THE ED MYLETT SHOW - How To Eat Like A Genius w/ Max Lugavere

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

WHAT YOU EAT AND HOW YOU EAT, MATTERS.The sad part is that there are too many people who pay little or no attention to their DIETS as part of a plan to LIVE HEALTHY.  It’s an epidemic in America and unhealthy lifestyles kill millions of us each year.That’s why this week’s guest, MAX LUGAVERE, is back for another must-listen podcast.He is a health and science journalist, TV personality, and the author of the newly released GENIUS KITCHEN as well as the NEW YORK TIMES best-sellers THE GENIUS LIFE, and GENIUS FOODS which has been published in 8 languages around the globe. Max is also the host of the #1 iTunes health podcast THE GENIUS LIFE and appears regularly on the Dr. Oz Show, the Rachael Ray Show, and The Doctors as well as a contributor to Vice, Fast Company, CNN, and The Daily Beast, and many other media outlets.I hope you’re literally ready to MAX OUT in a fast-moving hour that covers A LOT OF IMPORTANT FOOD AND HEALTH TOPICS like:Our obsession with PROTEIN intakeIs there a downside to eating too many PLANTS?The importance of FISH in our dietUsing EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OILMisconceptions about SALT and SUGAR-SWEETENED DRINKSHEART and BRAIN foods to EAT AND AVOIDThe importance of eating SLOWPORTION control Why FUNGI is good for youMax and I also get into how to DINE OUT HEALTHY, which is a huge concern for all of us.  Even more important, MAX downloads valuable information about consuming food that is exposed to environmental toxins and steps you can take to minimize any threats to your health.You can’t live your best life unless you are intentional about what you put into your body.  Take time to study Max’s work, and the work of others, on this important topic. Think of it less like homework, and more as LIFEWORK.Because that’s exactly what eating the RIGHT THINGS in the RIGHT WAY is…

This is the Ed Milach Show. Welcome back to the show everybody. Well, today is going to be special because I don't have a lot of people on twice. And Max Lugovier is going to be here for the second time today. So you already know who my guest is. But the reason I wanted to come back on is because I think the topic is so profound. We're going to talk about eating today. I'm going to talk about nutrition, your body,

cooking your food correctly. He's got a brand new book out now coming out called Genius Kitchen, which is, I'd say it's like half cookbook, half nutritional guide. I think the call to cookbook is not in the totality of really what the book represents. And it's incredible and he's one of a kind. He's just the best in the world at what he does.

So Max, welcome back brother. Ed, so good to be here, my man. He's just the best in the world at what he does. So Max, welcome back, brother. Ed, so good to be here, my man. It's a good day, have you, brother. I love everything about you. I love what you represent. You're just, yeah, so special, such a special human. Thank you, brother. The feelings are mutual, as you know.

And I'd always do anything for you to help you. And why is because you help so many other people? So I want to start off with a book, but just for the audience who might not have heard the first show, I just think people that are great at anything in life have a bigger reason to do it oftentimes. And your whole reason for being in this space in general about helping people with their wellness comes from your mom, Kathy, right? So just update the audience if they don't know or update the ones that do know and share with everybody

that doesn't know where your passion comes from. Yeah, so I began my career as a journalist and I did that for six years straight out of college and my, the topics that I covered were across the board. They were, you know, I was a generalist, but as I approached my late 20s in my personal life, my mother, who's the person who I've always been the closest to out of anybody in the world, started to show the earliest symptoms of what would ultimately be diagnosed as a rare form of dementia. She had a condition called Lewy Body Dementia, which for anybody who's not familiar with it,

it feels like having Alzheimer's disease in Parkinson's disease at the same time. It's a neurodegenerative condition that affects movement, it affects your cognition, and I had no prior family history of any kind of neurodegenerative dementia. And so what it did for me was it was a call to action to, I mean, A, be there for my mom and go with her to doctors' offices to try to come to some kind of understanding of what it was that she was suffering from, but also to try to figure out to the best of my ability what could be done to help her, and in tandem with that because I recognized that I had this newly discovered risk factor, of family history now for the first time, what could be done to prevent this from ever happening

to me and others that I care about. So that journey began about 10 years ago, and it's going to continue until the day I die. I mean, my mother's life was incredibly tragic, but all the work that I care about. So that journey began about 10 years ago. And it's going to continue until the day I die. I mean, my mother's life was incredibly tragic, but all the work that I'm sharing and putting out really is so that what she went through, what my family went through, wasn't in vain. Yeah, and you're the best at it. And the thing is, as you by the way, is get an unbelievably successful podcast as well. I was thinking about you as driving out here this morning. This concept of genius that you're always talking about. Now the new book, Genius Kitchen, it's interesting.

Your, your mother's tragedy unlocked a genius in you that you never even knew you possessed. Nothing you'd ever say. But it's become your real genius now is the space that you find yourself in. So I'm really excited to share all this stuff. They were really stupid thing to start out with. My stomach's growling. You're like, I'm going to tell you why you're stomach's growling. You're like, I'm gonna tell you why your stomach's growling. There's a mechanism in there.

So why is my stomach growling? There is. It's super interesting. Oftentimes when our stomach growls, we think it's because we're hungry, right? And in part, it's probably time for us to eat when our stomach gives us that indication. But the reason why the stomach is growling,

it's owed to a system in our GI tract called the migrating motor complex. Okay. And the migrating motor complex, it's like this completely underappreciated mechanism that gets going after about 90 minutes of not eating. So after about 90 minutes of not eating, we feel like we're giving our digestive system a rest, but actually that's when this process kicks up. And what it does is it sweeps, debris, dead bacteria, food particles that haven't been fully digested.

It sloughs off dead epithelial cells from the stomach, down all the way, past the small intestine to the large intestine. So it's essentially called a housekeeping way. It can help prevent SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, which a lot of people suffer from. So people that have like GI issues, when they eat, they, you know, they'll have like, from otherwise benign foods,

feelings like indigestion, gas, bloating, stuff like that. It's because we are constantly subverting this housekeeping way, which is so essential to our digestive well-being, by eating constantly throughout the day. So the fact that your stomach is growling means that your housekeeping wave is functioning, cleaning the small intestine,

and keeping your digestive system healthy, essentially. Eating throughout the day. So before we get into the book, by the way, it's great about the book is that it's not only the nutritional guy, but you also like rank things to unlike, what the terminology that you use is like, like okay, good, best, better, right?

Better, right? And I like that as well, because it kind of gives a rank. I love to rank things. I always do those with my friends, one to 10, how much do you like this guy? Yeah. One to 10, how good was that song?

So you rank things in the book, but I want to ask you first, it's like a really basic thing overall. If you walked into my kitchen or an average person's kitchen right now, before we get into detailed stuff, what would you tell them to throw? What would you probably go look for and throw out of their kitchen

immediately? Is there something in there? Good, good question. I, you know, what I find to be, I used to be a lot more dogmatic about like mac rows and, you know, carbs, fats and things like that. I think that my perspective, especially with genius kitchen, I'm, I really think that the major problem with the standard American diet and the root cause

of all of the modern ills that we're seeing, burdening society from obesity, overweight, the increasing rates of cardiovascular disease, autoimmunity really stem back to our overconsumption of ultra processed foods. These are the foods that are packaged, they're shelf stable, minimally satiating, and highly calorie dense. These are the foods that really underlie the obesity epidemic. Now, you can take the most obvious offenders like sugar, sweet, and beverages, which are purported to be the cause of about 200,000 deaths

annually worldwide, just from sugar, sweet, and beverages alone. That's how toxic they are. I mean, once you want to, you know, occasion the occasional indulgence in your favorite sugar, sweet, and soda, not the end of the world. But the problem with foods that contain added sugar and sugar sweet and beverages are really at the epicenter of this problem because they're so easily consumed is that we have no biological requirement for sugar and it's not satiating at all and provides no nutritional value.

So you could basically eat all of the calories that you require in a day, get all of the nutritional, you know, all of the nutrients that you need, and then throw 200 calories of high fructose corn syrup soft drink on top of that. And that really is what people are doing. And that's why we're seeing, you know, this, this just crazy rates of ever, of our expanding waste lines and the like. Well, the thing about not being full, you and I talked about last time a lot, that's my layman's version of it, right? Is something I did not really thought about before that when I'm eating these processed foods that although I've intake the same amount of calories,

say as a handful of nuts or something like that, I'm not satiated, I'm still hungry when I'm done, right? So when you say, just curious, when you say sugar sweetened drinks like that, you tell me on all of them, even the artificially flavored ones, anything at all that's any kind of basic carbonated drink that we're finding at any grocery store.

Well, you definitely don't wanna drink your calories, but the sugar sweetened beverages, I think, are the worst, and that's because there's zero capacity to satiate your hunger. So you could drink, I mean, look at the size of soda of like beverages at fast food joints these days. I mean, they're having a bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's because we just don't tire of drinking these, drinking these products.

Okay. I'm not that worried about artificial sweeteners, although my personal preference is to go for more natural sweeteners, you know, or rather it's all stevia, monk fruit, and things like that. I do like stevia. Yes, stevia I'm okay with. I mean, it has an aftertaste, which is an ideal. But you mentioned satiety, which is really important, I think, to unpack for people. The three characteristics of a food, that make a food satiating, that make it fill you up, so that you get that gratifying feeling of fullness

after eating it, is water protein and fiber. So those are the three things that you want to look out for in any food, if you want to avoid over-consuming that food, water makes a food satiating because if you think about it, for hunter-gather, one of our hunter-gather ancestors, when water ceased to be available, where would the next best place that a hunter-gather would look for for hydration?

Food, food, food is full of water, right? Fresh, produce, even meat is a good source of water. So, if you're dehydrated, you're likely going to eat more. So, that's why water should be one of the first places that you look to. The second thing is fiber. Fiber, we have no biological necessity for it. It does make life better. Fiber consumption is associated with longevity.

Can I ask one thing on that? Yeah. Don't you talk about in the book, though, that it actually has some LDL particle removal capacity? It does. Yeah. Especially viscous gel forming fibers in particular, sillium husk. So a lot of people take sillium husk for regularity, but there's like this amazing side benefit of sillium husk. And that is that it traps LDL particles in the form of bile acids in the gut. And it's one of these like really easy interventions that can have a small but significant effect on your lipid on your lipid profile It can also trap excess levels of hormones like estrogen, which is one of the reasons why fiber consumption seems to be associated with reduced risk of breast cancer Which is one of these hormone sensitive cancers

So fibers is really incredible. It seems to do all these amazing things We don't it's not an essential nutrient. You know, you see a lot of these like people in the carnivore diet thriving with seemingly zero fiber intake. And fiber, of course, it's also a surrogate, you know, dietary fiber intake is probably also like a surrogate marker for just an overall healthy dietary pattern. Now, if you're eating a lot of fiber, you're not the typical person consuming the standard American diet, right? you're eating a lot of fiber, you're not the typical person consuming the standard American diet, right? You're eating probably more salads, more veggies, and things like that.

But fiber is satiating because it mechanically absorbs water and stretches out the stomach, turning off the hunger, hormone, and grelate. So that's the second aspect of food that you want to make sure that you're seeking out in order to be satiated. That's big. And then the third thing I would say is protein. Protein is the most satiating macronutrient, more so than carbs, more so than fat, and if you look at ultra processed foods, they tend to be deficient in all three of those things.

Okay. Right? Ultra processed foods tend to be some combination of carbs and fat, or both. Usually sodium, wheat, flour, stuff like that. tend to be very protein deficient. Also protein is the most expensive macronutrient. So it's another reason why these high margin junk foods, right, they all tend to be.

They lack it because there's too much to put in there. Yeah, it's too expensive. Are we two, so protein stay on that topic for me? You're going right down all my questions I want to ask you. By the way, here's, it's only one of these interviews everybody, you get to listen in on stuff I want to know and it's to your benefit too, right? So, because you don't get a lot of guys like Max

in front of you very often. So protein is like, obviously, you know, you know, that I have lifted weights all my life and everyone knows protein, protein, protein. Are we overly obsessed? So are we overly obsessed with protein intake? In other words, if we gone so far, like I, you know, I try to eat my body weight in protein every single day. So I weigh a couple

hundred pounds. I'm trying to get about 200. For me, though, I do supplement different things to get to that 200. So what you said protein is so critical. Yeah. But is it, is there, is there a tendency to be overly obsessed with getting so much protein or you can't get enough of it? Yeah. I mean, I think that you can get enough of it, but that is actually self-regulated. So you really don't have to think about getting too much of it because it's so satiating. I mean, nobody has ever gorge on lean chicken breast, which is one of the most protein-dense foods there is because it's so satiating. We have these innate hunger mechanisms in our mouths, in our tongues, in our digestive tracks

that know once we've had enough protein. But we do know that the RDA for protein is insufficient for good health, especially for people like you and like me who are active and who exercise right away. In fact, the research suggests that we need to consume about double what the RDA is. So the RDA is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight every day of protein. We don't use kilograms here. But everywhere else does. But everywhere else.

Yeah. So I mean, I'll break it down in terms of pounds. But essentially, we need double that. So the research suggests that if we want to optimize our time spent in the gym, which we all should, right? We work hard for the gains, right? You should be striving for 1.6 grams per kilogram of lean mass or goal weight. And so that's an important distinction. And that breaks down to, in terms of pounds, about 0.7 grams per pound of lean mass or goal weight. And the idea there is your lean. So for you, 0.7 to a whole gram per pound of your body weight, that's sufficient.

You're definitely doing the right thing there. But if you had say, if you had 50 pounds of fat mass on you that you want to lose, then I would do 0.7 to 1 times what your weight would be minus 50. OK. 0.7 to 1 times what your weight would be minus 50. Okay. Do you consider protein supplements as processed foods are those all processed? That's a really good question.

I actually don't. I think protein supplements are great. I personally take them good. I think it's, yeah, it's easy to meet your protein goals with protein shakes and also way protein in particular has been shown to support immune function. Which I think is like this nice happy added side benefit. It's interesting because when you read Max's book, you would think because we're talking

a lot about plants here in a minute, but there's a lot of meat in there too. And the way to prepare it, and by the way, he actually has a void all the way up to best in terms of foods or ways to prepare them as well in the book. The rankings are there's some avoid in there. So I'm learning about sulfurophane. Can I say that correctly? Yes, sulfurophane. Okay, so talk to us about like having these defense mechanisms in our bodies that we

need as well. So go plants and sulfurophane a little bit. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, absolutely. So plants like animals, they don't appreciate necessarily being eaten. Right? Plants have a innate drive to survive as well, but plants can't fight off predators. So what they do is they become chemists. And they create compounds that are fascinating right here. Yeah. They create anti-feet-in-to compounds. Basically that would make smaller animals, mice, insects, even fungus,

smaller animals, mice, insects, even fungus, that service toxins to those smaller organisms. It's fascinating. Yeah. And we can see this actually by sulforophane is a perfect illustration of this because sulforophane, even though it's one of the most powerful, punitive cancer fighters, neuroprotectant, cardioprotective compounds in crucifers vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts. So forfane isn't actually in those plants until the cells of the plants get crushed and chewed up. You're kidding me. Yeah. Okay.

You won't find if you take a rocky sub broccoli, there's no so forfane in it. There are two compounds. One is called glucose raffinine and the other is called myrosinase. You don't have to remember this, but they're basically, these are two compounds held in completely different cellular compartments. And when they unite, which only happens when you chew on the plant. That's incredible. When a critter chews on the plant, you create this sulfur-fane compound,

which is essentially a pesticide. It's a toxin. It's a toxin. It's a toxic pesticide that the plant creates itself to protect itself from predation. But the reason why these compounds are beneficial in us where obviously we're much more robust than a mouse or an insect. And for many toxins, like the dose makes the poison. For an insect, the dose of sulforophane that may be getting is going to be a much higher and more toxic dose relative to its body size.

In us, eating sulforophane, especially at the dose contained when we, at the dose ingested when we chew versus vegetables, is so small, but it still has a protective effect. And this protective effect is owed to a mechanism called hormesis. And hormesis is basically the term given to when small doses of a certain stressor, even a certain toxin, actually helps to facilitate robustness in the organism. And it's the mechanism by which exercise works. Humans, general. Yeah, humans in general, the way we develop grit.

I mean, you talk about this on your podcast all the time. And so we essentially get this form of, we, we ingest, and we derive this form of chemical stress from compounds like sulforophane, polyphenols. The plant kingdom is just like loaded with these compounds. Bro, that blows my way. So you've all know you should eat more plants, right? Or veggies rather, but in this case, are you hearing this? How much nature has constructed this to our benefit? That's mind blowing that it only materializes when chewed,

when they're combined, and then they have this benefit. By the way, Hormisa said, David Sinclair on the show, who's like, I think, you know, Dr. Sinclair from Harvard, but he's like, the number one longevity dude, and the whole philosophy of his work is based on the concept of Hormisa's. You do cold plunges or exercise or things like that. And the body, you're saying there's a mechanism that that strives inside our own bodies when these toxins kick in.

Absolutely. It's a mind blowing. It beautifully illustrates, I think, the symbiosis of all living things. In the sense that you take a plant that's been stressed, right? And it imparts, it develops a vigor, right? Like a stressed plant, a wild plant. It's gotta be scrappy, right? Like out there in the world. And when you eat it, it imparts that vigor onto you. It's like this beautiful circle of life. That's bananas to me, no pun intended. You said fungus earlier,

there's this big thing in the book on fungi, right? Like, so I don't like the taste of like mushrooms and stuff like that. So talk to us a little bit about fungi and why it's good stuff. Yeah, well, first of all, there, I mean, there are lots of different mushrooms and they all have different flavors. No, I probably haven't sampled really. There's, have you tried lion's mane?

Have you ever had fresh lion's mane? No. So a lot of people are talking about lion's mane these days because you can find it in various supplements. But now you're starting to see fresh lion lines may pop up at different supermarkets. Okay. And it has the taste and texture of fresh crap. I'm not even kidding. It's like, it's really delicious.

Okay, I will try that then. Yeah. You saute it in a little olive oil, maybe some grass fed butter, salt, pepper. It is so damn good. Mm-hmm. And the beautiful thing about mushrooms is that very nutrient dense and low calorie. So you're not getting a lot of calories from mushrooms,

but you're getting a lot of really interesting compounds like beta-glucans, which can support immune function. Certain mushrooms have different, different micronutrient profiles, some have vitamin D depending on where they grow. Some mushrooms actually create really powerful detoxifying compounds like glutathione. Glutathione is considered the mother of all antioxidants and certain mushrooms like the portini mushroom in particular, very concentrated in glutathione,

which is great. And one tip, so as you mentioned the genius kitchen, which is one of the reasons why I'm so proud of it. It's not just a cookbook, it's for people to learn actually how to cook. Which I thought was so important. And one of the biggest mistakes that people make, if they're listening to this and they say, well, I don't like mushrooms, I've never had mushrooms that I've liked, one of the biggest, most common mistakes that people make when cooking mushrooms is they rinse them. You never wanna add water to mushrooms

because mushrooms are already packed with water. All you wanna do when you buy mushrooms is brush off any visible dirt that you see, but you never want to rinse them, unlike other produce. You just want to throw them in a hot pan with some like cooking oil, some great oil, like extra virgin olive oil butter. Is it because once you're cooking them, whatever the gnarly stuff that could be potentially on there by washing is gone by cooking it, or there's nothing on there? Yeah, I mean, you neutralize any potential harm that would come from eating something raw, but it's also that mushrooms are like sponges for water.

And what you're, the aim when you cook a mushroom is to get the water out of it, so that the mushroom's natural flavor comes through. Do you, do you look at food like it's actually medicine? I do, you know, I think that, I like to say, there's a lot of, there are a lot of people in the functional medicine community that like to say that food is medicine.

I like to refine that a little bit and add a little bit of nuance. I think that food is definitely a form of medicine. I think it's certainly a form of preventative medicine. It can be used to help prevent conditions like obesity, overweight type 2 diabetes. That's uncontrovertible fact at this point. Do I think that it can treat every disease? Not necessarily. I'm not anti-medicine or anything like that.

I think that actual medicine has a place, but I think that food also has a place. And I think that we need to not be so dichotomous in our thinking, you know? I think that there's a place for both. So I think that food is medicine. I think exercise is medicine. I think medicine, sleep is medicine.

I think hydration is medicine. Yeah, I is medicine, I think hydration is medicine. Yeah, I don't understand why more people are conscious of this topic. So there's all this stuff now on supplementation, everyone's on different supplements, right? And this is why I'm so excited about your book and you. Working out, everyone kinda knows you're supposed to do it now. Everyone's heard a podcast on meditation.

I think most people know they should drink more water, but for some reason, food itself is really still an under discussed topic like in general. And for me, one of the things from your work is like I already ate a lot of me like I've added so much more. So many more vegetables green vegetables to my diet than I had before after you and I talked for the first time. And one of the things that's really improved for me is my digestion. What don't most people know or understand about digestion that they should in their lives? Such a good question.

Well, I think people don't realize, most people don't realize that digestion begins before you take your first bite. It begins actually, there's called the cephalic fates of digestion. So digestion begins when you're observing the food that you're about to eat and smelling the food. One of the reasons why I think it's so important for people to be seated and to relax and

to take a deep breath and to just calm their nervous systems before they begin their meal. Because our stomachs begin to pump out hydrochloric acid, protein digesting enzymes, enzymes like pepsin, all before we even take that first bite. By biting and chewing slowly, chewing slowly is crucially important. So we already talked about sulforaphane. If you're rapidly chewing your cruciferous vegetables. You need time for those enzymatic reactions to occur, so that the creation of that compound cell forphane, which activates detox pathways in the body. It's a cardio protective, neuro protective compound, but it needs time to be created.

The same thing with alliums, like garlic and onions, there's a compound created when we crush garlic, fresh garlic in particular, called allocin. It's an antimicrobial compound, anti-inflammatory. We need to chew slowly because that's where the digestion and the synthesis of many of the most valuable compounds in our food begin to be created in our mouths. Also, this is one of the things that I talk a lot about in Genius Kitchen as well. Some of our most beneficial produce,

like beats and arugula are very high in compounds called nitrates. Nitrates are really good for our cardiovascular health because the end product, nitric oxide in our cardiovascular system basically brings down blood pressure, it supports blood flow, it's a vasodilating gas that we all create in our blood vessels, also really important for sexual fun.

I see. Guys, there's big guys. Yeah, nitric oxide is super, super important. And the nitrates that are found in foods like beets, a lot of people will take like beet root supplement, right? To boost blood flow. But humans don't actually have the enzyme to convert nitrates in food to nitrite, which then gets funneled into that nitric oxide pathway. It's the oral bacteria

in our mouths that reduce nitrate to nitrite, which then can boost nitric oxide in our blood vessels. So for your oral bacteria to have the time to be able to do that, you need to chew your food slowly. So if you're wolfing down a salad that has a rugla in it, that has beets, and you're not taking the time to chew what it is that you're eating more slowly. You're undermining the capacity of your food to be cardio protective. And in tandem with that, it's another reason, and I don't know why I felt the need to mention this in the book, but I felt it was really apropos. One of the reasons why people should definitely not use antiseptic mouthwash every day, because what you're doing with antiseptic mouthwash is you're

nuking the bacteria in your mouth that basically reduce nitrate to nitrite, which then can actually, they've even an acute swishing of antiseptic mouthwash, antiseptic being the key here, can increase your blood pressure because it basically messes up that nitric oxide pathway. They've also shown that, wow, reencing with mouthwash after exercise can reduce the blood pressure lowering effects of exercise, and people who regularly use mouthwash

two times or more per day, and this is about 40% of the population, have 50% increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes because nitric oxide is also involved in insulin signaling, and they have double the risk of developing hypertension. Okay, brother, okay, I start chewing my food slower. I can't figure out my,

and I do you antiseptic mouthwash, so. Is there any, I'm going to start chewing my food slower. I'll give you up my, and I'll do you anaceptic mouse wash. Is there any, I have so many things to match you. By the way, I told you guys, you never heard a show like this before. So you're going to write down stuff down and learn stuff. Is there any downside? Because we're going to talk about some other stuff here in a minute and then some of the stuff in the book on preparation is just awesome. However, is there any downside to eating a plant based or too many plants or anything like

that that we can you over do that or is there no downside? Yeah, I love this question. I think there is. I don't prescribe a one size fits all diet. People have different tolerances for fiber, quantity, for various compounds in food. You know, I have a friend who if he goes within six feet of an allium, which is like garland onions leaks, he gets the worst digestive discomfort ever. So everybody's different. And I also think that there's this push, especially from the vegan community to just eat as much fiber as possible.

We know that fiber is beneficial, but if you, from one day to the next, start eating, if you go from what is typical, which is 15 grams of fiber per day, which is pretty low, I'll admit, to the goal that some people espouse of being 150 grams a day of dietary fiber, you're just setting yourself up for constipation for all kinds of digestive. I was going to ask you, do you need to drink more water if you're going to take in that kind of fiber? You just need to go slowly. And you need, because essentially what it is, is you need to cultivate the microbiome, essentially, the gut microbi- the gut flora to be able to assimilate all of that fiber.

Okay. This fiber, I mean, the thing about fiber, we don't absorb it. Fiber's fiber because it passes through the small intestine undigested, and it becomes a fermentable substrate for the 30 trillion bacteria that live in the colon in the large intestine. But you need to cultivate that bacterial community first.

The bacteria of the person listening to this compared to somebody in the HOSDA tribe, for example, or in Inuit, we all have these different microbial constitutions. And some of that's like cultural and it's over time, it's materialized. It's just may seem basic, but this is true. Correct? That's why some guy from American goes to Mexico in vacation for a long time. The foods are the waters there affect their digestion differently than somebody who grew up.

Yeah, yeah. Correct. Right. Because you don't have the same immune system, you don't have the same antibodies, you don't have the same gut flora. Okay. I mean, the gut is where the majority of our immune system is, is stationed. So I mean, the gut was a huge role in immune function.

What about fish? So you say in the book, no, you're fish. No, you're fish. Yeah, what's the deal with that? Why? Well, fish is really important, especially from the standpoint of brain health, which is, you know, my, my, it's your go zone. Yeah, my number one passion.

Fish is medicine when it comes to the brain. We have the most robust body of evidence that the compounds in fish, whether it's the omega-3 fatty acids, preformed, plug and play ready to go for your brain, or protective antioxidants like astazanthin, all really, really beneficial from a brain health standpoint. There have been studies that have shown us that one to two servings of fish per week can help prevent dementia, and people genetically at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease. Prevent dementia one to two times a week. Is there a particular type of fish that you would recommend over another one? Yeah, I would definitely recommend the wild fatty fish, so salmon is a great option. Sardines also a good option.

I mean, whenever they look at, this is how epidemiology works. They look at the population level and they say who's eating fish, who isn't? And the people who eat fish, regardless of what kind of fish it is, tend to do better. Right. So we can't be snobs about this, right?

That's why, in my book, actually, that's why I have good, better, best. Because to me, like, if all you're able to access is canned tuna, right? If you live in a food desert, and that's the only kind of fish that you have access to, that's still better than not eating fish. Okay.

Ideally you want to opt more frequently for a fatty fish, like salmon, because it's gonna be higher in those omega-3 fatty acids, and wild is preferred over-formed, but any kind of fish is beneficial from the standpoint of the brain. Fish is also great in minerals like selenium, like vitamin D. See guys, I gotta tell you, like,

I did not eat almost any. And then, actually, when you and I talk the first time and then reading the book, I'm like, I gotta add any more salmon. I just don't make these choices. The other thing about the book, I think it separates it from anything else too, is actually the preparation parts of it.

So, you talk in the book, I wanna go through some things about just stuff that's got flavor that you recommend, and I wanna give the whole book away because I want So you talk in the book, I want to go through some things about just stuff that's got flavor that you recommend. And I want to give the whole book away because I want everybody to go get the book, which you need to go get the book. Here's why I should go get the book. There's not another one in its category like it. In other words, if you want to go get a book on intermittent fasting, there are multiple

books on that topic you could go get, all of which are probably pretty good, right? But this topic of the preparation of the food and the way that he talks about eating like a genius, I still think there's another one like it. So that's my endorsement. Number one, but the idea of like, so extra extra virgin olive oil is in the book. Yes. Okay. Talk about it like one, it's taste good, but number one, why is that something that we should be considering using and you give recipes and stuff in there in preparation of our food? Oh, I even have an extra virgin olive oil cake a grain-free gluten-free extra virgin olive oil cake in the book with no sugar at it, by the way. I love extra virgin olive oil. It's one of these foods that just for years I've been obsessed with and

humans have been pressing olives to make extra virgin olive oil for thousands of years at this point. It's it's it almost as a perfect food. And especially when you compare it to these grain and seed cooking oils that are so heavily marketed, dirt cheap to produce, high profit margins, toxic to the bodies and the, to our bodies and the quantity that we're consuming them today. Extra virgin olive oil has super heart healthy mono-insaturated fat, which is the best fat to consume liberally. It's actually a kind of fat called oleic acid,

which is the most abundant fat found in nature. Press milk is rich in oleic acid. Beef has very high in oleic acid, so is wild salmon. But oleic acid, olea, is actually, it means olive. So we discovered this fat in olive oil. Mm-hmm. Centuries ago. Mm-hmm. And now we know how beneficial it is. It actually helps prevent inflammation.

It helps make our LDL lipoprotein particles more resistant to oxidation. Mm-hmm. And more resistant to adhesion to macrophages, which is where this sort of like atherosclerotic process begins. So, it's a really healthy fat from the cardiovascular standpoint and brain health relies on cardiovascular health. So, it's the primary oil that I use in my cooking and that I recommend using as a sauce, and you can cook with it a lot of people don't realize that there's a lot of misconceptions about that. But the other thing about extra virgin olive oil is, aside from the fact that it's a very

healthy fat, it's got a superpower that no other fat has and it's that it contains a compound called oleocanthol, which is essentially an anti-inflammatory compound that is as anti-inflammatory as low-dose ibuprofen. Whoa. Yeah. So over the counter, pain relieving medications that are anti-inflammatory, they have side effects. Actually, chronic use of ibuprofen is associated with cardiovascular events, but extra virgin olive oil, you're getting all of the benefit,

all of the anti-inflammatory effect, essentially, of a low dose of that, but without any of the negative side effects. Yeah, Keegan, and by the way, none of the taxing on your kidneys are liver. There you go, either, right? Exactly. There's all these little things in the book, like I'll mising on your kidneys are liver. There you go. Either, right? Exactly.

There's all these little things in the book. Like, I'll mispronounce stuff, but it doesn't matter because I understand the concepts of things. So you talk about cooking with butter. Yeah. And then there's like, you're like, like there's this thing, that you talk about in the book, right?

So everyone else is listening to this probably going, you don't know what guia is? No, I didn't know what guia was. So what is guia and why are you so high on it? So guia is a great fat, so is butter, and we can talk about the differences in the two. They're similar. Ghee is derived from butter.

It's clarified butter, essentially. So you take butter, you boil it gently, and then you skim off the milk solids. And what you're left with is this pure fat that's very well tolerated for people that are even the most dairy sensitive, because it's free of lactose, and it's free of case. That's big for a lot of people.

Yeah, it's great for high heat cooking. It's a staple in Indian cuisine. That's probably the type of cuisine most known for utilizing ghee, but actually buttering ghee while I use it and I love it. And I, you know, it's definitely a part of my diet. I talk in the book about how for certain people, butter actually can raise levels of LDL, which is the lipoprotein associated with cardiovascular disease, right? And this is actually kind of interesting, and it's distinct from cream.

Now this is kind of mind blowing. A lot of people don't realize this, but butter is made from cream. And you take cream, you turn it, you get butter. That churning process disrupts a compound in the cream called milk fat globule membrane, and it makes the butter more prone to driving up levels of LDL, whereas no other dairy product has that problem.

So you can consume all the dairy fat you want from cream, from hard cheese and things like that. The consumption of full fat dairy is actually associated with better cardiovascular health, with the exception of butter, because it lacks this milk fat globule membrane. So for people that are worried about, you know, have risk of cardiovascular disease, butter is one of those foods that I'm like, yeah, enjoy it sometimes, you know, I guess it's a, it tastes great, it's fairly nutrient dense for a fat, but itter is one of those foods that I'm like, yeah, enjoy it sometimes. You know, I guess it tastes great. It's fairly nutrient dense for a fat, but it's not one of these fats that I'll go overboard

with. Unlike extra virgin olive oil. What about salt? What's our, do we have misconceptions about salt in general? I know the answer because I'm weak stuff, but I want to talk about that. So what, what's talk about salt? I love talking about salt. Salt is one of the easiest ways to elevate your cooking. I mean, salt is

the one ingredient that takes a single ingredient food, right? Like a piece of meat and turns it into a steak. Sure does. Right. You need salt. It's all you need. So I'm a huge fan of salt and I think that blows my mind hearing you say that. Okay. Yeah. Well, not anymore, but without reading, I would have blown my mind. It's, I mean, a piece of me by itself is a missed opportunity, right? You got to add salt. And, yeah, I think that we've been misguided when it comes to salt. A lot of, you know, the nutrition orthodoxy will say, you got to limit your salt, cut out salt, stop adding salt to your food, but actually only 11% of the salt that Americans

ingest every day comes from home cooking and the salt that they had with their salt shakers. The vast majority of sodium that your average American ingests every single day comes from fast food, restaurant food, and ultra-processed foods can can foods and things like that. So it's not the salt doing the damage. It's the fact that it's associated with those foods or is it a different type of salt? No, it's the it's the it's the foods that that's the associated food to test. So yeah, about 25% of the population are sensitive to sodium. So they're what is they're what are called salt sensitive hypertensives. And so that's still a minority, right? But about 25% of the population, if they eat a lot of salt, they'll see their blood pressure go up by 5% or more. And that statistic or that proportion is higher among people who have hypertension already.

But for the vast majority of people, they can eat all the salt that they want and not see their blood pressure go up. If sodium is an issue, though, and you are a salt sensitive, if you do find yourself sensitive to salt, I still wouldn't say don't salt your food. I would say cut out the package process foods, the fast food, and you can continue of course to add salt to your food to make it palatable because even the healthiest foods in the supermarket aren't going to be tasty unless you add salt to them.

So by us telling people to stop adding salt to their foods, and by the way, the number one source of salt in the American diet, the number one isn't canned food. It isn't processed meats. It's bread and rolls. That's the number one source of sodium in the American diet. Bread. Bread. Yeah. Do you eat bread? You know, I really, yeah, I don't eat bread. I eat bread, I'll eat bread like, like an almond flour based bread, because for me, you know, nut consumption is associated with good health, nuts are very nutrient tense.

So if I can find like a good, like, quote unquote paleo bread, yeah, you know, I'll go to town on that. You will. And look, if I'm traveling and there's a really good, like sourdough put in front of me, like I'll try that occasionally, but bread is not a staple in my diet.

That was my next question. So obviously I want people to get the book because they, and by the way, you should be cooking more. You should be home cooking more. And but let's say you're not tonight. So to your point, I was gonna ask you that. So I'm going out to order. I'm in a restaurant because a lot of people eat out

or going to eat out inevitably. What's just a good guide when eating out to eat for our brains, to eat for our heart, to eat for our longevity, but yet still enjoy the meal? Do you have a guide you kind of give yourself when you do that? Yeah, I mean, and I want people to eat out. Like, eating out is one of the great aspects of modern life eating out with friends. I love to eat out. Now, you can't control every single variable when you're eating out and you shouldn't try to, right? You don't know what kinds of oils are going to use in the restaurant. And so I think you need to give yourself a break and you need to not try to control every variable. Control the controllables. And I think when going out to a restaurant, the things

that I look for, I base my meal around a protein. So whether that's a piece of steak, now I try to eat when I'm home, 100% grass-fed, grass-finished beef. When I'm out at a restaurant, yeah, I really appreciate it if a restaurant offers that, but most restaurants don't, and so I don't drive myself crazy. I know that even a piece of grain-fed, or grain-finished beef, which is the most commonly available kind of beef in a restaurant, is going to be a pristine source of protein. If you order something like a filet mignon, it's going to be pricey, but a filet mignon is

actually a lean piece of meat anyway. So lean beef, it doesn't really matter what the cow is fed, to be honest, from a nutrition standpoint, because it's lean. The cow eats dictates the nutritional quality of its fat. So if you're eating a lean piece of meat like a filet, it actually doesn't matter what the cow's eaten from a nutritional standpoint. So I'll try to get a piece of beef. If not that, I'll reach for some grilled salmon,

which I know is probably gonna be farmed, but it's all good. It's still great source of omega-3s. Still a pristine source of protein. Chicken, chicken is great, white meat, dark meat. I mean, it doesn't really matter. White meat is gonna be just leaner and so it's going to contain less calories, more protein. And then I try to get vegetables. So sauteed vegetables usually I steer away from because the veggies and restaurants when they're

sautee, they tend to be sauteed in cheap oils, restaurant oil, you know, like the vegetable oil or the canola oil or soy bean or worse or corn oil. So I'll try to get grilled veggies or steamed veggies if that's an option in the restaurant. And then you could always sprinkle some salt or some lemon. Extra, you can ask for extra virgin olive oil. I love going to restaurants and asking if they can bring out flake salt, which is way better than the table shaker salt. Yes. I've done that too.

Yeah, so I mean, I think it's really easy to like, to manipulate those variables in the restaurant. Focus on protein, order a piece of meat, or fish, or chicken, or what have you. And then veggies, a side of veggies, a salad. That's, I mean, those are the meals that I get generally in. And I find it pretty easy to do so, like no matter where I am.

So I'm eating, I'm gonna ask you a heart and brain. Meeting for my brain, give me one or two foods, eat for your brain, do this people, and then here's one or two foods to avoid for your brain. All right, love this. So I would say avocados are an amazing brain food. They have the highest concentration of fat protecting antioxidants of any fruit or vegetable.

And this is of particular relevance to the brain because the brain is made of fat. And not just any kind of fat, but like a really delicate, damaged, prone category of fats called polyunsaturated fats. The brain is constructed of these fats. And so, fat soluble antioxidants are crucial to aging well, cognitively speaking. Avocado is a great source of potassium, which we know helps balance out the effect of sodium on our blood pressure.

It's a rich source of carotenoids, which can boost visual processing speed, even in people who are young and healthy. Great source of fiber, very satiating. So avocados are an amazing brain food. I would say the second food, we've already talked about beef a little bit. We haven't yet really talked about eggs.

I'm a huge fan of eggs. Good, I eat a lot of eggs. I'm not here to hear that. Eggs are great. Eggs, you know, when you consider the fact that an egg yolk is packaged with everything that nature has deemed important to grow a brain, it literally is the ultimate cognitive multivitum, an egg yolk. Okay.

Yeah. So I love egg yolks. And also, there was a study in older people that found that colon consumption was associated with a slashed risk of developing dementia by 30%, which is, you know, there's no drug on the market that we could say here, take this and slash that, risk of dementia by 30%, but colon is a really important molecule. It serves as the backbone to acetylcholine, which is a neurotransmitter. It's important for learning and memory.

Eggs are the number one source of dietary cooling. You get, I think, like, 150 milligrams in just one single egg yolk, which is amazing. Okay. Avoid food for the brain. Process food or anything beyond that. I would say definitely the grain and seed oils, the kind of oil, corn oil, soybean oil. We know that these fats integrate themselves into our adipose tissue.

We've actually seen an increase by about 130% of the appearance of these fats, linoleic acid and particulate in adipose tissue over the past 100 years, which is owed to the fact that we're just we're chronically consuming these cheap oils. Something soybean oil by itself is our consumption of it has gone up 2,000%. Just in the past hundred years alone. That's a big part of the book by the way is the preparation part and I want them

to get the preparation part, but that's a big deal is if it's got corn oil preparation, that's just a big no-no. Yeah, you want to get rid of that stuff. I mean a little bit here and there certainly won't kill you, but the production of these oils creates trans fats, there's no safe level of trans fat consumption we know at this point. They're also full, especially when we cook with them under real-world conditions, the appearance of oxidative byproducts, certain aldehydes and things like that, which we know are damaging to our mitochondria, which is the organelles in our cells that create energy. These oxidative products are found under, and they're found in oils that are available commercially

and created under just everyday use. So. And what about heart? Anything you say this heart, eat this for your heart. From a cardiovascular standpoint. Yeah. I mean, extra virgin olive oil, I think, really important. Fish, wild fatty fish is great from a cardiovascular standpoint. Exercise is important. It's not food, but, you know, it's...

And I think the fiber part is heart related, too. If you are really truly, you know, if it does have some LDL reduction capacity in any way, any particles, then fiber is a big deal. Yeah, it does I mean basically what happens is you you release bile acids to help break down fats in the gut and bile acids we we use LDL particles to make bile acids and those part of that LDL is basically taken back up in the Ilium which is the latter end of the digestive tract, but when you consume fiber with your food, and especially this gel-forming viscous fiber, silium husk, and other fibers naturally found in foods,

it traps the LDL particles, and so they're not able to be taken back up in the olium in time, so you basically pass them. That's why fiber, I think, is so great from a heart. It yanks it, you pass them. Okay. That's why fiber I think is so great from a heart. It yanks it, you pass it. Yeah. You're brilliant by the way. Dude, thank you.

I feel the same way about you. Thank you. I told you this like five times last time that we talked about it's just what I'm talking with you and thank you. I appreciate that. Fruit. So here we go.

Yeah. So, you know, I get my info from different people. And so I'm curious because I have some friends of mine that say, listen, fruits like ingesting sugar in the body, the body doesn't know the difference. I'm gonna ask you whether this is true or not. Body doesn't know the difference. So you're gonna get some sort of insulin reaction to it

and then you're gonna get more inflammation. And so fruit equals yeast and equals inflammation. I have other friends who say, nope, fruit's got all this nutritional benefit to it. It's also got some water benefit to it, in many cases, and so I eat a ton of fruit. So, where do you stand on those two ends of the spectrum? I think fruit is great, especially whole fruit, but I do think it's important to make to bring nuance to the table and to acknowledge that there are different kinds of fruits. We have low sugar

fruits like avocados, berries, all berries are great, cucumbers, citrus, things like that. And then we have high sugar tropical fruits, like bananas, for example, or pineapple, mangoes. If you have problems with your glucose tolerance and your sedentary all day, do I think gorging on grapes and bananas, for example, is a very smart idea? No, I mean, it's better than gorging on junk food, but I think gorging on grapes and bananas, for example, is a very smart idea? No, I mean, it's better than gorging on junk food, but I think we could do even better than that. I think we can, look to foods that have less

to have a lower glycemic load. But at the end of the day, fruit is beneficial. And so I don't wanna scare anybody away from eating more whole fruit. I personally, you know, my fruit, my daily fruit consumption ranges from zero to two servings a day. Okay. And again, all fruits are different. So berries, you know, there's a lot of evidence now showing how berries, how supportive berries are to brain health. Right. You know, bananas are a great source of potassium, which can boost cardiovascular health,

but our bananas, the only source of potassium, no, actually, an avocado has twice the potassium of a banana, okay, with all those other benefits, you know, to it that I mentioned. And as you mentioned, fruit, it's self-limiting. So again, this is why I don't really, you know, place a limit on fruit consumption. It is self-limiting because of the fiber, because of the water. The fact that fruit comes with that, the fiber and the water, that is important from the standpoint of how the sugar in the fruit affects us physiologically. There was actually a really interesting study where this wasn't a fruit per se, but they compared the same amount of carbohydrates from wheat. So they took 50 grams, we'll just say 50 grams of wheat, and they turned it into a porridge.

And one porridge, in one version of the porridge, the wheat was coarsely ground. And in the other, it was much more finely ground. And the finely ground porridge, again, carbohydrates were controlled for it. So the calories were controlled for, right? So same amount of carbohydrates in each bolus, the finally ground wheat porridge and the coarsely ground wheat porridge. And what they found in the finally ground wheat porridge was that it sent blood sugar, the amount that the glycemic impact was way higher, which led to a way higher

release of insulin. The systemic impact was way higher, which led to a way higher release of insulin. And afterwards, so it sent the blood, it sent the blood sugar way higher in the subjects, but then what was really interesting was that it dropped it below basal afterwards. Whereas, yeah, so it led to a blood sugar crash. That blood sugar crash that we all try to avoid, right?

Because that can create feelings of anxiety and people prone to anxiety, fatigue, hunger, irritability, right? But the coarsely ground porridge is harder for our bodies to digest, right? And it digests more slowly. Return blood sugar right back to baseline, right? So going back to the fruit conversation, this is why I think fruit is so great. And not something that we ultimately need to worry about, because it's not like we're just juicing the fruit

and consuming that sugar, it has this whole food matrix of fiber and water, and it leads to a very slow infusion of sugar, whereas you can take the same amount of sugar found in an apple and drink it, and you're not gonna have the same effect, you're probably gonna see a blood sugar crash. That's one of my favorite things we've talked about so far right there, because that's a definitive

example of the difference of that and just ingesting typical sugar on its own, which is sort of one of the arguments against fruit. I'm not advocating fruit anymore or less than you are. I wouldn't advocate anything because it's not my background, but what about just eating less? So I'm talking, I want you to address a couple different things. By the way, I really appreciate you going so deep because, you know, this is really valuable to me. I care about these folks that are my family listening to this and watching this and they're well

being on them to live happy or stronger, more energized lives. And you really help people do that, bro. So what about less, and when I say less is, I mean, less often, meaning how do you feel about, you know about feeding windows? My cardiologist doesn't like to call it intermittent fasting, so I can call them feeding windows. Actually, David's in Claire did as well. And then just portion size in general. Is that something you're cognizant of, like, how much food you're putting in your body, actually? Not just calories, but just a amount of food and portion size, and how often you do or don't eat,

are those things that you think about or focus on? Yeah, I mean, I try not to eat for two to three hours before I go to sleep every night. Okay, that's my primary concern, is not eating too close to bedtime. Sometimes, when I wake up in the morning, I like to eat an hour after I wake up. Sometimes I'm not hungry at all, and I can go two, three hours after waking up before

taking my first bite. This all comes back to circadian biology, and we're seeing now that, especially with research on time-restricted eating, a lot of this research is being done down over at the Salcons Institute with Sachin Panda. He's done a lot of, really, a, really, published a lot of really interesting papers on time restricted eating, but that when we simply honor our bodies' natural inclination to eat during the day and not eat too much late at night,

we see cardiometabolic benefits to our blood pressure, to our blood glucose control, and this is independent of weight. So some will argue that time restricted eating merely just a way of controlling calories. And it is that. It can be a very effective way of controlling calories. It's not, you know, time restricted eating

doesn't give you a free ride to eat whatever it is that you want. You can still gain weight while time restricted eating. You know, I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that time restricted eating or intermittent fasting is this all pass to, you know, to eat whatever it is that you want and that somehow calories don't matter if you're time restricted eating. That's false, right? But independent of calories, it does seem to be the case that there is a cardiometabolic

benefit to not eating too late at night. And so that's what I try to do. You know, we see that people who eat late at night, their hunger patterns are, you know, miswired the next day. And I've seen, I've anecdotally experienced this myself when I eat really late at night. My digestion isn't great the next day and I tend to feel more hungry when I wake up the following day.

Well, for me, I sleep a lot better. Yeah. Because my body's working to digest food that I ate later at night. And so when I'm not necessarily in full digestion mode, so to speak, I just sleep deeper. But the reason I actually have a portion size, so I want to talk about this, maybe one of the last two things here, is that as you talked to you about how big these sodas are now, so are portions. Like you go to when you do eat out, the portions seem to be getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

You go to an average restaurant now, you're like, my gosh, the amount of food in some places that they're bringing me. And there's been this thing, like I grew up with this, like clean your plate. It was a big thing. I'm here. I'm 50 years old, but I would sit in a, a lot of us grow up like this. I wasn't even allowed to leave the table if I didn't eat all the food. Mom, I know you're listening to this. I love you. But like, but like there is a portion issue in our culture. And I do think people think, well, I have an eating in eight hours. So I'm going to eat three size fistfuls of steak because I haven't eaten any in 10 hours.

So what about portion size? Do you focus on that? Yeah, I mean, I personally am a volume eater. I like to eat a lot. You told me that last time. Yeah, I like to eat a lot. And I think that the way that that has become something sustainable for me, and I'm able to do that,

without having to think about calories and to portion control all that much, is to focus really on the foods that I know are going to be satiating so that I can feel full, but still not have over consumed my daily calorie needs. And the way to do that is to focus really on whole minimally processed foods. So you can eat a lot.

You can eat a huge volume of food and not consume at the end of the day all that many calories in doing so. I mean, that's the problem with ultra processed foods is that by the time you've eaten those kinds of foods to satiety, you've already over-consumed them. Yes. These are the foods like pastas and rolls and breads and cakes and fried foods and chicken dishes like lasagna and things like that. But it's the minimally processed foods that allow you to feel like you're eating a lot.

When in reality you're actually not eating that much because they're just that satiating. Okay. And so, yeah, I mean, I've done on my Instagram too, like side by side depictions where, you know, if you look at the calorie density of your average fast food. This is really good right here, you guys. I've seen you do this. Go ahead. Yeah, like the French fries and the soda and the Big Mac.

It fits within, like, I mean, you can, you can basically in two handfuls, hold all of that food in two hands. And that's, for the most part, it's like a 1,500 calories worth of food right there. And just you're holding it in two hands, right? But if you look at foods like, you know, wild salmon, fresh vegetables, dark leafy greens, whole fruits, eggs and stuff like that.

The calorie density is way lower for those three density. There you go. Yeah, calorie density is lower, but the volume is way higher. And so volume is one of those things that like, you know, it's really hard from the standpoint, like look at, look at like any animal. Like when left to their own devices, when allowed to eat ad libatum, which is a scientific way of saying to allow an animal to eat all the,

everything that they want, they don't stop, they don't pump the brakes, they have no self, they have no reason to self-regulate the way that we do, right? But when an animal is eating its biologically appropriate diet, it knows when to stop. Naturally, right?

An animal's, an animal's MO isn't to eat itself to a state of the type two diabetes, obesity, right? It's true. So I think that the reason why so many of us struggle with overeating is because of the, it's the food environment. It's not that there's anything wrong with us. I think a lot of people feel like there's like a moral failure,

right, when they can't regulate their appetite. So when they just find themselves eating too much chronically. But it's the foods, it's the ultra-process junk foods. And it's not even junk foods, it's the, it's food, it's fast food, it's sugar-sweetened beverages, and it's not even just food, to be honest, it's our lifestyles. You know, when you are under slept the next day you're inclined to eat 400 more calories and if you were well slept. So it's all these factors. Yeah. All these factors come into play.

And so yeah, I think that like moderating and trying to shrink your portion size is one of the reasons why diets fail again and again, because you can't just shrink your portion size and expect that to be a sustainable thing for you. People want to be able to eat and feel full. By the way, you just said for those of you that have some guilt about not eating health, they ask yourself about your satiation level when you're said, for those of you that have some guilt about not eating health, they ask yourself about your satiation level when you're eating, right? You're, I'm just going through things you've said today. The amount of fiber in takes that you're feeling more full also, your water in takes,

whether you're feeling more full. And just give yourself some break about that. Maybe it's not the amount of food you're eating, but the types of food you're eating so that you feel fuller sooner. The other little thing I thought about, I'd eat fast. I eat too fast. You said this earlier. It's one of my takeaways for our conversation today.

So one, I'm losing the benefit of some of that combination of circumstances that causes these healthy toxins in my body when I'm eating, but also the fact that it's not even giving myself time to signal the fact that I'm full oftentimes. I do everything fast. I talk fast. I drive fast. I walk fast, and I think sometimes our personality dictates even the way we eat.

And I think it's smart to step back and go, let me enjoy the flavor of the food. Let me enjoy the meal to some extent. Let me enjoy the conversations. Not a, I think sometimes I'm always in the contest to be first. I don't know if anybody can relate to that. I gotta be the first one finished.

First one to order, first one finished, which is not just insanely stupid thing, but yet I do it when I eat. And I think when I overeat, or when I have digestion issues, or fatigue after a meal, oftentimes it's not the food I ate, sometimes for me it's just how fast I ate it

in some cases. And so I really appreciate you saying, okay, last question. Oh man. Well, there's so many more. I've got 3,000 more questions I wanted to get to, but you know, the depth of your answers are so awesome, bro. I love talking to you.

I love talking to you. And I want to keep doing it. And by the way, guys, I just say this about Max. There's not someone else like him. So follow his stuff. Check out his YouTube. Listen to his podcast. Get genius food.

Get the book. You know, get it. So just an in general question. We've covered a whole bunch of stuff today I just want to we miss something we missed a lot of things But if someone's listening to you know what man? I'm gonna start to pay more attention to how I'm eating What I'm eating how I'm eating Other than what we've covered here today will be one more layered thing you'd say and by the way

Don't forget this either in preparation or the type of food or anything like that that you would throw in that I didn't ask you that they should just know before I let you go. Oh man. Well, a topic that I'm really passionate about is our almost constant exposure to environmental toxins. So, industrially created compounds that have saturated the food supply that we are unwittingly ingesting on a day-to-day basis that are that's compromising our health. So compounds like bisfinal A or BPA endocrine disruptors, like thalates in our food supply or PFAS chemicals. I would say that getting your food right is super important and probably going to be the lowest hanging fruit for most people, but I also think that people should start to at least gain a sense of awareness about

where their food is coming from and to reduce their reliance on foods that come in plastic packages. And to minimize their storing of food in plastic packages and certainly the reheating of food in plastic packages. So this is a big problem, like the microwaving of food in plastics, purchasing of sandwiches and other food products in oil-proof paper, wrapped in oil-proof paper. All of these situations increase our exposure to compounds that mess with our hormones, the system of chemicals in our body that guide everything from neurodevelopment to sexual function to where we store our body fat. So becoming aware of where your food is coming from. I mean, there's a study that came out just,

I think it was late 2021 that found that fast food was just rife with thallates. Thallates are known endocrine disruptors. And so if you're eating a food product that just try to visualize where, how it arrived in your hands, if it had to flow through a Byzantine network of plastic tubing, right, to make it into your food supply, to make it into it onto your plate, then it's probably

something that you should minimize your assumption of. If it's a piece of, you know, just compare it to a sliced piece of fresh meat or a whole chicken that you roast yourself. For example, it's a lot different or, you know, produce that you grab from the supermarket and put in a bag yourself. I mean, that's completely different. But, you know, so many of us today were consuming foods and packaging and we think that the packaging is inert, but it's actually not. Under certain circumstances, the chemical constituents of the packaging are able to leach into the food that we're eating. And it

screws with us. It affects everything from insulin sensitivity to our predilection for weight gain. So I think, yeah, and I offer some tips in genius kitchen to help minimize one's exposure to these kinds of toxic chemicals, which I think is a really important layer that we need to be talking about more. Okay, so I'm really glad I asked you that last. And by the way, it's a genius kitchen. I keep calling it a genius food a couple times. Beginning I called it a genius kitchen.

There's genius foods in the book, genius kitchen. And Max is one of a kind, you guys. I'm grateful for today. Likewise. Really grateful for today. I was so looking forward to this. Yeah, I really was brother. And you knocked it out of the park once again. So guys, go get Genius Kitchen, follow Max everywhere. We'll put some links up here so that you can get it.

If you're on the YouTube, you'll see them here on the audio. You guys already know about Max LugaVare. Go follow all of his stuff. And in our case, the show, case of our show, I got to tell you guys, we've doubled in the last 90 days already a huge behemoth of a show and that's cause you guys are all sharing it. It's because every week I bring you somebody who is the best in the world at what they do

and this week's show was no exception. And so please share this with people that you care about that she love and help the message of the show continue to grow. I love all of you, God bless you all and max out your life. This is the end My Let's Show.