#130 - Robb Wolf: Debunking Salt Myths & Embracing OMAD

All right, so the two biggest questions I get from everyone on the podcast is, Jorge, how do I get the Zero Hunger water recipe? And won't the Zero Hunger water possibly raise my blood pressure because it has sodium in it? So the answer to that is simple. You can get the water recipe at zerohungerwater.com. That's zerohungerwater.com with a Z right there. Easy. But the second question about high blood pressure is a little tricky. You guys email me every day on this. I've put stuff up on our website to explain how it doesn't change your blood pressure unless it's paired with high insulin, which means a high sugar diet. But if I were to ever have someone on the show to talk about this and go deep and make it simple so everyone can get it at a fourth grade level, it's the man that's on the show today. His name is Robb Wolf. He is brilliant. He's a biochemist. He's a New York Times bestselling author. He's a dear friend, and he makes complicated biochemistry so simple where I get it. And if I get it, you're gonna get it because I can tell you this talk is worth the hour you're gonna spend with us. You're You're gonna learn the basics on human nutrition from the world's leading expert. So I'm excited because today we are talking to Robb Wolf and we're gonna find out everything you wanted to know. So if you're ready to start the show, let's get started right now. Hi, my name is Jorge Cruise, but I'm also known as the Zero Hunger Guy. I'm a celebrity fitness trainer and a multiple New York Times bestselling diet author with 12 million fans. You may have seen my work with Oprah Winfrey, Khloe Kardashian, Kelly Clarkson, or even Steve Harvey. My career started because I was addicted to sugar, carbs, salty snacks, and stress, and experts told me to simply count calories to get control. They were wrong. My passion to get radical control over both physical and emotional health has led me to find science-proven shortcuts that help my clients drop 25 belly inches or even more, fast and permanently. And I know I can help you too. Welcome to the Zero Hunger Revolution. Well, happy Sunday. I'm so happy you're here, guys. I've missed you. It's been a little bit of time. I've been on a bit of a hiatus from the show, but I am back and it is Sunday. It's a beautiful May 16th here. Super excited. It's the kickoff really to an incredible week coming up tomorrow. We're going to be in the COVID The issue is May 17th of First Woman magazine is out now, so you can get it this weekend. Get it tonight, get it today. We can go grocery shopping on this beautiful Sunday. Uh, it's a gorgeous day in San Diego. Hopefully, hopefully you're gonna have a gorgeous day too. But today I'm so excited. We have Robb Wolf, as I said, guys, and he's brilliant. We're gonna be talking about everything that you need to know about Zero Hunger Water. We're gonna be talking about sodium, magnesium, potassium. We're gonna be talking deep about health, and we're gonna clarify the biggest question you probably have that I am not capable at my level. Uh, because you know, As a nutritionist and as a trainer, I know certain things, but I'm not a biochemist, and Robb Wolf is. And he's going to make it so simple so we understand the biggest question you have about high blood pressure and how sodium, only when it's paired with sugar, literally, uh, causes problems. And if you lower your diet to a low-sugar diet, which I recommend highly— please, guys, you guys know sugar causes belly fat, it just slows down your health, it causes aging. And when you cut out that sugar, guys, and the carbs and You're going to learn about the sugar calorie formula I have as well next week. So lots to learn next week, guys. The show's going to be fully lit next week, so I'm excited. This is the kickoff. So let's get started in just a minute, but first I have to give thanks to our sponsors. We are brought to you by Elemental Labs. This is the company that Robb Wolf actually owns with a bunch of incredible biohackers. Uh, this is the on-the-go version of Zero Hunger Water that I love. I use it every day when I'm at the gym or on the go and you New York, wherever I'm going. And they're giving us a free box of Elemental Labs electrolytes. It's a $45 value when you order this value bundle. All you have to go is to the following website. Just go to drinkelement.com/jorgecruise. My name, J-O-R-G-E, and I'll spell the URL. It's drink, D-R-I-N-K, L as in Larry, M as in Mary, N as in Nancy, T as in Tom, dot com forward slash Jorge, J-O-R-G-E. Get your free box of Elemental Labs. My favorite is chocolate. You're gonna love it, guys. We're also brought to you by Primal Kitchen. Primal Kitchen is where I go to get my avocado mayonnaise, which I have almost daily on my steaks. I love it. I put dollop of lemon chipotle, so delicious. And they're giving us for free a bottle of the lemon chipotle mayonnaise made with avocado oil. You probably know if you've been a listener of the show that most mayonnaise and most oils are made with canola oil or soybean oil. Which is incredibly inflammatory to our bodies and ages us and causes weight gain, all sorts of disease. This is made with avocado oil. Check it out, guys. Just simply go to primalkitchen.com/jorgecruz. Again, that's primalkitchen.com/jorgecruz. That's a $9, almost $10 value for free. And finally, we're also brought to you by the zerohungerplan.com website. That's my website, and you can sign up for a free coaching session with me live. All right, guys, so check that out. Go to zerohungerplan.com/jorgecruise. Hungerplan.com. That'll be launching soon, probably end of this month. So go check that out for free, guys. And with that said, who's ready to discover the power of the human body? A little bit about nutrition, super simple. This is literally like a PhD in nutrition in an hour, made simple with New York Times bestselling author Robb Wolf. All right guys, let's get started right now with the show. I'm so excited.

Welcome to a very special podcast for me, speaking to a man that I respect so much and is such a passionate man when it comes to biochemical health and paleolithic nutrition. Robb Wolf is the man that I'm talking about. He has helped me understand really what so many of us get confused about and understand it from a truly scientific perspective. This man is truly a biochemist. But he's also someone who's struggled. As you guys remember on the show, he's shared his past struggles with his own personal health, how his mother struggled with her health, and how he was really lit by that. And he's on the other side of the Zoom here. Hey, Rob, are you there? Please say hi.

Good to see you all. Yeah, yeah. And like I said before we rolled, you keep getting better and better looking every time I see you.

So, well, thank you, thank you. I've learned to say thank you. We got to appreciate that. And congratulations, I hear You and your family are in beautiful Montana. How is Montana treating you guys?

It is snowy and awesome. So we're really digging it. Yeah. Thank you.

One of my favorite movies, I think it was filmed in Montana. Do you remember Legends of the Fall with Brad Pitt?

Yes. And we, we live maybe a 20 to 30 minute drive away from where most of that was filmed.

Yeah. Oh, I'm going to come visit. That's what I'm going to do.

Open invite. Bring the whole family.

And we're going to eat some ribeyes and we're going to eat something good there and have a great time. But Rob, recently I was doing a lot of media and we were talking about high blood pressure, because a lot of people that I work with, as, and as you also with your clients, recommend as a prescription this idea of supplementing sodium in our diet along with magnesium and potassium. How much I love Zero Hunger Water, and you guys are our official on-the-go Zero Hunger Water folks, the Elemental Labs. I love you guys. We talk about it on every podcast. And I thought if you could do this, because you have a unique degree in biochemistry or a perspective in that, and I thought maybe share with everyone your origin story in the sense of how you got so dialed into biochemistry and also Paleolithic health if you want, because we've talked about it. But then help us understand the biggest question I think we got to address. We could just do this in the next hour or so. I'd be happy. And I don't know how deep we need to go to get people to have what Oprah would say is an aha moment, because right now so many people are scared. The salt has been vilified. As this thing that causes high blood pressure. And I know it's really an understanding of salt being paired with sugar and how that can be very unhealthy for the heart. But when salt is not paired with sugar, we seem to get healthier, especially even the heart. But would you kick it off and maybe take us back to how you got into biochemistry? And then let's get into that, that nuance of sodium and how it's healthy. And then maybe the misunderstanding that so many of my clients, they're just scared of salt. And I don't want them to be scared of the Zero Hunger recipe of your products, of any salt products, because I feel like it's such an important mineral and yet everyone is terrified. You would think it was straight-up poison or drugs or something. But would you take it away, Rob, and take us through this, please?

Yeah, your, your setup is probably going to be better than my answer, but I'll do the best job I can on it. I've just always been interested in health and performance. In my undergrad, I was casting around for what I wanted to do. Decided I probably wanted to either do research or go to medical school. A biochemistry degree sets you up really well for that. I actually really loved organic synthetic chemistry, but at the time I was going through that, you either become a meth manufacturer or you're a starving person with a chemistry degree. And so biochemistry was more the direction to take all that stuff. And it's cool in that it sits in the middle of the sciences. You have mathematics and physics, which are, are really describe the foundations of reality. And then you have biology that gets a little bit bit more squishy at the edges. And chemistry, particularly biochemistry, is cool. You get a lot of physics and math. You also get some steeping in the biological sciences. So it's a nice bridge to be able to look at a lot of different stuff and at least have enough background to start digging in and unpacking some stuff. And this was helpful in uncovering, you know, where the reality of our evidence-based medical research exists, because I don't know if people have noticed, but every other day they'll turn on the news and it's, this thing is good for you, and then a couple of days will go by, or a week, and this thing is now bad for you. And oftentimes what's going on there, sometimes it's bias, sometimes it's just ad science and like, uh, collusive forces in industry, and sometimes it's just the way that the question was asked. It, it's difficult to get a really broad comprehensive answer. So for a long time we've known that sodium was related to high blood pressure, and we know that high blood pressure for sure is a major factor in cardiovascular disease. And honestly, for me, I think blood pressure and blood sugar are the most injurious forces in cardiovascular disease.

And say it for us one more time, Rob, just to be repetitive here.

Yeah.

I believe in repetition being the mother of skill, but say that because I think you said it elegantly. Yeah.

Blood glucose and blood pressure, in my opinion, relative to things like cholesterol and LDL cholesterol and whatnot, are really the big drivers in cardiovascular disease and the big concerning features. And what's interesting about that is generally as a population westernizes and they get a little bit wealthier, they tend to eat more refined food. And they'll— with that refined food, they tend to have more sodium in it. And so there's then been this kind of guilt by association with sodium. As it— when you look at the, the way that dietary practices have changed, people are consuming more refined food. There's a significant amount of sodium that usually goes along with that food. It makes it taste better. It extends the shelf life. There's all these kind of features to it. But what's really interesting, and this is really where the rubber hits the road with this story, is that there have been a ton of gold standard randomized control trials where they put people on low sodium diets. These folks have hypertension, they have high blood pressure. They put them on a virtually zero sodium diet and it does almost nothing to change their blood pressure. Almost nothing. Like, it's very marginal.

So someone with high blood pressure goes on a low-salt diet, and, and if this is like hard to believe, but say it one more time, what happens? Nothing.

Almost nothing. Like, it's like a 5-point difference one way or the other. Like, it really doesn't budge things one way or the other.

And if I can preface this, the reason I'm so in love with sodium, and I have to give you and Dr. James D. Nicolai and Tony a lot of credit, is this idea of to have Zero Hunger, which is our tagline for the show here, and it's the plan I'm preaching to the masses now. I feel like we need to correct that hunger, that crazy hunger. And it's usually, uh, it's not even a hunger, it's like a calling or this cravings for carbs and sugar and all that. And I feel like people right now, even though COVID is different now, it's a little less scary but still scary, people still at home isolating, they're overeating all the time. And I know what's top of mind for everyone listening right now is how do I get some control over this addiction to sugar and carbs. It's— and I feel like sodium for me, and maybe you can get into this in a minute as well, has been a remedy. It has really fixed it. But again, then I'm scared I'm going to die of a heart attack or die of high blood pressure. So you're saying when you reduce it, it doesn't do that. It doesn't really lower the— by what degree? It's so small, Rob.

So let's say somebody has like a 150 over 90 blood pressure reading. It might take it to 145 over, over 85. Like, it's really not changing it that much. And we're going from someone, say, consuming 3,000 milligrams of sodium a day to 300 milligrams. So it's like a factor of 10 change, and you don't get a factor of 10 change in the blood pressure. But what's interesting, folks going on low-carb diets— or I think both you and I are pretty big fans of low-carb diets, but in full transparency Anybody that can figure out a way to lose weight, reverse insulin resistance, their blood pressure tends to reduce. And oftentimes, and again, this is whether it's a high-carb diet or a low-carb diet that they're doing this, people will feel like garbage. They get fatigued, they have neurological foggy-headedness and everything. And that's because there's a process called the natureesis of fasting. This is where we shed huge amounts of water and lots of sodium. And this happens more, much more significantly in a low-carb diet, but it happens in any type of a diet dietary intervention in which people are losing weight and normalizing insulin levels. So when people lose weight, get to normal, healthy insulin levels, then they don't tend to have high blood pressure. And that's really what gets lost in this whole story. There are folks that are sodium-sensitive hyperresponders. If they consume a significant amount of sodium, they get a really significant blood pressure spike, but inevitably those folks are also insulin resistant. So if you reverse the insulin resistance, And again, I'm a big fan of low-carb diets, intermittent fasting, all that type of stuff. But that's not the only path through the forest to get to it. I happen to think it's the best path for most people. It, it choose your own adventure, do what you wanna do. But the thing is that when you're vilifying sodium, you're vilifying one of these things that can be the tool to help you succeed, whether you're going low-carb, intermittent fasting, or some sort of a, a vegan protocol. And so it's really important to get the context around that. And the, the literature is pretty crystal clear on this. It, it, a low-sodium diets don't dramatically reduce blood pressure in hypertensive individuals. But if you can get individuals to lose weight, normalize insulin signaling, then they do end up with normalized blood pressure levels.

Love that. So if there were a bad guy— not that there are, I hate being picky on bad guys— if salt may be the, the superhero, because I think it is for me. I've been doing it now for almost a year, and I can tell you, using both Elemental Labs, using whether it's my homemade version of salt on the go or whatever, the Zero Hunger Water, the results are phenomenal.— we had one of my clients, Sandy, who lost over 100— what, lost 93 pounds? Now it's 100 pounds. She does this. I had another client, Julie, who's in another magazine coming out soon. She's lost 83 pounds. And so regardless, if that isn't it— you, you mentioned at one point, I think one of our past shows, how a high insulin environment, which usually stems from a high sugar or carbohydrate diet, not a low-carb diet, is more— I don't want to call it the bad guy, but it's really the problem because it's the combination. And tell us how this is unhealthy for our heart or bad for our heart of salt with sugar, because I think that's where there's some truth. But obviously, if you have a low-carb diet or low-sugar diet, that's not going to happen. And can you— should we point the finger? If there were a villain, I've always— I mean, 10 years ago, I read a whole series of books called The Belly Factor, talking about how a high-sugar diet causes the waist circumference to grow. And I think even Dr. Oz, everyone was behind this where sugar— I don't know whether it's orange juice or a Coca-Cola, whether it's from this or that— sugar, sugar, carbs are carbs, and your body breaks them down. But is sugar the thing, since you and I— and it's hard to generalize, but if someone could go low sugar, low carb, is that more the thing that causes the blood pressure to go up when you have a little salt, or even more salt? And is that connection there? Can you explain it to us? And I don't know if you have to pin the tail on the donkey here of sugar, But I, I can't think of too many nice things to say about sugar. Can you, Rob? Yeah.

Yeah. It, it, it's tough. I, I forget who said this, but there was a doctor back in the 1950s that observed that it, and again, this is in the 1950s, but he made the point that people were consuming the amount of sugar in a week that they used to consume in a year back, back in the 1950s.

So 50, that was in the '50s. And now how many times, times 10 now, or what?

It's so, uh, there, there was a really interesting historical account that made the case the average family used to buy— the family bought a 5-pound bag of sugar and that lasted them about a year. Now we have a per capita sugar consumption of about 125 pounds per year.

And it's not straight white sugar. It's hidden sugar. Maybe let's talk about sugar, how it's not really ideal. Maybe we need to say it, but then it's like an orange juice. And I know people think, oh, it's natural. It still causes insulin to go up. And then if they're not— that you're putting salt in your orange juice. But the idea is if you're doing a zero hunger water type of beverage and and you have a lot of sugar, then blood pressure could go up. Correct, Rob? Is that kind of to, to dumb it down a little bit? True.

Yeah. When insulin levels are chronically elevated, and th— this is where I think some of the low-carb people can go a little crazy. They're like, I can't eat carrots because they have carbs. And it's no, you can have some carrot on your salad. You can sauté some carrots. That's not where the, the danger is here. But when we're chronically overeating, which it gets really, it, The interesting thing to me is that if you go low fat or low carb, we're not getting the fat carb combo. And you think about pizza and ice cream, like all the things that are really hard to avoid tend to be these combination foods. And then whether you go high carb or low carb, part of what you're doing is excluding some of those food combinations. And I think to some degree that makes it a little bit easier to navigate, but when our insulin levels are chronically elevated, it elevates a, a kidney hormone called aldosterone and aldosterone causes us to retain sodium. If we retain sodium, we retain water, and that's where our blood pressure goes up. The flip side of that is that if we eat in a way that lowers insulin levels to a healthy degree, then we tend to shed the excess sodium, and then our blood pressure will come down. And there was just a, a really landmark paper that came out this past week that looked at, uh, sugar-sweetened beverages. And this is really interesting. Sucrose and fructose are just basically fructose-containing beverages were incredibly injurious to liver function. And there's a thought that insulin resistance occurs first at the liver and then spreads to the rest of the body. And this really nasty visceral adiposity, the fat that goes around our internal organs, appears to come as a consequence of drinking sugar. So if there was one thing that I really would level a, a, a, a gun at and say, this is really a dangerous thing is liquid carbohydrate.

Some things, including orange juice, right? As natural as orange juice is or a Coca-Cola, I think they both have near 30 grams of sugar in a, in a serving. And people say, oh, but it's not the same. Unfortunately, your body treats it the same, right, Rob? Or am I somewhat right?

Yeah, you're spot on. And plutonium is natural. Arsenic is natural. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're good for us. And so the natural moniker can really be misleading. And I don't know how normal it is for an orange to fall out of a tree and just be juiced in the process and end up in a cup. There's some process there. And for people on the low-carb side of this, nuts are the flip side of this. If you've ever sat down and tried to shell a handful of almonds, usually when people say, how many nuts can I eat and not gain weight on a low-carb diet? I say, shell them yourself. And then you're good because you, man, there's some time investment in doing that. Whereas like, if you just have a bag of almonds, all this work has been done. You can eat a massive amount of calories in a short period of time and, and people can get themselves in trouble. So it's, again, it's the processing of food that becomes problematic. If people are mainly eating whole foods, if they're eating some oranges, some apples, bananas and, and mangoes and stuff can be a little bit easier to overconsume, but avocados, right?

Because I love avocados. Is there higher in fat, lower in sugar, right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. If, when we start really processing stuff, I think that's where some of the, the problem really ramps up. But it was interesting that people eating the same amount of fructose from fruit sources, from food sources, did not experience the same type of fatty liver process and insulin resistance, but it's how quickly the fructose hits the liver that causes problems. And if people think about it, like if you have a handful of sawdust, you've got a campfire and you throw that on the fire, it, it just burns immediately. It goes through that process immediately. Whereas if we have a stick, it takes a certain amount of time for it to be processed and burned and broken down. And this is a little bit analogous to our metabolism. If we get whole foods, we have to chew it and enjoy it and spend some time with it. It has a really different effect on our metabolism versus being able to just shoot several hundred calories worth of what, whatever substance down.

So to summarize this before we move on to another topic I would love to ask you on regarding OMAD, in a nutshell, when you pair salt with nothing, you're in a good place. But when you pair it with carbohydrates or sugar, what was the hormone— say it just for repetition, Rob, just a mini summary here.

Yeah, yeah. So aldosterone causes us to retain sodium. That tends to happen in a high insulin environment.

Yeah. And for those that don't realize, a high insulin environment usually comes and is amplified significantly, not from fats, not from really proteins, a little bit from proteins, right? But mainly— I don't want to give you the middle finger there— mainly from which macronutrients? Say it, Rob.

Mainly from carbs. But I will throw a caveat on that. It's usually we're doing other stuff with it. We're putting other flavors. Oftentimes we're adding vegetable oils to it and making these long shelf life packaged goods. But the, the thing is that people aren't just eating vegetable oils by the spoonful. It's eaten mixed with these highly refined carbohydrates. And I think that this is where the, the dietary wars, like the low-carb camp says it's all carbs. The low-fat camp says that it's all fat, but when you stick those combos together and you have food scientists that figure out how to make them super palatable and addictive, like the Lay's potato chip tagline, bet you can't eat just one. I'll take that bet all day long. Like they're gonna win that bet all day long. And if you just had the potato, that wouldn't be that interesting. If you just had the fat, that wouldn't be interesting, but you add the combo and actually you put a little bit of salt on there and you've got a magic substance. If you're selling it to people, you have a really dangerous substance if you're on the consumer side.

So the take home for anyone that's listening, that's been using our Zero Hunger Water, that's been using Elemental Labs is to don't be scared of it. You can drink it, but just be cautious of when you're enjoying— and I don't even want to call it a high sodium diet, because Dr. James D. Nicolae Antoniou—

it's an appropriate sodium diet.

Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. But he shared with us, and I don't know if you want to add anything on what he's shared twice already, this idea that before 1930, the advent of the refrigerator, we as a species for many hundreds of years, maybe even thousands, going back to Rome, we would preserve meat, one of our easy foods and staples without growing agriculture, because that wasn't something that happened as much, would preserve it with the S-word, salt, not sugar, salt. And we were consuming, he shared, 20, 30, 80 grams of sugar in a day with meat, which is obviously protein and fats. I don't know what the ancient Romans were eating, barley. I don't know what other carbs they weren't— as much as they're Italian, they weren't having pasta and pizza. That wasn't happening in ancient Roman days. Were Romans eating pizza, Rob? I don't think so.

Not really, no. And even more contemporary societies like in Japan, They consume 2 to 3 times more sodium than we do. And it's only been since they've started adding more sugar to their diet that they've seen an increase in blood pressure. So this is a westernized culture. It's a very healthy culture. It's a longer-lived culture than in the United States, by and large, and they consume 2 to 3 times the sodium that we do. So it—

and Rob, tell us that, that, that study you mentioned, maybe we can include it in the show notes. It was just this year, 2021.

Yeah. Yes. It just came out a few days ago and I actually have a whole line of tabs that I will send to you as part of your show notes. It digs into cholesterol levels and PCSK9 inhibitors and cardiovascular disease. It's, it's a bunch of stuff, but I'll send it to you so that folks can check that out in the show notes.

And is there a study that you can share too, Rob? I don't know if you mind that talks about how this pairing of the sugar with salt is bad for the blood pressure and all that, because I think as much as I believe you and as much as I've talked about this one or two, whatever you can dig up and send our way, I'll include in the show notes. Because why do I feel like you have an arsenal of these?

Yeah. The, the point will be not so much sugar specifically, but elevated insulin levels plus sodium. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. That sounds great. And again, that only occurs really with a high level of sugar in your life, really more so that high insulin environment, uh, more than any other macronutrients coming from that, that, that family of, uh, sugar carbs and all that, as much as we need the good ones.

It's very difficult to do it without that. Like, the sugar and the refined carbohydrates make that process quite easy. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Thank you. All right. I hope that helps everyone because it sure gives me the confidence I want to continue living this way.

Now, Jorge, really quickly on that, if folks want to do a little bit of diligence on this, for $10, $15, they can go get a blood pressure cuff at a local pharmacy. They can check it before meals. They can check it after meals, check it 2 or 3 times a day, do that for a couple of weeks. And then that way it's not theoretical. They can see what's happening with their own body. And, and then it's very easy to do that. And again, for a, a rather modest investment, they can actually check their own blood pressure and see what's going on. And I think they'll be impressed with the results.

And I've had certain clients, some celebrities, Steve Harvey is one of them that just bought one on Amazon. It was like $30 or something. Are those okay to use these Amazon blood pressure?

Yeah. Just find something that's got like 6,000 and favorable reviews and go for it. Yeah.

Okay, good, good, good. All right, we'll include that in the show notes, guys, because I think that's great. Why not? Not that we're all scientists and we're not at your level, Rob, necessarily, where we understand the science, but we can look at something. And then what should be our goal? Since we'll end on this and move on to this OMAD topic of a proper— if you're enjoying sodium to give us that energy, to give us that hunger control, to turn off the cravings to more sugar and carbs What would be that number in blood pressure that we should all shoot for as a range to maybe give people those numbers? So if they are going to monitor it, they know what's good.

Somewhere around a 110 to 120 over 70 is pretty good. You start on that diastolic, the bottom number. When it starts creeping up above 70, then that starts getting concerning. There's some literature that suggests that could be problematic, but that's a pretty good range that we could shoot for. And just as an aside, That can be different AM to PM. It can be different based off of stress levels. If you just drove through a bunch of gnarly traffic, not the time to take it, or don't read into it too much. This is something to do multiple times throughout the day and just kind of make it fun. So a little n=1 experimentation. You are a citizen scientist in this regard, but don't overread into any one reading. If you get one reading that's out of that range, don't freak out. Like it happens all the time when you exercise, it gets above that.

Awesome.

Awesome.

I think that's so usable and practical. Makes such good sense. So let's just shift topics slightly to OMAD, an acronym that a lot of people are talking about. I was recently on The Doctors, the show on CBS, and we had a whole debate. Dr. Jason Fung joined us via— I was going to say satellite, but now everyone's via Zoom. And we had Dr. Khan, I don't know if you know Dr. Khan, pipe in and say how horrible being eating one meal a day is. And it's going to destroy all your muscle and all that. And Jason Fung clarified truly how that, that autophagy is healthy when it's done. This OMAD is this idea of doing a 23-hour fast and then eating for an hour or so. And then there are people that are concerned like, oh, I need more protein. I can't get enough to be absorbed. So tell us your thoughts on OMAD, because I know it's a tool. Some certain clients of mine use, some do 2 meals a day, but let's just assume people are doing 1 meal a day and they're doing OMAD, this acronym, 1 meal a day. What are your thoughts on this? Is it something that is going to destroy our health, or can it be a tool to help us have good health and help us understand it from the autophagy point of view? Because I just turned 50 and you're almost there next year, right, Rob?

Yep. Yep. About 6 more months.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A couple of months. Enjoy. We can go crazy in our 40s. They say 50 is the new 20, but I feel like I'm doing it not because I got to lose more weight. I'm about 194, 6 foot 1. I haven't lost any more weight. Back in the day I did, but I use OMAD every day, so I enjoy it. It makes my life easy, but I also want to do it because it keeps, keeps me young. It gives you this— maybe start with what autophagy is, maybe, Rob, because I always call it housekeeping. It's like room service in a hotel and you don't have to have it every day. But I like my house, my body maintained.

Yeah.

And I think this tends to happen when you do one meal a day. Walk us through this, Rob, would you? Yeah.

If we think about an organism growing like a child developing and whatnot, we have these growth periods of our life, but then we also have to have this pairing part too. Like when we developed in our mother's womb, we used to have flippers and we only got fingers because autophagy made the tissue in between our fingers go away because we didn't need it. And when a child is about 5 years old, their brain actually, they have more neurons at about 5 years old than what they will finish with at about 13 or 14. But the brain doesn't need all of them. There's a bunch extra there. And then the brain starts paring them back. So we have autophagy early in life. And then as we live throughout our lifespan, autophagy is a critical piece of keeping our cells, our mitochondria healthy. So it, when we are growing and developing, sometimes the DNA could be damaged. Sometimes it's from the sun. Sometimes it's from, uh, indoor air pollutants or a whole host of factors, or it's just a, a squirrely mistake. But there are mechanisms inside cells that tell them there's something wrong. This cell needs to go away.. And if all of that process happens appropriately, we tend not to get autoimmune disease. We tend not to get systemic inflammation. And perhaps most importantly, we tend not to get cancer. So autophagy is this recycling process. And I think a lot of what Dr. Fung is talking about, and with regards to protein needs, we can either eat significant amounts of protein, which I make the case that we probably should, even as we're aging and whatnot. And you can eat a, a pretty good whack of protein, even on an OMAD plan. But what's oftentimes missed in this story is that our body can and will recycle the amino acids that are part of the protein that are already in our body. So it can be broken down like, uh, uh, Lincoln Logs or Lego, and then reconstituted throughout the, the body later. So the, the protein needs are, are interesting in that if our body is very good at recycling and retaining the protein that we have, have, maybe our protein needs are not quite as high as if we're just consuming a large amount of protein all the time or overfed. And this is some of the stuff that is observed in particularly animal models. We haven't seen a ton of this in humans, but we assume it's the same, is that in chronically overfed animal models, autophagy tends to be low. And then we start seeing lots of problems. And it's worth mentioning that some things like coffee and exercise and even reasonable sun exposure, all of these things increase autophagy levels. So fasting is, is a great way to do it. Intermittent fasting, OMAD, but lift your weights, take a walk, get some sun on your skin, drink some coffee. All of these things lead into enhancing the beneficial effects of autophagy.

I love that. And I feel like so many people were responsive to the show. They wanted to find a way that could simplify life. I think that's the thing I always remember from Oprah that she taught me 20+ years ago, this idea of that if you want to reach the masses and you want to help a lot of people, you've got to dumb it down. We got to keep things simple. That's why I love Elemental Labs. It's a little packet. You add it to water. You don't need a— when I make Zero Hunger Water from scratch, it takes effort. I got to go mix this stuff. And I feel like a lab chemist. And you guys make it easy. And I believe simplicity is the key to it all. And complication is the blocker to execution. Because if you make things complicated, So say, for example, someone wants to do this. They're in midlife, like a lot of my clients, a lot of women that I work with are in midlife, and they want to try this. Obviously, if they go in this direction, one of their concerns is, I'm going to lose muscle. I'm just going to— my body's going to break it down. And I know what you just said makes good sense, but can you address that specifically, whether it's for men and women? I don't think it matters, Rob. Nope.

Nope. It's gender neutral.

Yeah. Thank you. That's the new word. I see it in the bathrooms all the time. So this is gender neutral as well. So for the men and the women watching, share with us because I sure don't want to lose muscle. I'm 50. I don't want to lose my guns. I want to keep my guns in place. So we're not going to lose the guns if we do OMAD, Rob, you can say that fairly certain?

Now, there's always caveats. Are they eating enough protein in this? Is the composition good? Are you still lifting some weights? Like, I'm a little— and it doesn't take a lot, like 15 minutes, full body circuit training, 3 days a week, it does miracles. Like, the return on investment is miraculous. So, I will throw out the caveat there. I will beg or hump knees or do whatever I need to do to get people to do that resistance training. And if you don't want to go to the gym, can't go to the gym, a bodyweight circuit, doing body rows with TRX, doing some push-ups, doing some air squats. There's a zillion different free online workouts. But as we age, once we hit about our 30s, we begin losing a little bit of muscle mass. If you lift weights or do resistance training, we extend that out into our 50s. And then you still, there's just this creep that occurs. The harder you train, the longer you push that out. A, a 90-year-old person who strength trains can be as physically fit as a 50-year-old who doesn't strength train.

Hey guys, it's Jorge Cruise. I just wanted to interrupt the show for a moment and invite I want you over to www.zerohungerwater.com. Check out our website where you can get the free recipe. There's a lemonade version that you'll get right away as soon as you sign up. Again, it's zero with a Z, www.zerohungerwater.com. And then every week on Sunday when we send our Zero Hunger Plan newsletter, you'll get a new recipe. And the cool thing is, is that we are starting our celebrity water series, uh, which is delicious in honor of birthdays. So it's gonna be awesome. You're gonna love these. They're delicious. They're easy to make. You make them at home with what you have, and they'll help you forget to eat so you can do basically a 23-hour fast and drop 2 pounds each day. So check it out, guys. Go to zerohungerwater.com. Let's get back to the show.

So it's huge. It's like getting double, double your life.

This with Oprah, but there's a term that's very fancy. It's a long word. It starts with the letter S. Would you give us the word here, Rob? The dot—

oh, sarcopenia. Yes, yes, sarcopenia.

Sarcopenia is basically the lack of use of the muscle. Yeah. And so we got to stimulate the muscles to grow. Strength training every day. I wrote books on this 20 years ago called 8 Minutes in the Morning, but now there's so many more options on YouTube. You can do all this. So let's assume we're working out. Let's assume we're eating I had Dave Asprey on the show and he started our whole discussion about Bill Gates and how his suggestion of eating plant-based protein was a little far-fetched as the only protein and how we should give up all animal-based protein. And I, for one, maybe you can give us two cents on that, Rob, because obviously we need some good protein. And I'm not saying protein from plants are bad, but I know you've talked about it not being as— I don't want to use the word superior, but it's not as bioabsorbable and, or or walk us through that, because I, I'm the guy who loves a good ribeye. And I think you and I have talked about ribeyes as a perfect food almost at one point, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And I wrote a book and co-authored it with my good friend Diana Rogers and did a film called Sacred Cow. And in that, both of those pieces, we dig into the environmental, ethical, and nutritional considerations of a meat-inclusive food system. And it is a massive topic. Topic and a very politically incendiary topic. I didn't go into it with the goal of committing, uh, career suicide, but it very nearly did because these things are really emotionally charged and people will throw things out like, "The science is settled." Science is never settled. Like, it is just as a baseline, we always learn something new. We always update our information, but we, we make the case in there and, and we draw on some pretty remarkable studies looking at, at food systems in developing countries and a host of other directions. We really make the case that animal products are disproportionately nutritious and tying back into the Zero Hunger community, they are disproportionately satiating. When you eat adequate protein, you tend not to overeat everything else. If you undereat protein, and it doesn't matter if you're low carb or low fat, you will tend to overeat more things. And there's just a reality, like we, we did a breakdown. If you, it in general, to meet basic protein requirements from exclusively plant-based sources, you will tend to eat significantly more calories because more calories just come along with the, the ride. Now people will say ribeyes are really, there's a lot of fat and it, there is, but it's also very satiating. It's, it, it, you will do one ribeye, you won't do two ribeyes. Whereas in my burrito days, I don't know that there was ever really a burrito off switch in that situation. Those are the considerations around that. And this is something that, again, from a self-experimentation perspective, do a vegan plant-based OMAD deal for a couple of weeks, maybe a month. How do you look, feel, and perform? Take some measurements, take some pictures, document that stuff, and then do something that's a little bit more keto, paleo, a little more animal-based, and see how you look, feel, and perform. And when you have the concerns around the ethics and the sustainability and whatnot, that's a really good resource is Sacred Cow, the book, and then also the film. And that's at sacredcow.info.

Oh, it's an incredible resource. Thank you for bringing that up because I want to make sure people know about that book and the film. I think the film is— in today's world, people have time for that and they can see the film. Uh, tell them where it's— where the film's available.

Rob, sacredcow.info will give you— but it's basically Amazon, any main—

Netflix, not Netflix, more Amazon, right? Amazon.

I think it's on Netflix also.

Yeah. Oh yeah. All right. All right. So for someone out there, because I have a couple celebrities, I'm not going to mention names, that are strict vegans and, and they struggle with weight as they get older. One of my dearest friends is Marko Borrago. He's written a few books that have been, uh, the foreword have been written by Jay-Z and Beyoncé. They're public about the Green Print, about this 22-day nutritional plan about eating plants that will change your life. They don't even eat fish, they don't eat eggs, they don't eat They don't eat meat. And God bless Beyoncé. I look at this beautiful woman and she doesn't quite look the same. I was a fan of Austin Powers. Do you remember Austin Powers?

Yeah. Yep.

She looked gorgeous, but it's a different figure. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but all I know is I have a lot of clients currently that are vegans or based is the new term. That's less polarizing, right?

Right.

Plant-based, but really they're just plants. They're just not based in plants. They don't add meat at all. I don't know if it's plant exclusive. What do we say to them, Rob? I don't wanna polarize Beyoncé right now. I don't want her to be— I don't want Marco to say, "Who are you nuts?" Yeah. But, but if I'm gonna try to make an elegant argument with your help, because you're the man that could do this, what would we say to someone like Marco Barrago? As much as he is a good-hearted man, he's a fellow Latin, he's Cuban. I love Marco. This is for you. What do we say for them to consider, at least consider having, maybe it's not even a ribeye. I don't know. I don't know why they're so scared of things like that. And obviously they don't wanna hurt the planet. Well, obviously you fixed that by writing the book we just talked about, and now they can go watch that movie. But what do we say when it comes to our own health and how I look at Mr. Gates, Bill Gates is on a, he's on a mission to save the earth, which I, who isn't for that, Rob? We all wanna save our earth. He says in 30 years, if we don't fix this, we're screwed. We're literally screwed. But his solution is putting billions in. I saw at Costco this, what's that brand of meatless meat called? Looks like hamburger meat.

Impossible Burger.

I see it everywhere and I'm like, oh my God, what do we say to Mr. Gates and Marco Barrago and maybe Beyoncé right now to get them to think that this— I don't know if we're going to be a little— this is my one moment to ask you to turn up the heat on this conversation.

So Bill Gates, I would— so all of these things, I like asking questions more than doing a dictation to people. And Bill Gates, I would ask the question, What is the ethical concern that you are now the largest owner of farmland in the United States? That is, all of the raw materials will be going into these plant-based meat alternatives. So I find some kind of ethical considerations around that. I love capitalism, actually, which I know is a dirty word these days. I like people being entrepreneurs and going out there, but there's also some points where the, the ethics can get a little bit dodgy and transparency and whatnot. So, Bill Gates—

So, say one more time, Rob. So, your question would be to Mr. Gates, for example, just tell us about—

Are there any ethical things that we should be worried about, the fact that you're promoting plant-based meat alternatives and you are now the largest owner of farmland to supply raw material for those same products? Yeah. So, that would be—

What do you think his response would be and what is the truth if there were a guess or Well, this is—

Oprah said, "Keep it simple." This is one of the challenges of our time. Things like climate change just aren't simple. And that's part of the reason why we wrote a 600-page book that got pared down to 300 pages and then a 2-hour movie. Like it's legitimately complex stuff. And I'm almost hesitant to say that much because if I just do a quick soundbite on it, then it's dismissive. It almost dishonors how complex the situation is. And so So what I would encourage people that if they have concerns around this, so for Beyoncé and, and then your other friend, I would ask the questions, why do you think a plant-based approach is superior for health, superior from an ethical perspective, and also superior from an environmental perspective? And would you be open to looking into some other information that maybe looks at this in a little bit of a different way? And maybe there's a little bit more gray area in that story than what we're generally being be told.

For me, I, I know you have a background in Paleolithic nutrition, right, Rob, to some degree?

Yeah, yeah.

I feel like for me, common sense, and to simplify things, I learned this from Tony Robbins years ago, is our past behavior is the greatest indicator of possible future behavior. When did we ever as a society, for the last— Mark Sisson will say 2 to 3 million years. How long have we been around as a species, Rob, in your opinion? 2, 3 million?

I don't As a species, about 200,000, but as a line of Homo for 2 to 3 million years, something that you would look at and you say, that's a human being.

Yeah. So it's 2 million years. What did we eat, Rob? You can tell us that at least, because that is historical. Yeah.

We have a pretty good sense, this hunter-gatherer life way, that there were a lot of animal products or a lot of minimally processed plant materials. It varied with location. It varied with season.

Season.

People who lived at more northern latitudes ate far more meat and far less plant material. People who lived more equatorially, that ratio was probably flipped. But even there, it depended on seasonality and location. Like the Hadza in Tanzania, they interestingly, their summer is when there's very little plant material around because it's very dry. And their winter is actually when there's a profusion of plant materials. Their summers, they're like ketogenic, like they're mainly eating meat and occasionally honey when they find a wild honeybee tree. And when you look at— with the guys that'll go up the tree to get the honey, they come down and they've got like 100 bee stings on 'em. And these are Africanized honeybees. Like they are badass.

You— ouch.

Yeah.

And it, I, I think that's painful.

It's totally painful. And if every time you wanted to eat a, a Heath bar or something, you had to get stung 100 times by Africanized bees, I'm like, go for it, man. That's gonna be very self-limiting, you know? And so we do have a pretty good sense of the way that our, our ancestors ate. That said, That said, there are cultures that have eaten higher carb diets more recently and not remotely suffered the diseases that we see today. The, again, some of the Asian populations are pretty good examples, but a key thing there again is that they didn't have the sugar. They didn't have these refined carbohydrates. They didn't have the sugar-sweetened beverages, which I think are particularly problematic. And all too often, I think what passes for a, a plant-based diet it's a lot of highly refined carbs. So people aren't eating pearled barley with soaked sprouted pinto beans and whatnot. They want good grab-and-go options like anybody does. And that, that inevitably ends up being more of a very high carb, very refined carbohydrate diet. And we see problems with that typically the longer folks are in a process like that. Some people do very well with it. Everybody typically needs to supplement to some degree. I see people do okay on vegan diets, but they need to be very fastidious with it. Maybe they have good genetics for eating that way, and also they need to be smart about their supplementation.

Wow. So if there were a perfect diet, that doesn't exist. It's varied over so many things. But one of the things for a lot of my clients, because luckily some of the people that are listening right now, uh, have made a decision and they're doing more of a zero hunger kind of community lifestyle They're enjoying salt, they're low in carbs. So let's assume some good things here, right? Yeah. They're eating high protein and they're not doing plant-based proteins. They're eating meat, they're eating a ribeye, maybe not every day, but they're doing some chicken, they're doing seafood. But Dr. James D. Nicolantonio gave us his Italian recipe on the show that his wife makes, which is— it's ground beef with heart and liver meat ground in there. And he shared with us how he believes the organs of the heart and the liver have certain nutrients that we can't get in the meat. And for some of my clients, this was a point of question. And I thought I'd ask you as a biochemist, because I think we touched on this briefly once. And from a biochemistry standpoint of the meat, I think you made it clear— maybe you can recap— that the meat from a heart or liver, as opposed to like a ribeye, maybe there wasn't a huge reason to eat a heart and a liver from that perspective. To do. But do you think there are some minerals or, or vitamins that are found in these organs that are useful? Because there are a lot of people— Paul Saladino, Dr. Saladino is one of them. Uh, I, I prefer to have it fresh if I'm gonna do it, or ground up. Dr. Dean Nicolae Antonia recommended ground it up and, and make it into an Italian meat sauce minus the meat sauce. But what do you think about organ meat, Rob? The heart, the liver mainly were the ones that Dr. James talked about. What are your thoughts on its— not the protein aspect, because I think the protein— would you agree?

All the other stuff.

Yeah, yeah, take it away. Yeah, yeah.

So liver for sure is super rich in both vitamin A and vitamin D, and most people are really deficient in both of those. Um, looking at COVID outcomes, folks that were low in vitamin D fared very poorly. And so I think that's a great source to, to add to I think ethically, again, if we're going to consume animal products, we should endeavor to eat the whole animal and make full use of it. That's totally reasonable. And with our family, we've trained up the local meat suppliers that we find to do these mixes, and we use them in taco night and also in kind of marinara night. So we do exactly the same thing. It will do—

tell us what you guys do. How do you mix it? And who's— who are some companies companies that you would suggest for anyone listening if they can get this online?

I don't know if it's possible, but I'm sure there's some folks doing it online, but usually we just find a local small-time operator and then we, we try to really patronize them, and then we just describe what we want. And this is usually all the stuff that's being given away for like animal feed and stuff like that. And so they keep the heart, keep the liver and whatnot. I like to keep the tripe because I also make menudo and pho, the Vietnamese soup, out of that type stuff. I don't know exactly what the ratio is in the mix. I think it's a pound of regular ground beef and then a pound of liver and heart mix combined. And then I'll take that pound of combo and then I'll put 2 more pounds of regular ground beef with it, and that'll be our base for taco night, for marinara sauces, all that type of stuff.

So give it to us one more time for those taking notes. Unless you can share it with us, we're going We're gonna try to, we'll type this up.

Yeah, I can, I can, I can shoot this for you also post-recording, but walk us through it one more time.

Please do, Rob. I say yes to that. Thank you. If you offer, we'll say yes.

Perfect. A pound of the mix, which is the ground beef, liver, and heart together. And then 2 more pounds of the, the ground beef just by itself mixed with that.

And then just ground 2 pounds of just ground beef. Yep.

And then the first pound of the mix.

Mix. And one part, and that's heart and liver together?

Yep. And ground beef in that also. Yep.

Is it split up into 3 portions, would you say equal portions, or would each one's a pound?

So the way that the— yeah, so it ends up being 3 pounds that I cook in the skillet. Pound number 1 is a mix of ground beef, heart, and liver, and then the other 2 pounds are just ground beef, and then that all gets mixed together and cooked.

Yeah. Okay. And then that first pound, since it's a mix, 6. How do you break that ratio up to get that? Is it equal, would you say, or—

I don't think so. I'm honestly not sure. I think it's about 50/50 between, or maybe 33 between the 3, but it varies based off of what they have available there. But they're just basically trying to, trying to normalize all that.

And do you lean more into the liver than the heart, or do you have a preference, or—

No big preference on that. The main thing is just that I know that my kids are getting some amount of these organ meats, specifically the liver, and that they, they eat it just as well as they would eat anything else. Now, what, what's interesting, I do need to season that reasonably well. I wouldn't make burgers out of that. I've done that a couple of times and the kids are like, this tastes a little different. When it's just a little different enough that they're, that they'll eat it, but they're not like attacking it.

Is it tougher meat, the heart or the liver or both?

It's not once it's ground, it's just the taste. It's the taste. A little bit of that liver taste. I don't think the heart tastes that much different once it's ground, but the kids are just like, hey, there's something a little different here. Whereas if you have really good taco seasoning, a really good marinara sauce, it's lost in that. You don't notice that at all.

Yeah. Hopefully with a lot of salt, right, Rob?

Absolutely. Yes. Yeah.

Significant salt. Yeah. I love that. I love that. That makes sense. It's just so simple to incorporate this kind of a mix in there. I think we've covered almost everything I was thinking of. Maybe to end on this, Rob, because I feel like right now for 2021, so many people are worried about their immune system and yet they've covered it with getting the vaccination. I don't know if that's something you're comfortable with. Have you done that? I've not. I've had COVID, so my antibodies are still high. Uh, what do you think?

I had COVID also, so I've— my tactical way of answering that is I'm saving my dose for someone who really needs it. And I have a feeling that as this plays forward, that the people who who have had COVID that can demonstrate that immunity, that at some point they will have the same citizenry status as people who've been immunized, because arguably it's an even more robust, comprehensive immune response.

But having the vaccine, because I went through it, it was a, like a 10-day process. I didn't know I had it at the time. It was more like I thought I had a really bad asthma issue and my doctor didn't even do the test. He gave me an inhaler.

Right.

And many months later I found out I had COVID and I was like, oh my God, I have the antibodies. And I didn't even know. It. You've not had it at all yet, Rob.

You're pretty— I did have it. It was back before Christmas, and, uh, I was really run down for about 3 days. Like, when I would go to bed, I was like, man, I'm tired.

And then— but yeah, like me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the, the night of the 3rd day, I woke up in the middle of the night and I had a sore throat, and I was like, oh, this is different. And then that next day, the 4th day, I didn't get off the couch. Like, I was laid out, really fatigued.

Yeah.

And then the 5th day I was probably 85% better. The 6th day I was the additional 10%. For about a week after that, if I worked out, I could feel it and my lungs weren't quite right. Yeah. And that, that day that I was sick, I was like, if I had already been sick, if I was already compromised and I felt like this and it went on for weeks, I could see where it could kill you. I, I got it. It was different. It was different than just the standard flu and, and stuff like that, which I usually just shake off and it's not a big deal. Yeah, yeah.

And do you believe we, you and me and people that may have had it, we have the antibodies. You said that may be a little better than a vaccine to some degree. Do you feel like we need a booster or we okay for now? What do you think, Rob? I hate to be—

In my opinion, I think that somebody that has had it should be good. And if there's one thing that's concerning about these SARS-type viruses, like the SARS-CoV-1, the reason why they abandoned research developing the vaccine seen is that the second dose, the second exposure is oftentimes what kills people or makes them very sick. That's what ended up happening in animal models. Now, I don't know if that's exactly the case here, but it's the serial exposure one after another that the, the problem is the immune response to the virus. And that can be over the top and over-accentuated. This is where having low insulin levels, good vitamin D status, doing a little bit of OMAD, some zero hunger type lifestyle, When you look at the things that cause COVID to go bad, the zero hunger lifestyle is literally the antidote to that. Does that mean you will not get COVID? Does that mean you will 100% not going to get sick or die from it? No, but it's hedging your bets in a way that I'm just at a loss to figure out how you could really do better than that. People want absolutely concrete buttoned up answers. And in, in these situations, there's probabilities. But I can't think of a better way of managing your metabolic health to be set up for the best situation you could going into COVID. Amen. Or the vaccine for that matter. There was just a, a very well done study that showed that the efficacy of vaccination in overweight and obese individuals was about one-third as effective as normal weight, normal metabolic function individuals. So it is a concern for people to get as med— let's say you're thinking about getting the vaccine, but you are, are overweight and hypertensive, I would make the argument, do a, a hard 20-day zero hunger plan and get healthier and then enter into that vaccine regimen, especially a year downrange. If you've avoided catching it this long, you probably got 15 or 20 days in you to, to just get more healthy. And the crazy thing is doing what you are recommending within the zero hunger regimen, you can have massive improvements in your metabolic health within a week or I think that's so true.

And I feel like it's so easy, Rob, if you have an article on that as well. I know I gave you a laundry list, but anything about weight gain or weight issues and the COVID being, you said one-third less effective, right, Rob?

The vaccines appear to be one-third less effective in overweight or obese individuals. Yeah.

If you don't mind, we'll include that. If you can do that, something up on that in the show notes, guys. I feel like, Rob, you are literally the man with all the citations. You You have— you're the Wizard of Oz. You have everything to bring the science to life and you do it in such an engaging way. I always am so grateful that you and I, we can literally talk for hours. I feel how to communicate in a way that Oprah would be proud of, you know?

Thank you. Thank you. That's a huge honor. Thank you.

Well, it's true. And I think that's why you're so effective. And for the folks out there that haven't picked up your book, I want them to pick up The Sacred Cow. But you've written a few others. Do you mind bragging for us your other books so people can do an Amazon sweep? And I'm going to say it for you. I want you guys to get all of Rob's books and watch this movie, whether it's on Amazon or Netflix, but start with the book again. The newest one is the Sacred Cow and then work your way back down because you got a few.

Yeah. The prior, prior to that was Wired to Eat. And then my first book was The Paleo Solution.

Yep. And for those who want the Wired to Eat versus Paleo Solution, I'm going to tell them, get them both, but they're not the same. Rob, how would you, uh, differentiate the two?

They're not. I had a lot better jokes in The Paleo Solution, but The Wired Eat was written 10 years later, and I just knew— so I feel like I knew so much more. And I, I think I present the material in a way— one thing is that I give people some really cool options for figuring out how to customize things for themselves. So it's not just a one-size-fits-all prescription. It really allows people to customize and find where they're going to go themselves. So I, truth be told, and I would push people more towards Wired E. Yeah.

All right. That's the fresher one. And then obviously you have an incredible podcast and community at this Healthy Rebellion. Would you tell them what your podcast is all about? And one day invite me on there. We'll talk about whatever you want. I do it.

Yeah. The podcast is 99% Q&A between my wife and I. So for folks just write in questions, some of them crazy, some of them really interesting, and we do the best job we can to unpack that and do similar thing, try to provide some literature and resources. And for a while, we were actually trying to make that work as a call-in show so that I could ask questions and get some feedback. It was a disaster. So we ended up abandoning that for right now. But that's the Healthy Rebellion Radio. And then the Healthy Rebellion Community is where we're trying to get a million people out of the sick care system.

I love that. I think, I think your work is so pivotal. And then I feel where I told Jason Fung, we're like the superheroes, right? We've got the Hall of Justice. And on the other side, there's people like Lex Luthor, I feel like, and I don't like to pick on who those are because hopefully they can be persuaded to think in a different way, the way you and I—

Bill Gates does make an amazingly good evil genius, uh, uh, supervillain though. He just—

and I always liked him. I thought, not that he was a villain. I know Steve Jobs did not care for it.

Right, right.

We'll just leave it at that. But he does make a good supervillain, and then I feel like I want to get this to him. And I'm trying to get— because he's got a new book out, I'm sure you know about his new book. He's doing what he's trying to do, what you guys did with the Sacred Cow, but obviously with the flip argument. I feel like— would you ever join us if we could get him? Dave Asprey said yes. If we could do a debate with Mr. Gates, yes.

And what I would love is not just a debate, but being able to present a position. Bill presents his position, I present my position, then we get to cross-examine each other. Then we lay out another position. Debate, it— for me, in the modern world, it's theater. And although a little bit of theatrics and entertainment is cool, something like the future of our species, the future of our world, deserves more than theater. So I would like it to be, if we could pull it off, something a little more robust, where Bill presents his side of the thing, I present my side, then we get to cross-examine each other and ask a bunch of thorny questions around what was presented and the assumptions and whatnot. And maybe even a round 2 of that then, like you go back and reformulate what you're doing. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm on board with that. Let's see what we can do. And I can't thank you enough, Rob, for your time, your support, your incredible work. Go out there, guys, pick up the movie, watch the movie, The Sacred Cow, read the book, get involved, subscribe to your podcast. It comes out every week, right, Rob? Every week. And thank you, buddy. I'm here for you, anything you need at all. I am so grateful to your friendship, and do my best to your wife, please.

Thank you.

All right, peace and purpose, everyone.

All right, today's episode is complete, guys. Thank you so much for listening, and I want to ask you to please subscribe to the show on Apple Podcast, uh, and please leave a review on Apple as well. Give it 5 stars if you think the show has helped you in some way to transform your thinking. I hope it has. And more importantly, share your comments, your review of what today's episode did for your thinking and what you got out of it, because I think that is how we spread this. And for me, this is a revolution. This is not a podcast, this is a way of life. And I hope to transform over a million lives in the next couple years, and I need your help. So please become part of the Zero Hunger Revolution by leaving that review on Apple Podcasts subscribing today. Thanks so much.

Have a great one.

Peace and purpose, and I'll see you on the next episode.