The Ultimate Guide To Nutrition w/ Shawn Stevenson

26:17Why do I have to suffer? I'm looking for data to affirm. Why me? You know, and so now my lens has changed and now I'm starting to see opportunity. And crazy thing is my path to wellness was there the whole time. I just couldn't see it. and so I had a friend who was in chiropractic school and I've I've been seeing her off and on for like two or three years and it's just like that thing over there that's weird you guys are weird and she after about a week maybe a week and a half after this revelation she took me to Wild Oats which has since been bought by Whole Foods and I didn't know that existed I've drove I drove past there a hundred times it wasn't near my neighborhood in Ferguson Missouri by the way But this was like 40 minutes away.

27:04And by the way, St. Louis is a big city. There's only one Whole Foods at this time. In L.A., you could throw a rock any direction and hit one. You also don't put Whole Foods in impoverished neighborhoods either. And that's one of the other challenges we have in this country is folks that don't have the financial resources to get access to this food. What's great about this podcast and yours is that it takes no resource to get access to the information now. Thank God. So times are changing, but it's still an issue in our country. One of the reasons that people with money live long is they get access to better health care.

27:39Yeah, and A and B, they are eating better foods most of the time. They actually can have eggs for breakfast instead of eating processed foods like cereals and things like that. So there's a big difference in this country financially between food as well, but that's a whole other topic. Yeah, but it's important. It's important for us to know because there's both. There's the personal accountability and there's the environment. That's right. But in your case, you took responsibility for your environment and it changed. That part. Exactly. Because we're not just products of our environment. We're creators of our environment.

28:11That's right. A hundred percent. And you were perpetuating it and that pattern was reinforcing it over and over again. So you make this decision, this chiropractic friend. And then what? Did you just change the way you were eating? Is that what happened once you started going there? The first thing I did, I was just operating on logic. I was just like, now I'm significantly overweight. And I'm just like, ease some of this pain maybe if I get some of this weight off my frame. And also, I was going off of commercials for what I was. The first thing I did prior to hanging out with her, I did Slim Fast.

28:39This is a true story. Based on the commercial, what is it? A shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, and then a sensible dinner. Right? So I got that nasty ass Slim Fast. I had those too. And unfortunately, I tried it not cold the first time. And yeah, it was terrible, which I lost a couple of pounds. But then - From throwing up. But that's the power of marketing too. It's just like, if I don't know, I'm just doing, as you mentioned, part of the transformation for impoverished communities like I come from is awareness. That's right. I just didn't know. I didn't know that it existed. and so in that environment so i did that then i connected with her and i go there and i'm a researcher i'm in school and i'm just kind of known for that helping friends and stuff like that and i went directly to the books and i was looking at my condition there was like this kind of nutrition nutrition prescription is this thick book and i went to the reference section because what they were saying was like is this backed by science and i went and looked at the reference I'm like, oh, my God, this is a public study on omega-3s and bone density.

29:48Nobody ever told me that. And examining my diet, and this is not an exaggeration, I might not get a viable source of DHA and EPA omega-3s in years. I was eating ultra processed foods, fast food every single day. if I wasn't if I didn't have like two dollars to go to jack-in-the-box and get two tacos I wouldn't I could eat like a family can of spaghettios or something like that like that's how I was living yeah and it was cheap it was accessible and really again living in that environment that's all that I knew yeah and so the first thing that I did was I found out about these nutrients that I needed to regenerate my my tissues my bone my spine that was not giving my body to do it then to provide the raw materials for the intelligence to do what it does for your body to heal itself and now i go to natural pill popping so i'm like getting all these supplements which was hard on my college diet you know and um can you stay on that for a second because you talk about this um often a lot of people listen to go all right yeah i got it food okay i probably get some omegas i better get some vitamin e i'm gonna get a little vitamin c but you know what i This is important right here, you guys, is an interjection.

31:03The difference between synthetically receiving these vitamins and getting them naturally from food. So you think you may be getting all that stuff because, by the way, I take supplements as well. But there's a difference in your body from getting it synthetically as it compared to getting it from food, correct? Absolutely. And I'm sharing the data. I'm not just – it's not a hypothesis. I shared several studies in the book identifying this even because, again, I don't care if it's true or not. I'm just going on what the data says and also bringing in some logic as well. What's the data say? So one of the studies, we just use vitamin E, for example, which is critical for helping your body to manage inflammation, for cognitive function.

31:45It's a really remarkable antioxidant. There's a bunch of benefits to it. And one of the studies that I cite in the book found that synthetic, well, let's just clarify what synthetic is. Okay, how do I best put this? So a naturally occurring nutrient or a whole food concentrate of a nutrient, which something like camu camu berry, which is a very dense source of vitamin C, that food-based vitamin C and a concentrate of that camu camu berry is surrounded by thousands of other micronutrients, many that we don't even know yet, that we haven't identified. All these cofactors have this kind of synergy that enables our body to use it better.

32:26And I'm going to come back and talk about vitamin C in a moment. But synthetic versions of this is a highly refined. But even when we talk about synthetic, by the way, it's still coming from the planet somewhere. But it's going to become from a very kind of artificial, constructed, man-made version of it. And so what the researchers found was that food-based vitamin E was twice as bioavailable, twice as usable by your cells than synthetic vitamin E. All right? There's something about food. And the thing is, really simple explanation, we evolved eating food. We evolved our genes have this interaction with food.

33:06Food. Right? Not to say that synthetic things cannot be helpful in some instances. Well, what they are is supplements. vitamins they're not the and it means that word at least based on reading your work you can supplement your vitamin e but it ought to not be your primary source of it right now you're going to say something about vitamin c as well i know what's in the book but we'll give them this little flavor i want to get i want to also get the book but tell them about the vitamin c piece too sure this is going to be a news flash maybe a little heartbreaking for a lot of people but most of the vitamin c out there and vitamin c supplements and even the little energy packs that are like at the checkout counter, the vast majority of it, we're talking over 90%, is made from genetically modified corn syrup and genetically modified cornstarch.

33:48So like some of the worst, cheapest, crappiest stuff. And because they can isolate this nutrient, it gets put into all these fancy pants supplements.

34:01And so one of the studies that I mentioned looked at people who are exposing themselves because vitamin C, we hear about that for their immune system. It does so much more. It is a, it is a master antioxidant in the human body. Your skin health is dependent upon vitamin C, um, helping to reduce the risk of cardiovascular events. And so specifically they were looking at individuals who are doing high risk behaviors, being smoking in this study and to see if taking vitamin C would have an impact on their cardiovascular and inflammation risk factors. And so this was a placebo-controlled study. All right.

34:36So part of the study, the smokers are getting camu camu berry, which is very likely the most dense source of vitamin C of any food ever discovered. And in another part of the study, they're getting synthetic vitamin C like you would find in these different supplements. And so at the end of the study, they found that when the individuals were taking the whole food-based vitamin C in the form of camu camu berry, they had significant reductions in their inflammatory biomarkers like C-reactive protein. So it's just showing this lowering of risk for pretty much everything, especially a cardiovascular event.

35:12And there was no change in the people taking the synthetic version of vitamin C. That's bananas. All right? Yeah. And so again, this isn't just hearsay. This is the real deal. So, and hearing this from me is a little bit different because I paid good money at two universities, actually, to get miseducated because we were not taught about a distinction with vitamin C. The professor would say, if you work with patients and for yourself as well, just make sure you're getting all your vitamins and minerals. Take a multivitamin. That was it. Yep. We weren't taught that there's multiple versions of vitamin C, that there's multiple versions of B12, that there's multiple versions of you name it.

35:55It's not just as. So if you're taking it in this synthetic form, are you getting the magnesium that your body is really looking for? Right. And so this food picture is so much bigger, but you can trust you're going to get a variety of these things if you're eating food. Okay, this is crazy to me. The other thing that you did, and then we're going to talk about how to prepare food too because that's a big part of the book. So then there's this idea of all this ultra-processed foods. Like if you're wondering whether this is real or not, I didn't realize this until I started prepping for the interview.

36:22You're saying now that they've actually studied fat cells from like 1900. See, I prepare, brother. So they studied these fat cells over time from like 1900 to now. And the difference in the makeup and the composition of these fat cells based on what we're now doing to ourselves in our diet is just stark to me. So if you're wondering whether or not this stuff really matters, it's affecting you at a cellular level and it's been proven. So go ahead. Oh, wow. I love you, man. All right. So one of the studies that I cite in the book, which it should be shocking for people and everybody should know this.

36:57So this was published in the BMJ, which is this is top tier. The British Medical Journal, top tier of all time. We're talking top three. And this was published in BMJ Open and looking at specifically heart health. And the researchers determined that our large consumption now of highly refined vegetable oil, canola oil, soy oil, corn oil, is one of the leading dietary factors of heart attacks, strokes, and other cardiovascular events. You don't hear that every day. And as a matter of fact, the marketing was the opposite of that. That's right. And another study, and I'll just throw this out there really quickly.

37:37This was published in Inhalation Toxicology. Just the smells of stuff, all right? They're looking at how smells can affect you. And they found that just smelling vegetable oil during cooking, the fumes of it, can damage your DNA. Oh, my gosh. It's crazy. It's crazy. And it's the vast majority of these ultra-processed foods, which, what is ultra-processed food? Let's clarify that just for everybody. Because humans have been processing food forever. All right? Just cooking a food is processing the food. Whether it's cooking a steak, it's changing the protein availability. It's changing the chemistry of the food in many ways.

38:12In many instances, real food is making many things more bioavailable. This is one of the advantages that humans had when we started to cook our food that really helped the development of our prefrontal cortex that makes us who we are. right and so it's basically in some instances helping to unlock certain capacities now there's an extreme of that too of course but just in general cooking is processing taking olives and pressing the oil out that's a processing all right it's minimally processed and it's got to finesse this in here if they're just like what oils to have olive oil auburn university researchers found olive oil is one of the few foods ever discovered that can reduce inflammation in your brain and repair your blood brain barrier, which that's one of the leading risk factors for insulin resistance is actually brain inflammation.

39:01This is from researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. But anyway, insulin resistance and brain inflammation. Yes. Yes. Okay. So, but in the book though, you have extra virgin olive oil as a sufficient choice for oil to use, but you actually talk actually about organic avocado oil. You talk about, I'm going to have him read the book, but are there even better oils than in olive oil for cooking purposes yes because those oils are sensitive and that's exactly the point i love you man that i was gonna get to was olive oil for centuries have been bottled in dark glass yes our ancestors knew that this this oil is sensitive all right it's like it's the uh it's the the boy band it's the journey it's the love ballad of oils all right it's still powerful Right.

39:48But it's a little more sensitive. But you're saying when you cook with it, there's a deterioration in its benefits? Is that what you're saying? Because these oils are volatile, they're very sensitive, they can be damaged very easily. Okay. And you can cook with olive oil. Don't get me wrong. Absolutely. You say it's a sufficient choice in the book. Ideally, however, we would be cooking with oils that are more stable under high heats because you're not micromanaging the heat of your food. Sean, this is a big deal. This isn't stuff anyone's talking about right here. So keep going. This is very, very good stuff right here.

40:20So what would we deem to be something more stable? This would be something that's higher in saturated fat. So this would be grass-fed butter, ghee, tallow, coconut oil. Coconut oil. Right? And so humans have been using these for thousands of years. Canola oil was just invented a few decades ago, by the way. It's very different. And if you see the process of making coconut oil, if you see the process of making olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, it is very simple. They're pressing out the oil. When you see how canola oil is made, it looks like gasoline. It looks like garbage. It looks like mud. It's terrible.

41:01So canola, corn, soybean, vegetable oils in general, no bueno. It's marketing. Yeah, but no bueno. Vegetable oil, it implies it's health washing. It sure, yeah, right. It implies that it's healthy. My mother switched over from Crisco to vegetable oil to be healthier. All right. It's like it's it's nefarious. Guys, this is huge right here. Now, by the way, I diverted us, but it leads down the road about what how are processed foods working in our lives. So I took us off track there. But I just feel like one of the secrets in the book to me was this because like I've always thought, by the way, and you say, you know, coconut oil, butter, avocado oil.

41:38Those are sufficient choices. But I've always thought, man, the healthiest thing you can cook with is extra virgin olive oil. And you're like, nah, once you've destabilized it to some extent, there's stuff that's better, which is what you've already told us about here. So let's go back a little bit. Let's stay on there. So we're back now to ultra-processed foods. We kind of understand what that is. And then what did they find in these cells? Because I want to make sure that they get that. Precisely. And the closing point with that is ultra-processed foods, on the other hand, are the minimally processed foods humans have been eating forever.

42:06ultra processed foods is when you see a field of wheat and somehow it becomes a bowl of frosted flakes or you see a field of wheat and it somehow becomes some twisted version of some cheese it's okay right there's no longer any connection to anything real okay all right okay and so same thing with corn that's one of my favorite snacks you know growing up in the inner city was funyuns you know funions we've got you know puffs cereal you know smacks the honey smacks the list goes on and on but if you were coming from an indigenous culture of like a hunter-gatherer tribe and you saw a bowl of fruity pebbles you had no idea where it comes from not to mention all of these chemical additives right so the food dyes and the you know the pesticides used in the growing process the list goes on and on it's so denatured it's no longer real food that's ultra processed food.

43:05And so here's what they found in those fat cells. As you mentioned, doing biopsies to look what makes up humans and our fat cells back closer to the 1900s, only about 2 % of our fat cells consisted of polyunsaturated fatty acids or PUFAs, all right, which is the primary fatty acids that you're getting in these vegetable oils, by the way. More recently, biopsies taken of multiple humans find about 25 % of fat cells are now made of polyunsaturated fatty acids or PUFAs. These are far more inflammatory fatty acids that our fat cells are just getting packed up with. And what I'm saying with this, Ed, is that we're literally changing the ingredients that make humans.

43:52Our recipe has changed. This is why we're seeing all of these epidemics of disease and dysfunction. We're changing what we're made of. You say in the book, 11 million people a year basically die, at least that we know of, just from eating wrong. That was a massive study. That was published in The Lancet, another top tier medical journal. They looked at all these different countries, over 100 countries. They found that poor diet is the number one cause of death in the world. In the world. Are you all hearing this? He just said a minute ago on top of that that what it is to be human is being changed by this stuff.

44:31The composition of a human is being changed. This is crazy. And yet, like, someone would have heard an introduction go, oh, he's got a cookbook out. That's great. No, no, no, no. Even when we were talking about this interview, like, brother, just get me there. Trust me, right? And then I started reading this, and I'm like, my gosh, this is unbelievable how much people need to know this. And here's another little thing that I didn't know. I didn't really understand this stuff. you're saying there's a connection between food and mood but food and cognitive function like i never thought about man i i just ate a jack in the box i had two of those tacos which by the way there's still a dollar there right so they you can still get access to this crap food but if i i if i'm eating that regularly that cognitively i can cause myself to function at a lower level as opposed to eating what and then that's there's a real connection between because i always thought Heart disease, cancer, I got all that.

45:27Okay, I can definitely see the connection between pounding my body with fat, creating inflammation in my body. It's the breeding ground for disease, no question. But cognitive function and mood is altered by food as well? Oh, man. This makes complete sense once you have that revelation that your brain itself is made from the food that you eat. Yeah, you said that earlier. Number one. Yeah. But it's even deeper than that. the energy exchange, how all your cells are talking, the fuel that all the processes are running on is made from the food that you're eating. And so it's kind of even with your car, you know, if you're getting the premium stuff versus you putting vegetable oil in your tank, you're going to have very different outcomes in your car's performance.

46:09All right. And so this is an, what I, what I really wanted to do was also to bring this back to simplicity. because we live in emoji culture. Yes. All right? Yeah. So we don't even like to use words anymore, which is cool because emojis can reflect a lot of qualities. And we can have a conversation with emojis. But because we have an emoji culture, what I wanted to do was put the top tier 40 plus foods, science-backed foods for improving metabolic health, supporting fat loss, improving cognitive function, improving mood and mental health, heart health, sleep wellness. What are the best foods? Here's a science, but each of those foods have a little emoji by it.

46:53If it's targeting metabolic health, you're going to see the little muscle emoji. If it's backing your cardiovascular fitness, you're going to see a heart emoji, et cetera, et cetera. And so taking that food and now, okay, cool. I know all this cool stuff, Sean, about sweet potatoes, right? And one of the benefits, they have these really remarkable anthocyanins that can improve your cognitive function. Now, what do I do with it? Just bake a sweet potato every day? That can be boring after a while. Now, guess what? I got you. We're going to make some sweet potato pancakes. Yep. Right? We're going to have a good...

47:26We're going to take that amazing food and those benefits and we're going to have a really good time.

47:33Okay. Do you know what I had for breakfast this morning? What'd you have? I'm not kidding you. I swear to you. Sweet potato pancakes. No, I'm dead serious. Amazing. See? We're linked up. No, I got his book a week ago. I think it was a week ago. That's no joke. My wife's going to hear this and laugh really hard. That's what we actually had this morning. I actually had that this morning. I take this stuff really seriously. Like, I don't know about all of you listening to this, but I want to know this stuff. I want to perform at my optimum rate for as long as I freaking can. And I want to know how to cook my food.

48:02I want to know how to prepare it. I want it to still taste great. At the same time, I want to understand, I don't need just the emoji thing. Because the book is that. It's simple on that, but it's also detailed. I mean, obviously you can listen to this man and understand this. I want to understand the mechanism at work in my body, and that's what's great about your work. Like little things that aren't little. He talks about sweeteners in the book. I'm just going to give you guys a little taste, okay? But this is something like you walk from this show today, you could live healthier right now. So you went through.

48:29He does this thing in the book that's awesome. Scary choice, sufficient choice, smarter choice. So let's just talk about sweeteners. Right before you came in, this is my third podcast of the day. You know I've got somewhere pretty important after this, and I wanted to be my peak with my brother here. So Sasha asks me, can I get you a coffee? I'm not a big coffee drinker, and I'm never a coffee drinker in the middle of the day, but I want to be on my game. Turns out the coffee machine wasn't working. That doesn't matter. What did matter was I was going to add a sweetener to my coffee, and it's changed because I read the book.

48:57So I just want to have everybody hear this. Scary choices. Artificial sweeteners, conventional sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, which most people have heard of that. Here's what surprised me. I won't say what the sufficient choices were. I was surprised that Stevia is a smarter choice. I was surprised to hear that. You recommend raw honey. I got that. Monk fruit. But Stevia is a good sweetener? Like, that's cool with you. All right. There's a distinction here. Okay. Because I've been in this field for 21 years. Okay. I've experimented more than any human should. Right. Right. And, you know, maybe 15 years ago, I first started utilizing stevia, but I got the real stevia leaf.

49:41The real stevia. It would be raw stevia? Is that what it is? So it's like a dehydrated leaf. Yeah. And it provides a nice little sweetness. It's so interesting that nature has that. Okay. But it has a little bit of a, maybe like a medicine-y aftertaste. Okay. You know, and so you have to know how to manage that. Okay. And if we, because of its concentration and it's so much sweeter than sugar, a tiny amount can make a big difference. So a couple of drops of liquid stevia can do you okay. Okay. And we've got some data on being beneficial for the microbiome versus artificial sweeteners having some significant downsides.

50:20And by the way, I shared some of the latest data with artificial sweeteners. And by the way, even as I'm saying that, even if something's scary, that doesn't mean you don't watch the movie. Yeah. All right? Yeah. You could still have a tryst with things from time to time and also finding what works for you, but just work to stack conditions in your favor. Let's do more of the smarter choice as often as we can. And I cannot have this conversation right now without talking a little bit about honey because I'm very bullish on honey right now. Okay. Talk about it. This is the sweetener we've been having as a species the longest.

50:51And they dig up tombs, the pharaohs, and find honey. It's still good. Not that you should probably eat it. Yeah. But you can. It's still active. It's still enzymatically alive. Okay. What can live that long? That is absolutely crazy. What is in that stuff that makes it so special? And I shared this mind-blowing study on honey that found that this, by the way, to call it a sweetener is a disrespect. We're like in a radio station vibe here, and it makes me think about put some respect on my name, you know, when that happened. But honey is not a mere sweetener. These researchers found that not only can honey reduce your fasting blood sugar, okay?

51:32It can help to reduce your fasting blood sugar and normalize your blood sugar. Interesting. What sweetener can do that? Yeah, it does the reverse. But also reducing your blood lipids, so blood fats, and helping to reduce overall cardiovascular risk. So to call it a sweetener, raw honey, just to be clear, also we got to put this full caveat in as well. Everybody's different. Okay. Okay. But even with that study, they're still going to be looking at the average. There can still be people that honey is not your, not your vibe. You're not Winnie the Pooh. All right. But for other people, for the majority of people, honey is going to be the ideal sweetener.

52:09But even with that, how do we use it? Like, how do we actually use this as a sweetener when traditionally we use this other thing, which the other thing isn't off limits, but I don't want us to lie to ourselves because Because even with stevia, if you got that powder stevia, that looks like sugar. It looks like an illicit drug. Yes. That's an ultra processed food and we got to be mindful of that. I'm so glad you made that distinction. Because a lot of my colleagues are very well-meaning. And of course, there's degrees of this, but they're saying swap out your baking and use all of this. Use all this xylitol powder or whatever the case might be.

52:45yeah we might have some improvement in health potentially versus them using conventional cane sugar yep but is that an ultra processed food and absolutely it is at the definition of the word it is an ultra processed food as well okay what about preparation food we're gonna run out of time i feel like i have albert einstein in front of me and i get to pepper him with like 11 questions and then we got to go when i want to ask you about 300 of them right but let's talk about how the where Food is being prepared as well. So there's no secret. There's these issues with plastics, right? Okay, so Chemicals that make plastics What about these phthalates like in food right so whether we're How do you feel about that like that's should that be a worry about how we store our food what we cook the food on Not just what we cook it with but how we actually cook it we grew up in the age of non-stick cookware you know it's glory days and when that hit the scene it's a game changer like everything's easier non-stick that's a it's a vibe teflon right this was just about 10 years ago one of the components of teflon was outlawed it's banned all right so this is pfoa so this is poly this is perfluoro octanoic acid perfluoro octanoic acid because also sometimes i can get them combined with these forever chemicals right this is a forever chemical all right so pfoas it was taken out of teflon why was it in there in the first place but the reason it was taken out and i shared the study this was published in one of the top cancer journals it was found to be a strong renal cancer causative agent kidney cancer so this was a strong kidney carcinogen right so it was pulled out no harm no foul right no there's all these other chemicals that just keep coming out what they're doing is just like instead of them scrapping the thing and like let's create something safer they're just trying to keep skating by let the data just pile up until we're forced to change it it's crazy now here's i again we don't want to villainize anything because it's if you have a couple of non-stick pans that's okay all right what we did over time was just add in a piece from time to time right and so what are some of the options well number one cast iron skillet it's one of the most time-tested things and a well-seasoned cast iron skillet for a while because of the industry with the nonstick they start to go after the cast iron and say you know where you're gonna get all this iron you know and it is negligible compared to the other chemicals that you're getting from these nonstick pans all right but again we can find we can create some alternatives like ceramic ceramic is great as well as a nonstick option okay it has some potential issues but we know that teflon is a problem all right also stainless steel has been used for centuries as well and but of course you've got to be more creative that might not be necessarily for like nonstick cooking purposes but let's bring those things back into the kitchen okay a well seasoned cast iron pan some stainless steel start swapping out pieces every now and then but over time as You see that nonstick pan and all those chips that are just getting scraped off.

56:14Those are in your body and they don't go anywhere. These are forever chemicals. And so, you know, we're having a revolution where not just with our food. This is a big part of this mission with the new cookbook is we're transforming the kitchen culture. Right. And just providing some education. But also in this conversation, it could be a little bit more harsh, but it's a soft place to land. it's very empowering providing options telling you like it is but also like okay this is cool let's do this let's try this yeah you know you guys i could tell you the thing about the book too is like the recipes in there the few that i have had are delicious like you're not sacrificing flavor you're actually not i'm just telling you straight up like you're not like it's really great stuff all right let me i got i got time for one more question we're actually already over Like this flew by, brother.

57:05Let's say you eat between, depending on how you eat. And by the way, he covers intermittent fasting in there. You can go through. He'll give you the preferred windows. Just eating in general. Let's give everybody a break or maybe we won't based on your answer. Seven days a week. If you have seven days in a week, that means the average person is eating somewhere between, let's say, 20 and 40 meals a week. Somewhere around there, right? depending on whether they eat three times a day or twice a day or four or five times a day, depending on their deal. How many of them can be not good meals? How do you feel about a cheat meal or just eat whatever the hell you want?

57:40Go get a pizza, go get a hamburger, go blah, blah, blah. In your house, because by the way, his beautiful family's on the cover of the cookbook, you can go on Instagram in a minute and you just see this man's, they walk the walk as a family. how many what percentage of my meals can i just not give a crap and eat whatever the heck i want give me some permission here and and i want to even know with you as fit as you are you got to eat bad once in a while like and so what's what are we allowed to do within reason i bet you haven't asked that one this week no i haven't absolutely not yeah and where i start is i don't i don't give morality to food there isn't a bad food to me there's even again scary sufficient smarter it's still an option because if we were stranded on a deserted island and somebody left a box of honey buns they're gonna help us survive all right there's a context to where all these foods still have some kind of value and i'm a big foodie you know i know that's the irony about you right we love food and I grew up in a culture, you know, household, my, my stepfather was an executive chef at Morton's of Chicago.

58:52And so he could cook. It was amazing. But a lot of times we didn't have much to eat, ironically, you know, and not being there and all the things. So we turned towards ultra processed food, but we still had the skillset. So we're big foodies and also humans evolved chasing tasty things. Have you ever thought about why certain animals eat certain things? What did they get a book that said like lambs eat this? Why are they eating this today? The lambs are like going over to those bushes, we are driven to eat things that taste good. Food scientists have manipulated our desires for tasty things, absolutely.

59:25But there's nothing wrong with enjoying food. It's something special about humanity. And so with that being said, the context of ultra processed foods, 60 % of American adults diet is now made of ultra processed food, according to the BMJ. Horrible. I know you said don't make a judgment, but my gosh, that's crazy. But it's worse for our children. And this is the first book that's publishing this data. I'm grateful for that. But this is a call to arms. The Journal of the American Medical Association, they analyze U.S. children's diet for 20 years tracking this. They found that in 1999, the average child in the United States, their diet was made of 61 percent ultra processed food.

1:00:01By 2018, it was almost 70 percent. And it's continuing to climb. Most of our children's diet is not real food. And in that time span, by the way, we've seen about a doubling in childhood obesity. All right. Is that an accident? Did it just happen? And so with all that being said, so now we know the domain that we're dealing with. We know that ultra processed foods are out there on the streets, but I encourage us to not give morality to the food. We don't have to have a cheat day. You know, even putting the term on there can evoke some changes in our chemistry for some people that can cause them to struggle.

1:00:37Right. because there are not many things that you can cheat on in our society and still be okay. You're right. Relationship, that could be a business, sports. We put that label on there. But with food, it's cool. Maybe not. It depends on your psychology. So I would drop the labels. And I'll tell you this. The very best time to have a food that might not be the best for you is when you feel well. when your parasympathetic nervous system is is toned when you're having a good time and you're enjoying life and you're feeling good but we tend to do it when we feel bad absolutely right and what we're doing is compounding the problem right stress eating is a real thing and simple things like what we're looking for even a little hit of carbohydrates boost your serotonin production and so maybe we can have some discernment and where we get in those carbs you know like i'm a big fan of sweet potatoes, for example.

1:01:35But, you know, especially when there's joy, joyous times, times of celebration, if you want to dabble in some things, I'm a fan of that, right? We're here to experience and to taste. And I'm saying this from a person who's been in this field for 21 years. And I've lived a time period where I was very dogmatic, as many people are when they find about all these problems, it's hard to not be angry and wanting to, you know, revolt. But I found a place of balance and to really advocate for finding more joy because here's the cool thing. Despite all the ultra processed food out there, what we have access to when we change that ratio, which I'll give you a ratio right after I say this, when we change that ratio, what we're opening up is the door of abundance.

1:02:22There are thousands, tens of thousands of foods, let alone meals that we can create with all of these real foods that have been around forever. The most amazing meal experiences that we have, if we think about it in our mental database, are often going to be incorporating real food. Yeah. Right? When something is made from scratch, especially by somebody that you love, it's special. It's special. And so, okay, let's talk about a ratio. This is not the same for everybody. This is why I don't like to give this cookie cutter thing, but I'm a big fan of 80-20. right 80 real food 20 other stuff okay i think it's a good balance in our society that's i think it's a pretty good balance and doable and doable yeah exactly and so we get we get a tremendous amount of these health benefits from the real food and also reducing the risk of you know all manner of problems if we're dabbling a little too much in the ultra process stuff again keep in mind the average person in our society it's almost 70 30 the ultra processed right and so just what if we switch where we flip that right the transformation that we can see in our families and our children can be remarkable you're remarkable and i love you just so y 'all know the behind the scenes this is also one of the best people in public life he's just a very good man and he truly cares about his work he's passionate about his work i don't even feel like if i don't even think it's work for him it's just a part of who he is now it's his identity and he's the best of the best today flew by flew by I promise him we are not going past this time and we blew past that time by about 15 minutes just so you know brother because it went so quickly thank you for being here and thank you for the work you do I'm grateful that you exist in the world and I hope there's a fourth time we can break the record we'll let Tony and Joe know that you came on for the fourth time would you come back absolutely you know I love you man and I really do appreciate you every time we get together it's just it's really special it's just not It's not frequent enough.

1:04:24And I live in L.A. now. I know. Well, I'm leaving, but that's a whole other thing my audience doesn't know about yet, so I'm not going to tell them yet. Okay, listen to me. You guys, follow him, by the way, on social, okay, at Sean Model. He's got the Model Health Show as well that most of you already know about. And go get Eat Smarter, the family cookbook. Trust me on this one thing, on this cookbook. The food, you're not going to prepare every single thing in the book, but the three or four things that we've already prepared in our home were delicious, and it made me want to eat better. And I got to tell you, and eat smarter going forward.

1:04:55So there's no morality to the food, but at the same time, I like that 80-20 or at least that 70-30 that you shared with us. All right, everybody, max out your life. Share this with anybody who's alive, who you would like to live longer, healthier, and with more energy. So that's a pretty big demo to share this episode too. God bless you all. Max out. This is the Ed Milard Show.

1:05:20We'll be right back.