Can You Fix Your Diet Without Dieting? with Dr. Sarah Ballantyne

Hey, J.J. here.

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The energy to play full out at 100. So it turns out there are 10 top nutrients that most of us are deficient in. These nutrients, like 80 to 95% deficient.

In these, these key nutrients.

Things like vitamin D and magnesium and vitamin K and vitamin A and folate. And so when you look at and you go, okay, well if I could get these from food, how would I do it? And there's really never been a tool to be able to do that besides looking up each food, trying to find the foods high in vitamin A, trying to find the foods, vitamin K, et cetera. Not anymore.

My friends.

A couple months ago I pinged my friend Dr. Sarah Ballantine and I go, what are you up to? We should, we should do a podcast. And I think I've started to use the podcast as a way to connect, reconnect with friends. I admit it. She goes, oh, that would be great. I've been working on a new project. Holy smokes. I am so excited to share this new project with you. I'm going to put it@jjvirgin.com Nutribor but basically, Sarah, who you probably remember from Paleomom, she was big in the autoimmune Paleo world because she basically resolved her autoimmune problems with the paleo Diet. And she has been quietly over the last couple years creating a whole new scoring system, a way to look at food and all of those nutrients. I just talked about 10 of them. And to really score food based on its nutrient density so that you can make the right choices in your diet and just really kick your nutrients up and out of sight. Some of the foods she's sharing, like the way she categorizes foods, which foods to choose, it's so good. So I am super excited to share this with you. You're going to learn through nutribor what nutrients do in the body, which foods contain the important nutrients, how to increase your nutrient intake. And this really lays over whatever you're doing, whether you're doing the Virgin diet hint or the Sugar Impact diet or whatever tool you're doing. This is the ultimate tool that lays.

Over all of it.

So I will be right back with Dr. Sarah Ballantine. Stay with me.

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Some people think nature is like this, but actually it's like this. That's why Columbia engineers everything. We make for anything nature can throw at you. Columbia engineered for whatever.

Okay, so, Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, I am looking at this new thing you've got going on.

Everything.

I always looked at around you was all around autoimmune.

Yeah.

And now you have Nutrivore. What on earth is this? What happened? Cause I haven't talked to you for a couple years.

I know it's been too long. So Nutrivore, I feel, is the very natural progression of my work in the health and wellness sphere. So one of the things that I have been shouting from the rooftops for 11 years is the importance of nutrient density. But I got really frustrated a few years ago with not having better tools to be able to really identify nutrient dense foods. And also I kept running into challenges in this space of communicating what foods have what nutrients and what nutrients do in the body. And even those of us who really care about what we're putting into our bodies, there's still a, a huge, like, barrier of information in terms of this really basic concept of what nutrients do what foods have them, and how to choose foods to meet our body's nutritional needs. And that is the overarching philosophy of Nutrivore. It is not a diet itself, but a philosophy that you can apply to however you eat now. And it's just that get all of the nutrients our bodies need from the foods we eat. And one of the things I've done in building this whole new web resource, nutribor. Com, is create a lot of foundational content around understanding what nutrients do, what foods have them, how to combine foods that are nutritionally distinct to be able to get all of those nutrients we need, and creating something called the Nutrivore Score, which is a new nutrient profiling method that helps us quantify the nutrient density of foods. It was basically the piece that I was missing in all of my previous work.

Everyone's missing it. And so this is where you've been like, I was like, where's Sarah been?

Yeah, I've spent three years building this website. Yes.

This makes total sense now. Now I know why I haven't heard from you or talk to you. And, you know, it's. This is also seems so obvious now that you mention it, because I think we've forgotten why we eat.

Absolutely. I think this is, for me, it's like the fun pitch of selling Nutribor. Or at least the idea of Nutribor is it is the most basic logical concept you could possibly imagine. Right. Just meeting our nutritional needs from our diet. And yet it is innovative and unique. It's not built into USDA government dietary guidelines at all. It's not built into most of the popular diets that people might go on to Lose weight. Many of the fad diets that are out there hit on nutrivore principles accidentally, but that's not how they communicate foods. And that's where people run into problems, is with not really understanding what nutrients are in what foods, it becomes really easy to accidentally avoid. Foods that have specific nutrients and nutrient insufficiencies are linked to every health problem, every chronic disease, infectious disease. Not getting enough nutrients from our diet increases our chances of all of them. It's like which nutrient you're deficient in will determine which diseases you're more at high risk for. But given the current epidemics of chronic illness in Western countries across the world and how much of that could be avoided with just this basic understanding of what foods are going to give us more nutrients. Like that is the hole that I am trying to fill with Nutribor.

It's a huge hole. Now that you're saying all of it, I'm like, I can't believe that this hasn't been done before. I'm thinking, yeah, we've never done it because I don't even know where to start. Like to imagine. I remember when I was just putting together the Sugar Impact diet and I wanted to compare. Basically the Sugar Impact Scale was looking at a food's glycemic index and really how insulin genic it was versus how much and how. How much fructose it had. So I was looking at those things versus nutrient density and fiber.

Yes.

But then you're trying to figure out nutrient density and there's not it like I was like, holy smokes, this is hard. Right? And so trying to figure out how to put these things in there, the red, yellow, green zones. Because there wasn't. You had not done your thing yet. So thank you, I'll have to revisit.

Time to revise.

Time to revise. But let's talk nutrient deficiencies in general. Because as you were just saying that I go, gosh, even just thinking of the last couple years of just one of the obvious nutrient deficiencies. Vitamin D. Yes, exactly.

So there's actually 10 nutrients that 50% or more of the population don't get enough of from their diet. And vitamin D is the top. Right. That's a hundred percent of people don't get enough vitamin D from our diets. Now, of course, vitamin D is a special case because we actually make more in response to the sun. But also, almost nobody actually spends enough time in the sun to make.

And they slather themselves with sunscreen. There we have.

So we are Basically, most of us, vitamin D insufficient, which would be. We're low, but not low enough to have rickets. Right. Like, it's, it's that like range. But the difference between insufficiency and deficiency. 97.8% of people don't get enough potassium. 96.2% of people don't get enough vitamin E. 90.2% of people don't get enough folate. 80.1% of people don't get enough vitamin A.

Do you have these memorized?

No, I have notes in front of me. Okay.

I was like, what's going on? Whoa.

Okay.

No, no, no.

I'm totally true. I know you're a total nerd, but.

I still have notes in front of me.

No.

And like vitamin K, magnesium, vitamin B1, calcium and vitamin C are all nutrients where half of us or more don't get enough from our diets.

These don't really matter though.

Oh yeah. They're all essential nutrients that between them, they're increasing risk of every possible health condition you can name.

Right. This is just insane. But the question would be, could you really with a well designed diet? Because again, when you started to talk about that, I went, I didn't like, create either of my programs. Thinking about nutrient, trying to put that together would have been insane. Like, so difficult. And even when you're using some of the different apps for tracking, like I was, I'm using one for tracking right now. And I go, where, why, why can't it track fiber? Like, where, like, how is fiber not even in here? Much less going through and tracking all of this, which hopefully you're coming out with an app that's also doing this.

There are plans in the works.

Can you actually get this from a well designed diet or do we need to actually, do we need to supplement as well?

Oh, that's such a great question. So the, the quick answer is yes, we can get it from a well designed diet. The, the bigger part of that is there's actually a huge variety of scientific studies that show that we don't get the expected health outcome from like a multivitamin, multi mineral supplement. So if you look at how much like people are getting enough nutrients, but they're getting enough nutrients because of that multivitamin, you still see increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and type 2 diabetes. You don't see that actually come down the way you do when you get those nutrients from foods. So that doesn't mean there's no place for supplements. Like, obviously supplements can be amazing. It just means that nutritional Insurance?

Yeah, it's. That's your supplement named that for a reason. Like I always look at that and go, hey, that's your insurance policy. But you shouldn't just go, I don't have to worry about what I'm eating. Cause I'm taking a. That's ridiculous. So we should always go food first. But we've never had this tool, so this is so ridiculously cool. So these nutrient deficiencies, these top 10, I had no idea there were that level, like, of deficiency.

I don't think most people understand how, how bad of a situation we are in.

These are people eating healthy, like they're eating healthy and they have these level of deficiencies.

So this is average American diet. So you're going to have about 25% of those people who are putting a lot of effort into what they're eating and another 75% who are just eating what is, what is there. And, and not really putting a lot of thought into it. But various analyses of like diets that focus on whole foods and help us make healthier choices still show a variety of shortfalls. And it's different depending on what dietary structure you're following. And I think the reason for this is that if you, the vast majority of diets think about whatever diet plan that's out there, the vast majority of them are explained by what you avoid. Right. So the, the way that I would have talked about the Paleo diet, as I would have said, no grains, no legumes, no dairy, no refined and processed foods. And there's nowhere in that sound bite that talks about what foods are really important to eat. And that's what Nutrivore is here to shift that whole conversation. So you can say, okay, look, here are the nutritionally distinct food families. We need to be thinking about this in a more sophisticated way than five food groups. We need to look at these different groups of fruits and vegetables that have unique phytonutrients we can't get from any other foods that are really, really important for our health. We need to be looking at like seafood is, is probably the most important of the animal foods in terms of its nutrients because we're not getting Those long chain omega 3 fats very many other places. They're also way more nutrient dense than, than meat. That doesn't mean we only eat seafood, but it just elevates its importance. And when we can have an appreciation for how nutritionally important these specific foods are and start picking more of them, the more of them we choose, the more room we have to round out the diet with whatever other foods we want. Quality of life foods.

Yeah, I. This is so good because one of the first things, I had a great nutrition mentor, I'm trying to remember how many years ago, but one of the first things he taught me was ADD before you take away. And if you think about it, and I learned this when I wrote the Virgin Diet and I was like, pull these foods out. The first rendition of the Virgin Diet was six foods, not seven. I didn't pull out sugar cuz I don't eat sugar. So I just was pulling out. Right. And guess what people ate because they were like, I don't know what to eat. So I realized I had to. It wasn't pulling these foods out, was actually swapping. But if you first started with. First started with, okay, we're going to start focusing on nutrient dense foods and adding these things to your diet. They'll start crowding out the other stuff. So it's like how you would do with little kids who actually get full and stop eating.

Yes. Yeah, that's a really great analogy. And I think that approach is still very unique in the health and wellness sphere of teaching people what foods to swap with, helping people understand the value of vegetables and how many vegetables we really need to improve our health. It's a lot more than people think, right? Ooh.

So first of all, you threw out something about these food groups. And I went, okay, wait a minute. You said there's more than these five food groups. What are these food groups that you've mentioned?

So I would say. So seafood would be the animal foods that I would pick out.

Okay, stop with seafood for one second. What about all of the issues with dirty seafood? What are the ones we should be focused on? What are our concerns?

Most of the time we're talking about mercury, and when we're talking about mercury in seafood, the important thing is actually not how much mercury that fish is exposed to, but how much selenium it has. Methylmercury, the organic form of mercury that we don't want because it will bind to the selena proteins in our brain that help act as antioxidants in our brain. And then oxidative damage will build up in our brain and we will go crazy. That's how mercury hurts us. But mercury binds irreversibly with selenium. So if that fish has selenium in its muscle tissue, the mercury binds to that selenium and we can't absorb it. So as long as there's more selenium than mercury in that fish, we don't need to worry about it. It's not going to get absorbed into our body and it can't interfere with our selena proteins. So almost all types of fish have more selenium than mercury in their muscles.

And can we just also take selenium when we're eating fish?

Yeah, fish is our, one of our top sources of selenium. Brazil nuts obviously are the. The top. Like four brazil nuts is your daily value of selenium.

And then we could just do a little brazil nut fish.

That would be tasty. Yeah, I think that'd be lovely. So. Yes. So adding more selenium to our diets can help protect us and we don't need to worry at all.

So really, so all. Are there any fish we need to worry about? Because I have not eaten swordfish for 30 years. Are you telling me I can have swordfish again?

Yeah. Three studies that have measured this, what's called the selenium health benefit value, which is the selenium to mercury ratio in swordfish. One has shown more mercury than selenium and the other two have shown more selenium than mercury. So even in the case of that more mercury than selenium. If you again made sure you had brazil nuts that day, you would be fine. It's just those top predators. Swordfish, mixed data. Pilot whale. I don't. I've never seen pilot whale on a mini. I, I think it's near Hawaii. I don't actually know. I'm making that up. But it's just those like super top predator fish that can have more mercury than seafood and then like really polluted rivers. Right. Freshwater fish in really polluted areas is a whole different. Like that's definitely a different, A different situation. But I think most of us are eating ocean fish.

Yeah.

And we could keep that same type of logic. Talking about dioxins. You're getting way more dioxins from vegetables. The nutrients in seafood are actually going to help you process those better. The radiation from Fukushima is like so dilute in the ocean. It is minute. You get more radiation from a banana than you get from eating 60 pounds of tuna. As we go down all of the myths about seafood.

Oh my gosh, seafood's great.

We should all.

I'm giving you a big virtual hug and kiss. This is exciting. Okay, so seafood, what's next?

So in the vegetable families, one of the most important is the cabbage family. Cruciferous vegetables. So that includes broccoli, cauliflower, kale, turnips, rutabaga, Radishes, watercress. So they have a class of phytonutrients called glucosinolates, which are some of the most important cancer prevention compounds in the human diet. Um, they also could reduce risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. They have lots of other good things, but the cancer reducing. They, they block cancer from a variety of different points in the cell cycle. And they are also like great sources of biotin and vitamin C and vitamin K. They've got great fiber. Like, they're particularly good for the gut microbiome. But they're one of the most important vegetable families we can possibly choose. And because they have these unique phytonutrients, it elevates them. I would also elevate mushrooms in a similar type of way.

You've always been elevating mushrooms.

I know, I am a super mushroom nerd. But mushrooms have unique fiber types we can't get from any other food. They have unique types of phytonutrients we can't get from any other food. And they have a type of amino acid that's not one of the 20 that we build our proteins with, but our bodies still use. They're found in almost every tissue in our bodies called ergothioneine, which is such an important antioxidant, it's actually been nicknamed the longevity vitamin.

Wow. How, how many mushrooms do you like? What are you doing a week in terms of mushrooms?

So three servings a week is a great target. There's some really interesting studies, like the dose response studies, like how many servings have what kind of benefit. So there was one study that showed that for every 100 grams, like basically a serving we eat per day, we reduce all cause mortality risk, which is a general indicator of health and longevity by 24%, which is absolutely huge. But there was another study that did a dose response and basically found any amount of mushrooms was about a 16% reduction in all cause mortality compared to no mushrooms. And it didn't, like, it wasn't a super strong dose response that really implied that eating any mushrooms in a week was good. So I think when you look at these studies together, I think I would say again, my interpretation is three servings a week is a great target, but any mushrooms added to the diet is gonna be beneficial.

Okay, you've convinced me again on the mushrooms. I always forget about mushrooms. I'll be honest.

The great thing is now there's so many mushroom extract options. And what's really cool about mushroom extracts is they, they tend to have, they have all of these good. The fiber types, the phytonutrients, the ergothioneine. And you can have mushroom coffee or you can just have it in a capsule or you can put it in a smoothie in the morning. There's lots of convenient ways of. So that eating mushrooms that aren't mushrooms.

I'm doing.

Yes, that.

That cocoa calm from living ratio. I've been doing that every day. Does that count?

That absolutely counts.

Quality smokes. I'm so excited.

Okay, so. So about a, a teaspoon of. Is it a teaspoon? I believe it's a teaspoon of like a pure mushroom extract is about the equivalent of a serving.

That's very exciting. Okay, so we have seafood cabbage, mushrooms.

Then I would say the onion family alliums. So they have a classified nutrients called thiosulfonates which are really, really important for cardiovascular health. That's why garlic has amazing studies showing how great it is for like reducing LDL and total cholesterol and raising HDL and lowering triglycerides and lowering blood pressure. Um, so it's the thiosulfonate. So that's the sulfurous compounds in, in the onion family. So they get elevated as well. And then we're finding different nutrient profiles that are like leafy greens. So it's not a family so much as a part of the plant. So leaves just are. The type of fiber they have is. Is really important. They have. They're really high in vitamin C and vitamin K. Like they're just super high. And magnesium. Like there's lots of really important nutrients in them. And then root vegetables also have this like nutrition profile. They're great sources of resistant starch, particularly beneficial for the gut microbiome. They tend to be great sources of carotenoids. So those would be like my five vegetable families that I would highlight as being nutritionally distinct. So three based on the taxonomy, the family they belong to and then two based on part of the plant.

Is there a place in here at all for legumes? Are we pure paleo on all the nutrivores?

No. So I. Legumes are. Legumes are amazing.

Are they back on the table?

I'm eating legumes.

I've always been eating legume. Like I've always been like a little paleo plus and getting legumes.

Yes. I would say if you come from the paleo diet community, as I do, like lentils would be my top recommendation for diet expansion. So studies show again like a 20ish percent reduction in all cause mortality with about 150 grams of cooked legumes a day. So that's, that's about two to three servings per day is a lot of yeast. But even just eating three or four servings per week can have this pretty big magnitude of benefit. You can't beat them as a source of fiber. They're actually very nutrient dense. Like it's, they're packed with minerals, they're packed with vitamins. Like they have really impressive nutrivore scores. So in the like starchy foods category. So you would look at root vegetables, whole grains, legumes. Legumes win for nutrient density. They, they beat out most starchy vegetables even for, for nutrients per calorie. And there's a huge variety of studies showing that they are incredibly beneficial for the gut microbiome. They basically are like the best food for these really important species of Bifidobacterium lactobacillus and Achromansum unisophilia, which is associated with reduced type 2 diabetes and better glucose control. They feed Faecalibacterium pratznitzi, which is like this super important keystone species that when we don't have enough, it increases risk of all kinds of health problems. So like beyond the types of probiotics you're gonna get from a supplement, you're gonna support the growth of these really important species in the gut with legumes. And they're super nutrient dense and they have low glycemic indexes because of their fiber content. They're really great slow burning carbohydrates. Studies show basically a linear relationship with health. So the more you eat, the, the better your health outcomes. Vegetables are similar compare and contrast to fruit which has a U shaped curve. So there's like a sweet spot for fruit intake that benefits our health, but too little or too much doesn't as much.

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Oh, that's interesting. Okay, there's so much stuff here. So first of all, because I want to definitely get into fruit because I Get on rants with people that seem to think fruit's like a free for all. I'm imagining, as you were digging into this, were. Were there some things where. Like the legume. The legume story, Was that a surprise? Cause you weren't eating legumes before, were you?

Yeah, that's correct. So I come from, like, pure paleo autoimmune protocol background. And my. My first foray into this research was actually writing or at least working on a book on the gut microbiome. That project's on hold. But I spent six years digging into that research. And that gave me, like, a really different lens through which to look at foods. Just understanding what bacteria are fed by what types of foods, which is why I can say Faqalibacterium pratsnitzi without blinking twice.

I think you're showing off a bit.

It is a $5 word to pull out at dinner parties. For sure.

It's ok. I'm gonna work out. I always look at those and I go, okay, I'm afraid to pronounce it. Cause I have no idea how the heck to pronounce these things.

You pronounce them confidently. That's the. That's the trick. Just confidence.

Just confidently.

Just confidently. And then whatever. Then you can just say, oh. There's multiple correct pronunciations. Mine's just one of them. It's fine. That was my first. My first tangent from the science that goes into the Paleo diet and the Arterine protocol. And it really started me, like, rethinking foods. And so that influence I brought into all of the base research that it was nutri for. And my. My goal was to just try to understand where the science is at for different foods as objectively as possible and not bring any dietary structures or dogma to that research.

I would say it's like. It's like all this is like religions.

You know it very much.

Yeah.

And that was one of the reasons why developing the nutriverse score was so important. There's a lot of, like, in the scientific field that's called nutrient profiling. There's a lot of. There's 20 different nutrient density scores that have been developed. And what those researchers are trying to do right now is figure out which nutrients to include in their calculations so that their nutrient density scores match the healthy eating index, which is a measurement of how well somebody is following the USDA dietary guidelines, which I think is backwards.

Yeah, maybe we do this and then they have to redo the guidelines so they actually mean something.

This is what I Think makes sense.

I mean like, like again, you look at these guidelines and you keep going, where did these come from? And which companies funded these guidelines?

There's obviously a lot of lobbying that goes into the guidelines. And I think that's why Americans are so cynical with them. Right. 9% of people are even trying to follow them. Only this is crazy. Only a third of Americans have even heard of my plate, which has been out since 2011, I think.

So they still think it's the pyramid and I still.

Yeah, yeah. The amount of people paying attention is, is negligible at this point. Which again is why there's a great opportunity to communicate some more science grounded principles.

Right.

But what I did with the nutriverse score was figure out algorithmically figure out the, the database where the nutrient information was coming from. Like figure out what that was going to be and then just blind do all the calculations. Don't even look. There's a searchable database of 8,000 foods on nutriver.com, so you can just go and look up the Nutriver scores, thousand foods and then use that as a way of understanding foods better. Like just look at it as this really fascinating new data point that I now can reappreciate foods that I had been avoiding unnecessarily for too long.

I feel like besides the legumes, the big question is, and I don't know if you, you didn't know this, I actually had the great fortune to sit in a group in a small room with Dr. Lauren Cordain 22 years ago. There were like eight of us and he was commissioned to do this talk and it was like my world was rocked and I went so hardcore paleo. It made so much sense. And then I started playing around. I was just, I struggled with legumes because I was like, I just find it so hard to make sense of these legumes as these bad guys. And I struggle with all of the anti nutrient information out there. So have you seen like with the lentil legume story? Because there's still that whole question mark around it with autoimmune disease. What is the story there and what other surprises came up for you as you were doing these scores?

Such a great question. This is where my, my research in the gut microbiome became really, really important in understanding foods.

See, everything makes sense. It might not make sense at the moment as to why you're doing it and you say it's on hold, but it was necessary for this.

Absolutely, absolutely. I don't, I would never take back any of the work that I put into that project. And I'm sure that project will see the light of day eventually. It's. It just got put on the back burner.

It's fermenting.

That's it. It's developing its own probiotics. Our gut bacteria process a huge amount of antinutrients for us. And so much of how we tolerate these foods that are avoided on paleo due to antinutrients is very much reliant on the composition of our gut bacteria. Which is why you see people who discover through Paleo that they can't do any grains, they can't do any legumes. And Paleo is like a ma. Magical solution. I was one of those people suddenly start to be able to. They cheat and then find out that it's fine. They go to a restaurant and they're like, oh, I've been. I've been missing this so much. I'm gonna eat this food this one time.

We'll.

We'll see how it goes. And then they start expanding their diet. There's so many of us that are paleo plus in that way. Um, and it's because of how much that initial focus on vegetables, on seafood, these on whole foods in general, fermented foods have a. The special star status in the health and wellness community in general. It's that shift in the gut microbiome that now means we've got the bacteria to help process phytates and oxalates and all of those anti nutrients that without a healthy gut, we're not going to be able to handle those foods. But as we heal our guts, suddenly our tolerance is like way back. Which is why so much sense we can add these foods back Now. I think I'll never be able to eat gluten, but I will say the. Another huge surprise for me. It's not a food that I have played with because the last time I was exposed to gluten, I was sick for a month and it was horrible. But bulgur wheat is crazy nutrient dense. And I was not expecting that at all. It is basically the highest nutrient dense grain. It has a nutriverse score in the 500s. So it is rival ring lentils and chickpeas for nutrient density. And I. I would have never, ever guessed. Now as soon as you process wheat, the nutrient density drops way down. And all of a sudden you really understand if you look at the foods that are the ingredients in most packaged foods in the grocery store and you see how low that nutrient density is like all of a sudden, like a whole foods diet. And how that's so beneficial makes so much sense. But there's certain foods that I just was shocked to get into the research on.

Hey, have you seen. Do you know Dr. Jeff Bland?

Yes.

So have you looked at his Himalayan tartery Buckwheat?

I have. So I had fans who drew my attention to it and I had a look and I tried to actually figure out the nutrient density score. I tried to figure out the Nutri score and didn't have enough nutritional information and ended up, like, bookmarking a whole pile of tabs to come back to. And I admit, never got back to. But this is my reminder to do that.

Yes. Because his story around it is quite like when he describes how it's grown and in the harsh conditions that it's grown in, which I think that'd be interesting to just describe as like, you know, these harsh conditions are what make these plants have these incredible nutrients. Like, it's. It's the. There's one area can be grown in. It's like he said, the nutrients are off the hook.

Looking at what nutrient data I have compared to regular buckwheat, I would expect it to have at least double the nutrivers score. But buckwheat itself is. Is like just regular buckwheat that you're gonna get at the store is one of the more nutrient dense grain options. So buckwheat itself is. You're already starting with a fairly nutrient dense base. And then if you can grow that plant in conditions that causes it to increase its nutrient stores for its own survival, then we're talking about an even better food.

This is. I am gleeful hearing all this stuff because, like, just the. The argument over white rice versus brown rice.

Oh, okay. So these are numbers I actually have in my head. So brown rice and wild rice have the exact same Nutri score. It's 159. It's pretty lack.

And I pretty much only do wild rice if I'm doing rice, but I don't really. I mix it with cauliflower rice. I'm not over.

I do enjoy wild rice. It's like my occasional food. It's like my sometimes food. And it'll just build up a craving for it, and then I'll really enjoy it, but then I won't want it again for another craze.

Wild rice, the wild girl, she is.

But white rice has a Nutri score of 66. So that is the difference of getting rid of that nutrients. Now it's still, it's a cultural food that is associated with very healthy cultures. Right. And it's because it's so high in resistant starch, it's very good for the gut microbiome. And there are some studies out of Japan that show reduced cardiovascular disease risk with increased rice, like polished white rice, steamed rice intake. Um, I would say the whole grain is going to be even better. But I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that white rice was bad. But from a nutrient density perspective, it's definitely underwhelming.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Okay, what about the bell shaped fruit curve?

Okay, so this is, this is fascinating about fruit. So if you look at all cause mortality again, right. General indicator of health and longevity and fruit intake is like from 0 to about 300 grams of fruit per day. You see this really dramatic drop in all cause mortality risk. So about a 10 to 12% drop in risk.

0 to 300 grams. How much? How much? What does 300 grams of fruit look like?

2 to 3 servings depending on the fruit. And the serving is standardized as one cup. So one cup of blueberries for example. So if you have fruit that's like really dense, like mango would be a really. Or pineapple would be really dense fruit, you're talking two servings. Something less dense like berries, you're talking three servings. Um, and so you see this like dramatic drop in all cause mortality. And that's probably because fruit is a great source of fiber, it's a great source of phytonutrients, it has lots of vitamins. Like fruit is nutrient dense. Not like vegetables can't compete with vegetables. But most fruit would have a, a Nutri score in the like 3 to 800 range, which is pretty impressive from a nutrients per calorie perspective. But like compared to cruciferous vegetables that are gonna be 2000 or higher. So what happens after 300 grams is you start to lose that benefit. So your risk isn't, it starts to come back up. But 600 grams of fruit, which is four to six servings depending on the fruit, is still better than no fruit.

Wow.

Which is fascinating. I'm talking to people and fruit is their like gateway into eating fresh fruits and vegetables. They find vegetables too bitter or too crunchy or whatever. They can't do vegetables, but they're happy with fruit. Like that to me is the most important data because it shows that that as an entry point is really great. Swapping out those fruit servings over time for more vegetable servings, you're gonna get great benefit. Cuz vegetables is a straight line. The more vegetables we eat, the better our health. Um, and with fruit, we have this sweet spot, around two or three servings per day, where we get the most benefit and more benefit than less or more. But what these, these data really show is there's a, there's a real difference in how our body processes fruit compared to the same sugars from another source.

Makes total sense. What about, what about like a corn?

So fresh corn is considered a vegetable.

It has a nutrition considered a vegetable.

A vegetable. Nutrition is defined differently than a vegetable in botany. So vegetable nutrition has to do with how we cook it and eat it. That's why tomatoes are a vegetable and mushrooms are a vegetable even though a fungus. Right. Tomatoes are vegetable even though they're a fruit. And from a nutrition profile perspective, this makes a lot of sense. Corn nutritionally looks very similar to a lot of other starchy vegetables. It nutritionally looks very similar to potatoes, for example. So it has a sweet. Corn has a nutritional score of 202, I believe, which is fine. It's, it's a better choice than a dinner roll or a pasta on a plate. But it's not a nutrition powerhouse that's going to bring a ton of nutrients to our meals. And then like maize or cornmeal, like dried corn, we eat that as a grain, so that's considered a grain. And you can see that reflected in the nutrifer score. Now its nutriver score is around 150. Right. There's, there's a different nutrient profile. Eating the dried grain versus the fresh, like not mature corn. Corn. It's not particularly impressive, but it sure does beat a lot of other foods that you might eat in its place.

I just, I went to Peru this last summer and basically we, they took us to. It was like a 12 course tasting menu. My worst nightmare, I was like, I so don't want to do this, but I was on a tour and I had to go. And literally one of the things on the tasting menu was a like gluten free bread potato sandwich. I kid you not. It was like everything on the tasting menu was basically potatoes and corn and potatoes and corn, potatoes and corn. Then there was a little chocolate with potatoes and corn and then there was a little.

What did they eat?

They ate guinea pig. It was a quite interesting thing. Oh, yeah. Yep, yep. Guinea pig.

Did you enjoy it?

I. I had the guinea pig.

Tastes like chicken. Okay, cool.

Like you expect. But the corn and potatoes got. Got old pretty quickly. But as far as the fruit goes, is there a difference on in the score as it starts to rip.

Yeah.

A ripe banana versus a barely ripe banana. I would think those are very different.

Yeah. So definitely what happens in ripening is a lot of sugars are getting converted into other nutrients. So you tend to get a lot of carotenoid formation through ripening. Right. So if you think about the. The fruit going from a kind of green color to maybe a bright yellow or orange color, that's actually sugars being converted into carotenoid. So you're actually getting an increase in the score. So a lot of starch getting converted into sugar. Sugar getting converted into carotenoids.

So wait, is the sugar content's going down.

There's three steps. So starch is getting turned into sugar. So sugar content's going up and starch is going down. But then that sugar is also getting converted into phytonutrients. So your phytonutrient content is going up. It depends on the. The food that we're talking about, but generally I would say that nutrient density increases with ripening. It's not a hundred percent of a rule. So, like, green plantains have a higher score than ripe plantains. For example, if you look at tomatoes, from green tomatoes to red tomatoes, the score goes way up. So as a general rule, you're getting some phytonutrient formation that's really, really beneficial, even though you're getting that sugar development and more sugars in the.

This is like, insane. I can't believe you did this. So someone listening to all of this, how do you go about using it? Like, how does someone go and take this and. And lay it over what they're eating?

So come on over to. To nutrivore.com I have developed a lot of different resources there to help make this a practical dietary philosophy. So the first resource we've already talked about is the nutriverse score database. You can just go click on it, search. I recommend finding swaps. So if you. You would normally cook broccoli on the side, have a look at other similar vegetables, and see if you can find one that fits in your recipe that has a higher nutrivore score. So I would, I would start there, right? Think about the meals you already like and what one ingredient you could swap out for something more nutrient dense. It's a really, like, easy first step. So the Nutri score is one resource there. There's a lot of articles to help learn about nutrients and appreciate nutrients. If you go to the nutrient articles, let's say your doctor said you need to eat more vitamin E. You're, you don't have enough vitamin E in your diet. You can go to the vitamin E article in at the bottom. It's all of the best sources of vitamin e that have 50% or more daily value per serving are all listed there. You can click on those articles and go find the detailed nutrition information. So there's lots of corners of the website to explore. But then I've also created something called the nutriver Weekly Serving matrix, which is like a, a really simple checklist. It's like you don't have to weigh or measure things. It's all based on approximations. It's not for tracking everything you eat so you don't have to engage with the guilt blame diet culture cycle. It's just for tracking those like foundational foods that are nutritionally distinct and helping you reach your, your target servings per week. And that you can find under the menu under, under master is where you can find that.

And that seems once you've done that, like it sounds a little overwhelming and at first, but it sounds like just even paying attention to that one piece of it and going, okay, let's just start to work on these servings. Couple weeks. It's habit.

And the, the weekly serving matrix is very flexible. You can apply it to, it's, it's general, right? So it's not diet specific. So you can easily apply it to diets. And there's a lot of like any vegetable is on that list, any protein food is on that list. So there's a lot of flexibility with it. If you just check all the boxes, you're actually only averaging about 300 calories a day. But you're meeting the daily value of 80% of your nutrients.

Oh my gosh, that's amazing.

Which is why, which is why nutriver is such an important philosophy because it shows you how easy it actually is to meet our nutritional needs from foods. We just need to, to unlearn some things that we learned along the way that aren't actually that accurate and learn some new stuff that no one ever bothered to teach us.

I loved it. I've, I've been really reevaluating every single thing, like every single thing I've ever said, every single thing I've ever been taught. Every even like, you know, I went back into all my exercise science classes. I'm like, we know things different. Like everything, like every single thing is up for debate now. I'm like, where is the science now? And the biggest argument I've always had with Paleo, it's like, all right, but we don't live in Paleolithic times. Correct. We are in such different times now. So what can we learn from that? Maybe there's things that we now have access to. That would be fantastic.

I would say my. Especially with what I've learned over the last eight, nine years. I would say my biggest challenge with the Paleo diet is it's painting with a very broad brush. So it's throwing out an entire food group because there are a few members where the science shows those aren't great foods. So you end up going, okay, so all of these are not good. And the science doesn't support throwing the baby out with the bathwater. So I think I could still make a pretty good argument for soy not being a great choice for most people, but I'm. I can't make an argument for all legumes based on compounds in soy.

Makes total sense. So I'm going to put all this information@jjvirgin.com forward/nutrivore. If you're wondering how it's spelled, just like it sounds. N U T R I B O R E. And like this, I feel like this is your life's work.

Yeah, it really feels like all of my experiences, my experiences with my own health challenges and losing a bajillion pounds approximately. All of my experience raising kids and their health issues, all of my experiences blogging and podcasting and writing books and communicating and communicating science to a community that doesn't always want to know the science. All of that has really. It's all the experience that I'm drawing on to. To build Nutrivore. And it. I can't even explain how fulfilling it is to build something that seems so obvious and logical and yet is so revolutionary and that has such a huge capacity to, like, completely change the landscape of how we talk about food. And it's so excited to just be like it. I. This only launched, like, just over a month ago. It's so exciting to be right here at the beginning and see the feedback and the excitement growing. Um, it's just. It's.

It.

It really feels like this is what I was meant to do.

Thank you for sharing it with us.

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure.

You look and feel great and more.

Importantly, that you're built to last.

And check me out on Instagram, Facebook.

YouTube and my website, jjvirgin.com and make make sure to follow my podcast so you don't miss a single episode@subscribetoj.com See you next time.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things Books and Reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next reading. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading Next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.