Change Your Brain Every Day - Should You be Washing Your Food? With Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

Because of COVID-19, we are all trying to live more cleanly in order to avoid contracting the virus. One of the most commonly overlooked aspects of this is the cleanliness of our food. On this third episode in a series with Earth Friendly Products CEO Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks, the discussion is on how to prepare your food to make sure it’s safe to eat.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back. We are here with our friend Kelly Vlahakis, the president and CEO of Earth Friendly Products. They make the ECOS brand that you can find at Costco and Walmart, Target, Whole Foods, many places.

And we are just so grateful for you because, you know, if you think of a war, what you're making is the ammunition to be able to win this war against COVID-19. But, you know, COVID-19, there are going to be other pandemics. You need to develop a way to start really thinking about using non-toxic products that work. And I know this is an anxious time, but whatever goes on your body goes in your body and affects your body and your brain. So protecting yourself is just absolutely essential. And Kelly, we're just so grateful for who you are and what you do. And the question often comes up, well, what about food?

And should you be washing your food? I actually read something. Older people are not supposed to be eating raw salad. Why didn't you look at me when you said older people? No, because it placed me on. I called my mom. I called my mom and said, don't eat raw veggies because we don't have an effective like i can't buy vegetable wash for her right now and it's like she shouldn't be eating raw veggies right now because people have been touching and sneezing

and you know so talk to us this is really important absolutely it's super important there was also a great article on the 10th of march in the LA Times talking about how safe are fruits and vegetables in the supermarkets. And it was a great article and the director of food policy and law at UCLA was telling everybody, make sure to wash your fruits and vegetables, right? And so once again, we make an organic fruit and veggie wash and it's got three ingredients in it. It's got organic white vinegar, it's got organic glycerin, and then it's got three ingredients in it. It's got organic white vinegar. It's got organic glycerin. And then it's got an organic soap nut in it. And a soap nut, I know, can be misleading because of its name, a nut. But it's actually a berry.

And it's this amazing berry that's found in nature. It's grown in tropical environments. So they're produced in Florida. They're produced in Brazil. But these berries actually have natural surfactant abilities wow and so you combine the three and when you put it in i'll just show you you can see what the product looks like right so this is our organic fruit and veggie wash you see the usda organic certification on it so what a fruit and veggie wash does is it

does a better job than simply water of lifting the dirt and the impurities. So the solvent in the product would be the organic vinegar and would be the organic glycerin. And then the surfactant would be the soap nut berry. And so you have those three and it really, we have all sorts of third-party testing that shows that it removes all sorts of bacteria and viruses from fruits shows that it removes all sorts of bacteria and viruses from fruits and vegetables. And this is really important for fruits and vegetables, especially that you're eating the outer peel of. It also removes wax and things like apples. And another thing is during this crisis, a lot of people are going to have a hard time

finding organic fruits and vegetables. Those of us that are typically devoted to only organic have to buy non-organic. So it's also really important to have a fruit and vegetable wash to remove any of the toxic residues from pesticides that are on fruits and vegetables. And we saw an increase in people purchasing fruit and vegetable wash maybe 15 years ago when they had all sorts of issues with salmonella and listeria and other things about 3 000 people die annually from all sorts of bacterias and things that can be found on fruits and vegetables so it is really important and it's simple so what you would want to do if you have a fruit that's like an apple or something like that you just spray it on and you rinse it

off if you have a fruit that's got a lot more surfaces something like that, you just spray it on and you rinse it off. If you have a fruit that's got a lot more surfaces, something like cauliflower or broccoli, in that case, you would soap it. We would put it in our soaking solution, I mean. And I think, you know, Dr. Amen has been here and had our food that's prepared by our wonderful kind of plant forward chef, Brandon Hall. And so if you go downstairs into our corporate kitchens, you'll see him all day long. We grow a lot of the vegetables in our vertical gardens here for all of our team members. He'll harvest the vegetables from our vertical gardens, and then he'll soak them. And it's super easy. You just put one tablespoon into eight cups. So one tablespoon of the fruit and veggie wash into eight cups of water. You can use cold water, which is what we do here. And then you'd soak it for about 10 minutes. If you use warm water,

you only need to soak it for about five minutes because the warmth activates it. And, um, and then you take it out and just kind of pat it dry, either with a kitchen towel or hopefully a tree free paper product. So you don't need to rinse it off. You don't need to rinse it after that. And is it the same? Oh, and then you take it out. I'm sorry. You take it. I usually will put it in like in a colander or something. Got it.

Rinse it and pat it dry. And do you, do you need to, um, do you, with the, um, is it the same product?

Yes. So it's the same product, both the soak solution and the spray solution. One, you just pour with a cap on it and then the other has the trigger sprayer. Same product, same ingredient. And for people who can't find it, because it can be hard to find.

Right now it's, yes. I have a note. For those who want something stronger than plain water, mix in lemon or distilled white vinegar or hydrogen peroxide. Lemon should be used on berries, but not the vinegar or hydrogen peroxide lemon should be used on berries but not the vinegar or hydrogen peroxide the porous skin of berries can too easily absorb the vinegar or hydrogen peroxide salt can also be added to a

white vinegar mix so kelly because at this time it may be hard for people to find it. Absolutely. What can people do? So washing it with soap. So a healthy soap. A non-toxic soap. A non-toxic soap. Absolutely. And what you're saying that, you know, the at-home, right, vinegar. I mean, you know, we're using organic white vinegar as the main solvent in our product, too.

So that organic white vinegar is extremely effective as well and making sure to lift up all these impurities. And just going back to the same thing like with hand washing, you want something that extracts the dirt, the impurities, and then you want something to rinse it off, which is why that rinse phase is an important one because you're just washing it away. I know a lot of people are worried about Amazon and the boxes. So Amazon workers, some of them have COVID-19. They deliver boxes. And, you know, I hadn't really even thought about it. You know, I'm opening up all these boxes. He can't hear me. I told him not to open them right away. He can't hear me. And I'm like, you can't bring them in the house anymore.

Right. We actually have like a quarantine place in the garage. So we'll quarantine them for 24 hours. But what do people do? What do people do about boxes, packages? What advice would you give our brain warriors? Absolutely. So I'm doing the same thing you are doing there. You guys are doing. The packages are coming in. We're unboxing things outside of our home. We're using gloves for the unboxing experience.

So we open up our boxes. We leave the boxes outside by our recycling bin. And then we're bringing the contents into our home. But we're not just bringing the boxes directly in simply because of the fact that people that are delivering it, it's being touched. There's many different touch points, and we're trying to as well be very cognizant of any incoming raw materials in our facilities or incoming boxes into our homes. Right. So I'm keeping one dedicated opener outside with the boxes, have gloves out there, and I have sanitizer. So as soon as I take the gloves off, I sanitize my hands, bring in the products, wash my hands.

It's a process, but it needs to happen. It is a process because these are the small touch points people need to really be cognizant of. You know, as a psychiatrist, my OCD patients have just their anxieties skyrocketing. But they're all sitting there going, I told you so. Sort of like you. Sort of like me with my end of the world prepping. My wife prepping.

I'm never going to lose an argument again. No. I'm never going to win an argument again. And then the last kind of vegetable I just point out are mushrooms too, because I know a lot of people often ask me, how do you wash mushrooms? Cause they're so porous and they absorb everything. So for mushrooms, that vegetable,

I actually would utilize a cloth like a kitchen cloth or, or utilizing our tree-free paper. And I would actually wet that in the same solution. And I would actually wipe that off. Because unfortunately, with mushrooms, they'll absorb all the water and everything else. And it'll compromise, obviously, the taste of what you're consuming. So in that case, that's the one thing that I actually just wipe off.

Interesting. That's great. When we come back, we're going to talk about how important our cleaning personal products and cleaning products. And we just want you to be a brain warrior, which means you're armed, you're prepared, you're aware to win the fight of your life. And now we're in the middle of a war, like a real war with this pandemic. Stay with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe.

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