Brownies for Breakfast: A Cookbook for Diabetics

Welcome to the Living to 100 Club Podcast. Here's our host, Dr. Joseph Casciani.

Greetings to everyone joining us today for today's podcast, and happy New Year to everyone. You're listening to the Living to 100 Club. And I'm your host, Joe Casciani. You can find this conversation and all past conversations on our website, livingto100.club. In addition to my podcasting, I'm a public speaker and I present to community organizations and senior groups on topics related to aging well and managing setbacks. And on my website, you'll see options to sign up for one-on-one resilience coaching for anyone wanting more personal time to talk. I also provide consulting and training on clinical topics like depression and dementia. Now to our podcast where we discuss successful aging, staying positive, and making more informed decisions. Our guest for today is Lynn Bowman. Lynn has written a cookbook for diabetics and the people who love them. The book is titled Brownies for Breakfast. We'll be discussing how Type 2 diabetes colors the attitudes and behaviors of those with this condition. First, a little background about Lynn. Lynn has been featured at women's expos throughout the country, teaming with actress Deirdre Hall to write and publish Deirdre Hall's Kitchen Close-Up and Deirdre Hall's How Does She Do It? In previous lives, Lynn won national awards as creative director for Silicon Valley companies, was creative director at E&J Gallo Winery, advertising manager at Redken Laboratories, and freelance for agencies in San Jose, Los Angeles, and New York. She's also worked as an actress, makeup artist, screenwriter, illustrator, legal journalist, and television weatherperson. She and her husband have a small farm on the coast of Northern California. Lynn, welcome to our program today.

Thank you so much, and Happy New Year.

Great, thank you. Glad to have you with us today. I always like to begin by asking our guests to tell us a little bit about the journey that brought you to where you are today.

Well, I just— you just did this long intro. Yeah, with, you know, this impossibly long, which is, is not even part, in a way, when I think about it, of, of what I've done in my life. I'm 75, and back in the day, especially we women, you know, we didn't have career plans. We just did stuff. We took jobs. And so it ends up being this long litany of all these things that we, we tried. And in my case, some of them didn't work out at all, especially the, for example, the weather person thing. I was the worst weather person ever. I was awful. But, you know, you're in your 20s or early 30s or whatever, and you go for it. You, you try. I was trying.

We take what comes along, right?

You take what comes along. Exactly. And, and here we are still, basically what we're doing every day is just trying to breathe. We're just, we're trying to, to stay alive and, and keep having adventures and keep making mistakes and, and keep having fun. So, so the resume gets long after a while.

I call it opening new doors. We're always opening new doors.

We are, at least I am, I am poking my snoot in whatever I can, whenever I can, pretty much. And the cool thing about being this age is people forgive you. You know, it becomes more sort of acceptable for you to stick your snoot in and say, well, what are you doing? And why are you doing that? And who are you?

Sure, sure.

People make allowances for us as well. She's old. It's all right.

You're 75 and as busy as ever with your writing and public speaking and many other things. Why, why this? Why now?

Why this and why now? Good question. Um, probably a confluence of things, but my children— I have 3 and they're all in their 40s and they're pushy like like me, and they have been saying for some time, "Ma, you need to write this stuff down. You need to share some of this stuff that you talk about and that you do." And of course, you read the resume, and I have done 3 books now, and they were fun, and, you know, it was interesting and good to share stuff. But at this stage, it's feeling a little more— not that my new book isn't fun, it is— but it's feeling more critical, let's say, to get the news out to people because we have an epidemic, if you hadn't noticed. And I'm not talking about COVID I'm talking about what is really taking lives, shortening lives, but maybe even more important, it is taking the quality of people's lives, and that is chronic disease.

Yeah.

So, and because happenstance, I've been aware of my chronic disease for decades and have been trying to educate myself for decades about how to eat and what to do and how not to deteriorate as a result of type 2 diabetes. And you find out, if you've been on this path with me in any way, you find out that what the American Diabetes Association and other big organizations put out is not helpful, really. It's not true. It's not directed really at the patient. It's more or less a matter of dealing with the drug companies that are funding whatever research is going on and whatever products are being put out. Because the— here's the dirty secret about chronic disease, uh, it's not about medicine. It's about food and movement. So The treatment is basically free if you're willing to acknowledge it and do it. And what you can do is you can prevent the disease, you can control the disease, and you can often reverse the disease. And I'm talking about heart disease and diabetes particularly. That's certainly what I know a little more about.

Yeah, so you're— that's so important because with a little bit of research, if we're willing to make some more informed decisions and gain more knowledge about our diets and nutrition and fitness and inflammation and, you know, our gut biomes and all of that. And we can really make some better decisions. So can you share with our audience, uh, maybe a couple of examples of what, what you found was misinformation?

Um, oh my goodness. I have a long list.

Yeah. Yeah.

The main thing is that, um, for years we were told that a calorie is a calorie. Yeah, you know, no, it's not. A calorie is not a calorie. There's a huge, huge gap between, um, the qualities of the food that you're putting in your mouth. So that's one thing. Another thing is we were told as diabetics that you needed to lose weight, you needed to control your weight, and you also needed to control your carbohydrates. But we were never told And it's actually only recently that it's become more scientifically documented that the real culprit is not carbohydrates. It's the quality of the carbohydrates you're eating, one, but two, it's animal fat. So that's the great big lie. And we're seeing it in other forms, not just necessarily in, medical terms, but, you know, where do I start? This stuff is so circular, Joe. It affects so many things in our culture and our life. And this has been a kind of perfect storm of bad nutrition. And the perfect storm includes women going back to work, families changing form, and there's no one left in the kitchen. Our grandmas are at the track. I don't know where they are, but there's no one left in the kitchen. And to make this short, the fact of the matter is, if you are not preparing food yourself, if you're not cooking, you're not eating well, you're not eating healthy, because virtually everything that you drive through or grab-and-go or get to make your meals fast and to get out of the task of cooking. It's all crap.

Yeah. All the processed foods. Yeah. The fast food.

You know, in varying degrees. But it's— and if you're a diabetic, particularly you, if you start reading those labels, you become painfully aware that you are eating sugar all day long in everything that you eat. Not that sugar is the only culprit. But it's one that everyone goes, "Yeah, that's right, we, you know, sugar is a problem." You have no idea if you haven't really been paying attention to how serious a problem sugar is. That's bad. And we're feeding our kids an enormous amount of sugar. We're feeding our elders an enormous amount of sugar. It's in virtually everything that is manufactured food-wise. So there's also the problem of, okay, nobody's in the kitchen, but no one's sitting down at a table together either. If you're in, if you're in a communal situation, if you're in an assisted living place or some other kind of living situation where you're grouped, that's different, but that's not most of us. Most of us are eating alone, largely. We're eating in our cars. We're eating on the couch, Doritos at 11, pizza at night, but we're not at the table. So, and, and if, and you can get me wound up about this because I, I am a table lover. I, I believe in the power of the table. You could say, well, but we've gone past that as a culture. We are no longer a table-oriented culture now. And that may be true, but think about what we are losing as a result of that.

Yeah. Like what? I mean, I understand that communal dining is so important, but what's, what's missing without the communal dining? What's missing?

A number of things. One, our, our probably our biggest mental health problem and possibly health problem in general is loneliness, depression. We are a lonely, nation. We're lonely.

Sure.

And loneliness is deadly. It's, it's not just a bad feeling. It's chemicals that are very destructive. So there's loneliness and the damage from that. And then when you focus on the younger ones in our community, our kids don't even know how to use utensils. They don't know what a, what a cloth napkin is supposed to do. They don't know how to have a conversation at a table. And I'm not making this up. I mean, this is— if you go out and chat with people and read not too far, what you'll find from college administrators, the people who are admissions people in colleges, high school, you know, counselors, they're all going to say to you, kids, they don't know how to have a conversation. They're not comfortable in a social situation. It's not hard to see why. They have for 15 years now had their snoots in a screen.

Sure.

They haven't been talking to people, and their parents have not dragged them into the kitchen or the dining room and sat them down to the table and had conversations with them because the parents are online too, right?

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, you walk into a restaurant, you can see entire families looking at their screens rather than—

Yes.

Having a conversation. Sure.

Yeah. And you have to— people talk a lot about, well, what are they seeing online? And so I want to talk about what they're losing, what they're not seeing, because they're no longer looking at each other.

Sure. So you did a lot of research for your book, uh, Brownies for Breakfast. And what was the— what would you say was the most compelling thing you learned about diabetes from all your research? That you really didn't know about?

Well, I've already mentioned it really. It's that it's animal fat. Uh, and the, that's the function, uh, the bodily function is you're talking about insulin resistance and insulin uptake and, and, and getting your glucose into your muscles so that it can be used by your body and all of that. Is obstructed by animal fat, not carbohydrates. People have always focused on the fact that if you eat carbohydrates, you make more glucose. That's really not the problem. The problem is that you are eating a diet— all of us— very heavy in animal fat, and it prevents this process of glucose uptake from going on in a healthy way. And it also prevents you from losing weight. It prevents you— it does a lot of other things. But if you, if you just want to pick a couple of things to do to completely change your health profile in a positive way, and you know, this is one that people go, I, I just don't think I could do that. But you can, and I can tell you how. If you, one, Quit sugar. Don't just cut down, you know, don't just kind of avoid sugar.

Quit.

And you are qualified to back me up to say that sugar is as addictive or more so than heroin. It is. And I don't mean that in a metaphorical way. I mean, it is literally an addictive substance. So y'all, friends, pals, you are addicted. Sure, that's your problem. And if you were on heroin, your relatives and I would be saying, we need to get you treatment, we need to get you off that stuff now, it's killing you. And you would understand that because you— there have been no advertising campaigns saying heroin is good for you, heroin will make you fun, heroin will make you smart. But you have had that kind of message for your whole life from the milk industry, right? Milk does the body good. Okay. And you believed it. Um, it's not true.

So cutting out sugar, we think of people, well, I'm not going to put sugar in my coffee anymore, but it's so much more prevalent than that, right?

It's in food, every—

all the cereals, all the breads. Yeah. Yeah, everybody products. Sure. So you touched on a lot of the contributing factors to diabetes with the obesity and the diets and a lot of that. But where do you think, where do people get off track when they become pre-diabetic? What's going on for them? Is it just diet? And I mean, where do we—

Well, it's a number of things. It's movement. It's the way we live. You're sitting, you're not walking. So it's movement. It's eating. You're eating badly. If you're eating like most Americans, you're eating the standard American diet. The SAD diet is all meat and bread. Couldn't be worse. So those two things. And then the other thing, Joe, and I take issue with— my kids call me a brawler, so I apologize for that. But I take issue with the medical community because They— not you, but allopathic docs are terrible communicators. They don't understand the value of the communication. They know that they get something like 15% compliance. That, that the studies are out there. It's, you know, I'm not making this up, but something like 15% of the people who walk out of their office heard what they said and will do some portion of what they said they need to do. 15%. That's a— excuse me, I was going to say a bad word. That's a bad batting average. That's not doing well. So, and, and so docs take the attitude, you know this, I'm not making it up, that people just won't comply. So why bother? Why should I tell them all this stuff? Because they're not going to comply. I am going to write this prescription, I'm going to write for this drug, and I'll give it to them. But if I tell them that they can eat this way or do this and heal themselves, they won't listen. Well, guess what? No, because you're not good about communicating it.

Sure.

You make no real effort to communicate it. I took the diabetic classes at Kaiser. I have never been so bored and so unbelieving. It was like, this is This is not helpful. Because what they're saying is you need to kind of reduce the amount of the processed cereal that you're eating. No, you need to chuck it, baby. You need to get rid of that stuff. You just stop eating poison. Don't just cut down on your poison. Stop eating poison. How hard is that to understand?

Yeah, I know what you're saying. I mean, the 15% that hear what the physician is saying to them, and maybe some of those will actually follow through, but that means 8 out of 10 don't hear it or don't remember it or don't care to comply.

Didn't get it. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's like, go away, you need to stop smoking, you need to lose weight, you need to do this or that. And that's not how we change behavior. No. Yeah.

No. And here you are in the United States living in a culture where our children are all rewarded with ice cream cones and candy bars and Easter eggs and Christmas canes, everything. If you've been a good boy, you get sugar. If you've been a good girl, you get lots of sugar. And, and cops on the way to work reward themselves, right, with donuts, whatever.

Healthy donuts, sure.

Yeah, we have this emotional attachment to bad food. And, uh, you know, you talk about cultures that, uh, you know, barbecue is, is part of the culture and barbecue contests and barbecue stuff. And if you're not eating barbecue together, you're just not— or fried chicken, or, you know, we can think of a long list of foods that we associate with love and belonging and all these things, because we've already talked about the fact that we're lonely people. So it's kind of, it's almost as if food was the only way that we have left, bad food, of being part of something, of consoling ourselves, comforting ourselves.

That's a good point. Sure. Sure. And now we have to really examine what those patterns, those eating patterns are. Well, let's talk about your book. I love the title of your book, Brownies for Breakfast. You did a lot of research. You have a lot of personal experience. You were trained a lot about, um, you know, addressing diabetes problems. So what makes this book different from, from others that are out there?

For one thing, open her up and it's, it's a beautiful book. And I did that very intentionally. I wanted people to receive it as a great experience, like, whoa, this is fun. This looks good. This is interesting. You can't bore anyone into compliance. You can't ugly people into understanding, I don't think. So I wanted it to be attractive and interesting and exciting and fun. And frankly, there's some funny in there too, because it doesn't have to all be deadly serious. You know, it's about food, and food is life. So I want— I had never seen a book for diabetics or about diabetics or about even healthy eating that was beautiful and enticing. And so I wanted it to be that, because the message is you can have donuts, you can have the best donut you've ever eaten, you can have pancakes, you can have macaroni and cheese, you can have all this fabulous stuff if you make it yourself the way I tell you, and it's easy and fun.

Yeah, well, well, yeah. What are some of the favorite recipes in your book?

Well, there are so many, Joe, but the, you know, the, the donuts and the brownies. I'll tell you about the brownies.

Yeah, yeah.

People say, how can you eat— how— what kind of flour do you use? I don't use flour. Flour.

Okay, sure.

Um, the brownie is made from pumpkin and nut butter 2 fabulous healthy foods, whole foods. Well, they're ground, but they're not processed in the sense of coming from some plant somewhere. So nut butter, pumpkin. I use monk fruit sweetener in it, which is excellent for diabetics. You don't get any kind of a diabetic reaction. There's no aftertaste. It tastes— it's great, tastes just like sugar. I also like chicory root, and I recommend that. So, so far, the brownie: monk fruit or chicory root, pumpkin and nut butter and cocoa. Chocolate, plain chocolate is fabulous for you. It's good food.

Yeah. And what is the chicory root for? Excuse me, what is it?

It's a sweetener. It's— chicory root is actually inulin. So it's, it's a fiber and a sweetener and it's It's chicory root. It's got great health benefits. Who knew?

Simple recipe. Yeah.

If I had another life or two, I'd be out there. We're growing some now, but I'd be out there cultivating this stuff and selling it and making mint. It's kind of a newer thing on the market. There's another sweetener, erythritol, that they're putting in monk fruit and putting with chicory root because it stretches it and it is sweet. It has a slight— it's good. It has a slight cooling effect. So if you're using it, for example, in the brownie, you don't get the cooling effect. If you're using it in my pumpkin spice donuts, yes, they're that good. Pumpkin spice donuts, um, delicious. And they're, as the name implies, they're made from pumpkin. You can either use regular eggs or egg substitute, either way. Um, And there's very little— oh, I use chickpea flour in some things, and I use almond flour in some things. But what you're doing is you're substituting the stuff that's making you sick. You're taking that out and putting in stuff that your body is going to love.

Really good stuff. Sure.

And it tastes great. And I'm not frying. I'm baking these things like a donut. You, you get a donut baking pan there in all the cooking stores, and you spray a little bit of coconut oil, and you put your batter in there and bake them in your oven. And it, you know, it takes one or two tries to kind of get the hang. If you don't cook at all, it'll take you a little bit to get a— get the feel for it. But then look what you've got. I mean, one of these donuts is a healthy meal or two.

Sure.

And then the other thing that's important to understand nutritionally is that you can't really overeat these because they're nutrient-dense food. So what happens is you eat 2 donuts, you go, oh my gosh, these are beautiful. Look what I made them. Yay. Yum. You eat one and it was really good. And then you eat the next one and then you realize that your body's saying, okay, we're good. That was enough. Yeah, because they were not engineered like most processed foods are for craveability.

Yeah, which are so— I mean, McDonald's, nothing against McDonald's, but McDonald's cheeseburgers, it's, um, they're delicious. I mean, we know how bad they are, but they're so easy to keep eating, and it's easy to see why people just crave that.

And you make another good point, they are delicious until you stop eating them. And what happens is when you change your diet, uh, can people always laugh at me about my arugula? I love arugula. I crave arugula. But what happens to you is your saliva changes, your body chemistry changes. I can't eat sugar. Yeah, it tastes terrible to me. Yeah, it makes my tummy hurt. My body is going, okay, no, we're over that addiction. And we're scared. We don't want that anymore.

Yeah, that's a great reward. I mean, that's a great reward. Eventually, that ultimately is the feedback we get when we're shifting.

And it doesn't take long.

Yeah.

In 2 or 3 weeks, you will notice a difference.

Were you always a cook, Lynn, and you had to adapt to your usual meals and recipes, or?

I think the answer is yes, Joe. But always, no, I mean, I, what happened to me in my life, it sort of put me on a different course from a lot of people is my mother died when I was 18. So I was already a little bit feral. And boy, then I was really feral. In the sense that nobody was telling me what not to do. It was 1964. So it was, it was an interesting time to be let loose. But I figured out really soon that my friends were hungry and I was poor. But if I figured out how to make a decent meal, I could have a great time.

Sure.

And, and I was always— I love to eat. So I couldn't afford, you know, to go out and eat. And, you know, the fellows were fine buying you drinks, but you couldn't always get a great dinner out of No.

Yeah.

A day, you know? So anyway, uh, I started cooking pretty young and, and, and I also had an interest because of my mother in health, because I had seen up close and personal what the death of a parent in my case does to a family.

Mm-hmm.

It blows the family apart. Most families cannot survive.

Sure.

That loss.

Very difficult.

Very difficult. And in those days, nobody talked about it. There was no support. It was so different. And I grew up in a community that was very, you know, tight-lipped about everything and emotions weren't expressed.

Sure.

And furthermore, having a chronic disease like that will destroy a family's finances. By the time you die, the money's all gone and you still owe. And that may sound a little crude to talk about, but I think people need to understand that. Better that you understand it now when you can prevent this outcome than to wait until it's too late. So, so I came into young adulthood with some experience that a lot of people don't have as young adults.

Sure, a few bruises.

Yeah, yeah. And in my case, it turned into, um, I could cook. Not fancy, I never went to culinary school, but I could put a meal on the table. And they came in really handy when I, like many of us, uh, went into a marriage perhaps somewhat naively and ended up having to get out of it on the run with kids 2, 3, and 4. So here I was, homeless, kids 2, 3, and 4, no money, no nothing, you know. And so it became a survival skill. Yeah, for me and for my kids. And even as I got back on my feet and I began to make enough money and we had a place to live, Still, I, for me, having the kids at the table with me was my way of providing substance and continuation and nurturance, nurturance. And so, and they all helped with it. But we sat down to dinner every night. And I, but I could do that in 15 minutes, I could come racing home like Moms did and still do. And they would do things and I would do things. And in 15 minutes, there would be something warm on the table and we would sit down together and eat. And so it might, it might make me a fossil, Joe, but I, I want that, you know, they have loving memories of that.

Of course. Sure. You value that and it pays off. I do.

Yeah, I do.

At what age did you find out you were diabetic?

I was in my early 40s because what had happened to me was with my first pregnancy in 1975, I was told after the fact that my 60-pound weight gain and my 10-pound baby were probably the result of gestational diabetes. I wasn't tested, that wasn't a thing in those days, but they told me, as I, I think they still tell folks, that I would likely develop type 2 diabetes in my 40s. So when I became 40-ish, I started asking to be tested, and they'd say, well, but you're not overweight, you're fine, you know, it's okay, don't worry about it, you're young. And I kept at it and finally found someone who would test me, and sure enough, my numbers were not looking good. So, but I did find out earlier than most people because I insisted on being tested. Women, I believe now, are routinely tested when they're pregnant, and they're routinely tested because they're in their doctor's offices more than men. And unfortunately, I think many men go decades before their wives drag them in to be looked at for something or other, and that's very often the first time that there's any indication that the blood glucose is out of range. And by then, a lot of damage has been done.

Sure.

So my ask, my message for everyone is get tested early and get tested often. Have a hemoglobin A1C test as part of your annual testing. And you guys, and I'm watching you, go in. Because guess what? It's going to make you miserable as an older person if you have not taken care of your blood glucose.

Yeah. So when you, uh, when you received the diagnosis, you made some decisions. Well, I need to get this taken care of. I need to get my arms around it and really manage it. Not everybody makes that decision. No, there are a lot of people who kind of just continue with their diabetic condition and it progresses and becomes very serious. I saw a lot of cases in nursing homes over the years where so many people were admitted for advanced diabetes and eventually had to have some amputations because of the poor vascular condition. So, um, what about people that don't want to recognize those necessities to change their diet. What do you say to that person?

That you are not only going to pay a price, a terrible price, but you are asking your family to pay that price for you and with you, and it's not fair. You know, we all— men particularly, I love you guys, I have a husband, I have a son, but you guys are worse than we are about visualizing your older life and your death. Y'all think you're gonna die like 007. You think you're gonna die like Fast and Furious. You're gonna go out in flames. You're gonna just fall over with an arrow in your chest, right? Yeah, you're not. No. Um, if you're not careful, you will spend a lot of years, a long time incapacitated in serious ways with, you know, dementia, with erectile dysfunction, with your digestive system completely out of whack. Yes, and having your limbs cut off. All of that. That's how we die now. You know, you may live to be 95 or 100, but the last 20 years, honey, are not going to be pretty. If you have not planned for it and taken care of yourself.

Yeah, that's the scourge of the chronic diseases, right? Yes, metabolic syndrome, that collectively just wear and tear on the person's body because you don't have symptoms earlier in your 40s and 50s.

You might start to have some in your 60s and certainly your 70s, but most of us have no inkling In term— people say, well, what are the symptoms? There aren't any symptoms. It's all going on unseen inside. You might be a little thirsty, you might be a little more hungry than other people, your energy might be low, but who can even call those symptoms? You know, those just seem like normal things. So, and in my case, I had to beg for the information about what to do. And so I wrote this book specific. This is the book I wish someone had handed me. I wish some fabulous guy like you, some doc, had said, Lynn, no worries. Yes, you have diabetes, you know, you're in diabetic range. But here, just do what's in this book. You will be fine. Be fine here. And furthermore, you will eat better than you've ever eaten. And the chicks will love you because you're going to be able to cook. This is for the guys, of course. Total chick magnet. If you can make a meal, it's a good thing. It's not punishment. It's not deprivation. It's just, here, here's how to eat smart so you don't wind up with no legs.

True.

How's that?

Yeah.

On one hand, the book. On this hand, no legs.

Yeah.

Up to you.

A gift of a lifetime, really. Yes. Yeah.

But that book didn't exist. And, and that's why I wrote it. And in fact, I tell a story in the book about my youngest daughter, uh, who is a hospitalist. She's a nurse practitioner, and her specialty is gerontology. And we talk frequently, every day. Okay, now you know. She calls me often on her way home from work, and she said, "Ma, I checked a guy in today who's about your age, and he's a vet." And so, and her, my daughter's dad had been a vet. And she said, I sat with him. He was struggling a bit. And he was there to have his legs amputated. And so I sat with him and chatted. And I said, yeah, my mom is writing a book sort of about diabetics and so on. And she's kind of stuck, you know, I, she I don't know if she's going to finish it or not. And she said, uh, he grabbed my hands and he got tears in his eyes and he said, tell her from me, please, to finish the book. Yeah, finish that book. I wish I'd had that book. So I did. I finished it.

Yeah, good for you. Gold stars to you. That's great.

Now it's your responsibility to get it out there.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, well, actually you have it. That's— I want to do that. I want to do that. So, uh, we're running out of time here. No, let me— what's, what's, um, what's one habit that you'd like all of our listeners to adopt that would really make a big difference in their diet? Is it sugar? Is it animal fat?

Okay, well, the first two, and these are not easy ones, but I'll list them first because they're the most important. Wands. One, yes, and you can do this. This is the easiest, strangely enough, one to do, and that's just drop sugar. Just drop it. Absolutely. Think of it as heroin. Think of it as the addiction that it is and drop sugar. You're in rehab from this moment on, as far as I'm concerned. That's one. Two, drop dairy. And don't take my word for it. Read, look around. It's absolutely not the food that you think it is. And it's doing a great deal of damage and you will feel better almost immediately. I promise you, you will feel better. No cow products.

No cow products. No cow products. Milk, cheeses, yogurts.

None.

No. Eggs are okay. Eggs are not dairy.

Eggs are not a cow product.

Yeah.

But I also, suggest highly that there are all different kinds of eggs, and the eggs that you want to be eating are the ones that have— where the chicken, the hen, has a first name that you know, or the farmer who is raising, or the neighbor whose hen that is, has a name that you know, because those are going to be healthy, beautifully goldenrod yellow yolks, yolks, excuse me, that are that way because what the chicken's been eating. The chicken's been eating bugs and grass and good healthy things. And the chicken is happy. It's important for your chicken to be happy. So eggs from Safeway are not the same food as eggs from Mrs. Johnson down the street. Sure.

Farmers market tends to have farmers bring their fresh eggs in. Sure.

Right.

Yeah.

So, so those, those are one and two. And then I'm going to add one more, which is also going to seem a little bit unattainable, but it's so important. Dark greens 2 or 3 times a day.

Yeah.

At breakfast, at lunch.

Yeah.

At, you know, everything that you can possibly manage. Smoothies, soups.

How?

And I tell you how in the book. But dark greens are going to keep you healthy and beautiful and perky for a long time. They've got everything in them that you need. Dark greens. Very, very important.

What about protein? Do you— I mean, is there room for fish and poultry?

Oh yeah, sure. Not poultry. No, no. Because of the things we've already discussed, because it's almost impossible for you to buy clean chicken. It's just, it's just not. Mrs. Johnson is not going to sell you her hen. And it's laying those beautiful eggs. So no, chicken is— the most tainted meat you can buy in this country right now is chicken. But I personally eat fish. Yes, I live at the coast and I eat wild-caught salmon, love it, and there's a great recipe in the book for how to do it. And I eat shrimp, but— and I eat eggs. But if you are eating smart and you're eating I mean, dark greens have protein in them. I eat a lot of nutritional yeast flakes, which, if you're familiar with them, they taste like Parmesan cheese. They're full of protein and all this other great stuff. And a sprinkle of it on top of your eggs or on top of your salad or whatever, really good. So I've got lots of tips for you about that protein is not going to be a problem if you are eating a variety of good whole foods.

Yeah, the plant-based vegetables, legumes. Yeah. Okay. Sure.

Lentils.

Lentils.

Oh, such great food.

Holy lentils are making a comeback. Great. Well, that's super information. I, you know, we touched on so many important topics and I wish we had more time. Maybe we'll have you back another time too.

I'd love to come back and be with you. Uh, you know, I— this is, this is cheap medicine too, Joe. You know, this is something that doesn't cost anybody anything. Just cook, you know. Yeah, a little time in the kitchen.

It's so good. Well, I, I'm sorry to say we are out of time, but before we wrap up, I just want to remind our listeners about a co-sponsor for our program. A Mighty Good Time. Are you looking for ways to engage and stay active? Check out amightygoodtime.com. It's a one-stop shop for events and activities for those 50 and over. It's free to search and it's free to post. amightygoodtime.com. And be sure to visit the Living to 100 Club website to sign up for weekly podcast announcements and my monthly newsletters. And while there, be sure to download a free copy of my 9 tips for living longer. Lastly, pick up a copy of my book, Living Longer Is the New Normal, all about maintaining a positive mindset in all we do, available on Amazon as an ebook and hard copy. Well, we've been talking today with Lynne Bowman. Lynne, for those who might want to contact you, what's the best way to do that?

LynneBowman.com, my website. There's a form that you can use on the website to send me a message, ask me a question. You can sign up for my Lynn's List and I'll send you recipes. And it also tells you about my Instagram and my Facebook and all that sort of stuff. But the easy one is Lynn, L-Y-N-N-E-B-O-W-M-A-N.com.

And your book is available there on the website as well as on Amazon.

Actually, no, but it's because I didn't want to do that. It's on Amazon. It's at your independent bookseller. Ask for it.

Sure.

If they, they don't have it in stock, they'll get it for you. And, uh, it's at Target and Walmart and those places, but you may have to ask. And I appreciate it if you do and say, you don't have it? It's fantastic. It's blowing up.

Supply and demand. Yeah.

So that helps me.

Brownies for Breakfast, a cookbook for diabetics and the people who love them. I love it. Thanks very much for being a guest on our program today, Lynn.

Thank you so much, and I appreciate y'all listening.

Great. And thanks to all of our listeners. Hope to see you next time.

It's time to rethink, renew, and reimagine retirement. Hey everybody, Jared Sylvester here, host of Retire Repurposed. Now this podcast is about the non-financial parts of retirement, which many times can be even more challenging than the financial. We believe retirement is not the end, rather the beginning of what could be the most impactful, purposeful, and fulfilling season of a person's life. So don't retire, become repurposed. To listen now, search Retire Repurpose on your favorite podcast platform, Senior Resource, or Life Audio.