The Power of Food

Hey, guys, this is Cribbin Govender from the Gut Health Gurus podcast. I'm a food scientist and founder of Nourishment Organics. And we have with us the wonderful James Shadrach, who has a background in psychology with a deep interest between the gut and the brain. So, James, how have you been?

Good, Good. It's good to be back. Good to be back doing another podcast. Ready to talk all things food.

Food, yes. So I thought today what we'll do is we'll talk about the power of food, because I think it's. It's such an underrated thing, James, that people look for this panacea in a pill or in a supplement. But we forget about the basics of our human evolution and the importance that food has played in the past. It continues to play a role in the current environment, and it will continue to be a major part of our expansion as a human civilization. Well into the colonization of the moon and the Mars and the universe.

Yes. Once we get there, eventually, yeah. I've got so many questions about this, but something I always wonder about is how should we be eating? And particularly how do we start? Because I feel like at this point, we've maybe gone in a very different direction to how we started with food, but I just wanted to open up the floor on that. How did we start eating food? Our ancestors, early humans? How did food really start?

James, that's an excellent flagpole to start, and I think it's a good place that we explore the past and where we've come from. So the. I guess the evolutionary biology is that we're approximately 10,000 years old as a civilization, and very early days, we were essentially hunters and gatherers, and we can see that pretty much at its remnants in some of these. In these African tribes. There's a lot of studies happened in the past around the Hasda tribes and some other tribes. So this gives us a bit of a clue as to what life would have been at those very early stages in our formation as a species and a civilization. And then what's happened is we've gradually moved to a more fellow hunter gatherer, which is essentially hunting animals, picking berries and tubers. Food would have been extremely scarce and very prized food would have been, I think, the central part of life for our early ancestors. Finding good food and finding a source of water and clearly security for the tribe. Then it's moved from that point into more agriculture as we kind of know it. And that's essentially farming. And that's where you start to see People start to, you know, build castles and build cities, because it was all based on the premise of securing food supply in the form of grains that have been grown, planted, grown, harvested, and then kept and then converted into things like breads and whatnot to feed that growing city.

And.

Then it kind of stayed like that for a long time. And only very recently, we're only talking about within the last less than 100 years, we start to see the modernization of agriculture and the modernization of food. So what happened is after, I would say probably the world Wars, World War I and World War II, we started to see mobilization of huge amounts of troops, and these troops had to be fed. So what happened is they started to build factories to produce large amounts of food to feed these troops, essentially in warfare. But after the wars ended, there was a massive surplus of these factories. And then there was this marketing campaign, I guess, to take food away from the family and the community making and providing for their own families to having corporations actually providing food for you.

Yeah. Wow. I mean, it's so different now how we get food. Like, imagine a hunter gatherer who really has to struggle to get food versus I can just press a button on my phone. You know, Ubereats delivers food to my. To my door.

Yeah, that's. That's where we've. Where we've got to right now. So we've gone from very much, you know, growing up hunting and foraging our own, to farming our own, to now pressing a button. Yeah.

Nothing's really our own.

Nothing. It's very limited. It's really funny. I'll segue a little bit. I recently spent a bit of time in Bali, partly on vacation and partly trying to find tempeh. Tempeh starter culture. That's one of the elusive things that I haven't really struggled to find. And I'm so happy I actually managed to source a traditional tempeh starter culture. But what I realized is that countries like Bali, who are developing, I don't know, I. When I consume the food there, I just feel so much healthier. I. I didn't take any supplements.

Wow.

I didn't want to lug a whole heap of supplements with me in the suitcase because we were there for two weeks and I purely ate the food. And most of it's produced locally. It's one of these regions of the world, I guess, where it's. It's not so influenced by modern agriculture. I actually did a permaculture course, so it was really funny. I actually paid someone to be a farmer for a Day. And it is intense, James. It is so intense. I literally got back to my room. It was about 6pm after about four, four hours or so of learning how to farm, and I passed out in bed and I woke up the next morning, is that exhausted. So imagine our ancestors who were firstly foraging and farming and how intense it was for them to actually make their food versus now having Uber eats.

It's really taken for granted.

It's really taken for granted. But I was so blessed that I got a chance to spend time with these farmers who essentially this knowledge had been passed down for generations. And they taught me about permaculture.

Wow.

Which is really looking after the soil and the environment and not using any chemicals and pesticides and producing natural food and then using a combination of different plants, so using, like, flowers within the actual vegetable beds to attract insects.

Wow.

And some of these flowers actually keep pests away. So planting flowers and fruits together and vegetables together in this perfect, harmonious ecosystem. And they had geese and they had ducks and they had horses and cows. So they were using, you know, all this manure and all these natural resources to produce this beautiful ecosystem. And how far have we moved away from that modern world? And we look at modern agriculture now.

Yeah. And, you know, I wonder, you know, did we have as many health problems back then? I mean, with things like obesity, anxiety, depression? Was that as, you know, frequently as it is now, or what was it like?

I think, well, from what we're seeing is a massive increase in the amount of diabesity. As in diabetes and obesity.

Yeah.

And cancers and mental disorders and anxiety and depression. And I, I think it's unprecedented. I don't. And I think even autism spectrum disorder. At that recent conference, I went to the Gut brain axis in Paris. 1. One of the keynote speakers was ringing alarm bells on the, you know, this rapid increase in autism across the world. And it's projected that one in two people in future will have autism. So that's staggering. We're already up to one in two people having cancer.

Yeah.

Wow. So the statistics are staggering as to, you know, what modern. The modern world is, is doing. It's bringing a lot of convenience, don't get me wrong, it's bringing a lot more security in terms of food supply as we increase population. But there is a cost. There is a cost to our health.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's mad. It seems like we're getting more and more sick as a. As a society, as a culture.

Absolutely. And I, I came across an article about a Couple of weeks ago out of the uk and for the first time they're actually starting to see life expectancy almost flatlining.

Wow.

Amongst younger people. So, my God, it's, it's a hot. It's highlighting that, you know, perhaps our children, touch wood, might have a lower life expectancy than us and our ancestors. So it is increasingly prevalent that, you know, the food that we eat has substantially changed and is a factor for why we're seeing this explosion of lifestyle diseases across the planet.

Totally. So I guess that makes me wonder what, you know, what should we be eating, what should we be avoiding? I mean, there's so much confusion out there. I heard so much stuff recently about the carnivore diet and maybe we should be eating only meats. Doesn't agree with people who are vegan. And now just what's the right way to look at this?

That's an excellent question, James. And I think with the explosion of information through social media, through the blogosphere, it's become increasingly confusing. People are genuinely confused and are looking for answers. And what we really want to do is simplify information around diet so that people can be the healthiest versions of themselves today, wherever they're at. And it's just going to take very small steps. But I think the confusion stems from the fact that we've been told pretty much through the information coming out, but particularly dietary guidelines coming from, I guess the government, for want of a better word, setting standards. And I think there's never going to be a one size fits all. So it's not that the regulatory bodies or the health organizations can say, well, this particular diet is best for you, it is best for you to have a carnivore diet, or it's the best for you to have a paleo diet or a vegan diet, it really comes up to the individual. And this is where we're at at the moment in terms of food. The science is telling us that everybody's different. You have a different microbiome, you have different genetics, you have different risk factors. So my recommendation is for people to firstly go on a journey of self discovery for themselves to understand their genetics, to understand their microbiome, or even if you don't want to go to that level of sophistication, trial and error, different things, and monitor how you feel and really be clear on what your goals are. Because for me personally, I can say that when I make certain changes to my diet, it impacts different facets of my health. Sometimes if I'm trying to boost, for instance, the Level of good bacteria in my gut. Sometimes it might be detrimental to me trying to take off, you know, to be leaner, to look nicer, to look sexy in the mirror.

Right.

So sometimes it's detrimental to that or other times when I for instance, increase my fat levels in my diet, then I find that I develop cirrhosis. And it's a lot to do. A lot of it stems from genetics and also what's happening in the microbiome. So it's up to the individual to self experiment. I mean there's so much good information out there, there's so much good testing parameters. It can be as simple as buying a glucose monitor because I guess the impact of food and blood glucose is substantial, especially when it comes to weight gain. So it's simply having something, having some food and waiting for a couple hours and then using a cheap glucose monitor from the, the pharmacy to just check your blood glucose levels and see how different foods elicit a different postprandial glucose response. Because this is what the studies are telling us that especially the Wiseman Institute, I've mentioned the study in the past did an amazing, amazing project on the personalized nutrition and microbiome field. And they were saying, well we can, some people can have rice and have no illicit, no blood glucose response and some people can have ice cream response.

Yeah.

Wow. So it's really personalized and it's a shifting target.

Gotcha.

So the most important thing, things for people to experiment, be clear of what your goals are and try different diets and see what works for you.

Makes sense. I think the way I see it now is it seems like there are a lot of nasty food choices out there. It's really easy to get poor quality food that can disrupt your microbiome, make you feel bad. And so I just wonder what your thoughts are on the state of food and our relationship to food right now this, this current time.

Yeah, I, I think James, it's a real mess. It's a real mess. But I'm, I'm so pleased that there has been, especially in Australia, there's been a substantial shift away from processed foods. The mess stems from us empowering food companies to feed us and having 100% trust that what they're giving us is best for us. But as I've highlighted, it's a really low hanging fruit that anybody can tackle. Before you even look at supplementation, look at, you know, like vitamins when we're going through vitaminia now because we've essentially stripped all the nutrients out of our food through modern, modern farming. But what I recommend as a low hanging fruit is simply eating clean, raw, minimally processed foods that you've prepared by yourself from scratch. Because you know 100% that what you've put in that food is going to be nutritious because you've sourced it.

Yeah.

You've, you've gone to a farmer's market or you've built some form of trust with your butcher where you're asking good questions on where this foods actually come from. Because it's not about what you eat, it's also about what you eat ate.

So yeah.

You know what's, what's, if you're looking at animal products, what has this animal being fed and we've spoken about it in past about the rampant use of antibiotics in, in meat farming and things like that and even aquaculture with, with farmed fish.

Yeah.

So really asking questions and sourcing the foods very carefully and really prizing and spending good money on buying good food rather than pills when you're sick. That's my mantra. I'd rather spend money on feeding my family the best that I can afford than waiting till it's too late and getting sick and then trying to fix the problem using pills.

Yeah. So I guess what you're saying is food is the easiest way to get started to improve your health.

Yeah, absolutely. Food, food and exercise.

Yeah.

If I could pick two things to start with as low hanging fruit.

Yeah.

And I think what people get overwhelmed with, especially on diets and fad diets, is they're looking for quick results. And I think even with exercise it's the same thing. You're looking for quick results but quick results are usually not sustainable.

Yeah.

What it takes is to, rather than having a paradigm of having diets is to view these changes that you make as a lifestyle. As a lifestyle and really in living this lifestyle and then, you know, not looking for a quick outcome. Yeah. Just simply believe in the process that if I'm nourishing my body with the best that I can afford and I'm getting out of the way by stopping putting all these chemicals and processed foods into my body, that my body will work things out. The body is incredibly intelligent and has innate intelligence that doesn't need us to get in the way.

Yeah.

To make these substantial changes. But what it needs our help is to form good habits.

Yeah.

And I think what's really undervalued is connecting with communities that can help as well in your journey.

Yeah.

And finding like minded people or you know, getting together with Friends and doing it together and exploring these fields together, whether it be fermented foods or, or starting a farm like a little garden patch in the backyard.

It's so true. I mean, I remember when I was younger I had horrible, horrible diet. And I started to spend time with a friend whose family was mostly personal trainers. They were really into health and fitness. And I remember I was over at my friend's place and we went to go make a sandwich and there was no white bread. My whole life all I'd eaten was white bread and they only had this like weird, gross, like whole grain bread. Now I think that stuff's beautiful. But at the time I was like, oh, what is this? But it was just that shift of my friend was so healthy, it started to shift me upwards and be like, oh, I need to start eating better, higher quality foods. And I think that's just powerful. Being around people who have a higher standard of health, who are eating cleaner, eating better, real foods, that brings you up as well. And you want to be eating that same type of food.

Absolutely. It's the rising tide lifts all ships. So it's again, they also say you're the combination of the five people you spend the most time with. So I think there's a lot of value in evaluating, I guess, your circles and the people that you associate with. Because by surrounding yourself with like minded people, it's motivation. We're animals, aren't we? We're communal animals.

Yeah. Like, yeah, because I know people who have very poor diets and it's okay for them to eat like McDonald's for lunch, but the people I spend time with are fairly health conscious and If I brought McDonald's into the office it'd be so weird. Like that wouldn't fly with that group of people.

And it's usually social pressure and the social context is so fundamental to, to making these, these life changing habitual changes. It's so important because James, the system, the way the system is developed, I'm talking about, I guess the modern way of food production. It is devised for your failure. Food now is so food marketing for one, but also food product development. I've come from a product development background. So I was one of the guys developing the food, the processed food for many years in agricultural context and also for quick service restaurants like McDonald's you mentioned or KFC.

Right.

I understand this field very intimately and I was actually part of the, or one of the people who are actually developing these things. And I can tell you there is so much money going into Making food addictive.

Wow.

Hear that? Addictive. More addictive than any narcotic, mind bending drug.

My God.

Whether it's the, the, the sugar, which is in itself potentially more addictive than cocaine.

Right. Wow.

But then also the amount of sensory research. These food companies have sensory departments. So during the food product development phase, they put it through all these panels. And so the panels can be from an external source or it could be if you work for a really big food company. The panelists are typically people that work for the company. You've got an office of two or 300 people. That's a lot of sensory data and a lot of statistical information and it's getting more and more sophisticated.

Yeah.

So they can fine tweak that formulation in terms of the sweet, sour, salty. They've got something called craveability as well. That makes you addicted.

Yeah.

And they even do this with pet food. They actually have like the big pet manufacturers have sensory panels which, with pets, where they develop that product, they tweak it to the finite level to get maximum craveability. For the pet or for you.

It's crazy. I mean like something like, I mean, these foods, they don't make you feel good. Like afterwards, like in that. I'm thinking about that kind of addictive state that you get into. Like, I'm thinking about McDonald's back in the day when I used to eat that stuff, I'd be, I almost go mad about it. It was just so, so tantalizing and really lit up all those sensory parts of my brain afterwards. I would feel horrible though. But man, I just can't believe, now that I think about it, those food companies want it to be addictive. They want me to get all jacked up like that. Oh, I just need the burger, I need the chips. I need more, more, more. But I feel horrible, seriously horrible after eating that stuff.

It is a horrible thing, James. I mean, if you look at the. You'd be staggered at the amount of MSG that actually goes into our food supply. And MSG is one of these things that it tastes amazing. It makes everything taste good. It just rounds flavors out. It is a magical thing for food companies to use to make things addictive. And I think the important, an important point to underscore is that when you were first, I guess, consuming a lot of these, these kind of fast foods, you don't know what you don't know. I mean, you. Potentially a lot of people are in that cycle, but they don't know how good their body is designed to feel. They just assume that this is normal. But I think for you and for myself, if I was to go and BINGE, you know, McDonald's or some sort of processed foods or KFC, I would feel terrible. Yeah, I would feel absolutely terrible. And my wife, she, she's binged in the past after having a very clean diet for some time because I'm a stickler at home. Yeah. And she's had a bit of a craving and she's gone out and had a binge. And she said, oh my God, I wish I didn't do that. Because she actually knows what it is to feel like how you're supposed to feel.

Yeah. Yeah, that's it. So that seems like the current state of things. These food companies aren't really on our side and people really aren't feeling as good as they can.

It is the current state of affairs. I mean, we're getting smarter about it as, you know, as information gets out. But I think a lot of people are still missing out on this very low hanging fruit. Simply eat clean food.

Yeah.

Or the hashtag, Jeff, just eat clean. Just eat real food. Totally real food. There is a bit of a watch out that I'd like to highlight. So as a food scientist and a product developer in my time in the industry, there are loopholes in the system. There are things called processing aids that don't need to be declared on the label. So this is a little watch out for people, I think across the world. Each food legislation is a little bit different around the world. But I think to ask questions from the food manufacturers in terms of what, what processing aids are being used, because you can very easily make the label look clean but have a slew of chemicals still present in that food.

Wow.

So it's a little bit tricky. Hence the best thing is to cook from scratch.

Yes.

And even that in itself is not 100%, but it's the best option we've got.

Gotcha. So I wonder what you think about moving forward for food. I mean, it seems like the option now, at least for me, is okay, I need to buy everything from the farmers market, buy organic, and cook all my food at home. I wonder, is that the way food's gonna move? We just stop buying from supermarkets and everyone just makes their own food? I wonder what you think about the future.

I think the future is fraught with danger, but it's also very. There's some positive things that are happening. I think the danger is this 70 year old, 70 to 100 year old experiment around processed foods and the impact on what it's having on our bodies. It's very much like asbestos or smoking. The information was suppressed for so long, but eventually it kind of burst out and, and then people reacted. It's the same thing with food. It's going to get to a point where the powers that be cannot hide anymore. It's clear as day, and it's becoming clear as day that processed foods, a lot of additives that have been used in our foods, a lot of pesticides, chemicals that are being used, glyphosate, a whole range of other agricultural chemicals are damaging our bodies, damaging our gut microbiomes, damaging potentially our future offspring. It's happening at a genetic level. So I think that's the danger of what's happening in modern agriculture. But I think the positives are that people are becoming aware, people are waking up. We are seeing shifts happening at a supermarket level where there is healthier options for people to choose. But I think it really depends on the individual, how far they want to take it. If you want to be the best version of yourself, buy the best food you can afford and make it from scratch. Whether it's fermented foods, whether it's your meals, it takes more time. I get that it's not as convenient, but you will thank me in the long run because you have the best control that you can over the ingredients that you put in your food. Because even if you go to a restaurant, for instance, there was a whole food service industry servicing these where it's pretty much you go into a restaurant and they're heating and serving food for you that's still made in a factory. So that's the danger.

I think. I've started making all my own food at home and it's really fun once you really get into it. It's a lot of fun. That cooking aspect of it. I make a lot of butter chicken and I usually just buy some type of pre made sauce from the supermarket. But I was looking on the label, it's got all these extra things that I know about. Now I'm just making at home. It's just a bunch of spices. It's awesome, man.

It is awesome and so much fun.

Yeah.

And I think the other hidden danger is genetic modification. Now this is something that's going to be. Have you heard of CRISPR technology?

A little bit. I'm not too sure though, Crispr.

I can put a link in the show notes for people who are interested in crispr. It has become cheaper than ever for humans to now make genetic modification to Ourselves and specifically to our food.

Wow.

So I think the future is fraught with danger in terms of the impact of what these genetic modifications are going to have on us and our future human beings. And I remember I was in the industry. I worked for a very large agricultural company. And this was 10 years ago. This was before CRISPR. They already had an offshore laboratory outside of Australia because it was limiting here from what research they could do. A black ops division doing genetic research and modification on food crops.

Whoa.

Highly secret. I just found out about it because I knew someone that was in that area and it was happening 10 years ago.

My God.

And they were already commercializing these products.

Wow.

And you look at what's happening with canola crops or cotton. Cotton crops. People stay away from processed vegetable oils. It's one of the most chemically toxic products on the planet.

So that's like vegetable oil, Canola oil.

Canola, cottonseed, olive oil is good. But there's a lot of genetic. Soybean oil is horrible.

Right.

It is the cheapest oil. This is the go to for food manufacturers, cheap oils. It goes rancid really fast and causes a lot of damage in the body at a genetic level. So and other. Let's, let's go in the positive side. So there's a lot of doomsday. Oh, sorry. One more negative.

Yes.

One more negative is the. Depends on, on what side of the spectrum you look at. It is lab grown meats. So lab grown beats. There's some, some companies popping up growing meat in test tubes. The positive side of it is that it takes the burden from land in terms of farming crop, farming animals.

Right.

The damage it does to the environment. But as always, there's a price to pay. You grab. You're growing tissue in a test tube or in a vat or whatever you're calling it.

Yeah.

And then I don't know, I don't know the impacts of these foods that they will have on our bodies.

Right. And then I wonder as well, a food company is going to get into that space too and start putting things into that meat to make it last longer, to make it easier to produce.

Exactly. And it's, it's all these, these adjuvants that have to be added to the, the cells to actually make it multiply, Create enough muscle mass and they can grow anything. Now they can grow turkey, they can grow beef, they can grow pork.

Wow.

They're getting to a point where I think they can even grow organs.

Wow.

So this is the future. This is, this is here it is here. It seems like science fiction. It just hasn't been produced at scale.

Gotcha.

But it is coming right with 3D printing as well. So you combine these technologies where very soon you'll be able to download a recipe and print it on your food 3D printer. But again, I caution people to do these kind of things, there has to be alterations away from the natural form of food. So that's a danger. So let's give people a positive. A positive development that's emerging. Especially I stumbled upon this when I was looking at permaculture. So in permaculture in Bali, they use a special type of fruit. It's called the maggia fruit. And what it does is during the composting process, somehow it favors a type of fungi. And this fungi speeds up the composting process, helps to extract the nutrients to compost and break down this biological mass of grass and off cuts and whatnot. And this led me onto this, I guess, this exploration on the fungal world and mycology, because I did highlight at the Gut Brain Axis show, there was talk about the emergence of the microbiome being the fungi and the yeasts, things that belong to that family of organisms. And so I started to explore the importance of fungi in agriculture. And I stumbled upon something staggering, and it's called mycorrhiza or mycorrhizal fungi. And mycorrhizal fungi. I've got an expert teed up to talk in depth about mycorrhizal fungi.

Okay, but.

But my basic exploration of what mycorrhizal fungi are is they're these fungal networks that are found in, like, really old forests, like these ancient forests. And what the mycorrhizal fungi does is it helps the root systems of the plants to extend far, far greater than the root systems themselves. They form a symbiotic relationship with the roots and help that plant to thrive. And something like 95% of food crops can benefit from mycorrhizal fungi. And so I'll see mycorrhizal fungi. The technology is probably around 10 years old. It's only starting to come to a forefront now as we move away from artificial agriculture to more natural agriculture. But I'm seeing a huge potential for this in future to transform the way we farm. So going back to the older methodologies, even before humans were involved, and, yeah, mycorrhizal fungi are amazing.

Okay.

So it could substantially transform agriculture and move us away from pesticides, from artificial fertilizers.

Yeah.

And what I'm seeing in that space as well is the development of essentially a natural pesticide using bacteria.

Wow.

So there's technologies now emerging where you can use probiotics, for one of a better word, beneficial bacteria to target species of pests. You could use beneficial types of fungi or fungi to target ant pests or aphids or anything that's damaging crops and have minimal impact on the environment.

Incredible.

So it's, it's, I'm really excited by that development. So, yeah, so I've sourced some mycorrhizal fungi and I'm trying it on my little veggie patch at home at the moment.

Awesome.

So I will report back on how it's going. So I think we've, we've covered, we've covered where, where we came from in terms of our food, where we're at at the moment.

Yeah.

And where we're headed in the future. But the takeaway message for our listeners I would like to instill is that it starts with really small steps. Small incremental improvements in diet and exercise will have a substantial impact in the long term. And also surrounding yourself with like minded people and communities and having fun, because food is all about fun. Food is a fundamental pleasure that should be enjoyed. It shouldn't be something where you're rushing through your meal with an iPhone, you know, it should be something that you enjoy with your family. You prepare as a family, you enjoy as a family. You converse and talk and have discussions eye to eye with your family and enjoy that precious moment that you have, enjoying life over food and perhaps a nice, nice glass of wine and really enjoying prize food. Much like, you know, the food cultures like the Japanese or the French, who really prize food. Any parting words, James?

No, that's it. I think we covered a lot. I think we got some really good messages out.

Awesome. Well, listeners, as always, thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Gut Health Gurus. If there's any questions or feedback that you have for us, any topics you'd like us to cover, please leave a comment below. And if you enjoyed it, I'd really appreciate that you hop onto itunes, leave a nice review so we can get this message out there and share with your friends. As always, till next time, bye bye.