EP 177 WTH?!?: Breaking Free from Diet Culture with Dr. Sarah Ballantyne

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Welcome back Everybody. I am Dr. Greg Eckle and this is what the health Our topic today is the essential eating patterns for lifelong health. Science backed eating patterns that support lifelong health regardless of what diet you follow. And My guest is Dr. Sarah Ballantine, PhD. She's the founder of Nutrivore.com and New York Times best selling author of nutrition the radical new science of getting the nutrients you need from the food you eat and the topic of today's episode. She creates educational resources to help people improve their day to day diet and lifestyle choices. Empowered and informed by the most current evidence based scientific research. With Nutrivore, Dr. Sarah has created a positive and inclusive approach to dietary guidance based in science and devoid of dogma, using nutrient density and sufficiency as its basic principles. Nourishment, not judgment. Dr. Sarah, welcome aboard.

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

You are so welcome. And I'm really glad that you said yes to this interview. You know, there is so much confusion around diet. I used to work in the Naturopathic Repository of it's the largest library of naturopathic books on the planet in Portland, Oregon. And there's five separate rows of books on diet therapy. And I am just curious if we just start out on how and why this topic for you. Like what, what inspired this nutrivore exploration.

So I, like many people have been steeped in diet culture for most of my life and a little over 12 years ago I made dietary shifts that had a profound impact on my health and I became a zealot for, you know, a whole foods diet focused on wellness. Except that I didn't describe it that way. I cut out a bunch of foods at the same time as I also ate more vegetables, ate more whole foods. Right. I improved my diet quality, but I also restricted a lot of foods and I think that's what happens to many of us. So we hear about some kind of diet on the Internet, whatever our health goals are, and we go, ah, here's this list of things I'm going to cut out. I cut out all these things and then I credit the things I cut out for my health, which is I fell into that trap myself instead of what I was actually eating instead, which was more nutrient dense whole foods. And the problem with thinking about diets in terms of restriction is when we have that initial success because all, all diets will, will give us some kind of initial like wow, I'm losing weight or I've got all this energy or my skin's clearing up. I Have had a lot of GI issues that, that like disappeared, that I had been on prescription medications for, for, for years that disappeared within a couple of weeks because turns out eating a lot of plant foods is really good for your digestion. I wasn't thinking of it that way. I was thinking of it in terms of what I was avoiding. So the trap that so many of us fall into when we credit what we cut out for the health benefits that we initially received, when we eventually hit the limits of whatever that dietary structure can give us in terms of our health goals, the natural next step is, okay, well, what, what do I cut out next? And I also went down this path of more restriction. More restriction. And what I come to realize now with a lot of therapy and, and the, the benefits of hindsight is that I learned an eating disorder through these dietary structures. I became orthorexic. I developed a lot of food fear. So part of my professional journey over the last seven or eight years has been challenging my beliefs around food by doing really extensive literature reviews, like going through all of the scientific evidence on those foods while challenging my personal fears around those foods by eating them. You know, doing methodical sort of like reintroduction protocols to test my own individual tolerance for them. And, and really every time I, I sometimes will like uncover this new like dusty corner in my brain where I'm like, oh, here's another food. I, I forgot, I forgot about. And I forgot. I have a lot of fear about. I need to, I need to challenge this one, my most recent one just a few months ago. I was like, hang on, I haven't tried peanuts. I should, I should figure out if I'm allergic to them and I should reintroduce them and so forth me, it's been a professional journey of sort of going back to my roots as a medical researcher and really working to unprogram a lot of the moral judgments of foods. I learned through diet culture and through experiencing the benefits of higher quality diet, just framed like in the, the complete opposite way of what's actually a healthy relationship with food. Challenging my own disordered eating patterns and my fears around foods and then figuring out how to bring this to everyone.

Because I love it. Yeah.

Right now, restrictive diets have gone about as far as this pendulum has swung, as far in the restriction direction as it can possibly go.

Yeah.

Nowadays every, every food is bad. Like every food is demonized by somebody.

Yeah.

If you bought into every claim on the Internet, there would be nothing left to eat.

Quite literally a Breatharian. Right. You know, that's where you'd be. I mean, and there are books in the, in the library on bread, the Breatharian. So that aspect of it is the good versus the bad. And you know, we want to get into those labels and dichotomy around food. And it is a slippery slope and for good reason. You know, people aren't feeling well and they don't know what else to do and they're kind of stuck on that perch of I can't go forward and I can't go back. And so I'm just going to try to control what I can. But it's maybe in the wrong place is what you found and discovered and uncovered for us here, which is awesome. What level of toxicity do you think plays a role in there too? So you're going nutrient dense. Let's, let's get into that with maybe that lens of environmental levels. So you know, you start out a lot with the nutrivore, which is on nutrient dense food. So why is nutrient deficiency so common?

Yeah. So, okay, I think there's, there's two different questions there. So one is. Right, our environmental toxin.

Well, yeah, use that, use that as a rule of that talking. Yeah, yeah.

And the other is our really sort of dire situation in terms of nutrient shortfalls. So just to give context to the that second statement, there are four essential nutrients for which 90% of Americans are not ever hitting the recommended Dietary Allowance of, from their diets ever, any day. Wow. And there's 10 essential nutrients for which half of us or more are not hitting the recommended Dietary Allowance of every single day. And what that does, to put it in the context of. Right. An environmental toxin load is that doesn't provide the nutritional resources that our biological systems need to do their jobs, including our detoxification systems. So in fact, detoxification is a very nutrient intensive process in our body. Our livers and kidneys require a lot of nutrients to both like drive their act as cofactors for the various enzymes that drive the various detoxification reactions. They're sometimes used to like package into a chemical so that it can be like shuttled out of the body. So these are really nutrient intense reactions. It's why, fascinatingly enough, it's why liver and kidney are such nutrient dense foods because those organs store all of the nutrients that they need to perform their detoxification reactions. So our detox, our detox systems are not the only ones that suffer when we are not getting all the nutrients our bodies need. Our cardiovascular system suffers, our immune system suffers, our gastrointestinal system suffers, our skeletal muscular system suffers, our central nervous system suffers. Right?

All.

All 12 biological systems have a collection of nutrients that they need, not just as building blocks, but as like the raw materials for the chemical reactions that those biological systems rely on. Right? The chemical reactions of life. So we think of food a lot in terms of energy, right? We think of calories and carb grams and fat grams, protein grams. Those are mainly. We're mainly. When we think about food in terms of macros and calories, we're thinking about it in terms of energy. And certainly we need energy. We. Energy is put into all of those chemical reactions as well. But when we start thinking about vitamins and minerals, antioxidant phytonutrients, essential fatty acids and essential amino acids, now we're starting to think about the reagents. So the, the before things that a chemical reaction transforms into something that our bodies need to be healthy. So when we're not getting all of our, the nutrients that our bodies need, it puts strain on the biological systems that need those nutrients. And that strain builds up over time and interacts with our lifestyle factors, right? How much sleep we're getting, how stressed we are, how active we are, our genetics and epigenetics, our access to medical care, our social and physical environment. So that would include social determinants of health as well as things like exposure to pollutants. And together all of those things will increase risk for chronic and infectious disease. They're all tied with our nutrient intake. So it's not one to one like a disease of malnutrition. So like scurvy is the direct result of not enough vitamin C to make or maintain collagen protein. In this case, we're not drawing that, like, direct line. Instead we're drawing like a, an amorphous cloud that kind of encompasses all of these other risk factors, and they together interact to increase our risk for a negative health outcome. But nutrition is a very clear point of intervention, which is why I talk about it so much.

I love it. Now you've piqued my interest and I'm sure the listeners. Viewers too. The top four that the majority of North Americans are deficient in. What do you got there?

Yeah, so, okay, so the top one, I feel like we should silo because it's vitamin D. And the reason why I kind of feel like we need to put this over in this little. It's a little category on its own. Like, 100% of Americans don't get enough vitamin D from their diets. But of course our diet is not our only source of vitamin D. We actually make our own vitamin D from cholesterol in the skin in response to UV radiation from the sun. So it's more the, the combination of the fact that we're not getting enough from our diet and we spend so much time indoors that is really driving the very, very high rates of vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency. So we can kind of put vitamin D off in its own little category. The next, the next most common dietary shortfall is potassium. Nearly 98% of Americans don't get enough potassium from their diets, which increases risk of cardiovascular disease, kidney disease and osteoporosis. The Next is vitamin E. 96 ish percent of people don't get enough. Vitamin E also increases risk of cardiovascular disease. Interestingly, really important for asthma and allergies. Vitamin E, it regulates histamine release from mast cells. And then the next one is folate, vitamin B9, which is about 90%, just over 90% of Americans don't get enough. And of course folate is as a B vitamin it is just important for metabolism generally. So all of the B vitamins are used in cellular respiration. So how our cells are making and using energy. But folate of course is also incredibly important for reproductive health. That's why folic acid is in fortified food so often. And there's so much education around folic acid for females of reproductive age who may become pregnant. But it's also very important for I mean nervous system health in general. But every cell uses, uses folate.

Yeah, so those are massive. Massive cat. That's a massive category of all of those. So just in potassium in general, like why do you think those are the top four? I mean, okay, we put vitamin D in its special category. I don't even think it should be named a vitamin. I mean because it is a pre hormone.

It is also a steroid hormone. Yeah, yeah.

It does all of those other things and but K vitamin E. So we've got two water soluble and a fat soluble in there. Those are some big like vitamin E. Surprise me.

Yeah, I, so I think vitamin E, a lot of our best food sources of vitamin E, we eat a refined version of it. Vitamin E is dominant in fatty plant foods. So think olives, avocados, you could get some from like unrefined canola oil. But not very many people are getting unrefined canola oil because it has such a strong mustardy, like quite off putting bitter flavor. It's not a very common cooking Oil, at least in North America, and even sort of olive oil or avocado oil, we're typically using refined versions of those that have much lower vitamin E content. As much as millennials have brought back avocado toast, I don't think that has necessarily transcended all of the generations. Nuts and seeds are really good sources of vitamin E, but those are also not a super common food for people to reach for. So I think with vitamin E it really has to do with just the, the types of foods that we eat on the standard American diet don't include a lot of vitamin E rich foods. And I could say the same thing with folate. Our best food sources of folate are pulse type legumes like lentils and chickpeas and soy products. Also, unless you follow a plant based diet, not a super common food for the standard American diet. Potassium, though, I think it has a lot to do more with the fact that there aren't that many really great sources of potassium. I think with potassium we just have a harder time getting it just about anywhere in the world. So I think the only cultures that have a really easy time of getting potassium is sort of East Asian because a lot of the traditional vegetables used in East Asian cuisines are great sources of potassium. Those are more unusual and unfamiliar vegetables for us in North America.

Is that like bok choy? Along that lines or so more along.

The lines of like heart of palm, water chestnuts, bamboo are all really good sources of potassium.

Okay.

In the of like foods that you're going to find in a more sort of typical American household. Potatoes are a fairly good source. The challenge with potatoes is how often we eat them in french fry form. Because sodium and potassium, the ratio of them in our diets is really important for regulating, I mean kidney health in general, but for regulating blood pressure as well as something called membrane potential, which is how it's basically the flow of ions across the cell membrane that is used for things like nerve conductance. So how nerves talk to each other and the electricity sort of passes through them. It's used for muscle contraction, the beating of our heart. So all of those bodily functions kind of, they require electricity. So think of it like electricity. And so the ratio of potassium to sodium is really important and probably more important than how much potassium we're getting. It's probably more important that the potassium about equals our sodium. But in western countries in general, we get way more sodium than we need and way more, less potassium than we need. So on a lot of our best sources of potassium we tend to eat covered in salt.

Indeed. Yeah. So that, yeah, between the frying and the salt, that's kind of discount some of the potato benefit. On the potato chip front, what's the optimal diet from a nutrient density standpoint?

I mean, I would, I would take a very simplistic answer to this question. An optimal diet is, is one in which you, you got all of the nutrients that you need from the foods you eat. That's what I define as Nutrivore. I think what's really empowering when you define an optimal diet that way. All of the nutrients in all the foods I ate throughout the day added up and they met my nutritional needs. Just that goal. There's a lot of different ways we can achieve that goal. So that means that Nutrivore doesn't have to have a list of yes foods and no foods. It doesn't have to have extensive meal plans. It can just be a nutritional sciences education to help us understand what nutrients do in the body, what foods contain what nutrients and how to combine different foods to get the full range of nutrients our bodies need. And then we can apply that knowledge to our access to foods, to our food budget and to our own individual preferences, whether those are taste preferences or we have found a diet that really works for us. So Nutrivore is more like a diet modifier or a food philosophy that can be applied to, to other dietary priorities. And I think that's, that's a really empowering way to think about food because no dietary structure actually really fully incorporates that idea. Even though it's the most fundamental aspect of nutrition.

Yeah, you know it, where we go or where, where we've come from is where know you get the kind of, the more of the fad components of we're going to demonize a macronutrient. And you know, so being whether it be a protein, a fat or a carbohydrate in those three categories, there are diets that people feel good with. Eliminating one macronutrient. Then there's the, the ketone revolution which we're now showing long term, maybe long term health consequences of getting into just ketosis. This makes much more sense to me to make it more relatable and easier. I mean definitely simplifying and then but this aspect you mentioned some essential amino acids, essential fatty acids. So in Nutrivore you spell out and educate people around, well how do you choose per meal? Like what's the game plan?

Yeah, so I've created a lot of resources to help us achieve this Very simple goal. Because I think the most important thing to know is the idea is like so logical, right? It's just, it's so irrefutably simple. Of course we want to choose foods to meet our nutritional needs. Like, duh, why, why didn't anyone explain it to me like that before? It makes so much sense. The challenge is, is that government dietary guidelines have never fully incorporated this idea. They've been originally, they were designed much more to help combat malnutrit and starvation. They have turned into something that's much more health focused. But we know the Dietary Guidelines for Americans have been the subject of much criticism from, from scientists and other health professionals over the decades. No fad diet has incorporated this idea. And if anything, the things that we've learned through diet culture over the last 60 or 70 years actually work against that goal. So a lot of us now in the second or third or fourth generation of modern diet culture, we've lost any kind of intuition that might help us eat this way without putting some intention into it. So because of that, I've created a variety of different resources to help people kind of learn how to eat more intuitively and increase diet quality without having to engage with restriction or deprivation. And while really focusing on those lifelong eating patterns that support that Nutri goal and also shown in the scientific literature to help reduce risk of health problems and improve longevity over and over and over again. So one of those tools is what I call the Nutri meal map. It's absolutely a ripoff of my plate. I'm not going to pretend it's not, but it is a very. There's some very important differences between the Nutriform meal map and MyPlate. So with the Nutrifor meal map, kind of like MyPlate, right, my plate's sort of divided into four quarters. We're going to do the same thing with the nutrifore meal map, but we're going to define the quarters slightly differently. So one quarter we're going to fill with a starchy food. So that could be a whole grain, which is kind of like on my plate, but it could also be a root vegetable or it could be a legume. So any kind of starchy food is going to count in that quarter. Then we're going to fill one quarter with a protein food. We're going to define that with a slightly higher protein percentage than how it's defined on my plate. So what we're going to do is if we're picking a plant protein that's not as dense of a Protein, So something like lentils, we're going to merge that with the starchy quarter of our plate because that food is really serving both functions. If it's something like tofu or a like plant based meat, then that's got a higher enough protein content that it can just be its quarter. And then the remaining half is going to be fruits and vegetables weighted a little bit more heavily towards the vegetables. So the preponderance of evidence right now in the scientific literature is that five servings of vegetables per day is about optimal and two or three servings of fruit per day is about optimal. So we kind of want to think about that ratio when we're putting together our plate. So maybe, maybe we have a little bit of fruit on the side or maybe we save that fruit for a snack or save that fruit for dessert or a chutney or a fruit salsa or some kind of like flavor element. And then we think about as many different colors and varieties of vegetables that can fill that half of the plate as possible. And not saying that every meal needs to be constructed that way, but the more we construct our meals, thinking about those relatives ratios of foods, that kind of automatically puts us in a balanced macronutrient territory. So it puts us typically right in the middle of the accepted macronutrient distribution ranges which are constructed with micronutrient sufficiency in mind. So those ranges actually already incorporate the idea that this makes it the easiest to get all of the vitamins and minerals that kind of are packaged with those macronutrients. Right. So we have certain minerals and vitamins that we tend to find in fattier foods, that we tend to find in carbier foods that we tend to find in more protein dense foods. So that's kind of already put into that, that math.

Yeah.

And then if we focus on, you know, mostly whole foods as, as the components of our plate doesn't have to be entirely 8020 rule here is very well supported by the scientific literature. And then just try to mix it up as often as we can. Right. Those are the dietary patterns that make it easiest to get the full complement of nutrients that we need without necessarily having to track more aggressively. I mean, if you want to, I've got resources for that too. If you want to get nitty gritty, we can go there. But just thinking about those big patterns that will get most people most of.

The way there, that's awesome. When you say serving, so like people don't understand what is a serving.

When you say because it's so confusing yeah. So servings are, I, I, they're, they're the most confusing thing because the way scientists want to define servings is based on, like, the proportion of the entire diet and then also, like, how much of that would normally be on your plate and then how the nutrients inherent to that food contribute in a relative proportion to everything that we're consuming. So it's, it's a, you know, it's like for, for, it's, you have to know, like, advanced calculus to be able to understand servings from a scientist's perspective. And then you have dietary guidelines. Like, every major government has its own sort of set of dietary guidelines, and they define servings based on how much we sort of normally would put on our plate, like how much we would serve ourselves, and, and think about simplicity of communication. And then you have to make those two worlds collide and meet. So what's happened in the science over the last maybe 15 years is the definition of a serving of vegetables has completely changed. So it used to be by weight, and it used to be some scientific papers would say 85 grams and some would say 100 grams, because scientists like to not agree on things. It's my favorite thing to do. And it's completely moved to the definition of one cup. So a volumetric measurement, measured raw and chopped, but 2 cups for leafy vegetables, that typically shrinks to half a cup once cooked. But it is. No, it is not. It is not simple to communicate. The reason why volumetric measurements are where everything is shifting towards is because most of us don't weigh our food when we're eating, and most of us don't want to weigh our food. That's annoying to do. So volumetric measurements better reflect, like, that big scoop of something that we might put on our plates. And the nice thing about a cup is it's about the same volume as your fist. The other thing I really like about that, though, is it kind of builds in scale for person size. So if we think about it as five fists per day instead of five cups or five servings per day. Yeah. Somebody who's like six foot eight.

Yeah.

And, you know, is going to have to, like, bend underneath my doorway to come into my house, going to have, going to have those bigger servings, and then somebody who's smaller is going, or even like an adolescent or a child, it kind of builds in that scale really well. But I will absolutely admit the servings feel completely arbitrary. Some foods it's volumetric. Some foods it's by weight. And there's complex Reasons behind each definition of a serving. The most important thing to know, though, is it's almost certainly less than you think. So most people, how much you put on your plate is almost always going to be two or maybe three servings of that food. So, for example, a serving of meat or seafood is 3 ounces cooked, which is about the same size as the palm of our hands or about a deck of cards. That's about half of what the typical portion is that somebody would serve themselves. Same with vegetables, you're probably going to spoon a full cup of mashed potatoes, but half a cup, once it's cooked is what a serving is. So most of the time, you're probably giving yourselves two servings of something. And that can be both fantastic for meeting serving goals of foods that we don't really like and really disheartening for trying to moderate foods that are not as good for us.

Yeah, that. No, that's crystal clear. And I think that really produces so much confusion because a lot of the suggestions are on serving size. And you did a beautiful job of articulating that. Thank you. How about the component of. Is, you know, five servings equal in the different categories? Meaning, like you read a lot about nutrients in the soil. We don't have the micronutrients or minerals, and so the food quality that we're eating today isn't what we used to eat. Is that. Have you found that?

That's a. That's a myth that has been completely busted in recent years in the scientific literature. And I'm so glad you brought it up.

I love it.

This one is all over the place.

Yeah.

What are they called? Zombie myths. Right. They just. They just. They won't die.

Yeah. Yeah.

So the origin of this Myth was a 2004 paper. There were a couple of papers that were published around the same time. But the 2004 one that everyone quotes is like open access. We can all see the tables. And what they did was they measured. They compared USDA Food Central database measurements of nutrients in 1999 for. Oh, gosh, it was a. It was a ton. It was a ton of different food crops. Sure. They compared the nutrients measured in 99 versus 54, I think, and went, oh, wow, look, there's six nutrients for which there's a statistically significant difference. What people have done is gone through the tables and hand picked bigger differences that are not statistically significant and shown, oh, look, copper is 81% decreased. It's not actually that big of a decrease. And so there was only six nutrients for which the difference was statistically significant. And then the authors have, in their discussion, suggested reasons for why there might be a difference. They suggested different cultivars. So we have different varieties of all of these foods that we grow now that are grown from for higher yield rather than, they're higher yield and higher storage rather than flavor is kind of where food manufacture has gone. And when you grow something for higher yield, you are producing more edible part per plant. So that does typically reduce the, the nutrients per edible part a little bit, because that plant only has access to so much nutrients in the soil, in the air, right in the water, to be able to put into whatever part we're we're eating. So when you increase the yield, that is a normal trade. We see that across agriculture. They also suggested that there could be differences in soil quality, that it could be climate change. They never showed that it was the soil. They just threw that out there as, hey, maybe soil doesn't have as much nutrients as it used to. Subsequent studies that have looked at this in a more rigorous way, that have looked at the nutrient content of crops grown in many different regions, in many different climates, weather, environment, with different fertilizers, have shown a couple of really important things. First, it has nothing to do with the soil. The soil, the soil's fine, soil's great. Two, the nutrient content of crop foods has a really high variability. It's actually quite impressive how different the nutrients in a tomato that you grow in pure compost in your backyard, the nutrients that it might have compared to the beefsteak tomato that was actually picked green two months ago, grown, you know, in a factory farm, in a, in a greenhouse a thousand miles away. And I think those of us who do like to grow our own food, we, we go, well, of course it's going to also taste completely different. Yeah, it makes sense that my homegrown tomato is going to also have more nutrition. We don't have really good ways of quantifying the variability of nutrition across all of these different farming practices. What we can say is the actual best explanation for the differences that that 2004 study showed was it was just all well within the normal range for all of these fruits and vegetables, and that actually fruits and vegetables vary more than we expect and it doesn't really matter. So if you 2017 systematic review that was so fantastic. What they did was they looked at all of these different studies measuring nutrient content of fruits and vegetables in different areas. I think they included grain crops too. And then they calculated if we ate the recommended Number of servings of the lowest nutritive value of all of the measurements we've made. Right. The worst broccoli, the worst carrots, the worst tomatoes. Hey, look, it's still really easy to meet our nutritional needs. Even if we're getting the lowest possible nutrient value of these different food crops. This isn't actually a concern. It matters a lot more what types of foods we're eating than whether or not we're lucky enough to get the most nutrient dense tomato from someone's backyard.

Oh, that's so heartening to hear. So thank you for dispelling. That was a potent study then. I mean, it just kind of promulgated through everywhere. There's certainly consciousness.

Yeah, yeah. And I think not. It wasn't. I don't think was the author's intent. I think it's just been a study that's been quoted on.

Yeah.

And the way wellness influencers work. Yes. Just to let you know, inside secrets, it's very common for one person to write an article that cites one paper and then everyone down the line just rephrases what's in that article. Not very many people.

Into the study.

Influencer space are going to go back to the original study and read it or read other studies in that field. And that's just a sad. That's kind of. There isn't not enough science communication in nutrition right now is really the problem.

Totally. Well, that's where I think you're fitting in and filling a great void that now has a champion. So thank you.

Thank you.

On. On that front. How about essential fatty acids? That's one. You know, over the 25 years of practice, I find that's a really hard one for people to get in their diet.

Okay, so I have thoughts, extensive, extensive thoughts about essential fatty acids. So essential fatty acids, I feel like, are maybe mislabeled. So what scientists have done. Some scientists sometimes make decisions that make sense to them but aren't actually the sensible thing to do. Do you know what I mean?

I do. I do, actually.

So. So our body, the two. The two types of fats that our body needs for a variety of. Like all of these different types of chemical reactions are omega 6 polyunsaturated fats and omega 3 polyunsaturated fats. And technically, we can convert any omega 6 to any other omega 6, and we can convert any omega 3 to any other omega 3, technically. So what scientists did is said, okay, look, we need Omega 3s and we need Omega 6s and we can convert between them. So we're going to call the shortest ones the essential amino acids. So the shortest omega 6 linoleic acid and the shortest omega 3 alpha linolenic acid, and we're going to call those the essential fatty acids. The challenge is that both of those have biological roles. Like, we definitely need those from our diet. They're not the most important physiologically and the conversion is not very efficient. So the most important physiologically is arachidonic acid, which is a longer omega 6 and EPA and DHA. So ICOSA pentanoic acid and DOSA hexanoic acid. These longer omega 3s that we get from seafoods, we actually get the longer versions of these from animal foods and the shorter versions of these from plant foods. So we're getting those longer omega 3s very abundantly from, from seafood. We're getting that omega 6 from like eggs are probably the best source. So the longer fats are the ones that we actually use for signaling molecules. So they, they live in our cell membranes and then our cells grab them when they need them and turn them into various types of communication molecules. So they're called autocrine and paracrine signaling molecules. They're analogous to hormones, but their hormones are like long distance signals. It's like calling your grandma across the country. In the olden days, you would pay extra for that because it was a long distance call. Nowadays that doesn't exist anymore, the short ones is more like yelling across the room to a family member. So those, those short distance molecules, they are signaling molecules for either adjacent cells or within a cell. And that is the main thing that we're using these fats for other, other than like membrane dynamics and like actually really biophysicsy stuff. So we need those for signaling molecules. And what's fascinating is we used to think that the balance between Omega 3s and Omega 6s really mattered. We used to say, okay, like we're growing cells in the petri dish. What signaling molecules they make is completely proportional to the ratio of these fats in the cell membrane. So if you have more Omega 6s, they're going to make this collection of signaling molecules that are just made from that Omega 6. They're made from arachidonic acid. And if you have DHA and EPA in the cell membrane, then they're going to make this other class of signaling molecules. And those signaling molecules have pretty profound impacts on immune function. So we used to think that we really needed this balance and that the, the lack of balance between Omega 3s and Omega 6s was driving inflammatory diseases. Studies from the last few years have kind of shown that's, that's not the case. So there's this growing collection of research. The best research to, to say it's not is the studies on vegetable oils. We used to think, oh, vegetable oils, omega 6s. Right. We gotta balance that. So we've gotta reduce our vegetable oils stick with olive oil, which is mainly monounsaturated fats. Studies over recent years have shown that vegetable oils reduce cardiovascular disease risk if they're swapping out sources of saturated fats in our diet. And they are inflammation neutral, if not slightly anti inflammatory. Which is fascinating because we don't fully know why other than there has to be something regulating how the cell is using these fats to make these signaling molecules that we don't, that's beyond substrate availability that we don't fully understand. So the net result is we need, we need them, they're very important for our health. We can't convert Omega 3s to Omega 6s or vice versa. So we need them both. Nothing, nothing, nothing bad from getting them both in equal quantities. Omega 3s are the most profound from a cardiovascular risk perspective and a neurological like disease risk perspective. So they reduce risk of neurodegenerative disease, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, they reduce risk of age related cognitive decline, they reduce risk of cardiovascular disease. So those long chain omega 3s, very fundamental. Yeah. And then weirdly the other fat that's really good for us is monounsaturated fats, especially oleic acid, which is not essential at all, but still has a lot of health promoting effects. So fats are, are funny because some of the most important fats are not even essential nutrients.

Yeah, interesting. You know, and that membrane integrity like that. I think, you know, there's a lot to that on the, on the longer chain.

Yeah.

Omega 3s and the sources. Just real briefly, will you comment on the, on the vegetable like flaxseed oil, omega 3, vegetarian, vegan sources versus from animal source. Because there's some, you know, convertibility issues in there.

Yes. So the one, the, the type of omega 3 that we get from flaxseed chia seed, like nuts and walnuts. Right. Is alpha linolenic acid. It's that shortest Omega 3. We do need it like it is good for us. But the one that, the type of Omega 3 that has the biggest impact is the longer, longer versions of the same molecule. So that's DHA and epa, which we get from seafood, so fish and shellfish. We also get Some from sea vegetables and algae. So a vegetarian in terms of lowering risk of negative health outcomes, especially as we age. And it's health benefits including reductions in jeopardy.

Awesome. All right, now so we, we, we geeked out there, which I'm really into. I'm wondering if we can go big broad again and looking at building room for quality of life foods.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes. My favorite topic. One of them. I've got too many favorite topics.

Awesome.

So I refer to Nutrivore as a permissive dietary structure rather than a restrictive one. When the goal is just getting all of the nutrients our bodies need from the foods we eat, it doesn't matter if one of those foods was like just we'll call them empty calories. Even though I don't, I hate that phrase. It doesn't matter because as it was compensated for with other foods that supplied more nutrients. So provided we're, we're getting all of the nutrients our bodies need from the foods we eat, doesn't matter if each food we ate contributed equal nutrients to our diets. And the more like freezing super high nutrient dense foods we choose, right? Vegetables like mushrooms and seafood and organ meat, you know, tropical fruits and berries. The more of those types of foods that we include in our diet, the easier it is to meet our nutritional needs and still have like lots of energy, demand rooms to spare for foods that we're choosing because they taste good and we like them. Maybe they're traditional foods or cultural foods for us. Maybe they're budget stretching foods or they're convenient, they save time. Or maybe these are just the foods that are more easily accessible to us. And I think that that idea is so important to be able to build in room for these foods that we just love for a couple of reasons. First of all, restriction. So anytime we like say, okay, this is a good food and this is a bad food, right? We take these dichotomous approaches to diet restriction. Dramatically increases risk of cravings and food fixation and obsessions. And it leads to something called disinhibition, which is where we start off. We're like, I'm following this diet and I'm enthusiastic about it. Then I'm following this diet and I'm like white knuckling it and it's getting really hard because I'm missing all my favorite foods. And then I finally give in to my craving and then that's it. I've fallen off the proverbial wagon. All my health behaviors unravel so that that moment of I gave in and all My behaviors unravel is called disinhibition. And that drives the yo yo. Right? So whether that yo yo is weight regain cycles or it is like there's, there's other ways that we can yo yo between eating healthily and eating a pattern that increases risk for, for long term health problems. That's not good. Because what actually affects every single thing that we care about health wise is our overall eating patterns. So if we're setting ourselves up with too restrictive of a diet that we are going to yo yo on and off of it, then we're not benefiting from the long term benefits of those overall healthy eating patterns. So because of that quite extensive psychology of diet research, I've really built in anti diet type dietary philosophies into the nutriver philosophy as, as a starting point. Again, that doesn't take away from having to avoid foods or medical reasons. That's a whole separate thing. It doesn't mean that you can't apply Nutrivore principles to a specific dietary structure that you really enjoy that works for you, that you have reasons for loving. But the, the base for me is as much about getting off the diet roller coaster and just looking at diet in terms of sustainable lifelong eating patterns because those, that's what actually makes the difference. And in order for a diet to be sustainable, we can't feel deprived, we can't be fixating on that food that we're not allowing ourselves. We can't be going into these like disinhibition cycles where we then have all of our health behaviors unravel. So by not restricting any food and allowing ourselves to incorporate those foods with, you know, balance and moderation in mind, it's a lot easier to have a balanced sort of moderation mindset with foods. When we're not restricting them, then we're setting ourselves up to improve diet quality and maintain that sustainably in a way that doesn't feel like we're white knuckling our diets.

I love it. I love it. Any last. I think that's a great way to wrap this discussion. Anything that you would like our listeners and viewers to hear just kind of last parting inspiration.

Oh, that's such a good question. I feel like this has been a very like wide ranging conversation. So I, I think my last thing to say is that Nutrivore is like a great next step no matter where you're starting from. So if you are completely at the beginning of thinking about making diet changes, the great thing about Nutrivore is it identifies Those like first steps that will give you the most health bang for your like little effort and it, it helps you like here's just one step which is like maybe adding a salad to your drive thru order or having a piece of fruit for a snack instead of something from a vending machine. Like it identifies those really simple things that science says actually yes will for real improve health and is an accessible, affordable thing that we can do to just start taking that first step. And it doesn't need to be like nutriver gets rid of that all or best mindset too. We don't have to be perfect in order to have health benefits from a higher quality diet. So if you're starting there, nutrivore gives you a first step. If you like me and like so many have been steeped in diet culture, you have a lot of food fear, you've been in restrictive diets for a really long time. Nutrivore also gives you a path to improving diet quality and expanding your diet through and feeling comfortable with that through its in depth education. Even if you're starting with like overall very high diet quality but needing to either ditch the restriction right. And expand diet or needing to get more nutrients within a, you know, say a diet that's required for medical reasons. So Nutrivore and everywhere in between. Nutrivore gives you that next step and makes that step as easy, as accessible, as affordable and as enjoyable as possible. I care so much about the barrier to entry. I think what's happened in the wellness community at large is the bar to like what what is a healthy diet just keeps getting raised and it keeps getting like just that much more out of reach for most people. I would like to dig a trench and bury that bar into it so that improving diet quality is something that absolutely everyone can do.

I love it. Thank you Dr. Sarah. If you all enjoyed this conversation as much as I did, give it a like and go out there and give us a five star review and and put down what your action item, what your take home is from this, you know, dispelling the myths of basically fad diet culture is that's not an easy job. Dr. Sarah and I really applaud you for coming out strong and I'm excited to help share the word. I hope you all listening and viewing also do too think of three people that could benefit from this really demystifying diet and making it achievable for all. So thank you all. We wouldn't be doing it without you. Dr. Sarah, thank you so much.

Thank you again for having me.