How Modern Diets Are Destroying Your Health (And What to Do About It) #142

And if you get rid of these three things, your life will change. You got to ignore a lot of the big sources of information. I do not watch news anymore. I don't take advice from mainstream doctors. They're not trying to give you bad information. They just have been schooled by the system.

Welcome everybody to the Homefront. I am Jeff Duden and today I am so excited to have Brian Sanders on with us today. Welcome, Brian.

Thanks. Thanks, Jeff.

Yeah, great. Awesome. So if you don't know Brian Sanders, you should. Huge online presence and for good reason. He is a film producer from the docu series Food Lies. I checked it out. Highly produced trailer online. He's also the founder of Sapien. It's a community based on healthy eating and really ancestral type eating and also nose to tail, which is sustainable, healthy products that all of us can use and consume to be healthier, live longer and last but not least, the peak human podcast. Welcome, Brian.

Yeah, thank you. A lot of things to talk about.

There is, you know, so I just was fortunate to spend some time a couple weeks ago with Robert Kennedy and the things that he is looking at doing in terms of our food and then people like Cali means working. You know, I would say against maybe big pharma, but man, somehow as a society we have gotten to whether it be the food pyramid, whether it be statins, like we are eating things that people never ate, we're putting medicines and things into our body that, that people never have. And if you just stand back and look at it from 30 or 50,000ft, we're not getting any healthier, we're getting sicker, we're getting fatter and we're dying, you know, with, with things that didn't even exist 100 years ago. So, Brian, so excited for our time today together. Can you just give our listeners a view as to who is Brian Sanders?

Yeah, mainly I'm trying to answer all those questions, right? Why, why is this all happening? Why are we dying younger and younger? There's kids with type 2 diabetes. Before it used to be called adult onset diabetes. Right. There's like I just posted today about the colon cancer. It's huge on the rise. So yeah, my main goal in life is to figure out how to live better. And it's actually pretty simple. So I spent 10 years on this path. 10 years ago I lost both my parents. I was 30, I had the dad bodies. I was getting on over the counter medications and having all these problems and just thinking that I would go down the path like everyone else and Then really why? I read Mark Sisson's book, if people know mark Sisson, he's 71, he's a beast. He's so healthy. He's sort of a mentor for me. And I read his book Primal Blueprint, and I thought, wow, this makes so much sense. It's so easy. And that was a jumping off point for my health journey that's really led to so much else, you know, beyond health. It's, it's just how to live better as humans. And yeah, so that was 10 years ago, seven years ago, full time into making this docu series, Food Lies, which still isn't done, but it's going to be big and on a big platform next year is the plan. And, you know, Netflix or maybe Amazon prime, if Netflix is too woke for us. I don't know. They don't. They like vegan content. I know, I notice all their documentaries are vegan, but ours is series. You know, it's fun. It's 30 minutes each episode, six episodes. And yeah, that's just what I've been doing full time interviewing 300 doctors and scientists and researchers in this health space and into the regenerative ag space too, of, you know, like, how can we grow food properly? And all I try to do is make it easy for people to understand, spread the information, you know, do the podcast, make this series, just let everyday people figure this stuff out. Because no one is going to sit there and do all the research that it takes to, you know, I mean, I'm just sitting looking at research papers, going to conferences, like talking to scientific nerds about this stuff. People just want the answer. And so we're, we're giving them the answer in an easy to consume format.

We've had Mark Sisson on the home front. He was launching a brand of shoes that had individual toes in it. And he was basically walking is the next sleeping. And you know, if you're, if you're cramming your toes into shoes that are creating a pattern of walking, it just, it affects your health and all of that. And. But when you go back into his background, like he was really early adopting into Primal and putting it, really creating the pathway that people would pay more for healthy products. And immediately after that podcast, I became very aware of seed oils and looking at the dressings that I'm putting on my salad or anything and just, I mean, the seed oils are always at the top of the list and they're some of the worst things that we can consume and it's literally in everything. And if you think about how it impacts our daily life, our access to food, especially if we're in a hurry. But more importantly, I look back and I feel like with, I mean, I have three children. I mean, we, we, it was child abuse what we were feeding them. I mean, it was convenient, it was in the car. And we thought one might be healthier than the other. But you get right back down to it. It's, it's, you know, it's bread that's full of sugar and all of these things. So. And I think that especially for me, as I've aged and I became increasingly concerned about things like brain fog, but body fat and, you know, the ability to recover. And I noticed just like reducing or eliminating alcohol consumption over a very short time, you will, you won't realize how deep you weren't sleeping, you won't realize how bad you felt. It's the same thing now if I have a relapse with my diet and I'll eat at a holiday, let's say I splurge on a holiday and I eat a bunch of cake and I eat a bunch of the things that I normally wouldn't eat on a daily routine, I feel horrible for a couple of days until that stuff gets worked out of my system. So it's. Think back to when you first discovered or started toying around with your diet. Like, what are some of the realizations that happened for you immediately that indicated to you that you were on the right path?

It was really so simple and obvious. And, and Mark Sisson's book, the Primal Blueprint, is actually just borrowing a lot of the findings of Dr. Weston A. Price. So it really goes back to him. We gotta credit Weston A. Price. And he went around the world in the 1930s and found that there was three main ingredients that came into people's diets. And they be, they went from being super healthy populations with no cavities almost at all and no disease almost at all, to fat and sick very quickly. And it was the refined sugars, refined grains and seed oils. Right. So then I read Mark Sisson's book and those were the three things that it called out as the main problems. And all I did was cut out those three things. And within a week, my whole life changed. You know, I had like acid reflux and I had like 20 extra pounds of fat. I had all these little things that I had allergies even. My allergies even went away. Like if you get rid of these constant chronic inflammation from just food and grains and stuff like that and who knows what else is on those grains, Pesticides and stuff. If you get rid of this constant inflammation, your body can deal with something like allergens, right? So if you're. It's. Before, I thought people were crazy or wacky for thinking that you could change your diet and your allergies would go away. I'm like, all right, dude, that. I don't know about that, but I know it's true because I've done it. And like you said, if I relapse a little, if it's holidays, I'm eating all kinds of stuff, then my allergies will come back. You know, it's just your. Your body can fight stuff off. Unless you're constantly giving it this. This bad stuff, this inflammation, then it can't fight stuff off. And then you're just always going to have allergies, for example. So the highest level thing we can talk about is getting rid of these three ingredients which make up 80% of foods people eat. You know, if you look at normal people, 80% of foods they eat contain sugar, flour, oil. This is how I kind of just shorten it. Sugar. Flour. Oil means seed oils, added sugars, refined grains. And if you get rid of these three things, your life will change.

I got. I had a doctor's appointment some seven to eight years ago, and they said, you're pre diabetic. And I was carrying around some extra weight. Now, I've always been. I mean, I'm still. I'm pretty lean right now for me, but I'm £239. So, you know, I carry weight. I was a football player. I've got a bigger frame. So, you know, it's hard for me to get down. And if I get into the two twenties, people, you know, my daughter will come home from school and ask if I'm dying. She'll be like, what's, what's wrong? But my father and my two brothers are both diabetic. They're on insulin, and somehow it missed me. And when I. When they said you're pre diabetic, I knew exactly what diabetes looked like. And I immediately. In the way that, that a friend of mine, Devin Klein, who's the founder of Burn Boot Camp, they've got like 500 studios, clinic, whatever they call them across the country. But he basically said, no whites. And he said, you know, no sugar, no flour, and no artificial sweeteners. So anything that was white, he said, you cut out all of those whites and you replace it with other things. So that's the way That I approached, it was cutting out the whites. And the next time, a very short time later, when I went and had my blood work, my doctor was like, you're in rarefied air. You know, all of your numbers are right where they need to be. They've all moved significantly in the right direction. You're no longer pre diabetic. And so you hear about it, okay, that's kind of a normal case when people are diabetic and they decide that they get serious about their food intake and they make a big impact in it. But then you hear people with things like cancer and you know, this is not a medical show. Maybe I am, I am not a medical person, but I, you know, there are people that have approached cancer with just crazy, insane diet change and have really helped themselves deal with those situations. And so, you know, I'm, I think. And what's interesting is it's. It shouldn't take a trigger event for us to train ourselves, our families, the people we care about and our children how to eat this way.

Yeah, that is a problem. So humans, we kind of have a flaw. And part of it, it's like we have this thing with gratification. Immediate gratification is big, right. And people probably know the famous marshmallow experiment and the people that could delay the gratification did better. And it's just hard to get people to not think about what they want to eat in the moment and think long term. And yeah, it's hard for people to think of consequences until they happen. Right. It's like, it's hard to think of, well, I want to be healthy when I'm 60, 70, I want to, you know, play with my grandchildren, stuff like that. When in the moment, I could just go to McDonald's. So it's hard to. You, you have to kind of change your environment, change the people you hang out with, change your mindset about this whole thing. And if you can do that, it's actually great. It's actually just as delicious and just as satisfying if you can make that switch, right? Like if I switch to eating more meat and eggs and dairy, you know, cheese, I eat raw dairy now. I, I thought I couldn't handle dairy, but then I found this great ranch or farm that does grass fed A2 raw milk and cream. And I. It's amazing. I handle it perfectly fine, right. So there's these. So it's actually way more satisfying to eat this way once you figure out. And I love the. Don't eat the whites. I mean, a lot of these are just like shortcuts to that have a lot of scientific backing behind it, you know, and there's, and there's a whole history, like I said, With Dr. West, any price. And he traveled the world and found these things. And there's medical journals that can, we can look at all these studies that show why these are bad. But it's like a shortcut to just say avoid the whites or just get rid of the sugar, flour, oil, and your life will get better. But I mean, yeah, we can talk about why that stuff works. And yeah, there's more to it. But, but the basic idea is you cut out these foods, you replace them with higher nutrient density foods, and it actually is more enjoyable once you get used to it. So another thing with humans is we don't like change. I don't want to change. Yeah, I love my routine. Right. But then once you change your routine, if you can get into the new routine, then it's, it's, it's better. You know, it could be better. You just have to go through that change. Like getting a new job isn't fun, you know, it's scary. Oh, I'm gonna have to do, you know, all this stuff. But then maybe your new job is way more fun and you, you get to know your co workers and it's all good. It's just the change was the hard part. So, yeah, yeah, I try to get people to think about it like that, where it's not like you're going to be on a diet for the rest of your life. You know, it's like no one wants to be on a diet. People think of a diet as like, oh, I'm going to eat a salad with no dressing and I'm going to eat just like terrible food.

One of my favorite books. Have you ever read Change or Die? No, I can't. I mention that book all the time and I can't believe that more people haven't read it. It's got a cover that's like half black and half white right down the middle of it. And it just goes through example after example. For example, people that smoked their entire life and then they have throat cancer, they go into the hospital, they have their voice box or their larynx taken out, so they're now going to speak with a synthesized voice box, which we all have seen what that looks like. They get out of surgery, they're in the hospital recovering, they roll themselves outside of the hospital and they stick a cigarette in the hole in their neck so they can smoke, right? Like at some point, you know, like that habit for them is so hard to change or people that are on life saving health medication or heart medication or something like that and they just don't even take it. So you know, people will avoid change and perception of miscomfort even at their own mortality, at their, at their own demise. So, and everybody has their, their different thresholds for the ability to self correct and, and to self manage and to self regulate. But man, it's just, it's, it's all, it's all about these habits. And I will tell you one the decision here's where I know that I can win. My diet is won or lost at the grocery store if it's in my house and I'm hungry and I've had a great day, you know, and I, I basically I'm on a high protein right now. So I will try to get 200 grams of protein a day. I'm going to limit it to two protein shakes. I'm going to eat several chicken breasts. I'm going to pop eggs in my mouth four or five times a day. Just you know, I just keep hard boiled eggs in those bags. So I'm eating really, really clean during the day. But if I go home and there's an awesome casserole and some other stuff and you know, we've got that, then you're probably going to eat it. So if it's not in the house, you won't eat it. If it's not available, you can't possibly eat it. So you know, making those decisions when you're not so hungry is an opportunity for us all to maybe do a little bit better. I mean, if you buy something, you fully intend to eat it like this because then you're going to be like, well I'm not going to waste this bundt cake. Why would I have bought it? So that's a good one. Yeah. So talk to us a little bit about information sources. What experience can you share with people if they wanted to get really good information and avoid misinformation about diet? Where would you direct people?

It's hard because the mainstream is set up for people to fail. And well, basically failing means being part of their system and being a good consumer. Right. So it's like what I've learned about the systems, all the systems really is they're designed for their benefit and for, for the top, the people on top, whether it be the government or just CEOs or you know, corporations. And it's almost always kind of the opposite of what's good for the individual. So what's good for them is bad for you, and what's good for you is kind of bad for them. If you're out there getting pasture raised eggs from your ranch, your local farmer's market, they're not making any money at all. You're like outside the system. Your money's going straight into the farmer's pocket. I'm terrible for all the corporations because I don't use anything really. I live in Austin, I live in the city, but I don't really use much of the infrastructure. I'm starting high level here. It's like you got to ignore a lot of the big sources of information. I do not watch news anymore. I don't take advice from mainstream doctors. They're not trying to give you bad information. They just have been schooled by the system. The medical system is a business really. These hospitals, these are billion dollar businesses. The top four businesses, the top four industries in the US are all pharma and sick care. And you know, I call it, I always call it sick care, don't call it health care. All of these, the top four industries are trillion dollar industries. And they're all in medical stuff that's, that's not helping anyone get better. Right? It's just helping their profits. It's just managing symptoms. So they, these doctors go to the medical schools that are all funded by, you know, the same types of organizations and big families really, that started these things decades ago that pushed the system in this direction, pushed it away from healing and holistic medicine and, you know, stuff we always knew as humans and into the paradigm of pills and procedures and profit. So from the top, you got to start by finding better sources. And I love Callie Means. He's in my series, Bobby Kennedy Legend. You know, these are the people you have to listen to. It's so funny when, but when Mr. Kennedy says anything, then there's these New York Times, you know, opinion pieces trying to take them down. And it's so funny because they, they actually don't even debunk him. I've. It's so funny. They're, they're saying, oh, well, he said this and, and then they actually end up just kind of backing up what he's saying. Or when they do try to debunk some of the things, they get it wrong. And there's research that, that shows that seed oils are bad. I mean, I just posted today, there's a new study that came out that when I was talking about colon cancer, there's a new study that just came out this week about problems with colon cancer and from seed oils. So it takes a while for the information to get out there because there's big interest in not having this information out there. So if people understood, if the average consumer realized that processed foods were the problem, then they would stop eating them and that that would make the profits go down. And so really I've, what I've figured out is that meat and fat, like animal fat and animal protein have been the scapegoat for decades. And it's genius, right? So they, you have all these huge corporations and in the food industry and the sick care and big ag that have been making a lot of money for a long time. And if they say, if the message is that meat and fat are the problem, then what's alternative? Well, it's processed grains and just processed foods. There's a lot of health claims, if you notice on a lot of packaged foods there's health claims that, oh, this is healthy, Cheerios, Heart healthy. You know, they, so there's a lot of claims out there. So normal people, if you're just listening to the narrative, you're like, okay, well, I heard that meat can cause cancer. I heard, you know, fat is bad. Animal, you know, saturated fat's bad, cholesterol is bad. All the, you know, my cardiologist says that I can't eat eggs anymore because high cholesterol. This stuff is wrong, it's outdated, it's not true. I making this whole series to debunk all of these things. But the problem is everyday people, they're just hearing it from their cardiologist or from their general practitioner, their doctor and they, they, so they're, they're trying to go to better source of information which could be my Food Lies account. But I don't, I don't have a degree in nutrition and I'm not a doctor, I'm an engineer. And I, I've been studying this for 10 years, but they're not going to listen to me. Robert F. Kennedy doesn't have a degree. You know, Cali means doesn't have a degree in this nutrition. But we all have better information than them. Mark Sisson doesn't have a degree either. It's funny because all the people that I trust, well, half the people I trust don't have any sort of degree. And then the other half the people I trust do have, you know, medical degrees and nutrition degrees. Just no one knows who they are, right? There's like Chris Masterjohn or, you know, Schultz or you Know, people never gonna hear these people, but they write amazing books and do amazing work. Yeah.

So both Robert and Cali have committed to coming on the, on the on the Home Front podcast. So we're excited about that. I think, I think Cali will be on before Robert. Robert's gotten busy lately. He's, he's got a few things on his plate metaphorically here since we're talking about food. But so like, so let's just give my editor something to cut marketing or murder. Like, okay, I own one of the major food companies and I've got to have growth, 2 or 3% growth and the population's not growing. So it's got to be I got to take the growth from somewhere else or I got to create new products to create more demand. And so as a result of that, how close to the line can I go? Making claims about health and making claims about nutrition before I'm just lying. And because I shop that way or I used to shop that way, oh, this says healthy way or, and I hope that's not a brand and if it is, we will have to edit that too. But you know, healthy this or you know, like you said, heart health this, that or the other thing. And, and then let's take it one step further. If I'm today looking to influence people to buy my product, I would probably create a diet and I would use lead funnels and I would use clickbait and I would use all of the best of e commerce offers and to get people to look at this diet. And embedded within what looks like a very credible diet that is supported by very credible people are my products. And like that's like, and that's just marketing. It's, it's like ascending. You know, when you're, when you're doing marketing, you trying to get to different wallets, people spend money different ways. They might not go to the grocery store and spend $10 for a healthy product versus $5 for a seed oil laden type product. But if it's all, if it's incorporated inside of a diet, then they're going to look at it as kind of a package. Right. And if they, so there's all kinds of different ways. Another great book, predictably irrational, like, like how people look at free, how people look at offers and things like that. You can really manipulate people into buying things that, you know, if you get, if you get them to, to view them in the right way. So you know, how has the food industry used diets or have they used diets and what is the evolution of diets because there's a new one that comes out every year and then there's always information, support, education, everything that goes with it. Like when you, when you think about diets is, is, you know, should people look at a new diet with skepticism or how can they evaluate whether this is a diet that has an ulterior motive or if it's really going to be good for them?

Yeah, over the years I've tried to rise above the diets and even though there's a lot of diets that come out that are actually good. Right. But there it, it could be considered a fad or it, it, it was good. Right. 90% of the time. But it, it's not really correct, like keto or Paleo. You know, Paleo is a great diet, but it's based on ancestral principles.

Right.

But I still don't say, okay, do the Paleo diet because Paleo for somewhat arbitrarily cuts out dairy because we supposedly didn't have it until 12,000 years ago. But I just said dairy can be a great source of nutrition. It actually is a amazing source of nutrition around the world for 8 billion people. Their dairy products actually is a major, major foundational source of nutrients for billions of people. Right.

So what's the difference between the grass fed milk and the regular milk that you would buy off the shelf?

Well, there's, first of all, there's, there's the difference between raw and pasteurized. Most dairy in the US and in developed nations is pasteurized, so it's heated and that gets rid of the enzymes and all of the good bacteria and all the good stuff that helps you digest it. So that's a huge one right there. You drink raw dairy, which is what most people have done for all of history and most people still do around the world. People in India, they're not, you know, they're, a lot of people are getting, in Africa too, they're getting dairy straight from the cow and it's a huge source of nutrition and it has all of the enzymes and bacteria that they need to digest it and so it doesn't mess with their stomachs and it's just way better. And then you're talking about grass fed versus normal. Then we're talking about a cow that's on grass eating its proper diet and then giving all of those nutrients to you compared to feedlots. So most of the big dairy producers, they have, you know, giant operations and the cows are just eating like cheap byproducts and, you know, soybean oil and grain, you know, random grains and stuff that, you know, aren't especially nutritious. It's not what they're supposed to be eating. So it makes the milk a little worse. So that's kind of the story with dairies. You want to get some stuff from your local ranchers if you can.

Got it.

But, yeah, I've heard.

Yeah, well, go ahead.

Okay. Sorry. I just want to make sure I answer your question, because we were talking about diets in general.

Yeah, yeah.

Let me see if I can just answer a little more, because so I. I said paleo. It's good framework, right? It's on the right track, but they cut out there and then like keto. It's a good. It's a good idea. You know, a lot of people lose weight very easily cutting out the carbs, but I don't think it's something to do forever. I did it for many years, right. I was like, oh, this is great. You know, I feel so much better. But then I realized, oh, maybe carbs aren't the problem. Maybe it's just that I was eating processed carbs, and all the foods that I was cutting out were seed oils that, you know, filled with processed oils and processed sugars. So now I do eat carbs. I'm eating fruit. I'm eating whole food carbs, right. I'm eating fruit. I even eat some white food, as you say. Don't eat the white food. I actually eat white rice now, but I cook it in bone broth, and it has a lot of nutrients in it. Actually. You can cook it and then cool it. You put in your fridge, it actually turns into resistant starch. And it's actually better for your gut microbes. And it actually is a lower glycemic index. It doesn't spike your blood sugar as much if you cook the rice and cool it, and then, you know, I heat it back up later. You know, it's good meal prep. It's a lot easier to have just some rice laying around. Then I can just warm up a little bit with some meat, and I'm done. So there's way more context to these diets. And that's why I'm kind of done with. With diets in general. And I just go with the framework. I'm just calling it sapien, which really is just how humans should eat. And it's like, there's a great doctor, Michael Rose. He spent his whole life researching evolutionary biology and aging and all this stuff. Famous guy out of UC Davis, and he said, he's like, this is very clear. All animals do best on the diet in which they evolved or which they've eaten for all of their existence. Right? And so we know that like a lion eats zebras and a zebras eat grass, and this is just how, how it goes. But for some reason with humans, we don't trust that, that we just need to eat what we've eaten for all of history. So, like, you don't need. Once you kind of learn more about this, hopefully by the end of the podcast, people will kind of understand what this framework is. Is that it? You, then you won't have to follow a diet. You can make a nutrition plan for yourself or a way of eating that gives you all the nutrients you need, gets you the protein you need, and gets you the right amount of energy. And by energy, I mean, you know, fuel for the day, which is mostly carbs or fats. And, you know, you can fuel yourself properly without over fueling yourself because if you get too much energy, you have to store that on your body. And that's just body fat. Right. So it's just, it's really your body's just, how do we get the right amount of nutrients and the right amount of energy? And when you're eating processed foods, that ratio is completely off. And you'll never win that battle. Some people force themselves to be hungry. And if you can starve yourself and use willpower and, you know, try to just eat less, you know, cut calories arbitrarily, and yes, maybe you can lose some weight temporarily, but you're probably also losing muscle. You're not getting enough nutrients. It's not sustainable. Right. So there's way more to the calorie story. So just to kind of recap, you don't need to follow diet, you need to follow framework. And also to answer your question, yes, there are a lot of dietary stuff out there that came from the mainstream that, that are wrong. And, and it's just basically selling stuff, trying to make money even to the highest level of the USDA. So this stuff went wrong in the 1950s. It started with. I don't want to get way into the details, but there's like, people might know other answers.

I know where you're going. Yeah, we learned it. It was, it was pled allegiance and then it was the food pyramid. Those are the two staples of the beginning of our day.

Exactly. Yeah. So it does go back to the food pyramid. And how that first started is 1950s, President Eisenhower had a heart attack. We didn't Know what was going on. Heart disease was a new thing. This is also when people were smoking all day, every day, including Eisenhower, at a four pack a day habit. People were starting to use seed oil since 1920s, 1930s margarine. Right. So we kind of know what was going on. But we basically, in around the 1950s, 60s, 70s into the food pyramid in the 80s, we thought that saturated fat was a problem. And I think it was a bit on purpose because if, if saturated the fat's a problem, then the solution or then you, you start eating processed foods.

Right.

Does that make sense? It's like, it's like, okay, animal fat, Animals, fat's bad, meat is bad. So we need a whole bunch of grains. What's at the bottom?

Alternative. Alternative.

And then here's another thing is the USDA actually has a dual mandate. They are supposed to support agriculture in the US and they're supposed to give the dietary guidelines. The problem is those could be at odds with each other, right. That those incentives aren't aligned because we had a whole bunch of grains. We had few, you know, millions of acres of corn, wheat and soy with a surplus. So, and so we were subsidizing these grains that don't really have much nutrition in them, putting them at the base of the food pyramid. And then those band aids went out for decades, which shaped the whole food industry.

Right.

It started now anything that had low fat was healthy and grains were good. And that, yeah, that really did shape a lot of the dietary ideas for the last 50, 60, 70 years.

When you talk about brains, I can't remember the gentleman's name, but he was in his 70s and he was one of the all time leading diet and exercise type gurus. I wish I could remember his name. He came to speak to one of my executive groups and he said your brain is made up of protein, water and saturated fat. And when you eat a steak, eat the fat. Don't cut the, you know, you need a certain amount of saturated fat, which is what, you know, people ate forever. And that one thing that I find interesting, go back and look at the pictures of people coming back World War I or World War II, coming back off the ships, the people that were there meeting them, some of those, lots of the old pictures, nobody was overweight like these. And I, okay, you could say, well, they're sailors, they're soldiers, they're coming back, they've been, okay, yeah, they're, they're, they're younger people and they've probably been pretty active fighting over in Europe. But Even if you get outside of that and you look at the night, you look at the clubs, you look at all of these old pictures, people were not overweight. I mean, it was very difficult for people to get enough of the types of foods because they didn't exist yet that were going to cause them to be overweight, that caused them to not to be satiated. There are things in so many products that are simply there to make you want to consume more of the same or similar product. Like you don't. You really don't have a chance. So here's, so here's my question. You said I had written the word framework down. Like everything that you're saying, I'm like writing down 30 seconds before you say it. So this is tracking the word framework. If people want to transition to a new framework for eating can go too fast. I know that when you go straight carnivore, it has a certain impact. You get diarrhea. It's a hard transition within the framework. Where is a framework? Is it on sapien? Is it on your website? Sapien? Where can people find a framework for transitioning to what it is for them today, to where you would suggest that they should be?

I don't have actually a good tool yet, and I have sapien.org and it's kind of just a landing page. And I used to have a little framework. So you might just have to listen to this podcast and figure it out. So I have this nutrient to energy framework. If you can get this idea, it, it can make sense. Okay, so your body doesn't care the name of your diet. It wants nutrients and it wants energy. Right. And nutrients are protein, vitamins and minerals. And energy is usually fats and carbs. So for all of history, if we ate what was around us, we got the correct amount of nutrients and the correct amount of energy. And you're talking about satiety. I love that. Satiety is a big concept of feeling full. No one wants to overeat yet. Almost everyone does. Why is that? Well, it's because the foods that they're eating are not satiating them properly over time. Right. Over months. Right. It's not like you get fat in one day. It's that if you're continuously eating foods that are low in nutrients and high in energy, which is just all processed foods, eventually you're just going to overeat them and your body has to store that energy. Right. So for all of history, we ate whole foods. We ate meats and fish and eggs and dairy and fruits and vegetables, you know, stuff from nature, right? And if you just eat that with your instincts like all humans did, no one had calorie counting apps or weight, you know, scales that weighed their food. You will be fine. You will get the correct amount of nutrients and you'll get the correct amount of energy. But we figured out food processing and what food processing, processing does is it takes away a lot of. It either starts with foods that have low protein and low nutrients, or even removes the protein and nutrients to make them more shelf stable and to form them into packaged foods. And actually they're a lot more profitable if you take away all the protein. If you, you sell foods that are low in protein and nutrients, people eat more of them and they're cheaper and they're more shift shelf stable and there's a higher profit margin. So it all makes sense, right? So if, so basically your body food is four things, right? It's protein, it's vitamins and minerals, it's fats and it's carbs. So the protein, the vitamin minerals, that's, those are your nutrients. Those are important things. Those are your, the building blocks of your body. They make your organs, they make your bones, they make your body. And there's fats and carbs that are mainly just powering your body, getting you through the day. And so you really have to think about foods like that. I'm going to get more specific very soon. So if you eat the, if you eat the correct, if you get the correct foods, you're going to get the right amount of protein and nutrients and you'll get the correct amount of energy. Processed foods, they're the opposite. They have very low protein, low nutrients and they have high energy. So no matter how much of them you eat there, you're not going to win that. You're either going to be hungry or you're going to get too much energy. Does that make sense? But because they are empty, like, you know, they, they're filled with empty calories. So really what if you eat meat, fish, eggs, you know, certain dairy products and you cut out processed foods, all of a sudden you are getting the correct nutrient to energy ratio that your body needs. So that, that's what the framework is. It's really like I look at foods, it's like I'm sounds like what you do, right? You're eating high protein. It's actually not even high, that's actually just normal. Like for a 229 pound person, 22, 26, you should be eating 200 pounds of protein. 200 grams of protein. That's not high. That's just correct.

Right, right.

So it's like, if, so I look at foods, if I'm building a meal, I'm like, how do I, how am I. I need to base it on the protein. And I can just see the nutrient to energy of, of a meal on the plate. Like, I'm filling it up with meat and eggs and stuff like that. And then I have some of the other stuff, like the rice I talked about or fruit for dessert on the side. But it, it, you know what I mean? They're, they're in the correct ratio. I don't, I don't have to count calories. I don't have to do all this math.

Yeah. Let's talk about how change can be made. And there's, you know, there's, there's lots of precedent throughout history where if you impact the children and if they grow up with certain ideals, certain ideology or certain habits, that that's the way that you can really impact society as they grow, grow into adulthood. How can people, you know, impact the next generation through healthy eating? And I mean, is it, and is there any, is there any groups or any movements out there that you think are doing a good job to help these kids understand earlier what all this means to them?

Yeah, I mean, there's bottom up and there's top down. Right. There's two things that need to change. And I don't like regulations by the government, because as soon as you start getting into, like, regulating, what are they going to regulate? They're going to start saying, oh, you can't eat the meat or the fat. Right. They're going to start regulating the foods that we know are healthy. So there maybe there could be some regulations that you can't advertise breakfast cereals on tv. You know, stuff like that, like that can actually make a difference. You know, if you're indoctrinating kids at a very young age that all they want is cereal and Fruit Loops. Other countries, they actually can't have the cartoon characters on the cereal. I think it's in South America. Yeah, it's Chile. I think they're not allowed to have the Tony the Tiger and all these things. And they, they, you know, there are some good regulations around that because if you indoctrinate them young into wanting this stuff, they're going to be a customer for life. So part of it, yeah, a little bit of the top down is probably helpful, but then also the bottom up is super helpful, which is just parents teaching them at the young age that if they, if they're never eating cereal for breakfast, then they're never missing it. They don't even know it exists. Right. There's no reason kids need cereal. They, they can eat eggs and they can eat some bacon, they can eat fruit. Right. There's, if, if parents would just learn about this, which, you know, takes a while. That's why we're making the series. It's like, let's educate families on what to do. Then you never, you know, have all these foods available, then they won't want them. And yes, you can still have treats, but if it's, it's really like habit forming from the very beginning and educating families, I think that's really, is the best way to do it is educate the parents, educate the families and then they'll start changing their habits.

Yeah, it's an uphill battle due to the lobbyists and the money. I mean, we see it in pharma, we see it in tech, we see it in food. I mean, it's just, the money is just so overwhelming and the machine is so, it's, it's, you're really nibbling at it from the bottom up and it's really hard to compete for the attention, to get the right information out there. And, and it's just, it's clear. I mean, we are, we are sick and we are overweight in this country as a culture. And I know the cereals and the pastas in Europe, they, you can eat, people that have gluten problems can eat over there because the food is completely different. The sugar content within many of the products over there is, is a, is a third to, to a quarter of what it is in the US Based products. And we are just absolute, we're, we're, we're sugar monsters here. We just love it. I mean, you can't get, it can't get sweet enough. Question for you, where do you shop?

You know, I don't have to do much shopping. I, I go to the farmer's market. I, I have my own company knows the tail we have. We used to do regenerative ag. We used to sell like meat. But here's a side story. There's no profit margin on meat. There's no profit margin on any whole food. This is what I learned because I started the business, I thought I, you know, I have an audience. I can just give them a good product and I'll make money. You actually don't. It doesn't work like that. It's more about the Profit margin, no one's going to make money on lettuce or meat or eggs. There's just no profit margin on whole foods. So this is exactly what you're talking about. This is why the world is the way it is. Because you can sell a box of cereal for $5 and there's 4 cents of cereal and the box probably costs more than the cereal. It's like a 6 cent box. 4 cents of cereal, sell it for $5. That huge profit margin goes to funding fake studies, that goes to lobbying and goes to the marketing. So it's really obvious now that I kind of had this hard lesson of not making any money is that the world runs because of the high profit margin on, on processed foods. So that's why the world is the way it is and that's why it's, it's going to stay this way for, for a while until we can somehow figure out a new way to align incentives. Right. It's kind of hard because the money runs the world, right? So it's like, how do you realign incentives? Because right now there's too much money in processed foods.

Yeah. Capitalism creates and capitalism taketh away. So if there's. I went to Noel and there's not only consumables on there, but there's body products. So what types of things are available at Nose to Tail?

Yeah, well, people are waking up to all kinds, like not only healthy foods, but like healthy products. Right. Getting rid of toxic cleaners in your house or you know, using tons of fragrances and stuff like that. So yeah, so beef looking at, you're.

Looking at the bags under my eyes thinking, that guy needs some beef tallow rubbed on those eyes.

It really is. Beef dog is amazing. I do rub beef tallow on my face face every day. I got beef tallow hair product even. So yeah, beef tallow is kind of the original product that people would use. And you know, we, we didn't have all these fake scents and fake oils and fake stuff throughout history. And it's just, it's made of the same stuff as your body, right? Like we are made of saturated fat like that guy said, right? Our brain, we are made of saturated fat. So what better thing do you want to put on your skin? Well, saturated fat, right? So yeah, we just make just products like even deodorant. Like you don't want to put aluminum under your arm and it just soaks up into your body every day. And that's the main ingredient in most deodorants or antiperspirants is this aluminum. And so, yeah, we just make a bunch of products that are just essential oils, like just really all natural stuff.

I, I found something interesting in one of the articles that either you authored or you were quoted in. And the blue zones are big lies. I've, I've been a big, I've been a Blue Zone person for years. And hey, you know, actually I use that as an internal reference for I would eat, you know, I like to eat olives. You know, I'm like, oh, well, you know, the people over there, they eat olives and they live forever. So I mean, I've got, I've got these little things that I've picked up that probably aren't true. Uh, what is it about the blue zones that has that, that you find to be kind of a false flag for health and longevity?

Well, actually, the blue zone concept actually 90% true, except they get a very important part wrong. And Dan Buettner is the author behind the Blue Zone, so he's kind of pushed a lot of this into the mainstream and even had Netflix series about it. And the, the main problem is that he claims that these blue zones are plant based. So they actually aren't plant based. Plant based. They. There's actually a good friend, friend of mine, a medical nutrition researcher and, and practitioner has been around the world going to these blue zones, debunking it. I've been to a couple of them with her actually, and they are eating animals nose to tail. Speaking of my company name. They are eating nose to tail. They're eating the organs, they're eating the fat, they're eating everything. Go to Ikaria is one of these places. They're eating goats and sheep nose to tail. They're, they're dripping with fat. And so none of it's basically. Dan Buettner was a vegetarian, plant based type of guy that just wanted to sell a book and sell his theory that they're plant based. But I said they're 99% right because all these people that live a long time, they're doing all of these other amazing practices. Like they have a sense of community and purpose laid into life, right? They, you know, these grandparents are living with their family members still working late in life. They're outside, right, Getting vitamin D, getting into nature. They're moving a lot. You know, these people are walking up and down hills. They're not even using cars, you know, like carrying groceries up and down hills. They're eating whole foods, right? They're all of these people's diets. Are based on whole foods, but they actually do have a lot of animal foods. He just is willfully ignoring those or cherry picking and not talking about all the animal foods they're eating. So blue zones, pretty good. Just in the sense of all the things I just mentioned and the fact they're eating whole foods. They actually are not plant based. Mediterranean diet. That's, you know, it's pretty good too. It has a lot of good things. And olives for example. Olives are great. Absolutely. Olives are fruit that perfectly healthy. They have good fat and Mediterranean. They're eating fish, they're eating seafood, they're eating meat. You know, when they have it, they're eating some of the pasta is, is sort of a smaller than the American portion. You know, it's not like the spaghetti factory. You're getting like a mound of processed grains. And so yeah, it's not bad. But I, I like to think of things more in the, the, the framework, like a bigger sense of the diet, not just the individual food. Right. I think some of the, the falsehoods out there are that oh, blueberries are going to make you live forever. Or like olives are these magical foods? Well, blueberries are great and olives are great, but not because they're magical. It's just they're whole foods that are from nature and they have some nutrients in them and they contribute to, you know, keeping you healthy in their, in their own way. You know, lots of foods contribute in their own way and it also is getting worse foods off your plate. If you're eating, you know, part of the why whole food for good is they're pushing processed foods off your plate.

Yeah. All right, I'm going to share something with you, Brian. This is going to be a complete waste of your time. I'm telling you this in advance. All right. So I read a study on the blue zones and one in their diets and what they, what I remember about the study is the, the diversity of the diets that the people ate. Like 69 different things were in the diet and then they would have one thing that made up a lot of the diet like sweet potatoes or something like that. But, but the, the under. So they couldn't. They wanted to attribute it to the sweet potatoes. But my takeaway was the diversity with which the diet they ate so many different things. So they get a broad set of nutrients that today we have to take vitamins and supplements to get because we usually eat large portions of a small number of things. So here's pasta. We're Going to eat a whole plate of it, some bread and a couple of meatballs and like that's the whole meal where these people are nibbling lots of things. So I, I created a fake diet and I was going to actually build a website and I was going to see if I could actually get people to sign up for it. And it's called the One Diet. Now here's, here's where your time gets wasted. You'll never get this back. Brian. The One Diet is you can eat, you can only eat one mouthful of any one thing a day. So you as, but it's as much as you can fit in your mouth. So if you can shove as much pizza, piece of pizza in your only what. But you got one bite of that and that's your breads and that's your cheeses for the day, that now you've got to go through the refrigerator and say, all right, what else? You know, then you go to a banana, then you go to some olives and you go to some nuts, and then you go to all this stuff. But the key was you would run out of a diversity of things so you couldn't overeat and you would get a diversity of nutrients, proteins, all of these types of things that you could get. Now, I think based on our conversation, we should probably just eliminate like cake, bread and a couple of things there. But I mean, people that forage healthy things and eat a diversity of those things probably don't need supplements because across those subset of items, you're going to get all these nutrients. Now that's the stupidest thing that's ever been said about dieting. And that is not advice. But, but I bet, I bet you if I created a website and I did advertising around it on Facebook that people would download that diet and I would get somebody to endorse it. But, you know, but I'll tell you, it wouldn't be any, it wouldn't be any worse than the other crap that's out there.

You know, it's not the worst idea I've ever heard. No, it makes a little bit. No, there's some sense here. I'll tell you the sense. Some of the sense. One, yes, we ate a variety of things and yes, you want to get a variety of nutrients and a lot of people are missing out on certain nutrients. Two is if you're eating only a bite of pizza, bite of cake. I do agree with some of this, this type of treat mod like mentality where I, I know some people, I'm in the health World, right? All my friends are like really hardcore into this stuff and are influencers and all this. And I know what they eat. Some of them are very strict. They will not eat one bite of food that is off the plant, right? And I don't agree with that. So to just a little bit of truth in what you're talking about. I. Over the course of a month, I'll have some pizza, right? And so instead of one bite per day, I have like three pieces one time in the month, right? If I'm already, I'll have three pieces of pizza. This is what we're eating. This is what's served to me. And so, you know what I mean, there is some truth to what you're saying is that that's not going to kill you if I have a couple slices once a month. Not going to kill me. And yes, variety is good. And yeah, so there's a little truth there.

All right, well, you heard it here first. It's the one diet.backslash Jeffden. So please buy it. It's $2.99 for download of the menu. Everybody can have it, share it with friends. Now, I don't think I would do that. I'm not qualified. But even the rock, like, have you seen him posting his cheat meal? Like, he has one cheat meal a week. I mean, it's. He's got a whole pizza. He's got about 200 pieces of sushi and rice and all of that stuff. I mean, you know, if your body's efficient and it's operating at a. At a high level, it's going to plow right through that stuff. If you do it multiple days in a row now, you're creating a new normal. You're reestablishing a baseline, and you're, you're, you're shutting down all the good things that were happening. Alcohol has a tremendous effect on our ability to. I mean, it just, it just shuts things down, you know, for a period of time. And as I've gotten older, you know, I don't tolerate that anymore. It's, you know, it just, it's not good for me. It's. It's not, it's really not good for anybody. But, you know, I think as. As I have become healthier, I think the negative impact of things, you know, of things that I put in my, in my body have become. I become more acute to understand. Oh, you know, I have, I feel it. I mean, I can feel a bad meal or I can feel, you know, a couple of drinks. I probably shouldn't have had.

That's true. And you, you said a good key word, acute. I was just about to say your body is made for acute stresses, not chronic stresses. So an acute stress would be a cheat meal once in a while. Chronic stress is what I'm talking about with the seed oils or the, like, processed grains. If you're eating that every day. That's what I was saying with the allergies. Your body's trying to deal with this chronic stress of constant processed foods. And. And it can't handle. The immune system can't fight off the simple allergens. So your body's made for acute stresses. Doing a cold plunge is acute stress. Doing a sauna. These are good things. Even alcohol. I think alcohol is bad for everyone. You're right. And I don't think anyone should be doing it daily. The number one thing. Don't. Oh, there's some stupid study. Oh, two glasses of wine. You know, it's fine. No, no, no. Daily. Terrible. What I was going to say. Do a cheat thing. I'm not endorsing alcohol. But once in a while, your body can handle it, right? Like, if you're gonna drink, okay, yes, Go out for Christmas, let's drink on some holidays, someone's birthday. And it can handle it for that acute thing. But once you're doing it every day, terrible.

Got it. We're running up against time here. I'd like to spend just a couple of minutes, if you have it, on Food Lies, the docu series. Really great trailer online, easy to find. Pops right up. So if you Google Brian Sanders, Food Lies, you. You get to. You see the direction with which you're taking it. Can you speak a little bit to it and what people can expect, you know, and when it's going to be out?

Yeah, so we don't know when it's out yet. We got a great producer, we got all these great people on board as of late. We've got some new funding. It's going to be hopefully on a big platform next year. At the end of next year, like I said earlier, we're just really trying to make it easy. Like six episodes, 30 minutes, really high quality, gives you all this information, tells you the whole story. We can. We've made it so you could sit down a few. Fifth grader or say, you know, some guy set in his ways that's overweight or a cardiologist, and they will understand what we've been talking about today. They'll understand why we've been wrong about some of these things in the past and why that, you know, meat's not going to kill you. Meat is healthy, that animal foods are healthy, and that processed foods are the problem. So it's really the best way to unindoctrinate people, and that's what we're making.

Highly credible. That being said, if you decide that you would like to interview me to discuss the one diet, I'd be amenable to it. All right, last question for you, Brian. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?

Oh, wow. I. I mean, I said it earlier. Avoid sugar, flour, and oil. The simplest thing. Avoid sugar, flour, and oil. It's even better than avoid white things. It's avoid sugar, flour, and oil. Your life will change. Yep.

Rather be a meaningful specific than a wandering generality. And that is extremely specific about what to do or what not to do. Brian, where can people get in touch with you and what would you. Where would you direct them to follow you?

Oh, yeah, yeah. Search for food lies. I'm on all the platforms. Food lies. YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.

Got it. Got it. Brian, this has been awesome having you on. Thank you.

All right, well, thank you.

Yeah. This has been Brian Sanders. I am Jeff Duden, and we have been on the home front. Thanks for listening.