Nutrition with guest Deanna Minich, PhD

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Smart Human podcast. Today I have the pleasure of talking with Dr. Deanna Minik, who is a nutrition scientist, international lecturer, educator and author. Today we're talking about phytonutrients, lectins, gluten free diets, nightshades, and so much more, as well as her new book, the Rainbow Diet. So stay tuned. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Smart Human podcast. Today I have the pleasure of chatting with Dr. Deanna Minick is a nutrition scientist, international lecturer, educator and Author with over 20 years of experience in academia and the food and dietary supplement industries. She is the author of seven consumer books on wellness topics, four book chapters, and over 50 scientific publications. And her new book that's coming out with right as we speak is the Rainbow Diet, A guidebook to the science and art of colorful foods for health and well being. Thank you so much, Deanna, for being here.

Oh, it's great to be here with you having this conversation. I'm excited to see where it's going to take us.

Well, you know, food is such a big topic and it seems that everyone's got their philosophies and there's a lot of science that even contradicts itself. So I'm curious to know, number one, let's go back a little bit. How did you get into food science? I mean, let's really figure out who you are before we move into what we're gonna hear about.

Well, I think my path really goes back to my mother. So I grew up in the 1970s with a very health conscious and at that time you would be referred to as a health nut. So my mom was a little bit of a health nut mom, listening to Richard Simmons, baking Adele Davis type of recipes and you know, I was very polarized and didn't like anything to do with nutrition. When I growing up, in fact, I developed an eating disorder because there was so much rigidity and discipline about what we could eat and what we couldn't eat. So I would say, you know, but I did like science. I was a bit of a nerd. I was a geek and I really like just studying the human body and I thought I was going to go down the path that you did and go to medical school and, you know, just forget all of this nutrition stuff. But, you know, I developed my own personal issues as well. And then I decided, okay, I was working for medical doctors, doctors during my spring breaks from college. And I was thinking, gosh, I don't know if I really want to do that. I didn't know about functional medicine, integrative medicine, at that time. You know, this is like the 1980s. So what I decided to do, which was very unpredictable if I was a teenager looking into my future, but I decided to go and do graduate school training as it related to human nutrition and metabolism. So I went to grad school, I studied nutrition. The subject of one of my theses was human oxidative stress and looking at carotenoids, which are plant pigments. And then from there I went on to do my PhD in essential fatty acid absorption and metabolism. So everything was really connected to nutrition, into health. And I did feel that there was something here that was really profound in the way of helping people to prevent illness. I eventually stumbled onto Dr. Jeffrey Bland. I went to one of his seminars, and I was already doing some work clinically with people, and I was doing that with. In a clinic with a psychiatrist and with a chiropractor, and I was the nutritionist. And I thought, you know, it would be great to work with Jeff Bland. So I. I started working with Jeff Bland. That was back in 2003. Jeff and I worked together for about just a little bit over a decade. In fact, I just had lunch with him last week. It was. He still continues to be a great mentor to me, so. But he was one of the ones that turned me on to plants and turned me on to phytochemicals. In fact, we were talking about it even last week during our lunch about, you know, all the research that we did together in terms of looking at these plant compounds, how they modulate cells in a lot of very intricate ways. You know, in the 1990s, we used to think of plant compounds as just being antioxidants. And then we realized after the Human Gen project, we started looking at epigenetics, that, no, these plant compounds are vast and they're doing a lot of different things in the body. So I think that's how I got here. Just a lot of different great teachers, starting with my mother and, you know, weaving in there. Dr. Jeffrey Bland, a lot of great professors, teachers, researchers, authors. You know, I think none of us travel the journey alone and especially having our own personal issues, which many times lead us into new frontiers of exploration and healing. And I. I had a number of my own personal issues that I needed to resolve as well. So I always kept coming back to nutrition and to different features of the diet.

Yeah, and. And I think, you know, as you mentioned, personal things do draw you towards your passion, whether it be medicine. Or whether it be physiology and biochemistry and nutrition and all that kind of thing, but also what we've learned, I guess, prior to that time period, when it kind of, that moment hits is. Is also kind of setting you up for which directions. Right. I had a background in kind of anthropology in college and it kind of really shaped the future stuff I learned. What are your experiences in previous. Have, I mean, have you incorporated things like anthropology into what your thoughts are on. On plants and how plants have changed over time, let alone humans?

Yeah, you know, in fact, it's not. I would say anthropology is probably more peripheral for me, but I would say looking at so many different aspects. Yes, the cultural aspects, but then also looking at our accessibility, looking even at the artistry, looking at the spirituality. You know, what has always intrigued me is that I feel that plants embody the planet's intelligence. Right. And so by connecting to plants, we actually connect to the wisdom of the planet. And I see that from a very scientific angle, but then also a very symbolic perspective which really does lead into the rainbow diet in the color code that I talk about. Right. That I do see that nature is connecting us to her intelligence through these different colors and what they impart as their functional signature. But I love that you have this background in anthropology and, you know, really looking at the matrix that we're enmeshed with as it relates to food and our experience of it, I think it's profound and we can't negate that. That's why when we look at, you know, what you started us off talking with about diets and, you know, there are so many different diets out there. What I have come to is it's all about personalization. And personalization is not just genetics, but it's ancestry, it's anthropology, it's cultural aspects and affinities and memories. And, you know, we even have epigenetic connections to food and eating and meals and even starvation. So I feel like, you know, that it's really a large, I would say, entity of so many different interconnections and lots of different crosstalk. That is very interesting. But my angle has been more, I would say, the psychology and the physiology of plants and what they bring to the surface for us.

Yeah. And it's a very important topic as we get. I mean, certainly now food has become such a big deal. It's a billion dollar industry, even the recipe cookbook industry. There's no ceiling to it, it seems. So tell me a little bit about. Tell our audience a little bit about your new book and really, having done so much work in so many previous topics, what drew you to this topic of the rainbow? The Rainbow Diet? What is that about?

Well, you know, over time, and partly this comes from Jeff Bland as well, because I remember having a conversation with Jeff about why he always rode the middle of whether it was things that were trending or being talked about. And he gave this wisdom to me, which was that the pendulum is always swinging. And I soon began to see, even in my two and a half decades of, you know, just experience with nutrition science, that indeed, like, things come, things go. And one of the things that I saw that you couldn't really arm wrestle was that of fruits and vegetables and plant foods like herbs and spices. You know, you and I could probably arm wrestle things like meat, we could arm wrestle eggs, we could arm wrestle dairy products. There are a lot of different things within nutrition that people can cherry pick data because there's data on both sides. We could say, well, there's a different quality of data, but essentially there would be data to support both sides. And, you know, even though science is science and we think it's objective, it's not. And I do think that there's a subjective imprint based on people researching it or even how they set up studies. But the thing that I was seeing over and over again that was irrefutable was the science of eating plant foods. And you could see that through different cultures. You could see from a pattern recognition point of view that there were lowered rates of chronic diseases based on eating certain fruits and vegetables. So I soon came to realize, you know what, let's go with the truth. Let's go with what has been the mainstay, what seems to stick and not just be a trend of butter or margarine. Margarine or a carnivore diet, or, you know, just I wanted something that was a connector to people and to the planet. And one of the things I was seeing in the literature and even through when I was doing more rigorous clinical work was that plants and it didn't even matter if people were eating a more keto diet, a more paleo diet. The unifier for all of these diets was actually plants. You know, that's where we meet on fiber, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, It. It's essential. So that's why I went with eating the rainbow, and hence the rainbow diet. The rainbow diet is a little bit, you know, if we think of this colloquial phrase that I've used, first of all, I'm not always into diets. I think, you know, the, the reason why we like the word diet for a book on food is because it does trigger a person to think, oh, that's a food book.

Right.

But, but truly eating in the way of color ensures that we're getting the signals at a very deep physiological level that will ensure better survival and even sustainability longer term. So that's kind of what led me there. And I was seeing other opinion leading organizations all talking about, you know, whether it's eat five a day or get your colors or, you know, it just seemed that it was something that everybody was saying uniformly right. Now I know that some people critique me and say, well Deanna, what about goitrogens and phytates and oxalates and I thought plants were poisonous. And you know, there's a paradox.

Right. We'll get into some of those questions about lectins and nightshades. We'll get into that listening. Yep, yep.

But anyways, dive into that now or.

Oh, you tell me. I mean, you know, the thing is, is that like you were saying, there's a lot of controversy, there's a lot of movements in one section or another. But I love how you're saying that, you know, but it all crosses over, over very, you know, wholesome components of plant based foods. You know, a plant plants essentially. And that what you did was what I thought was brilliant in your book is that you really, you know, kind of divided up some of the most incredible foods, some of the most incredible produce into colors and then you really went into why they were of value. So jumping into that, what are the four main principles of the rainbow diet of what you put together?

Yeah, and I know that I just said that I'm not into rules and rigor and discipline as it relates to food, but there are certain principles that I think that nature embodies that we can always go back to for answers. They are color, creativity, diversity and rhythm. And of course, color is what the book is about. It's a very, you know, colorful book in the way of looking at the colors and what they mean psychologically as well as physiologically and even through phytochemicals. When it comes to creativity, I think that this is also a really important feature of health. In fact, I made a social media post this past week which was health is a science, healing is an art, and holism is spirituality. And I feel that when we look at medicine today, you know, so much of medicine has become very rigid in the way of protocols or decision trees. But I would say you know, in my experience, my personal experience of going to doctors and healers and practitioners of all different types is that there's also an art to it. It involves creativity. It requires some ability to be in the flow and to think differently. You know, and we're hearing so much about neuronal plasticity, heart rate variability, metabolic flexibility, looking at markers of aging related to how we respond to stress. So I think that creativity and bringing that into food that, you know, if I look at my background and how food was something that was connected to a right or a wrong, I feel like there's a huge spectrum in between and some room for creative expression through that process. When I talk about diversity, that's one of my favorites, because diversity is one of the features that we now see being connected to health. So dietary diversity imparts gut microbiome diversity imparts better nutritional status and also even reduced toxin load because we don't accumulate things. We just keep cycling through, so we're not concentrating whether it's a nutrient or even a toxin. The fourth principle of rhythm is really about looking at circadian rhythm. It's not just what we eat, but when we eat and how important that is. And Dr. Sachin Panda the Salk Institute has done amazing work on that. But then there's also the menstrual rhythm. There's also the seasonal rhythm. There's the lunar rhythm. You know, we are in, I would say, enmeshed in time on this planet and layers and layers of it. And food responds to the timing of when we are eating it. So I also address that in the book because I do think that sometimes people have the what right in terms of, like, okay, I. I know that this is good for me, eating these foods are. Are excellent, but yet they're not in tune with their seasonal needs or they're eating a little bit too late at night. So I do think that bringing rhythm into that conversation is important.

Yeah, no, I think it's fascinating. It always reminds me a little bit of Ayurvedic medicine, too, because there's so much about timing that goes on to when you eat and that kind of thing. So what are some of. I mean, some of these questions, you know, I think are pretty, you know, basic that I want to ask, but tell us a little bit more. I think we want to dig deeper. I want to. I want to. I want to pick your brain because you're a brilliant, you know, food scientist and nutrition scientist. Tell me about how the colors actually play out into human health in terms of how the biochemistry works of some of the key color groups that you describe in the book.

Yeah, I love that question. And that really is the essence of the book. Because what I was hoping to share with the Rainbow diet was that there is a reason for each color. It's not just about really just having pretty colors on the plate. There's a functional signature to red, there's a functional signature to orange. So when you look at social media, as many people do, you kind of see these beautiful graphics with, you know, eat red foods. And this is why. And then you'll see like a whole list of reasons. And so what I did, and I published an article in the Journal of Nutrition and metabolism in 2019 where I actually talked about the science and the pattern recognition of each of these colors and what they connect to from a body system perspective. So we'll walk through each of them. And so when we think of red, red colored foods, first of all, they're kind of rare in nature, or they appear seasonally like a red berry in a green forest. Right. Many times they're small there. Your eye has to. We have also evolved based on being able to see some of these colors for our survival. Just even back to anthropology. Right. Those colors are essential. So red, in my mind, the way that I see it from a pattern recognition point of view, is that red connects to polyphenols. These polyphenols have these kind of cyclic benzene structures that resemble things like stress hormones in our bodies. And so they help to impart a bit of support to the immune system as well as to kind of the whole process of inflammation and helping at the level of the gut. Many of these red colored foods tend to be high in vitamin C. So typically when I think of red foods, I think of supporting the adrenal glands, but also the response of stress in the body, helping us to survive in our environments. You know, red, from a psychological perspective, perspective is the color of reaction. It is a color of, you know, some kind of strong emotion. Typically it evokes a response. Like if we see an ambulance, a stop sign, McDonald's, McDonald's and all the.

Fast foods, they're actually designed to be red and yellow.

Well, in other stores, you're right. And, and you just pinpointed something here about marketing and how marketing of foods has really connected into the psychology aspect. Right. So get in, get your food quick and get out. And it evokes a response. I mean, even just recently, as we know, the red dye number three was just banned by the fda. Right. So Food industries know about the power of these colors, which is why we, we see these bright blue drinks, these bright blue candies and purple candies, pink candies, they're very eye catching. Col intrigues us. Right. We are drawn to color emotionally. So again, back to red. Now the only thing about red that I want to mention, and I talk about this in the rainbow diet, is that there's a little bit of a double edged sword to some of these colors. And what I mean by that is sometimes red colored foods can actually be pro inflammatory. They can actually evoke a histamine response which is a red or a reddening of the body in some way. Right. Kind of the red ears after you eat something or the rash or the, you know, the itchiness, you know, kind of symptoms of inflammation after eating certain things. Maybe it's nightshades. You alluded to nightshades previously. I think of tomatoes and you know, maybe somebody does have a lectin sensitivity or maybe it's an acidic type of connection to that red food. Right. I know for many young children they have intolerance to strawberries. Whether, you know, maybe that's a something in the strawberry itself, maybe it's the acidity. But there can be a connection to red foods that may connect to heat or inflammation. I think of capsaicin, I think of hot chili peppers. Not everybody can withstand those. Back to Ayurvedic medicine. Right. So the way that I think about red is that we can draw upon the healing of red depending on what we need a little bit of firing up of our immune system, but maybe not too much for some people where we can go over the edge and create issues through certain of these red colored foods.

Yeah, no, I think it's great because you're tying, it's almost a storyline. You know, people like to understand a storyline. You know, you have the starting point of the color and we can all relate to these colors and that kind of thing. But you're moving it gently in the book towards sort of actionable statements and actionable components to what you're saying. So. And you do this for several colors. I mean, you do this for the rainbow. So there's lots of really good information. The other thing I thought was interesting, and I'm not someone, believe it or not, who likes to cook. My husband actually does a lot of the cooking. I'll do it and I'll do it. Okay, well, but you know, I don't love it as so many of the other colleagues of mine take on. But what I found was so interesting is that there was lists of foods that I'd never either seen before, cooked with before, ate before, didn't even know where to buy them, but maybe they're there and I just never looked. I think exposing people to sort of this palette of produce that maybe no one even considered. You know, the supermarkets are very narrow, wouldn't you say, in terms of what they offer in a very, you know, in terms of the business aspect of selling produce, you don't really get a full variety. If you go to an Asian market, you might see a whole host of, you know, new produce that you might not see in American or in a conventional US Supermarket. So what are your thoughts on sort of just variety and access?

Ailee, I think you've hit the nail on the head there because so often what people are in is what I would call food ruts. So people go to the same grocery store, they buy the same foods, they make the same recipes every week. And it's been estimated that the average American cycles between. And I think that this is probably pretty expansive, but something like five to seven different recipes or different go to meals. So we don't really expand out. And from a more anthropological perspective, let's just go into that for a second. It has been estimated that if we look at ancestrally, what were we exposed through time, the number of plants was something like between a thousand to three thousand different species of plants that we would have exposure to. And what we have now in your average grocery store, I actually wanted to count them up one time, but you know, in general, it's already been published and this number is out there that we have something on the order of 100 to 300 different plants that we're exposed to. So look at that dramatic difference. A thousand to three thousand. Now we're down to 100 to 300. And if you just go to the same grocery store all the time, you're just going to have that finite amount of different plants that you're exposed to. And even, let's just go back to the color red for a second. Even within red, you can't just have the same red colored food, right? Because you're just gonna have the same phytochemicals. You have to diversify within the colors. So it's not just a red tomato, but a red apple, a red raspberry, red beet, red reddish cabbage or radicchio, you know, all of those different ones. So to your point about are people getting exposed? There are a lot of things on that rainbow shopping list that you didn't recognize. That's where creativity comes in and meets diversity. And this is where I say to people a couple of things. One is try one food per week that maybe you haven't had in months. Like, I know for me, what was it recently, like Celerac, you know, and I even had to go and look up things. I do like to cook a little bit. I'm not obsessive and like to be in the kitchen all the time. I like to do many more things. And some people are really good at it. I just, I'm kind of an intuitive person when it comes to cooking things. But, you know, trying out new things, going to different markets. I tend not to be very brand loyal because I think that even brands, then you start seeing the same thing in those foods repeatedly. So to diversify people, places, events, foods, the more you diversify, the more palate culture you create in the gut. Again, the. The more benefit you get from a health perspective. And that translates. You know, one of your areas of specialty is the immune system. The immune system becomes much more resilient with this diversification. In fact, children, if they have a greater, more diverse diet very early on in life, they have less risk of allergic diseases as adults. And I think that that's really interesting, right? So like having children exposed. And one of the ways I usually get people saying to me, but Deanna, my kids don't like to eat vegetables. Well, there was a study, and I usually bring this forth as kind of an actionable, where children were given a variety of like three different vegetables versus one vegetable. And every time, the children would choose more quantitatively of the vegetables when they were able to select from three different ones versus just one. So I think our human minds, we like variety, we like choice, we like to make those different, I would say, decisions now that can also backfire on us. Like if we go to buffets and all you can eat buffets, where now we've got all of these choices in front of us and we. We can't stop and our head pops off.

We're like, what?

You know, yes, there's a. Again, there's always that seesaw balance, that yin yang of too much, too little, the Goldilocks principle of just the just right of whatever it is that we're looking into.

No, I. It's. It's quite interesting. You know, I learned something. It's funny with my kids is that you really. It's not. The question is because they fight over meals, you say you have the choice of this or this? Which one would you like as opposed to what would you like for breakfast kids? And that kind of changed everything for my whole world because I really just said, here are your choices. But they had choices as opposed to keeping it open ended for the kids. And I think as they got older they started doing their own thing. But at that point I think it was really nice to almost help them shape their options because they, they don't even know what to come up with. So anyway, that's, that's kind of interesting.

That's a great strategy. By the way, that that does work with kids typically having an either or so that they feel like they have the locus of control right within a parameter invested in eating it. Yes, yes.

Yeah. And then you don't go nuts because they're fighting with you. So, you know, I guess one of the things that we're always kind of really thinking of long term here or not, you know, is essentially how did the foods we choose keep us healthy? Are we getting, and this is the big an area that I like to talk about a lot because in the modern day food system, our food travels long distances. It's kept in low temperature refrigerators and freezers, even if it's organic and even if it's going to a really great food store. What I've realized again, thinking about anthropology and evolution is that we really do not get the nutritional value. Even if we had, I said this to patients, even if you have the best diet in the world, you know, seven, ten fruits and vegetables a day, well, what if it's not organic? And I want you to comment on that kind of option, you know, to see how we can think about USDA organic and why that matters. And also are we getting enough of the nutritional value? We think we are even with the best diets. And does that need to be supplemented with, you know, multivitamins and those kind of things. So maybe two questions. Yeah, hit either one. But I think they're sort of tied together in terms of whether we're nutrient sufficient, as I kind of call it.

Yes, that's a really good point because that's going to take us in kind of the whole environmental toxin, meats, food space a bit. Right. So, you know, and it's been estimated that maybe one orange in the 1950s, we now need eight oranges in order to get the same nutritional value from that food. So yes, we're up against some hurdles. Right. We've got polluted environments, we have depleted soils, and we have mass agriculture that is just, you know, not really cultivating food in the, in the ways that our bodies have been accustomed to. So we're short changing our nutritional status. Not only that, but we actually need more in order to live in this environment which is riddled with so many different environmental toxins. Right. So we actually need more. We have more stress psychologically, which also puts us in a position of where we have greater nutritional need. So now our food is not supplying what we need and we're more compromised just from a general status point of view when it comes to nutrients, toxins, et cetera. So I do think to your question, do we need supplements? I do think that most people need supplements. I think that if you look at the daily diet, even if people are eating all of the best things, they're eating organic, they're eating locally grown foods without a lot of travel to them, right. So that they're preserving a lot of the quality, people are still deficient. It's amazing. And I have even found through testing that even people who supplement are still deficient, right? Like they may actually not be taking enough. One example where I saw that was with people who are relatively healthy. And this was part of a clinical trial that we were doing some time ago. We were looking at their omega 3 index. So just looking at a basic marker, we want that to be around 8%. Several of these people were supplementing with 1 to 2 grams of EPA and DHA, but yet their omega 3 index was falling short at about 4 to 5% even though they were supplementing and they didn't even have any major health issues. So I do think this is where things like labs working with a practitioner is really important that you know your baseline. You might think that you're doing okay because you're taking a certain supplement, but are you actually absorbing it? Is it the right format? Is it a good supplement? I mean, I have been in the supplement space for some time now and you could be paying very good money, it could be very expensive, but it's a very unhealthy supplement. You're, you're paying a lot for getting very little there. So it's, it's really important to be a smart human, as you would say, and make sure that you have a smart process to what you're spending and what you're taking and also when you're taking it. I think this is kind of the next level for many people. Many people know about supplements, but what many people don't know is when do you actually take that supplement? Through the day. We know that the circadian Rhythm determines certain hormone levels. Efficiency of certain body systems, like the cardiovascular system peaks more in the later afternoon, like around 2:30 to 5. Right. So should we be taking things for the cardiovascular system, for the musculoskeletal system, for circulation at that time? What we don't have is the sophistication of even looking at body size and how somebody that is taller or heavier might actually need more of a probiotic than somebody that's shorter and smaller. Right. We don't have that sophistication. So I feel like we're still in the dark ages of supplements in some ways. But there are some sophisticated tools to kind of navigate that process through laboratory markers, especially functional biomarkers. Because your gene variants can't tell you everything. What we need to see is how your genes are actually performing in your environment. So looking at that, I think is actually one good way to do it. I just recently did, you know, I like to do my annual labs just to kind of see, like, how am I doing? You know, I take certain supplements. I fell short on zinc. I was really surprised because for a while, and I had, like, tracked my results over time and there were times that I was good on zinc. And then like, this time I was low on zinc. And I was thinking, okay, then that prompted me, I need to look at zinc, look at that zinc to copper ratio to be sure that I. I'm not exceeding, you know, because there's a tender balance of nutrients in the body, of course, and even, you know, foods and how we bring those together. But to answer your question succinctly, yes, I think in this modern age, we need supplements to carry us through all of the daily insults that were barraged with, unfortunately, yeah.

And, you know, to your point, also, you were mentioning. Well, we were. We were kind of talking about how you can be on certain supplements and still not absorb your point about the quality. I echo a thousand percent. You know, even the way fish oils are distilled separate from how much DHA and EPA are in there. Again, that's even a nuance. It's very hard for, you know, an everyday person who's never even us. I mean, at least me in training, I didn't know any of this. But one of the interesting things you mentioned about the zinc for yourself is that. And you talk about this in the book, which was really exciting to see, is that you talked about, you know, people who are, like, drinking tea and coffee, tannin, tannins that are in some of these plant materials, which, you know, we don't think much about. But guess what? You know, I found out I was iron deficient. I was drinking tea every time I was having anything with iron. And iron is blocked in many ways by the tannins in our tea. So you think you can do everything right. You think you're doing organic tea and you're drinking all these healthy foods. But let me let you speak to this. The interactions of certain foods can also affect, and there's some common ones that you talk about in the book, which I think everyone would love to embrace. So share some of that. Particularly, you know, the interactions between even the good stuff that we're taking in.

Yeah, you raise a really good point. I don't think many people bring this out with me to talk about, but it's, it's a fact that there are, again, it's back to timing certain things, to have certain ways to prepare certain things and certain food combinations that might not be optimal, let's say it that way. So when we think of a cup of tea, a cup of tea is filled with polyphenols. Polyphenols are one of the largest classes of phytochemicals. Over 8,000 different polyphenols have been identified. There is a class of polyphenols called tannins. And they're big and bulky. You know, that's part of what creates the healthful effects of polyphenols, is that they provide the substrate for the microbiota to chew on and then give you secondary metabolites. But because they're big and bulky, much like fiber, in some ways they can also bind to things like minerals. And what you spoke to was iron. Right. Iron being a mineral, Zinc would be along those same lines. Copper, selenium, these kinds of micronutrients, which could easily, because of their chemical charge, could easily adhere to some of these bulky polyphenolic structures. So, yes, it's been thought that having. Well, and especially if you are just have a tendency towards iron deficiency to be kind of keyed into even having tea with a meal. Right. And we see that culturally in India or in Asia, certain parts of Asia, that's just done as part of the meal. But in cases where we want to optimize, we might want to have that cup of tea an hour either before or after the meal. And there was actually a study on that showing that then you did not interfere with the absorption of things like these minerals like iron. So, yes, I mean, I think we. We always have to keep these things in balance. Right. I think when we're Having a meal, even traditionally speaking. I like the fact that you brought up Ayurveda because there's traditional Chinese medicine or all these forms of medicine that really look at food and how we're eating and the combinations of things. And it may not be such a great thing to have a lot of liquid with a meal. Right. Just a little bit. Because maybe we just want to focus on that food matrix without having something like a high tannin load from tea. But you do get tannins in food just overall. And so I think what we have to ultimately come to, this is just my perspective is working on our gut to optimize the digestion and absorptive process. And we can even think about that with oxalates. Right. Is it really the oxalates in the Swiss chard, or is it because our bodies have a predisposition to forming certain kinds of kidney stones? Or do we lack the certain microorganisms that are known to degrade oxalic acid? So maybe do we have a disturbed gut microbiome known as dysbiosis? Right. It's been thought that there is this oxalobiome. So what I would also say is that, yes, there's this issue about the food and how we eat food and when we eat it, how to optimize that for our own physiology, but then also to know what are our physiological predispositions and how can we optimize that longer term. Like, even with lectins, what we see with lectins is that certain of them. And we actually. So I teach a graduate school course as part of a program in human nutrition and functional medicine. It's actually on metabolic detoxification. And we. We talk about these things. And there's a student in. In one of those courses that I taught. His name is Weston Petrowski. And we took on anti nutrients, as they're called, and we went through each of them. And when you actually look at lectins, some of these lectins or these glycoprotein compounds in foods have immunomodulatory benefit, as there have been studied. And perhaps some of the ways that we've been preparing foods in modern times might be a little bit of the issue. Right?

Yeah. No, I love that you're saying this because there's such a fear of plants based on certain people that, you know, or certain groups that. That promote that. And. And I think what that does is it. In my world, I think it keeps people too narrow in their food choice. It makes people afraid of food. We don't want to be afraid of food, especially organic whole produce, if we can find it. And you can speak to the organic component, which I think we didn't get to yet. But the idea is that lectins, that I understand the way you prepare certain foods will offset the negative side of that argument, the bad side, and actually maybe harness the good components that lectins have for the human body a hundred percent.

And that's why it really boils down to the food preparation. Right? Like literally boiling, cooking, sprouting, going back to the traditional methods of cooking are. There was a reason for those. And now when I see a lot of people just doing raw smoothies, raw kale, you know, just taking food out of its traditional matrix in the way that it had been culturally taken in, I think that's where we start to see problems, especially with high amounts of things and again, with people being in food ruts. But let's go back to your question on organically grown food. Is that a better choice? I mean, when you look at conventionally grown food versus organically grown food, by far and away, organically grown food is going to be the better choice because at least you're reducing some degree of the overall toxic load of that food. Pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides. Is the organically grown food completely free of anything in the environment? No. In fact, the place where I was speaking to this a little bit more is when we had the whole trend with bone broth. So remember when bone broth, this was, gosh, I mean, I think seven to eight years ago, this bone broth started to come to the market and people were thinking, oh, this is great. But my first thinking, and probably yours too, was, oh, my goodness, you're taking these bones and cooking them, you know, just lead, tearing them apart. What has stored in those bones? Yes, lead. All kinds of different metals. Right. So then at the time, I had my assistant call around to the different food manufacturers of these bone broth to ask who was testing for the different toxic elements in that bone broth. Because food companies don't necessarily have to test for those things like supplement companies. And yet supplement companies get the short end of the stick, even though they're going through third party testing on a lot of these things. And at that time, not a lot, only one company was testing one company. So now you look at it now, things have changed a lot and people would say, oh, but it's organic bone broth. So I'm okay. But organic has nothing to do with just the toxic elements in the environment and how those might infiltrate into the water, the soil, the animal. Right. It only talks about the growing practices. So all of which to say, you know, everything to me is a spectrum. Right back to that, Goldilocks. You just have to find the spectrum of not shying away from something so much to the point that, like you said, where your patients are fearful, they can't eat. Now they have a stress response around food. But then on the other side, just being well informed too, of knowing, like, okay, that's a smart choice. That's probably not such a great choice for me. I'm going to feel like this afterwards. Right. So there's a spectrum of behavior. And, you know, I was thinking a lot just after the new year and thinking about, like, how do people actually change their behavior? How do they eat more of the rainbow? How do they actually. Most people know what they need to eat? Like, when they read this book, they're going to say, oh, I know of the benefits of fruits and veggies. You can't. You can't tell me that enough. I already know it. But how do I actually make the change? And I have been thinking more and more about this because I feel like many of us know, but we can't get there. And I was thinking like, is there a behavior biome? Is there a microbiome signature where that fosters more of a. I would say a proclivity towards certain decisions that would be more in the interest of your organism, your being. Right. Like if you had a gut microbiome that was in proper proportion. Proportion, because we're looking at psychobiotics. A lot of these microorganisms produce neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are connected to our behavior. We don't know about neurotransmitters produced at the level of the gut and then the brain connection. But still, it seems like many people know about eating fruits and vegetables. But what they don't realize too, is that the more that we eat these foods, the more fiber we have, the more of these vitamins and minerals, the more that we actually find ourselves in a better mood state. And then we continue on with making more favorable decisions about our next food choice. So that's kind of the newer sign, you probably saw that in the book, that I'm not only talking about reducing risks of chronic disease, but also feeling happier. You know, there's such a huge connection between mental health status and eating blue purple foods. Right? The brain foods. The B for blue, the B for brain. And so I want Everybody to know that, like, we all want to feel better, but we also want to be happier, more content, flourishing, creative, and we can get there with that rainbow as well.

Yeah, I think it's great because you're giving people a path and you're giving them sort of like, again, the story. And when you. When you describe sort of like this, you know, is our. Are our bodies more attuned to wanting certain colors or not? I think of pica or, you know, or pica. Pica, you know, and how pregnant women who are iron deficient tend to crave ice chips and eat dirt and all sorts of interesting worldwide cultural phenomenon with food when they're iron deficient. And I think to myself, well, do I crave blueberries? I crave them. I don't know if it's just habit, but maybe there's just something about the way I've read about their science, or maybe I'm yearning to have mental acuity or maybe I just, you know, like the flavor and the taste and the texture. Who knows? But I think we start to radiate and can change our palate because I used to eat the standard American diet, and now I feel like that would turn me off. And now I'm turned on by a salad. A big salad would make me excited. Where that normally would not do that, you know, maybe 20 years ago. So I think it's interesting. I think you can always make your. You can mind over matter. I think you can also learn your brain into better, healthy choices because as you said, it's a positive cycle. It seems to, you know, support. But all. All really great information. And I'm telling you, when people. When people read, you know, we. We tend to think it's simplified because it has to be about the colors of the rainbow. But really there's so much science packed into what. Yes, these recommendations are that it's not as simplistic as everyone might, you know, someone might think. And when you talk about, you know, the. I'm trying to get to some of the most key things because there's just so much to talk about. We talked about lectins. We talked a little bit about organic being something that's not only protective from chemicals, but also more nutrient value. I think that it's been shown to have more quality nutrients in soil that is organic and required to be organic.

Yeah, absolutely.

I get a lot about the nightshades just to tap back into that as an autoimmune disease and whatever, as a rheumatologist. The science, again, could go either way, in terms of arguing that there's some scientific component to staying away from nightshades and it might inflame your joints, my feeling, what I've seen with patients is that you really have to listen to your body and decide if those foods for you, eggplant, which is grown at night, tomatoes, whether they in fact affect the way you feel. Yeah. Would you agree with that or would you say all nightshades out, baby, with the bath water? I just don't agree with that.

No, actually, I concur with you 100%. And I even saw that clinically, I would say on average, like 10 to 15% of people would have some response to one or more of the nightshades. But it may not be just like you're saying. It may not be a uniform, just like ruling out all of them. It may be not forever either. Because, you know, again, I think that the more that we leave certain things out, I think one of the reasons why people have so many intolerances, sensitivities, and allergic reactions is because they're doing something over and over again, right? The gut is getting inflamed, and then it just continues to along that process. So I've even tried with clients what I call dietary micro rotation, which is basically like small amounts of many different foods, maybe even a little bit of tomato, like a little bit of the things that you normally wouldn't have as a big bolus, which could provoke the reaction, the strong reaction, but enables your body to see it. Right. So that if it does come into the diet at some point, that you don't have like a huge flare. So but what you're saying, I 100% agree with that. It's personalized. And what I also want people to know is that it can change. The immune system changes just like every other body system. I mean, the gut turns over every five to seven days. You've got a new lining, right? And that's where most of our immune system is. So I think that there's hope for people where they feel like they can't eat anything. And so again, getting a little bit of the rainbow. The reason why I talk about the rainbow and kind of make it a little bit more fun is because sometimes eating it can be a drag for people. It can be analysis paralysis. It can just take you into eating disorders, whether orthorexia to anorexia to bulimia. I mean, the whole spectrum of different types of connections to our relationship with food, functional or dysfunctional. And I would say, you know, the rainbow Is artistic. Like, if we saw food as art, back to healing, right? Health versus healing. If we saw food as healing, where it's in art, it is. If our body's the canvas, how are we coloring the insides? Because then we. We become essentially like this ever evolving sculpture of all of our life experiences. Right? Not just food, but everything. And so how do we see ourselves as creatively evolving and this artistic connection to our everyday lives? I. I feel like I want people to be more in the headspace of seeing food as art, because I feel like that will bring more joy. And that's. I feel, at least in my experience, working with people over these years is that people don't have a whole lot of joy with food. Like, we need to think about from an anthropological perspective, like when you go to the Mediterranean, you know, lots of talk and discussion around that long dinner table. And, you know, a meal is supposed to be meaningful. It connects us to family and to memories and to, like, the. Our ancestors through certain staple foods. Right. But yet in this day and age, I mean, we're just overturning so much of that, and people have so many food phobias, we don't trust the food companies anymore. There's so much polarity as it relates to our food supply. So if we can embrace, I would say, the positive elements of the art, the creative aspects of how do we bring more joy? You know, one of the things that I did, I don't think I've ever showed this to you, but when I see you at the Integrative Healthcare Symposium, I'm going to bring you a book and also a package of cards because I. One of the things I realized is that people need more interactive things. And I've done a lot of retreats and workshops with people around this, especially emotional eating. So I created a card deck where people can just keep it on their dining room table or wherever they eat and then just pick a card and it has a color and it has an inspirational message. Because I feel like people get a lot of nutrition, but they don't get a lot of nourishment. And the nourishment is what is for the heart. Right. It's. It's like what brings us back to that place of the balanced, sympathetic, parasympathetic. We're feeling a connection with this food. Yeah, I. I just think it's really important for.

I love it. You know, you. You feel the passion of what you do with how you talk about it. And, you know, it always inspires me to talk to people who are just like, they're in a zone. And I can almost, I can see that you put that into the work that you wrote about. I mean, it's just wonderful. And I did see it. I read your book and I, and I loved it. You know, it's, it's so exciting to talk to you. Quick question for you. I'm going to hit you with a couple quickies because I know we don't have much time. Gluten free, what are your thoughts? If you can make that a personalized.

Definitely personalized. So great. You know, I think gluten free, sometimes as a marker, it's a good thing, but it just kind of depends on the food. So just because something is gluten free doesn't mean that it's like to be exalted. And like, that's like the ultimate. I think it, you know, you can have a very ultra processed gluten free food. Right. So just take it in context is what I would say about that.

Excellent. I appreciate that. Top three things that someone can do right now to improve their diet as it pertains to any of the work that you've done in all the years that you've researched food.

Okay, well, I'll bring that back to my four principles. I know you only want three. So number one, eat the rainbow. And let me give you one quick hack for eating the rainbow for some people where it feels like just too much spices. Spices like spice blends. I mean, right there you're getting so many different phytochemicals coming together in very concentrated amounts. Bring spices into your. You know, there's a rainbow of spices that you have, rainbow of herbal teas that you can draw from. It's not just green tea, but you've got like, like, in fact, I just recently bought this elderberry, a beautiful blue purple tea. It is so gorgeous to even just look at. Right? Like, let yourself sink into like the beauty of the food as well when you're eating it. So yes, getting the rainbow, herbs, spices, herbal teas, you know, just drawing upon all different kinds of color. Number two, try a different food every week. See where that takes you with your creativity. And number three, I'm gonna give you a bit more of a tangible one on diversity. Based on the research, aim for 50 unique, diverse foods, plant foods per week. And that may sound like a lot, but it's actually not, especially if you load up your plate with spices. I actually did this exercise where I just gamified the whole thing. So I have a group on Facebook and we kind of did this whole experience together. Like how many plants can you get in a meal? And I actually had 31 plants in one of my meals where I just loaded up with spices. I loaded up. I mean I did count olive oil as part of the plant signature. Right. So there's more of an expansive view. And in the rainbow diet book, I actually have the food variety tracker so you can see how to count things. That should help you in getting your 50.

Yeah, no, it's packed with great things to think about. I'll tell you. It was a joy to take a look at. It was a joy to absorb. And then we agreed on so much which made me so happy. Even how food offsets environmental toxin changes to genes and methylation. And so we have it as a powerful weapon as on top of everything else giving us joy and being part of our culture in our lives and being important to our cell health and our prevention of disease, it actually offsets modern day effects from chemicals. So the argument is pretty strong that food is medicine, but produce and eating the rainbow is quite helpful to, to modern day humans. So thank you for putting that together and I hope people will check that out and we're coming to an end. So I just wanted to say thank you so much for taking the time. Is there anything else you would like to share? I know we people can reach Deanna Minick, Dr. Minick, at www.deannaminnik.com and we will have your full bio and all of your information, resources and other work on our podcast page for the smart human. So please check it out everybody. But yeah, last words.

My last words are thank you. You know, this is so exciting. You have a new book and so we're kind of on this book vibe together, which is great. You know, it just feels so satisfying to get our passions and our information out there to everybody. Right. I mean it's just, it feels like, you know, it just, just gives our lives meaning and really sets us afoot on purpose. So thank you for having me. And you know, I also have a lot of just free giveaways, like resources on my website, the website that you gave to everybody, the dnament.com 1. Because my main goal is to educate and to inspire. So thanks again. I feel like we're, we're joined on that purpose. So I'm going to do more of the same and I wish you all the success with your book as well.

Yeah, well, thank you. And again, it takes a village. I always say this, it sounds cliche, but it's true in this world of health and wellness and trying to keep people and ourselves and our family healthy. You know, it's a journey, but it's nice when we can stick together and support each other. So I wish you the best. And everybody check it out and have a great day.

Thanks, Deanna. Dr. Thank you.

Thank you.

Take care, everybody.