68: The Hidden Dangers of Ultra-Processed Foods and How They’re Wrecking Your Health with Brigid Titgemeier

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Hello and welcome. I'm Dr. Jen Simmons, a breast cancer surgeon turned integrative oncologist on a groundbreaking mission to transform the conversation around breast health. If you're seeking to redefine the way that you think about breast health, you're in the right place. Breast health isn't just an aspect of well being. It is health, integral and indispensable. Here on the Keeping Abreast podcast, we delve deep into the innovative ways to diagnose, treat, screen for, and prevent breast cancer. But it's more than that. It's about having the crucial conversations that empower, enlighten, and drive us all to a healthier place. As someone who has navigated the front lines of breast cancer treatment and now champions an integrative approach, I bring a unique perspective to these discussions, blending rigorous science with holistic health principles. Health is a journey, not a destination, and I am truly honored to accompany you on this path. Each episode aims to provide you with actionable insights and cutting edge strategies to take charge of your breast health and.

Your overall well being.

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Metabolic disease is a huge problem in this country. And I talk about it mostly in the context of breast cancer. As a metabolic disease, it is the result of long standing metabolic dysfunction. Now, there are so many things that contribute to metabolic dysfunction and in the simplest of ways, I'm talking about people who do not effectively manage their blood sugar and all the downstream effects that come from not effectively managing your blood sugar. So of course, the many things that contribute our diet, their sleep, there's stress, there's movement. And I feel like many people, most people understand how, how to sleep, they understand that stress is a problem and how to manage stress, they understand that movement is necessary and how to do that. But for whatever the reason, the diet part of it is so very confusing and people don't know what to do, they don't know how to eat, they don't know when to eat, they don't know what to eat. And as a result, we have less than 10% of Americans and the whole world is following in our footsteps that lack metabolic health. And we are in crisis. We are without question having a breast cancer crisis. And the breast cancer crisis is directly resultant from this metabolic crisis. So I have brought you, Brigid Tigemeyer here today to help us to solve, to talk about some major, major issues that are affecting all of us, especially here in the US we are certainly going to talk about how to eat. We're going to talk about diet, we're going to talk about metabolic function, but we're also going to talk about some systemic things that have a tremendous effect on our metabolic health, specifically our food system, because I don't think this is just a case of people having no willpower. I think this is a systemic illness brought by our food system. So, Brigid, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. There's a lot to unpack.

There is. I'm so happy to have you here. You know, you have, like, a very, very long list of accomplishments. You are highly, highly educated. You've worked with major, major people. Mark Hyman, not to mention the giant of functional medicine. And so can you just give us a little bit of your background and how you got to be in this space? What urged you to become a nutritionist and to do all the functional medicine work that you've done? Because there are lots of nutritionists out there who are still recommending boost and ensure and calories in and calories out, and it doesn't matter what you eat. And, you know, all calories are equal. I mean, that is still a thing.

Yeah. So there's a lot to unpack of why that is the case, like why that still tends to be the pervasive recommendations that are given by a lot of traditional dietitians. For me, I think my route into nutrition and into studying dietetics and getting my master's in public health nutrition really stemmed from my own personal health experience where in 2004, I was diagnosed with a neurological autoimmune disease called narcolepsy with cataplexy. So I was having about 20 to 30 mini seizures, seizures a day that would last for about five seconds. I almost drowned in my friend's pool once because I was having a cataplexy while we were swimming. And I went to the conventional neurologist who said, this is your diagnosis. Pulled out his prescription pad, said, here's what you're going to do for the rest of your life. You're going to take this medication. You're going to only need more as you get older. It's only going to get worse as you get older. And that's the plan. And my parents, who have no background in medicine but have an immense amount of common sense and intuition, were like, can we think about other factors that we could optimize before we start her on a prescription drug that doesn't have a lot of long term safety studies?

And I'm assuming that was a stimulant.

It was Provigil, which is not technically, it's. Oh, that's an apple. It's an awakening agent. So, yes, and then there was a different medication that was recommended for my cataplexies, which I never ended up taking because I reversed to all of the seizures that I was having through nutrition and lifestyle alone. But of course, when my parents had asked, is there anything we can do, nutrition, can we optimize? The answer was very clearly no. It was actually very triggering for them that my parents were even asking these questions. And we were treated very poorly as a whole. So my parents chose to go against those recommendations and took me to a functional medicine doctor in 2004 that completely changed the trajectory of my life. I remember when I was a sophomore in high school saying to my mom, there has to be a million people who are just like me, who are being told by their doctor that nutrition has nothing to do with their condition, who have conditions that are either being exacerbated by or driven by their nutrition. And I want to help those people. So that really led me to studying nutrition. But then I got to school to become a dietitian, which is of course a very rigorous course load. It's only a few courses short of a pre med major. And you're studying biochemistry, organic chemistry, but then also nutrition, food science, all of these clinical assessment tools. And I get there and it's like, oh, no, there's no reason for anyone to be gluten free unless you have celiac disease. Like, no recognition of non celiac gluten sensitivity. We had diabetes cooking classes where we were just taking out regular Cool Whip. And then the suggestion was to just add artificially sweetened Cool Whip with sucralose with no discussion around any of the consequences or side effects of artificial sweeteners. A very strange for me coming from, you know, a family who had invested so much time and energy into, you know, like, changing our diet and supporting me from a foodist medicine standpoint, like, I would call my mom and be like, isn't this weird that I just got out of this cooking class and they, they just replace the artificial, the regular Cool Whip with the artificially sweetened Cool Whip. Cool Whip for diabetics. Like, that's how we're actually helping them. My mom would be like, yeah, that's really strange. But you know, they indoctrinate you with this idea that this is evidence medicine. So the idea that like even me, who had used a gluten free diet when I was in high school to help with a lot of my symptoms, I was embarrassed to tell people that I was gluten free because they, you know, pushed it down your throat that the only time you'd recommend a gluten free diet was in the case of a person that had celiac disease. So I started in a very non traditional, from a non traditional place and just, you know, believing from my own experience that there was so much more that we could do with food. So I went on to get my master's in public health, nutrition, and really saw the corruption of the food industry there. And it was because of that that I then really switched gears into functional medicine, where in 2014 we opened the first hospital based functional medicine center in The World under Dr. Mark Hyman at the Cleveland Clinic. And I started the nutrition department there for him, under him and a few other functional medicine doctors and saw a patient after patient after patient who was being told, oh, nutrition has nothing to do with your condition. Oh, you need to take this prescription. And we're really being gaslit and dismissed. And I was like, wow, this is crazy. When you see the transformation that's happening in thousands of people in front of you, like governors, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, celebrities like, you name it, in addition to, you know, your everyday average person, it's like, wow, something is really, really wrong. And that took me back then to when I was in my master's program studying getting my master's in public health nutrit and I was in Washington D.C. in 2014 prior to the release of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Coming out in 2015, I was at the NIH for a meeting that opened my eyes to how much the food industry is consciously feeding our chronic disease epidemic in broad daylight. So I was at the NIH for this Dietary Advisory Committee meeting before they released the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. So the committee are basically our country's nutrition experts that are appointed by the government to review the latest research that have come out in the last five years. They then create the recommendations for the usda, the Department of Health and Human Services, for them to create, you know, the guidelines that are then used for, you know, billions of taxpayer dollars to then support the SNAP program, the School Lunch and Breakfast program, the Women, Infants and Children program. And in that meeting there were 70 people, approximately, I would say, that were presenting to the Dietary Advis Committee committee and they were giving oral testimony based on the food or beverage that they were there to represent. There was a person there from the American Beverage association, the National Confectioners association, which used to be known as the American Candy association, the Sugar association, the national association of Margarine Manufacturers, corn Refiners Association, McDonald's, the Dan and Company, the American Meat Institute Foundation. And then they had one doctor and one dietitian who were there on their own advocating for plant based guidelines. And that was really the moment for me where I was like, wow, the food industry is setting the agenda for our nation's nutrition recommendations that are causing us to get sicker, fatter, more depressed, more infertile, dying younger and stealing the vitality from our kids, all for the sake of profit. And I think that the fact that every day millions of people are killing themselves with their food choices that are largely driven by these highly addictive foods that are filled with food dyes, preservatives, pesticides, added sugars, artificial flavors, and an absorbent amount of untested chemicals. It's like, where has everyone been? Where have our public health officials been for the last several decades? Where has the health care system been? Where has the food industry been? Like, why has no one been advocating for the health of these people who are suffering unnecessarily and dying early? And then you're like, oh, they were probably at the NIH listening to the National Confectioners association tell you and argue that sugar is important in moderation for providing joy and decreasing people's stress.

I mean, it's so astounding. Unless anyone think otherwise, the industry is absolutely in control of what the FDA is recommending. And that goes for food. It also goes for pharmaceuticals, incidentally. And it's so astounding to me that people trust the FDA and people think that the FDA is there to as, as an arm of government to protect us, when the truth is that the FDA is an arm of industry. And this is, this is a perfect, perfect example that when you, when you're talking about food guidelines and the majority of the voices, I mean, you're Saying of the 70 people that were there to testify, two of them represented the healthcare industry. This is disgraceful. It's disgraceful.

I remember like I was so early on, it was the very start of my career and I remember like being in the bathroom after the, in the middle of these public oral testimonies and I was just like, eyes wide open. I cannot believe what I'M witnessing in front of me and then just being in the bathroom with these people, like, because there was a long line for the bathroom. Like, they're just everyday people that, like, how can you believe what you just stated as being so important for people to be able to live their lives in the way that's gonna help them actually thrive and flourish? Like, it's astonishing. I mean, even when you look at the National Confectioners association, for example, the national confectioners Association represents $37 billion of, of industry that's being of retail sales every single year in the United States. So when people think, oh, you know, there's a lot of arguments around the idea that, oh, it's just about moderation. Like all these things are important to have in people to access, and then people just need to have the willpower to be able to control themselves. And what people don't realize is that it's like the confectionery industry alone is contributing $37 billion in retail sales annually in the United States. That makes them a very powerful organization. And what the government isn't factoring in enough is that we either pay now or we pay later. So prioritizing the agenda that this industry is setting for $37 billion for the economy is costing us on the back end in our health care costs that are $4.3 trillion per year, 86% of which is going to treating chronic disease that's largely preventable through nutrition lifestyle interventions. And what everyday people aren't realizing is that they're up against billion dollar industries who are advocating against them. Like their interest in making more money is actually at the expense of people's health, without question.

And we are paying for that multiple times at multiple events. So we're paying in terms of subsidized crops because many of these foods that you're talking about, these franken foods, many of these foods are from subsidized crops.

Yep.

Right. So we're paying to subsidize the, the growth of things that are directly negatively impacting our health. Then we're paying for them at the store, then we're paying for them in our Medicare dollars because they're making everyone sick and we're paying with our own health.

Exactly. And I think that there's multiple times.

Along the life cycle we are paying for that 100%.

And then there's messaging around the idea that if you're talking about the importance of eating nutritious foods, of choosing organic foods, that is just elitist and not accessible to People. And it's like, well, let's talk about changing the incentives. Let's talk about not subsidizing the foods that are actually contributing to our chronic disease epidemic. Let's start there. Instead of saying that we shouldn't advocate for people of all income levels to have nutritious foods that help them, that help to improve their health and decrease their chronic disease outcomes that they're at a higher risk of to begin with. So I think, you know, like the fact that when you look at the farm bill, 80% of its spending is on nutrition programs. And when you look at even just 2018 to 2023, $428 billion over that five year period. So $85 billion per year were spent, 10% of which is spent on soda. So the SNAP dollars, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, 10% of that, the dollars that are allocated to people are spent on soda. So $8.5 billion of taxpayer dollars per year are being pocketed by the soda industry with individuals who are, you know, they, they need help, they need financial help to support their families with food. That we should only be allowing them to use that for foods that are contributing to their health because that is what's in their best interest. And there's a big argument that it's like, oh, well, they should be able to use it however they want. Because we want people to not feel that. We want them to not feel like we're, you know, going against them or making it unfair for them. And it's like, well, if they want to buy soda, then they can use their dollars to buy soda. But why would we, in a nutrition program that's supposed to be delivering nutritious foods to families to help them support their health.

Health.

Why would we be using money to include soda in that when we know the harms of soda and the increased risk of diabetes, of cancer, of heart disease, of literally every single chronic condition when you're chugging soda water. Yeah.

Non alcoholic liver disease. I mean, it's so illogical that that should even be allowed to happen. Like, why would we take government allocated funds which are meant to feed people and allow them to soda, which has no place in nutritional guidelines. Right. There is zero benefit to consuming that.

Zero benefit. But, you know, the American Beverage association, the American Beverage association will argue that it's important for them to have the ability to drink soda because it provides joy and life is stressful and that helps to decrease stress. But when you look at. So the American Journal of Preventative Medicine published a report that showed that 96 national health organizations have accepted money from Coca Cola and Pepsi. This includes the American Diabetes association, the National Institutes of Health, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Academy of Nutrition and dietetics. Between 2011 and 2015, when you look at the bills that were being proposed, Coca Cola and Pepsi publicly opposed 28 bills and they supported one. The ones that the bills that they were opposing were 12 around the idea of taxing soda, four were around Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Regulations, and one was limiting the soda portion sizes in New York. And even with that limitation in portion sizes in New York, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, who's the governing body of 100,000 nutrition, you know, credentialed practitioners in the world, they opposed the bill that was trying to limit soda portion sizes because they said that it was more about nutrition education being emphasized than limiting portion sizes that would be allowed to be sold. It's like, then you look at where the Academy of Nutrition Dietetics is getting funding from, and they have hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been paid to them between even just the years of 2011 and 2017 from Pepsi and Coca Cola. So this governing body of dietitians is accepting money from Pepsi and Coca Cola, which should not be allowed. It should be an enormous conflict of interest. And like I said, this is happening in broad daylight. Like, if people think that this is a conspiracy theory or that, you know, it's not evidence based, you can, the, the, their IRS documents, their tax returns are available for any person to look this information up to see the money that's funneled in from not only Pepsi and Coke, but also Monsanto and Kellogg's and General Mills and the Bisco and, and Hershey's, you know, in addition to pharmaceutical companies like Novo Nordics and Eli Lilly. So it's like, well, why is the pharmaceutical industry contributing to the Academy of Nutrition Dietetics? And then, you know, you can go down a whole rabbit hole of potential reasons. But the fact that that's even allowed or that the Academy of the Pediatrics Academy is also taking so much money from these companies and the American Diabetes association that not only are impacting dietitians, but also physicians and physician recommendations, especially around this idea that of course, doctors, as you know, going through medical school, receive virtually zero hours of nutrition education across the board on average. And there's, there's not only not an emphasis on nutrition, but in many of the people that we work with in my nutrition business, they're being told by their doctors, no, nutrition doesn't matter. So it's not only that they aren't making nutrition recommendations, which is fine, because honestly, sometimes when we work with people who are being given nutrition recommendations by their doctors who don't have the nutrition education are just like, go keto or do whatever. And it's like very blanket recommendations. Without enough guidance, it can't honestly do more harm than good. But at the same time, they're actually diminishing the role of nutrition. I've had clients and patients over the last 10 years. I worked with thousands and thousands of people, and I have had people tell me, oh, I was losing so much weight for the anti inflammatory plan that you had me on. And since I have ulcerative colitis, my gastroenterologist told me I should go back to drinking soda again to help bring my weight up or, oh, I have type 2 diabetes. And my doctor told me that it's still not clear whether drinking soda actually impacts your overall risk of diabetes. You can't reverse it. And so it's just more about learning how to dose your insulin appropriately and manage your medications, because it's still questionable the role that nutrition plays on these diseases. I've heard it all, and these are not things that I, I'm making up. I have one person that has had Crohn's disease for the last 20 years, and she, you know, they have access to the best doctors in the country. The best gastroenterologists have been going from, you know, the top medical establishment.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna put quotes around that because what. What industry considers the best and who is actually the best are two very different things.

It's so true.

I'm gonna air, quote, quote the best doctors.

It's very true. Yes. So they're, I guess we could call them the most prestigious, not necessarily the best, but in, you know, the general realm in which we perceive healthcare, they're, you know, prestigious. And they're like, they, they're like, we've been asking for the last 20 years, should she go gluten free? Should we change her diet? And they're like, no, that. There's no association with that. There's no association with that. The top gastroenterologist over and over and over again. And they're like, like, just continue your steroid injections. It's like, she started those at 15 years old. And this is the trajectory that she's been on. And within one month of removing gluten from her diet, limiting her added sugars, decreasing her inflammatory foods, her symptoms are drastically improving. And she's like, I cannot believe. It's not like we weren't asking the questions, but we were being told, no, nutrition has nothing to do with this.

No, you're so right. And here's like, the conspiracy theorist in me, but it's actually true and real. And I'm not, like, making this up. The conspiracy is very real. And in the case of Crohn's or ulcerative colitis, what we have to understand is there is, like, this underlying diabolical plan that the doctors may or may not be aware of because they end up just being pawns in the game. Because we have to remember that medical education is designed by the pharmaceutical company. Right? They are working hand in hand so that when you're in medical school, you're taught to recognize a constellation of symptoms, give it a name, and prescribe. Prescribe a pill, prescribe an injection, prescribe a procedure. Prescribe.

Right.

And so let's take a chronic disease like Crohn's or ulcerative colitis, because they are in the same family of inflammatory bowel disease. It is very much by design that they are trying to manage the symptoms, suppress the symptoms with these medications, which will eventually lead to the next step and which will require procedures and which will require the next medication. So the people, you know, they start off on certain anti inflammatories, and then they go to the biologics, and they know very well that the biologics are going to suppress the symptom for a period of time and eventually lead you to cancer. And then you get to treat them for cancer. And it's sick. It is sick. It's despicable. And I don't know that the doctors realize it because the gastroenterologists are so poorly trained, because they trained in a system that tells them that diet doesn't matter, that that lifestyle doesn't matter. Just recognize this constellation of symptoms and do this. And this way they stay sick. You get to scope them every year. You get to, you know, it's keeping your lights on. Yeah, it's keeping your lights on. It's keeping your staff paid. It's keeping you in a home and a car and vacations and. And I don't want to throw doctors under the bus because I really do think that they're pawns in the game.

Well, same with dietitians. Like, it's the same thing that what you're talking about is that doctors don't know what they don't know, and they're taught to be. You know, it's like, if it's not in this evidence based framework, then it's completely, you know, you're uneducated if this is what you believe. And then anyone that believes outside of the box is labeled as uneducated. And as someone that's, you know, like a quack essentially. And that's also, I think, very intentional. In addition to dietitians, when you don't fit into this, this model of being like, oh, it's just about calories in versus calories out. And then now there's the all food fits thing message. Because if, God forbid, you were to say that a food was inflammatory, you're creating more eating disorders and disordered eating and fear mongering. And you just have to teach people that all foods are fine in moderation. And it's like, well, when 67% of kids in the United States are eating ultra processed foods, no, foods are not all fine in moderation. Like, if we were talking about, about whole foods, then maybe that would be the case. But the fact is, is that the majority of the food supply in America is not actually food that we are designed evolutionarily to consume. And so I completely agree with you. I think that like these doctors, these dietitians, they're like trying, they're like dying on this hill because they truly are so indoctrinated that they're like, if you don't agree with us, then you aren't evidence based. And so many of the practitioners that we work with, the functional medicine dietitians on my team, it takes having your own health experience to be like, like to, to make you start to question or maybe someone in your family where you're like, wow, everything that I just experienced is not what I thought that it was. Like. There was one time that it seems like, oh yeah, just trust the doctor. Do exactly what the doctor says. If they say, oh, just take the medication, don't do the nutrition, then listen. Like, that's what I wanted to do. I thought my parents were crazy for, for pushing and advocating for nutrition and lifestyle interventions. And I was like, you guys aren't doctors. Listen to the doctor because they're the authority of health. And so I think that there's an enormous problem that exists right now that makes it seem like if you go outside of this box and are recommending things and are pointing out the industry ties, the financial corruption, then you're a conspiracy theorist. And I just, I wish that people could see. I wish that I could have a video camera in my office. For the last 10 years having people Witness like transformation after transformation after transformation of people who are being told by their doctors, no, functional medicine is an evidence based. No, food is not medicine, medicine is medicine. Nutrition is completely separate. And then seeing like the actual transformations that happen when people dial in their nutrition in a way that enhances their health, because it's really, it's really astonishing and it's remarkable. I think that there' sit's unfortunate that it isn't the go to recommendation. And I do believe that more practitioners are waking up to the importance of it, but we have a lot more work to do until there's enough of an awakening.

We do, we do. And it's mostly based on the fact that in our training programs we are so indoctrinated into thinking that if we didn't learn it in medical school or whatever high medical education that you pursued, if you didn't learn it there, it's either not important, not true, maybe, but. And then people get fooled by the fact that they think that medicine is provided by the four walls. Right? And so you think that you're going to one of the amazing institutions around the country and that everyone inside is brilliant and everyone inside has all the answers. And I can tell you from personal.

Experience.

My nephew went to mgh, to Mass General Hospital for his ankylosing spondylitis. And when he saw the top rheumatologist there who told him without question, what he eats, what he drinks is having no impact on his disease, disease. And he is really, really suffering. And they told him, the only way that your joints are not going to be destroyed is if you go on a biologic. And here I am, like having this conversation with his parents, saying to them, and you know, these are people that know me really well and that know exactly what I do know what I believe in, whether or not they believe it, it. I'm telling you that they heard from this doctor at MGH that what he eats and drinks doesn't matter. And they sat with me, with him, and he's, you know, an adult child. And they said, we're just going to go on the biologics because they told us that what he eats and what he drinks doesn't matter. And they, they are doing so much harm in their ignorance. And it's horrible. It's horrible because people really believe that medicine is provided by four walls.

Yeah, it's. I'm so sorry. I feel like it's sad to watch it happen to people in general, but it hits even harder when it's like a personal relationship with someone that you really care about, where you're like, I could help you if you would only be open minded enough to see the limitations. Like if the conventional medical system was nailing it, then we would not have a country that's 74% overweight or obese. We would not have 50% of the population that has pre diabetes or type 2 diabetes. We would not have 6 out of 10 adults with at least one chronic disease, 4 in 10 adults with two or more chronic diseases. We would not have, you know, hypertension rates at 45% of our population, infertility rates rising 1% every year, autoimmune immune disease rates like ankylosing spondylitis increasing. We would not have gastrointestinal diseases. Absolutely skyrocketing. Like our healthcare costs continue to go up every single year. We're paying $4.3 trillion in healthcare to date on 86% of conditions that are preventable and treatable through nutrition, lifestyle recommendations. And our healthcare costs continue to go up because. Because people think that spending more on medical innovation, medical interventions is what's going to create health. And it's like if that approach were working, then we would not see disease rates continuing to go up decade after decades.

We're getting worse and not better, right? Way worse and not better.

Show us your outcomes. Because the outcomes and the trajectory of that is more medical intervention as he gets older. And it doesn't mean that maybe he wouldn't need a biologic right here. He I've worked with plenty of people who have used nutrition and lifestyle who have improved their symptoms, but they still need medicine. And I'm not here to say that, you know, all medicine isn't necessary. We have so many amazing advancements in conventional medicine that I absolutely recognize and appreciate. But it's like, why would you not use the lowest hanging fruit of these food chemicals that have tens of thousands of phytochemicals and polyphenols that have been shown in research to change our gene expression that can decrease inflammatory signaling? Like, it's not that there's a lack of research, there's an abundance of evidence. And I think that that's also something that people don't realize is that if you even just go to PubMed, if you take the time to go to PubMed, I have taught in academia the last eight years in an integrative and functional nutrition graduate course at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. And like in reviewing the research, there's hundreds of thousands of papers on the impact of anti inflammatory diets of these key mechanisms that modulate our inflammatory cytokines, that decrease inflammatory sign that help to create decreased free radical exposure and create more of an anti inflammatory terrain and the disease outcomes that are impacted by that. Especially when we know that nearly every single chronic disease, autoimmune disease and even gastrointestinal disease is impacted by chronic inflammation, blood sugar imbalances and the destroyed microbiome that is being destroyed by our food supply and our factory farming and our lack of soil health with, you know, the lack of regenerative farming and the increase, increased spraying of glyphosate all over our food and pesticides that are not beneficial for our gut microbiome. And when you think of all of these assaults that are happening on a widespread basis, from the food additives to the food dyes, to the artificial flavors, to the pesticides to the glyphosate, it's like we as humans evolutionarily were not created to be able to sustain the level of toxicity, toxic exposure that we're exposed to. And it doesn't mean that the human body isn't resilient enough to deal with some of it, but it's like at the level that we are experiencing, there is no scientific study to show that the human body is capable of excreting the toxins that we're exposed to, from the environmental pollutants to our food supply, to a number of different factors that are creating disease. And no one really is talking about it in the healthcare industry.

Yeah, I agree with you.

And you know, those same genetic expression changes that are coming from phytochemicals and plant foods and all of that, so too are those genetic expression changes coming from chicken nuggets and cheeseburgers and french fries and pizza. And so, you know, we do have a choice, we do have a choice on how we change that gene expression, but we're making that choice every day by the foods that we put in our bodies. Now I do think that a large part, you know, people think that obesity is just bad willpower or that kind of thing. I mean, I don't like, like the messaging at all that Harvard has, which is that obesity is a genetic disease. I don't believe that at all. I think that there are certainly some genetic predispositions, but what I mean by that is you generally eat, move and live the way that your parents lived. So if your parents are obese, they're going to teach you to be obese in general. And so I think that that's where the genetic, genetic component comes from. But I don't think that it's like, oh, my genes are making me fat. I have no choice in being fat. And we are actually creating obesity. And I think we're doing it intentionally. I think we're doing it intentionally because I think that there is a partnership between the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry and the medical industry, incidentally, because they all get richer if you engage. So I know that you were recently in Washington, D.C. i know that there's a lot going on in D.C. so can you talk about that a little bit?

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Yeah, so I actually was not there, but I will talk about the Senate hearing that just happened. It was a Senate roundtable where a panelist came in and talked about the chronic disease epidemic and the need to do something very fast and rapidly to have to make interventions. So there's in the panel, there was three doctors that were there and then there was a number of other podcasters and to entrepreneurs and to people that were there advocating for improving the safety of our food supply and the direct connection between every single chronic disease and metabolic dysfunction that's underlying that chronic disease and the fact that our toxic American Food supply, our lack, our sedentary lifestyle, our lack of sunlight exposure, our increased levels of stress, that these are all of the leading causes of metabolic dysfunction that are then creating, that are then manifesting in a variety of different chronic diseases. So the panelists really laid out the impact of, you know, glyphosate of what's allowed as far as food dyes and food additives in our food supply. Looking at even just foods that something like Froot Loops, that's being sold in the United States and then Froot Loops, an American company, Kellogg's, that's selling their same product in other countries without the artificial dyes. So highlighting the fact that we need to hold American companies accountable and give our children access to safe ingredients like other countries where the unfortunate thing about the United States that one of the panelists pointed out is that we have a safe until proven guilty model within the United States food supply and, and most other countries have a guilty until proven safe. So the United States has not the strictest regulations when it comes to not only what's included in the food supply, but then also what we're going to provide any kind of regulation around. And I want to just give a few examples of this just from a historical level. Trans fats are the perfect example. In 2006, the FDA added a line for trans fats on the nutrition facts label. There was a number of studies that were coming out showing that trans fats, fats coming from partially hydrogenated oils were contributing to harm and increasing risk of heart disease. 2008, California Banned trans fats being sold in California. It wasn't until 2015 then that trans fats were removed from the generally recognized as safe list and then 2018 that they were removed from the food supply. And then there was a grace period given to companies where it wasn't, I believe, until 2021 that they were fully removed from the food supply. So we're talking, you know, more than 15 years of an evolution of something that had been deemed potentially harmful that took in order to get it out of the food supply. And the other thing that happens at that exact same time is that there was not strict regulation around what was able to be marketed to consumers around trans fats. So in the early 2000s, there was an increased awareness around the harms of trans fats. So what food companies started to do was advertise on the front of their packaging 0 grams of trans fat fats. Now companies were allowed to make that claim if they had 0.4 grams or less of trans fats. In their actual product. So a person that's not looking at the ingredient list, that doesn't see the partially hydrogenated oils, because no one's educating them on how to do that. Especially then when there wasn't social media and podcasts and in, you know, independent media companies out there. So the consumer believes that there are 0 grams of trans fat, is unaware that there's 0.4 grams of trans fat in this product, eats four servings, let's say, of that food, you're getting close to the 2 grams per day of trans fats that have been shown to increase risk of heart disease, with the person thinking that they're getting zero grams of trans fats. So not only is there a lack of regulation around what is included in what we consider to be safe, but then there's a drastically lacking regulation around what food marketers, what food manufacturers are allowed to market to, to people in the United States. And another enormous example of this is just added sugar. So in 1986, in the 1980s, there was, you know, more sugar being added to the food supply. There was increasing rates of chronic disease, you know, gradually increasing rates. The Food and Drug Administration had actually predicted that sugar consumption would just level off and decline on its own in the next few years without any intervention. Then in 1999, so almost 15 years later, there were health groups, including the center for Science and the Public Interest, that petitioned the FDA saying, you need to have more regulation around added sugars. There needs to be a daily value for added sugars. Because up until then, there was no daily value. And we need to have it actually added on the nutrition facts label so that a person knows how much added sugar is in there, their food. Because up until 2016, it was only listed as total sugar. So this happened in 1999. 2016 was when the added sugar line was added to the Nutrition facts label. Why was this so controversial? Because there was so much pushback from industry when they were proposing these changes. Industry was leading the conversation around, no, we don't need to add an added sugar lime. Because they didn't want the transparent, because that would mean having to spend the money to change the nutrition facts label, and it would mean changing their formulation once people had the level of transparency. It wasn't until 2015-2020 that the United States government formally recommended limiting added sugar to be a specific amount which was less than 10% of calories. Up until then, like if you look at the 2000-2000 or the 1990-2005 Dietary Guidelines, guidelines for Americans, there is no mention of added sugar as far as recommending limiting. And the only emphasis was around limiting your intake of total fat to less than 30%. And in that same timeframe we saw chronic disease really escalate and sugar addiction and obesity rates because people, people's actual satiety regulation was being hijacked by these ultra processed foods that were loaded with high fructose corn syrup and added sugars that were not not allowing them to understand like when they were actually hungry versus full. It wasn't until 2020 to 2025 dietary guidelines that there was actually a recommendation for children under the age of 2 to not consume added sugar. So this is happening. You know, childhood obesity rates are skyrocketing pre diabetes in kids. It wasn't until just this most recent dietary guidelines that the government said children under two should not have added sugar. In 2020, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which is the nutrition experts appointed by, we'll put them in quotations. The nutrition experts appointed by the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services, they recommended in the updated dietary guidelines to reduce the total added sugar amount recommended to 6% of total calories per day. But the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services did not go forward with those recommendations from the committee that they appointed. And they continued to include 10% of calories of added SUG sugar recommended in our 2020-2025 dietary guidelines. This is a 30 year evolution of knowing the harms of added sugar. And let me also backtrack to the 1960s when there was a study that was released that was the nutrition experts were paid off, they were Harvard researchers that were paid off by the sugar industry to downplay the significance of added sugar and to increase and accelerate the concerns around fat and the risk of heart disease disease. So these Nutrition experts, they 50 years ago steered a generation of research on heart disease away from sugar. In 1965, they published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine that singled out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of coronary heart disease and then basically said that sugar and sucrose consumption was not a big risk factor. So the Sugar Research foundation sponsored a research program in the 1960s and the 1970s that successfully cast doubt around fats and dietary fat being the culprit for heart disease and downplayed the significance of added sugar. And then we see decades and decades of nutrition guidelines by the governments that are not actually addressing one of the largest causes of our chronic disease epidemic, which is blood sugar. Imbalance primarily driven by added sugar and refined grains. And when you look even at those nutrition recommendations, in that same timeframe, the 1990s to 2005, the government was recommending six to 11 servings of grains per day, including cereals, breads, pastas, and 50% of those were recommended to be whole grain. That means the government was recommending three to five servings of refined grains every day for Americans to support their health. This was the national guidelines for Americans from the United States government. And I think that if that doesn't paint a picture for how misconstrued the recommendations have been and how much, like, you think that these authorities are out, like, looking after your health, but they aren't, and there's no recourse for the damage that they do. It's like, oh, well, we just didn't know. So we're going to update the policies and now we have new people in place who. They weren't the people that were contributing to these harms in the 60s, so you can't blame them. No recourse. It's just like, oh, just move on and continue to trust us as the base of scientific experts. That should be, you know, impacting and telling you what is healthy and not healthy.

Yeah, it's really disgraceful. It's so scary. And it's not over. It's still happening, right? Like, isn't there still a recommendation to consume grains at the base of our. Of our food period?

Six servings per day is what's recommended by the government. Six servings of grains, one serving equals about a half of a cup of rice, pasta or cereal, or one slice of bread. And they recommend at least half of those to be whole grains. So essentially, they're recommending about three servings per day of refined grains still currently, today in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

I don't actually even distinguish between the two because I think that they're both, both a tremendous problem. What people don't know is that we have absolutely no nutritional need for grains. And if we as humans never had another grain again, we would suffer no nutritional deficiency. So how can something that we do not need at all be part of our nutritional guidelines? It's astounding to me.

It is astounding. I mean, I do think that, like, if we're talking about the real harm that's being done, that, like, I'm not going to stand on the hill of like, oh, quinoa is like the worst offender of our chronic disease epidemic. But I do know.

But quinoa is a Seed. It's not a grain.

True. Technically, it's not a grain. But I do think that overall, it's like the concern around the fact that six servings per day is recommended. It's a very large amount of. And they also don't distinguish. It's like pasta, cereal, breads are all included under that category.

Yeah.

So it's. Yeah, it's really alarming. It's so alarming.

And.

And we can talk about, like, the ADA recommendations because, you know, we're talking about a. A governing body, a medical body that is supposed to be supporting people with diabetes, and yet their recommendations are only reinforcing and propagating that disease.

Yeah. And in my inpatient hospital experiences, I would say that the majority of experience that I had was not in educating people on. And this was before, of course, I, like, went into functional medicine. But as far as, like, what the hospital wants you to do and teaches you to do, in my experience, maybe this has changed since I was in these settings, but the experiences that I had were teaching people about, about, okay, this is the amount of carbohydrates that's in this serving. So if you have this many servings, this is how much insulin you need. It was never around, oh, like, let's decrease your consumption of these refined carbohydrates and added sugars and limit your consumption of whole grains and balance that with enough proteins and fats to help to offset the blood sugar increase. That was, you know, not really a part of anything that I did until I really got into functional medicine. And even when I was in functional medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Clinic, before I started my own nutrition business, I was leading a diabetes group and had, like, the diabetes group had really incredible health outcomes. And a person that was very high up at the hospital called me and said, how are you getting these outcomes? Like this group that you just led? These results are incredible. And she had come from more of the outpatient dietitians that are the traditional dietitians who are more along the lines of educating you on this is how many carbs you have for this amount of insulin. And I said, you know, really what I did is I. We talked about the concerns. We really limited their added sugar. They. I talked about the consequences of eating refined grains, limiting their whole grain consumption, telling them about food as medicine, like, educating them on the science behind the choices that they're making so they feel more motivated instead of thinking that people aren't smart enough to understand the science and to make an informed decision around their food choices. And I believed in their capacity to actually change. Like we had a lot of behavior modifications and behavior change discussions around the difficulty in changing your diet. So they didn't feel like they were alone and they were in like a group in a community together. And I think that, you know, it's not easy for people to change their diet. And so I'm not here to say that it's just like a magic switch that you just turn and that all of a sudden like, like you go from decades of eating certain foods to then, you know, like completely drastically changing your diet. But I do think that with the right guidance, with the right coaching, with the right support, with the right behavior change modification, you know, education and the personalization around each individual and not judging them for their food choices, but really empowering them and educating them, I mean, it really is not most people, 90% of people that go on a diet, diet, the diet fails. And the diet industry is a multi billion dollar industry. It's not that people aren't spending the money trying to make changes to their nutrition. I really think most people have at least one time in their life tried to make dietary changes and the diet didn't work. So people on the other hand, like outside of the healthcare industry and the food industry are then getting their nutrition information from the diet industry. That's just saying, oh, calories in versus calories out. And when that system fails to you you're like, oh, it's a me problem. I feel shame around this. I don't have willpower. I just need to white knuckle my way through this more and then let me take two years off until I can mentally recoup enough so that I have the mental capacity to be able to try again, to then just feel like a failure again, to then continue down this shame rabbit hole of feeling like I'm never going to be able to be healthy, of feeling like I'm never going to be able to eat healthy, of feeling like, like this is just my destiny, it must be my genes, I must have broken metabolism. It must be a hormonal imbalance. Like all of the things that people tell themselves that aren't true, that are based in the fact that this system, this diet system has failed them. And so I think like adding a level of recognition around that so people don't feel gaslit by their doctors of like, oh, any suggestions for like losing weight? And they're like, oh, just count your calories. Calories in, calories out, eat less, eat.

Less and exercise more.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah, yeah. And I agree with you. I think that people do have great capacity to understand and to change. So with that in mind, let's get really granular and simplistic. And what is the problem with sugar? I mean, why is sugar a problem? Because I think that most people believe the rhetoric that it's just like something that's harmless and why are we making such a big deal about it? So what is the problem with sugar?

So added sugar, especially added sugar. Added sugar is going to be the sugar that is added to a particular food that comes in a variety of sources that are added to the nutrition ingredient list that essentially increase your blood sugar levels at a more rapid rate than something like, I mean, fruit still will increase your blood sugar, but it happens more rapidly because there isn't fiber intact, typically to help to decrease the that rate of absorption. So you eat the sugar and you eat the added sugar and then you have an increase in sugar that enters your bloodstream. And then your pancreas has to produce the insulin to be able to take the sugar from your blood and carry it into your cell. It's like the shuttle that helps to carry it in. And the problem is that when a person is consuming as much added sugar throughout their entire day as the average person, you have have an inability for the body to basically keep up. And the body, as you're using more and more insulin, becomes insulin resistant, meaning that the cells don't recognize the insulin, the actual effectiveness of it is less sensitive. So you're left with this extremely dysfunctional system with more buildup of sugar in your blood. That happens over time. That also impacts, impacts your arteries, that contributes to heart disease, that also impacts, you know, increases rates of cancer and a number of other chronic diseases and increases visceral fat. In addition to that, it increases our desire to eat more. So the more that you're consuming of the added sugar, your taste buds really crave what you feed them. So the more added sugar that you have in your diet, the more that you're going to want it. So it feels that been, you know, biologically addictive, which is what these food companies want it to be. So the amount of added sugar that they're adding to everything and that now, you know, companies are starting to, I think, realize consumers don't want. So they're push, they're, you know, decreasing it a bit. But for so long, added sugar is like you, you can't find condiments, sauces, dressings. Yeah, like anything.

They're in really unsuspecting places. Right.

Unsuspecting places. And so they. This was especially happening in the 90s, the early 2000s, and then people were going to Weight Watchers and were like, oh, just count your points. It's just a matter of counting your points, like a point for a donut or a point for this serving of broccoli. And you can save your point from the broccoli and have this sugar. And that's literally what people have been taught by enormous industries like the diet industry and Weight Watchers and have been taught that that's what nutrition is. And so the fact that calories are not created equal is such an important message for people to truly understand. And just because for so long, health care and the food industry and the diet industry, we're all saying that a calorie is a calorie. It could not be more untrue. And I think that also has contributed to our chronic disease epidemic. So the fact that when a person has too much added sugar, their blood sugar is rising, not only does that over time increase risk of pretty much every single chronic disease imaginable, but it also drives a number of symptoms. So it'll typically manifest initially as fatigue, as brain fog, as irritability, mood swings extremely, extremely tied to sugar consumption. And a number of people that I've worked with, even that have depression and anxiety, have been able to decrease their dependence on medication because alongside their doctor and never make medication recommendations, but because their symptoms are improving from changing their diet. And no one ever told them that nutrition is that nutritional. Psychiatry is an emerging field that shows that there's a direct correlation between your food choices and mental health outcomes. So the fact that people are just given an SSRI or an antidepressant and then sent out the door without any conversation around the role that their blood sugar is playing and their dietary choices are playing in this outcome is honestly a tragedy. I agree with you.

And I think that something that you mentioned before, that one of the arguments.

For.

Subsidizing or allowing for the purchase of soda with these government programs is that soda brings you joy. I would argue quite the opposite, that if you get a temporary rush, the fall out afterwards is far more significant. And I think in the long term, it is contributing to depression and anxiety 100%.

If you really understand the science, you can see that added sugar consumption is not contributing to Joy. You are 100% right. It is fueling our mental health epidemic.

Yeah, without question. So you have been really, really successful at helping people make lasting, enduring changes. So can you share some of, like your most common insights and interventions that really help people to make these enduring changes. Because as you spoke of before, diets don't work right. And when you try to temporarily make drastic changes in your life, you're almost always met with failure and relapse. And we all know those people that have lost 10 pounds and gained 20 and lost 20 pounds and gained 40, and lost 30 pounds and gained 60. So how do you get people to be successful in the long run?

I would say that outside of even just nutrition recommendations, that the way that I approach nutrition, of course, you know, like for as many deficiencies as there are in training as a dietitian, I feel like I also benefited immensely from some of the things that I've learned throughout my training. And of course, working with thousands of people and what I think matters so much that is not emphasized enough when people are being given nutrition recommendations is really diving into the mindset and the belief system to one, a person needs to truly believe in nutrition's ability to, to heal their body and to change their genetic expression and to support their gut microbiome and to decrease mitochondrial dysfunction and to support their hormones. All these foods, all these things that foods have an immense power to do. But in order for a person to truly stay consistent over the long term, you have to have that belief. Because there's so many times that a person will be in situations that they're like, oh, it's probably not that important. I, I can, I can probably have this and I can probably have this and I'll just have this in moderation. I'll have that in moderation. And then the moderation, you know, adds up over time. And so I think that staying consistent requires people to really have that belief of the true power and healing potential that food can have. And it really being used as the center of healthcare like it should be the center of our medical interventions. And so that would be number one. Number two, I also think that the majority of people that I work with and that my team of functionality functional medicine dietitians work with in all of our programs is that we see over and over again that people fail because they value perfection over consistency. This is an enormous problem that also you would think that it's just like, oh, tell a person to just be consistent and to not aim for perfection and they can just like, course correct. It's something that if this is totally. If you have been indoctrinated by the diet industry and you are also more of a type A personality, this is very hard to overcome without proper Coaching and support to help you really peel back the layers to be like, wow, my perfectionist tendencies around food are completely sabotaging my health. And they're creating this vicious cycle of me eating a piece of pizza or a piece of cake or whatever the food is and then being like, okay, now because of that I'm going to be like, well, what the hell, I might as well have, have the candy and my kids treats and the other stuff and then I'm going to take.

A few days because I already messed up.

Because I already mess up. So now that I've, now that I'm off track, I'm going to take some time being off track before then I put the mental energy into getting back on track. And so I think that if people could rebound faster and not beat themselves up for choices that they're making, that it would do an immense amount of good for being able to support their nutrition long term. And then the third thing from a mindset standpoint is like the belief that you are worthy, that you are worthy of these changes, that you're worthy of nourishing food, that this is an act of self respect. And a lot of people struggle with that. And so when you're truly trying to change your diet, I think that you have to also gain the confidence and the worthiness to be like, I am worthy of this investment in myself. I do not need to be the last person that's getting the things that I need. And I do not need to make excuses for, for like being a mom and being busy and having a career and all these things because there are people in the world that are also moms that also have careers who are finding a way to make it happen. And so if I'm able to peel back my own self limitations and see through them so that I can step into this place of empowerment, of worthiness, of knowing that I deserve these foods as a form of self respect, then it really changes the entire diet mindset. Where, you know, like diet historically has been more about restriction and willpower and white knuckling your way through it. And it's not been about like nourishing this, this one vessel that you have of flooding yourselves with an abundance of, of nutrients, phytochemicals, vitamins, minerals that help to actually change your inflammatory signaling as a, as an act of self love, of self respect. And so I think that when you're able to change that narrative that creates a strong level of ongoing, of ongoing changes that can continue to occur occur.

And, and it keeps you, it keeps you motivated to stay on that track? I'll tell you from my own personal experience. And you know, I am someone who I, I definitely have that perfectionist thing. And I ate very, very clean. I mean, you know, I'm a functional medicine doctor. I walk my talk and up until recently I just wasn't where I wanted to be, wasn't where I needed to be, wasn't where I thought I should be. And I completely stopped eating anything that's processed and I wasn't eating a lot of processed stuff. But like every Sunday I would have almond crackers with plant cheese and I would have, you know, some of my who chocolate covered almonds after dinner every night. And I kept ten pounds on that I did not want and did not need and just stopping those little things and things that most people would say like, oh, it's healthy to have dark chocolate every, you know, and it's healthy to, and it's okay to eat almond crackers because they're gluten free. And you know, I wasn't, I really wasn't eating anything terrible. But that, just eliminating those things. I lost ten pounds. I'm sleeping better, I'm, my joints don't ache. I have all the energy I need. Like, it's just really amazing. Even a little bit of poison. Right? Because all these processed foods, that's what they are. Even eliminating a little bit of poison made a huge difference in my life.

Yeah. And I think that it's true that most people think that they're eating healthier than they actually are. I actually think that, you know, every single person that comes into our nutrition programs, if they describe the way they eat, they say, I eat pretty healthy. And so that's a very subjective, that's a very subjective way of measuring your food consumption. And it very much varies across the board. So one person's perception of eating pretty healthy will vary drastically from another person's perspective of eating pretty healthy. So I think that a lot of people fall into this camp that they're like, well, my diet, it's not so bad. And they don't understand the benefit that can come from like tweaking things and dialing them in to really support their long term health.

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to address something that we started to talk about earlier today and that's that there is, you know, aside from the things that most of us consider food even though they're not like sugar and, and corn syrup and that kind of thing, but that there is the whole issue about food dyes and it astounds me that they even get a vote, that they even get a say. But they, they are and, and they have a platform. And I don't understand how we are even considering food dyes. And I know that the Food Babe, we were, we were talking about it and I would love for you to share like what's going on with all of that and, and talk about the issue of food dies a little bit.

So after the Senate hearing that happened, the Nutrition roundtable with the number of people who went to Senate, Food Babe was one of them. Vani Hari, who started a blog many years ago called Food Babe. She's been calling out companies for, you know, ingredients that they're using that are pretty harmful over the years and has been a food activity activists. So she at her Senate hearing testimony had basically just shown the Fruit Loops in the United States don't they do contain a number of food dyes. And that the, the Fruit Loops that are sold in other countries are flavored or sorry, are colored with things like watermelon juice and blueberries and carrot juice and advocating for the, for Kellogg's and American companies give us the same safety and ingredients and remove food dice. So she's now had a petition, 200,000 signatures on her petition that she's delivering to Kellogg's in Battle Creek, Michigan. I'm going to the rally next week. And she's getting a lot of pushback from the science based community saying she has no credentials and who is she to talk about the concerns with food dyes in our food supply and the, the safety of food dyes within a certain dose. And I think that the concern is, is that it's like one who is spending their energy advocating for the safety and the need for food dies in our food supply. When they really virtually provide, they provide zero health benefits. There's no reason to have them in outside of these food companies being able to sell more cereal to kids because kids like them being brighter in color. But you know, there's so much pushback around, oh, there's no science behind the claims that she's making around the concerns with food dyes. And I think, I think the concern is that when you're a scientist and you're just isolated on like, oh, this food diet and this dose is technically quote unquote, like regulated in the United States. It's like, well, what about the cumulative effect of our food dyes, of our artificial flavors, of our artificial sweeteners, of all of these things that are being added to our food supply? Like where is the science on the safety of that, because there is none. We have no actual regulation or idea of how much we're being exposed to and what the human body potential and capacity is for being able to process these. And it's actually, it would be impossible to even do a scientific study. So it's like, let's try to stop placing so much value on the science and use common sense to say there is an alarming rise in a number of conditions that are happening in children, from ADHD to allergies to depression to a number of other conditions. And there are a number of things that are included in our food supply that were not included in our food supply 30 years ago. So let's start to remove them. You don't need, you know, large randomized controlled trials, as one of the panelists had said at the U.S. senate hearing to, to say, yeah, it's probably not a good idea for us to have these two dyes. And Kellogg's, who has the formula to do this in another country with watermelon, with, with blueberries, with carrot juice. It's like they have the formulation. They don't have to reinvent the playbook. Like, they don't have to create a new playbook. They literally just have to reinvent or like copy and paste what they're doing in another country and just bring it to the United States. It's a little bit less bright. The cereal is a little bit less bright. And the reason they want to have the brightness is because studies show that children are, you know, going to eat more of the, of the cereal that is more bright. And I just think kids deserve.

I don't even know if it's just the color alone. I think it has to do with the chemicals composition and the impact that it's actually having on the brain. And it's so astounding to me that we just don't call it what it is, which is poison. Right. And we are just giving kids a little bit of poison or a lot.

Of poison, or that people are like, parents are saying to people like Vani Hari, like, oh, you have no nutrition credentials, you have no science credentials. It's like, well, most people that have science credentials are the ones that are indoctrinated into believing that these things are safe and aren't asking the questions of why is chronic disease, autoimmune disease, cancer, and every other condition increasing when we're, you know, like following the, the quote unquote science?

Yeah, yeah, it's really, it's astounding to me and the other part of it that's astounding to me that people rely on the safety testing and don't realize that none of these are tested together.

So exactly.

None of them are tested for symptoms. Synergy. So we don't know what the effect of the food dye along with the, the corn syrup is. We don't know what, what the food dye along with the glyphosate is. Right. And so even if they are independently safe, and the two things that I mentioned are not independently safe, let me just be clear with that. But that we have no idea what the synergistic effects are and this is part and parcel to why we have an explosion of disease. Because we are not considering the synergy.

Exactly. It's one of the actually like the enormous limitations of science and all of our evidence based guidelines. I mean, we use over 10,000. Vani Hari talked about this at the Senate roundtable. We use over 10,000 food additives in the United States and in Europe there's only 400 that are approved. So, so we, you know, like, we, she advocated for the fact that we can't allow our American companies to treat us this way and to treat our kids this way when we know the harms of these additives because they were forced to actually remove them in other countries because the other countries have stricter regulations and have warning labels around the harm. So the companies know what the concerns are because these other countries are requiring them. So you'd think that they take like a proactive approach to be like, oh, we really care about the children in our country. We care about like our, our country being, you know, healthy and, and safe and productive in the workforce as they age. And that clearly is not the case. So it's, it's really honestly like a tragedy. And it's a tragedy that these people that are, you know, like these quote, unquote, science experts or doctors or nutritionists, dietitians are, you know, like solely talking about the concerns that she had that she's inducing with like fear mongering. And it's like, well, she even pointed out in her testimony, like, I've been advocating for changes in the food supply in a number of different cases. And she listed them like when she had, you know, the subway was using the yoga mat material or the chemical that's found in yoga mat material in their breads that then ended up being used, she found in like all these bread companies. And she was just a mom that was doing this, this, this research on her own and advocating for changes and she's like, I just want to point out that all these changes that I've been able to, you know, like, basically create in these food companies because of the support of my people in my community, shouldn't the government have been doing this? Like, where has the government been? Why is me as a mom, like, just as a citizen, a concerned citizen, why am I the one that's creating more change than our regulatory, like, governing body bodies?

And it's because people have a vote that shouldn't have a vote. Right. Like, there should be no reason for the person that is manufacturing that food additive that you put into bread that makes it stretchier. That person shouldn't have a vote. That's not any. It's not related to health. And that person shouldn't have a vote. They shouldn't have a seat at the table. And we have, have so much of just discredit the source. I mean, that's what's happening with Vani.

Right.

Everyone is saying, well, you're not this and you're not that. And they're just trying to discredit the source instead of looking at the actual issue. And that's their response. I'm not going to look at the issue, I'm just going to discredit the source.

Yeah. And this is us as like an MD and an RD like that have gone through the same level of training as a lot of these people that are trying to discredit her to be like, why wouldn't you also be concerned? Like, why wouldn't you also be asking the questions that she's asking if, if you really cared? And it's, you know, it's like weaponizing the science. It's crazy.

And, and I think that ultimately what you, what we have to do is just follow the money, because that's what it is.

And like you said, these, these companies should not have a voice, but they absolutely have a voice. If you look at even. This is why they're contributing so much money. Yes. To our, our governing bodies. It's.

Yeah.

Really astonishing.

So it is, it is astonishing. And we just have to realize that that's what's happening. That's what's happening. And the people that are controlling the policy, policy is being controlled by industry, by donations that they're making in kind to the, the mouthpieces, the, the doctors, the legislators. They, you know, that they, they have a vote because they're paying for that vote. Vote. And people who are on the other side of it that are advocating for health. It's hard to Overcome that because we don't have the money behind it. Because, you know, we think that logic and truth and you know, being right will prevail, but that's not what's happening 100%.

And just look at the history. I mean, I think it's important for people to also realize that up until 1954 that the tobacco industry was regularly running ads in premier medical journals like the Journal of the Academy, the Journal of the American Medical association, like not only saying, oh, this brand is better, this brand is better, but actually making health claims around like, oh, this, this cigarette can decrease throat irritation. This cigarette can, you know, like do these other things. And it's like alarming that that was actually taking place in our premier medical journals that they were buying and ads, the cigarette, the tobacco industry was buying ads in our premier medical journals. And it wasn't that long ago that doctors and nurses were still smoking cigarettes in hospitals. And you know, that the, these tobacco companies were, were making the ads for their cigarette, speeding up digestion and helping to relieve colds or asthma and decreasing throat irritation. Like, I think that it's important to like follow history, to see the way that, you know, influence, power, money can have over our guidelines and creating slow change. Like in the case of the cigarette companies, it was a very, very slow for them to actually come out making recommendations around not smoking cigarettes. And the same, you know, we're seeing the same thing happen over again with food.

Yeah, it's really despicable. So I love that you're helping people with their belief system that you are helping them get over that sense of perfection that if you do stumble, you don't have to fall.

Right.

You can stumble and keep going, going. And you know, if things aren't perfect, just move on and know that you're worthy, get over those self limitations. I can't be healthy because I'm too busy. I can't be healthy because I have to feed the kids. I can't. And incidentally, I want to say this, your kids should be eating healthy too because when you, when you feed them kid food. And we are the only country in the world that has kid food. Incidentally, in every other country of the world, the kids eat what the adults eat. But you shouldn't be feeding your kids kid food because if you do that, if you feed them a diet of ultra processed foods, they are only going to be met with chronic disease. And earlier than we saw it in our generation, much earlier. I mean we have kids with hypertension, we have kids with diabetes, we have kids with obesity. We did not see this 20 years ago, didn't exist. But now that these kids are being brought up on a diet of ultra processed foods, they are seeing adult diseases in childhood, in early childhood, 10 year olds with hypertension. This was unheard of before. We are not living on our grandmother's earth. We're not even living on our mother's earth. And this earth that we're living on now is so toxic. And we have to not only be mindful of how we're do what we're doing and what we're consuming and ramifications of that, but we need to be mindful of how we're, how we're teeing it up for the next generation. We need to start with the end in mind and, and let our children learn what food is from the very beginning.

Yeah, I, it's a, and it's an enormous problem. And I think that, you know, I'm, I'm a mom of two young kids and I'm honestly amazed at what is allowed in our food system, what is being served and marketed to kids, what is being included in like school lunch programs. It's completely different from what kids actually need to thrive. And I also have so much empathy for moms because it's truly an uphill battle that you're fighting against constantly when you're at the birthday parties, when you're at friends houses, when. And I don't think that kids need to live in a sterile environment where they're never eating these things. Like the idea of having resilience is that your body, you know, the majority of the time are making choices that help to support your health so that you have the resilience to be able to overcome the times that you are exposed to some of these less optimal ingredients or environmental pollutants. I just think that it's very difficult for the mom to navigate. Like just, it's so confusing. It's so overwhelming, especially if you don't have a background in nutrition. And the default, like the norm that we see around us is most people that are feeding their kids ultra processed foods. And I have no judgment around that. It's more of like I, we are choosing a different path because our family really believes that, you know, my husband and I are. One of our greatest responsibilities is to help, help to impact the health of our children and teaching them young. Not about labeling foods as toxic or those types of things, but more of, in a positive way that's like, this is how beautiful these whole foods are that come from the earth. This is how juicy a tomato is and this is how we prepare broccoli. And doing these things together to give them the opportunity to fall in love with, with fueling their bodies with nourishing foods that are going to help them feel good, that help to improve their energy and educating them on how much eating whole unprocessed foods can help with us feeling good with our hair growing with our nail growing with us feeling strong with our brains functioning and the way that we want them to so that they feel empowered. And not in a way that's like, oh, well, mom and dad are forcing us to do this, but really in a way that helps to set a really positive experience with food that's not leading to disordered eating and those sorts of things. But that also isn't accepting that the, you know, 67% of the foods consumed by children in the United States today are ultra processed foods filled with pesticides, added sugars, artificial dyes, flavors, artificial sweeteners, a number of things. And it's, it's really unacceptable.

Yeah, it is unacceptable. And that is a staggering statistic that 67% of what they consume is ultra processed foods. And it is just setting them up for these chronic diseases at every step along the way. So, you know, it's getting them to have irregular cycles, it's getting them to have acne, it's getting them to have learning problems in school, and then it's getting them to have infertility, and then it's getting them to have breast cancer. Right, that's what that path is leading to. So I think it's so important that we think about it now and that we intervene now. And I know that that is a lot of what was being discussed in Washington D.C. is fixing the system of food in the school, fixing the system of medical education, because we need to. We are in crisis. Without question, we are in crisis. I know that you have some great programs coming up for people. Can you tell us a little bit about.

I would love to. So we have the blood sugar resets coming up, which is just a great way to for 10 days commit to eating whole, unprocessed, real foods that are blood sugar balancing. For the 10 days, we give you a meal plan and you can download the meal plan. It has, you know, step by step instructions for meal prepping, your shopping list. And then as a community, together, thousands of people, we go through the 10 days where, you know, we have, have a really engaged group that's messaging about the foods that they're making, sharing pictures Just empowering people. And we have daily lives with myself and my team of dietitians to be able to provide the education and context around the importance and the science of why this really matters. So I'd love for you to join us for the Blood Sugar Reset. And it's a $10 program, so anyone that is interested in participating, we'd welcome. And I can send you the link to sign up.

Yeah, that's amazing. And we will make sure that we put the link in the show notes. And I'm just so grateful for you being here today and for you sharing all your wisdom. I mean, you are really just an abundance of information, science, and facts that people need to know. People need to know because we are being duped as a society into believing that everything that's going on is on the up and up and that these foods are not harmful and that they're not responsibility, they're not responsible for causing the disease. And yet we're getting fatter and fatter. We're getting sicker and sicker. I am seeing more and more people with breast cancer, and I'm seeing them younger and younger. And it's because of this toxic environment that we are creating in our food. And I love where you're coming from in your saying that. It's what you do most that matters, because people do. You do not need to be perfect. You do not need to be perfect because what you do most that matters. But you have to mostly be good. You have to mostly live in an evolutionarily correct way where you have to eat real food and respect the rhythm of the sun and get out into nature and get out into sunshine and sleep and move and mind your stress. But you don't have to be perfect all the time. It's what you do most that matters.

I like to frame it as like, this is something that we get to do. You know, it's never something that anyone has to do, but it's something that we, like, have the gift of being able to do. We have the gift of being able to support our bodies. We have the gift of being able to model these behaviors to our kids. We have the gift of being able to impact people around us by showing them and demonstrating what it looks like to live in a way. Way that supports our health and our vitality and being able to serve as a light to others, to help them awaken to some of the things that they're normalizing with their health.

Yes. Amazing. So where can people find you?

They can find me at being Brigid on Instagram my name is spelled B R I G I D&bingbridgid.com Amazing.

Brigid, thank you so much for being here today, for doing what you do, for being that beacon of light to our to our society. Because we need more and more people like you if we are going to make this world a better place. And you are absolutely at the center of it. I applaud you for going outside of the conventional medical box and figuring all of this stuff out, really promoting and supporting and being a part of the science. So you are a light onto this nation and I thank you so much for what you do.

Thank you for everything that you do and thank you for having me.

So if you enjoyed this episode, please like it, share it. Share it with someone who needs to hear it because this is such an important message. We need to all come together to be on one page to support real food, to support health, to make this world a better place to fix things for our next generation. Because unless we do, it's only going to get worse and we cannot support the system the way it is. So please like it, please share it, send us our comments, and know that I will be back next week, same time, same place. It's Dr. Jen. Bye for now.

Thank you for tuning in to the Keeping a Breast podcast with me, Dr. Jen Simmons. I hope today's episode has inspired you and equipped you with valuable insights to take control of your breast health and overall well being. If you found our conversation enlightening, please consider liking and sharing this podcast. Every like share and comment helps us to reach more listeners just like you who are on a journey to better health. Let's spread the word and make a collective impact. Impact if you or anyone you know is dealing with a breast cancer diagnosis, I highly recommend picking up a copy of my best selling book, the Smart Woman's Guide to Breast Cancer. It's designed to guide you through understanding the root causes of breast cancer and provides you the tools you need to navigate the complexities of a breast cancer diagnosis, the complexities of treatment, and all the while providing you the tools you need to reclaim your health. If you or someone you know is navigating a breast cancer diagnos diagnosis and seeking integrative personalized care, Visit us@realhealthmd.com We're here to support you every step of the way. Also, for those interested in the latest breast screening technology that's safe, painless and accurate, be sure to check out perfectionimaging.com and remember, perfection is spelled with a qt in the middle. Our innovative approach is forever changing the way that we think about and condition. Conduct breast cancer screenings. Remember, health is a journey, not a destination. I'm honored to be part of your journey towards health. Stay tuned for our next episode. And until then, remember, breast health is healthy.