In this interview, JJ Virgin and a nutrition expert (Speaker B) discuss how modern diets leave most people under‑nourished despite abundant calories. They highlight the scarcity of phytochemicals—especially fruits, vegetables, and colorful plant foods—as a major health risk, citing that only 1 in 10 Americans meet recommended produce intake and that this deficiency outweighs concerns about sugar, lectins, or red meat. The conversation introduces Himalayan tartary buckwheat as a nutrient‑dense, immune‑supporting grain, and emphasizes a practical “add before you take away” approach: prioritize protein, then fill the plate with a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and spices to crowd out less nutritious options. They reference Deanna Minich’s “rainbow diet” and the goal of consuming 30 different plant foods weekly, noting that counting spices makes this achievable. Finally, they critique popular fasting advice, advocating a circadian‑aligned eating window of at least 12 hours to allow ketone‑driven repair processes such as autophagy, rather than extreme time‑restricted meals that end late at night.
Chapters
I remember having this conversation. I think you probably know Dr. Jeff Bland, right? Yes. You know, and he has found this amazing Himalayan tartary buckwheat. He's actually now invested in, he's growing it, and it is one of those plants that people would have avoided before, and it's so rich in nutrients, it rejuvenates your immune system. And I was like, gosh, it's, it's like the poster child of this. So how did this get out there that you know, we got so afraid of all of these things like, you know, lectins on down.
You know how these things— I don't know, right? How these things happen. You know, honestly, JJ, I think what motivated me to actually write this book is we have to step away from what's culturally now, what is the expectation. We have to step back and say What does our body need? How has our physiology adapted? And these are non-negotiables. This is 2 million years of how our bodies were designed to make us strong, help us thrive. And we have to go back to these basics. I mean, right now, 1 out of 10 people in this country actually consumes the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables. We have more disease and more mortality from people not getting enough of what they need from food than mortality attributed to the things that we're demonizing, like the sugar and the red meat. So the lack of these phytochemicals are the bigger risk factor, and by manyfold.
Wow. Like, you know what I love about this? One of the things one of my nutrition mentors taught me early on, he was like, add before you take away. And I remember when I used to see a lot of people one-on-one, they'd come in and they would have like emptied out their fridge and pantry the day before because they knew they were coming in to see me. Now when I say empty out, I mean empty out into their mouth, right? And I'd go, I'd go, you're going to be disappointed because I'm not taking anything away from you at the moment. Like right now I'm just going to focus on let's make sure you eat your protein and get that in first. Let's make sure you get your vegetables and your fruit. Because they'll just crowd the other stuff out. You know, it's like you'll be full. Imagine that. So I love that idea. I had no idea that 1 in 10 people are actually eating the fruits and veggies that they need. That's, that's wild. I know my statistics for exercise. So you combine that with the exercise stats and we are in a dismal, a dismal state here. And now again, we're going to move into the next piece of this. So you talked about what you're eating and adding in the fruits and veggies. And I love, I don't know if you've looked at Deanna Minich's work at all with the, oh, it's so great. You know, she would be a great person to talk to about this 'cause she did everything around the rainbow diet but really dug into the different colors of all the fruits and vegetables and why you need all these different things and how many to get in a week. And so, you know, I got fired up when I heard it about, okay, I can get 30 different things in in a week.
And actually, when you count spices, It's totally possible.
I think I've gotten in 12 already today and I still have dinner, so it's completely possible to do, especially when you start to think about it. Now beyond this is the whole fasting thing, and, um, yeah, I have, I have definitely got my ideas on this, so I'd love to hear, because you already said something that sung to my heart about eating during the, you know, I always call it eating by the clock. You know, eating during the normal circadian rhythm. And that's been my frustration with a lot of the fasting information out there. I'm like, you're finishing dinner at 9:00 at night or you're eating one meal at like 8:00 at night. This is, this is, and then you're going to go to sleep.
Yeah, there are two parts to the optimal timing of meals. So one is like you just said, it's the duration of eating. And when I'm using the term fasting, I think it's so important to define it because I'm not talking about a long fast. I'm talking about going a minimum of 12 hours, um, maybe a little bit more if someone has metabolic disease because the fasting can actually help improve your insulin resistance. So there are some benefits of going to 10 hours, but at a minimum, people need to restrict their eating to 12 hours. And the reasoning behind that is when we're eating, our body's in a buildup phase. When we go past that 12 hours and we metabolically switch fuel sources from the glucose to the ketones, our body switches to a breakdown mode. We need buildup and we need breakdown. If we are constantly in a buildup phase— so the average person in America now eats over 15 hours, you know, from the time we wake up, start consuming calories until midnight snack right before bed, 15 hours. We are spending too much time in buildup. And if you look at the results of that, well, right now, this experiment isn't going well, right? We just announced very recently that 75% of America is now overweight or obese. We cannot spend the time we're spending in buildup. So what I'm talking about is balancing buildup would break down. And at a cellular level, what that is doing is when we're eating, we are in a growth phase. And when we make that metabolic switch to using ketones— ketones are signaling molecules. Signaling molecules are how messages get communicated through our body. And ketones signal these repair processes that we're talking about. That resistance against DNA damage, reducing our antioxidant strain, anti-inflammatory benefits, the autophagy. So we not only need growth, but we need time for repair. And if we don't give our bodies a minimum of 12 hours, ideally even a little longer, to repair from all the daily damage that's occurring, we are not optimizing our bodies. Like on any given day, there are 10,000 injuries to our DNA. One— that's every minute, there are 7 injuries to our DNA. If we are not using our body's innate ability to repair that through our DNA damage response, that cellular stress response, our risk of developing cancer and heart disease and so many chronic diseases starts to go up. So the time interval that we're eating gives our bodies that chance to do the repair functions, the housekeeping that it needs to do to keep us healthy and protect us.
