A Simple Way To Fix Your Diet & Lifestyle To Live Longer & Healthier | Shawn Stevenson

It's never been easier to be unhealthy. It's never been easier to be healthy.

I think the research has really shown that when you sit down with some people you love on a consistent basis, that it improves our health, our diet, reduces stress, improves our body composition, lowers body fat, increases muscle mass. It's not just what we eat, but it's how we eat and who we're eating with that makes all the difference. So can you talk about how food can bring families and communities together and why Family meals are on the endangered list.

It's so much bigger than the food itself. You know, the food itself is definitely an issue, but the culture is really guiding so many of our food decisions. And so one of the things that I highlighted in the book was a huge meta-analysis that was put together by researchers at Brigham Young University. And they looked at 148 studies on the impact of our social circles on our health outcomes. this included about 300,000 study participants. So it's a huge data set. And they found that people who have healthy social connections have about a 50% reduction in all-cause mortality. So basically, if we have healthy relationships, this is about a 50% reduction in risk for basically death from all causes, premature death. And so this is just like also another kind of echoing sentiment right now with some researchers out of Harvard, Dr. Robert Waldinger, another friend, and he's the director of the longest running longitudinal study on human health and longevity. And their research indicates that our relationships are the biggest determinant of our longevity and our health outcomes. And for me, it's just like, how is that possible? And what it is really is that our relationships are such a controlling force over our food decisions, over our exercise habits, over our mental health. And the list goes on and on and on. It's like a real powerful governing force. And so I took that data and built upon it in tying in nutrition and social science in this book in a really palatable, fun way. And so what I uncovered was that, and I started with some research that was collected out of Harvard, and I was blown away. And I'm already hesitant to even talk about this. because it's sad that everybody doesn't know this right now. And, you know, to actually go through the data and just like my, I had to hold my chin up because my jaw just kept on dropping. Like how do people not know this? And so what they uncovered was that families that eat together on a consistent basis, number one, the children consume far more vital nutrients that help to defend their bodies against chronic diseases. And they found that they consumed significantly less ultra processed foods, as you were just alluding to earlier on. chips and soda and things like that. And here's what else they found. And this was a thing that really got me to, you know, really put this book together was over time, just within the last couple of decades, you've seen it, the degradation of the family meal. And right now, currently in the United States, only about 30% of families eat together on a regular basis. And so my question was, could this be pulling away some protective factor for us when it comes to human health and longevity. And this led me to some really fascinating research. And I'm just gonna sandwich these together. Publishing Pediatrics, publishing in the Journal of Pediatrics and also JAMA, Journal of the American Medical Association. And what the research was found was that people who eat together with their children just three times a week, those kids have significantly lowered incidence of developing obesity and disordered eating. All right, now what about the parents? Well, I also shared in the book this study that was done on office workers at IBM, and they found that just by them being able to make it home and have dinner with their families on a consistent basis led to higher work morale, lowered stress levels, and better work performance. And as work obligations cut into that family meal time, they began to have a lot more unrest lowered mental health, higher stress, and lower job satisfaction. And why does this all matter to put a bow on top of it? Stress is really the leading component to our chronic disease epidemics in different ways. And this was published in JAMA as well. They found that up to 80% of all physician visits are for stress-related illnesses. And so there's something protective about getting together with friends and family, getting together with the people that we love, we can unpack why what's happening behind the scenes, but it's something protective for our health. And this is something that has been on the endangered species list, as you alluded to. And this is something that we're on a mission right now to rekindle this powerful protective metric and get people reconnected under the spirit of health and wellness and good food.

It's so true. It reminds me of, you know, the movie Fed Up that I was in and helped with. And it was, I think, released in 2014. And it was about childhood obesity. And we went down to South Carolina, this place called Easley, South Carolina, one of the poorest areas in America. And also, you know, one of the worst food environments in terms of food desert. There's something called the retail food environment index or something like that. And it's basically like, you know, how many convenience stores and fast food whose restaurants are there to a grocery store where you can buy produce. And it was like 10 to 1. This family of five lived in a trailer. They were, the father was 42 already diabetic on dialysis from kidney failure at 42. And very overweight. The mother was huge and the son was 16. There was two other kids who were smaller. They weren't that overweight, but the 16 year old was like 50% body fat, normal is 10 to 20 for a male. pretty much diabetic at 15 years, 16 years old. And I went in their trailer and I, you know, rather than giving a lecture and saying, oh, you know, you should eat this, you should do that, I said, why don't we cook a meal together? So I got a, you know, got a guide from the environmental work group where I'm on the board called good food in a tight budget, which is how to eat food that's good for you, good for the planet and good for your wallet. And we cooked a meal. And now I went through their kitchen and they didn't have one real food ingredient in there. Everything was in a box, a package, I can freeze in the ingredient lists were like, you know, four pages long. They didn't, you know, you couldn't pronounce them, know what they were. And they had no clue. And they thought they were trying to do the right thing. They thought they were, and they were desperate because the father needs to lose 45 pounds in order to get a new kidney, and he couldn't lose weight. And they were struggling. I said, so I basically, like, cooked a meal. And I said, here's how you peel onions. Here's how you, you know, stir fry a vegetable. Here's how you roast a sweet potato in the oven. Here's how you make some turkey chili. Here's how you take, you know, simple salad ingredients and make olive oil and vinegar dressing rather than something in a bottle that's got high fructose corn syrup and refined inflammatory oils and gums and thickeners and who knows what else. And we had this delicious time together. We literally cooked and chopped and talked and hung out and they loved the food. They were like shocked that one kid didn't like every vegetables. And so he was like, shocked. He said, there are vegetables in this. I'm like, well, they're like candy onions. And the one kid said to me, he says, Dr. Hyman, do you eat like this with your family every night? And I'm like, yeah, no matter how busy I was, no matter how hard I was working, I always made sure I cooked dinner for my family at home. And I actually often breakfast too, when my kids were little and we ate together. And it was really a time of being together, of cooking in the kitchen, of having the experience of even shopping together, including your kids in the process, including them in the preparation and the menu design. And what was amazing to me was that this family family. I gave them my cookbook. I gave them this guide on how to eat well for less. And they, I said, you guys can do this. And I didn't even know, right? They didn't even have cutting boards or knives. And I literally, on my way home, I basically ordered on Amazon a bunch of cutting boards and knives and had them sent to there because we were cutting, like, sweet potatoes with, like, a butter knife, you know? And they lost over 200 pounds in the first year. The, the father got a new kidney. The, the son lost 50 pounds, gained it back because he went to work at Bojangles, but then kind of got sorted out and wanted to work with me and ended up losing 134 pounds and, and was the first person as kid family to go to college and then ended up asking me for a letter of recommendation for medical school. And it kind of blew my mind because I was like, wait a minute, if people want to do the right thing, it's not like people are like, I don't care. I just want to be overweight and I don't care if I'm sick. And people are, are, are, don't really have the information. They don't have the knowledge. They don't have the skills. And being in the kitchen is a skill and I think what you're providing with the Eat Smarter Cookbook is a roadmap for people to kind of reclaim their kitchens, reclaim their health, reclaim their family connections, reclaim that fabric of our social networks that actually is the essential act of being human is we are social beings. There's no way around it. You stick a naked human out in the forest by himself and he's screwed. We're interdependent. And so what you're hinting on is just such an important Topic.

Yeah. What you're talking about as well, when you mentioned even him making that pivot when he started working at Bojangles and gaining the weight back, that is pointing to the influence of culture and the environment. Because even, even our Cravings, our Cravings are cultural, our Cravings are cultural. And let's Define culture really quick. Our culture is the shared values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that are then passed on from one generation to the next. All right, so a lot of this and our behaviors are really unconscious. And so for example, we know that hunter-gatherer tribes that really there's a subconscious belief that if I don't move, I will die because I need to move in order to procure my food and to provide for my family. It is required. In our culture today, movement is optional. It's never been as optional now as it has been in the past. and so our culture is really influencing our choices and our beliefs. And even sharing that insight, this is what is so special about your perspective and my perspective coming together is that I come from that environment of a low income atmosphere where when I was in college, as you mentioned in my bio, I lived in Ferguson, Missouri. And this is a food desert of the highest order. And in fact, as soon as I came out of my apartment complex, going to school, there's a huge liquor store right there. There's so many of them just like shelves filled with ultra processed foods. There wasn't a quote, organic section in my grocery store. There weren't any gyms. There weren't any gyms in my area. I didn't know what yoga was. Like none of this existed to me. And every fast food that you can name was within a two mile radius of my apartment. I'm talking, we can go down the list. You name one, it was around me. And so that's really all that I knew. But something else that was really special for me was I came across a study that was looking at minority children that would generally be in the context of a low income environment like I come from. And this was published in the Journal of Nutrition and Behavior. And they found that children who ate with their families four meals a week, no matter what those meals were, those children ate five servings of fruits and vegetables at least five days a week, just by the act of eating together on a consistent basis. And they ate significantly less ultra processed foods, things like chips and soda. And the researchers noted in particular when the TV was never or rarely on. Now, for me personally, I'm not going to be somebody who's going to be dogmatic. You know, we all go through our dogmatic phase and, you know, just kind of like being very, very, hyper focused on doing everything right. I love getting together with my family and having a movie night or watching the game and having some food. But we were missing out on something that was protective for our children. And part of this, why this is so powerful, is that when we get together with people that we love, our chemistry changes. We're shifting over from that fight or flight sympathetic nervous system, as indicated in that study I mentioned on those office workers, and shifting more to the parasympathetic rest and digest, right? Rest and digest system. Because one of the chemistry changes that happens is we start to release more oxytocin.

Right?

And so we know that oxytocin kind of counteracts the activity of cortisol in some really interesting ways. And just by getting together with people that we care about, that system, that tweak, that shift is happening. And on top of that, we know that, you know, by the way, when I'm talking about this chemistry change, our thoughts create chemistry instantaneously. Our thoughts are really a powerful internal pharmacy. and it isn't bioidentical, like it is made for you by you to fit your receptor sites, so your thoughts instantly change your chemistry. And so this is an opportunity, another reason why this is so powerful for our children, is that sitting down, the dinner table is really a unifier. And I'm not saying this just for dinner, by the way, but it's a unifier. It's an opportunity to see your child, to see your family member, to be able to notice subtleties in their character, right? To be able to offload stress as well. And so some of the things that we do is like just taking a moment, you know, for centuries, it's been one of those things where we have prayer, right? Why do people pray before they eat? Are they praying that, you know, maybe the food was, you know, dangerous back in the day that the food isn't gonna kill them? That's not really what it's for. It's a moment to press pause. to center oneself, to be present. And so whether it's prayer, whether it's a gratitude practice, so this is something we've integrated over the years is before we eat with my family, we all go around the table and share three things that we're grateful for from that day. You know, and it could be small things, you know, could be, you know, did well on a test, or it could be, you know, something big that happened, but we're able to start to share, you know, and open up. you know, it's kind of like these things that transition that into, you know, and also our, we know how the brain works, neurons that fire together, wire together. So it's like opening up that pathway to connection. Right. And also we've done things and tested things like share one thing you failed at today. You know, we'd go around and share that, you know, just like getting an opportunity to hear what, you know, my kids might have struggled with a reframing opportunity, you know, and also us sharing as adults, like, life is not all super smooth and sweet. Like we go through our own challenges and for my kids to develop more compassion and empathy and understanding and perspective taking and all these things take place at this unifying entity that we call the dinner table versus, you know, we've all got a lot of stuff going on. And so if we don't have this unifier in place, it's easy for life to kind of get swept up and we are in I'm thinking of the Wizard of Oz. You know, we end up in like this tornado of craziness and we miss out on the things that are most important. And so the last piece I want to share here on this cultural front is, you know, I mentioned this earlier that cravings are cultural as well. This true story, and Mark, you might even know this, there are people in Cambodia right now that are munching on spiders. All right, tarantulas are a delicacy. in certain places in the world. I can't see I crave eating a spider.

It's never a craving I've had. I'm like, let me go to the fridge and see if I can rip up some spider stir fry.

But that's a thing, you know, it's deep fried spiders in Cambodia, you know, in my wife is from Kenya, so it might be Nyama Choma, which is like barbecue meat, preferably goat, right?

And then there's other places where it might be.

That's one meat I don't like is goat.

Right.

And it's just, I think also again, it's cultural as well because goats are even called the baby goats are called kids, you know, so it's just even another layer of strangeness. But, you know, some people might crave fermented shark, you know, in Icelandic regions, right? Our cravings are cultural. And in our culture today, as you noted earlier, and a lot of people have heard this by now, you've shared this as well, the BMJ, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, published data just a couple years ago indicating that the average American adult, their diet is now made up of about 60% ultra processed foods. But here's the thing.

And kids- 67%.

Exactly. And I'm in a special place where I get to publish the first major book that's sharing that data and really getting that out to the world in a big way. Because that study that you just mentioned that was published in JAMA, they tracked the, the food intake of kids for almost 20 years in the US and found that in 1999, the average American child's diet was 61% ultra processed food. By 2018, it was almost 70% of our children's diet is ultra processed food. This is kids 2 to 19. And so we have now a culture where fake food is normalized. It is the normal thing to eat. and let's make a real quick determinant, the last little part here. Humans have been processing food forever, all right? Cooking is processing, right? We're not talking about taking an olive and pressing the oil out. We're talking about a field of wheat. We're talking about a field of corn being so denatured that in adding sugar and food colorings and artificial flavors, and this goes on and on to where that field of wheat is now a bowl of fruity pebbles. All right? Or that field of wheat becomes Pop-Tarts or that bowl, that the field of corn is now Lucky Charms or, you know, the list goes on and on. It's so denatured and removed from anything natural. That's ultra processed food. So we just want to make that clear distinction between the two.

All right?

So ultra processed foods are really at, at its core, foods that aren't even real food anymore. And that's making up the ingredients that are making us up now.

Yeah, really, there's so much in there. That was a beautiful dissertation, Sean, really. I just want to comment on a couple things. One, the science is really clear that our social relationships determine so much about our health and not just on an emotional, spiritual, or psychological level, but on a biological level. And loneliness is arguably one of the biggest killers in the world. the science around the gene expression changes in social relationships to me is fascinating. I call it sociogenomics, which is how our social relationships influence our gene expression, turning on genes of health or disease, of inflammation or anti-inflammation, of longevity or like shortening our life. Literally, our social connections determine so much of that. So what you said is so right on. Second, just to kind of reemphasize the the importance of family dinners and sitting with your kids and meals and making it a priority. When you look at the data, kids are right now suffering in such a way that I just have never seen in my entire career as a doctor. The levels of ADHD, levels of depression, the levels of eating disorders. I mean, it's just out of control. And when you look at the data on family dinners, if you eat with your kids, like you said, they're less likely to be obese. They're less likely to have eating disorders. They do better in school. They have better relationships and friendships in school. They have, you know, less addiction and drug use. I mean, these are big deals. And we're talking about something that is actually fun, which is sitting down with your family and having dinner. I mean, yeah, family's got their, you know, craziness and drama, but, you know, if you can kind of get over that, you actually can start to create a beautiful culture around dinner and food. So it's a beautiful thing. And I think lastly, around Ultra processed food, just to kind of emphasize that. What is Ultra processed food? It's not a can of tomatoes with tomatoes, water and salt, or a can of sardines with olive oil and, you know, sardines and salt. It's, it's basically food substances that were grown in the ground, like corn, wheat and soy, like you said, but they're deconstructed, and so chemically they're altered. And, you know, if food is information, it, it actually works based on the shape. and the structure, the chemical structure of the ingredients, which are signaling our biology to do different things in different times. When you deconstruct these molecules, when you rip them apart, when you pulverize them, when you create all kinds of weird things that aren't ever something that humans ate before, and you reassemble them into things that look like food, it's actually not really food. And it's what's driving so much of the disease epidemic. For every 10% of your diet that's altered processed food, your risk of death goes up by 14% and it's 60% of our adult diet and 67 or 70% of our kids diet. So, really we're seeing an increasing awareness about the dangers of ultra-processed food. And of course, the food industry is like, oh, well, we've had, you know, what does that mean and how do you define it? And it's not so bad and, you know, you know, like we always processed food and processing is fine. You know, in my book, Food Fix, I kind of cataloged this research that was published, I think in the, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which is, you know, a very premier nutrition journal. But you look at the funding of the journal, it's all like 40% food industry funded. And one of the articles was like, Processing food is actually healthy and it's okay. And I'm like, what? And I read, who funded the study? And it's like, it's all up.

Excuse my French. But anyway, yeah. You're just summarizing what I experienced in college. You know, I took a fancy nutrition, you know, nutritional science class, this big auditorium classroom. And it was drilled into us the food pyramid, you know, very early on, seven to 11 servings of healthy whole grains, which I'm going to come back and talk about a new revelation there. But also, you know, we, we were really just kind of, there was a, there was a huge through line, whether it's in nutritional science or whether it's in biology and a disconnect from understanding how food plays into it.

Right?

As we're studying the cells in my biology class, we were not informed or not, of course, my professors were blind to this as well, that as I'm looking at that mitochondria that it's made from our menu, as I'm looking at the nucleus that is made from the nutrients that we eat, when I'm looking at the membrane of the cell that it's made from the meals that we're eating, we're literally making all the things that we're studying is made from food. this is why we see such big ramifications when you just talked about the epidemics of chronic disease in our children, not just our children, but us. The CDC's numbers just last year, the CDC put this out. There's a cute little infographic, I guess, to soften the blow. But now 60% of American adults, according to the CDC, have at least one chronic disease. 40% have two or more. Right. And the crazy thing is like so, so many of these issues have skyrocketed in just the last four or five decades, skyrocketed. And it's a huge hallmark of this, as you alluded to, was there's this entire field of nutrigenomics, right? Looking at how our intake, our dietary intake, affects our gene expression. But it's deeper than this because in that biology class, for example, and I remember this, you know, DNA to RNA to protein. Right? DNA to RNA protein. So number one, our nutrition is impacting which genes are getting read, how they're getting expressed. Let's put it like that, including, you know, that interaction with our DNA. But as we go down that pathway, we never stopped to ask, how are those proteins that we're printing out getting made? What are they getting made from? That's made from the food that we're eating. So literally, as you know, you know, colleagues who are experts in cardiology. As they're studying the human cardiovascular system, the human heart, veins, arteries, blood, we're not getting educated that all of the things that they're monitoring in their patient is made from what they've eaten. And the quality of those ingredients determine the quality of the proteins that are getting made. So food is of the highest order of importance. And not just that, and last part here is it's the energy substrate itself. How all this stuff is working. Food is the fuel that is enabling our cells to talk to each other. Food is the fuel if we're talking about hormones. Our hormones are proteins, neurotransmitters, these are all built and how our cells are talking to each other, they're all made from food. And so if we're bringing in a.

Fruity powder, junk in, junk out, junk.

In, junk out, you know, Snickers crumbs and, you know, Funyun, substrates to fuel these processes. What are you gonna have?

That's that funyun.

Oh, funyun. That's that was one of my favorite hood snacks. Funyuns are onion. They're basically potato chip onion rings, all right? Made of like corn, you know, corn starch.

I grew up in the suburbs. I missed that one.

Yeah. Funyuns and best soda, right? We didn't have like the really fancy soda. you know, oftentimes it costs more, we get the, you know, cheaper stuff. So even with Kool-Aid we didn't get Kool-Aid we had Flavor Aid, you know, so we had all of these, but it's all still made from the same ultra processed food.

So, Sean, this is really important, you know, you know, I personally was very lucky because, you know, my parents left America in 1950 and they went to Europe for 11 years and sort of they missed the industrialization of the food system and the push of processed food into the kitchen. Although my mom did have the Betty Crocker cookbook. But they shopped in markets, so they went to the butcher and they went to the little vegetable stand and the fruit stand and then everybody had like a bread, the little bakery, and there was all these different street markets and they made real food and they didn't even really have a fridge and they kind of had to buy fresh every day. and then my mom had a garden when we were growing up in, in Toronto, and, and we'd go eat vegetable. We had fruit trees in the backyard, and she would cook real food every night. And, and I, I learned that as a kid. And so that, I think that was really important. But, but you grew up in an, in an environment which you were eating all this weird stuff, like you said, like Flavor Aid and, you know, Funyuns and things I never heard about. And, and how did you go from, like, being essentially deprived of understanding how to actually shop for, prepare, cook, and enjoy real food to where you are now where you're making all these yummy meals with your family and you're teaching all this. It's like how did you get there and how did you learn those skills? Because I think that to me is the biggest challenge right now is that the food industry has been so effective at disenfranchising us from our own homes and kitchens that we no longer know how to cook a meal or prepare anything even simply and are overwhelmed and don't feel burdened and feel like we don't have the time. And the food industry is very good at teaching us and brainwashing us that preparing your own food, it takes too much time, it's too expensive, it's too hard, and just leave the cooking to us. You deserve a break today, right? So how did you kind of get to where you are and tell us like how somebody who's listening to this who Just like, I don't know how to cook. I don't have time. I got a job or two jobs and I got three kids and I got this and I got soccer and I got, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever. How do I do this? Cause I'm overwhelmed.

Absolutely. So just to start things off, you know, number one, because of the way that I was eating, as you know, we've talked about this before, when I was 20, I was diagnosed with an advanced arthritic condition of my spine, degenerative disc disease. My bone density was so low that I broke my hip at track practice, just running. And I. I was basically ex, dramatically accelerating my aging process.

Right.

Kind of like a meta perspective. But really, what I was doing was making my tissues out of these really, really low quality ingredients. Because at the time, you know, even then when I got the diagnosis, I was eating fast food at least 300 days out of the year. And when I wasn't 300 days. Wow. Yeah, at least. at least. And by the way, I'm not abnormal in that because at any given day in the United States, about 85 million people are stepping into a fast food restaurant. You know, this is a normal part of our culture. But when I wasn't eating fast food, if I didn't even have $2 to go to Jack in the Box, I ate like a bowl of macaroni and cheese at home for a meal. Right. And so, or a family can of spaghetti. All right. That was my one of my favorite go tos. And so I was eating ultra processed food essentially at every meal. This is this what I was making my tissues out of. And for me, there was a huge revelation because I didn't know that there was a difference. That was really at the core of it. You know, I didn't know that there was a difference between wild caught salmon and the fish sticks that I was eating. I didn't know there was a difference between, you know, even, even just, you mentioned something earlier, and I want to point back to this. You mentioned the Environmental Working Group. And one of the big revelations that I'm sharing in the new cookbook, they just did an analysis which was fascinating. You know, a lot of people now aware of glyphosate and some of the impacts the World Health Organization has denoted that glyphosate is a class 2A carcinogen. So this means it probably causes cancer. But the environmental working group did this huge analysis of some of the most popular products on store shelves and found that up to 90% of all grain products in the United States on store shelves are contaminated with glyphosate. It is crazy pants.

Yeah, yeah.

And so being in the environment that I was in, I didn't know that there was a difference in the sourcing of that food because when I was trying to get healthy, here's the first thing that I did, Mark. I was like, I need to eat more like an adult. All right. I was 20, you know, 22 years old at the time. So I'm gonna stop eating my kids you know, Honey Nut Cheerios, and I'm gonna eat more of an adult cereal. I'm gonna eat Quaker Oatmeal Squares because it's higher fiber. And there's a Quaker on the box. And I don't know if he was real or not, but he's not a bee at least, you know, he's not this bee who has a dysfunctional stinger. All right? He's a real guy. And so in that analysis, come to find out, Quaker Oatmeal Squares is like top five most contaminated with glyphosate. you know, and so again, I'm trying to make these- To mention high in.

Sugar and, you know, it's all sugar.

It's all high sugar. It's just, it was the framing and is dating back to my university education that that's what I'm supposed to be eating. And the basis of our diet, the bottom of that pyramid, the foundation should be these, quote, whole grains. And without paying attention to the sourcing, without paying attention to the impact that it has, on my metabolic health and my blood sugar and all these things. And so how did I make that change in that environment? Well, you know, number one was awareness. Awareness is really that first domino. Just becoming aware that there was a difference in how these foods were impacting me. I had no idea.

Then you have to learn how to cook and learn how to chop vegetables and peel garlic and do, you know, basic, simple skills. Like, it's a skill. Like, we know how to use our iPhones and Drive a car and use our computer, but like most of us don't know our way around the kitchen.

Kill babies. You see them rolling around in their carts at the grocery store or, you know, at the Target. They know how to mess with iPads and all this stuff at like one year old.

All right? Yeah. All of my- that's a whole nother problem.

My youngest son, he just turned 12 last week. Since he was like seven or eight, he's known how to prepare food. all right? And he's been helping out in the kitchen even prior to that. It's just a part of the culture. And as you said, it's just a skill set in normalizing that. Whereas, you know, for me, I actually grew up in a culture where my stepfather was an executive chef, all right, at Morton's of Chicago. But again, we're living in poverty, all right? I'm talking about getting food from charities, you know, the Hosea House was close to our house, wick, food stamps, all these things. And it's just like, Even hearing that, like, why don't you just work harder for the parents and not understanding the volatility of the environment that we're living in, by the way, because I grew up in the crack epidemic. And so next to our two family flat, there's a little gangway, a little path separating us from the next building. That next building was where crack was being cooked and sold. and so my stepfather lost his older brother to, to the, you know, to the ramifications of crack. And my stepfather, he just passed away two months ago. He's been in assisted living for almost 15 years due to brain damage from crack. And, you know, it's just, again, if people understood the volatility and also my mother trying to make ends meet, sometimes she would sell her blood just to get, you know, twenty dollars to get us a meal. and so she also worked overnight at a convenience store and being in this environment, she was stabbed eight times on one of those evenings. And you know, my mom is different, you know, she actually subdued the guy and he ended up getting arrested. But when she went in to get stitches and all the things to get sewn up, the physician told her that if you weren't a heavy set woman, you would have died. You being overweight, her obesity saved her life. right? And so do you think she's going to be in a hurry to try to lose weight? You know, it's her protective force field, really, you know? So these are the conditions that I'm in. Every one of my family members has at least one chronic disease, including myself, chronic asthma, my little brother, chronic asthma, my little sister, eczema. And for me, having that onset of this arthritic condition when I was 20, finally getting this diagnosis, that was years in the making to get to that place where I have such severe degeneration that the physician is telling me I have the spine of an 80 year old man. Now, here's how it all changes. Number one was awareness because I didn't know. I didn't know. But number two is, and this is really important for again, there's two parts here. There's, okay, there's a cultural aspect where, yes, we need social change, but the most powerful form of transformation is addressing the microculture, the microculture in your own household. And so regardless of the fact that I was living in Ferguson, Missouri, I can step outside of my close environment, close proximity environment, and go and start to procure my food. Because as soon as I became aware that food mattered, that food could change the ingredients I was making my tissues out of, suddenly this farmer's market in Ferguson, the nicer part of Ferguson, by the way, for years there had been a farmer's market. And I was oblivious to the fact that it existed. And now I'm going there each week with my family. I'm saving, sometimes paying 50% less of what I'm paying at Whole Foods to try to get these same foods, saving money, getting closer to where my food is coming from. And now again, just because of my awareness and my dedication to changing the microculture in my household, because as I mentioned, it wasn't just me going to the farmer's market. I was taking my kids with me. I was taking my then girlfriend now wife with me. And we made this into a family event and it became a part of our culture.

But how did you, Sean, how did you like go, God, here's what kind of knife I need. Here's a pot I need. Here's how to chop an onion. Here's how to like, how do I mince garlic? Like how do I bake? How do I... I mean just basic things. How did you go from like basically eating in factory-made food to making homemade food? and that bridge that you had to cross was like a big expanse for most people to think about who don't know their way around the kitchen.

Okay, I'm gonna share two things. Number one, that wasn't my particular story because I grew up in a household where the skill of cooking was apparent. It was there. We were oftentimes eating ultra processed food, but my mom was a great cook. My stepfather got paid to cook at high-end places, we just didn't have a lot of money. Same thing, my little brother to this day is a fantastic cook. And so I'm going to share with you one of my core memories.

That's unusual, right? That's unusual.

In that environment.

It is.

So I'm going to share that second thing in just a moment, but one of my core memories, and it's so interesting that this book is coming out having just lost my stepfather, but one of my core memories was, it's one of those days we open up the cabinet, there's nothing there. We open up the refrigerator, we don't have anything to eat. And this is a time when he's at the house and we're just like, we're hungry, you know? And so I go to him like, hey, you know, we're hungry, there's no food. He goes into the kitchen and there was a loaf of Texas toast that we got on the WIC program. There was government cheese, which is this block of cheese. and there was some tomato sauce in the cabinet, and there was some frozen deer sausage in the freezer that my grandfather had sent to us. And at the time, of course, I wasn't trying to eat Bambi. I didn't. I was not into that deer sausage. But what he did was he took those ingredients and he made pizza out of them. He made pizza with those ingredients. And I will never forget that I was, like, eight years old, and it stayed with me forever because. Number one, and by the way, it didn't taste like Domino's, all right? It didn't taste exactly like pizza I was used to, but the fact that kids like pizza and I was eating pizza, that elicited some motivation and some joy in that moment. And the fact that I got to eat with him because we rarely ate together and sharing that moment with him, eating pizza, eliciting, and this is a huge part, this is what the point I was trying to make in that environment, It really can incite such a high level of creativity. When people hear about my story and where I come from, there can be a lot of empathy and even sympathy about that, but you don't understand the beauty that's there as well, and the capacity for creativity. And so that stuck with me my entire life to this moment. And so this is bringing back to, okay, so where do we pick up these skill sets if we don't grow up with this? and, you know, today it's really, ironically, even though we have this, it's never been easier to be unhealthy. It's never been easier to be healthy. We have access to every manner of training with this, with a simple YouTube video. But what we need to do is.

My mother always said, if you could read, you can cook, meaning just follow the recipe. And, and, you know, she, it's like, if you can watch a YouTube video, you can cook. Right.

That part.

I was like, I don't know how to make duck breasts. I'm gonna, like, watch Gordon Ramsay make duck. breast on YouTube.

You can yell at me virtually, you know?

Yeah, I was like, wow, wow, wow. That's like, not so hard. So I think, you know, even if you don't know how to make everything, you can learn so easily by, by just the tools we have available. You're right. It's never been easier to be sick or healthy.

And we've also got to take this, take the complexity out of it because it's unnecessary. And so even a lot of great recipe books they can tend to be a little bit complex. And so what I focused on was simplicity, high quality ingredients, real food ingredients, but also tying in some of the most joyful food experiences in our culture. Like, for example, one of my favorite things growing up, and in particular when I was trying to get my health together and having this revelation prior to that, I love McDonald's breakfast. all right? And I'm not alone. All right? The sausage McMuffin. And. But the thing was, I oftentimes didn't get up in time to make it to breakfast because of, you know, staying up late, playing video games, being unhealthy, all the things. But it's one of my favorite things. So my thought was, I know that these breakfast sandwiches are incredibly popular. How can I upgrade this and create a delicious breakfast sandwich using real food ingredients that's going to knock people's socks off? that's one of my youngest son's favorite foods, by the way, favorite meals is his breakfast sandwich that we put into the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook. I love that. And the same thing with pancakes, you know, if we're talking about, I would get the hot cakes and sausage. And so I took a foundational food that has these powerful anthocyanins that have been found to improve our, the health of our memory, you know, metabolic health in the form of sweet potatoes and make these delicious sweet potato protein pancakes.

Wow.

And like, again, it's based on a real food. deliciousness. And now we're getting all, as you said, and I remember it changed my life when you said it, Mark, that food isn't just food, it's information. Right? So now we're getting all these higher order, more intelligent compounds into our bodies, and it starts to change us from the inside out. And so those are the two things. Taking away the complexity, making simple recipes, number one, easy on-ramp and also things that we're familiar with.

I agree. I mean, I, I, you know, I was a single father. I had two kids, you know, worked hard as a doctor and I, you know, figured out how to make simple things. And the weekend might make a big pot of stew or soup. I learned how to make simple, quick meals. And, you know, like last night, I, as a great example, people think it's like, gotta take the onerous and take a long time and be difficult, but it really doesn't. Like, I had a couple of friends over last night and we didn't really have much time. And now was busy working all day and essentially just made like in, like, I don't know if it was 15 minutes, maybe less. An incredible meal. I had sweet potatoes that I put in the oven before, so I planned ahead a little bit. Just put them in an hour ahead, which is, you just throw them, wash them, throw them in the oven. It's like a toaster oven. It's pretty easy. I whipped together a salad. I buy, like, pre-washed arugula, and I chopped up some Tomatoes, chopped up some cucumbers. You know, I didn't bother even mixing the olive and vinegar. I just pour the olive on, pour the vinegar on salt and pepper. toss it up, like literally salad took three minutes. I cooked a steak on the grill, five minutes, and stir-fried some mushrooms with garlic. And the whole thing was like a very simple meal, but it was delicious, full of medicinal compounds and everybody loved it. And it didn't take a lot of stress or a lot of time or a lot of effort. And I think people have to understand that that the myth of cooking for yourself that is hard or takes too much time or it's too expensive is just a myth. And we need to reclaim our kitchens.

Exactly. And part of that myth, again, it's that cultural influence. And I was just gonna share this really quickly was that one of the other things on the other side is when we're eating in isolation and we're not preparing food for us, even ourselves, let alone our families, and this was published in nutrition journal in 2018. And I, I was just finding, like, is there some data showing that if we're not doing this, what's going to happen? And they found that eating alone, we tend to have significantly lower diet, diet quality and lower intake of essential nutrients that help to prevent chronic diseases, you know? And so it's protective on so many different levels, eating together with people we care about, having higher quality ingredients and taking the complexity out, taking back really control because America, we invented the TV dinner. We invented it. And that marketing, that culture, I used to take control.

Salisbury steak.

Oh, the mushy steak. Yes.

Swanson's. I remember that. And we had those like TV dinner trays. It was like a special tray that you'd open up to put on your TV tinfoil dinner on, and then you could watch TV. And this was like in the '60s, it was like so bad. It was so bad. Wow. The title of your book is so important. It's like the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook. This is food you can cook with your family, with your kids, 100 delicious recipes to transform your health, happiness, and connection. And health, happiness, and connection is not, they're all not separate. Your health is actually determined by your social relationships and connections as we started off talking in the beginning. and so, you know, whether it's inviting friends over, whether it's, you know, family members, whether it's, you know, your spouse, whatever it is, if it's two people, that's, that's a family dinner, right? So make sure you prioritize this. It's got to be something that's, it's built into a value system that you have for yourself. Otherwise, it's going to be very hard for people to sort of reclaim their health and for us to get out of this, you know, disaster of, chronic disease and obesity that we're seeing today in America. And so, Sean, let me to sort of talk about, you know, some practical tips, you know, around grocery shopping, around what, you know, pots and pans we should have, about cooking tips that make things faster and healthier and easier and more fun. Can you kind of guide us through, because you've been talking about getting your kids in the kitchen, take us through some of the really practical things in the book? Because I think people would love to sort of hear that and understand some of the juiciness that you've put together for people, not just the yumminess, but the juiciness of how to do this in a different way that's gonna activate your biology in a way that's gonna create health as opposed to create disease.

Absolutely, absolutely. So a couple of really interesting things that we could transition into, you know, it's also, you know, one of the things I targeted in the book was transforming our kitchen culture. and looking at the things that we're cooking on, as you just mentioned. And one of the big revelations recently, and I grew up with this is Teflon and non-stick pans, but there's a chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid or PFO PFOS. And this has been shown repeatedly in peer reviewed studies to contribute to higher levels of infertility, liver disease, various types of cancer. This chemical has actually been banned. It's banned. But testing people's blood today, the majority of people tested still have this compound in their system because it's one of those, quote, forever chemicals, all right? And so coming into this and wondering, by the way, so I'm not just saying a bunch of studies. One of these studies was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that PFOA's is a strong kidney carcinogen, so renal carcinogen with risk increasing in tandem with levels of exposure. and so this non-stick cookware that we've grown up with is not without a cost. And in particular, you know, the higher temperature that we're cooking, the more these chemicals are getting released and getting into our food and also inhaling them as well is a big risk. And so let's pivot and look at what are some better options here. And also, again, we don't want to become neurotic because what we did over time, living in a low-income environment, was just replace one piece of cooking equipment over time, right? We didn't just do an overhaul, throw everything away. We just did what we could. And so, you know, one of the time tested things to cook on is cast iron skillet. Now, of course, some people will be like, well, there's iron, whatever, but it is far safer than Teflon. And by the way, them removing that one compound, there are several others that are really dangerous and shown in peer review studies. to be dangerous for our health. But cast iron skillets are awesome. A well seasoned cast iron skillet and it has so much versatility. You can go from the stovetop to the oven, stainless steel, time tested, probably the safest of all of these. But, you know, it might not be great for what we, what we tend to do for nonstick cooking purposes. But there are ways and skills that we can learn to be able to modulate, manage that. ceramic is very popular right now. And, you know, being able to source it in a, in a, in an efficacious way, making sure that you're getting actual ceramic coating is important because there are some imposters out there. So this is also speaking to knowing the companies that you're purchasing from. So these are all options. So.

And you have all that in the book. You like, you have the specifics of what to get. And so people have to guess like, oh, to people, what should I get? And what brand? And I'm like, you have all that laid out so it doesn't have to be problematic.

People will figure out what to do. Exactly. Yes. So I was just, again, really hitting these hard-hitting facts, and then here's what we can do as an alternative, you know, and also another part to kind of transition into with that as well. And by the way, this study just came out. So this was newly published, and this was in clinical and experimental Pediatrics. and they were looking at the impact of plastic bottle feeding on human infants and finding significant amounts of BPA metabolites in these infants urine and higher levels of vldl in these infants, higher levels of triglycerides. And of course, this can be due to the formula as well, but in particular create this kind of creatine. canes offshoot that can indicate cardiovascular damage as well being elevated in these kids. And in particular, finding all of these microplastics, we're talking about one somewhere in the ballpark of 1.5 million microplastics found per, like, bottle feeding. It's like these crazy numbers. It's just like, we've never been exposed to this kind of thing. So what about Safety for our food and storage. So I'm talking about because for us, we had the Tupperware, you know, we had the, you know, the glad whatever, and we take even hot food and putting it right into some plastic containers. And you are definitely consuming a significant amount of microplastics and nanoplastics with this. So what are some things we can store our food in, you know, stainless steel is we've got a bunch of that downstairs now. you got glass containers and the like, and silicone for, you know, things like if you're talking about bottle feeding, for example, even silicone nipples could be better, but we got to be careful with heating on that. But for, that's great for lids, it's great for frozen items, you know, like if you're making iced coffee, you can, or even popsicles, you've got a great popsicle recipe in the book. And this is speaking to growing up in my environment. And I don't know if you know about this, Mark, because, you know, this is in the same vein as funyuns, but we had The ice cream man. Do you know about the ice cream man?

Yeah, good, good, yeah. Well, I don't know about the good.

Humor man, which is all those crappy good humor. So, but they're rolling around the hood in a truck, and it's like a bell, dinging, dinging, dinging, dinging. We called him the bomb pop man, and they would roll down your street, and you can hear him from two miles away. We can hear it, and we're all going nuts. The bomb pop man is coming, and they're rolling up, and, you know, maybe if you even got 25 cents, you can get at least a popsicle. from this guy. But then there were all of these, like, monstrosity, you know, Ninja Turtles was popping at the time. So, like, a Ninja Turtle face popsicle. But I wanted to take that same thing. We love those frozen treats, and we have this really wonderful cherry frozen yogurt pop that you can, you know, simple mold, you know, silicone, ideally, you could pop into the freezer and have these ready to go at any time. And it's so delicious. Plus, even with that, you know, one of those ingredients, I shared over 40 different foods, science-backed foods. Cherries are one of the few foods that are a dense, concentrated source of naturally occurring melatonin. All right, so that's one of those foods that can. Yeah, it's so cool, you know, that we have these foods that can help with our sleep quality. We have foods that can help with our metabolic Health. We can. We have foods that can help with our cognitive function. And what I did was take. We have an emoji culture as well.

Right now.

So I can send you a whole message with just emojis and you'll feel what I'm talking about. You'll know what I'm talking about. And so for each benefit that that food is targeting, so for example, with those cherries, we've got a sleep emoji right next to it in the book as we're talking about it going through the studies. And then in the recipes where you find those cherries, you'll see that same emoji so you can eat for a purpose if you want to improve your sleep quality or improve your cognitive function.

Yeah, that's amazing. I have a dream for a cookbook where we're in menu where you actually like write, you know, what is the ingredient? But then what is all the medicine in it? What does it do to your body and how does it work? And I think it's pretty fascinating and so great. So what about the people who say, you know, I just don't have time or it's too complicated.

I just don't know what to do in the kitchen. I'm lost.

What would you say to those people?

Well, the first piece is, you know, we all have the same 24. You know, people have heard this before, but it's really about priorities, you know, and even with this, all the wonderful science that we have on eating together with our families, it can get brushed under the rug, unfortunately. And so what we have to do, especially in our busy day-to-day lives, is to schedule it, to look at our own individual family and our family culture and design it based off our own lifestyle. So for us, it might be family dinners on Monday, Wednesday, because as I indicated in the research, those three meals were really the minimum barrier of entry to see some significant protective effects for our family members. So family dinner on Monday and Wednesday and family brunch on Sundays. And so I'm catering this to what fits with our family model, right? And I'm putting it on the calendar, especially with our busy lives. If you don't schedule it today, is sometimes it's not even real. It is a floating objective. And so what happens also when we know that we're having family dinners on Wednesdays, our subconscious mind is already enacting, okay, it's bringing forth a matter of planning. Like, okay, this is what we're gonna eat.

Right. And also, you failed to plan, you plan to fail, something like that.

Benjamin Franklin. Shout out to Benjamin Franklin. But also, if we have this as our family's mandate, our modus operandi, where we're operating from, just a couple weeks ago, for example, we had our typical family dinner that was scheduled, but my wife got caught up on the other side of LA, which LA traffic is different. And she was gonna suddenly now not be able to make it home and she had planned on cooking. So what I did was it was a door dash moment. So I ordered some high quality foods that we can get around us and had it delivered. And I still sat down and ate with my sons. We still ate as planned together as a family. So giving ourselves grace, allowing ourselves to pivot if need be, and also just with that barrier of like, well, I don't have the time, things are too hard. It's really about again, creating that micro culture.

Right.

And part of that, and I'm just gonna be 1000 with everybody, when we are going from what we're typically doing to something new, there's going to be some turbulence. And so being prepared for that, because the real solution is people don't like things taken away from us. We don't. And what I found success as working as a clinician was helping people to replace that thing that they might have been addicted to. with something of equal or greater value. And so with my kids, if they're addicted to their screens and their gaming and whatnot, and I'm just like, guys, we're eating family dinner together. Shut it down. Just out of the blue, there's gonna be some revolting by the townspeople. All right. So we've got to approach this in a more intelligent way, which is let's find some things. And by the way, this goes back to even eating together so we can pay attention to our children. because whether we acknowledge this or not, we know our family better than anybody. But a lot of times because our mental energy is drained, we don't want to deal with it. And so we're just like, we want people to just act the way we wanted them to act. Just don't kill my vibe. Everything's going to be fine. Just act right. But people without a doubt are going to do things that you don't want them to do. And so by paying attention to our family members, we can know what excites them. what de-excites them, what inspires them, what gives them, you know, even a feeling of like a kind of a depressed attitude. And so we can leverage psychologically things to inspire our kids, our significant other, because you've probably seen this as well, Mark, the number one reason people would give for not being able to make the changes that they said they wanted to make, they would say, well, you know, it's just so hard with my kids because da da da, you know, they won't eat this. I don't want to make two separate meals. It's really so hard because my wife, you know, or my husband is always, you don't understand. It's my, my parents. If they would, they were always pointing the finger at people that they love being the most difficult obstacle in them getting from where they are to where they want to be. And what I'm saying and, and supporting people in is like, here are these strategies, because that micro culture that you're creating in your household starts with you. starts with you and you are a representation. And so I just took my family for the first time. We went to Maui. We went to Hawaii recently. And something I realized, number one, there's this kind of dramatization of a luau, right? And this is something that humans have been doing forever. Our tribe was constructed in such a way that we hunted and gathered together, prepared food together, ate together, celebrated together. This was a normal part of life. And over time, we become further and further away from each other. But we're watching this dramatization, and I'm just like, we're not doing that anymore. There's something special about it. But here's the other part I noticed. Even taking my family and plopping ourselves into this other culture, I realize we take our culture with us. everywhere that we go. We are a representation of that and we can't help it. And Mark, I'm telling you, this happened twice on that trip. Somebody walked by us on the airport, on the airplane and said, I love your family. And I didn't even know they were watching us, right? And one lady, she had to be in her 70s, she walked by us on the airplane and said, she asked if we would adopt her. All right, there was something about my family that was exuding something that was infectious. Because bad health isn't the only thing that's communicable. Great health is as well. And this is what we have the opportunity to do and to understand because you and I have both spent a lot of time trying to target the bigger social, we'll call it the larger culture scape. to make it easier for people to make the changes that would help them. And we can still continue to do that. But it's going to be very, very hard and take a longer time versus let's focus on the micro culture, help people to change the culture in their household. And then that's going to affect the people around them. When they walk out their doors, people can't help this, but to see what's possible. When they see their family, people can't help but to see what's possible. And that's how I think we can get to this Tipping Point.

I love the whole concept of the microculture and actually that you think change has to be on a big scale, but it actually happens on a small scale over and over and over again. We used to have this saying back in the 70s, think globally, act locally. You gotta think of the big picture, but you gotta act locally, which means locally is your kitchen, is your dining room table, is your family. And I think that that's something that we lose. And however you define your family, whatever your family looks like, and we live in a world where families are not like they used to be, but it's about what is your tribe. And it could be you just have a bunch of friends, and that's your tribe. And you have maybe weekly dinners together, or you have a supper club where you rotate through. It doesn't have to be the traditional nuclear family structure. That's what we're talking about. But it's just the idea that we are social beings and that we get sick together, but we also can get healthy together, as you said, and getting healthy is a team sport. If you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here.

It goes to your muscles and it.

Says, Hey muscles, as soon as glucose gets into the bloodstream, soak it up, store it as glycogen in the muscles. Don't let it float around. And so by these two mechanisms, glucose is broken down at a.