Your Brain On... Nutrition (with Dr. Walter Willett)

Your Brain On... Nutrition (with Dr. Walter Willett)

From Your Brain On by Drs. Ayesha and Dean Sherzai

October 29, 2025 · 42 min · Season 6 · Episode 2

About this episode

In this episode, Dr. Walter Willett discusses the complexities of nutrition and its impact on health and brain function.

Everyone eats. It's the one thing we all have in common. And yet, nutrition has become one of the most confusing, divisive, and misunderstood sciences in modern life. Low-fat. High-fat. Keto. Vegan. Paleo. Superfoods. For every study, there's a headline that seems to say the opposite. In this episode, we turn to one of the most trusted voices in nutrition research to cut through the noise: Dr. Walter Willett, MD, DrPH. Dr. Willett, Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has spent more than four decades studying how what we eat affects our health, longevity, and brain function. His work has helped reshape dietary guidelines around the world, replacing fear and fads with clarity and evidence. Together, we unpack what the science really says about diet and the brain: how food choices shape inflammation, cognition, and long-term disease risk, and what practical lessons decades of data can teach us about eating for life and longevity. In this conversation, we discuss: • How nutrition became so confusing (and what the data actually shows) • Why the quality of fat matters more than the amount • How refined carbohydrates fuel inflammation…

People in this episode

Hosts: Drs. Ayesha and Dean Sherzai, Dr. Ayesha Sherzai, Dr. Dean Sherzai

Guest: Dr. Walter Willett

Topics covered

  • nutrition
  • diet and brain health
  • inflammation
  • cognition
  • dietary guidelines
  • plant-based proteins
  • microbiome

Keywords

  • nutrition
  • diet
  • brain function
  • inflammation
  • cognition
  • dietary guidelines
  • plant-based
  • superfoods
  • microbiome
  • longevity

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

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