Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Food 3.0: Prioritizing Health, Sustainability, & Conscious Choices with Ocean Robbins

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

This episode with Ocean Robbins is not just about the power of food but a deep dive into the profound legacy that Ocean carries forward from his father, John Robbins, the author of "A Diet for a New America".  Ocean and Dr. Mindy explore the integral role of lifestyle medicine, the impact of fasting, the benefits of mindful eating, and the nutritional power of superfoods like sweet potatoes. We delve into the secret behind the impressive longevity of the Okinawan people, the power of love, belonging, and the detrimental effects of loneliness on our well-being. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep208. Ocean Robbins is co-founder & CEO of the million-member Food Revolution Network. He is author of the bestsellers, 31-Day Food Revolution and Real Superfoods. Ocean founded Youth for Environmental Sanity (YES!) at age 16, and directed it for the next 20 years. He has spoken in person to more than 250,000 people, organized online seminars and events reaching more than a million, and facilitated leadership development events for leaders from 65 nations. He has served as adjunct professor for Chapman University, and is a recipient of the national Jefferson Award for Outstanding Public Service, the Freedom's Flame Award, the Harmon Wilkinson Award, and many other honors. His TEDx talk, Eating Our Way To Happiness, has been seen by more than a million people. Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

On this episode of The Resetter podcast, I am bringing you Ocean Robbins. Okay, I'm so excited for this conversation because I have been following Ocean's father for decades. His dad actually wrote a book called A Diet for a New America, and I read it when I was 20 years old, and it was the book that helped me see the power of food on our health and the power of not not only choosing the right foods, but the power of making sure that foods and ingredients were clean. So I'm not going to tell you the story behind the Robbins family because Ocean tells it so well at the beginning of this podcast. So I want you to hear the whole story because it's remarkable. And what you're going to hear in this discussion that is so important

is how do we choose the right foods in our eating window to make sure, that we are amplifying our health. Now, let me break that concept down for you for a moment. Remember, when you're building a fasting lifestyle, you have a fasting window, and you're going to hear a lot of guests that I bring you that talk about how do we make the fasting window easier, how do we amplify the fasting window. And then when we're done with our fasting window,

we open up our eating window. And I really want to dive in more with you all on how, do we use foods in our eating window to keep the healing going? Because when we're metabolically switching, we are operating not only from the sugar burner system, we're also operating from the fat burning system. And there is healing that can happen in both of those. So what Ocean and I unpack in this is a couple of concepts around food. For starters, we talk about superfoods, and he's got some really great ones that he brings to the surface. The most important one that I hope you all know is the sweet potato.

I love sweet potatoes, and we talk about why it's a super food. We also went into the concept of mindful eating, and you're going to hear me talk a lot about how I've been thinking deeply lately about the environment in which we eat food and how important that is, and an ocean had some really interesting concepts on that. And then lastly, we talked about the Okinawa women. Okay, I'm obsessed with both men and women in Okinawa, but the women of Okinawa live very, very long, hopefully you know that.

And there are some traits that they do around their food that allow them to live so long. And Ocean knew those traits, and we unpack those traits. So it's such a great conversation from what I can. consider to be, you know, the Robbins family is iconic when it comes to nutrition because of what Ocean's father started and what Ocean continues to carry forward. But also, oh my gosh, you all, Ocean is such a loving human. Oh, what a heart. And you are going to hear that in this conversation. And as new cookbook is out, it's called Real Foods, Everyday ingredients to elevate your health. It is a phenomenal cookbook. We will leave links for that. Please go.

go get it. And I can't wait for you to listen to this conversation. Enjoy. Hey, Dr. Mindy here. And welcome to season four of the Resetter podcast. Please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Enjoy. Well, for starters, I have to just say welcome to my podcast, Ocean. Well, thank you. I feel very welcome and so honored to be here with you. Yeah. Thank you. I actually have to start off by telling you a story that I'm sure a lot of people tell you, which is when I was in my early 20s, I stumbled upon a book called A Diet for a New America. Are you familiar with that book?

I think I might have heard of that book. Yeah. And it literally changed my life. And now, full transparency, I'm not a vegetarian now, but your dad's book did for me is give me this incredible healthy respect for what food could do for you and how food is made, how animals are treated. I and my 20-year-old fresh brain, that just really set and put me on a course of deep respect for food. So can you just fill everybody in on that book and you were born into that legacy? and what it's been like since you've carried your dad's message on. Yeah, absolutely. I was born in a one-room log cabin in the middle of the woods in British Columbia, Canada,

to parents who are growing most of their own food, practicing yoga and meditation every day for hours, fasting regularly. And, you know, they named their kid Ocean. Yeah, right. Well, I'm married to a Sequoia. Right, there you go. And then we both, just full transparency, we both named our children. You have a son.

Bodian River. Bodian River. And so my daughter's name is Bodie and my son's name is Pax. So we're of the same thread. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. And my parents almost named me kale. Oh, wow.

It was way before kale was cool. Oh, the ocean is a good. I'm kind of glad they took the more conservative route with their name of their son. But we eat a lot of kale. And that's why they almost named me kale. It was a staple in the Canadian winter. And we ate a lot of other cabbage and carrots and other veggies from the garden. And then when I was tan, we moved to California.

and that's when my dad began working on a book called Diet for New America, which came out of 1987, and it was about how our food choices affect our health, our happiness, and the future of life on earth. And as it happens, the media kind of went nuts with the story because the story starts a generation earlier here. My grandpa, Irvin Robbins, founded an ice cream company. You may have heard of it.

It was called Baskin Robbins. And he started it with my dad's uncle, my grandpa's brother-in-law, Bert Baskin. They flipped a coin over which name went first. Robbins Baskin or Baskin Robbins. My grandpa lost the coin toss. But, you know, that went on to become the most successful ice cream company in the world and kind of actually was what brought franchising to the world. So Ray Kroc actually sold milkshake machines to Baskin Robbins

and learned about the franchising model from my grandpa and then went on to start McDonald's. Wow. So for better or for worse, that's quite a family legacy. That is. My dad grew up with an ice. ice cream coat-shaped swimming pool in the backyard and with 31 flavors of ice cream in the freezer plus testing flavors at all times. And he was groomed to one day join her money in the business. That was the expectation from the age of about six. And then when he was in his early

20s, he was literally offered that chance. And he said no. He walked away from a path that was practically paved with gold and ice cream. Yeah. As we jokingly put it in our family, he had to follow his own Rocky Road. That was good. Yeah. So, so, and that's when he walked away not just from the company, but any access to the family wealth. And my grandpa was really mad because he'd spent his whole life building a business that he was proud of. Yeah. He wanted to share it with his only son. Right. And his son's walking away from his life's work. Yeah. And my grandpa was really hurt. And when I was growing up as a kid, we'd have, we'd visit. We weren't going to let, we weren't going to let anything stop us from being family. Right. But it was tense. Oh, you know, because my grandpa had watched, he sold the company. And then he watched.

it go in directions he didn't like. You know, for whatever you say about ice cream, Baskin-Robbins, it had certain standards as far as using real vanilla instead of vanilla. We were using, you know, products that were from cows that were treated a little bit better. It wasn't like they were really anti-factory farms. But they had certain values in ethics. They treated their employees pretty well.

But once it got bought, it just became another corporation. Yeah. And my grandpa felt hurt to see people that he'd worked with for decades fired or not treated right and all the things. But he had no control over it. And he blamed it all on my dad. Like if you had stayed in the company, none of this would have happened. Yeah. And our family name is now on a product with ice cream that's made in China. So he had all those feelings. And so, so I think that it was challenging. And then a very interesting thing happened. My dad came out with his book and it became this runaway bestseller. My grandpa didn't read it. My grandma asked at

one point. Did you write this book just to hurt us? Oh. Because she felt that my dad was like saying that conventional agriculture had some problems and that ice cream wasn't health food. And yeah. But then my grandpa was on death store. He lost his, he lost his brother-in-law Bert Baskin to heart disease. My dad's uncle died when he was ironically. Ironically. Yeah. And he ate a lot of the family product. Yeah. And he was a big man and he passed at 54. My grandpa in his late 60s was on a similar path. He had serious heart issues, serious weight issues, and type 2 diabetes. His doctors told him, Mr. Robbins, you're very sick. And if you don't make some big changes, you're going to take these medications for the rest

of your life, and it probably won't be very much longer. They said, but if you want to make changes, there's a book you should read. Oh, I've heard that story. And they give a copy of Diet for New America by the Redingade son who walked away from my grandpa's life's work. And my grandpa, bless his heart, read the book, not the one my dad had sent him with an autograph in it, but the one the doctor gave him. And he changed his life. He wound up following its advice, and he gave up processed foods and sugars. And he cut way down on his animal product consumption.

He started eating a lot more fruits and vegetables and whole plant foods. He gave up ice cream. And he got results. He lost a bunch of weight. He reversed his diabetes. He reversed his heart disease. Got off all these medications. He'd been told he'd need to take for the rest of his life.

His favorite part was that his golf game improved seven strokes. Yeah. My favorite part was that he lived 19 more healthy years. And I got to know my grandpa as I was growing up, but not only know him, but know him healthier and know him happier. Yeah. And so he got a second chance when he got to live out his golden years and his retirement years with more health and vitality, taking the dog for a walk for an hour and half every morning.

Amazing. And so we've really seen in our family what happens when we follow the standard American diet. You get to standard American diseases and we've seen what can happen when we make a change. Yeah. And, you know, I'm so proud of my grandpa because he was a stubborn cookie. Yeah. And if anyone ever had an investment in the standard American diet, it was him. He manufactured and sold so much ice cream.

And yet he had the courage to make a change. Right. And if he could make a change, maybe there's hope for some of the rest of us to make changes, too. With all the habits and all the inertia and all the reasons why we don't want to make changes, maybe we can find hope too. Yeah. You know, and a lot of us don't get a second chance. Yeah.

You know, like my dad's uncle, who I never even knew, he was gone before I was born. Yeah. But my grandpa did and he took it. And so for everybody who's listening right now, Like we all have a chance right now, whether it's our first chance, our second chance, our our 10th chance. We all have a chance to do something with our lives to make positive and healthy choices. And so my life is just dedicated to giving as many people as possible the opportunity to seize

those opportunities so we can have the health that we want. Yeah. God, that was like such a great completion to the story that I didn't know. So thank you because I'm thinking as you were talking and please pass this on to your dad because that book literally set me on the course that I've been on. And what I learned was so many things in that book. Literally, I carried it everywhere I went. Like, I was like, this book.

And what I found so fascinating was the fact from my, and think about this from my 20-year-old brain. My 20-year-old brain was like, why would you give up millions? Why would you give up, like you had a path like you said that was paved with golden ice cream. My 20-year-old brain was like, why would you give that up? And then it translated it into because people's health is that important. And here is an individual that stood up, one individual that stood up and said, I don't want that because it's too important that people stay healthy. And that left a massive impact on me.

Yeah. You know, we live in a culture where it seems like we've made the almighty dollar more important than human health than the well-being of others and maybe even the survival of our species. It's like we'll save the planet if it's. It's convenient and economically viable. But the reality is that lives are on the line. Our lives are on the line. And the way I look at it, food 1.0 is about survival. If you can get enough calories to fill your belly, that is success.

Well said. And that's been the reality for most of human history and for many people today. Food 2.0 is about commerce. It's about the buying and selling of goods. And it brings us taste and texture and cuisine and option from all around the world. But it's morally bankrupt. Yeah. It has no compass.

Yeah. And it's killing us. And it's killing our planet. which is why I'm calling for, as you are, for food 3.0, which is governed by health for our bodies and health for our world. And there's healthy profits in food 3.0. They just come from healthy food. And I think that when we orient that way, we realize food is medicine, food is fuel. Food will shape our destiny. And, you know, a lot of us think about food and we think about short-term pleasure. That's good. Most people do it that way.

And my question is, what if we ask not what do I want now, but what do I want most? Yeah. You know, because at the end of the day, there's more pleasure in a body that works. Right. I don't know anybody who thinks it's pleasurable to go through chemotherapy. No. Or to, like, be morbidly obese and not be able to get off the couch. Yeah.

Or to feel like crap and your brain is foggy. And you can't remember the names of your loved ones anymore. No. That's what we're headed towards if we, the standard American diet. There's more pleasure in and be able to do what you love and play with your grandkids and dance and sing and celebrate and play sports and do all the things you love with a clear mind and a clear conscience. And that's what we make possible when we treat food as a source of nourishment,

not just a source of entertainment. Yeah, and it's really inspiring to hear you talk. And I want to dive into these superfoods here in a moment. But another story that my audience has heard a lot from me is that during the pandemic, I was asked to advise a group of high school teachers in the South on what they could do, what kind of foods they could use to. support a healthier immune system. So I get on this, there was about 30 of them, I get on to this Zoom call. I'm so excited to share what I know with them. And I go through all the ways they should

eat healthy. And at the end of the call, basically several of the teachers said, we agree with you, but we can't afford. We can't afford healthy food or we don't have time for healthy food. And here are the people teaching our children. And I walked away from that and I thought, well, that's where fasting comes in because I have so much admiration for people like you. And we talked about our friend Vonny who's like fighting the fight against food and we need to keep fighting that. But until we do, I'm like, why don't we take fasting and let's all learn how to heal ourselves with fasting because the food industry does not appear to want to clean its act up anytime soon. Yeah. One of the things that I think is powerful about fasting, I remember the first time I did like

an extended fast and I when I started eating again, like I didn't take food for. granted. Like I was, that first bite was like, oh, this is really special, you know. What am I getting? Of course, I spent on teen hours during my fast, thinking about what I was going to break the fast with. Because you had all that time. And a little bit of hunger. Yeah. Although that fades after a certain point. But then I was really, I was more conscious of what I was eating. It's like, if you can eat nothing, then you're not a prisoner of your desires. That's right. And I think a lot of us are so caught in addictive cycles around food and fasting can be one of the ways for some people to help break that. Yeah. And then you get to make a more conscious choice as you reenter the relationship with food.

Exactly. But what terms you're entering it on? Yeah. And what foods are actually going to serve your vitality and wellness so that it's conscious rather than compulsive? Well said. And I think that if you look at even the way I teach fasting where you've got like an eating window that might be eight to ten hours, a lot of people say to me, well, how do I

get enough protein? How do I get enough vegetables in that eight to ten? And my answer is high quality. Let's go high quality and what some of the foods we're going to dive into here in a moment. But like, let's be, to your point, very mindful of what you're eating. And I watch it change people's relationship to food just because they have a shorter time period to eat their food in. So it's really incredible. Yeah.

Okay. These super foods. Okay. So there's a couple of things I have to tell you. And I'm just, I just have to like throw this out here. Let's start with this one because this is literally my favorite food on the whole planet. and I'm pretty sure that this food has changed the direction of my hormones as I've gone through menopause, and that is the sweet potato.

Okay. It got a chapter all by itself. I'm like, yes. I feel like I'm like the spokesperson for the sweet potato and you put it in as a superfood. And if everyone doesn't know, we're talking about put it in a book called Real Superfoods, every day ingredient, stuff with your health, which is my latest book. And it's also a cookbook. Yes.

Yeah. So, yeah, we got chapters on each of these superfoods. So, yeah, sweet potatoes. Okay. I mean, how special are they, right? Because I don't know about you, but I grew up thinking that sweet potatoes were sweet. So therefore, they were probably less healthy than like regular potatoes. It turns out nothing could be further from the truth. They're super loaded with phychemical antioxidants that are amazing for us. Of course, they're high in fiber. They're not high on the glycemic index. No, they're less, they're lower on the glycemic index. Right. than a regular potato. Right, right. Why is that? Why is that? Well, because they have so much fiber and so much other compounds that are in there that slow down the digestion process, even though there's some sweet in there.

The people of Okinawa, Japan, are probably the longest-lived documented population in the world. The elders there consistently live into their hundreds. They have vastly more centenarians per capita than we do in the United States. And they outlive us by about 10 years, the elders there. And they don't have more medical care. In fact, they have less medical expenses than we do significantly. You know, it is a developed country, so they have good hygiene and so forth. But what do they eat there?

Well, it turns out over half their calories come from sweet potato. Oh, half of them. Half their calories. Seriously. So you can eat a lot of sweet potatoes. I mean, that's just insane to me. I think I'd get tired of them. And they actually eat a particular type primarily.

It's a purple sweet potato. Okay, so this was going to be my next question. By the way, have you, you've seen the Netflix series on the Blue Zones and the Okinawa. Yeah. And I just want to point out the other thing that they do that I'm really trying to figure out how to do is they created, they created something called a moai. And a moai is a community that supports each other and uses its resources to come together. Yes. And I think that's a really interesting concept in a world where we're like, this is mine.

I work, you know, like these people who are living so long are not only eating sweet potatoes, half their diet, but they're, also really embracing, supporting each other, which is incredible. The four pillars of lifestyle medicine are eat better, stress less, love more and move more. And I think these are just really central. And so you're talking about the love more piece, that strong social ties and connection, a sense of belonging. We have studies telling us that loneliness kills faster than cigarettes. And I think there's almost an epidemic of loneliness. And 2020 only made that so much worse for a lot of people around the world. We need each other. We belong to each other. We need to feel a sense of community and connection.

That's what opens our hearts, which turns out to be good for our physical hearts and our life expectancy and our well-being. And it brings down all the reactive fight or flight responses in the body and helps us to settle, brings down cortisol levels, brings up peace, serotonin, all of this. So love and belonging is critical. Exercise, of course, is really critical. We could talk about that too and bringing down stress through practices like meditation or prayer or mindfulness or deep breathing or.

all the different things that help settle the nervous system. Yeah. These all work in concert. And in Okinawa, and all the blue zones, actually. They do all of them in very different ways. They don't all have the same faith. They don't have the same types of exercise or same diet. But they all have certain things in common.

And in Okinawa, sweet potatoes is a big part of their diet. They eat a predominantly plant-based diet, very little animal products, a little bit of fish. And they eat lots of fiber. Yeah. And, of course, all the other pieces. So, yeah, but sweet potatoes are, they're actually not related to potatoes. They're a totally different family. You have to explain.

The big question I have that I get all the time is when I'm looking at the sweet potatoes, yams, like all the different colors, but we call them all sweet potatoes. Well, here's the thing. Actually, what we call yams are sweet potatoes. Oh, so they're all yams. So they're all sweet potatoes. So yams are a very large vegetable, if you will, root vegetable in Africa that maybe weighs 20 or 30 pounds when they're full-sized, and they have no sweetness to them.

They are like a starchy thing. I got one. I was so excited. No, I never really am. I was like, oh, very anticlimactic. Went to like a special grocery store. But we really don't have yams in the United States or much of the developed world. They're not that popular for some good reasons.

Yeah. But for some reason, we called like garnet or certain varieties of sweet potato yams. They're actually not. So it's all a family of sweet potatoes. Then some are orange. Some are purple. some are yellow, some were more white-fleshed, and they're different colors on the outside. And they have different levels of sweetness.

Right. And they have different pigments reflect different antioxidants and phytonutrients in them, each of which has its own unique benefits. If you want the absolute most bang for your buck, go for the purplish ones. That's, okay, so wait, I want to stop right there because that's, so just to fill everybody, and my husband, Sequoia is like obsessed with the purple. And every time we get him, he's like purple, purple, bring more purple. And then he starts sending me all these science studies on the purple ones.

Yeah. And the purple ones feed a very specific type of bacteria in the lower intestinal track. Yes. Yes. So talk a little bit of the things. Well, I mean, the wonderful thing is that, I mean, there's so much we don't know yet about the microbiome, right? It's like this leading edge frontier of medical science.

But as we learn more, we're like, wow, maybe that's part of why. Like we see the Okinawans live a long time. And then we see they eat a lot of sweet potatoes. We don't really know why for sure, right? But we do know that sweet potatoes have a lot of specific kinds of fiber that seem to be linked to better microbial health and the lower intestine. Yeah. And, you know, each one has a different mix, but that seems to be part of the genius of it.

Yeah. So we have this word fiber. I was just interviewing David Perlmutter recently. I wish fiber was its own food group. You know, part of the carbs food group, right? I mean, a macronutrient group, I'm sorry, but it should be its own macronutrient. Yeah. We should have a fourth macronutrient.

Technically, alcohol is the fourth macronutrient, but let's not go. What? It's not an nutrient. Yeah. One thought on that before you continue on, I think we should stop, just like we stopped saying oil and fats and plumping them all together, I think we should say nature's carbs and man-made. And then the nature's carbs would be including fiber. Yeah, you got that. That works too. Yeah, absolutely. But I think that, you know, as a macronutrient fiber, if we think of it distinctly, is just so powerful. And it's not just like there's one kind of fiber. and we say, okay, they're soluble and insoluble, which is a very basic thing. Does it dissolve in water or not, right?

And then there's like, we have this sort of crude way of saying that, you know, insoluble fiber is like a broom, and it helps clean you out and keep your regular. Insoluble fiber nourishes the good bacteria in your gut. And at a very gross level, those are true. But it's not nearly so simple. There's so many different kinds of soluble and insoluble fibers. And so they each feed different types of bacteria. Right.

Also partly depending on what's already going on in there, though, what's already populated. But they also can help you have more balance with the microbial ecosystem. Yeah, so talk about that because I think fiber, again, this is, I don't want to just smooth over this because it's got a lot there. It's a prebiotic, right? Right, yeah, exactly. Prebiotic means it feeds the good bacteria. A lot of people are taking probiotics. It's a $60 billion industry in the United States right now.

Most of those are just passing through. others may take up some root and population, but not necessarily in the ways you would want. In some cases, that's like a monocrop. You can have too much of anything and it's out of balance. What you want is a lot of diversity of microbes. And the best way to do that is to feed them. Yes. You know, if you starve them, it's like keep bringing in more reinforcements and they die

because they've got nothing to eat. Feed them and then let them find their own natural balance. And they have this exquisite way of working it out with each other when they have have the right context. They're a little more intelligent than we are perhaps. They might just be. Yes, exactly. We don't even understand. There's so many of them. It's so many different kinds. So we think we have this concept of good bacteria and bad bacteria, you know, but it's so much more complex. Some of the so-called bad bacteria in their right place can actually be part of a healthy ecosystem. Interesting. They're really important. Like, would you look at nature and say,

oh, there's good bugs and bad bugs? Mosquitoes are bad bugs. Okay, I think we could all agree on that. But at the same time, they actually serve a part in a larger ecosystem. And we with our limited human brains don't understand that sometimes. Like how do things fit together? How do they work together? There's an ecology there. And nature has evolved in exquisite ways and the same is chewing our own guts. So rather than just coming in with like, okay, acidophilus,

Bing, take a big pill with 100 billion colony forming units. Like in some cases, that can be helpful when things are way out of balance. But in the long run, what you want to focus on is restoring the ecosystem. So that the good guys propagate. They'll naturally propagate and support each other and work together without overpopulating. And that's the key thing. And the right food is critical. And it's fiber.

So there's fiber in all whole plant foods. There's no fiber in any animal products. There's no fiber in bottled oils. There's no fiber in added sugars. And there's very little fiber in white flour or all the processed foods we see today. So if you eat whole plant foods, you're going to get a lot. And the average American is getting about 15 grams a day of fiber. We're told we need at least 30.

But our Paleolithic ancestors in many parts of the world got 100. Yeah. And we probably would do better with at least 40 or 50 grams a day. Yeah. So 15 is not even bare minimum, less than 5% of our populations getting 30. Yeah. And so that means more whole plant foods, which, you know, sweet potatoes and all the other superfoods that we'll be talking about. Yeah.

And I think, again, the fiber is really massively important because I came up with this thing in Fast Like a Girl because one of the biggest pieces for me of that book was we needed a whole chapter on how to break a fast. Yeah. Because people were getting so attached to the fast that they didn't know how to go back into food. Yeah. And so I looked at it through the microbiome's eyes. And I was like, okay, well, if we're changing the terrain through fasting, using of the gut, then what would be the most. logical thing to put back onto the gut. And I called it the three peas, polyphenol, probiotic, and prebiotic foods. And when you look at what matches all of those, we're back at the, you know, the fruits and

the vegetables and their ability to support these microbes. Yet, we just don't have enough people eating enough of them. So it's really critically important. I love when you said probiotics, you said probiotic foods. Yeah. Because, you know, we think about probiotic capsules and pills. Yeah. fermented foods are really the best way to get probiotics, especially I'm a big fan of wild

fermented, which is things like sourcrowd and kimchi and peckles that are fermented without having an inoculent added. So when you take a yogurt, for example, any yogurt, I mean, I've made yogurts or plant yogurt with homemade soy milks and almond milks and oat milks and all sorts of things. And it's really fun. But what you're doing is you're taking a specific bacterial species and inoculating it into a warm medium and letting it sit for 12 hours or 24 hours, and it propagates and thickens up and gets sour and makes the yogurt. And in a sense, you've got a live bacteria in there, which is lovely, and you know it's alive because it made it thicken up and turned into a yogurt.

At least it was alive. If it sits in the store for a long time, there's no telling. But you're still just getting a small number of species, right? And that can have health benefits, no doubt about it. And it's great that you're eating it with food, because that's, tends to help it get through your body a little better. And it does help, by the way, make the medium more bioavailable too. The bacteria tends to break it down.

And you are getting, one cool thing is you're getting some of the postbiotics in that mix. See, probiotics, they breed these bacteria, and then they sluff off the liquid and distill to get the powder that you consume. But that liquid has the postbiotics. It's the compounds that are created by the bacteria in their living. Call it bacteria excrement if you want to get. gross about it. But in a sense, those postbiotics may actually have more benefit to the human microbiome than anything. You lose that with the pills. But when you consume an actual fermented

foods, you're getting those postbiotics, which turn out to be absolutely profound. We don't even understand why entirely yet. But we do see that there's a significant correlation between postbiotics and bringing down inflammation and contributing to overall health in the body. And microbial health, interestingly. They seem to help feed the microbiome and interesting. ways. So that's one benefit to like fermented kefers and yogurts and things like that. But if you get the wild fermented, like the sauerkrauts and the kimchi's and the pickles and so forth, those have all kinds of bacteria in them. They may be fermented for six months or a year. Also, misos have this. They ferment for quite a while or even just a month, but they get whatever's in the air tends to

propagate. And one interesting thing, these all have salt in common, right? That's part of what makes them. Because that's what fermentes. That's what foments. That's what fomented. That's what keeps it's safe. So you can just put cabbage out and it would ferment, but it would also get moldy and rotten and gross and disgusting, right? Okay. Soap cabbage and water, you won't get sourcrow. You'll get a really putrid smell. Yeah, but eat away if you want to. Put the salt in there, and somehow it seems to naturally select so that you're getting the good stuff and not the dangerous stuff. So it tends to be antipatogenic. Which is interesting because we have another thing we've tried to do as a society has go low salt. Right, right. There is no question that

excess of sodium consumption tends to come in processed foods. Yeah. Right. And those processed foods have all kinds of things wrong with them. And it's true for somebody who has cardiovascular disease, in particular, or is at risk of stroke, high salt can be problematic. Yeah. And I think probably if there was one compound that is causing the most deaths of anything on earth, it would be salt for that reason. You know what it is? Just a really interesting nuance on that part of the conversation is that it's when insulin's high and sodium's high. Right.

That's the deadly combination, yeah. So if we can get everybody's hemoglobin A1C down, they're more metabolically flexible, salt wouldn't become this thing that is causing everybody to have cardiovascular. Yeah, so you get the insulin down and also blood pressure down, right? Which tends to go together as well. Because salt will increase your blood pressure. Because if you put salt in water, it's like it makes things expand. Yes.

And your body will hold more water. if you have more salt, which can increase the blood pressure. But if you don't have cardiovascular disease, it's probably not so much of a concern. And then there are people who genuinely don't have enough of it, which is also a thing, right? You want that right balance. And you also want enough potassium.

So a lot of the sodium-potassium balance consideration, if you're low-potassium, then high sodium can be more problematic. If you get a good balance with lots of potassium, then that helps your body regulate. So that ratio is probably what we need to pay more attention to. You know, whereas potassium, it's in bananas. I was just going to say, what's the food? I mean, bananas, I think.

Yeah, we think of bananas, but it's in lots and lots of fruits and vegetables. So potassium's great. And then that's more what we should probably focus. But you also want to get away from the processed foods. And one of the interesting things is we tend to be so reductionist in our thinking. We're like, okay, this compound. And then, like, food industry is great to come up with fancy new hyper-processed foods that avoid that compound. Or add in this other thing.

They're like, oh, this vitamin's good. We can add that for a penny a package, you know, and then put a big label on it now with this added vitamin. But we don't realize nature is, it doesn't work like that. It's all about ecology. It's a symphony. It's an ecosystem. Yeah.

And food is an ecosystem. Yeah. You know, and you can't just, you know, what concert would sound good if you just heard the trumpets. I mean, maybe if it's went and Marcellus playing it. But like most of the time, you want to hear a whole thing, right? And so that's how food work. That's how our bodies work. We don't recognize a isolated pill very often.

we tend to recognize the whole. So we get a study saying, oh, people who had higher blood levels of this compound were healthier. And then we give them more of that compound. Their blood levels go up and they die sooner, right? We see this time and again, vitamin E is a classic example where people had higher vitamin E blood levels and they were living longer and having lower heart disease. So they started giving them vitamin E supplements and their blood levels went up. And they died sooner.

Yeah. Right. And we don't see that with food because it's interesting when we look at what food does to us. Yeah. The human body is always meant to come back into this homeostasis. And so when you're using food, it's like you can't over, the right food, healthy food, superfoods. You can't really go to the extreme where it's now damaging you. Right, right. Can you? Like when you're using healthy. Not with health. I mean, okay, extreme, anything's possible. There was a woman who was battling cancer and she decided that she wanted to eat a lot of bok choy. So she ate a

a case a day, a case a day, like 15 pounds a day of bok choy. She juiced some of it and she ate a bunch of it raw and she wound up having a seizure. Yeah. Because she was getting overloaded with certain compounds that are in bok choy that were causing her problems. You know, and now she was in a serious situation. That's one case. It's an N of one. But based on that, we're told all sorts of terrible things about all of the Brasica family, cruciferous vegetables in general, don't eat too much of them. Well, yeah, don't eat 15 pounds a day of anything, please. You know, there can be too much of a good thing. We need diversity, right? And so I think that's important. In general, healthy foods don't tend to lead to binges. I don't know anybody who stays up all light snacking

on kale, you know, like, you know, when you're late at night. Just I do have to like fully call myself on a great binge that I had yesterday, which was dehydrated persimmons. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I ate the whole bag. I'm not going to lie. Yeah, I could see that.

But, and if there had been another bag, I probably would have kept going. Yeah. Yeah. So that's possible. And that's slightly processed. Yeah, you're right. If it was actual persimmons, you probably would. Although, okay, okay.

I've been knowing to indulge on like, you know, 10 pounds of cherries at a sitting. And I paid the price at the toilet. Well, right. So actually to your point, it's the less fiber when you dehydrate a food like that. Well, and obviously less water is the big one, right? You've taken out all the water. I don't know, maybe a little less fiber, but most of you're losing water. Yeah.

So it is altered. It is altered. Yeah. And so lightly processing is anything you can do in your kitchen, maybe with the help of a blender or a stove or a dehydrator or an oven. And these things are basic and they'll alter food a bit. But they're not going to be the kind of hyper-processing. They're not like putting it.

Yeah. And yeah, it's possible to overeat and binge on anything, right? But when you think about what people binge on, it's almost always hyper-processed, hyper-palatable junk foods. They've been engineered. You know, Lay's had the famous slogan, but you can't eat just one, right? That was actually a challenge to the consumer. We own your taste buds now. You know, and people like being seduced.

They like that feeling of compulsion because there's a pleasure and that desire. It brings them alive, right? And so I think that Lay's. was also making an offer, but they're also engineering their products to keep us hooked. Yeah. And we're willingly following along and allowing ourselves to go there. When you're eating real foods, it's much harder to get hooked like that. So just cleaning up your diet to get away from hyperprocess makes you more the author of

your food life. Yeah. A lot of folks, we've been on the empty end of the wrong end of an empty bag of cookies or potato chips a little too often. Yes. Human nature. And that's human nature. but when you change what's in your kitchen,

it's a whole lot easier to make conscious choices about what of it you will or won't consume. So well said. And before I leave the fermentation idea, because I think there's a lot to unpack just on fermentation alone. In your book, do you have recipes for fermenting? Do you have some advice for us

about how we can make our kitchens better because a lot of people don't even know where to start with that? We didn't focus on real soup, on fermenting and meal soup. But we definitely talk about how to make our kitchens. kitchen's better and how to clean up and get on the path to a healthier way of life. You know, for a lot of people, the problem isn't knowing what to do. It's doing what they know. You know, I mean, we all know we need to eat more vegetables and less processed junk. But are we doing

it? You know, the average American thinks that the average American's diet is a C minus and that their diet is a B minus. So, oh, they think they're doing better. Yeah, everyone thinks they're doing, the average person thinks they're doing better than the average person, right? So we all tend to like give ourselves a little bit of a rose-colored glasses when it comes to our own choices. Around food. Around food. And we know that we live in a toxic food culture and then most folks aren't doing too well when it comes to eating healthy food. We think we're a little better. I don't think B-minus is anything to get too excited about. But I think that as we move

in a healthier direction, the beautiful thing is that you get momentum. And it gets easier and easier to do the right thing. And fasting can be one of the ways to break the chains. So you get some freedom around it and some mobility around it. But then what do you do with that freedom? Do you go back into your old habits? Or do you start to make more conscious choices with that mobility and freedom? And I think that it's so important to keep leaning into healthier choices. So what I focus on is the basic principles are get rid of the bad stuff in your kitchen starting, right? Like, if you don't have it there, you're a lot less likely to be pulled towards it at late night. But also say yes to the good stuff. Like make a shopping list of the healthy foods you want to eat

on the regular. And then get them. So you always have healthy options. Cooking quantity. because time's a big factor for a lot of people. It doesn't take twice as long to make twice as much. So I'm a big fan of making friends with leftovers. And making friends with the freezer. You know, one day's dinner can become the next day's lunch. And for me, the following day is breakfast. I've been knowing to eat, you know, something's really good for dinner.

Why not? I don't need breakfast to be some carb-laden, sugary, whatever thing. Like, I might enjoy some, you know, quinoa and veggies and a sweet potato, you know, with a nice sauce. So, but yeah, you can just make friends with leftovers and cooking quantity. We like to cook certain staples in volumes, so like legumes or a whole grain or even kale. We'll have it like in the fridge and containers, and then we can mix and match for a quick, easy meal. Just steam it and you're ready to go, you know, or add it to a stir fry.

The freezer's great. Like, you can have frozen veggies that are ready to go. You know, here's the awesome thing. A lot of people think that frozen is like somehow a compromise. It actually often is better nutrient-wise than fresh. And here's the, here's why. because frozen foods were generally packed and frozen at the peak of freshness and ripeness right off the vine.

So they're super, super fresh and those nutrients get locked in there. And yes, they degrade over time. If it sits in the back of your freezer for two years, be suspicious. But it lasts a lot better than it will in the fridge, like a lot better. So something could be in your freezer for a month, and it's going to be fresher and more nutrient loaded than something that's been in your fridge for three or four days. And so it's a great way to lock it in and preserve it. And then you've got it ready to go anytime you want.

and it's often cheaper, and that's because you're cutting out waste. You know, farmers can grow food and get it packed and in the freezer instantly, and nothing was lost in the process. Whereas on the journey to the supermarket, half of it's getting lost. Well, don't they pick it actually green so that it will ripen on the way? On the way of the supermarket, they do, but if it's going to be frozen, they don't. So it also may have been more vine-ripened. So there's a lot to like about frozen, actually, for all those reasons.

And, yeah, if you're going to eat super, super-supor-ra. You won't get that same texture from a frozen food. if you're going to cook it anyway, then have that it with the freezer. It's a really interesting concept, and you just flipped my paradigm on Frozen because my brain has always been like, no, it's ruined the nutrients. But I also know that when they pick a vegetable so that it can be ready and sit in your grocery store, they have to pick it green, which means it didn't get enough time in the roots to be able to get all those nutrients. If you ever look at tomatoes like in a truck, like it's semi.

truck on the freeway, loaded up with tons of green tomatoes. And you're like, wow, that's not the same. If you ever been a gardener and you've like picked a tomato off the vine and eaten it like juicy and drenched in the sunshine, it's so sweet, you know. And those green things are never going to taste like that. They're going to taste a little bit like some cross between cardboard and, you know, water, you know, but with a little bit of tomato flavor. So, you know, there's something so precious about fresh. And yeah, frozen can be one path to fresh remarkably enough. I love it. And a little family history on my end on that one, my grandfather invented the dry cleaning system. The toxic dracon system. I always feel like I'm like trying to unwind karma hair, but he was a

beautiful man. And he was named one of the top 10 inventors of his time alongside Birdseye, who invented the process of freezing food. So I was thinking that every time frozen food comes up, I always think of our own family history and how my mom, whose father it was, always says, you know, your grandfather was honored alongside of the guy of bird's eye, whatever his original name was. So anyway, so there's my family history. Okay. Okay, we have to go into coffee and tea because I think it's really interesting. And as I'm listening to you talk, I'm thinking about Andrew, do you remember Dr. Andrew Weil wrote a book?

It was like eight weeks to optimal health. And like the first three weeks, he didn't take anything away. he just had you add them. And I feel like that's what you're doing with this cookbook. You're saying here are these mega, like superfoods. Let's just focus on adding those in. And adding in is a lot easier than taking away. It really is.

You crowd out the bad with the good. Yeah. You know, and then no one's getting deprived. Making friends with great recipes, I think is one of the keys. When you find a recipe you love, make it again. Here's the fascinating thing about recipes is, you know, the first time it takes a while. Second time it's a little faster. Then it gets a little faster.

if you've made it 10 or 20 times, you can do it almost in your sleep. Like, you just do it. You don't have to remember, oh, my God, I forgot that spice. I've got to go back to the grocery store. Like, you've got it all. You would automatically add the things to your list because they become part of your starting rotation. Yeah. And so I love to make recipes that I make over and over.

I've got some recipes. I haven't making since I was 12 years old. You know, and I look back on that. They're in the book? They're not in the book, no. But no, there are some, they're better ones in the book, to be honest with you. Then you're 12-year-old. My 12-year-old, yeah.

But yeah, I've got a cookbook when I was 12 and made some stuff, and I've been making it ever since. And when I'm tired and stressed, that's what I do because I can just do it so fast, right? Yeah. I just dump things in and I have a feel for it and it works out, right? Yeah. But with a new recipe, you try it out and you practice it. And I think one of the keys is recipes that use real whole foods. Yeah.

Recipes that taste good, recipes that are relatively simple and easy and recipes that don't cost an arm and a leg. And that use ingredients you can easily access, right? So it's not hard. and you don't have to wait, order it on Amazon and wait a week. And, you know, like, let's just go. You know, what have we got in our kitchen? How do we make it happen? So for real superfoods, we really focused on those kinds of recipes that are super easy

to do and that taste amazing. And hopefully you find some and then you make them over and over again. Yes. And gradually, if you make one thing once a week and it makes leftovers for a couple of meals, boom, you've got three meals a week covered out of 21, right? Or maybe less if you're fasting some. And you're on the path. like solidly on the path.

Okay, so tell me why coffee and tea. We have... Coffee and tea. Because I agree with you, and yet people are doing it wrong. Okay. So here's the thing about coffee and tea. There's a lot of studies out there. Yes.

Showing how people fear based on... Look at their diet and their lifestyle and what they eat and drink over decades. And then we look at how long they live and what diseases they do and don't get. These are called epidemiological studies. And they have their downsides because, correlation isn't causation. But over time, we learn to filter out like, okay, how many of them we're smoking and smoking accounts for this much worse life expectancy and this much higher risk

of disease. So we adjust the data based on that. So if people who are, say, drinking more coffee are also more active, are also exercising more or also smoking less, we try to adjust for that and then say, okay, what does that leave us with, right? Right. So after adjusting for that, and I'm not just talking about one or two studies, I'm talking about dozens of them involving literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people over decades, you get some interesting data, right? And the data is overwhelming. People who consume coffee have higher life expectancy, have lower risk of Alzheimer's, lower risk of cardiovascular disease, and lower risk of type 2 diabetes, more balanced,

blood sugar, lower rates of obesity, and are more economically productive for what that's worth. So you put all that together. Okay, obviously it's a drug that's making people's brains more active. maybe they're doing more stuff. Well, maybe decaf seems to have a lot of the same benefits, so not quite all of them. But that may because we lose some nutrients in the decaffination process. Coffee is by far the highest source of antioxidants in the American diet.

By far. Now, partly that's because we're getting way too few antioxidants. So we don't know for sure. If somebody was eating a super healthy diet already, and then they did or didn't drink coffee, how would that affect things? Hard to know for sure. But based on what Americans are eating and drinking, coffee is radically accelerating their life expectancy and health.

And part of it is that it's opening, it's making the blood flow, it actually dilates blood vessels, right? Yeah. Which is part of its cardiovascular benefit, but that brings down inflammation. It brings down blood pressure, but also increases blood flow, which makes for more energy,

which is why sometimes runners will use coffee before a big race, but it also gets our brains thinking. Now, is there a benefit to having our brain think? Yes, obviously there is, and we're more active and engaged. All that said, some people don't do well with the caffeine. I mean, truly, some people are jittery. They're wired. They can't have coffee after 10 in the morning because then they're up at night and they can't.

I'm actually that person. Yeah, absolutely. So not everybody is the same. And it's one of those compounds caffeine that affects people very differently. And there's what's called the half-life. How long is it in your system? For some people, the half-an-hour. For some people, it's all day.

Oh, it's so how you metabolize coffee. Exactly. So if you're a slow metabolizer, you're actually going to have. do less well with it, most likely, and have more of the negative effects, the jitters and the distress. So coffee's not for everybody, even though studies show that it's good for most people. Green tea also has some caffeine, but it also has altheonine and some other compounds in it that help mitigate that are actually calming agents. So it doesn't create that buzz in the same way. And green tea is even more loaded with antioxidants and a whole host of phytochemicals.

Macha is even at the top level there. So black tea and oolong and green, they're all coming from the same tea plant. Right. And they're just processed in different ways. Green is the least processed. And then macha is actually the whole leaf ground up after it's been fermented. Oh, I number new. And so you get loads of antioxidants and health benefits from that.

And if you don't do well with any of those things, hibiscus is even more loaded with antioxidants. I love hibiscus tea. So hibiscus tea is number one above all else. any drink we know of that humans consume for antioxidants. So, hibiscus is fabulous if you don't want to do the caffeinated beverages at all. If there was sort of a pecking order, I'd probably say from an antioxidant perspective, hibiscus tea, green tea, and then you've got U-Long, then you've got black, and then you've got coffee. Oh, so it's coffee, even though all the wonderful...

Right, exactly. Well, at least... It's low on... In terms of some of the critical antioxidants and phytochemicals. Okay. And then in terms of caffeine, coffee is the highest of those. things that I just named. Right.

But interestingly, your Bermate seems to also have incredible health benefits. There is some concern that may be linked to higher risk of cancer. We're still not sure about that. So I'm a little cautious on Yerba Mote, but I personally love how it makes me feel. And it doesn't create the jitters that coffee does. So everything, you've got to listen to your own body. You know, just because studies show that something's good for most people most of the time doesn't mean it's good for everybody all the time or it's good for you right now.

So I'm a big fan of like, be your own and of one experiment. pay attention. I think that actually attention is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. So when you bring love and care and attention to your body, you're already sending signals of, I care, you matter, and I'm curious about you. And so that's a powerful force. And then, so you've got to do that especially with the caffeinated beverages, because we really are different. But in general, for most people, coffee can be super healthy. Now, let me also add that a lot of people are adding a bunch of cream and shrie. I was going to say, I feel like we need to say the type of coffee because people will listen to this and they'll go rush off to some of the franchises that your grandfather started

the whole thing. I mean, there are Starbucks drinks that have more sugar in them than Coca-Cola. And then they've got a bunch of factory farm dairy in there, which, by the way, Starbucks spends more on dairy than it does on coffee, I believe. You know, and you wind up with a product that is, that's a lot of other stuff that probably isn't doing your body any favors. And the studies show that When you add milk to coffee, you reduce the efficacy of the antioxidants and they are quite significantly. Now, it's interesting because you would think that some of the fat would help slow absorption of the caffeine and so forth. But personally, I add unsweetened plant milks to my coffee. And I do cold brew, by the way, because coffee can be acid forming.

I love the cold brews. Yeah. Almost too much, they're so smooth that I could drink too much and then I might like two in the morning. Right, yeah. Yeah, and there actually can be more highly caffeinated. Yeah. But when you mix that, I make a homemade latte, so I mix like half, half of it is unsweetened soy milk, and then half of it is the cold brew coffee. And I just, I enjoy that very much. But I make sure I'm done by one in the afternoon.

Right. But what we're not saying is, I mean, so, I mean, if I look at this through my toxic lens, there's not only are we looking at some of the cancer-causing chemicals that are in some of these coffees, but like tea, for example, I've recently heard that there is plastic. and almost every, you know, tea brand, major tea brand out there that people are drinking. Is there a good, like, litmus test that we can say, hey, this is how you know you're getting clean coffee and tea? You know, it's a little bit hard to know for sure because you've got to, do you trust the manufacturer?

Yeah. You know, you can contact them and ask if they have a policy. Do they test for plastics? Where are their sources? I do that a lot, actually. And it's interesting because when you do that, eventually they'll put a thing on their website and you can just Google it. And, you know, at least they know people care and are paying attention.

because they have no incentive economically to do the more expensive thing that creates a better product if nobody knows about it, right? So when people care and ask, then they know, oh, there's an interest in this. Fair trade is a good example of that. A lot of folks realized a while back while a lot of our coffee and chocolate is coming from slave labor, from farmers that are in destitute conditions. Well, guess what? When farmers are in destitute conditions and they've got a toxic pesticide that's going to increase their yield

and let them feed their kids next year or go to school, how their kids go to school, they're probably going to use it, even if it's regulated and not legal in the United States. So there's a lot of incentives to cut costs or to use plastic in the processing of the tea, for example, right? So you want to invest in, I think, fair trade as much as you can afford to. And that's labeled. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different certifying agencies. They're not all perfect, but they're all big steps in the right direction. So fair trade, especially with coffee and chocolate is important.

You know, chocolate, most of our chocolate in the world comes from the Ivory Coast in Ghana and West Africa. Africa where child slavery is a big deal. There's a lot of kids that are not going to school. They're working in the fields 12 hours a day under terrible conditions. Some of them are literally separated from their families and sold off into slavery by the hundreds of thousands. And most of that is in the chocolate industry. And I don't want any part in that. So I choose to go with fair trade or organic. And here's the thing about organic. There's no organic chocolate being growing on West Africa right now. So it's coming from Central America for the most part when it's organic, which means at least you're avoiding the most extreme forms of enslavement.

So I'm talking about chocolate right now, but coffee has some of the similar dynamics. You know, where you, I want the people who grow my food to be paid enough to feed their own families. Yeah. And so fair trade is a way to help to ensure that. And in the process, you tend to get a cleaner product. Yeah. Now, organic certified is also great because, again, folks who are certifying organic tend to be doing other things right. And obviously, there's less pesticides involved in organic agriculture, which is better for the environment and farmers and farm workers.

and for our health. And that's why I love going to a farmer's market. Because we literally sit and talk to the farmer and we get to know them. And, you know, you get a real passionate one. We'll come out with like a, hey, let me show you where your eggs are being laid. Or let me show you where I grew this. And you found the right person. But I think to put it into context, what you just said that's really important is that

we go with our, you know, have wake up on a Monday morning. We're like, I hate Monday. We go straight into Starbucks and we're like bitching and moaning about the day we have ahead of us drinking a cup of coffee from potentially a situation where a child's been taken from their family. Right. And cows are being tortured in the factory farms. And the sugar is growing in plantations too. And all of that is creating also a toxic load on our bodies. And added sugar, obviously, we talk about crowding out the bad with the good. Well, part of that is not bringing in the bad. So if you're going to consume coffee, not doing it with a bunch of added sugar,

because that sugar is mitigating whatever health benefits there are and creating a whole cascade of problems in your body as well. And just to point out, like, it gets so depressing, so quick when you go down these paths, but we can't ignore it anymore. We have to wake up and start to see that our choices and vote with our dollars and our choices affect other people's lives. Our personal tastebud choices are going to affect another person's life if we're not conscious about it. And what I just heard is if we can just look at fair trade and we could just start to get fair trade items, we're now at least, and do buy the chocolate you love with a fair trade stamp on it,

we're aligning our taste buds with the humanity of the world. Exactly. And that's powerful. And that's the biggest case for going organic, by the way. Like, yes, there's pesticide contamination. There may be higher nutrients in organics, but there's no question that farm workers are not getting poisoned in the fields in the same way. And, you know, farm workers have rates of cancer that are through the roofs.

In one study, the average life expectancy for farmworkers in California is 51 years. A lot of them are dying of cancer in droves. And, you know, that's because they're dealing with the pesticides. You know, the canary in the coal mine? Yeah. Like the, well, farm workers are like the canaries in our coal mine. Yeah. And if they're dying, who wants to eat that food then?

And what might it do to us? But we know it's doing it to them. Yeah. And we know it's doing it to our soil and water and environment and birds and honeybees. And so if you like, I want a sustainable world for future. generations with the pollinators, with the insects, you know, that are thriving, that can pollinate our crops. Like, let's move away from pesticide-dependent agriculture as much as we can. Yes. And that starts with our consumer choices. Yeah. Oh, that was so well said. Okay, so to close

this down, and I have so many questions, but I do want to point people towards the book, because, again, you listed out, I believe it was 10 superfoods. We got, I remember exactly how many. We got legumes, we've got whole grains. We've got aliums, like onions and garlands. which are really amazing actually. Yeah. And spices in general, spices are incredible. Incredible. Like so potent and such, and they also add flavor, right?

We're not about starving anybody's taste buds here. Sweet potatoes and leafy greens, which everyone hears all about. Yeah. Because we should keep talking about that. Yeah. Those are some of my favorites right there. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think, again, I'm so excited about how cookbooks are coming out into the world now because they, somebody told me the other day it was called a cookbook plus where it's like all these recipes. but then they teach in the beginning. And when I got a copy of yours and I opened it up, I was like, oh my God, I love that we have chapters all on one food. And then I saw sweet potatoes. You know what I think is important about superfoods here,

why we chose that names. I feel like we have a lot of marketing for foods that are called superfoods that are, they are super healthy in many cases, but they're also super expensive. And they have super big ecological footprints. They may come from around the world. And to me, the real superfoods, can do the most good for the most people.

I don't know any superheroes that only save the super well-connected and super rich from burning buildings, you know? They want to help everybody. And so I'm interested in the foods that we can make the staples of our diets that won't cost an arm and a leg that are widely accessible, that are already well-known to us. Let's lean into them and crowd out the bad with the good and reap the benefits because we have tens of thousands of studies published in peer-reviewed medical journals showing us in no uncertain terms what are the consequences of the status quo and what's possible when we make a change.

And the change we're calling for is to bring more of these foods into our diets, into our lives, and reap the benefits. You know, your body will thank you for the rest of your life. When you make choices that say, I love you, I care about you, I'm willing to invest in you. Oh, I love that. And we've lost our ability to see food as healing. Yeah. We have lost the art of doing that.

And that is what I hear when I listen. and to you talk so passionately and so eloquently about the foods, it's like, yeah, like, why are we not, why are we so willing to give over our power to a supplement or to a medication without trying what nature provided for us? So, so well said. Okay, speaking of superpowers isn't my last question for you, and I'm really interested in what you're going to say. If you had one superpower that you bring to the world, what do you think it is? I'm going to go with love. I mean, that might be a lot of people would probably say that, But, you know, I feel like when I was a little kid, I was always like, how do we bring more love into the world?

You know, like less pain, less violence, less hurt, you know, more love. And to me, the food revolution is about love at the end of the day. It's about loving our bodies, loving our planet, and loving the people who grow our food and wanting to be a part of a more harmonious and healthy and loving food ecosystem. And so, you know, that's what lights me up and that's what warms my heart. And that's what inspires me every day. Yeah, well, I will tell you, I, you know, again, followed your father for years and just met you personally. And I follow, you and I've met before in like bigger groups. I've seen your work.

But when I actually sat next to you, I felt love. Oh, thank you. Like by it's Mindy. Yeah. Thank you, Ocean, for everything your day. Yay. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode.

I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know. know about it, so please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.