How Quality Relationships Enhance Your Health and Longevity with Shawn Stevenson

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Your first order hello listeners, this is Anne Boeckle, 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 take 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.

I'm JJ Virgin, PhD, dropout, sorry, mom turned four time New York Times bestselling author. Yes, I'm a certified nutrition specialist, specialist Fitness hall of famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information I uncover with as many people as I can. And that's why I created the well Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode, we we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100. So you're trying to eat healthier. Maybe you've got your workout routine down and you're managing stress as best you can. But have you ever thought about the power of eating together with family or friends? We often hear about what we should eat, but what about how we eat and who we eat with? Today I'm incredibly excited because we're diving into this often overlooked topic with someone who has a wealth of knowledge and insights to share. I'm joined by my longtime buddy Shawn Stevenson, the best selling author of Eat Smarter and Sleep Smarter, a research scientist and the host of the Amazing Model Health show which holds the top spot as the number one health podcast in the United States. This episode is a goldmine of information. Why should I care about eating with others? Or how does dining with friends or family actually impact my health? Well, Shawn is here to unpack all of that. We'll explore why relationships and social bonds are so crucial to not just living longer, but living healthier. Shawn shares insights from his conversation with Dr. Robert Waldinger who oversees the longest running study on human longevity, emphasizing that our relationships are a key factor in our overall well being. We also dig into how we can eat to support our stress levels and improve mental health, significantly reducing the risk of stress related illnesses. Shawn breaks down the studies and shares practical, actionable advice on how to make this a part of your life. Shawn's new family cookbook is packed with delicious recipes designed to bring people together around the table. Ever wonder about those so called healthy foods that still feel off? Shawn and I dive into the concept of health health washing, where foods are marketed as healthy but are actually highly processed and detrimental, and how these ultra processed foods interfere with our metabolism and well being. Stay tuned for tips on how to navigate this tricky landscape, find balance and make truly nutritious choices that benefit your whole family. So if you've been curious about how to take your health to the next level, or if you're looking for ways to use food to connect more deeply with the people around you, this episode is for you. Stick around as Shawn and I delve into the power of communal eating and how it can transform your health and happiness. You're going to want to hear this and I will be right back with Shawn Stevenson, so stay with me. Hey, it's J.J. here. Now let's be honest. The holidays are basically a financial ambush. Travel, hosting gifts, surprise holiday school things. Suddenly you're wondering how December turned into a spending spree. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or your phone. What really grabbed my attention is how fast those little holiday expenses pile up with Monarch. Seeing everything in one place makes it a lot harder to accidentally overspend and honestly, I appreciate anything that keeps me from starting January with a money hangover. You'll love exploring the holiday spending category. Imagine how good it will feel to actually see what's happening before your credit card statement does that whole dramatic reveal thing. Monarch basically shows you exactly where the money is going in real time. And that level of clarity could change everything. Right? Don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use the code virgin@monarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with code Virgin. Shawn Stevenson, welcome back to the show.

It is my honor to be here.

Well, we're actually at your show.

It's my honor to be here in my studio with you.

Yes. How cool this was. And this is an interesting topic because what we were talking about offline is you did a family cookbook. And at first I was like, well, this podcast is well beyond 40, so there's not usually little kids at home. They're not doing family. And what might happen in this situation is you've got maybe someone single and they're just making dinner for themselves, or maybe they've got teenagers and who knows where they're going to show up. So it gets super duper random. Now. I think back to when I was in this state where I was single and quite often super random meant I was sitting on the counter by myself eating a bag of Siete chips with some hummus. Not really the best way to go with this, but you talk a lot about why we need to eat together. And I'm wondering how we solve the problem of this kind of stage in life and why we need to. Why is it important?

This is really the heart of your work too, is like we know the cultural way that things kind of unfold and we need to be intentional about adding certain things in to keep us fit and healthy and not just extending our lifespan, but our health span. And the majority of data like we've got. So we've got so many studies on this stuff now, but we know that the number one component for aging healthfully and extending our lifespan is our relationships, the quality of our relationships. And I actually had this really great conversation with Dr. Robert Waldinger and he's the director of the longest running longitudinal study on human longevity ever construct. It's been over 80 years. He's the fourth director to get the baton passed to him and he didn't even believe the data at first, which was again, looking at all these other confounding factors. Yes, diet matters. Yes. You know, not smoking. Yes, paying attention to exercise and all these. Yes, all this stuff matters. But the quality of our relationships, as he called it, having healthy social bonds was significantly more impactful on how long people live and live healthfully. And we know this, we know that our relationships deeply impact us. And for me, I'm a big why guy. So I'm asking like, why? Like what is it about it? And what it really is, is our relationships are a force multiplier. Our relationships impact our exercise, our relationships impact what we're eating. Our relationships impact how we're sleeping and how we're associating with ourselves, our own self talk. Our relationships are impacting, you know, the choices that we make on a day to day basis. So being that it's controlling so many of those other things, yes, we can like grin and bear it and you know, exercise, do all this stuff solo, but it just makes it more complicated. And so to share with this with everybody, for me, this was the, the reason I wrote the book was this was a catalyst of it and it was this huge meta analysis. It was 148 studies, which is a, a bunch of studies, but it also included a lot of people. And this was about 300,000 study participants. And these research, and this was from Brigham Young University. And they found that people who have healthy relationships, healthy social bonds, again we'll use that label. They had a 50% reduction in all cause mortality. All right, 50% reduction in early death from everything. All right, that is again speaking to. And they accounted for beating obesity for exercise. But it was the quality of the relationships that stood out. And so the question is, when life is changing, if we're not paying attention to this and being intentional about it. And yes, things can start to transition to where we're more isolated, where we are, you know, having like, you just use the word random. It's more random when we're getting together with people that we care about and that care about us. How can we be more intentional about it moving forward? And that's what this is really all about. And so just to throw this out, because we mentioned the context of eating, how does this affect our diet? What, what data do we have on this? Well, there was a study that was published actually right before I started thinking about writing, you know, this cookbook. And this was in 2018 when it was published and it was published in Nutrition Journal. And they found that people who do frequently eat alone and are more, you know, eat in isolation more often do in fact have poor diet quality overall. They tend to eat more ultra processed foods. And they also most notably have a Significantly lower intake of essential nutrients that help us to fight off diseases. And what tends to happen, again, if we're just. Why would we cook a whole meal for just ourselves? Right. And we start to just like, lean on these other things. And so with all that being said, I feel that under the spirit of eating together, it's like such a great opportunity to check so many boxes.

Yeah, right.

So we can have that relationship time and that connection time and get all those benefits, which we'll talk about, and also do this with amazing food. And the last time. Well, the last time I saw you, I think you were here at the studio, but before that, we were eating together, you know, and just being able to hang out and also to just. You pick up things, too, when you're eating around people. And, you know, it's just. It's such a beautiful part of being alive, and we don't want to miss out on this. And so this is the homework already. We're going to get to the homework early in the class, which is, let's set the intention to spend more time and to be that person. If, if you. If you don't have this as a consistent thing in your life, be the person who gets people together. You know, maybe schedule a dinner with friends. I mean, by the way, it's not just family, it's not just kids, but also your friends. You know, this could be coworkers, this could be. There's so many different flavors of this. Your, your, I don't know, your team that you might be on, you know, intramurals or whatever, get people together and make this a consistent weekly part of your life.

Yeah. You know. You know how they say when your kids leave after they graduate high school, they have some horrendous stat of how much you'll ever see them again. And I'm thinking, huh, Because I see my kids, I see one of my sons every day comes over and walks the dogs, and the other one comes over every Sunday, every Sunday night. My husband, my ex husband and my two kids and all the dogs, because they're involved in the dinner, too. A little too involved, in my opinion. Like, not a good dog trainer. We always have this dinner and it's like, it is the greatest thing. And as you were talking at first, my. I was pushing back a little bit at first because I was thinking, oh, but what happens? Because I hear this so often. Well, my family doesn't want to eat healthy like I do. Or, you know, for us, all our friends eat the way we eat. So it's Fine. But what would you say to someone who said, I'd love to invite people over, but they, they, you know, want to have a pizza or they don't want to eat healthy?

I love this was. This is the benefit of, like, I've worked in the real world with real people for many years. You know, I spent a decade working as a clinician and really starting to look at people's lives, you know, getting a bird's eye view because sometimes when you're in it, we're not able to see all the, you know, the forest for the trees. Right. And so being able to see and to find those leverage points, you know, I'm a big proponent of finding leverage. And so this is even the basis of why I created this cookbook. I'm a big foodie. I love. I love food. All right. Our friends are like, we know the people who are like the head of each diet framework. Right, Right. The top paleo person, the carnivore person, the vegan first person, the eat to live, don't live to eat person. You know, these are all friends and colleagues. And respectfully, I think that all of them are right and wrong. You know, we can be. Have a, you know, really genuine sentiment to say, eat to live, don't live to eat. You know, food is supposed to be energy. But for me, just being a very logical person at that, why are we driven to eat certain things? Why are certain things attractive to us? Why do any animals, where do. Why do any creature on earth go towards certain things? And they go towards things that they're desirable to them, they taste good. And there's tons of studies on this even looking at, like, you know, sheep, for example. Right. This is getting a little weird, but just follow me. There's this phenomenon called post ingestive feedback. All right? And so these scientists were just trying to understand, like, why would these sheep go and eat this particular food at this particular time and what it is and that we're. We do the same thing as well. Whenever we eat a food, our cells, our bodies are so intelligent. It's just literally taking notes on what we got along with that food. Say we eat some cherries, for example, and our cells are tracking. Our cells don't have labels and names for these things. We do that as humans. But our cells know that it picked up some vitamin C. It picked up a natural food source of melatonin. That's interesting. It picked up some anthocyanins, it picked up these, you know, array of antioxidants, whatever you know, some selenium, whatever the case might be, right? It picked up all these different things from these cherries. And so if we were living in a natural con. Context, if, for example, we would run low on this particular nutrient, maybe our body really needed some these anthocyanins to heal something. We know our body remembers that those cherries have that, and it would inspire a craving for us to go and seek out more of those cherries, right? And so that's what they were seeing with these sheep. They would go based on the nutrients because they were basically combining flavors along with certain nutrients to try to trick the lamb system. And so they started to crave certain things when they became deficient on certain things. All right? And so, you know, having this as, like, our blueprint, we're driven through flavor. But now this is the rub.

Yeah, I was just saying, nowadays, this.

Desire to eat tasty things has been manipulated, right, by brilliant. I'm talking. They're. They're incred. They're brilliant food scientists. And one of the more recent. Well, this was actually decades ago, but it's really been perfected recently is something called a gas chromatograph. And basically, you know, scientists were able to isolate the chemistry to make certain flavors, right? So that cherry that I mentioned earlier, they can use chemistry to come up with that cherry flavor. Now add that cherry flavor to things that are not cherry, right? We can add that to coke. We can add that to ice cream. We can add that to candy. And it doesn't have to taste exactly the same. That's the thing. Because you're just like, well, the coke doesn't really taste like cherry, but it's just enough to, like, muddy of those metabolic waters where your body doesn't really know, like, what am I actually getting with this flavor, right? And obviously the addiction quality there, you know, and the gluteal morphines and the sugar and all these different things that really manipulate our biology. And so I'm saying all this to say that what if. And you are. Everybody already knows that this is real, but what if we can have the most amazing food experiences, but with real food? And that's the hallmark of the smarter family cookbook. You know, my family, we've. We've always been like, we love brunch, you know, breakfast for dinner type family. You know, like, we'll. We'll do that. And. But I also know that going to McDonald's and the hotcakes and sausage that I used to get or, you know, International House of Pancakes, I Hop. Now, the quality of those things is so poor, and you feel it. You feel that food coma after eating that stuff. And so I came up with this amazing sweet. Instead of this highly refined flour, using sweet potatoes as the base, and making these delicious sweet potato protein pancakes. So I'm placing the protein.

Sweet potato as a base.

Yes.

How do you do that?

All right, let's hear it. So, I mean, this is like, now.

I want to dig into the cookbook because I didn't get this ahead of time.

Let me say this, too. Everybody's invited to the picnic. All right? Everybody's invited to the East Martyr Family cookbook. We've got recipes for every diet.

So you covered every religion in here. What is your. Because that's. I mean, that's how I think of these things. It's like, you know, I view diets as tools.

Yeah.

See? So maybe. Maybe carnivore for a month is gonna do some great healing, and then you move over to something else. They're tools. But it's so amazing. I flipped right to sweet potato protein pancakes. So first thing I have to ask you is, did you make these recipes up?

Yes.

You really did?

These are my recipes.

I am so impressed.

Well, I'll tell you, there's 100 recipes, right? And there's also 250 scientific references embedded in this book, too. Like, why we do what we're doing.

And this was like, number one cookbook.

Number one new release cookbook in the United States.

That's a huge, huge thing.

It's nuts.

This is a huge thing. Usually the number one cookbook is something like the Paula Deen or the Lord and Rams Contessa.

It's the one stuff. But buy my cookbook anyway.

Well, it's the ones that's like, I'm gonna take a donut in half and put a burger in there. Right. I mean, that's what it usually is. It's not this. It's not Honey Sriracha salmon and sheet pan fish with mayo, lemon sauce, and asparagus. Amazing. Okay, let's go back to the sweet potatoes.

Yes. So. Oh, but also just to. Right. Before we get to that, my. You. I love how you called it. Basically, these diet camps do become religiosity. Really. I think that it's. It's really valuable if you experiment with any. Any of these things, to speak from a place of experience. And so I've done all the things. I've been in this field for 21 years, and I'm done. But I'll do them Years at a time. I was trying to explain to somebody yesterday I was at my son's basketball practice that I was. I did a vegan protocol for five years when I was.

I was a vegan for five years.

Yeah. And I was 100 raw food for over two years. I couldn't do that living in Missouri in the winter. Wow.

All right.

And I didn't. This is when I do something, I'm 100 type of person, you know, so the only hot thing that I had was tea.

Oh, my goodness.

You know, and we had.

Weren't gassy.

We were dehydrated. I don't want to talk about that. I don't want to talk about.

The answer is yes. Yes, he was.

But I'll tell you, the beginning of that was amazing. You know, the level of clarity, the energy, all the things. But also, you got to look at what was I coming from.

Exactly.

So what were you talking. I was living in Ferguson, Missouri, you know, one of the most notable food deserts, quote, food deserts in the United States. And. And I also want to make a shift with that term because that evokes this belief that, like, it's hard to find healthy food. No, the healthy food was there. It's really more akin to like a food swamp, where we're just inundated with really, really low quality food. And there's healthy food there as well. But we're not attuned. We're not attuned to it. I did admit.

Don't you feel like that's everybody nowadays, though? Like, if you go into a Publix or a Vons, there's healthy food there, but you're also inundated with all of the rest of the stuff.

Yeah. I mean, what it really is, living in a place like Ferguson, it's an extreme. It's a. It's a. It's an extreme because when I walk out of my apartment complex, there's like a liquor store and then there's a Papa John's, there's a Dairy Queen. There's, you know, there's two McDonald's within a mile. It's like I'm just surrounded by this, and it's very cheap. It's like zoning like this shouldn't even be allowed, but in that community. And I don't see that living in Sherman Oaks, there's nothing remotely close to all that exposure. So that's. That's really what it is. And so with that being said, Paleo protocol, you know, again, all these guys are my friends. The. The keto Protocol. And I don't really share this often. Only a couple people know this.

I'm leaning in.

When I went in for my book prior to this one, Eat Smarter, which was, you know, really special book. When I went in for that book deal, I had like maybe 11 offers for that. But when I went into my who I ultimately chose, they were just like, so what is this book gonna be? This is gonna be like a keto book. You know, they had all these keto books from their authors on the shelf. It's hot. So they're doing what's hot. Right, right. And I'm just like, no, this is kind of like anti any of these frameworks because my advocation through that book was to teach you how to make choices that work for you where you are right now. And knowing that that's probably going to change and that's okay. And so with all that being said, everybody should be invited. We need to stop with all this infighting. Because the reality is, and this is, According to the BMJ, one of our most prestigious medical journals, about 65% of the average American's diet is ultra processed, fake, newly invented food.

Yeah.

That's amazing. And we're in here, we're, we're fighting about eating asparagus. Like this diet says asparagus is bad. Like, just if we focus on real food and what unites us and we could talk about the minutiae, but we're not going to help people if we're being dogmatic.

Amen. So nature in the majors.

Yeah. And now, you know, to circle to the sweet potato pancakes. So you can make the sweet potatoes. Whatever works for you. You know, this could, you could bake them, you could, you know, peel them and, you know, boil it. You could pop them in the microwave. Not a big fan of the microwave, but just to get it soft so that you could stir it as, make it a batter and add the other ingredients.

How'd you find out about making pancakes out of sweet potatoes? Did you come up with this?

So the closest thing that I had an exposure to was like, honestly, I came to LA before I moved here and I had a sweet potato donut at this restaurant. Right. And it always stuck in my mind. And I was like, how can I make this into a pancake and also add protein?

Yeah.

Right. So you can use your respective protein powder, whether it's a whey protein or, you know, vegan or vegetarian option, to increase the protein fraction as well so you don't feel that food coma.

Nice.

And there's also. But the. Here's the magic in the experimenting is like finding the right texture. That's the key, because you don't want your. Some of these people are making these healthy pancakes, and they're all. They're nutty as shit.

Sean. I'll tell you the funniest story I had. I think it was when we were doing Sugar Impact Diet Cookbook. You know, I went. We had a food stylist make this stuff, and then I was going on one of the new shows, and we had all the food sitting there, and we were going to talk it through. Well, the pancakes had been sitting there for, like, two hours before I'm going on, and this newscaster goes to grab one of these things. It was like grabbing a tire. I mean, it was. And I'm like. And it's live. I'm like, no.

You know, I've had one of those experiences. You know, I went on a TV show when I was working as a nutritionist and doing nutrition classes, and it was a hot, hot chocolate that I was making, and they kept it in this kettle, right? And it was simmering.

Oh, no.

So it thickened up. All right. And the news anchor is, like, pouring it. And at the end of the segment, and it's just, like, coming out, and it's not coming out, right? Yeah. And I'm just like, oh, my God. Yeah.

And it's life.

But, yeah. You know, and that's the. That's the news for you. But, you know, funny enough, one of the cool experiences was the week that the book came out, the East Martyr Family Cookbook. I went on Good Morning America, and I had this amazing chili recipe that's in the book, by the way. And within that, just being able to bring my family along, you know, So I had my two sons there with me and my wife, and just kind of taking them on this adventure and getting them these exposures. And so this is very much about family and not just eating together, but just finding active activities and just being more intentional about how can you find time to spend time.

Right.

You know, especially when everybody's got stuff, you know, as. As people get. Yes. And that. That statistics you mentioned about, like, how little you'll spend time with your kid after a certain age is like, that stuff can hit you, you know, punch in the gut, or it can be a catalyst for, like, let me really focus right now, you know, and really see this person and invest in them and love them as much as I can.

And they'll probably come back if you.

Do that they'll probably come back.

But you brought up a couple things that have jarred my memory. One of them, you know, you're finally coming to Mindshare this year. Yay. And one of the things that I've always prided myself there is because here you've got all of these health experts. So literally, we have the fruititarian, the vegan, the carnivore, the keto, the paleo. I mean, everything, right? The chefs there to try to find a hotel that would pull this off. But it's always been my joke is, I go, I have the carnivore and the keto and the vegan all eating together, and everyone gets along. This last weekend, when we did our wine mastermind, we found a French chef in Paso Robles, and he had to cook without gluten or butter. He was like. He took this on as his greatest challenge. But then we had vegans and we had keto. We had everything in there. And everyone's. Everyone's eating together and no one's judging each other. And it was super fun to make.

French dish without butter.

He's like. He was very. Then, you know, Cynthia and I did something in Miami last year, and what we decided to do, we rented an Airbnb, and we decided it was probably not the best idea, but it was very fun. We all made dinners and breakfasts together. Now, granted, dinner ended up being at like, 9 o' clock at night because we start cooking at 6, and it became a whole thing, but it was so fun. And so when you look at ways that you can spend time together, you can actually do the whole thing together, like, have people over and, you know, we'll either have people bring things, like, if we're doing a holiday, everyone brings something. Or my son Bryce loves to cook. So we're all in the kitchen cooking together, and it's super fun.

This goes back to, you know, that. That initial question of, like, the apprehension that might be there. Right. So if we're already coming to the table, literally, like, I just recently had over. A friend of mine, Dr. Michael Beckwith, came by, and he's more into, you know, plant based. Right. And so we have this enchilada. So it's like a sweet potato enchilada bake, which is flavor fire. It's so good. But there's the template of the recipe is vegetarian. Right. And. But you can add whatever you want. Ground beef. So we made another version that had ground beef. That's more like pizza, like, for me personally. Right.

But why haven't I been invited over? What's the girl gotta do? What she. You can move in. Jj, don't say that. Be very careful.

Be careful what you ask for.

Yep, yep.

But you know, and same thing, you know, we're, we love burgers as well. You know, we're a burger family. So we've got a grass fed beef burger. We've got. Which is like the quintessential like dad burger. We've got a salmon burger, which is. It's probably my favorite recipe right now. I just. It's so good. It's really good. So it's a sam. It's a salmon burger. You know, you use it, you need a binder and. But it's the, it's this amazing olive mayo that goes along with it in the arugula, which again, all these things are option to put on the burger, but the combination together will knock your socks off. But we also have a real food veggie burger too, because that's another issue. Like folks want to do a vegetarian protocol and they're eating these trash.

Talk about the plant based meat out there. Let's just get into it a little bit. Because you talked about ultra processed. But I feel like the gray zone that's dangerous is this area of poser foods.

Yeah.

You know, they hide out at Whole Foods. They look like they're, they're healthy. What's up with them?

So this is using this, it's a term called health washing. Right.

Because I did not know this term.

Yeah. So it's just using these catch catchphrases, these healthy terms like gluten free, like plant based. Like, you know, like for us, you know, when we got started in this field, low fat slapping, that label on there, it's health washing. It's using snack wells. It's using this like framework or this, you know, this moniker in the minds of the people and applying that to your food to negate the fact that this is an ultra processed garbage. Right. So for me, when I was trying to get healthy and not eat a kid's cereal anymore, because I was eating like, you know, Honey nut Cheerios or whatever and I was like, I'm gonna eat these Quaker oatmeal squares. Right. There's nothing more wholesome than the Quaker, you know, and, but not realizing that this is an ultra processed food to the highest degree. And actually this was, this is a fun fact. Which I had no idea about this when I was doing the research for the book, but I was utilizing some data from the environmental working group and they actually went and tested the most popular cereal brands for glyphosate. Right. And by the way, glyphosate. And this is, you know, the, the World Health Organization. And their data is classified as a class 2A carcinogen. All right, so this is not, it does not absolutely cause cancer. It's probable. It probably causes cancer in humans. All right? And so they, they looked at all these foods and basically they found every popular cereal was contaminated with glyphosate at levels that are higher than what was deemed to be safe.

Wow.

And.

And our body stores this.

Well, we can circle back and talk about that.

Yes, let's circle back.

But the highest concentration of glyphosate in all the cereals it tested was Quaker Oatmeal Squares, my former favorite cereal. When Anne met me, I had a bunch of. Because I was trying to recycle. Even though I lived in the hood, I was trying to do my part. Right. So there was all these empty boxes where she came over the first time of this Quaker Oatmeal cereal. And little did I know I was consuming such a high amount of number one, of course, probable human carcinogen, but also a notable obesogen.

Yeah, right. Yeah. Talk about obesogens.

So these are, as a carcinogen is a cancer causing agent. Obesity obesogens are obesity causing agents. So these manipulate our biology in such a way that they contribute or fortify or sustain obesity outside of the context of this calories in, calories out model, it alters our metabolism so that our body starts to tilt towards body fat accumulation. And the thing about any of these conversations, you know, it's, it's unfortunately, you know, I went to a conventional university and took multiple biology classes and nutritional science and all this stuff. And we were not taught these things and we were taught this very linear, just really tunnel vision about looking at human biology. And the reality is, for example, just understanding our fat cells. Like we in our society, we were kind of programmed to hate our fat cells. Like we just want them to go away. But our fat cells are incredibly intelligent, efficient. Like they've helped us to evolve and survive as a species. Like, they're there to be able to store energy in the case that we need it. Thank you, fat cells. But here's one of the insights that I was not taught in school. Our fat cells can expand upwards of, you know, contain a thousand times its, its size, its volume. So they can expand substantially. It can carry a lot, but they're not designed to carry that much. And so when our fat cells begin to become, we'll say, overly filled, it starts to set off an immune response. Right. So this is one of the things that we see when we venture into a high state of overweight and obesity is an overactive immune system. Right. So essentially it's sending out a false distress signal to our immune system that we're carrying an infection. Right. And so this higher level of inflammation, which everybody's talking about now, I've been.

Talking about this for a decade.

You know, this inflammation component, this is increasing the risk of all manner of disease and dysfunction, whether it's infectious diseases, chronic diseases, inflammation is really this kind of hallmark. And with that being said, our fat cells with these compounds, they can be lipophilic or lipophobic. So phobic is like, I don't mess with you. Philic is, let me in, let me, let me in, let me connect. And so a compound like glyphosate is lipophilic. All right? So those fat cells will gladly contain that and hold on to it. And this is one of the things, and there's some data on this. We can actually put a study for folks in your show notes as well, showing that as people are losing weight, they're seeing an increase in some of these compounds in their bloodstream. Right. And it can be one of those things that is a little bit scary. And do we want to lose weight very quickly if we're going to increase this overall kind of toxic load that our body's trying to deal with and metabolize? Because our fat cells essentially are helping to keep us safe in a highly toxic world.

Right. And it's why we need to make sure that there's so much when you start to think about losing weight that you need to think about to do it safely. And one of them is the ability of your body to detoxify. Well, Ray Ban Meta glasses come with.

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So the minute you start talking about all your oatmeal squares, because your body, I used to say your body isn't a bank account, it's a chemistry lab. Now I say it is a bank account, it is a chemistry lab, and it's a history book. And you look at your fat cells as the little history books, right. And as you're releasing fat, you're freeing up all these toxins. You better be getting it out or you're going to get in trouble. So, you know, sauna for the win. All those non starchy deep green leafies and fiber and protein. So what is your process when you're, you know, what do you tell people about these obesogenic foods? And now you're freeing up fat. What do they do?

And by the way, let's add to the mix exercise as well. And I. If you just even look at the word exercise, it's very close to the word exorcise, which is like to get rid of something. Right. From all my years of research and just look again. We've created the label of exercise and we have an image of what that is. Movement is a primary mode of detoxification for the body as well. You know, so just having these things, we can. It's more complicated today because we are living in a pretty complicated environment. But if we're subscribing to these things, like you just said, making sure that we're sweating, right. Whether that's with the sauna, whether that's through exercise, you know, maybe put, you know, a hoodie on or something like that, and eating really high quality foods, our bodies can still handle a lot of this stuff.

And so, so 65%, because I just heard this actually on another podcast this morning, that we're eating like 65, 70% of our diet is ultra processed foods.

Yeah.

And so if all that someone did and there's no way to eat ultra processed foods without getting toxins.

Yeah, right.

Besides just, you know, poor nutrient value. And so you're not getting the nutrient density you need. You're getting a lot of like simple carbs, sugars, but you're also getting things like glyphosates and bad oils, damaged oils. Like, it's just a.

Listen, One of the most overlooked aspects of this is again, all these newly invented, you know, food dyes and, you know, artificial flavorings and, you know, all of these things, it's just a conglomeration of chemicals. You know, it's not really food. Like to call Kellogg's, you know, Corn Flakes or, you know, Lucky Charms. Food is like, it's really stretching it. It's not really food. It's like all of these things are incredibly abnormal and it's so far removed from anything real.

But now we've created like, this is where I Have had the challenge with intuitive eating, because I go, intuitive eating doesn't work unless you're eating real food. And you'd have to have been eating real food for a while so that your body recognizes it. Because if you've been eating ultra processed food, you've so screwed up your nutrient sensing and your taste buds that you have no idea what you're really looking for.

Yeah, yeah. The intuition that's saying to call Papa John's is like, that's a new. That's a new intuition. You know what I mean? And, but here's the thing, too, and not to completely villainize these entities, you know, these companies. You know, Papa John's, for example, when I was in college, we had the Papa John's special at my campus. And it'd be $5 for a large one topping, you know, and we use that generously, you know, and it's like, these are all food experiences that are part of being in this world in 2024, which is amazing. Like, it's really cool. We've got all these cool things that we can come up with and invent and all this stuff. But when it becomes the majority of our diet, or even even a sizable percentage of our diet, all manner of metabolic problems start to happen. It's just because it's not real food, you know? And so my advocation is for people to let's not villainize that stuff or even like psychologically try to fight ourselves.

Let's just crowd it out.

Crowd it out with the good stuff. Just focus more on adding in rather than subtracting.

I had a great mentor early on in nutrition. He said. He said, add before you take away. And it is why I like the eat protein first. I'm like, if you do that, it crowds some of it out. I mean, you think of little kids, they get full and stop eating. Now it might not be that much anymore because they're eating ultra processed food. And I think I heard you. Didn't you talk about that cheese sandwich study?

Yes, yes, I did. How do you remember that?

Yeah, I heard you talking about it on some podcast. I'm like, I gotta find that cheese sandwich study. But I'd love you to share it because that's such a great example of what these things can do.

Yeah, so I talked about this in my, in my previous book, Just Eat Smarter. So it's more the Big Idea book. And this was a huge national bestseller. Just like took off like a rocket. I was blown away. And it was the number one new release in the United States as well. But the cookbook is different. You know, like, that's more like, eat this and you know, the pictures and all this stuff. But the initial book, Eat Smarter, I talked about this study. And, you know, what the researchers did was they had test subjects to consume, you know, these two different sandwiches. So it's basically like a crossover study. And one is what they called, you know, whole food sandwich. I put that in air quotes. And another was an ultra processed version of it. And here's the key. They were the same amount of fats, proteins and carbohydrates and the same amount of calories. This is very important. All right, same amount, but one food was whole grain bread and cheddar cheese, and the other was white bread and cheese product.

What I got sent to school with almost every day growing up, by the way.

I know about that. All right, so the cheese product, that's like Kraft Singles, that. It's not called Kraft Cheese, it's called singles because they can't legally call it cheese. It's cheese product. All right, so same amount of calories, same macronutrient ratio. Here's what happened. After consuming the respective sandwiches, the people, when they ate the ultra processed version of the sandwich, they had about a 50% reduction in calorie burn after eating that sandwich. All right? It effectively was creating, like, what I would call hormonal clogs to where the body was not metabolizing and releasing this energy. It was just like crowding it away, sticking it away and holding on to it. And again, this is outside of the context of calories. It's not just calories in, calories out. It's the quality of food that you're eating is an epic caloric controller of how your body's going to handle those calories. Right? Calories do matter. It's again, this is a socially accepted term that we use to describe the energy content in a food. But even that is massively flawed. And in that book, I actually took people through the origin because, again, I'm big. Why, guy, where this calorie concept come from? And it didn't start off in nutrition. It was like in physics, you know, but then it kind of parlayed its way over into nutrition. And you got to understand the nutrition calorie content on these different processed foods. They're not using a bomb colorimeter in measuring how much. They're just. It's gross. It's like grass. Generally accepted as, like, this is how much is in there. You don't know.

And I think it can be. It can vary by like 20%.

Yeah.

Could you imagine if your savings account interest rate varied by 20% or your budget, you were off by 20%.

Oh, man.

I mean, that could be the difference between going bankrupt or not.

Yeah.

So that's what I've heard is it can be off by 20, of course. And it's how you're metabolizing it as well.

Yeah. And that's the key too. You know, you have a unique metabolism. My metabolism is not like yours. And how our bodies process certain aspects of those calories as well. You know, you're. Again, the protein first concept is so intelligent. Like, it's just, it's easy, number one. It's easy and it is incredibly effective because when you're. Again, like, we'll go back and use the bomb colorimeter. And if people are like, wonder, what the hell is that? This is the original way that we measured how much energy is in food. Right. So you basically incinerate the food and see how much it can heat up water, basically. And here's the rub. With these calorie counts, it's not taking into account the indigestible parts of the food. Right. You don't, you're not a bomb calorimeter. You don't process and take the calories out of everything that's supposed to be in there. You don't. And also certain things cost more calories to burn. Right. And that's protein. Protein is more expensive. Your body burns more energy to break down the protein. And I believe my theory, because we don't know why. My theory is that it is such a valuable macronutrient for our biology, for our evolution. Our body really goes to work to get as much as it can from that protein. So it really puts emphasis and energy on breaking that protein dense food into amino acids, because every cell in your body is using amino acids. When we're talking about hormones, estrogen and testosterone and neurotransmitters and all this stuff, these are all based on amino acids, of course. Yes. Fat is a component too, by the way, Cholesterol with building our sex hormones. But we're talking about amino acids. All right? Our hormones are amino acids. And so it's so valuable to build the stuff that life happens on that things run on.

And we don't have any storage depot really for them unless we want to rip up our muscles. I mean, we've got fat stores. Like while fat's essential and protein's essential, we have a place to store fat. It is really Interesting that mother nature didn't make it so that we could really. That we have to have those amino acids in all the time.

Yeah. So what does this point to with this, you know, whole food meal versus ultra processed meal? My advocation is at least 80%. If you could target that being real food that you can actually recognize where it comes from and just kind of, you know, leave the play, you know, 20% playroom. I personally probably hover around 90, 10, you know, because I don't want to be that person because I'm. Some people might think that I'm 100%. Like, I don't eat anything that would be deemed to be, you know, like a ultra processed food. But if I'm like taking my son to, I don't know, the basketball game and I don't know what the hell is in those nachos, it's okay, you know, I have a couple of nachos, you know.

But I think we get, if we get a B plus, a minus, the way I see it is the poorer your metabolic health, the smaller your margin for error because you got to heal your metabolism. But once you're there, right. Once you're there, like A minus, B plus.

You just said one of the most profound things that we don't think about. The best time to have a food that might be sketchy is when you feel good, is when you're healthy. But we tend to do it at the opposite time when we're feeling down, when we might be, you know, really stressed out. Your body is going to interact with that food very differently. And that's another thing that I, you know, I'm addressing in the Smarter Family Cookbook is like how your body associates with food is different based based on your mental and emotional state. And this is why eating with friends and family has all these really remarkable health outcomes. And so just for example, there's a study done on workers at IBM and, you know, and working in tech can be pretty stressful. But they found if the test subjects, if the study participants were able to consistently eat a meal with their family, you know, quote, make it home for dinner, their work stress and just overall life stress, it just stayed. It stayed, quote, manageable. And they were able to metabolize the stress efficiently in their lives. Work morale stayed high, productivity stays high. But as soon as work obligations started cutting into them, being able to spend time with their family, guess what? Work morale starts to decline rapidly, productivity goes down and overall health goes down because stress is not getting metabolized. And stress and this was published in JAMA Journal the American Medical Association. These researchers determine, again, this is a meta analysis looking at multiple studies that stress, 80%, upwards of 80% of all doctor visits today are for stress related illnesses.

Wow.

So stress is literally killing us and it's just really again how it's altering our biochemistry and just flooding our system with all of these helpful in the right context, but really health detracting and damaging, you know, stress hormones and breaking down our tissues and messing up our digestion. The list goes on and on. When we're eating in this parasympathetic relaxed state with people that we care about, oxytocin's running high and our digestion is improved. When we're eating with people that we care about, we tend to eat. It depends on the context. Different studies, we tend to eat more for people that tend to under eat real food because they're just making their kind of mono meal for themselves. So people are eating more healthfully. But here's the big thing. When you eat with other people, according to researchers at Harvard, we eat significantly more vital nutrients that help to defend us against diseases. So yeah, it just, it really does matter. And so my homework at the beginning was be if you don't already do this on a consistent basis. Their data indicates, and this is from studies published in JAM and also the journal Pediatrics too. So for adults and children, but in particular with children too, three meals per week, that's the minimum effective dose. Three meals per week with people that.

You care about, that's doable?

Yes.

Three meals, yeah. I mean you got 21.

Yeah, yeah, three meals a week. So this could be Sunday brunch and maybe dinner, you know, a couple dinners through the week. This could be lunch, this could be. It doesn't. You could flavor it whatever way you want, but those three meals a week really do make a difference with our metabolic health, with our mental health and with our longevity.

And if you do those three meals a week and you do them from your cookbook, it's like exponential bang for the buck. There you go. Now you have something cool that you are giving everyone. It is your waste reduction quick start plan. First of all, like who doesn't love that name and why is it so important to reduce our waste specifically?

Well, this goes back to the concept of waste management versus weight management, you know, and what really has more, the long tail benefits. And you know, this, you've been talking about this for years of just being hyper focused on the scale and not your body composition. And we know that Carrying excess around the waist. And by the way, you don't have to be like, you don't have to be super slim. Right. Having a little bit of something to hold on to is okay. All right. But we know when we get to that place where we have a nice amount of excess is a clear indication, number one, of insulin resistance. You know, our bodies are starting to store fat in a way that it's an adaptation and our body's trying to protect us in a way. So. So this could be from the context of the food that we're eating. But also stress is another.

And when estrogen dumps, you store more fat around your belly because you're producing estrogen that way. So I love when I saw waste reduction, I'm like, good. Because I think one of the easiest ways that we can measure and stay on it at home is there's a Bluetooth tape measure called Renpho, so it'll read right into an app, so it's easy to track on your phone. And, and every week do a waist to hip. So you can look at your waist to height. Waist to hip, and just make sure you're tracking progress there.

Yeah, yeah. And also, of course, this is one of the, if we're being honest, is one of the vanity metrics that we, that we look at. And I remember, you know, when I was working with people day in and day out and, you know, I would take their waist measurement and of course, you know, weight and all these other different measurements. We do body fat and all this stuff too. But we would see, let's just say, for example, we see about a two inch waist reduction in two weeks. It was about two and a half inches on average. This was average.

Huge.

All right. And somebody might come in, you know, after two weeks and they've lost three inches off their waist, but they only lost one pound. Guess what? They would be like feeling like, I didn't do enough. This isn't working. I'm like.

And you're like jumping up and down.

Three inches off your waist. And here's the thing. Before we do all their measurements, they're already coming, coming in like they're pumped. They're just like, I feel so good, like my clothes are fitting better and all this stuff. But the scale. Mess with their head. And the scale again, this is a great, it's a great tool to have. But when we are centered on that without context, you know, and so just being able to work through that and also putting that into this quick start guide as well, just some of these insights and cues and because a lot of times we, I would have people come in like, you know, somebody I'm thinking about, you know, they're a former athlete. Right. And so they're coming in, there's like, you know, I love my legs and my arms, but then they get up, they get up out of their chair and they grab it, they grab their, their stomach and shake it at me. But I just want to get rid of this.

And I was, I'm not ready for that.

You know, like they just, we're talking and then just get up and grabbing it and shaking it at me and there's like, I want to spot. I just want to get rid of this. Right. And just these things that you've talked about over the years of like spot reduction and things like that. Now to say that you can't target or spot, that's not 100% true. And so that's another thing that we're sharing in that as well. Just like how do you actually science backed way target the belly fat area? Yeah. So all that's in there.

And it's not sit ups.

It's not sit ups.

It's not sit ups. There you go. For spot reduction, you actually can. It's not sit ups. You'll have to get the waste reduction quick start guide to find out more there. How's that for a. So where shall you get that? You'll get that@jjvirgin.com where'd we put it? Eating habits, I think, because we've already got sean backslashes. So jjvirgin.com eatinghabits this was really enlightening. I will be honest, I didn't know where we were going to go. I'm like, how are we going to talk about eating with family every night and the fact that three times a week you could do this? Because I'm always looking for, what's the prescription number here for whatever the thing is, whether it's steps or weight training or sleep, three meals a week is totally doable. Yeah.

Yeah.

How cool.

Yeah. And this is based on science. It's based on real data from the real world with real people. And so, yeah, just if we could target that minimum effective dose, we can get a lot of excellent, a lot of benefit in our lives.

Now we need the next study done at Harvard with your book as the recipes.

Come on now, let's do it. We could change the world.

Come on, Harvard, let's.

How you talking about changing the world?

Right? Well, this book is one that could do it. So there you go. Thank you, thank you. Eat Smarter Family Cookbook. 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 are built to last. Check me out on Instagram, Facebook and my website, jjvirgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast@subscribetoj.com so you don't miss a single episode. And hey, if you're loving what you hear, don't forget to leave a review. Your reviews make a big difference in helping me reach more incredible women just like you to spread the word about aging powerful after 40. Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next episode. Hey Jeja here. And just a reminder that The Well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk.