What's in Your Food? Dr. Austin Perlmutter x Dr. Stephan Van Vliet

What's actually in your food? Now, I'm not talking about the fats, the carbs, the proteins, or the calories in a bite of food. I'm talking about the thousands of other nutrients that are found in each bite of food. These nutrients that are found in plants and animals and are found in humans that have been now studied to influence a host of different pathways related to metabolism, immunity, epigenetics and longevity. To understand what's actually in our food requires us to get to a level of nuance that is not commonly the case in conversations around nutrition. But today we have the opportunity to speak with one of the world's foremost experts on these molecules called phytochemicals that can translate between soil and plants, animals and humans, and are revolutionizing the way that we think about nutrition. Dr. Stefan von Vliet is the director of the center for Human Nutrition Studies at Utah State University. He earned his PhD in kinesiology when he was training at the University of Illinois. And he has received postdoctoral training at Washington University and St. Louis School of Medicine as well as in Duke University School of Medicine. He is now at the Utah State University. His research is looking at how agriculture influences human health. And he is one of those really interesting people who is at the intersection of so many different fields. He works with farmers, ecologists, agricultural scientists, and to some extent with doctors like me. He is one of these people who will absolutely change the way that you understand what is actually happening in nutrition by dissecting the conversation between soil, plants, animals and humans. This is a phenomenal conversation. I'm sure you're going to enjoy it. And for lots of information as to where you can go next, be sure to watch to the very end. We'll provide you some resources to learn more. With that said, let's jump right into this conversation with Stefan Von Vliet. Well, Stefan, I'm so excited to be here in conversation with you. And we had the opportunity over the last couple of weeks to connect via zoom, via email. And Both myself and Dr. Jeff Bland, we're just both so enamored with the work that you're doing in connecting, but seem to be these disparate areas of health. And so, you know, just for our listeners, you've, you've heard from me before. I'm a conventionally trained doctor, and when I was learning about in medical school and residency about nutrients, we learned about the big ones, the macronutrients, and then we learned about the micronutrients, and we never really talked about anything beyond that. And So I think, Stefan, what you've done so well is shed light on the fact that there's more to food and there's more to the connection between soil and animals and human health than what people like me learned in conventional training. So maybe we could start with how did you become interested in this whole space in terms of nutrition and what is it that you're up to now?

Yeah, thank you so much for the those kind words.

Yeah.

So how I got into it, I think it's cultivated at a young age, even though at the time I didn't realize it. But growing up, I grew up in the Netherlands in close to a rural community. And we often get our milk directly from the farmer and there was a potato farm close by, so we get our produce locally. So I think subconsciously that's where, where it kind of started. And as I, as I got older I, I got really interested also in sports nutrition. And this is really how I got interested in nutrition in, in, in the current form. Started lifting weights in my late teens and got really interested in how to use nutrition for, for performance. And actually during my PhD, this is an interesting project that kind of all sparked it. We were doing this comparison of whole eggs versus egg whites. And, and the leading thought at that time was is that it's really just protein that dictates the muscle anabolic response. So the accretion of new muscle proteins and that other nutrients don't really matter. And we did the study where we had whole eggs versus egg whites. And if you ask most body whales, they say egg whites are better because you don't get the fat. So it's, it's more anabolic. And so the digestion absorption is quicker and the digestion absorption of egg whites is quicker. But it paradoxically, even though both were matched for protein and the whole eggs actually had the amino acids come in later into systemic circulation over, when measured over a five hour time period, we actually found stronger muscle anabolic response with the whole eggs. And whole eggs contain a bunch of nutrients in the yolk, fat soluble vitamins such as caroteno, a bunch of other bioactive compounds that, that people maybe not immediately think of. But that's where I really got interested. I was thinking, well, there's probably more to food than this. And that kind of led me down the path of learning more about what is the complexity of foods, what are these other bioactive peptides in foods. And as I progress through my career, specifically at Duke, I was able to, I actually got, it was kind of random and I saw how these things work. I got a call one day from two animal scientists, Dr. Fred Provenza and Dr. Scott Kronberg, and they said, no, we've been looking to partner with a human nutrition scientist for many years now and have unsuccessfully done so. But yeah, we heard, learned about some of your work. Are you willing to write some grants with us? And we did that. And the first 15 grants didn't get funded, but number 16, 17 and 18, luckily that's so we kind of after the races then. And what we've been applying is really sort of deep metabolomic profiling. So we look at hundreds of nutrients in, in food and it's up to thousand if you go really all out. But learning how different agricultural practices impact the composition. Because if you think about it, what is the most obvious way, going back to those eggs, by which we can increase the nutrients in that yolk that seem to be giving a strong anabolic response? Well, the most obvious way is how you raise and feed the chickens. So if you give the chickens a more appropriate or healthier diet, however you want to define healthier, but that's richer in carotenoids and in other secondary metabolites that are coming from the plants, this is the most obvious way to increase the nutrient density of these foods. And this is kind of how it all started. And from there on we expanded our work into different crops, different animal sourced foods. And yeah, that's, that's, I know that's, that's in a nutshell how we got to this.

Well, what you're saying here, which sounds on its surface a little bit obvious, but maybe isn't for a lot of people and certainly has not been incorporated into, I think conventional wisdom around nutrition is that all these systems are connected. And so, you know, I've seen so many papers published by people attempting to increase the kind of output of a very food, whether it's a plant or an animal. They want bigger animals, they want bigger crops, because then they're able to sell that for more money. They're able to kind of accomplish what they're seeking to do, which is kind of expand their business, keep their animals healthy, etc. But the question then becomes, what does that do to the humans who consume it if various interventions are being performed on the plants and the animals? And what I love about what you're talking about here is you're helping us to bridge this gap, which is to talk about how nutrients flow through systems, rather than just saying, well, I have eaten a bunch of protein and therefore I'm building muscle and it's all just about the amount of protein I eat. So if I take two scoops versus one scoop, that's the major variable. It's saying there are more molecules involved and these molecules influence a whole lot more than just some sort of a macro thing like muscle gain. And so for me it's trying to understand how does that apply to human health. But also when we go all the way back down again, it is, how does it apply to the health of the animals, the health of the plants? Because at the end of the day it is all connected. And so you have kind of found yourself in this realm of what we would call regenerative agriculture, which seems like a long ways away from where you started. You know, you're interested in trying to understand, let's say muscle dynamics and now all of a sudden you're talking about what happens in a farm. So can you tell me a little bit about how you first got interested in or your research started getting into regenerative agriculture and what does that term even mean for you?

Yeah, there's no clear definition on regenerative agriculture, but I would say it's making it better than the current status quo. And, and how that looks may differ from, from different farms depending on, on a variety of reasons, the ecosystem or what is just possible financially or the resources or the staff that you have in hand. But it's making incremental changes. Right? That, that's for me what really was regenerative ag is and you know, to be quite honest with you, I was jokingly say it's like I bought, have been buying grass fed milk for a long time because I get it directly from the farmer or the animals around the pasture buying grass fed meat. And I kind of wanted to know this for myself, Austin, to be 100 honest with you. And it's nice, yeah, it's nice that other people want to know it as well and that you can get funding for it. But that's kind of how it started. I was like, huh, I wonder how grass fed beef differs from grain fed beef because I've been buying this and, and that's kind of, you know, how it initially got started and then obviously it grew from there into a variety of different, different crops as well. But that's really what cultivated. And as you go further down the road, I also more appreciative of how just how complex foods are. And a lot of things make make sense down the line. Right. In retrospect. But for instance, one easy example is as we were doing the comparisons between grass fed and grain fed beef. It's really interesting because you see lipid oxidation products increase, you see advanced glycation end products increase in the grain fed meat. And if you think about it is that you're feeling a lot more glucose, a lot more sugar to the animal. And in humans you would see advanced glycation emperors increase in people with a more diabetic phenotype where they have some sort of glucose or metabolic dysfunction. So to see that happen in an animal and, and we think of ages from like sort of, you know, not being very great to your health for to consume within a dietary plan and then you actually think like, well, this completely relates to the animal health, of course. Right. So. But learning those things. Yeah, it's been really, really interesting and valuable and makes you, has kind of convinced me over time that animal health and human nutrition are the same thing. And probably plant health and human nutrition, provided these are plants that we consume. It's, it's, you're essentially talking about the same thing.

Yeah, I, I want to go back to where you, you just started because you, you know, there's this premise that things are interconvertible, interchangeable at a certain level. Right. Where one protein, many grams of a protein is equivalent to grams of the same amount of protein in another source. And that we all should just kind of focus on one line metric and for a long time that's calories, right? It's are you getting enough calories? And then there's some focus and there's still a lot of focus now on proteins, carbs, fats, the macronutrients. To some degree, people are focused on micronutrients and avoiding deficiency. But where you started was saying that you thought maybe there was this difference between grass milk that came from a grass fed cow versus milk that came from a grain fed cow and that the meat might be different as well. And it's the type of thing that we see kind of repeated a lot in what I guess we'd call the genre, the people who are interested in, let's say, eating more natural foods. There is the premise that eating an animal or eating a plant that has been raised in an organic way in a healthier way has some value to human health. And I think there's kind of an assumption it should be the case because if you were to go out to the field and see your cow thriving and you were going to eat that cow, you would think that's maybe better for me than eating the sickly cow that's in the feedlot that's being given a lot of pharmaceuticals in order to keep it alive because it keeps coming down with infections and it because it's not having really a good life. But what you're describing here is actually analyzing and starting to ask is that true? And if so, are there pathways that we can look at various molecules, various things within, let's say the meat or in a plant that can help us to better understand the differences? And I think you're getting, getting to something that seems so fundamental as a reconceptualization of general health, which is in humans we might say, well, you know, if I can't measure it with a kind of coarse metric, then it's not a concern. So unless your hemoglobin A1C is a certain level, you don't really have issues with your blood sugar. Similarly, unless you're testing positive on some sort of a cholesterol panel at a certain level, you don't really have issues with your cholesterol and the number of, of metrics, of data points that you're able to collect. It's a totally different way of looking at what is actually driving health outcomes. I was particularly intrigued by some of the work you've been doing talking about the difference between meat, meat in this case that comes from animals as, as one would consider usually meat and a plant based alternative. Because that gets to the core of this, which is to say, is it just about the protein composition or is there something more to it? So can you help us to understand a little bit your take on that?

Yeah, no, it's absolutely. And it touches on. The other point is that if you would ask a general person, do you think an egg and a carrot are the same thing? People would say no, they're completely different. Right. So essentially if you're studying meat from a plant, or plant based meat alternative or meat from an animal, it's a completely different phenotype. Once you just move beyond the protein alone. And it is true, once the protein has got digested and the amino acids available in our blood, we cannot know whether this comes from an animal or a plant. But if you go beyond the protein and appreciate the complexity of food, you see that there's a 90% difference. It's as different as you expect a carrot and an egg to be. Indeed. Right. So, and I think it's important to appreciate is that you're going to get very much different nutritional profile because foods are not just protein. They contain an estimated 40, 50,000 molecules and we know that they play important cofactors in things such as protein metabolism or DNA and RNA synthesis, in how in gene expression in disease related pathways. So it's really critical to appreciate the complexity of food. And if I look at from that standpoint, then yeah, I would argue that plants and animals or foods are complementary to each other. There's some overlap in some primary nutrients like vitamins and minerals and, and amino acids which are the building blocks of protein. But if you look at a broader perspective of nutrients, there's many unique nutrients. Creatine, taurine, anserine, maybe things that people are not as familiar with initially that are only found in animal sourced foods, CoQ10, et cetera. And there's many other compounds that are higher or exclusively found in plant source foods. And take it together, I believe as humans, as we're biologically omnivores, we can gain a lot of benefit from eating both. And then to pull it back through to sort of regenerative agriculture. If we can, through the way that we raise our crops and our animals, increase these beneficial nutrients, I think that can increase the health of our population. Because frankly, if you ask me, we have solved a lot of the issues of nutrient or primary nutrient deficiencies, right? In terms of like we're eating, probably most of us, at least on average on a societal level in the Western society, eat a good amount of protein. We have fortified a food supply with vitamins and minerals. But probably our antioxidant intake, these polyphenols, flavonoids and other phytochemicals has gone down. And what we see is that the intake of those compounds are largely associated with anti inflammatory and antioxidant effects. And what are we struggling from at the moment? It's diseases that are rooted in inflammation and maybe issues with signaling pathways which can be altered by these phytochemicals. Of course it's not the only issue that we're struggling with in Western society. But clearly we have an issue, a large scale issue with metabolic disease and this could play a role in that.

I think that's such an important point. And what I hear you saying is maybe we're missing the central narrative. You know, there's, there's so much debate right now over how many grams of protein should you eat in a given day, or should you eat these carbs or those carbs. And what you're describing here is this incredible nuance and important part of nutrition, which is the thousands of additional molecules found in foods that are highly variable depending on how the food was raised and the food itself that arguably are playing a very significant role in many of these, at least pathway specific outcomes that relate to humans. So to kind of take a step back for our listeners, I know many people who have tuned in and heard me speak before have heard me talk about these phytochemicals or phytonutrients. But seeing as you research these things each day, starting from square one, a person, let's say, knows about macro and micronutrients, or maybe they don't. But where do you put this in that conversation and how would you explain what these molecules represent?

I would argue that they're antioxidants. I think within layman's terms, when we're talking about antioxidants, these are compounds that we're referring to. So these are polyphenols and flavonoids and terpenes that are found in things such as blueberries and kale. Obviously you're not, if you ask me, what do you eat a blueberry for? They probably say for antioxidants. I think. Right, you're not eating that for protein. There's some fiber and sugar in it.

But.

Well, people say because it's healthy. Well, why is it healthy? Because it contains these, these antioxidants in it. So, so this, what phenolics and polyphenols have in common is, is that they contain a phenol ring which act as an antioxidant. That's why the term is oftentimes used interchangeably.

What is, what is a phenol ring for? For those who maybe haven't done organic chemistry in a little while.

Yeah, no, I mean, you know, if you look at these molecules, there's a, either one phenol ring or multiple phenol rings, which would be a polyphenol, which is why polyphenols usually are stronger antioxidants. And these phenols, they can typically bind to reactive oxygen species. And these are sort of villains in our metabolism that can result in inflammation in oxidative stress. So having higher amounts of these from, from food sources can potentially lower inflammation, oxidative stress and inflammation. Oxidative stress is an important underlying reasons for, for, for many metabolic diseases that we struggle from. So which is the reason why we consume fruits and vegetables. And on top of that, also what is really interesting, and this has been on our mind lately as well, is just that, you know, if an animal, a cow, consumes more green forages that are rich in these polyphenols, it actually gets transformed into compounds that are Very similar to what we would find for instance in breast milk or blood of people. In essence, you get mammalian versions of these antioxidants already. Because if we take this plant, we typically convert this with the microbes in our gut. It gets converted in the liver through phase one and phase two metabolism. And actually maybe that polyphenol that you see in the bloom, where it actually becomes oftentimes a different compound within our body that is in a more usable form for us. So eating plant source foods and then getting maybe pre processed version from animal source foods, I think is something at least a further area of study. Because right now we don't really know getting these pre processed versions from animal source foods, is that a benefit or not?

This is very different, I think, from what most people understand in terms of antioxidants because we're layering in an additional layer, layer of comprehension and metabolomics. So just so that we can all kind of COVID the basics. Polyphenols, phytochemicals. Primarily we think of these things as being found in plants. And you're saying these are things we think about as antioxidants. So if you look at a blueberry, it's blue in part because of these molecules that give it color. And when we consume these molecules, they're thought to decrease oxidative stress, which is generally thought to be a good thing. So seemingly one of the reasons many people have recommended eating fruits and vegetables over the years. And maybe we could talk about a little bit. But one of the reasons I've seen people pitch red wine as being a superfood, could argue over the relative value of the resveratrol. But what you're talking about here, which I think is a very, very different way of approaching this, not in terms of changing the core narrative, but in terms of adding to it, is that polyphenols and these other phytochemicals in our foods, we may not absorb all that well if we eat them on our own, but when animals consume them, they can actually convert them into formats that if we eat the animal, it's almost a more bioavailable form, or at least it's a different form. So am I getting that right? And I guess the other part is as a relative percentage of the polyphenols or phytochemicals in our diet, how much do you think an animal would contribute if we were eating an animal protein or an animal product?

Yeah, that's a very good question that I at the moment don't know the answer to. It Will definitely depend on intake. But you know, as we've recently learned, is that the compounds that we get from meat and milk or eggs are strikingly similar to what we find in our body. So let's say if we take, let's take an example of a compound, benzoic acid. It's found in anything that's green, any plant that's green. Benzoic acid, a very major phenol. How does it appear in our body? It appears as 2,6 dihydroxybenzoic acid. It gets hydroxylated, it gets transformed into different compounds that are very close to. We find in our body, but we also find in the meat. Another important point is that I absolutely believe it because you plant source foods, then there will be a very rich source of polyphenols for us as well. I think it's just we can get some unique ones from animal source foods. But if you look at the polyphenols and I think is oftentimes into the something that people would argue saying like, well, the bioavailability is only 1% or something like that, or 2% of that compound, benzoic acid. Yes, that may be the case. You might only find 1% back of that. But it gets metabolized into probably 50 intermediates of that. And there's some nice tracer work that's been done. And tracers, what they are, they're, they're stable isotope labeled molecules. So basically we put a flag on, on the polyphenol for instance. And then you see that flag or fragments of that flag get attached. So the cut up and it gets attached to a bunch of other compounds as well. So that tells you. And then you look, you made bioavailability of maybe like 10 to 13%. And what's really interesting is that these compounds, they go in and out of the cells back into your blood or maybe able to cross the blood brain barrier, at least they can in a rat. So it's just another mammal. So no reason to assume it cannot do the same for us. Although there's no direct evidence for this in humans, obviously. But it's very likely they cross our blood brain barrier, they go in and out of our cells and maybe 48 hours later we pee them out. But obviously if we have a chronic intake of that, we are chronically exposed to that. And I think that's where a lot of this benefit happens. And what's also really interesting to think, if you think about it from a broader perspective, these compounds can increase our insulin sensitivity. They might directly act on non Pancreatic beta cells. And so we think about it, it's like, oh, it's sugar. Well, actually having these compounds in there is that if you get sugar from a blueberry, it will probably respond very different than just having glucose. Right. Because sometimes people are afraid of like sugar in, in, in, in, in these foods. But these are obviously very much different. I, I, I believe. And that's also what some of the work would suggest because you get them in in terms of a complex food.

Matrix with a, this is really interesting stuff. So it kind of seems like beyond just the antioxidant potential, these molecules act on various signaling pathways. Metabolism seeming to be one of the big ones. We're doing, as I know we spoke about before, some research showing how some of these molecules may act on immune signaling and epigenetic signaling, which is really quite game changing, I think, in terms of our comprehension of what food can do for us. You know, in some ways I think about this as maybe the fine tuning knob in terms of volume. So, so obviously if you don't eat calories, you're not gonna last that long. If you don't eat proteins, you're not gonna do very well. If you don't eat fats, things are gonna go poorly. Most people can go without eating carbs, provided they're eating the other stuff, because the body can synthesize glucose through other sources. But there's been very little kind of research into saying, is there a minimum necessary level of these polyphenols or phytochemicals in diet? And I'm curious where you think. I know the research hasn't been conclusive on this front yet, but where you think, do you think five, ten years from now we're going to say, you know, you really need to get this much both in terms of the total amount and in terms of diversity of phytochemicals each day to promote wellness. Or do you think it's going to be more kind of targeted, meaning for various people? Various polyphenols are going to be recommended, which may mean certain foods, may mean certain supplements. Where do you see this potentially going?

Yeah, I see that, I see that going up for sure because there, a paper that came out about a year or so ago is the, the American Academy for Dietetics that made the first official recommendation and they looked at flavonoids specifically, which is a major class of polyphenols. And they suggested, based on reviewing a variety of epidemiological studies and randomized controlled trials, I think it was about 120 papers, it was a meta analysis. They, at least through their organization, they provide the first offer recommendation suggesting we should get about 500 to 750 milligrams of these compounds in our diet. And this is still probably a pretty low amount. You would get a lot more if you just consume a very whole food rich, rich diet in various fruits and vegetables. So. But I do think that over these things will take time. But over time, I do see these things getting incorporated into official dietary guidelines. Maybe somewhere in the year 2030 or 2035, who knows? But yeah, I do think people start to realize that more because like I said, we have, you know, you can keep someone alive with, with protein and multivitamin, right? And in a sense, that's what we're doing by heavily fortifying our food supply. But you will probably run into issues of metabolic dysfunction over time, or it's kind of like you're not. Your body's not performing optimally or it's not right. And I think that's, that's, that's kind of what, what we're learning is, is that these things are not just sort of waste products of a plant. That's actually why they call plant secondary metabolites, which is people noticed. Oh, yeah, the plant contains protein, the plant contains sugar, contains fiber, and it contains all these other compounds. But not knowing what they did, they thought they were just waste products. And later on, we're actually starting to find out, well, without these compounds, these are plant defense mechanisms. They protect them from sunlight, maybe from drought. And you could argue that they're actually quite essential to a plant because unless you're nurturing in a greenhouse, the plant won't survive out in the wild without any of these polyphenols or flavonoids, because again, the plant produces these first and foremost for, for itself. And then the animal, of course, consumes these plants. Why? Because it nourishes them as well due to the flow of these, these polyphenols and phenolics as well, in addition to sort of the more primary nutrients, such as vitamins, minerals and protein and fatty acids. And that's where you can kind of see the synergy happening where you have this sort of layering or flow of nutrients through the plant into the animal and then into the human. And it's really, I would say, I would feel comfortable saying that on paper. It seems that foods from regenerative agriculture increase the levels of these antioxidants. We see that if I looked at it just pure now paper, I see that Grass fed beef probably has a more, more beneficial nutritional profile than grain fed beef. The really open ended question is that how does this translate to human health? And that's just at the moment due to a lack of studies in that area and we're working on several of them. But we need a meta analysis of this from 40 randomized controlled trials probably before we can really move the needle on policy or come to the conclusion really it doesn't matter.

From, from kind of a logic perspective though, what I hear and what you're saying and where there's I guess echoes of where we've been is that sequentially we, as I guess science related or science interested humans have kind of looked at where there's opportunities to better understand optimal nutrition. For most of the time it was preventing basically caloric malnutrition, preventing macro nutrient malnutrition and preventing micro nutrient deficienc. And so where we've kind of landed is somewhere along the lines of we want to make sure people have enough calories and we want to make sure that they don't become deficient in anything. We don't want them to be vitamin B deficient, we don't want them to be vitamin C deficient. And so that's what I realized is not that long ago that we discovered molecules like vitamin C and discovered molecules like vitamin B in the context of deficiencies. And so then we're saying, okay, well there's a little bit more to food than just the fats, carbs and the proteins and the calories. And actually it turns out if you don't want to get one of these deficiency states, you need to be making sure that your food contains these molecules. Hence exactly as you said, the fortification. I mean, if you open a box of breakfast cereal, there's not a whole lot of quality nutrition in most cereal, but they're fortified, there's these vitamins and minerals are added backed in so people don't become deficient. So it kind of feels to me like that was just scratching the surface of the data that's actually in real food food. And I think what we're saying here is kind of in the context of having more data available and being able to do these larger sequencing of various foods in terms of the metabolomics that you're already doing, we can start to make connections between these pathways and it may be early to say, hey, here's exactly how much and how which types of these phytonutrients are necessary for an individual. But the general gist of it as far as what I can tell is diets that people consume, where people tend to have better overall outcomes, meaning living longer, better overall health, are diets that are richer in these molecules. And the conventional diet that we're seeing more and more of kind of propagating around the world, the standard American diet is one that has been largely stripped of these nutrients. And I don't know if you have any sort of specifics to this, but presuming, which I think is true, that the majority of human caloric intake around the planet comes from rice, comes from corn, comes from wheat and comes from soy. Soy maybe is the exception here. But how rich in these molecules is a typical product made from those ingredients compared to what people have historically consumed?

Yeah, very poor, actually. And if you process them, it becomes even poorer. Right, because if only we were consuming rice and corn and wheat, but instead we're consuming corn derived products and wheat derived products. Right, like, because we further stripped them off and then probably wouldn't strip the bunch of individual components out of corn and then put them together in a ultra processed food product by, you know, high fructose corn syrup, a bunch of preservatives that are maybe corn derived, like citric acid or something like that. Right, like which. So this is really interesting and problematic because yeah, you take something that's very complex and you try to reassemble it later on, but then that complex food is not represented anymore by just throwing together 10 to 12 individual ingredients. So that is a big problem on its own. But also, just if you look at things like corn or wheat and you compare that to more quote, unquote heirloom grains, you do see a difference there as well. Historically in Europe people are consuming a lot of rye, for instance, and maybe buckwheat as well in other areas of the world. And what you can see is that those ones are typically much richer in phytochemicals and even more heirloom varieties of corn. For instance, we did the project where we tested just a regular sweet corn or more native varieties that were purple, purple and red and black and. Yeah, I mean, why is it purple? Because it contains the same things that are in blueberries. Right. So that, that's what goes up. And, and we've done something similar with rice as well. Where it was really interesting, we tested purple rice and found resveratrol, the red wine polyphenol to be present in, in, in that, in that rice, in addition to a lot of bunch of other compounds. So I think we're doing ourselves a disservice by, by not consuming these foods. And I think you put it beautifully by saying that you. We focus on these primary nutrients, we focus on vitamins and minerals, we can keep ourselves alive. Alive. But we are really missing this broader array of nutrients that can keep ourselves metabolically healthy. And that's why I think it's part of our. At least on sort of a societal level where we are clearly not in optimal health. In fact, we are in quite a metabolic crisis.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's fair to say.

Yeah, yeah. At some point we got to turn the corner. Right. If you think about it like two thirds of our caloric intakes come from ultra processed foods, rising levels of obesity, diabetes. At some point we got to turn a corner, I would imagine, and hopefully by having a deeper appreciation of food, and this is something we haven't talked about, is that you can actually taste these polyphenols. What gives a deep flavor to a fresh strawberry or I think all of us have had a strawberry in the winter that came out maybe out of California. It tastes like water. That is not in California, but that's where most of our food is grown. But that came out of. That just tastes like water with a hint of strawberry flavor. Or maybe in peak ripeness we had strawberry. And it's like this incredibly deep, rich flavor that we have. And that's just. You're talking about the polyphenol content, really. So besides these compounds being healthy for ourselves, we can also taste this richness. So you could argue in that case that flavor and health may. May be related because I would think most people would argue that that fresh blueberry that's first full of flavor tastes a whole lot better than. Than the cardboard blueberry.

Yeah, it's really a profound thing that I think you're saying here, because if we look at how people are doing right now in terms of overall wellness, the answer seems to be very poorly. And yet these are not necessarily people who are deficient in calories, deficient in fats, proteins and carbs, or deficient in micronutrients, meaning vitamins and minerals. Those bases are covered, but they're not. Well, and I think that's kind of the transition here is to say, look, it's not just about having the necessary calories. Now, there are places in the world where that's still a major conversation, but in many places in the United States, the bigger risk to health is not a caloric deficit, but rather what is coming alongside. It feels like those calories. And so to the taste Point. I think that's so interesting because if you consider that polyphenols are, at least in part, you know, kind of these resilience signaling molecules for plants. And so, at least in certain plants, the one that, you know, we study is Himalayan tartary buckwheat, it seems that the plant produces more of these molecules, like rutin in particular, because it allows the plant to thrive in conditions in places that other plants could not. So it provides them a level of resilience. And yet what does it taste like when a person eats that? It tastes a little bit bitter. And so we could say, well, is that telling us that we should eat less of that food, or is it actually a signal telling us there's something meaningful here that our bodies need to make use of? And, you know, there's this very well established theme, which is that our diets have become progressively bland and sugary and. And salty. And these are the things that kind of make our brain say, okay, this is a safe food and I can eat a whole lot of it. But in the aggregate, actually takes us away from, you know, some of the value. Now, there are certain bitter foods I'm thinking of, for example, beer and coffee that have some of these nutrients in them that people tend to enjoy. But it almost feels like we have to retrain our brains to think about, well, what's actually in the food, what is the. The data that I'm being given based on what this food tastes like. And if we start thinking, oh, well, this food tastes really bland, but also very sweet, meaning there's no deep, rich flavor, but it does taste very sweet. That's the perfect combination to get our brains to continue to eat that food. But what it should do at a higher level is tell us, this is not something that's going to benefit my health. Whereas certain bitter foods, colorful foods, foods with more exotic taste, with that richer taste that you're describing, that's actually our brains detecting our taste receptors, detecting that there's some additional value in this. So I'm curious. I know that, you know, you're not trying to proclaim that you have this thing figured out, but to try to create some actionables in terms of what your research has shown. You know, one of them seems to be that it's reasonable to support regenerative agriculture because there's more to it than simply making healthy cows, that it has implications for human health and maybe even planetary health. And another one would be, you know, what would you tell people, if anything, about how you might consider a structured Diet to take advantage of some of this research. You're doing certain foods to eat more of, certain foods to eat less of.

Yeah, I'd say we have done a few randomized controlled trials now. And the thing that always pops out, if you stop consuming the standard American diet, your health rapidly improves. So, and this, I know this brings up a bigger issue of like, you know, I'm gonna drive home and I'm gonna pass 50 fast food restaurants and you know, like, I learned to ignore them. But you know, it's, it's really difficult, of course, in a food environment, but provided you can stick with it. I'd say consume whole foods and consume the foods that you, that you like to consume that taste appealing to you. Right. Like you don't need to consume a broccoli to be healthy. You can consume many other other foods to do it. So I'd say that's the case. And I think we're sort of, that this, this can help is also if you connect directly with the farmers. I think it's, if you have that opportunity, start to appreciate where your food comes from. It starts to get this local community feeling back. Right. Because food is more than just nutrients. It's like this experience and it's what binds people and things such as that. So if you can have the ability to do that and maybe go out of your comfort zone, go to a local farmer's market and try to sample some of those foods there and buy some of these to bring them home to support your local community. Probably the carrots that you're normally eating that tastes like water. Now you'll be like, oh, this thing actually tastes pretty good raw. Let me have another one. Right. And I think that's again, the flavor feedback mechanism where it's like, okay, this, this actually tastes good for me. And it's probably also why maybe, you know, this is. Again, there's many research questions here that we need to further understand, but we do have some. There's data in animals on this, is that animals overeat to get their nutrients. There's no reason to suggest that we're different as, as humans. And if we get a rich palette of nutrients and these, these phytochemicals they eating as well. So, and you could argue maybe because our fruits and vegetables stay so bland, that's why we can't get kids to, to, to eat them or why maybe even adults can't eat them. But that's, that's a bigger picture issue. But I would say actionable is that I think there it's, and this is purely anecdotally, but I've heard this from people many times, is that the first few weeks, even from our research statistics, the first few weeks we put them on all foods diet and like, ah, you know, I miss my Snickers bar etc and, but then after a few weeks they really start to appreciate the flavor of their oatmeal or their, their, their carrots or their whole foods. Whereas actually these cravings start to decrease a little bit, they start to feel better.

And.

And maybe this is like a six to eight week period, but I've heard this, I've seen this in many of participants, I heard this from other researchers or maybe clinicians as well, that once people kind of go through it, it's almost like a withdrawal period that you have to go through and then after that time you kind of start to appreciate the subtle hints of your, of your oatmeal that you have in the morning. So I think that's, that's also key is to kind of, kind of stick with, with it and start to appreciate whole foods. And you know, another thing is that I would argue is, is that after a while you start to feel better because you're maybe your baseline is always having this like sort of low level of like feeling a little bit tired or you don't feel that great after a meal. You should feel energized after a meal or you should feel energized during the day. And once you kind of get that, then maybe the addictiveness of ultra processed foods starts to hopefully become replaced with the quote unquote, I don't know if you call it addictiveness, but the addictive of just feeling good.

Right.

So, and hopefully that will then take, take a stronger, stronger preference. But by far I would say we've seen this now multiple times. And even talking about some of these, these nuances be conventional or regenerative agriculture, I think are important pieces of the puzzle. Puzzle. But if you take people off a standard American diet and just eat some whole foods, you're gonna improve rapidly.

I, I totally agree with you. And one of the things I most often say is just there is absolute consensus that the standard American diet is basically poison. Because when consumed over time it detracts from every important health metric that exists. And so you know, there's Always enough another 10 or 20 diets on the horizon in terms of eat this, that, not that. And, and the reality is that the one thing they have in common is that they get people off of the standard American diet, so totally in line with what you're saying there. The other thing that you were mentioning, which I think is really important to just call out, is here we are in a society in which the quick fix kind of immediate pleasure, instant gratification model has become so pervasive that you're just surrounded by it at all times. You know, nobody wants to be hungry for even a moment. Moment. Nobody wants to be away from their smartphone for even a moment because, you know, you could get an Instagram notification. You don't certainly want to miss that. And certainly you want your bowl of popcorn there if you're going to be scrolling on your phone. And I think there's a lot to be said to actually not blaming people for the fact that they continue to do this because it is so well entrenched as the default. And if you look at the majority of foods that you can buy in the grocery store, they have on average over 70% with added sweetener. That is the default. That is what we're all being exposed to, to. And so this idea of kind of retraining yourself, retraining your brain is fundamental. And not just around the food, but just this whole intention of saying you've got to make a break from doing what is the easiest thing, because the easiest thing is kind of the worst thing. And so finding those little opportunities, like you said, going to the farmer's market, trying a new food, an heirloom, this, that or the other, shopping, the periphery of the grocery store is going to make you depart from the status quo. And it's almost, almost essential if you want an actual chance of enjoying life to the fullest. Even though it's not going to be the easiest scenario. One of the things I hear a lot of people talking about is, oh, just do the thing. As though it is easier to exercise, easier to eat healthy food, easier to get good sleep each night. And at least initially, it kind of. It isn't. Is is my kind of experience. And for many people I've worked with and have spoken to, it's hard to do things that are different for most people because everything around you is set up to make the usual thing the easy thing. So I think people like you who are able to kind of show, here's the science of it, right? Like, there's more to it than just saying, eat healthy food. There's underlying mechanisms behind this. Here's what we're seeing in animals and here's what we're studying in humans, I think can be such a powerful motivator But I love what you were saying in terms of just kind of these easy first ways to get into it, as opposed to what some people will say, which is, you know, you have to change everything today, and if you don't, then you're a failure and you might as well not even try, which I just do not agree with. I am also curious because here you are in a position where you're doing this actual research, and many people in our audience tend to ask about, well, where do you see the future going and where might there be opportunities for individuals to get involved? So maybe we could structure this as if a young person is listening and they're interested in maybe doing something in science and something specifically in science and food. Do you see any opportunities there? And then more generally, if somebody's saying, I want to learn more about this, in addition to maybe following you and learning about what your lab is doing, what opportunities would you say are good for people to know about?

Yeah, the first opportunity. I think, you know, first and foremost, we're all consumers. So I think it's, it's, it's, it's doing that. And even I, you know, well, if in the sort of lower socioeconomic status, you know, if you just eat whole foods, even if it doesn't come from regenerative agriculture, you're already going to have such a big improvement. And in that regard, I know it's definitely not easy, but it's like, you know, yeah, if I have cookies in my home, piles of cookies in my home, and a cake, you know, I'm human, it's very hard for me to resist as well. So I just don't get it. So I think that's sort of an important part. But then you, if I, what I do see sort of in the field, there's a, currently a big momentum going on in regenerative agriculture with various groups getting involved. Big food companies are starting to pay attention to this thinking like, okay, this is probably going to be a thing over time, so see how we can obviously market this. But, okay, if becoming the right team becomes the most profitable thing, then probably the priorities have aligned.

Right.

So you could argue that that can be a good thing. I, I certainly think that's the case. And so these are ways of, of getting involved. And as young folks, it could be getting involved in, in, in learning more where your food comes from. I certainly think that we don't really have this in, in middle schools is, you know, visit some farmers, learn, go on, on field trips and, and learn how your food comes from learn maybe something about food production instead of only because what's probably one of the most important things in life is food. And we get so little education about this. I think whereas where we have more the classic like math and Right. Like maybe biology and things such as that. I think that that would also be key is maybe learning, teaching people how to cook, learning where food comes from, et cetera. I think if you cultivate it at a young age, I think, you know, well, for me I was just lucky and it just happened because my parents would take me to farmers or to get milk locally. At the time I didn't think anything of it, but I'm 100% convinced now that that subconsciously cultivated my interest in this right now. So if we get this from a young age, I think that's, that's a good thing. And this is sort of like sort of a systemic policy level and. But yeah, if you're interested in science, obviously I'd say there's many ways, ways to get involved with this. You can, you know, go into industry and, and work on, on these things. You can go into, into research as well. Get a, get a degree in, in food science or nutrition or even plant science or animal science. Right. Or soil science is probably all related, some sort of field of biology and, and you'll be surprised like even, like some of the, even data analysis, data analysts. Right. This is going to be key in the future. And even AI, the integration of that and learning how to what's in food, probably it's going to play a role in that as well. So I think these are key ways for people to get involved with this. And then most of our work, I mean we've always tried to publish everything open access on Google Scholar. Opportunities such as this are super very grateful of that to talk about the work that we're doing. Various webinars that I try to give regularly and engage as well as publishing papers on Twitter or X. These are all ways to get involved. And like I said, I'm always open for trying to answer emails and stuff like that. If people have further insight or comments or inquiries about this.

Well, really, really appreciate that. And we also appreciate that you've taken the time to chat with us about the research you're doing. And I think anybody who's listened to this point of the interview appreciates how what you're doing is the next frontier in terms of understanding what food does and how ecosystems are changed by the food that we eat and the decisions that we make and how that then translates into the quality of the food that we eat and the decisions that we make. So I would say, you know, for anybody who's out there listening, there are lots of ways that you can can do exactly what was just described. We had some great actionables there. Stefan, if people would like to learn more about the work that you and your lab are doing, what are some of the best resources, links or otherwise that they can find out more?

Yeah, I would say our Google Scholar profile. If you just type Stefan Athlete Google Scholar, you'll find it. If you try to Utah State University, it will link you to it. And honestly, just if you type my name in YouTube, you can given various. For people that really want to geek out and go deep into these pathways, given several webinars about how these pathways are altered in response to grass fed and grain fed beef or plant based meat and meat. And we kind of like, you know, take a visual deep dive into well, what are these pathways? How do the forages relate to that? So those are, those are all opportunities to learn more about the this work.

Fantastic. And I know we're very excited about the analysis that we're doing with you for the Himalayan Tartery Buckwheat. So hopefully more to report on that soon. So, so value your time and for educating us all today and look forward to chatting with you again very soon.

Thank you, Austin.