Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - How To Eat To Boost Your Body’s Natural Defences & Avoid The Foods That Weaken Them with Dr William Li #450

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

Today’s guest passionately believes that the decisions we make every day about what we eat, have a huge influence on our overall health. Dr William Li is a medical doctor, internal medicine specialist, research scientist and the author of the 2 international bestsellers, Eat to Beat Disease and Eat To Beat Your Diet. He works in a field of research called Food as Medicine and having been involved with the development of many different drugs over the past few decades, he is passionate about using scientific rigour to analyse the specific benefits of food. Dr Li has been a guest on my podcast on 2 previous occasions - Episodes 234 and 376 - and those episodes remain some of the most downloaded episodes in the history of my show. Today’s brand new episode was actually a conversation Dr Li and I recorded together around 2 years ago, but the content within it, is just as relevant today.   In this conversation, we covered a broad range of food related topics that people often find confusing, with the intention of providing more clarity. We start off talking about the foods we might want to consider cutting back on, due to their negative effects on our health. We talk about sugar, artificial sweeteners, ultra-processed foods, alcohol, and the problems with reusing oil when frying.   We also talk about the practical steps we can all take immediately, when it comes to choosing foods that will enhance both our short term and long-term health.   We cover so many different topics today, including:   how you can go about choosing a good quality olive oil, the benefits of pairing certain foods together to increase nutrient absorption, how we can increase the amount of vitamin D in mushrooms, why organic foods are healthier, how to best read food labels, the link between the foods we consume and autoimmune disease, whether supplements are beneficial, and so much more.   Dr Li is someone who wants joy to be at the heart of how we think about our food choices and our health. He is knowledgeable, passionate and a wonderful communicator. I always enjoy my conversations with him, I hope you enjoy listening. Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Thanks to our sponsors: https://drinkag1.com/livemore https://vivobarefoot.com/livemore Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/450 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

Dr. Rongan Chatterjee, MD, PhD There's a lot of foods that actually impair our health defenses, our circulation, our stem cells, our healthy gut microbiome, the ability for our DNA to protect our bodies from the environment, and also our immune system. Your body can't handle some of those foods that we have gotten used to eating. Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rongan Chatterjee, and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More. Today's guest passionately believes that the decisions we make every day about what we eat have a huge influence on our overall health. Dr. William Lee is a medical doctor,

internal medicine specialist, research scientist, and the author of two international bestsellers, Eat to Beat Disease and Eat to Beat Your Diet. He works in a field of research called food as medicine. And having been involved with the development of many different drugs over the past few decades, he's passionate about using scientific rigor to analyze the specific benefits of food. Now, Dr. Lee has been a guest on my podcast on two previous occasions, episodes 234 and 376, and those episodes remain some of the most downloaded in the history of my show. Today's brand new episode was actually a conversation

Dr. Lee and I recorded together around two years ago, but I can assure you that the content within it is just as relevant today. Now in this particular conversation, I wanted to cover a broad range of food-related topics that people often find confusing, with the intention of providing more clarity. We start off talking about the foods we might want to consider cutting back on due to their negative effects on our health We talk about sugar, artificial sweeteners, ultra-processed foods, alcohol and the problems with reusing oil when frying

We also talk about the practical steps we can all take immediately when it comes to choosing foods that will enhance both our short-term and long-term health. We honestly do cover so many different topics today, including how exactly we can go about choosing a good quality olive oil, the benefits of pairing certain foods together to increase nutrient absorption, how we can increase the amount of vitamin D in mushrooms, why exactly organic foods are healthier, how to best read food labels, the link between the foods we consume and autoimmune disease, both of our collective views on supplements, and so much more. Dr. Lee really is someone who wants joy to be at the heart of how we think about our food choices and our health.

wants joy to be at the heart of how we think about our food choices and our health. He's knowledgeable, passionate, and a wonderful communicator. I always enjoy my conversations with him. I hope you enjoyed listening. I think one of the greatest things about food is that, and food and health, is that it actually puts the agency of choice into our own individual hands. And so we make our own choices. One of the interesting things that is very clear is our body's health defenses, the five of them we talked about last time, our circulation, our stem cells, our healthy gut microbiome, the ability for our DNA to protect ourselves, our bodies from the environment, and also

our immune system. for our DNA to protect ourselves, our bodies from the environment, and also our immune system, these systems, for us to reach our health potential, we want to make sure that they are not squashed inadvertently by foods that we have gotten used to eating. And so let's talk a little about some of those foods that actually impair our health defenses. That's probably the best way of thinking about what to avoid. Now, we know that added sugar is something that taxes the body's metabolism, right? So, if you have a little bit of sugar in fruit, from natural sugars, that's fine because you're getting a lot of other stuff in fruit as well that, in fact, helps your metabolism and helps your body's ability to be able to digest and metabolize fructose and glucose and use that fuel into your body.

But if you drink soda, to have those 10 teaspoons of refined sugar that are dissolved invisibly in whatever colored fluid we might be drinking, it tastes great, quenches your thirst. Our mental blueprint is that this is something you use to slake your thirst on a hot summer day. And I can tell you that the hyperglycemic state, your body can't handle 10 teaspoons of sugar at the same time. And think about the people that chug an entire can of soda. I mean, I've done it myself. There's no way that's good for us. So that overwhelms a lot of our systems.

It overwhelms our stem cells. Our stem cells cannot adequately function, properly function to help us regenerate when there's too much sugar around. You know, sugar is a concentrated material. It's a solute, meaning that it's dissolved in water. And when there's a lot of things, and think about when you're in a swimming pool or if you're swimming in the ocean for a long period of time, what happens is the water gets pulled out of your skin or even in a bathtub, your skin gets wrinkly because you've sucked out all the water. And that's basically what happens to these cells in a high sugar environment in your blood.

So I would say added sugar with sodas that are so popular, that is something that sits on your health defense systems. Too much sugar also literally damages the ecosystem of your gut microbiome, which is connected to your immunity. Unhappy gut, unhappy immunity. We all want to actually be as strong immunologically as possible. And then, by the way, let's kind of just take one step over to the kissing cousin of regular soda, which is diet soda, right? So here's the thing I just told you, you know,

we might want to cut down or cut out regular soda. So what do people say? They say, well, don't worry, Dr. Lee, we just go over to the diet soda. No worries. I drink the diet version. It's much better for my metabolism. Well, science tells us it's not true. And the irony is that people who drink a lot of diet soda with the purpose of not getting a lot of carbs from refined sugar actually still gain weight. This is a kind of a paradox that now makes sense because scientists have figured out that many of the artificial sweeteners used in diet sodas actually harm our gut microbiome. And so when you're drinking that soda and that artificial sweeteners used in diet sodas actually harm our gut microbiome. And so when you're drinking that soda and that artificial sweetener, you get that sugar hit on your tongue

to go to your brain. Man, it's pretty sweet. But all those chemicals go down your gut and they're feeding our gut bacteria. And the gut bacteria really don't like these synthetic compounds, these artificial sweeteners. And so they revolt. And as they're revolting, they're actually literally drowning in these artificial sweeteners. And that is bad enough because our gut bacteria actually helps to lower inflammation, but our gut bacteria also controls metabolism, our insulin sensitivity. So when that gets upset, guess what? Our actual blood sugars raise and we actually have poorer metabolism of our energy and we actually start to gain weight anyway. So that's, you know, kind of two, just two examples, but there's a lot of other foods that we might want to be careful about.

Can you just explain that term metabolism? Because it's something that I think the public hear a lot, but I think it's not always that well understood. Glad you're asking that question. Here's what I will tell you, because I'm actually working on a project now on metabolism. Metabolism isn't that well understood by doctors either. And it's actually not even that well understood by scientists. And that's part of the mystery of the human body, that gigantic question mark, what is our metabolism, right? human body, that gigantic question mark, what is our metabolism, right? So here we are thinking about metabolism, I think, classically as energy. You know, how do we, our metabolism is, these are some assumptions. Our metabolism is something we're born with. You know,

I have a lot of body fat, so I got the unlucky straw in family genetics. Look at my sister. She's skinny as a stick. She's lucky she inherited the thin gene for her metabolism, right? So that's one assumption that we make about metabolism. And that infers, and it's wrong by the way, but that infers that our body's metabolism is the machinery that's used to take energy that we put into our body. That's our food that we eat, how our body processes that energy in order to be able to load up on fuel, and then how our body takes that fuel in the fuel tank, like filling the gas tank with petrol, and then actually uses that fuel as we get on the highway and drive. That's not incorrect, okay? But what we're really beginning to realize is the metabolism is a lot

more complicated than that because it's connected to our immune system. It's connected to our inflammation. It's connected to our ability to actually maintain our health in the sense that body fat is not necessarily bad. It's actually really good. and so many of the assumptions of metabolism energy and all the negative aspects of it you know an athlete has got is you know who's in his top shape has got great metabolism whereas somebody who actually is obese has terrible metabolism not not as simple as we thought yeah thank you for that i think that's that's really really helpful so in terms of categories and types of foods that we should think about limiting or avoiding, the first thing you went to was those drinks with added sugar, soft drinks, fizzy drinks, soda, you know, in

whatever country you're in, however you like to refer to it. I hope it's generally well known that actually those things are damaging for our health, our immune system, our teeth. And you beautifully explained why that is. Now, before we go to diet drinks, because I'm really glad you brought that up, full sugar fizzy drinks. Is it just the sugar that's causing problems because it overwhelms our system and we can't process it? Or is it something else? Is it the sugar and the chemicals and the impact they have on other aspects of our body's health? And potentially those five defense systems that you've written beautifully about in your book, what's going on there? Is it just the sugar or

is it something else? Yeah. The soft drinks, the sodas that we see so commonly around us, it's part of everyday modern life for the last hundred years or so. It's interesting. The history of soda is really fascinating. It dates back into Europe where people were trying to find additional ways to be surprised and delighted by beverages, right? So the traditional drinks were always tea or coffee. Of course, the most popular beverage in the world was just drinking water. The most important one, actually, as well, tea and coffee following close behind. And then there was wine, right? I mean, these were for thousands of years, sort of the elixirs, so to speak, of our beverages. And carbonation was actually added to fruit juice. First, it was a mistake, I think, that was made when they invented it. But then actually,

it became something to delight folks, kind of like kind of like in a, you go to a carnival, you know, and you see some spectacle that actually is just something you walk by and you think, oh my gosh, that's so unusual, that's delightful. That's how sodas were actually drank. And then once actually the big industries came in and turned it into a marketing buzz. It started to take on a life of its own. And here's where it morphed. Went from food juices that actually had some carbonation, which is just gas, you know, CO2.

And that's okay. But what wound up happening is that they started to have less fruit, but they figured out how to put chemical flavorings that actually mimic the fruit flavoring. And then, of course, nobody really wants to have just a plain watery looking carbonated drink. So then they started to add artificial coloring. And then they started to add preservatives. And this goes to the importance of reading a label. Whenever I actually pick up something to drink from a store, a grocery store,

I'm an explorer. So I love to actually try new things. If I saw a drink in a store that seemed appealing or attractive or intriguing to me, I might pick it up. But the first thing I do is I take a look at the label. What is in there, right? So it should be mostly water. So I look for that. And then many people don't know this, but the order in which the ingredients appear on a label, at least in the United States, is synonymous with

their relative concentration in the drink. And so what you want to do is it's usually water, and then it's sugar. All right. So we just talked about that or artificial sweetener. And then you start seeing the other things behind it. And I think most people will be astounded and disappointed, rightfully so, that natural fruit juice is usually pretty low on the list of 10 or 20 ingredients. And so if you are creeped out by not being able to pronounce, understand, identify the ingredients on a beverage, you should follow your instincts. the ingredients on a beverage, you should follow your instincts. That's probably not something you want to put in your body because your body's not hardwired to handle those chemicals. Yeah, I think that's great advice. Something I use with my patients as well. People say there's always exceptions. Yeah, there are exceptions, but as a general principle when looking at

ingredient labels, I completely echo that. If you don't recognize it, maybe give it a miss and choose something else instead. You also mentioned marketing there when you were talking about fizzy drinks. And that really is something that we're fighting. You are trying to promote all this incredible, colorful food. But what we're fighting is this marketing machine. And in particularly around, I guess, soft drinks and fizzy drinks and sodas. It's really tragic to see sports stars who are looked up to by children. You know, you certainly have seen this in the UK for many years. You see this in a big way in India,

where like the big cricket stars are often sponsored and are seen drinking a can of soda. And actually, I think this is one of the big problems we're up against because that just infuses into these young kids' mind that actually, I want to be like that person. Oh, they're drinking that drink. Oh, I want to drink that and be like them. How much of a problem do you think marketing is? Sponsorship, product placement, commercial deals. Is that something we need to be fighting against? I think that we all have the freedom, most of us, to make our own choices. And I try to think about

any argument, such as one we're discussing now, from both sides of the coin. If you run a company and your company is making a product, your job is to market it, whether it's a soda or whether it's a tennis shoe or whether it's a wristwatch, right? On one hand, I don't blame companies for actually doing marketing and the ones that actually do it really well, hey, you know what, that's their job, okay? On the other hand,

I think that the fight that we're actually having is not really against the company. The fight is really against the inertia that many of us have in the community to do our homework on and to get back in touch with our body. Because I think that if we actually, you know, took a look in the mirror and started to reacquaint ourselves with what our body is telling us, I mean, you know, look, here's how I think about it. In the morning, you get up in the morning, you take a shower, you step out of the shower, you look, you're going to see the mirror.

You look in that mirror. Most people aren't that happy. Most people are not that happy with what they see. They can always find something wrong with themselves, you know? And then, you know, and then you might step on a scale and you might not like that number. Okay. And then you're like, those are the few moments of clarity in a day where you might actually be thinking about yourself. And then we get dressed and we go off and we're just, those are the few moments of clarity in a day where you might actually be thinking about yourself.

And then we get dressed and we go off and we're just swept up with the rest of our lives, whether it's our jobs, whether it's our families, whether it's other responsibilities. And we leave ourselves behind. Oftentimes, we deprioritize what our body needs. And I think that one of the things, the inertia we're fighting against is actually all those other distractions in our life. I actually think that, you know, one of the things that we could do to teach children and one of the things we could do to teach young parents, one of the things we could do to help teachers, whether it's grade school, high school, or college or beyond, is to really reemphasize the fact that we all need to be in touch with our bodies. We need to know ourselves first. Knowing yourself first allows you to then discern whether or not a message that you're

seeing on television or being promoted by a sports star or whether something that is being marketed to you in a grocery store is something that you want to partake in, right? And so I think that, yes, we should be vigilant and we should enact policies that prevent predatory marketing practices to people that are uninformed and are highly vulnerable, like marketing to children, you therefore, it's something that really we do need to actually push back against. But on the other hand, I think companies are just doing their job. I think that we have our own decision. We need to push back on the predatory practices of companies that are preying on the vulnerable. And we also need to be able to lift up the consumers so that they are smarter, wiser, more in touch with themselves, and then they actually can discern what they should be ordering or buying that can actually

help themselves. Yeah, I really appreciate that nuanced answer, looking at it from both sides. You mentioned sugar and these soda drinks that we know certainly even small amounts consumed regularly can be quite damaging for our health. And then you went to artificial sweeteners and these diet drinks. Now I share the same perspective as you do on this, but it does appear to be a very divisive topic with the public, but even within science and within medicine, this whole topic of whether artificial sweeteners are good, bad, or neutral seems to get a lot of people's backs up. I know Professor Tim Spector, who has been on the show before, and he's pretty clear as well that we should be avoiding them. You seem to be pretty clear on that. I certainly

take the precautionary principle with my patients to say, listen, I've seen enough data that suggests it's having a negative impact on the gut microbiome. So I would prefer to take that precautionary approach and say, let's try something else. What is your view on that? And why do you think it's such a divisive topic? Well, first of all, every kid loves candy, right? Me as well. I remember when I was a child, you know, in the US, you know, we had Halloween and who didn't look forward to collecting all the candy from the neighbors. And I think that, you know, sugars, the candies, they're delightful and there's nothing wrong with being delighted.

And I think we carry with us lots of pleasant, fun memories. I think brain's also hardwired to actually go after sweet things, right? I mean, it's part of our instinct as animals to, you know, just like the lion on the savannah goes after the antelope. I think humans, you know, on the street go after candy. It's one of those things that just we're hardwired to go after sugar. I think there are industrial interests that actually pose counter arguments to the harm of sugars and artificial sweeteners. And by the way, I do want to actually bring this up because I think it's important.

Let's not character assassinate categories. I think that's really important. So artificial sweeteners, let's be specific. What I was referring to are things that are not refined sugars, the powdery white stuff that you would buy in a supermarket. The artificial sweeteners are the ones that are chemically synthesized, not natural, that actually have been designed to activate the sugar receptors on your tongue and mimic sweetness. Right. Okay.

And there's many different kinds. And so I think that if anybody were to go to Google and look up categories of artificial sweeteners, you'll start seeing this is not one product. It's many different types. Some people could consider artificial sweeteners Stevia. Now Stevia is a natural sweetener, but it's still artificial when you compare it to refined sugar. And what about, you know, like some people use monk fruit, which is also a natural sweetener, which is the same thing as refined sugar. It also activates your sugar taste buds. It's more natural. And then what about our spartame and circulose? And what about all those other kind of chemical names that you can't pronounce? Now, we need to say, categorically, I think excess natural sugars in product form added to food, added sugars, tend to be unhealthy if you overconsume that. And soda is just one of many examples with lots of added sugar. Artificial sweeteners is not one category.

It's a lot of different types of things that are used in place of refined sugar. And what I would say to be a savvy consumer, just know that there are more natural versions of those. I think Stevia is fine. However, there are Stevia that actually are not really all Stevia. You pick up the package, you look at the ingredients, and you find even though it says Stevia, you look at the ingredients and you actually see that there are other things that are added to it. We cannot forget when you buy ultra processed food in a package, stuff has been added to it. Almost certainly, even to preserve it on the shelf, that may or may not be good for you. And one of the big advantages we have right now, every one of us carries around one of these, a mobile phone.

And so if you don't recognize something and you're curious, go ahead and type it in and search that chemical to learn something about it. That could actually make the difference between whether you put it in your cart or not. Yeah, I love that. Very empowering way of looking at this to put the information in the consumer's hands and say, right, you start as much as possible to make these better decisions because you know that this one's going to lead to health. This one's probably going to not promote my health over a period of time. I mean, look at what happens when we sit down at a restaurant, right? You open a menu and the waiter comes over and says, do you have any questions? And so all of us have done this. You pick one that kind of seems interesting to you.

And you ask, what's that question we asked? You ask the waiter, hey, what's in this? All right, what's in this dish? And they tell you. And on the basis of the information that you asked for as a consumer on food that you're about to purchase and eat, you might say, oh, well, that sounds pretty good. I'll have it. Or you might say, you know, that doesn't sound so great to me. I think I'll choose something else. And I think that the power is in the pocket of the consumer and it's our money, our resources that we're spending. And by the way, I mean, you can see this now with global and the geopolitical events that are happening. If we choose not to support something, it can have a powerful impact.

And that impact actually comes from our pocketbooks. Yeah. Apart from these drinks that we've covered so far, any other sorts of foods that we should generally try and avoid? Let's say when we're in the grocery store or the supermarket, anything we should think about? out. Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, if you're looking for something at this time of year to kickstart your health, I'd highly recommend that you consider AG1. AG1 has been in my own life for over five years now. It's a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It contains vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important, especially at this time of year. It also contains

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But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Foods that come in a box, foods that got lots of ingredients and lots of preservative and chemicals inside them. Things that they say that your grandmother, if you showed her, might not recognize as food or a great grandmother, perhaps. Ultra processed foods as a group tend to be associated when we look at populations with

poorer health outcomes from diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and even cancer. And so again, you know, I, even though I said we should be careful not to overgeneralize, it is true things in a box, things in a can, things, you know, that are manufactured at scale and intended to sit on the shelf for months or maybe even years tend to draw the attention, my attention anyway, that really is worth reading the label and knowing what it is you're putting in your body. So ultra processed foods. I think alcohol is another thing that is popular. It's social. I mean, look, if you look at beer and wine, these go back millennia as part of human culture. People sat and distilled and fermented beer and wine

for thousands of years in the Colosseum in Rome. They're still doing excavations to figure out what the gladiators actually ate and drank. And they find inside there wine casks and things like that. It's a cherished tradition of humans. But what we do know is that it's easy to over consume. And we do know that while there are healthful properties in the liquid of wine due to the fermentation, it pulls things out of the red grape skin or pulls things out of the barley hops in the case of beer, like xanthohumeral in beer or resveratrol in red wine, the fact of the matter is that none of the benefits that you get from any alcoholic beverages

come from the ethanol, the alcohol itself. The thing you get the buzz from does nothing for your health. Some of the other things that happen to be in the broth of the fermentation might be good for you. And so that's something that, you know, like, like, oh, well, they found that. And I think recently there was research showing that, you know, even one glass of red wine could have an impact on brain health as well. And I think that, you know, we have to be, I'm really careful about not chucking a spear, you know, at every food that,

you know, we want to kind of malign for a health reason. I think wine is a cherished tradition. Alcohol is a cherished tradition, but people should know that the benefits of it, and it's okay to have a glass or two every now and then, but I think that the people who really go after it hard, look, besides the obvious liver disease and the problems of nutrition and the brain health, I mean, alcohol is a toxin to your brain. of nutrition and the brain health. I mean, alcohol is a toxin to your brain. We do want to actually be mindful about the amounts that are consumed. You know, processed meats are another food product that actually are classed as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization. Now, what kind of processed meats are we talking about? We're not talking about that. The air cured salami from

Sardinia, you know, that, you know, that have been made in the same way for thousands of years that people eat sparing amounts of, you know, as part of a more well-balanced Mediterranean traditional meal. I'm talking about the deli foods. You go in there and they're slicing stuff, you know, from a big lump that, that looks nothing like the animal from which it came. And some of these cured sausages, if you visit a sausage factory, I had a patient once who actually worked as an inspector in a commercial sausage plant. And he told me that he used to have to change his boots every month, rubber boots, walking in there because the stuff that splashed out of the pool in which the sausages were essentially

embalming it for preservatives and for flavorings would actually dissolve the soul of his rubber boot. Oh, man. That made such an impression on me. I'm still talking about it 20 years later. Yeah. And we're sort of removed from that process, aren't we? We don't see that.

We don't see that on videos. We just see the nice packaging and the clever marketing copy on there. And so I think that's really, really important. And I really like the way you made that distinction there. Also, you know, when talking about things like alcohol or anything, it depends not just on that one thing. It depends on everything else that's going on in your life as well. We like to take these things in isolation, good or bad. It's like, well, it kind of depends, doesn't it? In our first conversation together, which if people haven't heard, I'd highly recommend they go back and listen to, one of the things I really liked

about your approach was you said, well, let's put into our body foods that support these five defense systems. And if we can do that and support them, we raise the bar, we become more resilient. Therefore, we've got more headroom to actually deal with the insults that are going to come in in life, whether that's DNA insults from pollution, or whether it's the odd thing that we creep into our diet that we probably know isn't the best thing for us, but we just fancy it now and again. And I really like that approach. And I know we're starting off this conversation focusing on some of the things to avoid. We're very quickly going to get onto the things that people can put in. But yeah, I really, really appreciate that. The most important thing that we as doctors can do is to

listen to our patients and hear them out and try to understand where they're coming from and what's important to them. I always ask my patients, what do you eat? What do you like to eat? What brings you joy when it comes to food? That question usually can elicit an answer. I'm very careful not to ask that question judgmentally. What kind of negative foods? How much for steak do you eat? I never ask that. I always sort of say, tell me about what do you enjoy eating? What brings you joy? What are some of the favorite things that you like to eat? And, you know, again, it's that conversation that invites someone to look deeply within them. I think that, you know, I, when I was a kid, I studied martial arts and, and one of the greatest martial arts artists ever was Bruce Lee,

who I actually read a lot of his writings. He wrote in a philosophical sort of way. And he wrote one of the most important things to succeed in life, whether it's in martial arts or otherwise, is to know yourself, to truly know yourself. And I think that so often we get distracted. We don't have that opportunity to ask ourselves something simple like, so if we had a choice, what would we want to eat? What brings us joy? And my strong belief is if we want people to get on a better diet, to get them started and to keep them going on it, we want them to actually feel like it's not a heavy lift. Like it's not a heavy lift. It's something that's doable. And I think there's nothing easier than to say, hey, you know what?

Something that already brings you pleasure and joy. Something that you enjoy to eat already is healthy. So let's start with those things because you already know you love them. So in my book, Eat to Be Diseased, I have lists of like 200 some foods. I always tell people, yeah, have my book, get a Sharpie. Okay, I say a Sharpie, like the marker, permanent marker. Yeah.

Because it's permanent. You have to make a commitment. All right. Take a Sharpie, a black Sharpie and circle the foods that you enlist that you already like. No, actually that you love. All right. And I don't care if it's just one or two, almost everyone I've met has been able to

circle like 10 of them or more. But if you find a food that you already love, that's healthy and good for you, that activates your health defenses, you are already way ahead of the game. Love that. Very empowering approach to people. Oils. Oils are something that can cause a lot of confusion. I know you're a big fan of olive oil. I want to talk about olive oil and why it's so beneficial. But before we get to olive oil, in the spirit of the kind of foods that we should think about limiting when we are in our supermarket or our grocery store, and we're looking around to

purchase oils to cook food in, to sprinkle on food, to pour on our salads. What kind of oils should we try and avoid? And then what sort of oils should we try and buy instead? You know, so this, like the debate about artificial sweeteners, is a loaded topic. And so I want to just start, you know start this component of our conversation by saying the jury is still very much deliberating what oils are harmful to you and are most harmful to you. But I think that it's less controversial what oils are better for you and good for you. For your listeners, I want to kind of give people some real practical things and not just kind of dive into the science of petroleum products, which is what oils are. Let's talk about this.

Rule number one, regardless of what oil you actually have, what I would say is don't have too much of it because oils are fats and fats can be healthier, but there really isn't such a thing as a healthy fat that you should like drink lots of it every single day. Okay. So the point is that there are healthier oils, but you should, we should all limit the amount of oil that we actually intake into our body. All right. Number one. Number two is that, and this is actually broadly speaking, is don't reuse your oil. OK, most oils that are reused when we heat them to cook, whether we're actually, you know, I mean, again, deep frying is generally something that's not very healthy.

The process of deep frying actually changes the chemical, the natural chemicals that make up oil in the oil itself, and then paint it onto the food, stick it onto the food. So we're eating some of the changed chemicals when we actually eat deep fried food. Now, look, I mean, I've had some awesome fish and chips when I visited England before. And again, as we talked about, you know, every now and then, if you spend most of your time shoring up your health defenses, raising your own bar, you know, having a rare treat is totally fine. But when you fry things in hot oil, you're also changing the chemical structure of things. That entire browning, golden browning, crisping of food actually changes the chemical structure of the food itself in ways that are potentially carcinogenic. And so just need to be careful about that.

are potentially carcinogenic. And so just need to be careful about that. The third, so I think, you know, like reusing oil, here's the thing that's kind of like a little risky. You go to a restaurant to eat, you have no idea if they're reusing your oil over and over and over again. You know, I mean, think about in Asian restaurants, whether it's an Indian restaurant or a Chinese restaurant, they've got these gigantic vats where they're frying tasty little bits up. But they may be reusing that oil for days. So reused oil, not good for you, for sure. And the stuff that's fried in oil can also change in time. So let's start now talking about just like the properties of oils themselves.

This is where I think rather than kind of walk into the quicksand of trying to say, is palm oil better than corn oil? Is coconut oil dangerous for you? We can wade into that jungle, but I think you need a machete to cut your way out of it. to use and how to use them. And this is where I think olive oil really stands out. Number one, it's part of a healthy pattern of eating that's been revered for thousands of years. And that's the traditional Mediterranean diet. And the olives are seasonal. They're pressed. The extra virgin olive oil contains not just fat, monounsaturated fatty acids, which are better for your body and less damaging for your cardiovascular health. But there's a lot of polyphenols that come from the olive itself. Now, a lot of people don't understand this, but when you look at olive oil, the reason we say extra virgin olive oil, E-V-O-O, that's what supermarkets and what restaurants are proud to use now is because it's not just fat.

It contains the polyphenols from the oil. So if you were to actually, by the way, this is a good experiment to do for your listeners. Buy a little container of olives from your grocery store, de-pitted, make it easy for yourself. And literally, take it home and take a heavy glass or take a board, like a heavy cutting board, and press those olives yourself. And you'll actually see, if you press hard enough, you'll see some oil come out of it. Now, in an olive oil factory, I mean, so you can actually appreciate where your food comes from, where your olive oil comes from. And when you actually press it, you'll see that you've crushed the olives. And some of the bits from the olives are actually in the olive oil. The reason that olive oil

tastes so good, it's got that kind of peppery, vegetal kind of quality to it. It's got an umami flavor. It's not because the fat is flavorful. It's because the bits of olives that were crushed in there are actually in there flavoring it. Now, because the bits of olives that were crushed in there are actually in there flavoring it. Now, those bits and the stuff that comes from the meat of the olives contain the polyphenols, one of which is hydroxytyrosol. Hydroxytyrosol sounds like a very complicated chemical name. Your listeners don't need to memorize it by any means, but you should know that that comes from the olive. Now, olive oil will have some of it, only about 20% of it. But if you actually press that olive, 80% goes into the olive water and it's stuck in the pulp. And so one of the things that I always

say is that if you really love olive oil and you want to get the most out of it, just eat the whole olive. And you can actually cut up an olive and you'll get a little bit of fat. You'll get all that flavor and you'll get a lot more of the polyphenol. Now, if you're going to cook with olive oil, I always say go for extra virgin because of that reason. I would say don't deep fry, but you can put some on to food. You can actually saute with it. not too much. All the studies show that about three tablespoons of olive oil, probably that's around the max of what you'd want a day, so nobody's drinking olive oil. And then the other thing that is, if you want to choose which olive oil, because I get overwhelmed when I walk into a store and I see a whole wall full of olive

oils. Everybody's marketing. Here's what I do again. I pick up the olive and oil and I look at the ingredients. What do I look for? I look for mono varietal olive oil. Mono varietal means it's made with just one kind of olive. And I look for the one kind of olive that oil is made from, from three different varieties of olive. In Spain, Spanish olive oil, I look for PICUAL, P-I-C-U-A-L, PICUAL olives, among the highest in polyphenols in the oil. So the olive oil will be loaded. Second, Greek olive oil, the Koroneki olive, which is from the Peloponnesus. Both the PICU Koroneki are very common olives, so that's good news. It's not very expensive. Highest amount of poly, one of the top three polyphenols.

And the third, for Italian olive oil, I look for oil that's been pressed from a monovarietal called Moriolo. And that comes from Umbria. And that's less common, harder to find, a little pricier, but I just gave you three olives, Picuel, Cornici, Moriolo. Most of them are not good eating olives, but they're great for olive oil. They're packed with polyphenols. If you get olive oil that is mono-varietal, pressed only from each of those, you can be guaranteed that you're getting sort of the top, the sort of the capo de capo of the polyphenols in the olive oil. Yeah, I love that. I actually, in my kitchen, as we speak now, is the Piqual olive. It's,

well, I would have called it a single origin, but that's because I'm probably used to picking coffee. But as you were describing that, there was such a wonderful energy in your voice and your body language. It reminded me of like a wine connoisseur talking about the different varieties of wines or a coffee connoisseur talking about that, you know, I get the single origin bean from this particular farm. But I guess it's not that different, is it? It's about going back to where does this come from? How was it processed? What is actually in my hand right now that I'm about to buy? Yeah. And, you know, there is great pride that we as humans have always had, and it's still within us to know something about the food that is around us.

I mean, you know, if you talk to a farmer, they are proud of what they have. You talk to a villager, they're really proud of what their community, what grows around their community. And again, I think that, you know, something that maybe that we're fighting against, because I want to draw back the jargon that you raised at the beginning that I think is helpful to think about, what are we really fighting against? You know, I think we're fighting against our distraction from ourselves, getting to know who we are, getting to know, I think we're, we're fighting against our distraction from ourselves, getting to know who we are, getting to know, slowing down so we can actually understand our own pace. We're getting distracted by the, by the, by the pace of what we're expected to do. And so we've got no

time for ourselves, right? I mean, every, every young working parent certainly feels that way, you know, like, man, I'm so busy and on time for myself. And yet when it comes to food and health, we all need to have that time for ourselves. And I think we should take great pride in saying what it is that we actually love. Yeah. A lot of people talk about the health properties of vegetables. Of course, you promote all kinds of vegetables, which have different impacts on the body. But some of the time we're told to sprinkle or pour some olive oil onto the vegetables because it helps us absorb nutrients from them. What's your perspective on that in view of what you've just said about oil and, you know, perhaps not over consuming it, even though it can be healthy?

Yeah, well, there's well, let's unpack that because there's two things that you were describing. One is that in plants, let's take a tomato as a great example. There are natural substances, natural chemicals like lycopene. Lycopene is a carotenoid. It helps to make the tomato red. It has lots and lots of healthful properties. It's a powerful antioxidant. I've studied lycopene in a laboratory, and it actually can help starve cancers by cutting off the blood supply. It can slow the shortening of telomeres to slow cellular aging, and it can protect our DNA from even sunlight and ultraviolet exposure.

Lots of good things about it. Now, lycopene actually is a, naturally occurs in a tomato on a vine in a chemical form that our body doesn't absorb that well. So if you pick a tomato off the vine and you cut it up and you throw it into a salad, it might taste great. Just got some vitamin C in it. It's a great source of hydration and great flavors. Okay. Especially if it's like a homegrown heirloom type of tomato.

But you're not going to get as much lycopene. You're probably only going to get maybe 20% of the lycopene that's in there. But for me, I want to get as much of the good stuff as I can. So here's what research has found. If you wanted to convert that chemical structure of lycopene into a form that you can absorb better, your body can avidly absorb, What you want to do is you want to heat the tomato, like in a pan, and with the heat will change the chemical structure from a form your body doesn't absorb that well into a form that your body avidly absorbs, loves to absorb it. Now you

go from 20% absorption to 80% absorption. You flipped it around completely, upended that equation completely. Now you're really absorbing it. Now, here's one additional thing, though. How would you heat a tomato in a pan? You heat it in water or nothing? No, not really. You put a little bit of olive oil in it. Why is that? Why is that? And it's because lycopene is a substance that we call fat soluble. It's a lipid. It loves to dissolve into fats. So a little bit of olive oil in tomatoes on a pan sauteed. So it's soft, change of chemical structure. Flavors are really great now. And you have that. Now, when you eat that tomato sauce sauteed in olive oil, the oil, the olive oil with the lycopene is carried into your body even more efficiently than if it were cooked in water. And so again, that's just one example of thousands of how oils with fat-soluble foods... By the way, if you didn't want to look at olive oil, here's another common snack in the United States, anyways, kind of tearing a

page book from Latin American cuisine. You have these tortilla chips and then you wind up actually having a salsa and guacamole. The salsa is often sort of stewed down tomatoes, cooked down tomatoes, served at room temperature or chilled. And then the guacamole is just avocado that's been smashed up. Now, avocado has a lot of healthy fats in it. It's a fat-soluble veggie. It's actually quite nutritious. Remarkably, people eating avocado actually shrink their waistline because actually, even though they're eating fat, it actually makes you, it burns down harmful fat.

It's a whole other story. But if you have guacamole, avocado with tomatoes, you get more lycopene. And so that happens to be kind of a popular snack in the United States. Yeah, I love that. So the right combination of foods can actually help absorb the nutrients. I think black pepper also can do that, right? With certain nutrients? Well, right. So black pepper, so this is an interesting thing. We, most of us have heard that turmeric, which is a kind of a root, when you cut it open, it's this bright, beautiful, bright orange, a lovely color.

And turmeric is also a dried spice used in Southeast Asian cuisine, including Indian cuisine is where I first became acquainted with it. It not only makes food beautiful, it actually makes food delicious. It's got a quite a lovely taste to it. It's a, it's a spice inside turmeric is curcumin. Curcumin is one of those natural chemicals, kind of like lycopene. It's one of those mother nature's treasure chests, mother nature's pharmacy with an F, not a PH. And the curcumin has a lot of properties, anti-inflammatory, it's antioxidant, it cuts off the blood supply feeding cancers. It actually is helpful for your stem cells as well. It really activates almost all of your body's health defenses and it's good for your gut microbiome. So why not just enjoy turmeric as a spice by itself? Because it's so potent that our body actually doesn't absorb everything that it could. In fact, our body

kind of gets a lot of it gets flushed out at the tail end. And so what we want to do to improve our body's extraction of the good stuff, the turmeric, it turns out that if you have fresh cracked black pepper, all right, there's a substance in fresh cracked black pepper called piperine. Piperine is one of mother nature's, again, these remarkable chemicals that actually influences the body. And piperine helps the body hang on to the curcumin. So if you have fresh cracked black pepper with your turmeric, you're actually creating a one-two punch that allows you to absorb more of the curcumin. Yeah, I love that. So the right combinations can actually help us get more out of

these incredible whole foods. But I think the wrong combinations potentially can also make certain foods less beneficial. One example I've heard you talk about before is what happens when you put milk into tea. I know you're a big fan of tea. On the last conversation, you spoke about a lot of the benefits of tea. But I think I've heard you say that if you add milk to your tea, that actually you reduce some of the beneficial effects. Is that right? Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning a really special evening where I share how you can break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life that

truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the architect of your health and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health. And together, we're going to learn the skill of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life. And I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last.

Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour and I can't wait to see you there. This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision making and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits and improve our relationships. There are of course many different ways to journal and as with most things it's important that you find the method that works

best for you. One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three question journal. In it you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much this has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or

you don't actually want to buy a journal, that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three-question journal completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal, or click on the link in your podcast app. You know, those scientists that do television shows to actually make science accessible to people. This is kind of where we need to go with this topic. So look, tea, green tea especially, has a natural polyphenol that's called catechins, EGCG, epigallocatechin gallate, EGCG. And the catechin is actually just part of the natural substance in the tea leaf.

So whether you're brewing tea with a bag or whether it's loose leaf tea or whether it's matcha, which is just powdered tea leaves, the fact of the matter is that into the brew, into the liquid, the hot liquid, comes all these phytochemicals, including these catechins. So when you sip straight tea, the catechins go right in. They're easily absorbed by your body. And so our blood levels of catechins go way up. So many things that catechins can do. One of the things that's important is actually it's a relaxant. It actually helps lower your stress. It lowers the catecholamines. And so other things that helps your lipids, it actually also helps fight cancer. It's anti-inflammatory, kind of

like curcumin. It's a substance that has so many beneficial things that at least when I drink tea, I want to get as much as I can out of my food. All right. Now, I deeply respect traditions of eating and drinking. And one of the things that I know is a tradition in England or in Ireland, you actually put some milk or cream into your tea. It actually changes the flavor profile. And it's lovely. I've had plenty of teas in England before, and I find it to be just such an incredibly nice, I feel great, you know, sort of like having an English tea. Put dairy in it. Here's what you need to know. Dairy, and I'm talking about cow dairy, right? So not nut milk. This applies to cow dairy. We'll come

back to the nut milk in a second cow dairy okay actually is fat milk has got fat in it like butter which is made out of milk and um and the fat when you put it into your tea does change its flavor but that's not what we're talking about here we're talking about the fact that when milk or cream is put into tea the fat molecules in the cow dairy form little soap bubbles. These are microscopic soap bubbles. They're called micelles. Fat likes to stick with fat. And so tea is mostly water. And so when you pour milk into tea, the bubbles, the dairy fat sticks together and makes a little tiny soap bubble. And what does it do? Those soap bubbles trap the polyphenols from tea. It traps the catechin. So you've got some good stuff wrapped in a soap bubble of dairy. And now when

you drink the tea, the catechin is trapped in the soap bubble. It doesn't get absorbed as easily in your stomach and it just rolls down your gut. And a lot of it comes out the other end. Okay. And so you're missing out on a lot of the good stuff. You get a great, you know, you get a nice flavor. And so I have, you know, what I'm telling you is that if you're drinking milk or cow milk, dairy, put it in your tea, you're getting the, you're getting good flavor if you, if that's what you like, but you're missing out on all as, as most of the polyphenols. So just be aware that that's what you're actually doing. Now, if you want to actually still cut the tea with something that is milk-like,

nut milks are fine because they don't actually have the same fatty reaction that the dairy, cow dairy has. So almond milk, cashew milk, those soy milks, they're all fine. I mean, that's really interesting. And I like the way you frame it with this deep respect for cultures and traditions, because I hear that. And I think for someone who might be listening or watching this and they think, yeah, but you know what? It's just a part of what I do. I love putting milk in my black tea, or I know some people even put it in their green tea, which I certainly haven't tried before. They might hear that, and they may not want to change what they do,

but is this where potentially supplements could come in? Let's say someone, they like the taste of milky tea, but they hear that and think, well, I want all those benefits of those polyphenols and the catechins that Dr. Lee was talking about. Maybe I can boost that another way by taking a supplement. Is there any merit to that way of thinking? And I guess you could expand that broadly into what is your view of supplements as a whole huge category, but there are some really good quality supplements out there. Perhaps you could speak to those issues a little bit, please. Yeah. Well, let's pick up the thread on tea for a second because i i had this discovery that might be uh useful for your listeners who are in exactly that situation where they like the taste of milk in their tea i

discovered there is something called milk tea and it's actually from taiwan it's grown in the mountain and it actually it's it's just pure tea leaves that when you brew it, it tastes like it's got dairy in it. Oh, wow. It's quite amazing. I mean, if I made a cup of that for you and then made a cup of English tea with milk in it, you would have a hard time telling the difference. It's quite remarkable. Milk tea. It's a kind of, I think it's an oolong style tea. So it's mildly fermented and still got green properties. It's got polyphenols in it, but it literally, it has to do with the way, the climate, the way that it's naturally grown and the type of

tea it is. So, all right. So let's move that aside for a second. All right. Well, so what about supplements? You know, I think that we should look to the word itself. A dietary supplement means something to top off. So I always tell people, if you have a choice of getting it from the whole food, the whole food will tend to have a lot of other stuff that's good for you. If you eat whole plant-based foods, for example, you get the fiber, you get the polyphenols, you get a lot of other chemical substances, you get the natural peptides that are found in foods. But if you've got a pure supplement, you might get the one molecule or two molecules that has been created for like a vitamin C supplement. If you want to top off your vitamin C, it's pure vitamin C. You're going to get a lot of it if you take a vitamin. But if you had citrus, you're going to get a different kind of flavor. You do get sugar,

you get fiber, you get the limonene and all these other, hesperidin, all these other bioactives that you can't get from a regular supplement alone. That said, you are absolutely right. Supplements can be really important, particularly for people who have difficulty getting a lot of some nutrients or their food. So for example, I think omega-3 fatty acids are a great supplement if you get a high quality omega-3. acids are a great supplement if you get a high quality omega-3. Not everybody eats oily fish, you know, two to three times a week. You only need to eat the amount in each serving with the size of a deck of playing cards. So you don't need to eat very much. But that's not something most people do. People who live on the coastline, they might be doing it, but many people don't. So omega-3s are so important

to our health. I mean, this has been shown time and time and again, that's a supplement that's definitely worth taking. And it's a lot easier to swallow omega-3s than it is actually to go to a fishmonger and then to look at what the catch of the day is. That's an example. Another example of a supplement I think is really worth taking is probably vitamin D3. Okay. Vitamin D, you know, for those of us who live in the Northern hemisphere where we don't have as much sun all the time, all year round and where it's cold. So we're indoors a lot and not always outdoors under the sunshine. So I'm not talking Costa del Sol. I'm not talking about South Africa or Australia. I'm talking about England, Northern Europe, North America, and sort of the northeastern

side. Okay, we don't get as much sunlight. And even if we do go outside, because it's cold, we wear a lot of clothes. And so our skin tends to be covered up. And so vitamin D is made by our skin when sunlight actually hits it. And so we tend to be vitamin D deficient. So here's an example of where you can eat foods like mushrooms that can have vitamin D, for example. By the way, I don't know if this is a little tip, a tidbit for you.

I just told you that human skin with ultraviolet radiation from the sun will make more vitamin D. But did you know that if you took just a plain old lowly white button mushroom that contains some vitamin D, if you were to, before you eat it, when you buy it, if you slice it, like slice it pretty thinly, and you lay the slices out and you put it in your windowsill so the sun shines on the slice, it will make more vitamin D. You'll actually convert more vitamin D into the mushrooms. So if you're going to prepare something with mushrooms, slice them ahead of time, stick them in front of a sunny window, no matter what time of the year it is, maybe a couple hours before you cook with it, and the mushrooms will actually give you more vitamin D. But it's a lot

easier to get your regular dose of daily vitamin D by actually just having D3 supplements. And so that's an example. Yeah, no, I love that. And certainly what I found with my patients, I always adopt a food first approach, definitely. But many people these days have got, approach definitely. But many people these days have got, as you've already touched on, super busy stressed out lifestyles and they're rushing around and they either don't have time to cook a fresh whole meal, they're often buying things on the go that probably aren't the best thing for them, they've probably got high levels of stress so actually they're probably not even absorbing as many nutrients as they could because their digestive system isn't in the right place to absorb those nutrients. And I found sometimes, you know, a good quality supplement, like let's say a whole food,

sometimes a green supplement, which has lots and lots of difference, phytochemicals, prebiotics, polyphenols in, it could be helpful. And sometimes it could be helpful in the short term to help them have more energy and feel better so that they can then make those lifestyle choices. So I know a lot of doctors take quite a hard line on supplements, but you've demonstrated some really important ones that I think have been shown in scientific studies have real benefits like vitamin D for sure. So yeah, I really, really appreciate it. You know, I want to support and underscore what you just said. You know, there's always something valuable to look at the history of things. Supplementation

wasn't developed to be an online internet scam, okay? Supplementation was a really serious effort to improve global nutrition because back in even the early 20th century, most of the world was undernourished. That's different than malnutrition. I mean, maybe there was some malnutrition too, but undernourished means that we were eating food, but we weren't eating enough of the right things at the right time. And so one of the things that supplements were developed to do is to really fortify supplement top off, you know, everyone so that everyone could have a more equal chance of being, of filling up, becoming replete with the key micronutrients that we, our body needs to actually survive. And so I think it's a mistake

to disparage supplements as a category. I mean, this is a theme of what we're talking about today. Let's not throw the baby out of the bathwater. Let's not character assassinate entire categories of things. Let's be discerning and try to know exactly what we're talking about. There are some dietary supplements that are absolutely valuable. Some that research has actually shown proven to be helpful and some that are, can be lifesaving as well. Pregnant moms really need to be taking folate. You know, if you don't have those, you'll have neural tube defects in your babies. The risks go much higher. So you really want to be able to actually take the evidence. And so this is the other thing I think maybe a useful coat hook or hat hook to hang for

your listeners is that supplements are the real deal because they were once designed, originally designed to help the body top off with what it actually needs. But if the marketing, and we're back to marketing now, sounds too good to be true, if the claims sound like they're just magical claims, that's when your spidey sense, your radar needs to go on that maybe there's something not quite fully honest about what is being told about this and it's being misrepresented. And so I think that every consumer needs to be able to, I mean, again, this is where I come back to, we all have mobile devices. We can easily search something. When in doubt, look it up,

check it out, and then make your own decision if that fits your comfort zone. if that fits your comfort zone. Organic or non-organic is another topic that people find confusing. If people are able to access organic and they are able to afford it, in your view, are there any benefits to choosing that? Right. Well, I want to just tell everyone that, first of all, I was a skeptic for many years about organic food. I thought it was marketing. I thought the food looked beautiful, was very expensive, and I thought it was mostly marketing. And the marketing message that I received as a consumer was, here's this beautiful food

that's more expensive. And by the way, we don't grow it with pesticides. And so you've got less harmful chemicals on it. And I, you know, I, it didn't feel right to me. And I had all these questions in my head about like, whether or not that's really true. And what do I just wash my food a little bit more? I mean, I, I, I wasn't really sure what was real or not. Well, I changed my mind a few years ago. And I'll tell you, I was at the Royal Society in London, actually, at a really incredible meeting with horticulturalists, with astrophysicists, just a bunch of incredible scientists. And I had the privilege of sitting next to a horticulturalist. And I was talking with her about a new paper, research paper that had come from

out of the journal Nature, which is a British publication, one of the premier scientific journals. And I said, you know, I just read this paper that was really astounded me. They looked at strawberries and they were looking for the natural substance, ellagic acid, which is what makes strawberries tart. And eletric acid is anti-inflammatory. It helps your immune system. It starves cancer. I've done research on eletric acid myself. And so I know how powerful it is. And they were looking at strawberries, comparing organic versus conventionally grown strawberries. Another way to say that is strawberries may be grown with pesticides or no pesticides. And they were looking at the allergic acid in the strawberries. And when they measured the conventionally grown strawberries, they all had some allergic acid.

That was fine. I expected that. But then when they measured the organic strawberries, every single organic strawberry they measured had two times or more of the allergic acid. And I thought that was absolutely astounding that an organically grown fruit would actually have more of that beneficial substance that mother nature's kind of bioactive. And so I talked to the horticulturists and I said, okay, so help me understand why, right? So look, you know, you know, when you're talking to a real scientist, when, when scientists admit that they don't know something, right? So look, you know, you know, when you're talking to a real scientist, when, when

scientists admit that they don't know something, right? So, and that's how anybody who says they know everything, probably not a scientist. I mean, so, so I, I literally admitted my, my ignorance about this. And I asked the horticulturist, can you help me understand why that might be? And she gave me this answer that I've subsequently dove deeply, more deeply in, and it's absolutely true. It's true with coffee as well. Mother nature, in part, made these bioactives like ellagic acid in strawberries or in coffee, chlorogenic acid is another one of these. And the way that plants respond to bugs nibbling on the stems and leaves, biting at them, okay, that's the pest, leaves, biting at them. Okay.

That's the pest. Okay. Might make the plant not look so nice. All right. Might even like, might even mar the fruit a little bit. So it's not quite as beautiful, but the plant reacts to those little nibbles as an injury, as a wound. And in response and a wound healing response, it produces more elagic acid or in a case of response, it produces more eletric acid.

Or in a case of coffee, it makes more chlorogenic acid. So the little nibbling is part of kind of the way that evolution actually developed how plants respond to create more of these bioactives. So what happens? So why is there this difference? Well, if you actually grow a strawberry with pesticides, there's fewer bugs. The plant looks nicer. Fruit looks nicer. No bugs, no injury, less allergic acid being made. And so all of a sudden, this light bulb went off in my head. And this was a few years ago that I realized this and I had this conversation. Everywhere I've looked, any research that's been done, it is true that the bioactives are higher in the

organically grown plants. And that started to change my mind about organics because the argument now is not that organics have less bad stuff. The argument is the organics have more good stuff. Now, all of a sudden, I have a different view of the nature of how this fruit is grown and what the benefits of growing without pesticides are. Yeah, super clear explanation. Thank you for that. And then taking that one step further, which goes, I guess, beyond organic into non-organic as well, but let's take something like an apple or a carrot. Let's say a carrot, for example. There's all kinds of phytonutrients and beneficial compounds within that carrot.

So what happens when we start to peel off the skin off that carrot? Because my view would be, well, a lot of the beneficial properties are in that skin, right? That's what's had to protect itself from the environment, from bugs, as you just mentioned. So when we are peeling off that skin, yes, people may want to do it for a taste profile, I understand. But aren't we reducing how beneficial that food could be by taking off the outside? Yeah, I'm glad you described the fact that we might want to remove and peel for aesthetic purposes, maybe for taste purposes or texture purposes. But the fact of the matter is we know for a fact that skin does actually have good stuff. I'll give you a great example, like in an apple or a pear or a peach. Okay. Those are all fruits that, you know, if you

took the time to peel it, you'll have a more homogeneous, you know, kind of looking piece of fruit. But most mothers will tell their kids, if you eat it with the skin, you'll get more stuff. And it's actually true. There's not only more fiber oftentimes in the outer layers, as you're talking about outer layers, but there's also more phytonutrients in these bioactives. In apples and pears and in peaches, there is actually a substance called ursolic acid that's much more concentrated in the outer layer. And ursolic acid is one of these bioactives that stimulates blood vessel growth. It helps us heal. It stimulates angiogenesis so that if we have an injury, our bodies will more, will speed its healing up. That could be really important for our cardiovascular system,

for example. It helps to promote the growth of blood vessels in beneficial sort of ways. Now that's actually on the peel. So, okay. So how can you eat fruit peel? Well, look, if you had to eat six apricots or six pears or six peaches, you know, that might take a little work or eat six apples. That's a pretty commitment. That's a good commitment to eat six apples even in a day. But on the other hand, if you actually get dried fruit, the dried fruit will take a big fruit and shrink it really small. So take a look at an apricot. I might not feel like eating six apricots, whole apricots from the tree, but I could easily eat six dried apricots sort of in a dried fruit mix. And so again, if you want the skin, it's not just eating the fresh fruit,

which you can do, but you can also get it in a dried form. Now, back to the fresh for a second, this would be a good reason to buy organic as well. Because when you spray with pesticides for fruits and foods with very thin skins, I mean, for carrots, there's not a skin. It's really just an outer kind of layer of the carrot. The fact of the matter is that if there's pesticides in could happen, it's recommended that you actually rinse, whether it's organic or not, you rinse it under cold running water for 60 seconds. I did not realize that. That's been shown. And by the way, another thing I didn't realize is that even like an onion, you're supposed to rinse off before you actually cut it. Now I, I had previously never really washed my onions. I just figured if I peel off the skin, what's underneath there is pretty clean,

but then I was told, no, no, you, you should see the research. You really want to be able to wash that onion 60 seconds in cold running water is what you want to do. So again, back to the fruit skin, great reason to buy, good to have, good to eat, nutritious, more phytonutrients, phytochemicals. A good reason to get organic is because it's harder to wash the pesticides off of it. And dried versions of fruits are also ways of actually getting the skin as well. And that's the other reason to get, if you get dried fruit, get dried organic fruit. Yeah, super interesting. Autoimmune disease is on the rise massively across the world, frankly.

And I'd love to hear a little bit from you about the relationship between foods and the development of autoimmune disease. And I want to just add there before you respond that, you know, maybe 10 years ago as I started to really get tuned into how you might start to use food as a therapeutic tool with your patients, I've noticed that when certain patients with certain autoimmune diseases, like I can remember one, clearly this lady with hypothyroidism, she was on levothyroxine, but she still didn't feel very good

at all. When I changed her diet, I helped her change to a completely whole food diet from like a standard Western diet that she was at that time consuming. Her symptoms went right down. We could halve the dose of levothyroxine, I think within a few months. It was really incredible. So maybe, you know, speak to that if you can a little bit about the relationship and potentially why that could have worked with that patient. Yeah, I mean, you know, so I've noticed this as well, you know, over the decades of my clinical practice that autoimmune diseases, which by the way, let's just make sure our audience, the listeners actually appreciate this. It's not one disease. It is dozens, scores of actually different types of diseases that all share kind of a common denominator.

That the autoimmune part of it is that somehow, for some reason, the immune system is triggered in ways that actually the immune response causes harm to your body itself. It's sort of the body attacking the body or the body responding, the immune system responding in ways that causes incredible distress at the organ level, right? And so it could be lupus, it could be rheumatoid arthritis, it could be psoriasis, it could be Hashimoto's, it could be celiac. Those are some of the more common ones that people actually talk about. But in fact, there's probably a lot of autoimmune diseases that we don't even recognize yet. And a new one, by the way, which is coming down the pike, which we've believed long COVID, which many, many people do have already. And I think we're going to see a whole other emergence of long COVID as a significant medical problem

in the coming decade. That also seems to be autoimmune as well, where the body's immune system has overreacted or is overreacting to attack ourselves, our healthy selves. Okay. So if we're talking about a panoply of different diseases that share this common denominator. What's the role of food? Well, one thing that actually we do know, as celiac is a great example of this, gluten enteropathy, is that some foods, in the case of celiac, it's gluten, which is in wheat and whole grains. For reasons that we don't fully understand. The body sees that and just has a bad reaction. It's kind of like that, you know, the family member that, you know,

the black sheep in a family that comes over for your family holiday gathering and like, you just don't have a good reaction to them. We all have one or two of those people in our families. And that's how your immune system kind of reacts to something in food that it just doesn't like. And it's how your immune system kind of reacts to something in food that it just doesn't like. And it gets pissed off. And when it gets angry, it actually starts to have this reaction that makes the entire body unpleasant, just like that visitor to your home that you just don't react well to, like you want to stay in a different room. Well, that reaction is what

autoimmune diseases are. And that's why when you talk about the levothyroxine, just so your listeners know, that's actually trying to replace something that is damaged because of this reaction. You want to actually see if we can undo the damage a bit, right? And autoimmune diseases are often treated with steroids. What do steroids do? They shut down, they turn down the volume of the immune system. Hey, this rock music is too loud. Let's turn it, the house music's too loud. Let's turn it down a little bit. Okay, so that's what steroids do.

It turns out that if you go back, back, back, back to look at what might be some of the root causes, increasingly we're wondering if some of these chemical additives in ultra processed foods are actually triggering immune responses that are unintended. These are unintended consequences. And so there's a theory that in people who say that they've got gluten or celiac disease, they don't actually have full-blown celiac disease, but they're reactive, allergic, immunoreactive to something that's packaged food that also has gluten in it. And so there are things that in these chemical-laced foods that we may not fully appreciate yet. Now it goes back to what your observation with your patient is. So what happens when we take people, and there's many people who spend most of their lives eating things out of a box, right?

Out of convenience. It comes from a factory, sits on the shelf for months or years, and you change it to a whole plant-based diet. Mostly plant-based or a whole foods diet. Okay. Now you're talking about not shopping in the middle aisle of the store. And I have nothing against the middle aisle. There's good treasures in there. But you're spending time in the middle aisle of the store and i have nothing against the middle aisle there's good treasures in there but you're spending time in the produce or you know if you live in a village you're going to the village market and yeah going first to the fruit and

vegetable and herb stand and you're buying all the stuff and now you're getting fresh foods that have all these phytonutrients um you're having to take the time to repair them in tasty ways. You're staying away from that boxed can preserved, chemically preserved foods. You're allowing your immune system to calm and you're allowing the phytonutrients to also lower inflammation. And we're getting back to a more natural state. Like that's how I, that's how I explain the kind of broad observations that you actually had, is probably unburdening the body, pissing it off less, and allowing the body to actually get back to a more natural state where it's capable of being less inflamed. Allow the health defenses to reassert themselves. Yeah, I love that explanation. And moving to a whole food diet,

no matter who you are, no matter what your current state of health, there's very little side effects or negative side effects, I should say. There's many effects, mostly beneficial effects, very, very few negative side effects of doing that. One thing I must ask, Dr. Lee, before we end this conversation is in our first chat, you mentioned many foods which have super helpful properties. Two that come to mind are kiwi fruit. You mentioned how they can actually help repair DNA, which is remarkable. The amount of people who stopped me in the streets since then to say, Dr. Chachi, since that conversation, I've been buying kiwi. I've been buying kiwi. I've heard

it over and over again. So that's credit to you, Dr. Lee. But also tomatoes you mentioned. I know we covered lycopene in this conversation as well. But many people contacted me, including some family members to say, listen, I don't tolerate kiwis. Like I get a really bad reaction when I have them. I don't tolerate tomatoes. I get a really bad reaction when I have them. And of course, this is individual because not everyone has intolerances or reactions to certain foods. But for people who've heard your great advice and wanted to bring those in, but thought, well, I can't have that. How would you respond to them? What would you say to them to give them some sort of hope?

Yeah, well, look, what I always tell people is when it comes to food and health, it's not just about the food or any single food, whether it's a kiwi or tomato, it's really about how our body responsibly put inside it. So if you don't like kiwis, can't find kiwis or are allergic to kiwis, all right, those are three easy reasons or can't afford a kiwi, you can do a swap out. Okay. so what's what is what are in kiwis? Kiwis got vitamin C, has got fiber. What are some other foods that actually have vitamin C that also have fiber? Red bell pepper can actually have that. What if you like? Well, I'd like I'd like something a little sweet. OK, guava that also has vitamin C and it's also got fiber as well.

Now, the research that we discussed last time about the kiwi was research done with kiwi itself, but the properties of the kiwi, which is vitamin C and fiber and some of the other phytonutrients, those can be found in other fruits as well. So kiwi, I always say, if you want to kind of stick with the research, you got to go with the food that was actually studied. But the properties and the principles allow you to actually think about how to swap things out. What a tomato. Great example.

I don't really like tomatoes. I'm allergic to tomatoes. Some people have hypersensitivities, like a histamine reaction to tomatoes. I remember in college, I had a classmate who would never go to the salad bar. She would stay as far away as possible because tomatoes kind of gave her this super histamine mass cell reaction. Her whole face would puff up when she actually had anything that had tomatoes on it. And well, guess what?

Lycopene, if you want to get the lycopene benefits, you know, lowers risk of breast cancer by 20%, lowers risk of prostate cancer by almost 30%, protects your DNA against sunlight. What else is lycopene? Watermelon. Watermelon has lycopene as well. So maybe you don't like tomatoes. Maybe you can't get tomatoes. Well, what about a slice of watermelon? And so, again, these swap outs are really, and this is something I think is so important. And this is what I hope to be able to convey through my book.

And I, you know, I created a free masterclass. I've been trying to teach people periodically online how to do this is, is think about why something is beneficial for you. And then if you can get that food, that's perfectly fine. If you need to swap it out, cause you can't find that food or can't afford that food. Think about what else might be a good standard, right? And at the end of the day, it still has to taste good for you. So maybe you don't like tomatoes, but you like watermelon. Maybe you don't like kiwi, but you actually like guava. Yeah, I love that. And in my experience, also, when we go to more of these whole foods that we can tolerate

over time, actually, I find that we often repair our gut and then we become more tolerant to foods that we previously couldn't manage. I'm not talking about over allergies, but a lot of food intolerances, I've definitely seen that that happens. I just want to echo what you just finished off there, Dr. Lee, with that for people who want to swap things out, your book, Eat to Beat Disease, I think it's a fantastic resource for people because you can see the properties and you can find a food that you like that suits your culture, your background, your tastes. And I think the masterclasses that you put on for people, I can see why so many people around the world really enjoy them because they're very beneficial, they're developed with, they're really delivered with passion and engagement and quality information.

So I want to say thank you to you for all the work you're doing at raising awareness of these little things that we can all do each day to make a huge impact on our health. Any closing words to my audience who might be confused, inspired, empowered by what you said? Any closing thoughts for them? You know, I have one motto that I want everybody to just sort of try to take to heart which is that when it comes to food and health i really believe that you should love your food to love your health both can happen at the same time you know we should find the foods that we love that are good for us and really lean into it and that's the best way to have a long and

enjoyable life. You're an incredible individual. You're an incredible doctor. You're doing such wonderful things for the world. Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. Thank you for having me. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember, when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday Five. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your

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you can sign up for free at drchatagy.com forward slash Friday Five. Now, if you are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world, covering all kinds of different topics, happiness, food, stress, sleep, behavior change, and movement, weight loss, and so much more. So please do take a moment to check them out. They are all available as paperbacks, ebooks, and as audio books, which I am narrating. If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always

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