The School of Greatness - How To HEAL Your Gut Microbiome for Better Mood, Weight Loss & Disease Prevention

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!Your gut microbiome shapes every aspect of your health from mental clarity to disease prevention. Dr. Will Bulsiewicz reveals how the diversity of plants in your diet forms the foundation of gut health, recommending a goal of 30 different plants weekly to optimize your microbiome. Shawn Stevenson explores the powerful connection between family meals and health outcomes, showing how eating together just three times weekly dramatically reduces chronic disease risk. Dr. William Li explains how ultra-processed foods send "hooligans" into your gut's symphony, while whole foods begin healing your system within 24 hours. These experts demonstrate that transforming your health doesn't require extreme measures—just small, consistent choices that work with your body's innate healing capacity.Dr. Will’s book Fiber Fueled: The Plant-Based Gut Health Program for Losing Weight, Restoring Your Health, andOptimizing Your MicrobiomeDr. Will’s cookbook The Fiber Fueled Cookbook: Inspiring Plant-Based Recipes to Turbocharge Your HealthShawn’s book Eat Smarter Family Cookbook: 100 Delicious Recipes to Transform Your Health, Happiness, and ConnectionShawn’s book Sleep Smarter: 21 Essential Strategies to Sleep Your Way to A Better Body, Better Health, and Bigger Success: A Longevity BookShawn’s book Eat Smarter: Use the Power of Food to Reboot Your Metabolism, Upgrade Your Brain, and Transform Your LifeDr. Li’s book Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal ItselfDr. Li’s book Eat to Beat Your Diet: Burn Fat, Heal Your Metabolism, and Live LongerIn this episode you will learn:Why the diversity of plants in your diet is the #1 factor in gut microbiome health (aim for 30 different plants weekly)How your microbiome directly influences your mood, cravings, and mental health through the gut-brain connectionThe shocking research showing families who eat together just three times weekly dramatically reduce disease riskWhy ultra-processed foods now make up 70% of the average child's diet and how this damages gut bacteriaHow exercise shapes your microbiome differently depending on the type of activity you chooseThe transformative power of olive oil and other healthy fats on brain inflammation and blood-brain barrier healthWhy your taste buds can completely change in just four weeks when you consistently choose healthier foodsHow polyphenol-rich whole foods begin creating positive changes in your gut microbiome within 24 hoursFor more information go to https://www.lewishowes.com/1763For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Dr. Will Bulsiewicz – greatness.lnk.to/1621SCShawn Stevenson  – greatness.lnk.to/1484SCDr. William Li – greatness.lnk.to/1743SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to

this episode on the School of Greatness. So if someone is feeling like they have symptoms of some type of mental health challenge, they're feeling maybe they have ADHD or they have depression or depressed thoughts or they have anxiety or stress or overwhelm, what are three things they could do to start recognizing how to fix them? Well, I'll give you three things and they'll connect back to the microbiome. I would start with food. The food is our most powerful lever that we can pull in terms of shaping and changing

the microbiome. And there are simple choices that anyone can make and this doesn't have to fall under a dietary pattern or a label. It's just changing the way you eat. What would be for that first one, what would be the top five foods that everyone should eat daily to optimize their gut microbiome? Okay. I can give you a top five, but can I start with this essential rule? Yes. Which is diversity of plants. All right. So eating as much variety of different plants in our diet, we have to be intentional about this if this is what we want.

Because the problem is the food system is not going to do that for us. You go into the supermarket, they've distilled it down to 75% of the calories in our supermarket is three foods. What are those three foods? Wheat, corn, and soy. Wow. Yes. That is 75% of the calories in the supermarket. Now granted, most of those are ultra processed.

So I'm here to advocate for real food. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds, nuts, and legumes, that's at least five. We could add mushrooms. Those are broad categories. And we can get more specific if we want to. But to me, it's about getting that variety. And this is not just an idea or a concept.

This is actually scientifically proven. So in a study called the American Gut Project, which by the way was international, but it was run out of UC San Diego, what they found is that at the end of the day, when they did their analysis above everything else, there was this one rule, the diversity of plants in your diet was the number one factor in predicting who had the

healthiest gut and the number is 30. 30 per week. So 30 different plants per week. Now all fruits, vegetables, whole grain, seeds, nuts and legumes. Include those 30. They count. Okay. All of them, right? So, you want to have 30 different ingredients every week of plants. At least. Wow.

At least, but you know what? I don't even know if I've tried 30 different plants in my life. Lewis. It's like... You and I need to spend more time together. Exactly, right? It's like 30. Wow, that's incredible.

You start to take a smoothie. It could be Monday morning. Okay. Take a smoothie, bananas, blueberries, greens of your choice, whatever ones you like. Chia seeds, hemp seeds. Chia seeds, hemp seeds, flax seeds. We're already up to six. Okay.

Right? You want to add in some raspberries or some other kinds of berries. We can easily get this up to ten. You're making pasta sauce. Why would you just do pasta sauce? Why not throw some plants in there? Onions, garlic, basil, oregano, those count too. Spices count.

Why is the, you know, if someone's like, listen, I just like my five to 10 plants a week. I eat healthy plants, I eat mostly plants, I eat non-processed foods. Is that good enough or is it really more about the adding more and more of the diversity as possible as opposed to just broccoli and spinach by itself? The average person in the United States, 10% of their calories comes from actual plants. The number one plant is the potato, right? We're not talking about optimal nutrition here. There's a reason why people in the United States

are suffering through the health related issues that they currently have. We need to make changes. If we simply added more fiber to our diet, we would radically transform the health of this country. Really? Yes. And that person who's not necessarily eating a lot of variety, but is eating a lot of plants, If we simply added more fiber to our diet, we would radically transform the health of this country. Really? Yes.

And that person who's not necessarily eating a lot of variety, but is eating a lot of plants, number one, I give them a standing ovation. Their diet's great starting point. They're way better off than the average American is right now, right? We all though should be looking to optimize. We all have opportunities to do better.

So if you take that diet and you add more variety to it, they will reap the rewards of that. And the reason why is because every single one of these plants has unique properties that are number one, going to affect our microbiome. Right? So these microbes, they're kind of like us in many ways, Lewis. They have personalities. They have, some of them are not nice.

They have clicks. They have certain ones that they tend nice. They have cliques, they have certain ones that they tend to hang out with and they work together. They also have taste buds. They have different food preferences. Not every microbe, believe it or not, likes kale. Right. But you can train it to like kale or you can get rid of the ones that don't like kale. You can train it to like kale but there's going to be a lot of microbes that are going to be hungry if the only thing that you eat was kale. Interesting. Right?

So, every single plant is feeding certain families of microbes. Interesting. So, the more diverse and expansive that you have with your plant diversity, the less hungry you'll be as well is what I'm hearing you say. Oh, 100%. So, if I just eat broccoli and spinach and kale a few times a week versus I might never feel like I'm full. It's like I still want more, right?

So, I need some different carbs or some snacks or things to feel more full. But if I'm hearing you say right, if you have more diversity of plants more frequently, you're going to feel more satiated. You're going to get the fiber that your body needs to be less hungry as well. Yeah. So, satiation, like feeling full, is an important concept these days, right? We have all seen the rollout of ozempic and these other GLP-1 type agonists. What is this GLP-1 that we're talking about here? This is a hormone, is this GLP-1 that we're talking about here. This is a hormone. It's a gut hormone already produced by your body, right?

And makes you feel full. Now I'm not sitting here and going to try to pretend that like what you eat is gonna have the same effect on your body that a drug does. That's not what I'm trying to do here. But I want people to understand that here we exist where 95% of Americans, 95% are deficient in fiber. This is our most prevalent nutritional deficiency.

And fiber is what actually leads to the release of GLP-1. And GLP-1 is what exactly? GLP-1 is glucagon like peptide 1, which is a gut hormone, which is what Ozempic is. Ozempic is GLP-1. Okay. And it has these different effects on our body, including helping us to control our blood sugar and making us feel full. Interesting.

Which is the reason why Ozempic is used for diabetes and for weight loss. When someone takes an external drug like Ozempic to create a chemical, I guess, formulation inside of the body, the brain, the gut, the nervous system, things like that, to either turn on or turn off certain things. How effective is that versus, you know, having 30 plants a week and just eating the foods that will make you feel that will turn on these hormones that you're talking about that the drug would do and make you feel more satiated in a full by itself. So first of all, we have to fully acknowledge that these drugs are highly effective. Like there is no doubt that they work.

They're getting results. They're getting results. But what are the long-term effects of these? We have no clue. Right. We have no clue. We don't have the data yet to say what the long-term results of these. We have no clue. Right. We have no clue. We don't have the data yet to say what the long-term results of these are. What we do know with complete clarity is that if you stop using the drug, by the way, they're

very expensive. They're very expensive. Thousands of dollars per month. Wow. Right? And are we ready to commit to doing this for the rest of our lives? Because when you come off of the drug, you go right back to where you were before. Really? Yes, you go right back to where you were before. Really?

Yes, you rebound immediately. So flip side though, I think it's important at the same time as we're having this conversation about Ozempic and these types of weight loss drugs, again, like I'm not here to vilify them, okay? But when we're doing that instead of changing the way that we eat. The behaviors. Right. The problem that exists with this is like, yes, we can measure weight loss. And

when people lose weight, there are different things that can certainly improve and they become more healthy. But is the only thing that matters for human health, our weight? That is not the case. There is so much more to us as humans and our determinants of our health beyond just whether or not we're obese, skinny, or what our body habitus is. And so we need to look at that bigger picture. The bigger picture is that when we optimize our diet, we have opportunities to improve ourselves metabolically, which includes improving our weight, which includes improving our blood sugar control, but we also have opportunities to prevent other diseases far beyond what Ozempic is capable of preventing. Yeah.

But it also sounds like, you know, as I'm hearing you talk about this, it sounds like if someone's taking something like Ozempic to lose weight, if that's their main goal, like I want to lose weight, I'm going to take this drug, it's going to help me be less hungry. But if someone's losing weight but they're just still eating processed foods and they're not having plants and they're just eating less junk but they're still eating junk, how will that affect the brain and the gut connection to feeling good beyond just losing the weight? So, the data are clear that when we consume an ultra-processed diet, which in the United States today, 60% of calories are ultra-processed foods, so more than half.

These are foods by the the way, that did not exist 100 years ago. Crazy. Right? So like what we're describing was not possible for our great grandparents. There's no way they could have ate the diet that we currently eat because these foods did not exist. And our kids, 70% of calories in our kids come from ultra processed foods. Wow. And there's no doubt that they cause a shift in the microbiome. It's a shift towards what we call dysbiosis. So it's the opposite of what we see when we eat a diverse diet. Diverse diet leads to a diverse microbiome and that is a healthy microbiome.

When we shift towards ultra-processed foods, we're actually contracting the microbiome. We're empowering the ones that love sugar. We're empowering the ones that create inflammation. We're empowering the ones that create inflammation. And they're signaling the direction they want to go in. They want you to go in. Hey, you want more of this sugary drink. You want more candy. You want more chips.

They're telling your brain you need this. There are interesting studies to suggest that our taste buds and our cravings are driven by our microbiome. Wow. It's almost like we don't have control sometimes. Or maybe it's felt in the past like, I want this so bad. Yes, I can stop myself, but my desires and cravings are just like, I want to go to the store and buy candy right now.

And is that the microbiome kind of signaling and constantly telling us, get this, go buy this, you need this. I think that they play a role in that full, yes. I think that they play a role in that whole impulse. And yes, that certainly exists. But also the beautiful and exciting thing is our taste buds can change, right? Those impulses can change and you can get yourself to a place where what you crave is actually something that's good for your body and nourishes your body.

How long would you say it takes to change your taste buds from not craving sugar and processed foods into craving a diverse plant-based healthy options? I think it really, you really start to see the benefits of four weeks. Four weeks of doing it consistently. Of doing it consistently. Yeah. But by the way, don't, I don't recommend that people try to flip a switch. Now, there are some people that works for it.

But to me, we want what I want is sustainable. Something that you can actually stick with. Not extremes. Not extreme. We don't want yo-yo. We don't want to be swinging all over the place. So we want consistency, sustainability, and we want it to taste good.

So start with the stuff that you enjoy, introduce simple, sustainable choices, and build from there. And as we start to build, we start to build momentum. And our microbiome is given a chance to change with us. So I say four weeks is what it takes to really make this huge change. But really, I would rather that you do it over the course of six months a year.

Because then by consistently doing this, you are actually going to completely reshape your microbiome. Wow. So, getting back to the question about ultra-processed foods and brain health, what you're going to create with these ultra-processed foods and inflammatory microbiome. And inflammation is an essential feature that exists in many different cognitive disorders and mood disorders including depression, including anxiety. So, from my perspective, Mr.

Marshall, inflammation influences anxiety and depression. Oh, 100%. How much would you say, sorry to cut you off there, but how many, what's the percentage of the human population would you say has an inflamed gut and brain? Oh gosh. It's hard to put an exact number on that. But I think what we see if we were to zoom out. Even in America then maybe. Yeah, in America. If we just focus on what's happening here in the states, if you zoom out for a moment, think of all of the digestive disorders that exist.

So obesity, digestive disorders, metabolic issues, immune issues, meaning autoimmune type issues that are like hugely on the rise, hormonal issues, right? And you go down the line and you think of these things and I haven't even gone to the brain yet. Heart issues. And basically what I'm saying is the gut microbiome is a player in all of these different conditions. Wow. So, if the gut microbiome is a player in these conditions and you have these conditions present, you've already proven. You've already proven what the state of the microbiome is. And then the question is, how is it affecting your brain? And could you have better energy, better focus,

better ability to do tedious, hard things during the day? And the answer would be yes. And the way that that starts is by changing your diet. Wow. Yeah. So the number one thing you said is food. We covered some of these foods. Yes, and 30 different plants.

And 30 different plants. Yeah. What are the next Tuesdays? We talked about the top three things. So, on food real quick before we move on, there's a study called the SMILES trial. Okay. Where they took a plant predominant, it was not vegan, it was a plant predominant Mediterranean diet. Uh-huh. So, it has some fish and shellfish, things like that.

100%. And it was as effective as medication for the treatment of major depression. Really? Yeah. Just putting them on that nutritional food plan. Yes. For some reason, I don't like the word diet because I feel like it's a restriction. Yeah. As opposed to an addition

of healthy good things. It's not about like eating less and starving yourself. I think that's what people associate the word diet to. It's like starvation, cutting out all foods that I enjoy and being miserable. That's what people think when they think of diet. So I'd like to try, I try to keep correcting myself to being like, what's the healthy food plan? What's the nutritional abundance plan that we're going to step into?

Abundance is the right word for what we're talking about here. 30 different plants or more. I'm asking you to add more variety, not take away, not restrict. So, it's the opposite of what we've been told by traditional fad diets. Yes. So, all right, number two. Yes. So, we want to improve our mood.

Okay. Exercise. Mm-hmm. So, exercise clearly improves our mood, can be used as something to help in the treatment of major depression. And the question is, how is it doing that? And one of the answers to that question is actually through the way that exercise shapes our microbiome. How do they shape our microbiome?

It depends on what exercise you're doing. So, what kind of exercise do you like? I'm curious. I like to lift really heavy. Me too. And I like to run about two to three mile. I ran four miles last night, but I usually run two and a half to three at about a seven mile hour pace. Cool. So not too intense, not like too slow, but kind of like a steady pace.

Yeah. Do you switch up your exercise every once in a while to see if you can get better gains? I daily do different sets and different kind of like body parts, I guess, but I'm constantly following a program to either intensify or add reps or add weights. Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm getting more gains. In fact, I just put up 220.

I haven't done 225 in years but I started like six months ago, maybe four months ago being like, how many can I do when I did three? Yeah. It's like, okay, let me see what I can do over the next few months and a couple weeks ago I did 11 and a half reps at 225. So I feel like I'm back at almost college when I did 15 when I was training football. And I feel like I can do more than that now that I have more wisdom and knowledge and nutritional and training and recovery information.

So. It's amazing to be in your 40s and thriving. Yes. And that's and I'm actually lifting my heaviest weight in my 40s as well. Let's go. Yeah, dude. I'm pumped Let's go get the cameras and let's go look exactly So I like to play pickleball. I want to make sure I'm doing like some athletic movements also not just like I'm on a bar I'm jogging on a treadmill, but it's like okay. I need to do some pickleball. I like to do ping pong

I like to do different activities. I like to dance also So I'm also making sure that I'm doing lateral movements, not just in the gym because I know how important that is for mobility, stretching, all these different things. Ice tub, sauna, like I'm incorporating as many diverse activities as possible. Well, this is the point and I don't know that you were intentionally trying to set me up there because we haven't talked about this before but actually diversity of exercise is actually a relevant idea. Really?

Yes. So, much we can be talking about different types of foods have a different effect on our microbiome, different exercises have a different effect on our microbiome. They did this study where they looked at marathon runners and they identified that there was this one bacteria called Velonella that was disproportionately represented within these marathon runners. So the scientists, this was by the way done, I believe at Harvard and Boston. The scientists asked the question, what's the deal with this velanella? Like why would the runners have more this specific thing? And the answer was quite interesting. The velanella was breaking down lactic acid. When we run endurance exercise, lactic acid accumulates in our muscles. That creates muscle fatigue.

If you want to be a better runner and have greater endurance, you would break down lactic acid. The microbes are helping. That's interesting. Okay. They have another study done by rugby players in Ireland. Uh-huh. All right.

And they looked at their microbiome, these rugby players, and they discovered that there was a shift within their microbiome towards actually more anti-inflammatory bacteria that interact with fiber to produce what are called short chain fatty acids. Wow. Which are the most anti-inflammatory molecules out there. And these short chain fatty acids, which people may have heard of them, butyrate, acetate, propionate, these short chain fatty acids have healing effects have heard of them, butyrate, acetate, propionate. These short chain fatty acids have healing effects right there in your gut, they help to shape the microbiome, they affect the immune system, they affect our metabolism and they enter the blood

stream and they travel all the way to the brain and they affect the brain including the blood brain barrier. That's interesting because playing football growing up in high school and college, I always felt like I healed very quickly. I felt like when I'd get a scrape or a cut or I'd get like a bruise, like it wouldn't really show. And I don't know if that's because I was training in certain way that was explosive and power and speed that my microbiome I guess were helping me recover faster.

I have no idea. Yeah. Like a rugby player. Well, it's interesting because you think about all the great athletes, for example, in the NFL, and you see these guys do, you know, like Adrian Peterson comes to mind where some of the recoveries that he had

during his career- It's crazy. We're crazy, and they defy like the rules of recovery. Yes. And it makes you wonder if there's something- Is that genetics, is that microbiome, is that, yeah. Are there other factors in play here? But what's interesting is because you have this shift in the microbiome towards these anti-inflammatory molecules.

Okay, well, I just mentioned that depression has an inflammatory component to it, right? So here we are and we discover that exercise is actually good for helping our mood. And what I'm saying is what's happening under the hood, if you lift up the hood and take a look, is there's this shift in the microbiome. And now you don't even have to change your diet. I mean, I do want you to eat more plants, right? But actually, that alone helps you improve your anxiety

or stress or depression. Yes, and that shift that's happening in the microbiome is actually helping you to get more from your fiber. So, you don't change your diet, you eat the same fiber, now you get more from it. But what if you also changed your diet at the same time that you were implementing this exercise? We did one and two, food and exercise. This is why they synergize so well. So, would you say your gut microbiome influence your mood more than anything else?

I think that the answer is yes. And the reason why I say that is they have these bizarre studies that they've done where they take people and they inject into them something called lipopolysaccharide. What is that? All right. Lipopolysaccharide is produced by bacteria that live inside of us like E. coli. So, we inside of us like E. coli. So we've all heard of E. coli, okay? So this is like-

They inject a disease inside of us. So they're injecting this thing that you find in E. coli into a person's bloodstream. Wow. Okay? And then they track them over the next couple of hours. We're talking about humans. We're not talking about mice right now. And they see what happens and here's what they find.

Number one, because this bacteria has entered into the bloodstream, they get increased levels of inflammation in the body. Number two, their mood and their motivation to work dips. Wow. All right. Number three, they socially withdraw. All right. So what's going on here? Basically what I've just told you is that when they inject this E. coli type stuff, which I by the way want to unpack that in a quick moment, when they inject this E. coli based stuff called lipopolysaccharide, it basically activates inflammation which affects their mood and it also makes them socially withdrawn. And they think that

what's happening is that the body is starting to shut down to preserve energy because it needs to fight the infection. So that's number one. It's going to slow itself down. It's not going to have the energy to talk to people or be motivated. 100%. And then they socially withdraw. Why would they socially withdraw? We're social creatures. We come from living in tribes of people, right? And you want to protect one another. If you're sick, you don't want to pass that on to someone else. So, when you feel sick, there's this natural inclination to socially withdraw. To get away. Interesting.

To protect the others. Now, is this injection through this study, is that causation or is it I guess correlation? I guess what is it the difference between like, did it cause them, the microbiome to be depressed or is it part of the correlation of it? It could be something else that is causing that. Okay. So we have these studies where there's correlation. You have a group of people with major depression and you study their microbiome and you discover that their microbiome is damaged. Yes. Okay.

They have what we call dysbiosis or a leaky gut. Right? Now, what's causing what? That's the question, right? Because there's a correlation, but you can't prove that the microbiome caused the depression or similarly, you can't prove that depression caused the microbiome change. Yes. Right?

So then it raises the question, how do we then prove this? And there's a couple of ways that you prove this through interventions. And when you take this lipopolysaccharide, basically what you're recreating is what happens when a person has a damaged gut. Interesting. Because when you have a damaged gut, those microbes, they live inside the tube of the intestine and as we discussed at the very beginning of the show, that tube is outside of our body.

We have a single layer of cells called the gut epithelium that basically protect us because on the other side of the epithelial layer is 60 to 70% of our immune cells. Okay? So, the immune system is there to protect us on the other side. And the single layer cells, it's like the wall of our castle. And when our gut breaks down, when our microbes are damaged, when we don't have enough anti-inflammatory short chain fatty acids, you start to see this gut barrier breakdown. We get what people may call leaky gut.

And what leaks. Is the lipopolysaccharide. This lipopolysaccharide that they were injecting in this study, basically what they were recreating, they were not recreating an infection, they were recreating chronic inflammation that comes from a damaged gut. How do we get to the place where we start to choose healthy when we have the option as opposed to man, this is convenient. The Starbucks, I'm just gonna get all the sugary drinks, I'm gonna get the cookies, I'm gonna you know, when you have the money to buy healthy food but you still choose the convenience, the high sugar, the high calorie foods that

have a lack of nutrition. Why does that take place? Your culture has already inundated you with the deliciousness, the perceived deliciousness of all these ultra processed foods. In the United States, the average American adult is according to the BMJ. It's one of the most prestigious medical journals, British Medical Journal. 60% of the average Americans died as ultra processed foods. All right.

Now, the revelation that I'm bringing forth in this new project, the East Martyr Family Cookbook is that a new study that was published in JAMA, Journal of the American Medical Association, found that almost 70% of the average child's diet is ultra processed foods. Ooh. All right. So you're inundated as a child here in the United States, if you're average, if you're the average child, you're inundated with ultra-processed foods that is engineered by brilliant food scientists to taste a certain way that has this excitatory thing that influences what's

happening with your dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline, all these different hormones that make you feel exhilarated, that make you feel pleasure, right? And so, it's not just a taste thing, it's a addiction thing that is taking place with our children, all right? And so, you're inundated with this, why would you even consider eating quote healthy? It just doesn't even sound right. Right. Especially I'm tasty and you're young and so you've got all these metabolic benefits

on your side, right? And so this is- You're gonna have the candy, the ice cream, the processed food, the packaged food all day long. Absolutely. The fast foods, all that stuff. If you're a free range child in America, like we got free range chicken out here, if you're a free range child in America, you're going to go for ultra-processed foods.

Let's make a distinction to it. People are curious, what is ultra-processed foods? Processing of foods has been done by humans for thousands upon thousands of years. It's just taking a food and processing it in a way that makes it palatable, that makes it easy to store, to make it easy to trade, and to make it more enjoyable. So processing would be something like taking olives and using a stone press to make olive oil. That's extra virgin olive oil today.

And something like tomatoes and making a pasta sauce. You can still tell where it came from. It's like a one step and then maybe adding some spices, some cooking, that kind of thing. Ultra processed foods is when the food is harvested. We'll just say a base food substrate. So we'll say corn, for example. And the corn itself used as kind of a base and also as a sweetener, right?

I fruit those corn syrup with corn syrup and somehow that corn, that field of corn that you're looking at becomes pop cereal, right? Gotta have my pops, right? You don't know, you no longer, that hunter gatherer, if they were to see that box of cereal they would have no idea where it came from. There's no essence left. It spins process so much. All these different, not only breaking that corn down into sugar and different substrates,

but the additives, the flavors, the added flavors, added preservatives, food dyes, which we have strong data on this now of this being one of the underlying causative agents in attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders. Really? Our food dyes. Many food dyes have actually been banned in other countries that are still largely used here in the United States because they're disruptive to our nervous system, especially for our kids.

And so again, really starting to unpack these things, you start to realize, like, we're so disconnected from our food, it's scary because not that long ago, we evolved, really. If we just take out the last hundred years, just throw that, put that to the side. If we look at the thousands upon thousands of years of humanity before that, our food, we were deeply connected to it. It was a tribal thing. We all had responsibilities in procuring our food. And not just that, the acquisition of the food, the preparation of the food, and the eating

of the food was a community thing. All right. That's something you talk about with your new cookbook, which is about really eating healthy foods that taste delicious with family. Because we've lost the art of connecting with family when we eat. Everything is fast or convenient or watching with the TV on, which I'm guilty of half the time, but not as a community. And you talk about in your book about how, you know, when you deal with family or friends you care about and you're eating meals together that you're specifically creating together or having some

element or role in the creation process, how much more powerful is doing that consistently over time versus eating isolated and eating ultra processed foods by yourself? Yeah. The last time I saw you, that's what we were doing. Eating together, it was a celebration for you, for your birthday. It was one of the most magical days, right? We'll always remember that experience. And funny enough, this was normal. I just came back from Maui, for example.

This was normal, this celebration around food, right? Having a luau, like this is kind of like maybe a commercial aspect of it now, but it's deeply rooted in sharing a food with your tribe, right? And celebrating life, celebrating our connection to food and to each other. And this is the mission right now. Now we're getting to how do we fix this? I talked about the larger culturescape that we're existing in and cultures like an invisible hand that's guiding our behaviors. We think we have free will, but our culture is really deciding what we're aware of and the choices that we have. Now, how do we change this culture? We start with our own family. We start with the controlling the controllables.

Because I've been in this field for over 20 years and thinking about all the time I've spent trying to target the bigger culture, it's very, very difficult. And what I found to be the most effective is changing the culture from within, starting with yourself, your family, that starts to bleed out to your community.

People start to see things different. They see an example. I didn't see any examples when I lived in Ferguson, Missouri. I didn't see what health looked like. And so people to see me and my family, knowing where I come from, it changes everything. Now how does eating together with friends and family start to shift this culture? Well, according to the data, I'm going to share three powerful studies with you. It's creating a protection for our health that here before we didn't really understand.

What does that mean? Science. So, eating together with friends and family, and we start with study number one. This is researchers from Harvard. They gathered all this data on family behaviors around eating and they found that families that consistently eat together have a higher consumption of vital nutrients that prevent chronic diseases and lower intake of ultra-processed foods. Really?

Right? So this is Harvard research. Why is that? Why do you think that is? There's a couple of reasons why, and I break this down in the book because I'm a why guy. I want to know why. Right, right. And so one of the things that really jumps out is the intention behind eating together

as a family, right? There's an intentional meal planning that's automatically going to take place. It's not going to be across the board all the time, but if you know I'm having family dinner tonight, you're thinking about it. It's an unconscious, subconscious thought process. It's like, okay, we got to plan, like, what are we going to have? Right? Whereas today, if we don't have this as What are we going to have? Whereas today,

if we don't have this as a constant structure, door dash is on tap or just picking up something because we're not thinking of them. We make the food decision last minute and that's okay because we have access to that. That's okay. But when that becomes normalized, we get more and more separate from each other and also this protective mechanism for our health. So that's study number one. That's's study number one. That's from researchers at Harvard. Now this next one was cited in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. And they looked at family behavior around food and the outcomes for the children specifically.

And they found that families who eat breakfast with their kids, parents who eat breakfast with their children four times a week had dramatically lower intake of ultra-processed foods, higher intake of vital nutrients, at least five servings of fruits and vegetables at each day, most days of the week, and the list goes on and on, all these different benefits they were saying. But this is the most important part about this study. And by the way, they found that when the TV was rarely or never on for these families, they had an even further drop in their consumption of ultra-process foods to the kids specifically

because of that marketing, that advertisement. Now the most important part about the study is that this was looking at minority children who would generally be in the context of low-income conditions, families like mine. We didn't know that eating together could help to protect our health in some strange way, but had we known even if we were eating processed foods, just the behavior of eating together, it starts to create this protection. I'm going to share with you why. This leads to the next study. This was a collaboration of studies. This was actually published in

pediatrics and the Journal of the American Medical Association. And I'm gonna get all these resources and link them up for you guys too. Yeah and they're all in the book detailed. How perfect. In the family cookbook. And so what these researchers uncovered was that, and this is the most important takeaway from today, this is the one, do this one thing. They found that families who eat together any meal three times a week, okay, so parents eating together with their children or parents eating together with their children, just three times a week

dramatically decreased overweight and obesity in the children and decreased eating disorders obesity in the children and decreased eating disorders and just overall decreasing the risk of the onset of early mortality and chronic disease. By eating together with your family three times. That's fascinating. This is the major takeaway that I want people to take on and make that a mandate, make it a mission to eat with your family, eat with friends three times a week, plan it, add it to your calendar,

because today we've got a lot of stuff going on. And a lot of times if you don't put on your schedule, it's not real. Like literally plan it out. This could be whatever flavor it looks like for you. This could be family dinner on Wednesday and Thursday, and then brunch on Sunday, right? Just whatever works for you,

but there's something really special about this process process and we can unpack more of this why, but also the psychological aspect. And this was shown in data looking at adults and how eating together with their family dramatically decreased their stress levels. This was coming from a population of workers from IBM. And they found that as long as the workers were able to get home and have dinner with their Family it kept work morale high But as soon as their work schedule and the demand start to dig into them spending time with their family and getting home in time For dinner their work morale start to go down their stress levels elevated now. Why does this matter overall? well, and this is another big takeaway from today and

Now, why does this matter overall? Well, and this is another big takeaway from today. And this research as well is published in JAMA. But the research, this was a meta-analysis, and the researchers determined that upwards of 80% of all physician visits today are for stress-related diseases. 80%! Up to 80% because of the stress-related component. Because stress isn't just something that's invisible. Your thoughts create correlating chemistry in your body instantaneously. And so if you're having these habitual stressful

thoughts and automatic negative thoughts as our friend Daniel Amen discusses, when this is on automatic for yourself you're just releasing these chemicals, a chemical cascade that can lean towards toxicity. They can be great in the short term to help you to survive short term stress, acute stressors, but we were never designed to carry constant emotional stress, constant mental stress, constant environmental stress. So a lot of people might hear that, they're like, well, I'm not that stressed. My work isn't that stressful. We got to talk about this,

something called an allostatic load and your overall stress load. So what goes into your stress load individually? Well, we do have work stress. Yeah, that's a common one. We have relationship stress. A relationship stress can mess you up. Oh man.

It can mess you up. It was messed up for about 15 years in different relationships, man. It was like, it'll mess your health up. Absolutely. Your mind up. Absolutely. Your energy flow, everything.

And it's based on your perception. Wow. It's based on your perception. It's where you think about it. And the correlating chemistry that you're gonna be creating, the most powerful pharmacy in the universe is in your body. 100%. Because it's, this isn't bioidentical, it is identical. the you're creating chemistry for your receptor sites designed in you for you. There's nothing else more powerful than that. And so

We've got of course there also some great breakup songs out there. All right, some great love songs that come from that there There's that so we got we got work stress. We've got relationship stress. We've got mental stress emotional stress We've got relationship stress, we've got mental stress, emotional stress, we've got exercise stress. Exercise stress is what's known as a hormetic stressor. It's a good stress if you're able to heal from and recover because the exercise isn't making the magic happen, it's tearing you down. The magic comes when you're able to recover, rebuild, come back better. But add that on to an already stressed person, spiritual stress.

What if you feel disconnected? What if you feel like you're lacking purpose and significance, right? All these things, it starts to add into that overall stress load. And now here's another huge one, environmental stress. The environment that we are living in today is very, very different from what our ancestors evolved in. All right.

There are tens of thousands of synthetic, newly invented chemicals. And we're talking about millions of tons released into our environment. And so the very air that we're breathing is different. And to take this into one of the cultural contagions that we need to protect our family from within our own household. A really good friend of mine, and she's one of the most brilliant researchers. She's the leading authority in the world on dietary oils. All right, so her name's Dr. Kate Shanahan.

She has background as a family physician, but also she was a nutritionist for the Lakers during Kobe's time there. Later in his career, helping to extend his career. Every time he would go to a different hotel and travel, he's bringing bone broth or finding a place where they would make it like that was one of his things. Bone broth. That she introduced. Yeah.

And also Dwight Howard was there, too. And she was like, he had the worst time. He was eating all this candy and whatnot. Some of these guys you hear about these NBA NFL guys, it's like just candy half the day. Yeah. And they're just genetic fre half the day. Yeah. And they're just genetic freaks though. Yeah, well we'll see what happens.

Yeah, but the injuries start to come, you start to feel tired. But Kobe wasn't like that. Kobe was always looking for the edge. He was, right? And so anyways, so she's got this huge database of research on dietary oils. And one of the research papers that she shared with me,

and this blew my mind like I had to sit with it like I had to really sit and think about it. We're taking muscle biopsies of human fat cells back in the earlier part like the night around the 1900s and you see what makes up a human fat cell. What is what's in there? And in the biopsy they found that the fat cell itself was made of about 2% PUFAs. Okay, PUFAs are polyunsaturated fatty acids. All right, and they're naturally occurring in different plant foods like nuts and seeds for example.

And so that's all good. Now they recently took biopsies of fat cells of modern humans and they found that the average fat cell was made up of about 25% Pufus, polyunsaturated fatty acids. Now why does this matter? Polyunsaturated fatty acids are by their very nature very unstable, right? They're by their very nature very pro-inflammatory and they are a byproduct, oftentimes unfortunately, are coming along with things that stir about something called these reactive oxygen species or accelerated oxidation of your cells or accelerated aging to put in blood link. Now what does this mean for us?

About the span of about a hundred years, 2% polyacetamol fatty acids make up our cell fat cells to now 25%. What does this mean for us? The very ingredients that make up human beings has changed dramatically. Huh. The recipe for making a human is dramatically different. All right. And wondering why we're having such poor health outcomes. Could this be one of the causative agents when we're talking about our switch over in the oils that we're consuming? Where are we getting all these polysaturated fatty acids, ultra processed foods that are riddled with vegetable oils, canola oils, and all these unstable oils?

And by the way, I encourage people, we'll put in the show notes as well, to go to YouTube and look up how canola oil is made, alright? And just watch. Watch. Wow. Alright? It is going to shock you. If you look at olive oil, right?

Extra virgin olive oil, that means it's cold pressed and you're pressing olives and you get the oil. That's it. You're just pressing it down and oil comes out when you see how canola oil is made to be able to extract from the canola plant That amount of oil it is it is scary and really so it's all this chemical processing all these solvents and deodorizers and By the way, because it stinks, you know, they're trying to nullify and neutralize the smell. And a lot of even inflammatory, like I'm talking about literally being able to catch on fire

type of chemicals used in this process. And to get something that looks uniform and clean, and then they put it in a plastic bottle, instead of on store shelves. And plastics don't just biodegrade, they photodeodegrade so light is breaking it down over time by the way there's been a lot of science I've talked about this on past shows about this and all a what are that what are that we'll just say the three oils we should try to eliminate from our diet and then three healthier oils that may

even have some benefits yeah let's stay right here with extra virgin olive oil. So one of the studies that I shared in the new book in the East Mortar Family Cookbook looks at olive oil and researchers at Auburn determining that olive oil can actually help to reduce inflammation in the brain and help to heal the blood brain barrier. Incredibly, like that's astronomically powerful.

Like why is this oil, why does it have such a resonance with the human brain and nervous system? That's amazing. And this is more mono and saturated fatty acids, by the way. And also if it's treated right, it's gonna be bottled in dark glass because it's sensitive to light and heat.

And so even using it, by the way, we wanna make sure that we're not using it on too high of heat and also Traditionally, maybe finishing your dishes with it, right? So you play just your food or using it for salad dresses pour on some olive oil, right our mutual friend. Dr. Steven Gundry He's a Every day look at his results My guy is you know, he's in his senior years big time and he's just so on point, like his cognition, his health, his energy.

Last time I talked to him, he was like on a ski trip somewhere. It's amazing to see. He takes like a shot a day of olive oil, right? Yeah, and it's just like a crazy old man. Or he's like, oh no, he actually is looking at the data. And so that would be one in the healthy category. And another one, now this one, there's a little bit of, by the way, none of these are 100%

across the board for everybody. All right. We've got to keep that in mind. The new, the future of nutrition and health is personalization For some people olive oil is not your thing. You might have Background genetics that don't metabolize this particular oil a certain way or small amounts or whatever the case might be So you got to keep that in mind So we've got nutra genomics and nutra genetics are going to be some of the leading fields of science looking at how What you eat influences your genetic expression

and also your set of genes, how it's catering towards certain things being better for you versus other things, right? Versus your friend, versus your wife, versus your brother, all right? Everybody has our unique cascade of genes. And on top of that, microbial genes, all right? So all the genes that make up your microbiome, all the genes that make up your microbiome all the bacteria that make up your Microbiome they have their own genes if we go gene for gene in the human body 99% of your genes are bacterial. It's the little critters their genes right and so now

Where we're at today with science we're looking at how our Bacteria's genes are affecting our human gene expression. All right, so we can go down the rabbit Sure, sure, sure. But just circle this back to another oil for us to look at would be avocado oil. Avocado oil is hot out here in the streets. We like it. You'd want that to come in a dark bottle. It's higher in monosaturated fats and it's coming from a real food, all right, an avocado.

It's a lot more close touch than trying to process corn and make it into an oil. All right, so and that leads over to, and those are just a couple. What about- For the audience watching or listening, I had my first taste of guacamole at your place. Yeah.

Remember that? Actually, this sounds bad, but as a 40 year old man, I had my first avocado, like hard avocado. Congratulations. You're a big boy. I still have the palate of like a seven year old child. But every time you've been with us, we've introduced something new.

I know, and I was like, ah, I'm scared. But did I do it? I'm like, that's not that bad. But it's also- There's salt out there. These great food experiences, you know, because you tore that guacamole up, let's be honest. I did, it was good.

And also, like the cookies that my wife made back in St. Louis, for example, like very, again, using higher quality ingredients, but still, like every now and then you want a cookie. Nah, give me some of those. I think we had a casserole too. She brought some cookies over here, man. That casserole's amazing.

Yeah, when you come by, we've got some great stuff. I'm in. Okay, so we got olive oil, avocado oil, all in dark bottles. What would be one more you think? Is there one more or? Man, there's so many. There's so many popping in mind.

There's good oils. Yeah, but there's a caveat here. So there are these cat this category of seed oils which that in of itself unfortunately is going to invoke some controversy and what I want to implore everybody who is really about that life and nutrition, let's come together, let's have healthier conversations and not become so black or white or dogmatic about a certain thing. So seed oils in general, the majority of these seed oils out here on the streets that are

riddling, riddled in processed foods. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about hemp oil, flaxseed oil, chia oil, that's cold processed, that's stored in shelf stable ways, it's generally going to be in a refrigerated section. You can find some really valid benefits here that's backed up with peer-reviewed data. There's a plant form of omega-3s that can be utilized as an energy source by the body pretty efficiently and also can get converted into some of the omega-3s, DHA and EPA to help to fuel your brain and nervous system.

Now your conversion process is going to depend on you. It's going to depend on your genes, your microbiome, your overall metabolic health. So I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water, but first of all, where does that analogy come from? That's terrible. Yeah? All right, who's throwing babies out? but with seed oils just being all that all right certain seeds, but The important thing is they cannot be exposed to very much heat at all. Are they going to become oxidizing rancid? So those are the ones I would say and as far as the ones to avoid absolutely avoid vegetable oil, quote, vegetable oil.

It's not made from vegetables, by the way. All right. It's the framing because it sounds healthy. This is called health washing. Throwing the label on a thing and making it sound like it's healthy. And marketers are using this like crazy now, right? So you can get a box of Cheerios. It's like, it's heart healthy, right?

Honey Nut Cheerios. Lowers cholesterol. They actually had to change that. Really? Yeah. Because they finally face some backlash and but also now they'll say gluten free, right? Gluten free. Oh, you're a gluten free diet or like they're just fat free, right?

They're still throwing these catchphrases onto things with an ultra processed bowl of crap. But by the way, vegetable oil, I put this study in the book as well. This was published in the journal Inhalation Toxicology. So it's the top journal looking at how inhaling different things, fumes and things like that creates toxicity in the human body and other animals as well. What the researchers found was that just smelling vegetable oil during cooking can damage your DNA.

Holy cow. But the biggest focus needs to be on the quality of that food that you're eating, that you're building your tissues out of real sustainable materials, and that things that your cells can recognize, that your cells, your genes have evolved having some exposure to this versus hot fries.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Which is very different from the metabolic impact that that's gonna have versus in a kid. You could do things in a certain phase, like you were guzzling Dr. Pepper, like you can pay for it and you can get by,

but at some point there's a cost with everything. Absolutely, man. There's a cost with everything in our universe. There's causality. And so being able to be empowered and start to see through a different lens, like is this real food or not? Based on what I'm hearing you talk about, it almost sounds like if we stop thinking about mental health, not stop thinking about it, but focus more on get health, if we stop thinking about mental health, not stop thinking about it, but focus more on gut health, it sounds like it connects to the brain and the mind and will create more

alignment in ease versus dis-ease. More, it's a new frontier. It opens up the avenue for more solutions. And by the way, because the gut also connects to other parts of our body as well, you know, again, remember I told you, like I'm all about the common denominator. Pull that bow back and send a single arrow through as many problems as you can. Imagine if we could actually tackle mental health,

mental wellness, and physical wellness all at the same time. And gut bacteria clearly plays a role. It's not the only thing, but you know, it is the undiscovered country. Because there's a, who is the doctor? Dr. Emory Mayer, I think it is. I don't know if he's got a book called Gut Brain Connection, I think somebody that's talking about these things as well. And it seems like a lot of the things that are stemming from the brain disease or challenges is in the gut.

Yeah. And it's also linked to longevity, it sounds like it's why. Exactly, exactly. Well, this is what we're beginning to really, I would say unravel and take, go into the layers of the onion to say, all right, if gut health is important for you in your normal active adult life,

which we now know it is, what role could it play towards actually fostering, supporting, maybe even triggering those signals for longevity? I mean, maybe, listen, I mean, so I always talk about our body like this. We're all different, you know, we've got different genetics, we've got different, you know, like, of course, most people say they've got different metabolisms. But it turns out that when we are born, it's like taking a laptop out of the box. Our operating system is all set. When you and I are born, my operating system and your operating system, pretty much the

same. Our OS was exactly the same. Exactly. All right. And so why is it that our, I mean, maybe your metabolism, my metabolism closer than more different, but you know, cause we take care of ourselves, but why is it that people develop such divergence, so different metabolisms, for example, or maybe longevity patterns. And it turns out, you know, just like your laptop, you know, if you take care of your

laptop, you turn care of your laptop, you turn it off at night, you clear the software. Yeah, you update the software, you make sure that you pad it when you're traveling, clean it, clean it, all that kind of stuff. And let's say I'm not so careful. I drop it, it stays gets really hot in the car. I spill coffee on it, or whatever, you know, what do you think is gonna happen to our operating system? Or I download all kinds of stuff. Let's go break.

Well, what's gonna happen is that your computer operating system and mine are gonna diverge. You're gonna go this way, I'm gonna go that way. And actually, probably for our, definitely for our metabolism, but probably for our longevity as well, you know, that's actually what happens is that we start to diverge our patterns. We're all born the same way.

And the reason I'm bringing this up, because I think for anybody who's listening to this or watching this, people tend to think I'm the fate of my genetics. You know, there's nothing I can do about it. So screw it. I'm just gonna do whatever I wanna do. Eat whatever, drink whatever, yeah.

You know, what I wanna really emphasize is that we are all hardwired to actually heal. We can get back to that healing, we can heal to get back to our original state, which is designed like the laptop to function its entire life of the device with an intact operating system.

What do you do with your computer? Hopefully you don't have to reinstall the operating system. Take good care of it. But if you don't take good care of it, clean the cache, do a virus scan, clean it up. Take good care of it. And that's kind of how I think people should think about longevity is that it's not like just set a number.

This is not like booking a seat in a movie theater online. I'm going to get that number and that's what I want. Okay. Good luck. You know, I think that, you know, it's a journey we need to focus on today and keep focusing on as far as we can actually see and keep doing that. You know, it's like longevity, you know, there's a quote from E.L. Doctorow, who was a novelist, who once said, writing is like driving at night. You can't see beyond your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. And that's kind of how I think about longevity,

living as long as you can go. But you wanna actually make sure that you're enjoying yourself and you're fully aware of what you're doing along the same line. Yeah, 100%. And seeing what's in front of you, not just only focusing on how do I make it to 100 or 110, just enjoying the moment. The rise is important, but honestly, like, so is what's directly in front of you. Sure. If someone watching or listening has maybe neglected their health for many years, and they're now living in excess weight or maybe even obesity.

And they've been on a pattern in a routine of eating poorly, drinking a lot of excess alcohol, whatever it might be, and just not taking care of their health. and you were to prescribe just a 90-day game plan to reset their metabolism and try to get the right things going again, what would you prescribe that individual? And how much do you think they could actually recover and start to heal from years of not taking care of their health? First of all, I think that we're able to recover a lot of our health and heal ourselves by making small moves. And this is really important. Not extreme moves. Big moves are, some people can do them, most people can't maintain big moves. All right? Small moves, almost anybody can actually do. And of course, you know, people are very complicated

and you know, the scenario you described as somebody who's like, you know, been super unhealthily their whole lives and you know, not done the right things and are overweight and they're alcohol, I mean, I think you were stacking, you know? I mean- Maybe it's not that extreme, but maybe it's, you know,

you know, like- 20 to 40 pounds overweight. How about this, like the typical person who hasn't taken care of themselves for most of their life. Yeah, exactly. Maybe not too extreme. What can they actually do? And maybe it's not 90 days.

I would say, you know, like, hey, you know, I think you should take a look at things that you can actually do in a month or two. Give yourself a little runway, all right? Take it easy on yourself, because stress and putting too much pressure on yourself doesn't actually help. But some of the principles, I will tell you,

that is supported by evidence, scientific evidence and clinical evidence, is number one, I would say, switch to eating more of a plant-based diet with whole foods. All right, so I just said a mouthful there because what I'm saying is that eat more foods that you are buying whole and fresh and cook them yourself.

Not processed. Not processed, okay. So you can cut down on your ultra processed foods and focus more on your whole fresh foods. Immediately, you're gonna be flooding your body with more of Mother Nature's pharmacy. more on your whole fresh foods, immediately you're going to be flooding your body with more of Mother Nature's pharmacy. That's pharmacy with an F, not a pH.

Yes. All right. And that's going to start healing and prompting your gut to start doing it as well. But you're going to start getting a lot of stuff that is not prescription. Before you go to the next point, can you make a distinction? If you can explain to people, because I don't think people truly understand, can you make a distinction if you can explain to people because I don't think people truly understand when you eat one processed meal, what is happening with a processed food, whether it's ultra processed or just processed and not its complete whole food that you cook, what happens when it enters the mouth of ultra processed food or something that's processed

and goes through the gut and out. What is happening to your body with that versus just single ingredient whole foods cooked and in the system? First of all, I think that this idea that the word, I mean, we're now beginning to have this conversation about ultra processed foods as a society, right?

And it's damn well time that we actually did, all right, because we do know that ultra processed foods aren't good for you. But the word process and ultra processed often gets confused. So let's start there. Okay. So raw foods are, I mean, whole foods ingredients are like going to the grocery store and just eating the food without doing anything to it. Banana, apple.

Exactly. Spinach. Oh, right. Carrot. Right. Like single ingredients. Yeah, single ingredients. The salad bar is a great example of really just like whole individual ingredients that

you put into a bowl and just eat them one by one. Most foods that we cook, by cooking them, we're processing. I don't know if you've ever seen, so anything that we do to manipulate food is processing. So if you ever made pasta by yourself, you take a big pile of flour and you crack some eggs in it and you just take your fingertips and work it

and you then roll it up and roll it out and cut it up. And okay, so that's processing. So that's different. So that's different than all your process. Going to ultra processing, which is having a factory extrude the ingredients, shape them into animal crackers or whatever, and then adding flavor. Food colorings. Adding coloring, adding stabilizers, adding elucifiers, and then throwing in all these like chemical ingredients that you can't pronounce, or you have no idea what they do in there.

That's ultra-processed. OK, so the difference between something minimally processed first ultra-processed, what happens to the gut, the bacteria in your gut, and the body and immune system with having those different options. And I'll tell you what we know as a release of longevity. So first of all, I try to break it down really simply. Our body is like your car.

When you put our food is our fuel. When you go to the filling station, you get a choice. You're gonna actually put in, like you got four different kinds of fuel you could put in. All right, if you put in, like you got four different kinds of fuel you could put in. All right. If you put in good quality fuel, your car is going to drive better. Over the long haul, it's going to drive better.

Every now and then you put in some crummy cheap fuel, it's all right. You're not going to notice. But if you do that day in and day out, you're going to notice it for sure. All right. So you put something good into your body, your body is going to respond really well.

You put something bad in your body, your body's gonna respond really well. You put something bad in your body, your body's also gonna respond accordingly in a negative way. So simply, in simplest terms, that's actually what the difference is between ultra process, which isn't really good for you, and your body's gonna revolt, and it's gonna trash your body from the inside out.

In ways, some ways we know, and other ways we don't even know yet. By the way, the whole conversation about ultra plastics, about micro plastics, all right. Hey, you know what? If you've ever seen like the amount of machinery and plastic that has to, you know, the machines that the processed food has to go through,

who knows how much ultra, you know, micro plastics are actually found in ultra processed foods. It's like leaching through, who knows how much microplastics are actually found in ultra-processed foods. It's like leaching through, yeah. That remains to be seen, you know? And so what I say is that the least amount of processing you can have for your food, the more you can be assured that it's going to be a quality food that you're actually going to put in your body, and your body will react well. So what's going on when you feed your food, minimally processed whole foods, your body is going to extract immediately as many of the polyphenols as it can out of it, goes in your stomach, it's absorbed into your bloodstream. Those polyphenols go to town. The effect of a polyphenol

of eating polyphenols and there's a lot of polyphenols in foods, strawberries, blueberries, an orange, an apple, broccoli, all right, when those, all those polyphenols basically get into your bloodstream and think about it like starting a symphony of effects, you know, you ever go to like listen to a, a symphony orchestra. It's not just usually one instrument that goes off the whole, the whole orchestra goes off. And that's what happens when we eat poly foods with polyphenols, the dietary fiber tumbles down. We might absorb some of it. Some of we don't, goes tumbles down all the way to your lower gut. What does it do? It feeds our gut microbiome. We've got 39 trillion hungry little baby birds in a nest waiting to be fed. Okay? And the dietary fiber we eat actually feeds them. How important is this? And we know it's really

important not only because dietary fiber seems to be eating dietary fiber lowers the risk of diseases like dementia, diabetes, cancer, improves outcomes for cancer, but for cancer, for example, there was a study from the MD Anderson Cancer Center that looked at people with melanoma, okay, deadly form of skin cancer, getting immunotherapy, so they're getting the state-of- treatment requires their own immune system to go to town. That's the 70% in your gut requires the gut bacteria, gut bacteria need to eat. Okay.

Got to feed them. Turns out for every five to six grams of dietary fiber, it decreased mortality by 30%. Mortality, death, okay, death. Decreased it. Decreased it by five to six grams of dietary fiber per day. Now, what does that look like? Dietary fiber, five to six grams? You get a medium-sized pear has five to six grams of dietary fiber. Not a big ask. Can you do one of those a day?

One of those a day or the equivalent to get the dietary fiber. Of course. All right. So, and again, now you get all the polyphenols and so like powerful effects. How quickly does dietary fiber and these polyphenols, how quickly can they change the fate of your gut bacteria within 24 hours? Come on. You can start getting changes.

So, and I wrote about this in my book, A to Beat Disease, you have kiwis, okay? And you measure the gut microbiome. And you can within 24 hours after eating one kiwi, you can start to grow more healthy gut bacteria in the first day, all right? By four days, you start growing other bacteria that are healthy as well. So, you know, like you're asking me,

what about the dude who actually hasn't been taking care of his gut bacteria? the first day, all right. By four days, you start growing other bacteria that are healthy as well. So, you know, like you're asking me, what about the, what about the dude who actually hasn't been taking care of himself? Look, this is what I'm telling you. Go eat some whole fresh foods that you prepare yourself. Okay. Cut down some of that ultra processed stuff. I'll talk about what the ultra processed stuff does in a second.

And you'll start to get these changes. You're hardwired to do this. Your body wants to do it, you know? Let it do its job, okay? And you'll start to feel the effects, or at least your body will feel the effects within 24 hours. Well, the changes start fast.

And so, you know, definitely within a few days, you will start to feel much better. I mean, listen, you ever go like a crummy food bender? And then, right? Don't feel good. Don't feel good. And then you say, you know what? This sucks.

I'm gonna actually eat healthy now. You start getting it back pretty quick. Yes. You're like, I am so glad I'm doing this, right? So the changes happen fast. So I think, you know, so number one, it is within everyone's power to be able to actually make these moves, okay, that count,

simply by shifting to whole good healthy foods. Cause you know, the bad stuff with the artificial preservatives and artificial coloring and all that, they, you know, the simplest way to think about what they might do besides dump chemicals into your body is they can kill your gut bacteria. That's not what you wanna do. Killing the gut bacteria, by the way,

is like we're talking about the symphony, Beethoven's fifth, we're Handel's messiah, big choir, in a big concert hall, hurting your gut bacteria, like ultra processed foods and all these artificial things. It's like sending in, it's like sending in hooligans from a British football game. Screaming in the- Screaming into a concert hall and kicking over all the instruments. Wow, that's what processed foods do, ultra-processed. Yeah.

all the instruments. Wow, that's what processed foods do, ultra processed. Yeah. What are other things that ruin the gut bacteria then, besides ultra processed foods? Well alcohol will do it. Smoking also can affect it. Not getting enough good sleep, not getting exercise can also affect your gut. What about vaping? Vaping, oh yeah.

Vaping is also, I mean, look, cigarettes, vaping, cigars, pipes, it's all part of the same continuum. There's nothing better about vaping. In fact, research has actually shown that the flavoring that they put in vapes are actually probably even worse than some of the stuff that you have in just a plain cigarette. So, you know.

So vaping or smoking or cigars, that doesn't help the gut bacteria. No, not at all. Does it impact it in a plain cigarette. So, you know. So vaping or smoking or cigars, that doesn't help the gut bacteria. No, not at all. Does it impact it in a negative way or is it? Yeah, it impacts in a negative way. Really? Yeah, because guess what? All those chemicals, instead of eating them,

now you're inhaling them and they go right into your bloodstream. Instead of from your gut, your stomach, it just goes right into your bloodstream for your lungs. And now, you know, everything is affected. That 60,000 mile channel of highways and byways is delivering whatever the menthol flavor or the whatever flavor you've got all over the place. You really don't want that.

How much of a block, if someone is smoking every day or vaping or doing cigars or pipes every day or they're inhaling some type of smoke, how much of a dam are they creating in the flow of health throughout their nervous system, their bloodstream, their... I don't have a number for you, but it's pretty significant. Really? It's so significant that some of the researchers

looking at environmental toxins have been even looking at not just, not only smoking and vaping, all right, but looking at even like cooking. Think about the line cooks at a restaurant. The smoke, you mean? And all the fryer smoke. Yeah, the grease and everything coming out. Listen, like you and I, we probably good. We probably have spent more time,

we've probably done our time, standing in the front of a grill, in the summer, right? Of course. And we're flipping the burgers, or grilling the steaks. Hey, you know, like that's part of the, that's part of the,

it's part of growing up, and doing our thing, all right? Think about all that stuff that we're breathing. We know that grilling meat puts carcinogens into the meat. What do you think we're breathing in? Oh, man. Okay. Fortunately, you know, like most people aren't grilling every day.

But if you're a line cook in a restaurant, you're going there doing that. Eight hours a day. At the station, eight hours a day every day. Okay. at the station eight hours a day every day. Okay, so what I'm saying is that, like what we expose our bodies to makes a big difference. So these are choices that we make. And researchers and public health and policy makers, like I think that there's starting to be a convergence

in recognizing that, if we want a healthier society and healthier individuals, all right, we gotta just be a little bit more Alert to the fact that what we're exposed to can have like a really really big impact in ways that we didn't think about before Now it's time now it's the time to think about it I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel

exclusively on Apple podcasts, share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.