EP 189 WTH?!?: Nourishing Connections: Lynne Bowman on Family Meals and Healthy Living

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Hey, welcome back, everybody. Dr. Greg Eckel. This is what the health Today's topic is sugars effects on aging you rapidly eating habits to help you live longer. My guest is Lynn Parmiter Bowman, author of the Amazon bestseller Did I Blow It? She's saying hello. Author of the Amazon bestseller Brownies for Breakfast, has been featured on women's expos throughout the country, teaming up with the actress Deidre hall to write and polish Deidre Hall's Kitchen Close up. That was 2010. And Deidre Hall's how does she do it? That was 2012. She's won national awards as a creative director for Silicon Valley companies, was creative director at E and J Gallo Winery, advertising manager at Redkent Laboratories, freelance for agencies in San Jose, Louisiana and New York. She's also worked as an actress, a makeup artist, a screenwriter, an illustrator, legal journalist and television weather person. Lynn and her husband have a small farm on the coast of Northern California. Welcome aboard.

I'm exhausted listening to all that. You had some stuff out, Greg.

Yes. You have had some lifetimes and I'm really excited about this because, you know, eating habits that help you live longer. I am not going to give away any secrets of this and I have some questions loaded for you, but I want to know. You've got this whole concept of brownies for breakfast. It reminds me of my aunt where we would go to eat pies for breakfast. So what is the deal, Lynn?

What is the deal?

Yes.

Well, the deal is I want everybody eating fabulous, delicious food all the time. Really good food, whole food, real food, lots of plants. Okay. Is this is sounding familiar? Yeah, it's, it's, it's how your grandma and your auntie wanted us to eat too. But we've kind of gone off the rails the last 50 to 60 years in the way we eat crappy food all the time. I lucked out.

Yeah. So let's, there's a couple components that I want to get into with you because let's talk about what fast food really costs somebody because it's convenient. Along those lines, this off the rails. In the last 50 to 60 years, what do you think has happened there?

Well, I think along with a lot of other people in the food business and the health business, we have been eating manufactured food for a long time now. We've been eating food that was invented literally by guys in a building in New Jersey in what's called the craveability industry. Yeah. Taking cheap components, you know, the, the sugar, alcohol kind of things. The, you know, this everybody knows this, You've read about it, you've heard about it. All of these components made it easy and cheap to create food, put some flavors in it, you know, put it in a box that said healthy fun. And. And suddenly you had a product that cost you practically nothing and that you could sell for a decent amount of money and sell billions of them. So the cereals, the packaged, you know, meals, the. The stuff that you've been grabbing and going with for all these years is not really food in the true sense of the word. It's engineered feed for people. And it. That's just as bad for us as we imagine. Engineered feed is for those poor cattle out there or the sheep or whatever. And I bring that up because as bad as it is for us, it's also really bad for Mother Earth. Every time we open up a plastic package full of something that's kind of hard to identify, but it cost us 12 bucks, we are costing the environment a huge price. And that's not a political statement. That's just true.

That's truth. You know, when you say manufactured food, you know, the. The thing that conjures up in my mind is Soylent Green. Do you ever see that movie? Yeah, about, you know, processed people being fed to people and this whole component of manufactured food, or better, living through chemistry. I really, you know, I'm a naturopathic physician and Chinese medicine practitioner. I'm very into natural processes, following the environment. What happens in the macrocosm environment happens in the microcosm, our bodies and, you know, you look at. There isn't.

The.

The experiment is failed at this point. We look at life expectancy going down, the health of people. You've seen it in your lifetime. You've seen a massive change. This whole linking food culture to environment. You had a concept in, in the show notes of, you know, really the culture of the family table. Because I really want to have that conversation with you living on a small farm in Northern California, which is like the. The bounty land of farming and, you know, the cornucopia of richness of life. So, you know, can you bring that into our conversation here?

Oh, absolutely, because it's. You can't really pull them apart. What happened was we stopped sitting down to the table and eating with our family and friends. And we've got two or three generations of kids that have grown up eating in the back of a car out of a bag. And I don't mean an occasional meal, I mean all the time. And literally, I've talked to teachers and other grownups who are around kids who talk about how the kids have never learned how to eat with utensils. You know, I mean, a thing that we just took so for granted. But to me, it's so many other losses along with the health loss and the loss of the just eating that good food when you don't have family and friends around a table. There's so much education that's not happening there. And I actually think that a lot of what's happening in the country right now politically is because people have not learned how to argue in a kind and decent way. They haven't learned how to pass the salt. You know, they haven't learned how to share the main dish, the entree in a very nice way. They haven't learned how to clean up their mess. Right. And these are all the things that you learn in the kitchen, at the kitchen table. Yeah, I'm not even going to go to the dining room. Let's just talk kitchen table. And you know, I didn't, didn't grow up in a particularly elegant circumstance, but we ate around a table that was set and, and that was the way my neighbors in this little neighborhood in Pasadena, California, little post war homes, but everybody thought it was important to sit down to a meal and talk. And in those days, the daddies came home. My daddy was, you know, one of those guys in a suit who came home with a briefcase and sa down and the dinner was laid out for him and everything. And so he, he reigned over the dinner table. What he said was the important thing, what he had done was the important thing. But guess what? I learned so much about how life worked at that kitchen table and I didn't even know what I was learning at that kitchen table, what I was learning. And it's only really become obvious to me lately, Greg, and I'm, as you already know this, I'm ancient.

I. Anciently young. Yeah, I think we're, I'm going to call you out on that.

But yeah, well, and this is the thing we're talking about though. We're talking about age and longevity and health into longevity. And so, and I like talking about how old I am because for one thing, I didn't think I'd make it. Look, I'm still here, I'm, I'm still standing while I'm sitting, but I can still stand and I'm 78. And I think it's important for us to say those things aloud because guess what? It's fine. It's great. I have never been happier in my life. It's a great time of life for a lot of reasons. It comes with its own set of griefs, as we know. You lose friends, you lose family members, but there is a freedom that comes with it that is really beautiful. Plus grandkids, plus other things. But we'll talk about that later. Anyway, so I learned industrial marketing at my kitchen table, listening to my dad go on and on about his day. I didn't know then that I was learning about aeronautical engineering, you know, about how to market an airline. I mean, these things that as a kid you're just sitting there eating your spaghetti, going, oh my God, I'm so bored. I wish he, you know, but what we learned and we knew how to behave at the table. So when my kids were growing up and coming of age, I felt like the gift I could give them. I mean, I was a single mom of three. We had a crazy life. I had a crazy homicidal ex. It was all nuts. But my gift to them, as best I could do it was going to be knowing how to sit at a table and defend an argument and, you know, behave responsibly and clean up afterwards and help set up before those are. And we could probably list out 10 things. But what is more important in life to learn than those things?

Sure.

That you only learn being forced to sit with your parents and your family at a table and eat nicely and keep your napkin on your lap.

Sure, yeah. And relate and converse and have differing opinions. And most importantly, it is that shared experience. So, you know, when we talk about, I like that the culture of the family table and who the guests are at the house and serving folks and, you know, really having some of those, you know, now I'm sounding old fashioned too, but it is true with regards to a way to bring back culture and have this aspect of food and how it plays a role in culture and the connection to land and place and identity, you know, there's a lot of. It's tied together, you know, as a naturopathic doctor, my job is to address the root causes of illness and this separation from, from self, out from family, from land, from production, from, you know, good food is a massive, you know, heart ache break. It creates a lot of isolation, you know, so that's why I was really excited to have this conversation with you.

Let me say another way.

Yeah.

Food is love.

Yeah.

That's how we love each other. Always have and hopefully always will. Yeah. That's how you, that's how you make friends. That's how you deal with enemies. I Mean, right? Table with food.

Yeah. And it's not bioengineered food. We're talking about real whole food from Mother Earth that came from sun energy that then feeds us naturally. Like, that's. There's more than plenty to go around. It's distribution issues. And, you know, this aspect, you know, you at 78, you could be doing anything. Why this? Why is this in the mission of Lynn?

That's a good question. And I ask myself that every day. Wrong with you. You know, go play. Go do something. And, and this is play for me. One of the main reasons I do it, Greg, I. And I mean this sincerely. I meet the best people. Right. It's so fun making friends in Melbourne, Australia, and Tallahassee, Florida, and all these folks in Europe who are on the same path, who are on the mission with me, who I never would have had the opportunity to meet. So between writing my book and doing these podcasts, it's delightful to meet people like you who are doing what we do. But I just. Everybody asked me to write this book. And because I was feeding people and because I found out early in my life that I was a type 2 diabetic, I've been eating as healthy as I could, unlike a lot of people, for most of my adult life.

Yeah.

Since I was in my early 40s, I knew that if I didn't eat well and do some other things, exercise and so on, I would shorten my life. My kids would have to be taking care of me, and my mother had died when I was 18 of a chronic disease, kidney disease. So I knew up close and personal what that looked like, felt like, what it did to your family, what it did to the rest of your life. And I was determined I was not going to do that to my kids. And so it, it became so. I mean, I had a career doing other things and so on, but the, the, the eating part of it and, and staying healthy part of my life was such a constant for me. And then I realized that people would look at me and go, hey, how do you do that? You know what? How do you. How do you. And we always had people at my house because I had all these kids, so I couldn't go anywhere. So I had my social life around my table, and, And I came to understand that people didn't always get that kind of food or that kind of a social structure in their own lives, and they really appreciated it when they came and sat at my table and with my little rowdy kids. And so as time went on and as you know, I started writing these books and, and people reacted positively. And so this last one, I, I really put my heart and soul in. And by the way, it's on audible now.

Oh, great.

Yeah.

This is Brownies for Breakfast. Right. So.

And the subtitle is A Cookbook for Diabetics and the People who Love Them. So that's code for everybody. Yes, we all know diabetics, right? Somebody in your family.

Totally. It's a massive, massive issue for so many people. And in the sugar component, you know, I'm currently wearing a continuous glucose monitor. I do it periodically through time because it is a big component of longevity and understanding how food impacts your sugars. And then insulin, it can really rapidly age you. So as you're, you've noticed, and people coming around your table saying, hey, Lynn, how do you look so good? How do you have so much energy? How do, how are you so strong? And you're thinking, hey, well, this is from my diet. So tell us about the book.

Well, it's. And after studying and reading and all this stuff, what I began to understand was that the medical community was lousy at communicating what people should do, you know, and I don't want to hear about the cellular structure and I don't care about, you know, the, the electrode. I want to know what to do, what do I eat and what don't I eat, how do I stay healthy? And so I wrote the book that I never had. I wrote the book that I wish somebody had written for me, which is it's got some stories in it and, you know, some grandma stuff, and I hope you'll enjoy that, too. It was the 60s, and hey, it was fun. And so, you know, but, but I had never seen a book that told you how to eat sugar free. If you want to eat vegan, fine, it's all in there. If you want to eat vegetarian, fine, it's in there. If you want to add some meat or fish, it's in there. But here's the deal. It's easy, it's cheap, it's uncomplicated. I am a messy cook. I'm impatient. But I can do this and you can do this and you can do. I have recipes in there with two ingredients, three ingredients. I tell you what to have in your, your larder that you really need, what you don't need, what to get rid of. And it's, it's really not complicated at all. But the result, Greg, is that you eat better, yummier, cheaper. Yes, true. Than you were eating, buying crappy food. It's simple.

We want to make it simple and easy. Yeah.

Yes, yes. And I took all the pictures myself because I didn't want you thinking that. Yeah, fine. Look, it looks great when she does it in her kitchen with her stylist and everything. No, no, no, I, I did it just me with my iPhone. So you can do it. So this is how it's going to look when you make it.

That's great. You know, these resources are really important. So many folks, like, I didn't really learn how to cook growing up in Western Pennsylvania in the 70s that, you know, we, we were like that generation, right, where McDonald's came online and not saying that we didn't have home cooked meals, but we did have a lot of canned vegetables, we had a lot of pot roasts, we had, you know, a lot of cookouts. Etc, so it is, you know, even now I'm learning how to cook and I love it when my teenagers are saying, hey, I want to, you know, they're contributing, they're making new recipes and they're actually contributing in the kitchen. And we are creating that family table, which feels so good, where, you know, it is that time to decompress from the day and share some time. I think, you know, it became this propaganda of you're wasting your time in the kitchen. And it's like, no, this is a, this is the love food. You know, food as medicine and as love and as coming together around the table. I think it's really appropriate and very timely for this. So I was really excited to get you on the podcast and share your message and your story with our listeners and viewers, because it is, it can be simple, right? Simple doesn't mean not good tasting. It just means simple.

It just means simple. And, and I have a couple of things in there that sound very fancy. One of them is cassoulet, which I learned to appreciate when I lived in France. It's delicious, but it's, it's basically just a lentil stew. And lentils are cheap, they're high protein. Another thing I've experimented with veganism. I spent a year vegan just to see. And it was so interesting, Greg, because, yeah, dropped weight like crazy and felt fine. I've now kind of, you know, I've done some different things, but I'm now kind of settled into a plant based way of eating. And I add a little fish in or I add a little meat in. I live right in the middle, as you were saying, of the place on earth where I can go down the street and meet the most beautiful designer chickens, you know, whose names I know and who lay the most glorious little eggs and, and then down the street, the goats, the pigs, the little beautiful cattle on the hill, the little banded fat cattle, they're so gorgeous. So I can get the grass fed grass finished, all that stuff if I want it and it's good. And I'm not about to say that that is not a thing anybody should eat, but I don't want anybody eating factory farmed animals. For dang sure. That's a real thing, not only for how we eat, but it is truly an awful way of polluting the, the earth if you look into it at all. It's just, it's really a nasty business. So nasty for the critters and it's nasty for the people who do the critters and it's nasty for the neighbors. I mean it's just nasty all the way around. So yeah, there's so much for us to talk about. I don't know, what do you want? Hormone replacement therapy? Okay. Autophagy. One of my favorite subjects, electrolytes. That's a new thing for me. And let's talk about that for just a minute because I think a lot of your listeners are of a certain age, let's say, and I am just now understanding that lack of water hydration can look like dementia. It can, it, people can.

True. It's one of the first recommendations that I have made for 25 years is you've got to be hydrated. It is such a big thing for pain, for memory, for movement, for absorption of other minerals, etc, and I think.

It'S a thing that a lot of allopathic docs don't talk about and they should and I'm glad you do and you're into it. Another thing that, because I've, I've just started in the last few months doing weight training, strength training. I had, I had been working out. But you know, people have this idea about if you're as old as I am, you know, well, honey, you're getting on now. So you know, these things aren't.

No those people saying get used to it, you're getting old. That is not a true statement. You're a living testament of it. I have 80 and 90 year old patients that are fit, more fit than they were in as 50 and 60 year olds. It is truly possible. We're living at an amazing time. And I'm really happy to hear that you started lifting weights because that is a massive thing. As we age, any Loss of muscle is very hard to put back on and you're doing yourself such a service. Yeah.

For a smallish, whitish old lady, your bones are likely to be somewhat frail and if you don't want to take those medications that Big Pharma is selling us for, for that, and I don't, and I've seen some unfortunate circumstances for people who did. So. Yeah, no, thanks. One of the things we can do to still build bone, they're telling me, argue with me if I'm wrong, is to lift weights, to do strength training, that you can actually add density to your bones.

And it is true.

Sign me up.

Yeah. You know, it really is important. You know, what I call it is training for the centenarian decathlon. What are the activities you want to be doing as a 100 year old? And you had mentioned one of my favorite relationships on the planet, which is as grandparents. Now I can wait for that, but I want you to speak to that because I had such a great relationship with my grandparents. My kids have a great relationship with their grandparents, and it is a lost relationship, but I, I really look forward to it personally when appropriate for, for my family. But will you, I just want to hear your joy in that.

Well, I, I, I can't. Partly because I was so thrilled to have my kids loved, but they, they were three years apart. I mean, literally when I, when they were 2, 3 and 4, I became a single parent. So their young years were so chaotic and I was the breadwinner, the single source and so on. So I never had the chance to just be with them like a lot of parents do. I mean, we were together, we lived together, but I was here and there and everything. Yeah. Yeah. So with, with grandchildren, I only have one that lives really, really close, and she is four miles up the road from me and she's 16 now, so doing the Mimi. Oh my gosh. You know, your, your YouTube is just so, you know, and I can't believe you're, you know. But I take every word of it with joy and, and appreciation because she's my connection to a couple of generations back. She's in her second year of college at a wonderful community college here, and she's, we've been very close. I mean, she spent so much time with us when she was a little one. You know, she would sleep here and, and eat here and spend tons of time with us, which was so precious. Just, I, I can't even. So it's hard for me now that she's got this life and, you know, Indeed, she has other things that she's doing, but I get to drive her. She's still not driving. And this is so interesting because kids, I mean, when we were 16, we could not wait to get behind the wheel. And kids today, wisely so, aren't so eager, you know, they. They're too smart. They see what it's like to be out there driving around with all those crazy people. So I'm still chauffeuring her a little bit, but I'm kind of secretly glad because that's good time that we can be together and talk about things like. Okay, you want to hear crazy? She loves statistics.

Wow.

I mean, awesome. And. And she flew through calculus.

That's awesome.

So I kind of wondered if the. If the genetic thing, you know, I don't know what happened there, but it's in there. It's in there. But, yeah, it's just such a. A lovely, lovely thing. And to. To be a parent without being a parent, you know, Grandma. Yeah. I get to hear the stuff that maybe mom, you know, isn't too sure she wants to hear. I think it's great for kids to have someone that they know is on their team, they know loves them deeply, every square inch, but it's okay to talk, you know, so it's a great. It's.

It is an amazing relationship to have. And, you know, for any listeners and viewers out there, it doesn't have to be even of your kids. You could volunteer. If you're older, you could volunteer at the preschools, reading books and. And being involved. I think it is an amazing gift to give the youth and younger generations that connection, because a lot of the families in North America have been dispersed everywhere, so we don't really have that baked in anymore. Lynn, this has been such a fun conversation. I want to. We're. We're wrapping it up. So Brownies for breakfast, a cookbook for diabetes and people who love them. I'm going to give you an opportunity to share some wisdom here at the end for our listeners and viewers, though.

You don't even want my brownie recipe.

No, I want people to get your cookbook. I. I want to. I'm gonna get your cookbook, too. I, you know, when you said it, simple recipes that are delicious, you had me at simple. But delicious is a bonus, and I, you know, I am excited to share. We got the links in the show. Notes for folks. It's a very accessible book, and it really is. Let's bring back this tradition of the family table that could be your neighbors. It could be friends, friends over at your family table because they are your family. So, you know, we're going to bring that back. I love it. It's the way that change is made is around the, the dining table, the kitchen table. That's where the real conversations are happening around the globe is with loved ones and friends and family, sharing food and love together. And it doesn't mean that we're all agreeing to what is said, but we're having the conversation which counts. I'd love to you know any last parting wisdom that you'd like to share with our listeners and viewers.

Eat joyfully.

I love it.

Yeah.

Thank you so much, Lynn. We're we'll have a link to your book in the show notes. And folks, if you got something out of today's conversation, please give us a thumbs up and write a comment as to what you are taking away from this conversation. Would love to, if you are so inspired, give us a five star review out there and let people know that we're out here delivering the goods. What the health Dr. Greg Eckel, Lynn Palmeter Bowman and the author of Brownies for Breakfast, a cookbook for diabetics and the people who love them. Thanks.