# Kiriakou on diet and nutrition > **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou. > > Cite as: "Kiriakou on diet and nutrition," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kiriakou-on-diet-and-nutrition/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *John Kiriakou's views on eating, given to a Cypriot nutrition interviewer who challenged several of them: that the worst dietary advice he ever heard was to cut fat and cholesterol, that the American sugar lobby spent decades persuading the public that fat was the enemy, and that at his age carbohydrates are the enemy instead.* **Kiriakou on diet and nutrition** collects the dietary positions [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) set out in a 2026 interview conducted, unusually for him, by a nutrition professional who disputed them as they were given. Asked for the worst weight-loss advice he had ever heard, he named it twice for emphasis: *"to cut fat and cholesterol."*[1] His explanation is political rather than metabolic, protein is good and carbohydrate bad, especially refined sugar, but *"the sugar lobby in the United States is so powerful that for decades they convinced us that fat was the enemy."*[2] His interviewer pushed back on both halves, arguing that the harmful fats are specifically the saturated ones rather than fat as a category, that the response to dietary cholesterol varies between individuals, and that the real problem is overconsumption of calories, the average American, he put it, taking in 3,500 a day. Kiriakou agreed on the calories.[3][4] He defended the carbohydrate position on the narrower ground of his own age and circumstances: *"if you're my age, carbs are the enemy,"* because he will not get the exercise his body needs, his metabolism has slowed over the years, and the calories will be stored as fat rather than burned.[4][5] He also accepted correction. Describing the [tofu he had added to his diabetes diet](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kiriakou-gastrectomy/#type-2-diabetes), he added the aside that *"tofu gives you man boobs, now they're telling us"*; told this was untrue and that a recent meta-analysis found no such effect, his answer was *"Good. Thank you… Because I eat a lot of soy and I don't want to grow man boobs."*[6] When the interviewer proposed that the real driver of his post-surgical weight loss was simply a lower calorie intake rather than the operation itself, Kiriakou agreed without argument: *"Oh no, you're exactly right about that."*[7] ## On chocolate Asked on Halloween 2025 for his favourite candy, Kiriakou declined the premise: *"I don't really like candies, but I remain partial to chocolate."* Either kind will do, *"I like milk chocolate or dark chocolate the best"*, with one preference stated firmly: *"especially the heavy salted kind."* He notes that this was not available to him growing up: *"they didn't really do that in Ohio in the 1970s."* The other thing he liked as a child was Life Savers.[8][9] ## See also - [Kiriakou's type 2 diabetes](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kiriakou-gastrectomy/#type-2-diabetes) - [Kiriakou's gastrectomy](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kiriakou-gastrectomy) - [Kiriakou Operational Eating](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kiriakou-operational-eating) - [Kiriakou On Greek And Cypriot Food](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kiriakou-on-greek-and-cypriot-food) ## Sources 1. CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou — 'They Physically Removed My Stomach' (2026-06-01), at 00:00. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAmAja1Rly0&t=0s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-01-giorgos-omirou-clickbait-title-personal-channel-probe/ 2. CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou — 'They Physically Removed My Stomach' (2026-06-01), at 00:33. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAmAja1Rly0&t=33s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-01-giorgos-omirou-clickbait-title-personal-channel-probe/ 3. CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou — 'They Physically Removed My Stomach' (2026-06-01), at 02:08. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAmAja1Rly0&t=128s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-01-giorgos-omirou-clickbait-title-personal-channel-probe/ 4. CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou — 'They Physically Removed My Stomach' (2026-06-01), at 03:11. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAmAja1Rly0&t=191s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-01-giorgos-omirou-clickbait-title-personal-channel-probe/ 5. CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou — 'They Physically Removed My Stomach' (2026-06-01), at 03:43. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAmAja1Rly0&t=223s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-01-giorgos-omirou-clickbait-title-personal-channel-probe/ 6. CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou — 'They Physically Removed My Stomach' (2026-06-01), at 05:20. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAmAja1Rly0&t=320s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-01-giorgos-omirou-clickbait-title-personal-channel-probe/ 7. CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou — 'They Physically Removed My Stomach' (2026-06-01), at 11:32. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAmAja1Rly0&t=692s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-01-giorgos-omirou-clickbait-title-personal-channel-probe/ 8. DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Gaza-istan?” (2025-11-01), at 07:13. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7-d0Y6eESc&t=433s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-01-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-with-ted-rall-and-john-kiriakou-gaz/ 9. DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Gaza-istan?” (2025-11-01), at 07:46. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7-d0Y6eESc&t=466s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-01-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-with-ted-rall-and-john-kiriakou-gaz/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kiriakou-on-diet-and-nutrition/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt