Eat Well to Be Well: 5 Things to Avoid to Start Eating Right

Hi, and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson, and today I'm going to introduce you to Mira Desi. She's known as the ingredient guru and she's a certified nutrition educator. The cool and amazing thing is that she's here to share with us how she healed herself from an autoimmune condition by learning all about what's in food and changing her diet. Thank you so much for being here, Mira. I appreciate you.

Thank you so much for having me here. It's always great to talk with you.

I know we have so much fun and I'm looking forward to this. Please share with everyone. Like, I mean, as I mentioned, you healed yourself, so talk us through. Like, what motivated you to become the ingredient guru and learn all this stuff about food?

Sure. You know, and the funny thing is, I wasn't in the nutrition field before, and a lot of my friends used to say, oh, you're the healthiest eater we know. You know, we belong to belonged to the farmer's market and we went to a CSA and we made all this stuff, but we still had things that were not so great for us in our house. And over time, I got sicker and sicker and even sicker until I got to a point where I was deathly ill. Like, I could not walk up a flight of stairs without lying down on the top stair to recover, even if I was going to bed, I had to lie there for a while. I. I had to choose.

So weak and so very, very weak.

Absolutely. My gut, I needed to know where a bathroom was within 20 steps of me at all times. And I also just had horrible pain and bloating and I would get all kinds of weird body symptoms, a lot of different things. I wound up leaving my job. And as I began to dive in, and so I should shiver that my previous, my last paid position in corporate America was as a database administrator. So I am an information driven person.

That makes sense. Then you just took what you know well and you said, I'm going to apply this to food and nutrition.

Yes, absolutely. And so the more I began to learn about food, the more I began to realize there was a huge disconnect between what I thought was good and what it was doing to my body. And as I began to make changes, I began to feel better. So I started cleaning up our pantry and then I started diving deeper. At a certain point, I had to go back to school. So I did. And from there discovered my life's work, which is to let people know that there are Things that you can do to make a huge difference, especially if you have some kind of a chronic health condition.

Well, and that's the thing is even if people, even if a listener doesn't have an autoimmune condition, or in your case, it was if I might share ulcerative colitis. So even if someone doesn't have inflammatory bowel disease, these same things you learn can help them improve their health in so many ways. Especially because our digestion, our gut health is so key to the rest of our health. And tell us a little bit more about that. What is, what have you noticed in terms of the connection with gut health and the rest of your body?

You know, I think one of the things we tend to forget is that many of the health conditions that we experience and some of them are full on hardcore something like ulcerative colitis or arthritis or diabetes or any of, you know, the very highly identified disorders. But a lot of them are very low level. I'm very achy. Oh, I get bloated all the time. Oh, I have all these things. And what we don't realize is so many of these take place over years, if not decades of exposure to non food ingredients, to not nourishing your body the way it needs to. Because everybody's body is different. So like, what's good for me may not be good for you. And we wind up having this low level, unidentified disruption in what's going on. And the truth of the matter is it's not just what you eat. Because, you know, sometimes I get clients who come in and they'll say, I have the most perfect diet, like I do everything. And it's not just what you eat, it's what you absorb. So if your gut is not in good shape, you're not absorbing, if you're putting things in that have no nutritive value, your body's gotta do something with it before it can get to the things that it actually needs. So there really is this whole paradigm of beginning to recognize that the gut is the key to what's going on with our health and wellbeing.

And I, I mean, I'm trained, originally trained as a nutritionist and then went to naturopathic medical school. So this has been my passion as well, is this concept that our food can be our medicine. But we have to recognize that we live in human bodies and our human bodies require us to digest the food, absorb the nutrients as you're, and metabolize those nutrients. And if we're, if we're missing those steps, like if we assume, well, I can just put whatever in my mouth and my body's gonna handle it, we're likely to end up with some health issues. And it's only once we, like you're saying, come back to, like, hey, what am I really eating? And is my body actually digesting and absorbing these nutrients? And in order to expect that it's gonna be able to benefit your health?

You know, one of the things that I think is so important to keep in mind is that there are so many different things that go on. We have all these different moving pieces and parts. And really, one of the best places to start is at the foundation. Because regardless of what's going on, if your gut's better, you're better. And there may be other things, you know, perhaps, are you moving well? Are you sleeping well? Are you taking care of your mind, your brain, how you feel? All those kinds of things. Kinds of things as well. But when we start at that foundational level that provides our body with all of the building blocks that it needs, and then we can layer in the other things to find what works for your bio, individual self.

It's so true. And I love that you emphasize that individuality. You know, that it's. It's not just one diet fits everyone or it's not the same foods are going to be the best exact cookie cutter meals for everyone. We have to. And that's sometimes the challenging part, right, Is to realize, hey, say if you're just starting on this journey and you're like, hey, I don't feel good. I want to look at my food and I want to address my digestion, but where do I begin? Because I know I needed to be individualized. So where do you recommend that people start? What do you find is their first, best step into this journey?

I'm so glad you asked for me. Truthfully, the very best place to start is in your own pantry. I encourage people to build the habit of reading the label. And the very best place to do that is go look at what's already in there. Because unfortunately, you know, most humans, we. We like the same 20 foods. We know what we like, and we just get that all the time. We. We shop on autopilot. We don't think about it. And so I promise you, whatever's in your pantry, there are things in there that you really don't want in your body.

And I could tell we haven't even if we looked at the label at the beginning. Maybe we've been buying that food over and over, and we haven't looked at the label again a while. Like, so you're saying even go look in your pantry, go look in your fridge, pick up each item and be like, what's really in here?

Right? And even more than that, one of the things that I love is when you do that, you then begin to go, oh man, I'm seeing a lot of artificial colors. We need to not be eating things with artificial colors. And then you be, you go on a mission to try to find those things that don't have that. Because I promise you, there's an answer out there. The one story that I really like to share with people, however, is if you have other people in the home with you, if you don't live by yourself, you need to get their buy in. I promise you there were some knockdown drag out fights with my family on the way to cleaning up the pantry.

You're like, wait a minute, what are you taking out of the pantry?

Taking away my favorite insert food here, not food here. And so, so we really need to get their buy in and also to learn how to make those changes one step at a time. And I love that you talk about, even if you read it the first time, maybe you haven't read it lately. Unfortunately, the world of who owns your food is vast and confusing because when brands go through mergers and acquisitions and trades and all different kinds of things that happen, they don't change the brand, they just change the package. Because what they're buying are people who say, ooh, I like Brand X, I'm a Brand X fan. And that's it. You know, so if they, if they change what's in the package, people aren't going to pay attention because they think it's always good. So I encourage something that I call brand disloyalty. Don't buy the brand, buy what you need. And if that means you have to change, then you do that.

Yeah, so it's more about like I love that you're saying, hey, the priority is you and your health and the ingredients. And it's not about, you know, so that's really your loyalty is to yourself. And so then you need to go, hey, what do I need to be ingesting? And go find is this product contain what I want and not what I don't want. So tell us, Mira. So because I know you really get deep into the stuff that we need to be careful is not in our food or and I keep saying, quote, food, ingredients, what are like, would you say like what are the top five things you Find in foods where you're a lot, you're. When you. If you saw it in there, you're like, there's no way I'm eating that.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, my number one is anything that says artificial anything. Because if it's artificial, it's not real. Our bodies don't need it. That's definitely so that it covers artificial sweeteners and artificial flavors. I will say that artificial colors kind of get lumped into that category. However, they don't often put the word artificial in front of them. They just put, we're very lucky in the US because we put, you know, blue number two, yellow number six, whatever. We don't put E numbers like they do in a lot of other countries. In Europe, for example, they use these things called E numbers. So then you got to remember which ones are the good ones and which ones aren't the good ones. Very confusing.

Lando.

Yeah. So colors, definitely not. I'm hugely opposed to high fructose corn syrup. I'm sure everybody's heard that a lot by now. We know that it's really bad for us, bad for our liver, not good for our system. However, there are some analogs similar to high fructose corn syrup that we need to watch out for. One is agave nectar. And I know that surprises a lot of people because it's low glycemic. So it's the darling of the, you know, not affect your blood sugar world. The problem is it has more fructose by volume than high fructose corn syrup. So it's even worse for your liver.

Oh, my goodness. And that's when, like, I don't want to lose your track, but it reminds me, like, when I go to buy ketchup, for example, and I'm looking because a lot of people, I think you probably like, go, well, I'm at the health food store. It's the. The ketchup should be healthy. But when you actually look at the label of something like a condiment of ketchup, a lot of them have sugar, even though organic, healthy ones, or they have agave nectar in there. So it's. It's what? Right, like. Or what are some of the other places you've found agave? When you're like, why would they put that in there?

So it tends to be in desserty things. It tends to be in baked goods as well. Anything where they're trying to attract those people that they know are looking for that lower glycemic index. So they use that a lot. And then the Last one in that fructose category is crystalline fructose. So we just want to avoid that. And here's the problem. Crystalline fructose kind of drives me crazy. It sounds fairly innocuous. You know, fructose is fruit sugar, crystalline crystals. How bad could it be? In very, very simplistic terms, it's dehydrated high fructose corn syrup and it's 90% fructose by volume, whereas high fructose corn syrup is only 55% fructose by volume. So it's way worse. And unfortunately, one of the biggest places that we find it is in frozen confections. For example, when you go to some of those serve yourself yogurt bars, you know, the frozen yogurt thing, and you add all the candy toppings and then check out by the pound. Most of those tend to use crystalline fructose as their sweetener. So not a good choice.

Those, those places scare me. But it's probably you too. You know, I know it looks so cute from the outside, but then if you're. And they don't show the ingred, most.

Of those you don't ask to see. They have a book behind the counter and by law they are required to show it to you if you ask. So you can ask, although with a line of people behind you, who's going to ask, you know, And I think part of the problem is it has what I call a health halo because it's frozen yogurt. And so we're like, oh, yogurt's good. We can do yogurt, that's great. And then we add, you know, gummy bears and Snickers bars And M&Ms. And everything else. And all of a sudden it's not so good. It wasn't good to begin with. Another thing that I really, if this is in a product I will not buy it ever is carrageenan. And it's an emulsifier, it's a, it's a thickening agent. And unfortunately, the challenge with carrageenan, it comes from seaweed, but the way it's processed and the type of seaweed that it's from, it's really not good for us. It, it has a, a very negative impact on gut health. It can cause ulcerative colitis like symptoms in the gut. And in laboratory studies it was shown to cause renal bumps, bumps on the kidneys in laboratory settings. So not a great choice.

And I, I see that a lot of times in like non dairy milks.

Yeah, well, the problem with Carrageenan is. It is in virtually every aisle of the grocery store. You can find it in lunch meat, you can find it.

That's true.

Canned goods, you can find it in pharmaceutical things. So it's in a lot of things. And you really do want to watch out for that. And here's the thing. I also want to point out that we. I'm encouraging you to read the label. It doesn't mean you have to go to the grocery store and spend 10 hours reading every single label in there. Pick one category of whatever it is in your grocery budget that you're going to clean up. Okay, we're going to focus on non dairy milks, we're going to focus on canned soups, we're going to focus on pickles, we're going to focus on condiments, whatever. Clean that up. And once you've got that mastered, then move on to the next thing. Because every single thing that you're doing is more than you were doing before.

Yeah.

You don't have to do it all at once. Otherwise I, I give you two days before you're like, I give up.

Yeah, it's too overwhelming, right? Yeah, but it's. And, and I like how you're kind of putting it as something fun. Like in some ways you can look at it like a game or like an experiment. Like, okay, when I go to the store, I'm going to find, I'm going to replace one product. You know, I ran out of this other one. So this time I'm going to get one that doesn't have these things in it, and I'm going to find one that I like. And then little by little, you, after a couple months, you're like, oh, wow, I've. Now I really can see a big difference in my pantry and my, in my refrigerator because I've been working at it.

And one of the things I like to encourage my families with kids to do. For example, you're used to buying a ketchup that has high fructose corn syrup. And all of a sudden you're like, not doing that anymore. Well, there's a lot of different kinds of ketchup. So you go to the grocery store and maybe you find three. You're like, I don't know which one we're gonna like. So you buy them all and you take them home and you tell your family, we are going to do a taste test to figure out which one we like the most. And they kind of get into that. They, they kind of like that. Cause that's Kind of fun. And then I encourage people to think about ways to use up the ones you don't like so much. Can you turn it into a barbecue sauce? Can you do something else with it? Worst case scenario, you can take it back to the grocery store. However, unfortunately, because it's open, it'll be thrown out. And I'm not a fan of throwing out food if I can help it. So can you disguise it, like I said, in something else, and then just eat the one that you like? Cause then you know what it is, you know, so that's, that's good because one of the, one of the bad things was with our youngest daughter and I tried to change her juice and we just had a huge screaming match and the grocery store was ugly. For everybody who was there, it was not good. And I, you know, to this day, like, I can tell that story now and I can laugh, but at the time I was angry and I was frustrated and she was angry and she was upset because I was taking away her favorite juice. And everybody's walking by going, I'm not going to go down that aisle. I mean, yeah, it's, I think we've.

All been there at some point in time, you know, but it's true. It's like, okay, how can we set ourselves up for success so that we can all be like, hey, let's have a conversation before we go to the store. Let's make it like, hey, this is the reason why. I think a lot of times for children, when they, when they understand why and that we're, we're not just taking something away randomly, but there's a reason and there's, we're going to find a solution and they're going to be more on board to work with us to find in.

Absolutely. I also feel like kids are more willing to make changes when they're part of the change. If we just make unilateral decisions for them, they feel disempowered. If we give them a taste test or we, or we educate them on why we're doing it, this is why this ingredient is not a good choice for us. We're looking for something different. Different. What do you think about how this tastes? You know, those kinds of things really help them get buy in. Because at the end of the day, the truth is for those of us who are raising kids, we, we are trying to help them become healthy adult eaters. And the best way to do that is to help them become educated eaters.

And it. And when better to learn than in childhood you know, it's. It's when we. We get to adulthood and we're like, why didn't I. Why didn't they teach me this in school?

Right?

They don't. We don't learn this in school. We have to learn it later. And usually it's only once we've developed health issues that we are feel motivated to be like, what am I actually eating here? What is actually in my food? Hey, did we cover all five of your most important things not to eat, or is there anything else we missed on that list?

So there's. There's another one that I don't like a lot. It's a. It's a new darling of the sweetener world, and it's called allulose. And there's a couple of things that I don't like about allulose. One is I'm annoyed because it is a sugar. It is a true sugar. So it has that ose ending. Because anything that ends in ose tends to be a sugar. The others not so much. However, allulose normally in nature appears in such minute quantities, and they've figured out in a laboratory setting how to make lots of it. And it's a very low glycemic sweetener, unfortunately, really bad for the gut. I have so many clients, it makes their belly blow up. It's such a bad choice. And unfortunately, because it is this big darling, it's finding its way into a bunch of keto things, which is very popular dietary plan right now. A lot of paleo things. Another popular dietary plan in things like protein bars, which, let's be honest, are really adult candy bars, but still, it's. It's in a lot of things. Yeah.

Yeah. No, Such a good point. And. And I like how you're pointing out the. The oaths in the sugars, because we. I mean, sometimes we're. I mean, it's certainly a good thing to avoid actual sugar too. I'm sure you would agree. But then people end up falling into the fructose world or the allulose or the. Even the other kinds of sweeteners trying to avoid sugar. And it's like, it's not. It's not a better solution. And I like that you're pointing out how it affects digestion. Of course. Like, when I see patients with ulcerative colitis or even Crohn's disease, you know, they are really gonna notice these things because the symptoms are gonna be amplified and much more. You know, you could be in pain and on trying to recover for weeks after eating something like this. And other people might be like, oh, my gosh, I'm so bloated and this. In discomfort or having reflux or diarrhea after I eat certain foods. And you're thinking, okay, I got a diagnosis of like, let's say irritable bowel syndrome. But what really is causing the irritable bowel syndrome? It could be one of these sugar molecules that's causing the symptoms of bloating and spasming and constipation and diarrhea could be from something in your food. So I just. Anyone listening? If you have any of those digestive symptoms, it's worth a look to say, hey, is it. There's a. A sugar or a. Even a sugar, alcohol. Maybe we can talk along the lines of fructose intolerance. I'm sure you're familiar with, like, when. Because even then it can be even from a fruit or vegetable that's high in fructose, not even having to be high fructose, current corn syrup, but other forms of foods that are higher in fructose or just the quantity we're consuming becomes too much fructose. And that can lead to symptoms, too.

Absolutely. You don't have to have some sort of irritable bowel disorder to be impacted by allulose or any of the other things that can have an impact on the gut. I think part of the challenge we face is that for so many of us, it depends in part on how quickly our system responds. So sometimes if we're very slow responders, we have slow motility, whatever, then it doesn't show up for a while, and we. Who remembers what they ate, you know, two days ago, or it's also a matter of how much you're consuming. We tend to forget that so many of these items are listed as generally recognized as safe grass.

The challenge is grass says so many parts per million is okay for you, but who's keeping track of how much you're eating? I know you're not, and I know I'm not either, because really, we. We don't know how much is in there. We just know it's below whatever they've said is the level that we shouldn't consume above. But if you consume a little bit in a lot of things over a period of days or even weeks or months, it's going to catch up with you and it's going to be a problem.

Yeah, yeah. And so then it's a matter of, like, as you clean it out of your system, then it may Also take a few weeks to feel better.

Would you say it does? And one of the things I've noticed a lot with people, as we clean up certain things, if we accidentally get exposed to them, our response is heightened. It's like the body goes, oh no, there's that again. Because when you have a continual low level exposure, you sort of learn to ignore it. You think it's normal to have bloating or for your belly to feel a certain way after certain meals or whatever. You don't stop and look at not only what you're eating, but what's in what you're eating. And then when you remove that from your diet and you add it back in, the response is so much more heightened because you haven't been chugging along with this low level belly bloat or tummy pain or loose stools or those kinds of things. So that's definitely something to keep in mind. And then just to bring this full circle, the last thing that I won't eat that I encourage people to definitely, if it's on there, put it back. Is anything that's not a real word, if it's just letters, bht, bha, edta, tbhq, all those are abbreviations for really long chemical names. And if that's in there, it's not something you want to eat.

So coming back to like ingredients you recognize as a food.

Yes, we. And part of the challenge is of course there are new foods sometimes that come on the market. So when quinoa first came out, this is of course my perfect example because nobody knew how to pronounce it when it first came out and we weren't really sure what it was. But as we learned, it's, you know, as pseudo grain, high in protein, can be very delicious, can be nutritious and supportive for us. So that's great. We love that. However, if you don't know what it is, why take a chance, put it back, figure out what it is and then make a decision as to whether you want to read it or not. But I promise you, all of those non food capital letter abbreviations are not, do not represent any nutritional support for your body at all. What they do is create a preservative status for the food producer so that that item can sit on a shelf longer.

So again, like going, hey, is this, am I just willing to eat this because it's in there or am I going to be like, no, my health is a priority. I'm going to choose a product that doesn't have that substance in there. Or I'm going to make my own food that I know what's in, what the ingredients are.

Absolutely. And I. I don't think you have to make everything. There are times, however, where it may be like, yeah, I'm just going to make that myself because it's harder to get, or it's too much of a pain to get to the store that has it. But it is possible to have a nourishing, healthy diet without having to move, you know, to the middle of Wyoming on a thousand acres and raise your own food that you don't. You don't have to do that.

And maybe that's fine.

But I just.

You should be able to. Yeah, you should be able to find options that. Yeah. That are available. Thank goodness. There's always, you know, people who are realizing this and coming out with food products that are clean. And I think this is like when. When I use the term clean eating, this is part of it, right? Is like, how do we choose foods that are clean, meaning they don't contain some of these things we really don't want to be eating.

And another important part of that, I feel like a lot of this also connects us closer to our food. I love, when I go to the farmer's market, there's a vegetable vendor. My farmer's market has usually three vendors. There's one particular vegetable vendor. I just love his stuff. And we always have a nice little conversation. When I'm there, I feel more connected, you know, and when you. There's a. I do buy my organ meats online, but I know that I like the way they raise those animals. I like the fact that they're sustainable about it. I like the fact that there is nothing in there except what I want. It comes frozen, you know, shipped directly to me, goes right in my freezer. So it's just helping you connect a little more closely with who's actually producing your food.

I love that. That's beautiful. And I love that now you're coming to us saying, hey, this made a huge difference in your health. Like, because sometimes people might be like, is it really going to make that much difference? But for you, it's made a huge difference.

Life changing. You know, obviously I changed careers because of it. But even more than that, before I changed careers, I started recovering my health. I tell people that story about the stairs, and they look at me, especially if they run into me at a conference and they see me just like, running around and being very active and very busy. I. I'm a fairly active person and they look at me and they just kind of shake their head like, I can't believe that that was you. And the answer is yes, it was. You know, and as you, as you mentioned, and we talked about this before we started. Ulcerative colitis was my primary diagnosis and my last colonoscopy. I was told that I have no more signs of ulcerative colitis in my system. It is possible to go into remission, to make a change, to have things reduced. And, you know, this is my body, my situation. Maybe not everybody's going to have the results that I did, but I know from doing this work for so many years that many people have significant improvement. And I also know that no matter what your story is, no matter what's going on, if you nourish your body, that's always better.

I mean, our human bodies do that is one of the requirements is we gotta eat. We got. We require some intake of food in order for us to function right? So it's like, okay, we're not, you know, we're not robots that run on some other kind of fuel source. This is, you know, this is a human body that needs food. So let's learn how to feed it in a way so it can perform better. I know that you have a preparedness Pantry masterclass, and I wanna make sure to share that with everyone. What can we expect in that masterclass?

I'm so glad that you asked. The Preparedness Pantry masterclass is a program that I created in part just because we've had so many emergencies and so many things going on and food supply shortages and all these other challenging situations. And especially if you are someone who has to follow a particular diet, maybe you're gluten free, maybe there are certain ingredients that you can'. Have. You need to make sure that you always have what you and your family need on hand. And then the other thing, of course, is when there's an emergency, you do not want to be with the throngs rushing to the grocery store to fill their carts up with junk food. You just want to stay home and stay off the road, be safe. So we created the Preparedness Pantry masterclass in order to teach people how to properly stock their pantry, to build a preparedness pantry that's the right one for them, and then how to properly rotate and utilize their food stores. There's also a module called 10 Tips for Emergency Preparedness that talks about all different kinds of things. Just, you know, lights and water and all those kinds of things. If you have to leave, how you plan for animals and that kind of thing. So that's all in that as well. So it's just a mini preparedness class to help you have what you need on hand so you can nourish your family and have enough to eat.

Wow that's so cool. I can't wait for everyone to check it out. And oh my gosh I'm so glad you were able to join me and talk this through today. Thank you again so much.

Thanks so much for inviting me. Like I said, it's always wonderful to see you and great to talk with.

You and I love what you're doing to help people get educated about what what's in their food and what they're choosing to feed themselves. So amazing work. Thank you again Meera.

Thank you Donni. I appreciate you.

Thanks for listening to how humans heal. If you liked this episode leave a rating and a review and for more resources visit drdani.com.