Food is MEDICINE | The Surprising Truth of Your Eating Habits

I've learned over time that the most important thing that causes so much of my patients' suffering is food, but it's also the cure. Food is medicine.

Yeah.

But then I realized I could sit in my office all day, but if we live in an environment where it's hard to access, find, and eat good food, how are people gonna really change? And it occurred to me that I have to think about the why. Why do people eat the way they do? Because they're surrounded by food produced by a food system It's not working. And then I'm like, well, why do we have that food system? Well, it's our food policies. It's the policies that drive the kind of food that's produced, processed, marketed, distributed, eaten, wasted, right? All those things matter. And I'm like, well, why do we have those food system we have? They said, well, it's really our food policies that are caused by the food industry. They really are the dominant force driving the education of our lawmakers That drives them to make policies that they think are okay. That's the problem. And I think I realized in order to solve my patients' health in my office, I can't do it there. I can't do it in the clinic or the hospital. I had to do it in the kitchen, in the grocery store, at the restaurant, on the farm. And, and that's why I started thinking about the bigger context of food and the food system, because people don't understand the broad implications of food, right?

No.

Number one, it causes chronic disease, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer, but also mental illness. Mental illness is so rampant in this country.

Right.

We see divisiveness, we see conflict, we see depression, we see anxiety, we see ADD, we see memory issues, we see all these things, increasing rates of Alzheimer's. And not all of it is caused by food, but it's a huge factor. And so if you care about your brain, you have to care about food, and you have to care about the food system that produces it. And we need to fix that 'cause it has broad consequences. It threatens our kids' academic futures. You know, kids who are eating Doritos and Coke for breakfast, or not at all, or eating processed food, can't focus. Their test scores are lower.

Mm-hmm.

Their grades are lower. Their absenteeism is higher. Their ability to earn a good living is reduced. increasing risk of disease, and their lives are threatened by the food they're eating. You know, the environmental issues and climate issues— people don't understand that the food system is the number one cause of climate change, and then climate change conversely impacts our ability to grow food, right? If you have the floods, for example, in the Midwest with soil that can't hold water because it's industrial farming that depletes the soil, you have these floods and we've got a million acres destroyed. So we're in this horrible cycle. So it's climate, it's environment, it's social justice issues, it's Poverty, violence, mental health, all these things are related. And I think food is the problem, but it's also the solution.

That's good to hear. And so we all could play a part in this. How do we— I mean, it sounds like such a grandiose challenge of epic proportions, but little by little, a little becomes a lot. Yeah. So what are some of those little things that somebody could do to be able to begin to To have this food focus?

Well, it starts with all of us, right, individually, and that's the place to start. I think, you know, your work is so good because it helps people train their brain to do things they didn't think they could do and optimize their brain function. But I always say it's a lot harder, it's a lot harder to be focused and attentive when your brain is fueled by junk.

Right.

And if you actually figure out that your brain is connected to your body and that it requires feeding and care, Then all of a sudden it's a game changer. So you could do all your techniques, right? But if you're eating processed food and soda and you're in a brain fog because of it, good luck. You know, if you care about your health and your brain, uh, and you fix that, you're going to make choices about food that's going to have a ripple effect, right?

Yes.

So if you say, I'm not going to have chemicals that may be bad for me, like glyphosate, for example, which is an herbicide used on soybeans and wheat and other crops, Then, then you stop doing that. It sends a message to the food industry that they listen to.

And we vote with, we vote with our dollar.

And our fork.

And our fork, completely.

Yeah, so, so I think, um, it's really important to make those choices that are good for you and your brain and that will have ripple effects. So choosing whole foods, stopping buying processed or ultra-processed food, which is 60% of our calories, eating foods that actually are regenerative, that restore the soil, restore the healthy ecosystems, and There's a whole science of how we do that.

What about organic food?

Organic food is important, but regenerative is the next step. It's regenerative organic, which essentially puts the emphasis on creating healthy soil, on conserving water, on not using chemicals, on really specific farming practices that help. And if you buy that, guess what? More people will do it. And now General Mills committed 1 million acres to regenerative ag. So our behavior matters. There's a study called the SMILES study, which is a randomized controlled trial of a healthy diet compared to a processed food diet, and there was a dramatic reduction in depression as a treatment for depression, you know.

Wow.

And anxiety, you know, what can you eat to fix anxiety? So if you're anxious and you're depressed and you have brain fog and you're malnourished, how are you going to actually make your brain work to do the things you want to do? And why should it be important to you? Because if you want to be living a satisfied, fulfilled life, you have to be able to be present. To be focused, to engage with your family, to be able to learn, to be able to show up for your work, to show up for your friends. I mean, how do you do that when you have FLC syndrome? That's when you feel like crap, right?

That's a technical term.

Yeah. And it's like, you know, if you want to solve the problem, you have to go to the root cause, or literally the root, or the seed. Start with the seed and go to the root. And it's the seeds we grow. And I think, you know, we, we, we've gotten into the where now the majority of what people eat is just, you know, 4 to 6 crops. It's wheat, corn, soy, rice. You know, it's very few crops around the world that are the majority of our food. And we've seen 800 species of plants. These are so powerful. These are superfoods. People say grains are bad. Well, what grains? Yeah, the industrial processed grains for sure. But there's something called Himalayan Tartary buckwheat, which is a superfood. It's grown at high elevations in the Himalayas that is high in protein, low in starch, full of phytochemicals that heal your body, and nutrients and fiber. I mean, it's an incredible food. And yet, you know, we don't get to eat that stuff. And that's good for your brain, it's good for your health, and it helps restore the environment. It's, it's all these benefits. So we need to sort of combine, you know, modern scientific innovation and technologies and agricultural advances with sort of ancient practices and sort of combine the best of those practices into a new way of thinking about how we grow food and how we process, distribute, sell, market, eat, and even waste food.