The Rich Roll Podcast - The Power of Plants to Nourish & Heal

Episode Date: June 9, 2014

Imagine this: you are a practicing pediatric ER doctor; all day long every day you treat kids that are not just overweight, but obese. More than obese, these kids are sick — really sick. What do you do? Well, you can do what most doctors do – tell the kids to ditch the salt, sugar and fat; swap the video games for some fresh air; maybe prescribe some medication for the cholesterol or blood pressure; then move on to the next patient. No time to linger…. Or you can take a harder road. Despite a fellowship at Harvard Medical School, full time employment as an emergency room pediatrician, and editor of 3 medical textbooks, Dr. Sujit Sharma felt the need to do more. It was time to try something new: address the cause; focus on prevention; identify and provide doable, sustainable solutions that actually work. Radical! It was around this time that Dr. Sanjay Gupta– Sujit's longtime University of Michigan buddy and yes, the guy from CNN — introduced Sujit to his friend Ladell Hill — a molecular health specialist, herbalist, fitness trainer and wellness expert who had been spent the last 20 years researching and experimenting with nutrition. A passion for healing Ladell inherited as legacy from his Native American grandfather. When he wasn't training celebrities like Gwen Stefani & Lenny Kravitz, Ladell studied tirelessly for years to understand how to best apply the wisdom of his grandfather to his modern practice of health and wellness. He came to realize that science now substantiated much of what he learned from his grandfather: the power of an indigenous, whole food plant-based diet to not only promote overall well being and wellness optimization but to also expedite physiological recovery from exercise induced stress and even — in certain cases — prevent and reverse disease. Bold and powerful, particularly when you get a glimpse of Ladell, who at almost 50 sports jacked guns and the physique a 26 year old NFL running back would envy. Sujit and Ladell immediately hit it off. The result of their collaboration, combined expertise and passion is Chuice – a brand new category of food product that can only be explained as chewable juice. Chewable juice?!? Say what? Bizarre, right? I was skeptical. But I've tried it and it's great – a mastication of nuts and seeds plus fruit and vegetable juice with all the fiber, every ingredient chosen for a specific cellular benefit — it's like a delicious, super easily digestible whole food meal in a bottle. Disclaimer: This is not a paid endorsement or an advertisement of any kind. I have absolutely no business, financial, sponsorship, affiliate or other incentivized relationship with Chuice whatsoever. I just like these guys and find their mission worthy of discussion. A couple months ago, Sanjay introduced me to Sujit and Ladell simply because he thought we would hit it off. Out of courtesy to Sanjay, I ended up calling Sujit a couple days later thinking we would have a cordial few minutes on the phone. Instead we spoke for almost two hours — dialoging on everything to wellness, to plant-based nutrition to the state of medicine and disease prevention. At at that moment I knew I needed to meet Ladell and have these guys on the show. They do not disappoint — a fascinating deep dive into the state of nutrition education in medical school; the ills of our current healthcare system; the potency and power of plants to prevent and heal disease; and a culminating call to action to return to the natural. I sincerely hope you enjoy the listen. Rich

Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, Episode 90, with Dr. Sijid Sharma and Liddell Hill. The Rich Roll Podcast. Greetings, audience. How's it going? It's Rich Roll here. It's the Rich Roll Podcast. Thanks for tuning in, you guys. Welcome to the show. I appreciate you stopping by. What do we do here? On a weekly basis and for free, I might add, I do my best to bring you the best, most forward-thinking paradigm-busting minds in wellness, fitness, athleticism, creativity, diet, art, nutrition, entrepreneurship, personal growth, and spirituality. The people that are rocking the tools and the knowledge and the experience and the inspiration that you need to discover,

uncover, unlock, and unleash your best, most authentic self. 90 episodes. I can't believe it. I can't believe we've done 90. I feel like I've been doing this my whole life. And I also feel like I just started, but I can say this. I feel like I'm finally starting to figure out how to do this and how to do this right. Not that I'm any kind of expert or whatever. I'm actually thinking, God, it took me 90 episodes to figure out kind of how to conduct myself and how to interview people. But I don't know. I feel like we've hit a little groove lately. The guests have been fantastic and the audience continues to grow. So thanks, you guys, for sharing it with your peers and with your friends. I appreciate that. And I am pumped to bring you today's guests, two people that I'm sure you've never heard of before or probably have never heard of. But at the end of this interview, you are going to be glad that I introduced you to them. But before we do that, here's the question of the day.

What do you do if you're practicing pediatric medicine and every single day you see more and more kids coming into your office that aren't just overweight? They're not just fat. They're obese. And they're not just obese, but they're sick. And in many cases, really sick. Well, you can do what most doctors do. You can tell them to, you know, kick the bad dietary habits to the curb, stop it with all the cocoa puffs. Maybe get outside a little bit more and quit it with all the video game playing, etc.

Maybe in certain cases prescribe some kind of medication. maybe get outside a little bit more and quit it with all the video game playing, etc. Maybe in certain cases, prescribe some kind of medication and then move on. You only got 15 minutes per patient. You got a business to run here. That's the only way you can make it work and you can't get too invested in any particular patient. That's how most doctors I have been informed operate. And I sympathize with that because of the constraints of the way their business is sort of constructed. But there's an alternative. And the alternative is to try to find a way to do something about it, something real and something preventative. And that's where Dr. Sujit Sharma comes in after a fellowship at Harvard Medical School and full-time employment as an emergency room pediatrician, as well as editor of three medical textbooks, Dr. Sharma realized that he needed to do something more with his life and to address what he was seeing on a daily basis in his office. what he was seeing on a daily basis in his office.

And through a mutual friend, a mutual friend of mine and a mutual friend of his, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the chief medical correspondent at CNN, who happens to be a college buddy of Sijit's. They went to University of Michigan together. So, Michigan, they go way, way back. Anyway, Sanjay connected Sijit with his friend, Liddell Hill. And Liddell is a fascinating guy. Liddell has been spending the last 20 years researching and experimenting with nutrition. He's a molecular health specialist, an herbalist, a fitness trainer, and a wellness expert who grew up learning about natural healing from his Native American grandfather. Kind of a holistic upbringing, if you will.

And part of what Liddell does is he's sort of a celebrity fitness trainer. He's worked with all kinds of people like Kate Hudson and Gwen Stefani and Lenny Kravitz and Steve Harvey. He's been featured on CNN as a health and wellness expert. CNN as a health and wellness expert. But he's also studied tirelessly for years to try to understand how to best apply this wisdom that his grandfather sort of preached to him throughout his childhood and apply that to Liddell's practice of health and wellness for himself and on behalf of his clients. And what he's come to realize is that science is now substantiating so much of what he learned back in the day, which is really cool. This guy is a walking specimen of health and fitness.

He is approaching 50 years old, and the guy is absolutely ripped. He's jacked. The guy's got massive guns. It's unbelievable. And if you don't believe me, you can check out the little preview clip on YouTube or it's at richroll.com, a little trailer for this episode where I sit down and kind of explain what we're going to talk about today. And you get a good glimpse of this guy's guns and what he's all about. So anyway, Sujit and Liddell connected and Liddell had started this company called Chuse and Chuse, C-H-U-I-C-E. Chuse is essentially, how do I describe it? It's essentially

like juice that's food. It's chewable juice, right? Which is sort of weird, right? So he had started this thing and Sujit kind of connected with him and they, they decided to partner up on it, um, to, uh, build it into a real business. And it's kind of interesting, um, to hear them talk about, you know, this thing. And, and I got introduced to these guys because Sanjay emailed me and he's like, listen, Rich, I got these friends, Sujit and Liddell, I've known them forever. I go way back with these guys. Uh, they're doing lots of interesting things in the health space. I think you would, uh, you guys would have a lot of talk about. You're kind of interested in the same things, et cetera, et cetera. And he just introduced me to them with no expectation of anything. And so I ended up

getting on the phone with Sujit and I thought, oh, we'll talk for 10, 15 minutes. Sanjay introduced us. We'll see what this guy's all about. And we ended up talking for like two hours. It was a fascinating conversation. I knew that I wanted to have him and his business partner Liddell on the podcast. So of course we talk about what choose is and their product and this new company that they're starting and growing right now. Uh, but really our conversation is predominantly about the status of healthcare in America, our problems with heart disease and obesity and diabetes and what's going on with kids and how can we address this and how can we more effectively prevent, treat, and message not just the American public, but the world at large

about what is going on and how we can do better. And just for purposes of total transparency and clarity, I'm not sponsored by Choose. I haven't been paid to say anything about these guys. I have no business relationship with them whatsoever. I just like these guys. I wanted to have them on. I wanted them to share their story and talk about what they're doing. And that's it. And I think that this is a fascinating, very dynamic conversation with two really interesting people. And I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed sitting down with them. So without further ado, let's dig into it. We're brought to you today by recovery.com.

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is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Why don't you tell me a little bit about why you guys are in LA? You're both from Atlanta, but I want to hear, we'll get into the whole backstory and all of that, but what brings you to LA? Well, we're here to try and spread the message of what we're doing, trying to execute a larger vision of finding a way to make our plant-based product and the message of, you know, this is the kind of food or the type of vehicle to help change, you know, culture, society, however you want to call it. And we wanted to

come out here to help build awareness in a place where we already know there's a lot of interest. People are already into it here. It's an easy conversion out here. Yeah, it is. And we've noticed that. So, are dabbling in trying to just meet the people who are interested in listening and finding out how we can build that awareness. Yeah, cool. I mean, what is the kind of perception of the plant-based lifestyle in Atlanta or throughout the South? I think it's still new. It's new, yeah. the South. I think it's still new. Like the rest of America. I mean, if you have physicians like me,

who themselves don't see or don't quite know what even the literature is starting to show in terms of the benefits, how can the rest of America, you know, who go to their doctors all the time know about what all of this, what people like yourself are promoting and showing demonstrating physically on themselves and what they're able to do being plant powered and um you know what research is also showing but trying to then convert that into you know knowledge information then giving choices i think this is what we're trying to do we're saying that we're coming to market with a product that liddell and you'll hear you know his story about it but a product you know that really in the end has a higher concept it's like we need to build some interest in getting this concept off the ground so that we can have an impact on more people and prevent disease right and the kind what is how do you how do you articulate what the concept is?

The concept is that this is a product that brings the worlds of juicing, of herbs, of overall nutrition and benefit together in one place where you have, you know, scientifically our cells, in order to get energy, make energy happen, they need three basic things. They need either carbohydrates, protein, or fats. And that's where you're going to burn fuel in the engine of our cells. So we still need all three of those things,

although there is obvious confusion, I think, out there for people. The Internet, the digital era has made it very easy to get a lot of information sort of thrown at you. And it's hard to parse it out. But the fact is our cells have not changed in a million years. And they need certain things to function. And we're bringing to market a product that actually brings all of those things into one. Carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, minerals, vitamins, and most of all, fiber. And these are basic essential nutrients.

And I think a few years from now, if this goes right, people look back and say, wow, how come something like this hasn't come out sooner? Right. right people look back and say wow how come this didn't something like this hasn't come out sooner right and and for the listener out there the product is called juice c-h-u-i-c-e and essentially it's like this uh hybrid between juice and and uh and what like a chew chewable food so it's called chew chewable juice is how you describe it which sounds weird right like if you never heard of that like you're going what like that, I don't know about that. Like there's a, I guess there's a certain sort of mental barrier that you have to get over. I mean, we were just having some in the kitchen before the podcast, the stuff is delicious and you drink it and you chew it and you eat it. And you're like, of course,

this is amazing, you know, but I think there is that kind of hurdle that you're going to have to, you know, sort of deal with people who are deal with people who are struggling with this concept and this idea of, what, is it juice or is it not? I don't get it. I think the biggest thing conceptually is that I think the most valuable commodity in our culture is convenience. We live in an era now where we really expect convenience. We live in an era now where we really expect convenience. We walk around with these powerful computers that sit in our pocket that are definitely more powerful than those first desktop computers we had when we were in college.

And it's unbelievable where we've come. So we want things at our fingertips. We want things that make our lives easier, more so than when we were all kids. So this is something that does at least attend to convenience, but also attends to nutritional need. And, you know, I think for me, it's just now simple. It's intuitive, but for a lot of people, you know,

I think there is that education part to make it get to that level. Right. So you're on the road. You're on the train stop tour, right? Exactly. It's fun. Explain it to people but it sounds like everywhere you go when you kind of you know do the when you introduce it to people

and they experience what it is that they're you know they get to the other side of that and they're like oh you know i get it this is great absolutely so you guys are in you were here because you were down at pc greens which is a uh grocery like a high-end kind of organic grocery uh store in malibu, and they're going to be carrying it as a pilot program, right? Exactly. Yeah, it's cool. It's exciting. It is exciting.

It's like any entrepreneurial kind of activity. You get nervous, you wonder, but that's what makes it exciting is the fact that you don't know the outcome right now, but it's heartening to get the response from people that we do. Right. So, I mean, and as an entrepreneur, when you look at, you know, this sort of a new business, you say, well, what is the problem and how, how is what I'm doing going to solve that problem? And you guys really have identified this, this niche, this thing that no one has ever done

before. You're sort of bridging food and juice and, and, uh, and, and really it's completely unique. I mean, it's completely unique. I mean, there's nothing else like it out there, which is pretty interesting. Yeah. I never thought I'd be doing something like this three years ago. And so here I am. And so I'm just kind of pinching myself every day, but excited. Right.

So you are just happily practicing medicine in Atlanta, right? Absolutely. then what happens like liddell comes over and puts you in a stranglehold or like how does this go down it came you know it was a intellectual debate um i was a typical doctor i mean i had i thought i understood nutrition and turns out i didn't um and i was skeptical of just with the knowledge you know first i mean i went to liddell when i turned 40 to try to get my athleticism back and I didn't. And I was skeptical just with the knowledge first. I mean, I went to Liddell when I turned 40 to try to get my athleticism back. And when I was waning, a lot of us going towards our middle age,

we start to get into a comfort zone where we enjoy food and drinks and indulge in life. And you start to see yourself sink into a sense of complacency. I don't know what that's like. I have no familiarity with that. So this is every day, and I think it's people why they identify with your story too, because it's our nature. We go through these cycles in our life,

and Liddell impressed me first with his understanding as a trainer, just physically. I like biomechanics. I'm a science geek at heart. I mean, so as an athlete, you know, as a younger, I think that's what got me interested in medicine, finding out how things work. Turned out Liddell had an unbelievable breadth of knowledge. He was a trainer's trainer. And so I was impressed first with that. But when he started introducing me to the nutritional concepts, he was, I was, I was a skeptic and I just i didn't i didn't buy it and so it would be a lot of you know you're like who's this trainer trying to tell i'm the harvard doctor you know what i mean yeah and that's some balls on you too to be like listen man i'm gonna i'm gonna tell you what's really

going on here right well that was amazing his patience know, his patience with me. And so it, it was, it was fantastic then to come around and realize, man, he's right. This is, you know, I think there's more of a cultural problem at heart too, but he was, he's just, it was like, this makes sense. And then when he first introduced me to the product, I was also skeptical. I was like, what is this chunky, you know, liquid kind of thing coming out? He started walking me through it and I just became a believer. I was just converted at that point. I realized that this is a solution oriented product. This is something that actually can help people because of that attaining to convenience.

Right. So it was neat. And, uh, and so Liddell, like, tell me a little bit about, you know, this sort of interaction with Sujit. I mean, he's, you know, what is it, what is, what was his perspective on nutrition and how did you challenge him on that? And, you know, where are you coming from on this spectrum? Well, actually I'm at, um, Sujit through, uh, Sanjay. And, um, I used to have these conversations with Sanjay about health and he used to, uh, come at me at a medical perspective. And I used to have these conversations with Sanjay about health, and he used to come at me at a medical perspective. Shocking. I used to communicate with him with what I had learned from my grandfather as a child with plants and herbs.

And he didn't understand my world. I didn't really understand his world. and understand my world. I didn't really understand his world. So I took it upon myself for probably approximately about 13 years to start picking up medical books because we became really good friends. And we were working out together, so I had to have some form of a conversation. So once I went through the whole entire body with learning about the cellular structure of the body, the organs, what

they require to run efficiently. It took me back to what my grandfather had taught me about plants, herbs, and I went back to Sijit. He introduced me to Sijit actually and I used to talk to Sijit about, hey look, you eat this plant, this particular chemical compound helps the stimulation of this particular enzyme to get rid of inflammation from working out. And he challenged me, and he went and done his homework and came back, and it was probably, I would say, seven years of convincing. Just very slow, like wax on, wax off. Absolutely. Well, that's interesting. So Sanjay is sort of challenging you, which makes

you sort of hit the books in a new way to educate yourself, right. And kind of raise the bar on what you know, so that you can engage in these conversations at a higher level. But all of this, the more information that you're getting from all these books you're reading, it's taking you back to your youth and your relationship with your grandfather. Yes. Right. So it's coming, it's coming back. It's almost working in reverse. Like the more you learn, the more you realize, like you knew all along. Right. And so explain to me like how you grew up and, and you know, who your grandfather was. Well, I grew up in Tennessee and I grew up on a farm. My grandfather, he's part Native American. He couldn't read, write, or drive, but he knew plants and he knew herbs.

So he used to take me out when I was, I would say, six, seven years old. And he used to introduce me to plants. And he said, you're going to consume these plants for the rest of your life if you want to become big and strong like me. So I just started practicing it. Was he a big guy? Was he a strong guy? Yeah, he was fairly a big guy. He was probably 6'3", and I would say around 220. And he was saying if you want to get big and strong, you've got to eat these plants.

You've got to eat these plants. And I was always fascinated by my grandfather, and I just stuck to his regimen all through my teens. And when I hit around 20, I moved to California and then I got involved with the bodybuilding world and started taking the protein powders and, and closer to my later twenties, early thirties, I started finding myself having issues with inflammation from knee problems to hip problems to skin abnormalities to you name it, all the above. And that's how what I learned from Sanjay.

I realized that there was a certain time in your life when you slow down the production of all these enzymes that slow down aging process, fight chronic and debilitating illnesses. That took me back to my grandfather because I realized that when he was 80, 90 years old, he didn't have some of these chronic and debilitating illnesses that's going on today. And where did your grandfather learn all of this? Where did he get his knowledge? He was passed down. So this is like an oral tradition? Yes. And what tribe was he?

Cherokee. Cherokee. Wow. And so is that like a, I mean, is in the Cherokee tradition is sort of plant-based medicine or sort of plant-based nutrition, something that is part of that culture? Cause I'd never really, I don't really know that much about it. Yeah. He, my grandfather, his, he was a probably 75 plant base so um and was he like what did he do i mean was he like a like a medicine man guy or yeah he was a medicine man it was it's a very small town uh in lebanon it's called lebanon tennessee and uh when people used to get sick in his community he used to go out in the woods and get these particular herbs, sassafras, you name it. And he used to help people.

They used to come to him when they were sick or any forms of illnesses, and he had some remedy for them. So I grew up watching him and learning from him. And I always respected that because people respected him. He couldn't read or write or drive, just a team of mules and a tractor. And he was always looked upon as, you know, a crazy man until, you know, now I realize that he was very wise. He was right all along. And so, I mean, when did you kind of have that initial realization? I mean, was it in the wake of your bodybuilding experience or when did you start to really kind of think, think about things in a different way? Nutritionally?

When I hit, um, around 35, cause I'm now getting ready to be 50. So I realized that my skin, you're almost 50. I can't believe that. Wow. I'll be 50 in June for the listener out there. This guy's crazy shape. Thank you. So when I hit around 35, I realized that my skin texture changed. And then I just started feeling joint problems from old football injuries. And I realized that it was some of these chemical compounds that I was ingesting from either protein powders, whatever processed food that's out there. And he was not exposed to processed food. He just walked out in the garden and ate a raw sweet potato.

And that's what I did primarily the majority of my life. So that's how it came about. I've been practicing this for probably around, I would say, 25 years or so. And it just made sense to me to go back to what he taught me, make it convenient for me when I'm on the road, when I'm moving around, when I'm working out, have it with me. And it's chewable, and it makes sense to chew it because obviously that's the first stage of digestion is to chew. It secretes that enzyme that breaks down the material that you're consuming, which are

complex carbohydrates, because it's pretty much fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds. So talk me through the sort of coming from, so you're in this bodybuilding phase, you're taking all this whey protein, you're starting to have these inflammation problems and sore joints, et cetera. But is there a moment where you say, all right, I'm going to, I'm going to go back to my grandfather's way. I'm going to start eating plants and, and you know, how did that change how you felt? How did your, how did your body change in response to that? And you know, how did that challenge you or maybe your ideas at the time about what, you know, somebody who's an athlete, you know, what they needed in order to sort of either compete

or just be strong and fit and healthy. Well, that goes right back to Sanjay when I was learning the human body and how the cells work and your pancreas and all these different organs and what they do when you feed them correctly. It just makes your body run more efficiently. So what I learned was that when I was consuming all these chemical compounds, I studied the liver, and it has to secrete certain enzymes that break down certain chemical compounds.

And as you get older, you slow down the production of it. So it took me back to what my grandfather, I'm like, why is it that my grandfather had pretty flawless skin, but here I am 35 years old and I have skin abnormalities. So, you know, once I got into the medical books, I started understanding what your body needs, what the cells need to rejuvenate and secrete these enzymes efficiently. And what, and what is that? Like what was the answer to that for you? Plant-based, you know, and I started, I really got into indigenous cultures and really that was the icing on the cake for me, so to speak, icing on the cake.

Once I started studying indigenous cultures, I realized that their diet was a lot of plants and they didn't have some of the chronic and debilitating illnesses that we have in this country. Also, they didn't have, I couldn't find that they had periodontal disease and skin abnormalities and even brain abnormalities. And it took me straight to that diet. Once I dissected that diet, I realized it was so similar to what my grandfather was teaching me.

Right, and so now you're similar to what my grandfather was teaching me. Right. And so now you're starting to, you're realizing benefits in your own life, right? As a result of eating this way, your skin repairs itself. And what are the other kind of changes that you experience? Well, when you consume a lot of the plants, you consume in chemical compounds that help your organs secrete these enzymes that get rid of inflammation for those that have inflammation. Or if you are an extreme athlete and you need a recovery, you're getting bioavailable fuel, vitamins, minerals, trace minerals, everything your body requires. So it just made more sense to me. I have tons of energy. I don't eat quite as much as most people.

People can't believe that I eat maybe one or two meals a week. It's usually fish or salad. I mostly live off of this product. Interesting. So you're just living off of juice. And other than that, you're only eating one or two meals a week yeah outside of outside of the choose yes oh my god wow yeah that's intense man yeah interesting you know if you study indigenous cultures they usually consume a lot of plants on a daily basis and you get everything your body

requires just from plants and nuts and seeds and uh here in this country we have a tendency to eat an abundant amount of food and we are already slowing down the production of digestive enzymes so what is it what's going to happen normally just sits in the stomach well what we do is we eat a tremendous amount of food but it's very nutritionally poor you know it's low in phytonutrients low in phytotochemicals, low in minerals and vitamins, trace minerals, all that sort of stuff. So it's very, but it's very high in calories, high in fat, high in salt and sugar, et cetera. So yeah, we get fat, we get diabetes, we're obese. We have all these, you know, chronic conditions. It's incredibly inflammatory. It contributes to a state of chronic acidosis, which we're now learning is behind all of these diseases that,

you know, plague Western developed societies. And my experience, and I always try to root it in, you know, I'm not a doctor and I, you know, like yourself, I try to root it in my own experience. And as an athlete, all I can say is that it's not that eating a plant-based diet inherently makes me stronger or faster or a better athlete, but because it's so anti-inflammatory, it allows me to push myself harder and recover more quickly. And when you protract that out of, over the course of a number of months or years or, you know, a season or what have you, that's going to translate into tremendous performance

gains. If by no other reason that you're not getting sick, you're not getting overtired, you're not going to overtrain, like all you're just, you're just operating like at a higher level on a daily basis. Yeah. Yeah.

Agree. I agree. I agree a hundred percent. Can't anything of that. Right. It's absolutely true. so uh in your practice as a trainer are you starting to kind of you know preach a little bit or you're trying to impart this knowledge to your clients and how does that go absolutely i have quite a few um football players and tons of athletes now are getting

you're like the guy i'm getting the idea that like in atlanta you're the guy you're the go-to guy the go-to trainer guy right um can answer that question right he is right he's liddell's about quality over quantity so he's you know he's the clients that he's gotten you know have just stuck with him for years. And he doesn't like to overburden himself and diminish the quality of what the messages he delivers. So he just does a good job of balancing. He's always taught me that. Life's about balance.

So yeah, I consider him the trainer's trainer. But it's a competitive world out there, and everyone's going to have their views. But I'm biased, but I would agree with that. All right. But back to the question here. All right. So you're working with these football players. Yes. I'm working with football players and basketball players and they've noticed a tremendous, um, actually their recovery is so much better. And, you know, it's going exactly the way I anticipated it would. It just took me many, many, many years to stick to what I believe in and just stay on the grind and practice. And now people are receiving it. minute. Yeah. I mean, I think that we were talking about a little bit about this before, you know, before we were recording that, you know, all anybody has to do is look at you and go, you're

kidding. You're, you're almost 50 or, you know, that's unbelievable. And you're an incredible physical shape. You got giant guns, you know, and it's unfortunate that our society works this way, but that's a powerful thing. Like that's more powerful. Like how your arms look is just as important as what comes out of your mouth because the proof is in the pudding. Right. And clearly, uh, if you're walking your talk and this is a way that you look, then that is, you know, that's a program of attraction rather than promotion because people just get it. They look at you. Well, if you're doing that and you look that way, like I want, I want that for myself. Right. And, uh, and, um, that's, you know, that's a big part of the message. It, it seems like you should just be able to explain it to

somebody regardless of how you physically appear. But you know, that's not how humans generally operate. But, uh, but definitely, I mean, you're, you know, you're an incredible human specimen. So whatever you're doing is obviously working. So when you're working with your clients, I would think that it would be an easier sell, especially with these athletes, football players, basketball players, they can get behind this idea. Like, of course the Holy grail for an athlete is if I can recover more quickly or, or not over train or not get sick or not get injured, that's like huge, right? But the next thing is, yeah, but like, I need to be strong too. I need to be fast. I need

to have power. Like, how am I going to get that eating this way? So how do you handle those kind of questions? It's bioavailable fuel. So when you consume plants in the rawest form, it doesn't require a lot to break it down. It usually tax your digestive system. I think approximately about 80% of the body's energy is to break down a meal. So when you consume like an apple or something that's a fruit base or vegetable, it goes straight to the cell. So that's instant fuel. That's instant fuel. It's funny. I used to think the same way from playing ball and lifting weights to get the big muscles and so on and so forth. It wasn't until I realized that my grandfather was a strong, big man and good quality muscle density. I started studying these indigenous cultures and they can run and climb trees at 60 years old and how could they possibly do that eating all these plants so

just made sense to me but I had to do my research I had to stay in the books for the last 15 years especially in the medical realm and understand what it is that your cells need to rejuvenate and to work more efficient. Right. And this idea of bioavailable fuel is something that Brendan Brazier talks a lot about in his Thrive books. You have to look at net energy gain from the foods you're eating, not just gross energy gain. So if you eat a steak, for example, it requires so much energy on behalf of your body to break it down that by the time that energy that is stored in that piece of steak is available to you you've you've already you know expended so much energy to to get there right which is why you feel lousy after you eat it and all of that as opposed to something that's easily broken down a plant food that you feel great right

after it you don't have that heaviness you don't have that food coma that we all know about like after eating lunch absolutely that's uh that's because it requires so much energy to break down the food your heart is about seven percent so you're moving around exercising that's another metabolically active area so what's going to suffer well gravity states that your brain is about two and a half pounds. So it requires a great deal of nutrients, oxygen. And that's why a lot of people are very lethargic after they eat a meal because they're eating heavy meals and it just doesn't have the nutrition that is required. Yeah, exactly. And it gets to the point you were making earlier about your caloric needs and how people find it surprising that you don't eat that much. And that's another kind of common thing that I share with you because I've noticed the longer that I do this and the more I kind of refine it and dial it in and improve that my caloric needs are going down. And like, I just rode, I just did a, I did a four hour ride this morning, right. On my bike, I had a bottle of water with me and that was all. And I wasn't like blasting as hard as I could. It was an aerobic zone to ride. But you know, several years ago I would have had to bring all sorts of food with me and I'd be panicked. I was going to bonk and all of that. And so part of it is I physiologically adapted to the stress of this

kind of exercise. Like I'm used to it because I've been doing it so much, but at the same time, like I had for breakfast, I just had, I didn't have choose. I was, I already had drank them when she gave me, but I had something similar. I had a Vitamix smoothie with kale and hemp seeds and flax seeds and beets and beet greens. And, you know, I just drank that. That was my, that was it. That was all I had for breakfast, went out and rode. And, uh, and I finished and I didn't feel tired. I felt good. I didn't feel starved and I'm amazed because I would think like I would be, and I think other people think, oh, you must be eating all the time. But the point being that when I do eat, it's incredibly new nutritionally, right? So I'm taking in calories, but more

importantly, I'm feeding my body what it actually needs to live and thrive, like all the phytonutrients and micronutrients, all these kinds of things that we're talking about. And it's really interesting. You know, it's not something I would have thought would have happened, but it allows me to eat less and also keep my energy at a peak high level like throughout the entire day right so you don't get those spikes and drop you know peaks and valleys in your insulin which your body gets accustomed to i think right insulin helps mediate glucose to go into the cell and make it so that you have the energy that you need and if you're eating things that make your insulin spike quickly and your insulin is going to be used to doing that but then all of a sudden you're right you said training

yourself over time you're giving yourself you know your body is understands and how to adjust itself and how to regulate itself and you know one thing i'll tell you on the on the protein side is uh last year we come across you know like you we've come just unbelievably um you know informed and just fascinating people who understand nutrition there's one of the top sports nutritionists in the country is in atlanta and we were in his lab and got to um you know just pick his brain and he was we told him the story how every time we walk into a gym most of the people coming across liddell for the first time the guys who who usually weightlift, they want big muscles, and they drink lots, they have lots of excess protein.

They say excess for a reason. We were telling him how these guys don't believe Liddell when he says that he is 80% plant-based and he has this kind of muscle mass at his age. Right, you must be lying. Yeah, absolutely. Or you're on the juice, right, like secretly. Exactly. That's exactly what they think. And it's almost gets a little contentious, but it was, you're way too mellow to be on the juice.

That's probably true. And so this guy, uh, you know, Dr. Benadotte, he, he started, pulled up his computer and he just, he started showing us his data. And this is something that he's been working on a lot. And he asked Liddell, how do you consume the chews? And Liddell said, well, before a workout, during a workout, after a workout. And he got even more excited. He started plugging in the information and showed us a graph of the balance. He says, what people don't realize is when they ingest protein,

I mean, protein's got nitrogen in it, and that's going to help build muscle mass and any kind of tissue in the body and for repairing tissue. When people have these large protein loads, a lot of it gets processed and gets urinated out through the kidney and makes a urea, you know, and it prevents it from getting toxic. Liddell's mode, his style of consumption was balanced. He showed us that Liddell was optimizing the protein intake.

It is more bioavailable, not all proteins are created equally, so that when it gets in and it's digested and your body can process it properly and send it to tissue that's preparing, it can be more efficiently integrated into muscle tissue. So what he did is he showed us on his graph that based on the way Liddell optimizes the timing and intake, even if it's not high quantities of protein, it's higher in quality, and the mode of delivery to the tissue is better so he optimizes his muscle mass based on that and what is that what is that rule of thumb like what is that protocol he's actually really dr benedict writing book and it's fascinating it's going to be called balance and it is specifically you know

he has this whole formula about just how athletes can optimize their energy output based on that. So I don't know. Right. But in terms of like Liddell, like what you're doing, I mean, like the general rule that I've always been told is, you know, within 30 minutes post exercise, you have this window where you want to replenish your glycogen stores and, you know, get those reparative amino acids in there. And then you can kind of eat a little bit more later, but you have that kind of special period of time. Is that kind of what you're talking about here or something else?

Usually I'm between an hour, an hour and a half when I'm consuming the juice, and it's usually an eight-ounce. Post-exercise. Yes, and sometimes when I'm working out, because I've recognized that from practicing this for quite many years that it's also really good for workouts. Because I used to get lightheaded a lot. And you always heard that you shouldn't eat at least two hours before you work out. before you work out. And I've realized that from experimenting and doing case studies on myself, that even when my energy level or my stamina starts to drop, I consume a, just a swig of

juice and it just picks me right back up because of the, the, uh, bioavailable fuel that's in it. Right. And just to be clear for the listeners, cause they might be confused with all this talk about protein. Juice is just natural fruit and vegetable juice with nuts and seeds there's no added protein there's no like protein supplement that's added to this it's all just natural whole plant-based foods in this drinkable chewable form so that's interesting i mean that goes back to bioavailability i mean i think that sort of idea of know, don't eat two hours before, you know, your workout is an antiquated concept based on, you know, foods that are difficult to break down. All your blood goes to your gut and then you don't feel good or whatever. But if

you're eating something that just assimilates so quickly, you know, there's no reason to, you know, wait two hour, you know, to have that two hour window. It doesn't make sense. Right. Right. So, so I'm really interested in this dynamic between the two of you you know, to have that two hour window doesn't make sense. Right. Right. So, so I'm really interested in this dynamic between the two of you, um, you know, Sajit, your experience in medical school and kind of what you were exposed to or not exposed to in terms of nutritional education and kind of how you took that into your practice and then ultimately how that evolved as a result of, of, of uh hooking up with Liddell yeah well it was it was interesting I mean like I told you earlier you know my a lot of my interest

in medicine you know came from being an athlete and just playing every you know I was just like what sport did you play when you were a kid yeah I ran I played soccer I played uh tennis golf you know people joke with me about golf. But the fact was I just loved getting out in the yard and playing everything. And I loved also learning how things worked. And so I think that's kind of what drew me into medicine is sort of my interest as an athlete. I got to be a competitive squash player then, you know, starting in college and afterwards for 20 years. Right. And where did you go to college?

Michigan. You went to Michigan. So is that where'd you go to, where'd you go to college? Michigan. You went to, you went to Michigan. So is that where you, is that where you met Sanjay at University of Michigan? Yeah. We lived next door to each other in the dorm, dorm our freshman year.

Right. So that's where we got. So you, were you in the same class? Yeah. You were the same year. Yeah. We got,

yeah. We met on the first day of a undergrad. Right. And that's a trip. That was, you know, that's 27, 28 years ago. It's kind of crazy. It's hard to believe That was 27, 28 years ago.

It's kind of crazy and hard to believe. And you're both in Atlanta now, which is totally weird. It was serendipitous. We both moved to Atlanta within four months of each other in 2001. I was in Boston at the time and he was still in Michigan. Right, so he did the Interflex program, which is essentially

you start medical school on day one of college and it's like a six-year program, right? He's like on the Doogie Howser. Exactly. Exactly. He and I were different. He was the gifted student who got everything right off the bat. I was the one who was like, you know, I was always out playing sports and doing stuff when I was a kid. So it was a little bit harder. I spent, I had to spend more time, you know, with the books and really kind of apply myself. Congratulations, you're a human being. Yeah, exactly.

Well, yeah, there's a question whether or not he's a human being because he was gifted with that stuff. So it was an interesting disparity. But going on to medical school and learning the traditional way we learn in medical school, what they don't prepare us for is how much our culture has changed in the last few decades. The culture of eating has changed a great deal. Our medical tradition is to learn how the body works and use current evidence, basic science,

to really understand how the cell works, how the body works. And so we learn metabolism. We don't necessarily learn nutrition. And there's a big difference. And I think 30, 40 years ago, it wasn't as big a deal because we weren't facing the kind of problems we have now. We're having an overabundance of chemicals and especially starchy carbohydrates that just get stored as fat.

These are sort of unintended consequences of our progress. And we don't have years and years of being able to study this. It's so new and it's happening so quickly. Yeah, absolutely. So all that, most, I'll argue with other doctors who, you know, they want to do the Atkins diet or I want to do, and it's interesting just because we go back and then it's wondering, we learned this physiologically to understand how

these things work yet we're just as as as sort of confused as everyone else out there by all the things that are thrown at us so you know i my my undergrad uh experience was more i did philosophy degree and i was always interested in culture and that type of stuff. So I think what came full circle for me was, as a doctor who's seen all these changes in culture, my interest in culture movements, all of a sudden it started making me reflect in a different way. And so Liddell helped provoke that even more, because then I started looking at it nutritionally, that what is the deficiency here you

know is it every the way we were taught in medical school just it doesn't really prepare us then for what is going on the physiologic response right to all of this but the the medical school paradigm is really about kind of training your brain to diagnose and prescribe and by prescribe i don't just necessarily mean pharmaceutical but some kind of protocol to address the symptoms and the underlying cause of whatever the ailment is right right i mean it is you know that's what we're here for we're here to try and treat problems and unfortunately we've been faced with more and more problems we've eradicated and done a great job of finding the source and cause of infectious issues and been able to eradicate

a great deal of disease there's been great triumphs in the last several decades in the century we're able to prolong lifespan from you know in 1900 the life's average lifespan was 44 for a man. Right. And it went up to 77 100 years later. Now, based on the obesity problems that we're seeing and chronic disease issues, lifespan for the first time is set to go down in the next century. And there's something wrong culturally and social movements.

There's something wrong with that. So, you know, getting back to this with Liddell, provoked that kind of curiosity in my mind to say, what is a problem? I consider myself a bit more reformed in my thinking as far as what is it that... Right, like enough with the grandfather, right? What's really going on here?

Yeah, well, philosophically it's interesting because we have a great deal of knowledge um we don't apply a great deal of wisdom you know i think that that's a very astute statement about the state of our current culture you know i mean what happened especially in when we're talking about a native american culture that has sort of historically prided itself in great respect for its elders and, you know, the wisdom of, of the elders and, you know, a little aside story, Julie grew up in Alaska. Her parents live in Alaska and her father is a hunter, fisherman, outdoorsman, extraordinary guys like Indiana Jones, amazing. Right. But he's in the later years of his life and he's a civil engineer up in Anchorage. And, you know, he's 90 now, but not very many years ago when he was in his mid 80s, he was still working.

Whereas if he lived in any other city, he would have been long retired. But because so much of that culture is based upon, you know, sort of Native American, you know, Eskimo traditions of respecting their elders. They looked at him as somebody of great wisdom and they compelled him to continue to work and, you know, paid him very well to help construct these buildings. And he helped build the museum up there and all of that. It's just fascinating. And that's a relic of a time past, you know, that doesn't really exist now. It's sort of like, it's all about the 18 to 25 demo. And like, what does a 14 year old girl think? And like, when did that become, you know, sort of the, the demarcation line or the arbiter of like, you know, what we should or should not be doing in our society. And we've really lost that connection or that respect for, um, for our elders and, and and wisdom it's was you know

the difference between knowledge and and their knowledge and information and wisdom yeah there's a great deal of scientific knowledge we've gained and yet people don't seem to be terribly interested in respecting even what science has taught us they we go in a motion and this marketing you know really we found the last 30 years you can convince people to consume more of things they don't need and the market the economy grows is that a good thing you know irrational consumption is probably not the best thing for society all the time we see it in health care all the time right you know so it's it's a dangerous path sometimes progress

and so you meet liddell he starts training you and he starts working on you right like how so what's happening uh I'm thinking like a lot of doctors like you know herbs and uh no that type of stuff with the you know plant-based foods like I'm thinking hocus pocus right you know it's like it's just how many years how long ago was this this was uh probably five years ago okay so this was was this before sanjay's documentary the last heart attack yeah it was before that yeah it was before that and uh you know it's just again it's this sense of i don't know i don't know why we have this world of natural medicine and traditional medicine sort of seem to be at odds when there's so much that can be learned from each other.

And that, you know, I think when you have more collaboration, I think there's a great deal that can, you know, going forward can have a great impact on preventing disease and helping kind of people find ways to maintain their health and better. And, um, it's, it's, it's been unfortunate. So, but it was, it was a hard process because, um, it required me going back and looking at books and kind of looking to check up on what Liddell was telling me. Then it was like, wow, that makes sense. It's intuitive. Plants have been around for, you know, hundreds of millions of years longer than we have. And in order to survive ultraviolet light, bacteria, fungi,

they produce chemicals in their own cells and the cellular structure that helped them survive better for the conditions of this planet. And shouldn't it make sense that our cells, which do share some similarities as far as fighting off ultraviolet light, fighting off fungi, bacteria, all sorts of infectious problems, that those chemicals plants have sort of adapted themselves to produce, that those things would also make sense for us to consume.

And now we're starting to get a body of research more and more that is showing that, yeah, this makes sense. And 10 years from now, I think our thinking on it in the medical establishment will be much different than it is right now. Yeah, I hope so. I think it's a really interesting time. I've found that people are way more open to this idea than they were even a year ago, let alone two years ago. And I think we're at this crossroads or we're approaching this kind of very powerful, almost Malcolm Gladwell-esque tipping point where our health care crisis is completely out of control.

And the statistics are insane when it comes to heart disease and obesity and diabetes and all of these issues. I think I saw 75% of all of our health care costs are attributable to heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and a couple forms of cancer, like pancreatic and breast cancer, I think. But 90% of those conditions are preventable or reversible, predominantly through plant-based nutrition and lifestyle alteration. And when you look at that, it's insane. And then when you look at the population explosion and start thinking about like, well, how are we going to feed all these people? And you look at how inefficient and how ecologically damaging it is to raise livestock and to feed livestock for food. It's craziness, right? So the solution is right in front of us. Like if we all just started eating plant-based or at least

more plant-based, we start to shift the paradigm and we start to address the problem and, you know, reverse the damage and begin to, you know, forge a new path. You know, I was listening to an interview with Mark Bittman recently. We do so much of our agriculture. The land we allocate to agriculture is obviously predominantly corn-based. And if we were to get more fresh produce, even a small percentage, if the demand was there for more produce, that would actually have a great impact. Huge.

You know, the sustainability part of it. I mean, just to us is the idea conceptually that we're trying to do here is if we can create through a market-based product interest and demand for fresh produce, you know, you're also attaining to sustainability issues. And more people can actually then consume food that's actually more local that is not 1500 miles away you know you know the majority are of our food comes from for the average american or you know the unbelievable statistic about how how small a percentage of average americans diet consists of you know what you know cdc recommends as far as daily um you know fruit and vegetable intake.

And I can speak to it because I'm one of those people. I am not completely plant-based. I eat a bit of everything. Oh, come on. You hang around my house a little bit. We'll see what's going on in a couple days. I'm sure that will change. But Liddell changed it, and he changed that for me.

What were you eating before you met Liddell and before you kind of you sort of had this was happening all around the time you turned 40 right right so what was your diet like prior well I was you know I was french fries steak um a lot of uh you know uh uh you know potato chips and you know it's a bit of everything. And I liked to cook, but I didn't cook a lot of vegetable dishes. My parents were originally of Indian descent, so I was making Indian food and making curries and things like that, but I wasn't making the vegetable part of things. And that's a lot of it.

This is what's been kind of encouraging for our experience in Atlanta, is that even when we come across average Americansicans who are meat and potato type of people that this opens their eyes it was the same experience that i had wow i like convenience i don't want to you know i buy a bag of spinach that's already prepared all i have to do is open it up right put in a bowl and throw some nuts and little different things on there and maybe some dressing and there's a salad but somehow that became a challenge even if i had the bags in my fridge 50 of time it'd go bad before i'd use it right and you know we so we like convenience and so for me having something like juice that all of a sudden not just gives me the salad in a bottle type of thing it gives me so much more as far as the micronutrients and you know good quality protein and it changed me i mean it just i just found even times when i

didn't have time to train because i was you know still working full-time now and being an entrepreneur is uh is i just have a new respect for it but you know it has been so hard but i find myself still being able to maintain muscle tone, being able to maintain just sort of a lot of my own health that I know would have gone south had I not had something, had access, such easy access to these great nutrients. Right, right. So how old are you now, like 45? 46.

46, okay. So you've been doing this for a little while. Yeah, but, you know, like 45? 46. 46, okay. So you've been doing this for a little while. Yeah, but three years at least. And explain a little bit about what kind of medicine you practice. I'm a pediatric emergency room doctor. So I did my residency and my training was in pediatrics after med school and did four years of that. Then did another three years of the subspecialty

and pediatric emergency medicine. Right. And so I just take care of that. Then did another three years of the subspecialty in pediatric emergency medicine. Right. And so I just take care of kids in the emergency room. And you're being quite modest, though, because you were trained at Harvard, right? That was my subspecialty training. It was in Boston. And were you a mass general for your residency? Boston Children's.

Boston Children's. Okay. Yeah. So it was a great experience. But all of my training, I mean, in Detroit, you know, in Detroit, I had just a mentor who got me to really love being a doctor and really pushed me hard on appreciating what it is to be a doctor and the privilege it is. Did you grow up in Detroit?

Actually, other side of Michigan, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Oh, Kalamazoo. But I spent a lot of time in Detroit. So I'm one of the few people. We talked about this, right? Because I'm from Michigan. I forgot Kalamazoo, Michigan. Oh, Kalamazoo. But I spent a lot of time in Detroit. I'm one of the few people. We talked about this, right? Because I'm from Michigan. I forgot that we're in Michigan. Well, I grew up outside of Grosse Pointe.

We moved away when I was like seven. Okay. Both my parents went to U of M. Yeah. My dad went to law school there. My mom went to college there. And all my cousins went to U of M. Yeah, yeah.

I have two sisters and a brother. We were all U of M graduates. And my brother-in-law went to michigan law school as well oh wow and uh so yeah it's a michigan family for sure oh cool remind there's something i want to show you when we're done with the podcast or remind me i will yeah cool all right but i interrupted you where was that with the pediatric emergency room like what kind of things do you typically see? I see, you know. That's got to be the worst of the worst. Children coming in in critical states. Yeah, and fortunately, it doesn't happen as often as you'd think.

I mean, yes, we see horrible things. It's an emergency room. But compared to adults who often do, we do a lot more damage to ourselves. Sometimes intentionally, you know so adults we don't see it in kids as much as but we see a bit of everything it's right like the kid who swallowed the ping pong ball or what you know stuff like that from you know yeah so it's illness injuries and the basic you know stuff and so i i like it i still it's just it's it's a privilege you get to be around people in their most vulnerable state.

They're in an emergency room. They're scared. You know, they hear. Oftentimes, fortunately, it doesn't even have to be serious things to us, but it's serious to them because, you know, they are immersed in information that does scare them. You know, we're just, we live in the world now where people can, you know, hear about a child who was abducted in southern Utah within an hour or two after it might happen,

that wasn't the community that we all grew up in. Our community experience is different. So 300 million people in this country, I think we have a sense that statistically that our risk for things happening in the worst-case scenario is much closer than it really is. So that's been interesting, but I think what's been fascinating for me in just 13 years of practicing in Atlanta is the palpable change in

obesity. I mean, just when I come across eight, nine, 10 year old children who are almost the same weight as me and, you know, people have to ask me, well, you know, God, are you get upset with those parents who do that? Like they've, do that? They've done that to their kids. And I think, no, I feel a little bit sorry for them. This is the culture we live in, is that they think loving their kids means giving them what they want, making them happy. And doing that is giving them more of the things that they're surrounded by. This is, you're happy. If you want to be happy, eat this.

And that's what our marketing provides you know us is the sense of yeah it starts with what's at the home and then it's what's on television and then it's what's at school you know and and what's at the friend's house so they're surrounded by it it almost you know choice almost gets removed from the equation because you know there's vending machines everywhere and soda machines everywhere and the school lunch is deplorable i don't know what it's like in atlanta it's terrible here um you know it's there's a lot of things that need to get sorted out to address this problem it's massive and it's it's i look at again as an unintended consequence you know 30 40 years ago we talked about cholesterol being sort of like that was it that this is the main issue

for heart disease so let's get rid of cholesterol and what happened we got uh you know lower fat foods that were replaced with you know with more carbohydrates and in general carbohydrate you know we all i always joke about with people when i was a kid i remember even going to fast food restaurant and getting a little tiny basket of french fries. Somehow, physiologically, our need as human beings has gone up tremendously where most Americans would look at that little small serving, even the drink as well, and laugh. Like, are you kidding me? Why would I drink that?

Well, you go to the movie, and the small Coke is the largest thing you've ever seen. It's staggering. Yeah. It is. We treat. We're feeding each other. like the largest thing you've ever seen it's like it's staggering yeah it is it is you know we treat we treat we treat we're feeding our you know each other where this is i mean i'd look at all of this as the not trying to blame each individual i mean yes personal responsibility is a big issue but as a culture you know we have to blame and look at ourselves and say this is a problem of culture we've done this to ourselves. We allowed this to happen.

We allowed it to become okay to physiologically, through a discounted meal, consume 130, 150% more calories than we need to do in one sitting. So I see this back in my practice. You can't turn a blind eye until you wonder. And even for the, I see this with the gifted athletes that will come in with injuries. And sometimes nowadays, my practice has changed where I'll ask them, I say, so what are you eating?

Because this injury is taking a lot longer to heal and mom's bringing you in because you're worried about it. And it's interesting where I get to what Liddell, the influence he's had on me, is to actually then maybe sit down, spend a little more time and ask them. He said, maybe you should be eating a bit more leafy green vegetables.

You take nuts and seeds too. You get some prime athletes. These guys are destined for something in college, professional careers, and yet they're so uninformed with how much better they could be doing for their bodies. Right. Yeah. It's incredible. Uh, I think I've, I'm seeing that beginning to change, but there is this predominant kind of conventional wisdom that when you're 18 or 21, it doesn't, and you're working out all the time. It doesn't really matter. You

know, it's just like, it's like tissue paper on the flame and, and who cares as long as you're getting those calories in. And the truth is it makes a huge difference, you know, but it's hard to convince, you know, a young person of that, especially when they're getting stronger every day doing whatever it is they're doing. Uh, so I think that's a challenge, but I think that that's really interesting. And I think that, you know, I say this all the time, like the difference between, you know, what's the difference between the guy who's getting the gold medal and the guy who's fourth and out of the medal count at the Olympics. And these guys are all freaks of nature and incredibly talented athletes who have devoted their entire lives to training for their discipline

and have been, you know, going to bed every night without Olympic dreams as long as they could remember. And so what's the dividing line? It's not really talent. It's that extra 0.05%. And a lot of that boils down to nutrition, commitment to nutrition, and also like your mental or spiritual state of mind, which are the two things that I think are under addressed in athletic performance. And, you know, anybody who wants that extra edge, like I would recommend that's

what you invest in, you know, if you're going to do something outside of your training. Yeah. Well, you know, Liddell, and again, part of our, when, when our relationship started out, when I was the skeptic, he would tell me about, uh, with his practice and how we would, you know, he would do a lot of herbs for his clients and different herbs that he knew that he studied over the years to these, this for potent anti-inflammatory potential and then choose and what, you know, cause this would, a lot of these things would be in choose as well. He would tell me that, Oh, you know, so-and-so told me they're off their blood pressure medications and their doctor can't believe it. And, you know, there was, that was a repetitive story.

their blood pressure medications and their doctor can't believe it. And, you know, there was, that was a repetitive story. And I said, well, that's great. You know, you know, at this point, you know, I'm already kind of starting to become a believer, but I said, you know, it'd be interesting to collect data. I mean, I said, you know, in the end, you can't really tout things. That's a dangerous fine line you're playing. If you're going and touting benefits, because I said, your product, what you've created, you know, the innovation here is so good. Why waste it on gimmickry or, you know, trying to sell something that seems like snake poison to people? Because that's unfortunately what they're used to. It works. People do it. I don't think snake, the snake oil from, you know, over a hundred years ago, it's not a whole lot different than things that people buy to the tunes of

billions of dollars these days that really don't offer anything. I said, with this, you know, potential is great. Let's collect data. And so we were able to collaborate with an epidemiologist last summer at Emory University School of Public Health and run a clinical trial on shoes. And it was great. The whole process of getting involved with that, designing that, and trying to just look and see you know is there any validation to what liddell was seeing in his own clients it was neat it was just it was it was it was just it was it was great to see that come full circle right so what were the the findings more specifically we looked at fasting glucose levels um so like you know obviously pre-diabetes types of features, and then we looked at pulse wave velocity.

Everyone knows that fasting glucose levels does show you a sense of your glucose control, insulin responsiveness. Pulse wave velocity looks at your, basically how stiff your vessels are, your artery. In this case, it's like a brachial artery measurement. And so that is a known correlative to risk for heart attacks and strokes, pulse wave velocity.

So in the study, although we found a trend with fasting glucose, we didn't find statistical significance and change there, which is fine. I think we probably needed to measure further out in just morning. But the pulse wave velocity, we found statistically significant change in that we did 21 test subjects, 14 days in a row. They consumed the product at lunchtime as a meal replacement and didn't change anything else. This is just a pilot study just to kind of grossly look at some of these markers.

And we found that with greater than 95% confidence, we can say that this was not a random change in their pulse wave velocity. So their cardiovascular health measurement, that there was dramatic improvement, just without any other lifestyle changes. So they weren't doing anything differently? They were just adding, drinking this every single day? They were replacing, this was lunch for them.

Oh, I see. Replacing lunch with this product. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, and you know, not again, the Mediterranean diet, I mean, this landmark study done in Spain, published in the New England Journal of Medicine last spring, and it was the same type of thing. Potent natural anti-inflammatory foods help to possibly,

and what we think is sort sort of the result here is that you can decrease the risk of stroke by providing your body with the right types of foods people might say well is it maybe just the fact that they were avoiding the processed foods that may be provoking inflammation and causing more problems or was it because they were consuming this you know i think that still might be teased out more. That might be a combination. But the fact is that we know now that it's not just cholesterol, intravascular inflammation, the way our body regulates the inflammatory process. This is sort of the important feature to all of this. And so, you know, it seems we think that our results hopefully get us to the next level to do something like the Mediterranean diet study.

Right, interesting. I mean, in certain respects, you can generalize it by saying eating predominantly plant-based is very anti-inflammatory. Not every plant is anti-inflammatory, but by and large and on the whole, if you're eating lots of plants, you're going to be eating a pretty alkaline forming anti-inflammatory diet. By contrast, meat and dairy products are by and large, very acidic and very inflammation provoking, right? So when you look at it like that,

and then you realize the connection between inflammation and chronic disease, it becomes like a no brainer to me. And yet we're at a kind of an interesting cultural moment right now where, you know, the paleo diet is very popular. You know, the Atkins diet is sort of making this resurgence, and I have to be careful to not align those two because they get very testy about that. And also, along with that, this kind of sort of subset or sort of new trend of low carb kind of high fat, which is also ends up being very meat based. Along with that comes sort of this fetishization of eating lots of meat and like, it's super cool to eat tons of bacon and, you know, talk about how much bacon you're eating on Twitter and things like that. And this is, you know, I don't know whether it's

people like to hear good news about their bad habits, but this is kind of what is dominating the dialogue right now. And it confuses me and it's interesting. So I'm, I'm interested in your perspective on, you know know liddell first like what you think about that i'm sure as a trainer people are coming up to you all the time and saying i'm on a paleo diet or i'm low carb or you know what about ketosis and all this sort of thing because that's what athletes love to they want to know about that that. Well, first of all, I don't really go against anyone's diet. I just practice what I practice. This meat product that the paleo practice, to my knowledge, in order to get rid of inflammation, you have to provide the pancreas with what it requires to run efficiently. In return, it secretes these proteolytic enzymes.

All that means is protein eating enzymes. You got trypsin and chymotrypsin. They go out and they get rid of what they call exogenous proteins. That's inflammation. And if you do eat meat, it helps you to break it down, the meat, and make it available. The problem is we're not consuming enough plants. But the paleo diet, to my knowledge, I think they're consuming quite a bit of plants. So they at least have that in their favor.

Yeah, it's very pro-vegetable. Yeah, so they're at least supplying the pancreas with what it requires to break the meat down. And if they're consuming lots of plants, it's going to help break down the meat. Me personally, I practice more of an indigenous kind of a diet. And that's, you know, if you study indigenous cultures, they eat fish when they can catch fish, they eat a bird, if they can catch a bird, but they mostly live off of plants. And that's what I learned. It was so similar to what my grandfather taught me.

I mean, I think that's really what paleo is as well. I mean, it's, it's really, you know, getting back to, I think that like, you know, the animal products were the delicacies because they're more difficult. They're not as readily accessible. It required a tremendous expenditure of energy to hunt or fish or whatever as opposed to just grazing on what the plants are in your vicinity right but sorry i interrupted you i didn't mean to no no not at all that's no problem so uh you know i feel that the paleo diet is probably one of the healthiest diets that's out there.

I don't really believe in calling the way you eat a diet. I just believe in providing your organs and cells with what it requires to run efficiently. When people come to me, they, yes, they ask me, how do you get your frame this that big? Or how do you ride your mountain bike and you know work out as much as you work out and i've learned to uh as i've gotten older to feed the organ so i'm more of a focus more on what can i give my pancreas today what can i give my gallbladder what can i give my liver to run more efficiently to help with my aging process and help slow it down. So that's how I kind of, it's a lot of different facets with what I teach.

But back to your question, you know, paleo, I like it. I think those guys are definitely on to something. And what about like ketosis and low carb and all of these, you know, these are other kind of trends that are happening right now. I mean, do you have, do you have guys that you're training that are like, you still get into carbs. Refined carbohydrates and things like that, I just don't even consume it at all. Right. So obviously no crackers and things like that. And no pasta and bread and stuff like that. But fruit, you're eating lots of fruits and stuff like that.

Lots of fruits. And I will have sweet potato. That's pretty much the only potato I consume. Right. And the beautiful thing about it. Sweet potato is like the perfect food. Yeah, I grew up eating sweet potato. So that's one of the reasons why it's in the juice is because it's a power punch for your fuel.

Absolutely. And what is your perspective, Doc, these these these sort of various diet trends that are happening uh i mean i agree with what liddell says i mean what i like about his approach is that he's always preached moderation and what happens is you know i think people try to use a diet trend to help substantiate things they like so you know i think when people take extreme and I think, I think paleo, I mean, it's, it's, it is what I love about it is that it's physiologically based, but people can make it into a glorified Atkins if they really want to emphasize that. I'm hearing, I'm talking about, I, I like bacon, but I don't, I don't convince myself that I need

to have, you know, a pound of bacon every day. I think what their disagreement was is that people don't, they're trying to look at our ancestral kind of nature and say, what did our ancestors consume? Especially like Nadelle talked about indigenous cultures or just overall in some of the ancestry theory. We're not sure, but if you think about it you know physiologically our ancestors for the most part most likely just consumed plants and having meat was a um sort of a rare occasion and um right it was something that you would then you know consume um on those rare occasions but for the most part complex carbs you know are needed in our diet i mean the fact is, physiologically, we do need it. What's interesting is the first paper on the paleo diet actually came out of two professors from Emory University.

I think it was 1982 it was published. Was Lauren Cordain? Melvin Conner, and I forgot the second author's name, but they're both in Emory. So this was New England Journal of Medicine, and in their follow-up paper, Melvin Conner had discussed some of the issues about sort of the disagreement as to how much the meat plays a role

in the physiology. But the interesting thing he took into it was obviously talking about the omega-6, omega-3 fatty acid ratios. But what I found fascinating was he said physiologically the type of carbohydrates we eat, omega-3 fatty acid ratios but what i found fascinating was he said physiologically the type of carbohydrates we eat or that our cells need really kind of equate to about 80 percent of our intake of carbohydrates should be complex carbohydrates 20 should be you know can be from the added sugars refined carbs etc but the problem in our culture it it's flip-flop. 80% of our intake is these refined carbs and sugars.

And that's what happens. Our bodies are smart. Our bodies have learned how to survive for a long time. And so those carbohydrates, if you want to quote-unquote the bad ones in excess, they get converted to fat. So everything is about, a lot of these different diets and things,

they are trying to attain to the same thing. I mean, the fact is your cells need carbohydrates and to put yourself in a state of ketosis, you're not doing your body any good. Right. You know, I take care. You will lose weight, but it's, it's like a crisis state for your body, right? Right. Why put the extra stress? I mean, the fact is people don't realize that when you're eating the right type of carbohydrates, you actually have an opportunity to burn more fat um physiologically you know when you are balancing things properly and eating the right types of fats for people finally people are starting to catch on it also helps your body to work better as far as you know inflammation right yeah interesting i mean i think that you know the this the mean, I think that, you know, the, this, the quote, higher fat, you know, plant-based people. And

then there's the ethical vegans and then there's the paleo. I mean, it's like you can slice it in so many different ways and everybody has their unique perspective. And I think that there's all this kind of debate between these camps. And at times we lose the forest for the trees, right? We lose perspective that we, we lose perspective that we have this massive obesity problem and, you know, kids are getting fat and that most people are, you know, eating at McDonald's every day or some similar facsimile of that. Right. And, uh, and we need to be able to, it's not about preaching to the choir or trying to convert somebody who's paleo to vegan

or convince them that you're right and they're wrong. It's about touching these people that really need better education that are, you know, operating in a completely different world without any information whatsoever about how to, you know, course correct the crash course with poor health that they're on, you know, from a very early age. And so how do we, you know, how do we, how do we do that? How do we take this dialogue and reach people better than we are currently? I think you have to offer them better choices. You know, education can go so far and people get education through, you know, the wazoo, you know, just anywhere they go. And there is great information there for people to get.

And look on the internet for them to learn. Kind of like I do look at this as sort of an addiction. We're addicted to excess. We convince ourselves to consume the way we want to. And I think the marketing out there convinces us as well, supports that notion. You worked hard today.

You deserve a break today. Yeah, absolutely. How want to i mean i see this and i was told well this one of my favorite uh i used to love saturnet live growing up and those fake commercials were always funny to me but there's a lot of satire out there and even just what i think would have been satire years ago like uh you know larry the cable guy pitches for prilosec and you know he's basically saying don't you know avoid the pain just take the pill right continue to eat like an insane person don't put down the philly cheesesteak sandwich just take the pill right but it's an we have an addiction to excess and addiction problems really we i think studies show, take people out of that habitual environment that really supports the addiction problem. And in this case, I think if you're offering them more choices.

And so this is where I really felt like what Liddell's brought to market and why I became passionate about helping him make this into a success is because of the potential impact it could have. into a success is because of the potential impact it could have. This is actually a product, a consumer product, an option to give people, not just the product itself. Even if it means it starts a dialogue, eat real food. Spend more time in the fruit and vegetable section of the grocery store.

I think that is where we have to go. This is why I think this is an important concept and movement to get behind because to me, if there's 20 companies making something like shoes three four years from now that's a success that means that the market has determined that we need better choices like this that make us healthier right yeah i mean i think i think

convenience is huge uh you know taste is important and as you were explaining that i was thinking about this elementary school that I visited in Queens last year, about a year ago, the first public school in the country to institute plant-based school lunch, but they're growing garden. It's more than just that. It's like the whole elementary school is all about wellness and they're growing their own food and they're teaching kids how to cook and doing all this really cool stuff. And this is what these kids are exposed to. This is their new normal. And this is what is going to inform their choices. You know, when they're imprinting their

brains at that young age, they're going to carry that for the rest of their life. And, you know, what an amazing, awesome example that we could replicate in other schools. And then compare that to the typical school lunch and what's available. It's insane, you know, and we need to get beyond these petty arguments and look at this bigger issue. You know, I was talking about this the other day, there's a documentary that's about to come out and it's called fed up. Have you seen the trailer for it yet? No, it's interesting. Uh, and it's, it's poised to, be accessible to a mainstream audience.

Like Katie Couric is narrating it, and it's being produced by Laurie David, who was Larry David's, I think they're divorced now, ex-wife, who's a big environmentalist. But these are big-time people, right? This is like a mainstream documentary. And it's really about taking a look at childhood obesity from the perspective of our obsession with sugar. At least that's what I gathered from the trailer, right? It's hard to tell what the whole movie is about, but it looks like that's really the focus. I posted it on my Facebook page and I said, Oh, I'm really looking forward to seeing this movie.

And a very interesting debate ensued in the comments where some people were like, oh, that's awesome. And then other people are like, no, it's not the sugar, you know, it's the meat products and it's the fat and it's the dairy. And, and then suddenly everyone's fighting and it all just disintegrated into like, you know, a nasty, you know, kind of spiteful barb throwing exchange. And all I was saying is like, listen, if we can get more Americans talking about these issues, that's a good thing. Like, maybe this isn't the documentary specifically or exactly that I would have made if I was the filmmaker. But look, you cannot dispute the fact that sugar is, you know, our massive, you know, addiction to soda is contributing to this childhood obesity problem. Like we need to tell him we need to do something about this,

regardless of your perspective on animal protein or what have you. And most Americans, you know, really are not, they don't have the education on this at the very baseline. So this is going to get people talking. This is a good thing, right? And this goes to my point of like, how can we reach people better, more effectively? And, you know, I love the idea of creating a product that is filling that need. And one of the things we were talking about when we were on the phone was, you know, this sort of tradition with, or not tradition, but this trend that's happening now with all of these press juices that are coming out, whether it's suja or blueprint, and these are very high end products, right? They're very expensive. Like I think blueprints like $12 for 16 ounces. And so what happens is

the idea of eating well or eating plant-based suddenly becomes the purview of the rich and famous. Like you have to be, you know, have to be the hoi polloi. You have to be very well healed in order to afford these juices and it becomes elitist. You know, it's like, Oh, well I would eat well if I could, but I can't. So I'm going to go to McDonald's and our taco bell. I could feed my family for $4, you know, for the price of one, one blueprint juice, I could feed a family of six for dinner you know right so where where are you positioning choose in terms of that in terms of price point in terms of like the people that you're trying to connect with well it's a great question i what we'd like to do is first show the concept works that people are interested in such a product and in low scale where we are

it's expensive to make so it's going to start out. Right. And so you scale and you can make it more affordable. Absolutely. And that's, we're not too far off from that. I think we get our initial concept stuff starting taking off and then it becomes cheaper to make. Um, and the, the target for us is not just to go onto the shelves of Whole Foods and these places where I think it could be very easy and attractive to just, hey, I can make a good margin here. I'm going to want to grow this. But that's not, to me, it's the doctor and what Liddell has sort of, what he's articulated and what he wants to see,

that this is something where if we can bring that price point down and make it accessible to everyday Americans who go to a convenience store, go to a gas station on their way to work, we want to bring it down well under $5, $4 for a nice small package size that can be breakfast on the go. Somebody over there going to work out, or some kid who's in South Atlanta who's going to go play with his friends, and instead of grabbing a King Dong or something at the convenience store, that they have an option like this.

I think the mainstream potential, our experience in Atlanta, has been that people would be surprised that meat and potato people who get it, they're like, my grandmother would want me to eat like this. So why not? You know, and so we are, we feel like this is, you know, the culmination of knowledge and wisdom, the wisdom of our past, you know, this ancestral knowledge of the Dell's grandfather passed on to him. And, uh, you know, with the mixed in with the science that he's come to you know pull out in himself and just incredible capacity i think to to synthesize so many great facets the world of herbs the world of juicing the world of nutrition and what nuts and seeds offer and you

know this culminates into a product that is just to me has got the game-changing potential if we do it right. But, you know, we just, again, that's where the concept is. I think we're hoping the timing is right and that people get the concept. Because we, I mean, not to go on too much, right now healthcare spending 17% of GDP.

By 2025, the forecast, it'll be 25% of GDP. If we can't find solutions now to these problems that we're facing with obesity, the economic impact is unbelievable. We're going to cripple our economy. Right. I mean, just setting aside any interest in health or nutrition or diet whatsoever, just on pure economics, we should all be on pure economics. Like we should all be concerned about this. Like if we want to be a prosperous nation, if we want to, you know, remain, uh, you know, sort of top of the food chain in terms of like what we can provide for our citizens, this has got to be dealt with or we're going to, our country's going to look very

different in not too many years. Absolutely. Absolutely. So cool. Well, I think that's a good place to finish it with you guys. Um, that was beautiful. Yeah.

Thank you for having us. Yeah. Um, I'm excited about it. It's, uh, I know how much work it is to try to, you know, start a business,

especially in the food products. I mean, it's gotta be a tremendous amount of work and you guys are in the early stages, but it's cool to see you guys getting some good early feedback and some cool opportunities. And it's going to be really fun to kind of watch the trajectory and the progress of this product. And I wish you guys well. I appreciate it. And thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, cool. So if you're in, uh, LA or in the Malibu area, cruise over to PC Greens on the Pacific Coast Highway, you could pick it up there. There's nowhere else in this area where you could buy retail, right, at this moment. So this is like a pilot product, right? Exactly. And that means that it is a successful pilot project, right?

Absolutely. And then are you guys selling retail in Atlanta? Absolutely. You are? We'll be launching Whole Foods. The plan is next month. Oh, cool. But it is available.

You can buy it online. Online. Anyone can get it in the continental U.S. Is it just choose.com? Yep. Yeah. C-H-U-I-C-E.com. Yep.

And you shared with me that really cool, uh, video with Liddell. Is that on the choose website or it's, I think it's on our Facebook page. We're still, you're right. We've been so busy. We haven't really updated certain things that we'd like to. So how many, um, besides you two guys, how many people are working for choose now? Yeah, I think we were up to, to uh we have four on the production crew and we have our our operations chief tommy and uh our summer sales team 12 yeah about 12 12 yeah lean and mean man yeah yeah cool so what's next after uh california get back and get back to work get prepared for getting our sales team prepared for launching whole foods and

building, trying to build a solid company. Right. So the whole foods is going to roll out just in the Southeast first, or we're just going to start with even just one store in Atlanta. Right. Let's try and get into the whole South region, whole foods within a year.

Right. Interesting. That's cool. And we were talking about this on the phone too, that it's interesting that you're, you know, that the, that you guys live in the Southeast and that that's where the company is and that's where you're starting. And, you know, it's not Venice, California, you know, it's not Manhattan, you know, this is like, so if you guys can win over the people there, then that's going

to be, you know, a good sign for the rest of the U.S., I think. Right? Absolutely. So it sounds like you have people down there excited about it, and lots of people are enjoying it. So it's cool, right? Yeah. It's exciting. It's a labor of love. Yeah.

All right. How long have you been working on this, Liddell? Approximately 25 years. 25 years. So you started, you were just making this yourself and you know playing around with it or yeah i was making it myself and i would say four years ago i put it together and went to a health store in atlanta in a half and actually a gallon it looked just like chopped up lawn grass and i went in and i spoke with the owner of the health store, especially after I got done with all the medical books. And I said, this product right here is going to save your life.

I said, try it. And he tried it and he liked it. And then I went on and told him all the properties that it had in and what it would do for his body. And he loved it. And it was an experience because he was selling it out of his health store with no labels whatsoever, but people were coming in and just constantly buying it. So I went to the next health store, did the same thing. I'd say I practiced that for at least three months with no labels. That's how, that's how people love

this product. And now I connected with Sujit and we just built a team. And now it's, we're out here on the West coast. A lot of people out here are receiving us very well. I really enjoy being here for the last eight days that I've been here. Yeah. Cool. Well, yeah, I mean, you're, this is a welcome environment for, you know, what you have to offer. And just before we close it out, I realized like, I don't know if we've, that we're totally clear about how, you know, it's sort of chewable juice. But all right. What does that mean?

So basically, it's part juice where you're juicing vegetables and fruit. Right. Right. And then the other part of it is like masticated seeds and nuts and like some fibers pulp. Right. From the juicing that's sort of incorporated in there so you're drinking it and then you'll get a little some you know like sort of like nuts to chew on that are part of that and again it sounds weird but it's actually really it tastes really good

yeah thank you thank you very much yeah we'd like to patch it as it's real food i mean and right i think it's hard because juice implies the sense that it's a juice, but the fact is it's more food. We're part of the same family of other juice products out there, obviously, but we're taking it to another level because there's no juices out there that have this much fiber, have this much protein, this much essential fatty acids. And so it is different. It's just next phase.

Right. Cool. All right. Well, thanks,. Right. Cool. All right. Well, thanks guys. Thank you. All right. Liddell's going to bench press me now. All right, guys. Thanks for coming by.

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