452: I Asked a PhD Why Americans Are So Divided About Food with Dr. Jessica Knurick

13 and a half percent of our country is living in food insecure households which are households that don't always have access to the nutrients that they need to meet their needs. And that includes one in five children.

Welcome to Midlife Conversations. I'm your host Natalie Jill and I'm passionate about having amazing conversations that matter to us midlife women. On this podcast I do what I do best, taking complicated health topics and breaking them down simply so that we can optimize aging together. I share actionable steps to help you thrive in what I believe are our best years to come. Join me as I interview the most inspiring people living their best midlife years and dive into essential topics like hormone changes, health optimization, weight management, blood sugar, emotional well being, relationships, beauty and so much more.

Today's episode is about cutting through all of the food noise around food and nutrition. Something that affects us all regardless of what lens we normally view the world through. Now I've personally noticed how individuals easy it is to start living in an echo chamber. We follow people that reinforce exactly what we believe, what we already believe, what we want to believe. We listen to shows and read headlines that validate all of our current choices. And I am very guilty of this too. It is very rare that we listen to opposing sides, opposite views and consider have I been believing the wrong thing? Do I need to take on more information? I really feel that the truth is if we really, really truly want to understand how our food choice impact our health, our families, our future, our country, we have to be willing to ask hard questions, even uncomfortable ones, and hear science based answers from people who live and breathe the work. That's why I am so excited today and a little nervous. I'm going to be real to interview somebody that I really admire, Dr. Jessica Nur. And she's a registered dietitian and a PhD in nutrition science who specializes in chronic disease prevention. Now what I love about her is she doesn't just throw opinions around. Some people might think they're just her opinions, they are deeply, deeply grounded in evidence. She is passionate about helping regular people like us make sense of complicated nutrition topics. Now she herself does practice a lot of the nutrition things you've heard me share on the podcast, but she's got a very real view about what we need in this country, in this world. This conversation today is not about politics or fear. I hope no one takes it this way and I really want to start asking some hard questions and understand what's real, what's hype and what's truly in our best Interest. So thank you so much for Jessica. Jessica, for doing this with me today.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

So I reached out to Jessica, just a little transparency on this, because I thought I innocently was asking a question on Instagram. I had asked. I said, I'm not really clear. While people are upset about the food coloring ban. That's what I asked. And I was genuinely asking, what am I missing here? Why are people upset about that? What I wasn't prepared for was more than just getting some answers. I got a lot of hate, and I got a lot of, how could you ask that? And what this tells us where you are politically and what's wrong with you. And I thought, what. What am I missing here? And I. And I really am owning up to feeling super naive here, that I didn't understand what I was missing. Now, a lot of people were super kind and chimed in and said, have you considered this? And they kept tagging you, Jessica. They kept tagging you. They said, follow her page. And I started following your page. And I really started seeing things from a different perspective. And it became very clear to me that I have lived in an echo chamber. And I want you listeners to hear this, too, because I think we all do this to some extent, an echo chamber to me. And I'm gonna ask Jessica what she thinks that means to her. I think, to me, means we tend to surround ourselves with people that validate our own beliefs, and we start not seeing the opposite, or we think the opposite is dumb or wrong or evil or whatever that is. Jessica, I wanted to get your thoughts on that.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. I definitely agree with you that it's just easier, right, when we already have kind of an idea in our head, especially if it's been ingrained in us years and years. And it's easier to just kind of, like, hear the information that we already believe and just. And just believe it. And then it's also easier to be critical of the information that maybe, like, we haven't kind of, like, thoroughly thought through or, you know, had just had this belief that it's not right. I mean, I do this myself, even. And I've had a lot of, like, beliefs that have changed, but, you know, I held onto them for a very long time. And then it's work, right? It's like. It's like this uncomfortable kind of, like, gap between, like, what we hear and then what we believe and then figuring out, okay, well, where is the truth? And that can be uncomfortable for people. And people don't like to be kind of like live in the discomfort, I think. And so again, it's just, it's just much easier to kind of like latch onto what we already believe.

Yeah, I think we like certainty. We want the black and white answer. Like this is the way. This is the only way. Can you share just a little bit about your background? I mean, you're no dummy. You've got a lot of experience here in nutrition. You've got your PhD. Can you just, can you share a little bit about your journey?

Yeah, sure. So I'm kind of like a lifelong athlete. That's what got me into this field. I played basketball in college. I played a bunch of sports growing up. So I was always very interested in that area, being physically active. And then that kind of turned into, as I got older, just staying really healthy myself. And so that kind of, I got into kind of that exact area of study as well. And so I got a master's degree in exercise science and then my PhD is in nutrition science. And when I was going through my PhD, I went to a program that was this interdisciplinary program to look at how diet and movement and lifestyle can all impact our disease risk. And so my research was in the field of kind of preventing lifestyle related chronic disease, specifically looking at diabetes and cardiometabolic disease, so cardiovascular disease, and how we could use different strategies to help reduce our risk of those diseases. And what I found through my, and this is pertinent to just kind of like where I am today with what I started very much on just an individual level, like how can we optimize somebody's health to reduce risk of disease? And what I found as I was going through that research is that, you know, the guidelines, the science that we have, we have really good science to show like what kinds of like lifestyle related behaviors can reduce risk of disease. But what is missing is this adoption of these lifestyle related behaviors. Right. And so behavior change, the behavior change research shows really clearly it's very difficult to get people to change their behaviors. And that got me. So my dissertation work was actually in what's called easily adoptable strategies to reduce risk of disease because of this difficulty in changing behavior. So I would take what's the minimum thing we can get people to do to actually have a meaningful impact on their disease risk. And so I used things like a fiber supplement, a psyllium husk fiber supplement. I used things like a post meal walk, which was like walking just 15 minutes after you eat a meal can reduce or attenuate postprandial hyperglycemia or the rise of blood sugar after a meal. And so let's do those things and let's get people doing things. But that really started getting me interested in, okay, well, why aren't people adopting these things? Right. And so that's what really took me from the individual side of wellness to, okay, when we look holistically, when we look from a public health perspective, why are almost no Americans following the guidelines? Like, what are these, like, barriers and systemic barriers? So after I finished my PhD, I was a professor at the University of Nevada for a couple of years and then I transitioned out and started working in startups, working with their research teams and working more on the communication side of things.

What I love about your stuff, and I'm going to link everything about her below, obviously is she really speaks out. But it does, it's not, it's not the typical marketing clickbaity kind of speaking out. Like she speaks out and explains. So that's when I started looking at your content. I thought, okay, this is not just you trying to be opposing or trying to grab attention. You're really explaining things. And I want to share, and I'm gonna have her share this first before we get into some of the topics. She herself, before we started recording, said, I actually do a lot of the things like the age optimizing things or the eating this way. But when you look at the masses and how to solve a problem, it's a little bit different. Can you elaborate on that? Just like on how you live and where, what you teach?

Yeah, yeah, sure. So I call it like the difference between individual health and public health. Right. And I think probably a lot of your listeners, we spend a lot of time thinking about individual how can we really optimize our own health? And I think that's wonderful. And I'm not setting that aside by trying to talk about public health. I just want us to understand the difference. So for me, in my own life, and I kind of mentioned this before we got on, I have a pretty aggressive wellness routine. I've worked out my entire life. I work out most days. I lift, I try to lift as heavy as I can. I'm not very strong, but I do all of those things. I eat a really nutrient dense diet. My kids eat a really nutrient dense diet. I try to get outside each day. I try to decrease stress, which is not easy with two little kids. I have two and a five year old, you know, but as much as possible, get enough sleep. I don't do well with that either. But you understand.

Yeah.

So we have all of these buckets of like, what impacts our health, what impacts our longevity, those types of things. Right. When you look at it from a public health perspective, you have to think public health is not about these, like, individual behaviors. It's about how do we help people on a systemic level, how do we address the barriers that are impacting these people from being able to do these things. Right. So if we look at the United States of America, for example, you'll hear statistics about our life expectancy, our chronic disease rates, but we as Americans do not experience those equally. So it's not evenly distributed across the United States. And so, I mean, some examples I can give you just in life expectancy, there's research to show that if you look at the Highest income brackets versus the lowest income brackets in the U.S. there's a 15 year life expectancy age gap for men and a 10 year life expectancy age gap for women. Between those brackets. 13.5% of our country is living in food insecure households, which are households that don't always have access to the nutrients that they need to meet their needs. And that includes one in five children. And so, you know, a lot of times we get, we kind of don't realize that a lot of people are living in areas. I just talked to a woman earlier today in my DMs who she, they don't qualify for SNAP, which is a nutrition assistance program. And and so they have very little money left for groceries at the end of the month. And so she told me that her and her husband rely on like toast and cereal to get through the week, to make sure that their kids have food. Right. So this is what a lot of Americans are dealing with. So when we talk about public health, we have to look at who's being affected the most by chronic disease, by, you know, low life expectancy, by all of these lifestyle related diseases. And then what can we do for those groups of people to make sure that they have their basic needs met? They have access to food, have access to housing, they have access to safe drinking water, those types of things. And that's going to make the most meaningful impact on a public level on improving people's health.

That really resonated me. I saw your post today when you shared that on your stories. And I was thinking back to this, this trip. We went on a mission trip a few years back, me and my husband, to Nicaragua. And it was really, really poverty Stricken area. And we were there to help build houses and help bring in food. And they put these food kits together of all stuff I would never eat. Like I was looking at it, it was this huge thing of canola oil and a big thing and like a can of it was just stuff I wouldn't eat. And I remember being like really upset. Like, what, why are we giving them this food? Like what, what's going on? Like, and what I learned is that it, how hard it would be to even get them to have fresh vegetables or to have protein. Like it was almost near impossible to get this food in. So we have to feed them something. So it was like that was the first experience I had with okay, well how do we make this better? But just shaming and saying you can't have these foods, you shouldn't eat. This is not going to fix the problem. So your today with that woman reminded me a little bit of that, that we, I think we do get in our bubble and we're thinking of optimizing our own health or our friend circle's health, but we really are not looking at the whole big picture and that doesn't solve the whole big problem. So.

Yeah, yeah. And I think, I think the issue comes into play when we, you know, when we think that like what's working for us is going to work at a mass scale level in the U.S. yeah. Right. Because as you say with the, with the canola oil example. Well, how cheap is canola oil compared to like, like a really high quality olive oil? Right. So it's much cheaper. And so if people need kind of an oil source that's, that's the oil source that is going to be like accessible for the most people in the U.S. yeah.

And if you want to get really technical there, you're shipping, shipping olive oil or trying to store. And then you've got all these rules there now too, like. Well, because there's all these whole, these theories about olive oil and how long that lasts and can it be this? So there's all these, these layers to it. So let's jump into, I want to jump into some of the specific things. Like I want to start with food coloring and I had my own belief around this. I want to talk to you about what's, what's real there, what's your opinion there? And I'll share. When I was in Europe last summer, one thing I really did notice was simplified, not perfect, but simplified ingredients and a lot of packaged foods. What are your thoughts? You're like, what's Real about what's allowed in Europe versus here. And what is your take on food coloring?

Yeah, so I think let's, let's start with kind of like the difference between here and Europe, because you bring up a good example. My husband is from Romania. He's. He moved here in his 20s, so we go back most summers. And so I've spent a lot of time in different European countries. And there is definitely a difference in their food environment versus our food environment. And it's not just about them using food colorings. It's also just they have small markets everywhere. Right. They have good local food systems. They have pretty accessible, like produce and fruits and vegetables. It's just a totally different food system than we have here. When we're talking about artificial food dyes, I want to just kind of talk through some of the, some of the common things that I see. So let me just explain first of all what artificial food dyes are, if that's okay.

Yeah, that's perfect.

So we have synthetic food dyes, and then we have naturally derived food dyes and synthetic food dyes. There's nine of them that are used in the OR that are approved for use in the US One, which is red dye three, which most people are probably familiar with, just got banned last year by the fda. It's still in the food supply. So I just kind of like counted in that nine, but there's only five that are really used, so used abundantly in our food supply. And that's red 40, yellow 5 and yellow 6, blue 1 and blue 2. So those are the five that are like predominantly. If you look at packaged foods, you're going to see those synthetic food dyes. Why are they used? Because they're used in predominantly ultra processed foods. And I can define that if we want to, but.

Yeah, I'll tell you your definition on that too.

Yeah, yeah. So the term ultra processed foods comes from this NOVA classification in nutrition science, and it's a relatively new term, but it basically is foods that you couldn't replicate in your own kitchen because they rely on nutrients or ingredients or food processing methods that you don't have access to. So the best way, there's four different classifications. Best way I can explain it is using corn. So unprocessed would be corn that you pick from the garden, minimally processed would be like frozen corn. Like, so they just flash freeze it because that goes through a little bit of processing. Process would be like canned corn. And then ultra process would be a Dorito chip. Right. So you're not gonna be able to make Doritos in your kitchen because they, you know, processing methods and ingredients that you don't have access to. So that's what ultra process is most of the time. When we see these food dyes, these synthetic food dyes, they're used in these ultra processed foods, right? That as a dietician, as a PhD in nutrition, I'm recommending that we consume less of anyway. Why are they used? Because when foods go through that processing, from a food science perspective, they lose color. Like you. They go through a lot of. Of processing, it loses color. We know from a lot of literature that color is very important to the experience of eating food, right? So people who bright colored food, people look at it and they think, oh, that's going to taste better, that's going to be more flavorful. It's like this psychological thing that we.

All do it with real food, real natural food too.

We do it with real food. Yeah. That's why they add color to salmon, because people won't want to buy the less colorful salmon. Right? They think brighter orange means better and fresher. And so they add color into some of that salmon. And that's why it's a psychological experience of eating. And so these food corporations know that. They know that if they give you like brown, whatever it is that should look colorful, that you're not going to want to eat it as much. And so they add these colors back. Now, synthetic food dyes, as opposed to natural food dyes, they are less. Well, I guess natural food dyes are less stable.

And the appearance can vary depending on like the growing season.

Is that like when you use like a beetroot or something like that?

Yeah, like a beetroot. So, so an example is like red dye 40 would be the synthetic, but the natural version would be either beetroot or carmine, which comes from bugs, insects, like the. It's a part of the insect, but it's still a natural dye that can be used. But those natural dyes, right, they can vary. And consumers don't tend to like when it's like a consumer preference thing. They don't like to tend to like when they get one bag of whatever it is and then the next time they get it, it's a little. The color is a little off. Because when the color's a little off, quote unquote, which is a commonly used term, when they'll do these, like, surveys for people who are eating these foods, it makes people not want to eat them because they think it's bad.

You Shared an example, and I think it was General Mills. It was one of the companies you said they did like a volunteer share that example. Somebody had done a voluntary change and then people didn't want it.

Yeah, yeah. So in 2015, because of consumer demand, what they thought was consumer demand. Right. Which came from a lot of, like, what we're seeing now, consumer demand. Right. For different. A change in products. General Mills was like, okay, we're going to take out. They did it for marketing. This is why corporations do what they do. Their number one goal is profit. Right. Profit and growth. So they're going to do what they think sells best. They're not really interested in your health for the most part. So they were like, we're going to take out these artificial dyes and put in these natural dyes. And they had a whole marketing plan about it. And they did that in 2015, and within two years they ended up adding the artificial dyes back. And it was because they had a lot of consumer backlash. They had a lot of consumers saying that the cereal looked, quote, unquote, off or gross. And so they put it back because that's what consumers demanded. So it turned out that the consumers who were actually eating, you know, the tricks, the Lucky Charms, those types of cereals, they wanted the really bright cereal, and that's what they were buying.

And I remember this from being with my daughter, being my daughter's almost 18 now, but when she was little that I would go buy the natural version of things and she would say, ew, like, this isn't what my friends have at school. It's like, even with little kids not knowing there, it's just where their eyes are going. So when. What's your thought process on the whole idea? And I know it wasn't actually a ban, it was a suggestion. But could you share kind of your insight on this divide around food coloring, which I didn't even realize was such a big divide, but apparently it is. Like, what is your thought, your thoughts there on why people were so divided and what actually should be happening?

Yeah. So I think going back to like the Europe versus here, so I mentioned we have those five food dyes that we use in the United States. I think a big talking point that a lot of people believe is that these food dyes are banned in Europe or other countries. And so some of the videos that I do, and this is actually a good example to explain something, some of the videos I do is correcting that, because the idea that we in the United States don't ban These dyes, because there's all this data out there to show they're unsafe where other countries are is just false. So all five of those dyes that I mentioned that are predominantly used in our food supply are completely approved for use and deemed safe in all EU countries. The EFSA has deemed them safe in Australia and New Zealand, their regulatory body has deemed them safe. Health Canada, their regulatory body has deemed them safe. And I think that will be surprising to some people to hear. And you can fact check me on this. You can go to the actual websites and see. You can go to the website, which I did pull out everyone.

I did, because this was all new. I'm like, how do I not know this? So I did. I went and looked at all of your stuff and fact check all of it.

Yeah. And I always welcome people to fact check what I'm saying. I think we should do that because it helps us to kind of get to the actual truth. Right. So I'll make a video correcting that and being like, no, these dyes are not banned in other countries. And I'll get a lot of pushback being like, well, you're pro food dye. And when I say to that I'm not pro food dye, actually I would recommend that we eat less foods that have these food dyes in them. But I'm pro. Why that narrative is so harmful is it plays into this narrative that scientists here are corrupt or they're not kind of like going through the proper regulatory process when we are literally coming out with the same exact recommendations as these other countries. So then the question is, why are we different than these other countries? Why do you see fruit Loops in Canada that are not as dyed versus us having these synthetic dyes? And that comes down to much more about consumer preference. Right. In the United States, culturally, we are used to these really bright dyes, dyed cereals, right? So, like, I grew up in the 90s, I was a kid in the 90s. And like, I remember lots and lots of commercials of these. Like, they all had mascots. And, you know, just the marketing to kids is just insane. Of course, tricks are for kids. Yeah, tricks are for kids. Or I mean, even all these processed food companies, they're like, you can't eat just. Bet you can't eat just one. Right. They're like telling you that their goal is for you to eat as much as possible. And so artificial food dyes are absolutely a marketing thing for these companies. But that's very different than them being dangerous from a scientific perspective. And so that's just the difference that I want to get at. I can be for.

Getting rid of some of these food dyes, but I also want the honest conversation about why we're doing it. Not because they're super dangerous and we're poisoning our people, while Europe is not. It's much more of a consumer preference thing.

And just to, to make sure we're all clear, you're not telling people, go eat lots of food coloring or. Because you. That would be. No, of course, lots of ultra processed food. You're not a fan of that. You're just saying all the things going on. This is. We're not sharing the real information about that. Like we're not sharing the real facts about food coloring. We're thinking that that's just going to solve a problem and that these are so dangerous and they're banned everywhere else. And you're saying they're not banned everywhere else. They're not as dangerous as everyone thinks, and that's not our problem. Is that accurate?

Yeah, yeah, I think it's that they're not banned everywhere else. Number one, the evidence that we do have, I mean, food coloring is regulated by the fda and we can talk about the fda because I actually prefer to. I actually prefer to critique the FDA than being in defense of the fda. I found myself being in defense of them more and more lately. But there are issues with the fda, Right. But with the, this particular topic, they're regulated by the FDA just like they are by the EFSA or Health Canada or these other regulatory bodies. And.

The data that we have shows that they're safe, overwhelmingly shows that they're safe. And I can kind of even talk about how we decide on their safety. It comes from toxicology studies. We look at something called an adi, which is how much somebody can have in a day. That's, that's the acceptable daily intake is what that stands for. And that's set based on something called an noael, which is the no observed adverse effect level. And so what they do is they look at all these toxicology studies and they find what level in rats or in animal models can these animals consume these, let's say red dye 40? At what level can they consume red dye 40 with no adverse effects? Like no observable adverse effects, looking at genotoxicity, looking at reproductive issues, looking at all of these different things, and then they find that level and then they add a safety factor to that level. So, for example, 100, they'll put in 100. And that's for like variability between species and just to be like extra, extra safe. So they'll take a number and then divide that number by 100 and then come to an ADI, which is the, you know, allowable intake in the day. And so an example is red dye 40. What studies have shown the EFSA and the FDA have seen with red dye 40 is they found that no observable adverse effect level at 695 milligrams per kilogram. That was what they found in the toxicology studies. They divided that by 100, they got to 6.95 milligrams per kilogram. And so the ADI is set at 7 milligrams per kilogram. And that's, that's the ADI. Now, this will vary a little bit depending on the country. In the United States, actually, for three out of the five food dyes that are used, we have a lower ADI in the US than in the eu. And so again, this is. So that's the adi. But the ADI is already super, super conservative. Right. And so at those levels that are allowed in our food, there's just been no, no adverse effects we're seeing. And that's why it's allowed.

You know, I'm just thinking about growing up. I grew up in the 70s, you grew up in the 90s. And we used to have in our pantry the whole spectrum of food colorings, probably ones that we definitely don't use now. And we used to, I remember making pancakes for breakfast and we would make them purple or red or whatever. Like we used to like, dump them in our food at a whole different level, which is wild. So if I hear you correct, all the things that we had years ago aren't even necessarily in our diet right now. But now we're getting really nitpicky here and we're saying if we just pull food coloring that this is going to fix our whole problem. What do you want people to know about that?

Yeah, so I think, think about the foods that food colorings are in, right? So these synthetic food dyes, again, they're in these, generally in these nutrient avoid ultra processed foods that I'm sure you would recommend people eat less of. Of. I recommend people eat less of. And, you know, like, let's say Skittles. If you take Red Dye 40 and Skittles and you swap it for carmine or beet juice, right, A natural dye, it's still Skittles, it's still a candy, it's still a high sugar, nutrient devoid, ultra processed food that we would recommend consuming. Less of. Now, on the flip side of that, potentially there's not a lot of data to suggest this, but just from like a psychological perspective. And what could happen is that because they're not so bright, maybe kids start eating less Skittles.

Yep.

I would love to see, like some research done on that because. Because that could be a really good reason to actually start taking out, you know, but like, let's talk about that as the reason you would get behind that reason.

That makes sense. You would have gotten behind that. Like, how do we make if. If the conversation was, how do we make these foods less appealing to kids? Let's dull the colors. You would have been like, that makes sense. You like that. It was just making it the story that it's this. These are so harmful and these are so bad and they're allowed everywhere else.

Yeah. Or by the way, so there is a little bit of evidence to show that potentially these dyes exacerbate symptoms of ADHD in children with adhd. Right. A small subset of children with adhd. It's some correlational data and it is there. And I hear from parents a lot like, oh, when I removed these dyes, my kid felt so much better. That observational data is very important to then go in and do even more research. So I'm not saying we just say, these are safe, let's continue using them, but let's look at what's happening and then let's do more research. Let's not misconstrue the research and say that they're super dangerous and they're causing ADHD in children. Because there's absolutely no evidence to suggest that. There is a little bit of evidence to suggest that their removal might help a small subset of kids with adhd. That research is very difficult to parse because of the types of foods that these diets are.

Because now we're looking at a high sugar diet and all this.

Correct.

There's a lot of other things, so it's hard to know was it that or was it the sugar that went with it? It's hard to know.

Yeah. Because if you take out artificial dyes from your diet, like, what are you taking out? You're taking out things like Skittles and these high sugar cereals and things like that. And so, yeah, your diet quality is going to improve when you do that.

I just had a complete flashback as you were talking about the natural one, the carmine that's made from bugs. In the 70s at camp, we used to drink Kool Aid and they used to call it bug juice. And the reason they called it bug juice is I think they had tried to make it with that initially and then there was backlash around that. So it's like.

Is that why I didn't even know that.

Yeah, because we used to call it bug juice. I just had this whole memory of that. That. That makes sense. Why? So if, if food coloring were to get completely removed from foods, do you think it's a bad thing or you just don't like how people are explaining it?

Well, okay, so there, so there are some downsides which I just kind of mentioned with these natural dyes. So kind of natural. This idea that natural is always better is actually, actually not true. You know, like with carmine, for example. Carmine is quite allergenic. So a lot of people will be. More people than who are even like affected by synthetic dyes will be affected by natural dyes because it's a higher allergenicity.

Makes sense.

And so, you know, some kids who maybe could tolerate Skittles if they don't have, if they have synthetic dyes, won't be able to. If they have some of these natural dyes. Again, I kind of already mentioned they have those issues with like texture.

Because they have the issue of.

The stability issue. It could affect the texture of the food, which some people are going to not love. There will be plenty of people who don't like the alternative to what the synthetic dye food looks like. So those are some downsides. I think that right now I think we're kind of like the narrative kind of is that we don't have any choice right now. I just want to mention, like, we do have choices. Like we right now, like I can go to my local Kroger, which is called I'm in Denver, so it's called King Supers. And you can either buy the Fruit Loops or you can buy fruitful O's, which are, you know, these naturally dyed. You can go to Aldi or Trader Joe's and there's no artificial dyes used in there. Like Whole Foods.

You can still buy a dollar. Like if you don't want a certain food, you buy the more natural one. And you're paying those companies.

Yeah, yeah. For a subset of the population. Again, we get back to public health and not everybody gets to choose the higher priced option. And that's another downside. Potential downside. These are. Things are so nuanced. I'm so sorry that I'm like, oh, it's all around it. But you know.

Natural dyes are also more Expensive. Right. So it's going to increase the product price. And so that if I think of.

Like some of my friends or some of my other guests that I've had on here, other people that I've interviewed around these topics, what they would say is that they would say, well, what about the people that can't aff it? We need to protect them. We need to remove it to protect them. But if I'm hearing you correctly, okay, fine, but we're not claiming the right reasons. We need to. Maybe that's good, but is it gonna, is it gonna then not be as appealing? Are they not gonna wanna get it? Great, those are good things. But to say that these are banned in other countries is just not true information. So we don't wanna be, we wanna be truthful there. And then to avoid the fact that the other natural ingredients might create another problem. We have to be aware of that too.

Yeah, yeah. And if we're looking to. I think an even bigger issue is if we're looking to protect low income populations in this country, banning artificial food dyes is not even on the list of the first 25 things we should do.

Okay, good. Okay, I'm gonna come back to that because I want to go deeper there, but I want to ask you about some of the other hot topics. And these are, these are close to me. So I'm putting myself out there asking these questions because I've done lots of episodes on, on being against some of these things. I want to talk about seed oils because I've been for years, for years before any of this became political or popular. In my, in my first book, I talk about not having them. I talk about focusing on olive oil and avocado oil. And then if you're going to have real fats, maybe butter. I don't, I still am not a huge fan of the high levels of saturated fat for some people. So this is something that I talked about for years now. It's become this very divisive topic. So I want to get, get your shares, your research, your data on what do we really need to be concerned about with oils versus what's just been overkill.

Sure. Okay, so when, when you talk about kind of recommending olive oil and avocado oil and was there another oil?

Is it real butter? Sometimes. If you're gonna choose.

So maybe real, maybe coconut oil.

Coconut oil would be another one. I tend to not love the saturated fats as much, but. But yes, I would say more natural coconut oil or butter or ghee versus canola. Oil or vegetable oil or seed oil.

Yeah. And, and why, why do you recommend that?

Well, I recommend. Well, first of all the avocado and the olive to me is the most heart healthy. It's going to, it's going to give us good fats and we get benefits from that. So. And as somebody who has familia hypolipiden, am I saying that right? Like the high cholesterol, genetic. So high cholesterol, something that I've just been monitoring for a of lot for years and to keep my hdl. Well, like I'm just very aware of that. So. And then it's more natural and then I, I don't love the highly processed because I've always taught lessening the processed food in your diet. So I look at some of these oils as. Not like we wouldn't really go squeeze cotton to make oil. So cotton seed oil would not be something that makes sense. So that's me. I can't tell you, like here's all the science that I can go find, science, data. But I really want to open up this conversation and understand like where do we need to be concerned about this versus this is an overkill.

Yeah. So I agree with you. So when we are looking at our fat sources, there's an immense amount of data that things like olive oil, things like avocado oil, things that have more polyunsaturated monounsaturated fatty acids versus saturated fatty acids are more heart healthy, are more beneficial. Seed oils, actually the fatty acid composition of them in and of itself are what we would consider a heart healthy oil because they are full of polyunsaturated fats, a little bit of monounsaturated fats, very little saturated fat. So when you're just looking at fatty acid composition, and that's why in the dietary Guidelines they're actually added into there, because the dietary Guidelines are supposed to be for all Americans. What are we looking for? So seed oils are one of those polyunsaturated fatty acids. Now from a processing perspective and a nutrient perspective, seed oils are lowest on the list in terms of nutrients. Right. Because they're very, very processed and they. So they're kind of like stripped of their nutrients, so to speak. We're not like pressing out a sunflower seed. Right. Cause that's what seed oils are. They come from like sunflower and safflower and rapeseeds, which is canola oil. So again from a fatty acid perspective, the research is actually quite good on them being heart healthy and heart protective. If you look at data kind of swapping out saturated fats and putting in polyunsaturated fats from things like seed oils. It's actually quite beneficial for decreasing cholesterol, decreasing cardiovascular risk risk, even some research showing decreasing all cause mortality. But they are very low on the list for nutrients. So if you're looking for your oils to be the most nutrient dense as possible, seed oils are not going to be that. Right. Your options are going to be more like olive oil, more like avocado oil, those types of things that are going to retain some of their nutrients. When I. That's more of like an optimizing thing. Right. So, so let's, let's look at like what are the best oils?

What are the best oils that we could be recommending to people? If they have the means, if they don't have a lot of barriers. From a taste perspective, olive oil is way better than actually this is a funny story. My son loves olive oil and balsamic and it's his favorite thing to eat. So he was really cute. He's five. He just went, this was a couple days ago and he went and took what he thought was olive oil, but it was actually my mother in law's vegetable oil that was in my pantry and he got that and he poured it in a little like bowl for himself with some balsamic and the dipped bread and he was like mommy, this is terrible. Yeah, it's not as flavorful.

Yeah, no, I love the tea smell. But I hear what you're saying. It could be, it's more expensive and so not everyone has their hands on that.

Yeah. And just when we look at the actual data on seed oils, there's just not evidence that these oils are harmful. Now they are refined oils. So again they're not going to be nutrient dense oils but from a heart healthy perspective, they're actually quite heart healthy. If you look at globally populations all around the world use these oils a lot. In Japan, canola oil is the number one oil used. Japan is often, we often like compare our life expectancy and our health status to like Japan. But they use a lot of these seed oils.

So have you heard of the book, have you heard of Kate Shanahan or Dark Calories or have you heard, have you read any of the new. Some of the, the, the studies around seed oils? I mean I'm just, and I don't again, you, you know more about a lot of this than me as far as data. So I'm just curious like your, some of the, and I've had many guests on also here about seed oils. So are you saying some of these, the claims that people are making about seed oils being actually creating wreaking havoc on our heart health and all, you don't feel that those are accurate, you think? Or do you think that some are accurate? Or any oil in a lot of melt. What's your take on that? Because I'm sure you've read research looking at the other direction.

Of course. So epidemiological data doesn, it doesn't support that. Right, but that's epidemiological data.

Can you explain what that means? Because some people don't know what that means.

Yeah, sure. So that's like long term longitudinal data where we're looking at really large data sets and we're seeing. Okay, and it's correlational. Right. For the most part. So we're looking at, okay, what populations eat a lot of seed oils and then what populations don't eat a lot of seed oils, maybe they eat more saturated fat. And what are the health outcomes when we control for a bunch of other factors. Right. So it's like you get these huge data sets, thousands and thousands of people, and then you statistically control for like, you know, poverty level or income level and you know, other lifestyle factors that might affect what you're looking for. So if you're looking at like heart health, what other things impact heart health control for as much as that as possible and then kind of like see the impact of these oils. And so when you look at those large data sets, it doesn't. There's no evidence that seed oil intake like impacts this. When you look at some of the other evidence of lead, like just looking at the polyunsaturated fatty acids and if they're causing inflammation. Yeah. So looking at like, I think there's some studies looking at linoleic acid and how that.

Acid. Yeah. And how it oxidizes and. But when you actually see that like in vivo, like in actual human trials or human studies, the amount of arachidonic acid that comes from the seed oil is very, very small. And so it's, it's not. So when, when you think about like from a systemic perspective causing inflammation, it just doesn't hold up in the research. Like, honestly, this flies in the face of nutrition science research. So it's really difficult for me to.

For me to like, kind of like with, with, with like artificial dyes. There's a lot of nuance there with seed oils. There's just not great evidence that it's Harmful for us. What is what there is evidence on, on. If I can just mention this, we over consume seed oils in, in the United States and that's very problematic.

That's what I was just gonna say. Yeah, I was.

Yeah.

Because if you're, if you're eating. So what I. Here's what I feel because. And I, and I did an experiment with myself just cutting out literally all seed oils. And what I realized is the seed oils weren't happening at my house. They were happening eating out. All because I started asking because I wanted to see what happened on my labs. What would change on my markers if I did this. And I, and I did notice a change on my markers. But here's the problem with even just going off of my own little personal study with myself is I'm not counting. We're eating out. Like you're eating out. What else is going into that food? You're having more calories, you're having more things added. So you're getting into more ultra processed. There's more things happening. So there's a lot of variables going into. It's not just the trace amount of seed oil that's in something. It's how much are you having. Are you having french fries that are now fried in it and that's an excessive amount?

Well, yeah. And frying, frying with seed oils is problematic. Right. Especially not necessarily just like frying one time, but especially like at fast food restaurants that continue to reuse it, that can be really problematic because that can oxidize and turn into trans fats, which is actually very problematic for heart health.

They're right there. What you just said there, that is the key to all this that I think people have completely taken out of context and made it the wrong way. So what you just said, everybody, that's the agreement line. So no matter what side people fall on Seedles, what you just said there about it oxidizing and creating inflammation, that is the prob. The key thing. But where people have taken it to this extreme now is the tiny trace amount that's in a healthier snack or something like that.

Yeah. Or even just like at home using canola oil to like saute something like. That's, that's just not. There's just no evidence to suggest that that's harmful for like people who. That's what they can afford is canola oil and that's what they're using to saute. I want to get back to this point about how we over consume it though. Because seed oils are abundant in our food supply, our food environment, which we could talk about our food environment too, but our food environment is like 70 ultra processed foods right now. Right. This is somewhere where I think we all can agree too. Like, our food environment is terrible. We need to start doing things to improve our food environment so that people have more access to healthier options. But within that ultra processed food. Most of these companies are using seed oils. Why? Couple of reasons. They're cheap because they're so processed, but they're also flavorless. Right. For the most part. Like we just talked about how flavorful like olive oil is. Well, you don't want olive oil in some of these processed stacks because it's going to overpower in terms of flavor. So they use canola oil or safflower oil or whatever it is to vegetable oils as the fat source in these products. And because we are over consuming ultra processed foods, we're over consuming restaurant foods where they're using these seed oils. We're over consuming polyunsaturated fatty acids and seed oils. And that is problematic.

So if I'm hearing you correctly, if you're having a big salad at home, you're not dumping canola oil all over it. You yourself would love olive oil. You would love to have the more now natural. You are just saying there's been a little bit of an overreaction or maybe in some cases a big overreaction on the dangers of it. When the specific danger of it is when you're frying it, when you're over consuming, when you're, when it's oxidizing, when it's creating inflammation. So that you agree with. It's just that this. It's just gotten into this, this crazy zone. And I, and I noticed this. This came up for me where I downloaded an app that would tell me what restaurants had seed oils or not. And I noticed some of the healthy restaurants, even like flower child came, came up high levels of seed oils. And I'm like, but wait a minute. But their stuff is healthy. So this is where you know all these little nuances. And I'm thinking, well, is it better to have flower child or McDonald's? Probably flower child, but now they're saying they have seed oil. So it gets very confusing for people.

Yeah, I think that's a really good distinction that you're making there. Because is it healthier to have flower child or McDonald's? Like, there's an obvious answer there, right? Because one is using a lot of like fresh nutrient dense foods. And so this is Kind of where these types of conversations or these types of like this type of rhetoric can actually be really harmful. Because like if you're putting, being put in the position like, oh my gosh, both of these are equally bad.

That'S clearly not the case where one is much more nutrient dense. And seed oils, again, when we look at the data and we look at long term longitudinal data and we look at the large scale data, there's just not evidence that these seed oils are harmful to human health. And actually quite the opposite we see because of their polyunsaturated fatty acid profile. If you're for people over consuming saturated fat, for example, it can be heart protective. And so it's not the first oil that you would recommend because of the nutrient density of it. But it's also not something that I would say if it's this beautiful.

Sauteed, what is it called? Stir fry with all of these veggies and these nutrient dense foods and it was made with a little seed oil that's not taking away from the nutrient density of the meat.

Makes total sense because if you look at, if all of a sudden dunkin donuts and McDonald's start saying seed oil free, but flour, but it's like flour. It's just, that's where this goes very bad for us.

Or what's the fast food restaurant that just switched out seed oils for beef tallow?

Oh God, I don't know.

Steak and shake, I think steak and shake. I don't want to name somebody, I'm not sure, but one of the fast food restaurants like that doesn't make. I think it's like the psychological thing. People are like, oh, because there's no seed oil and now there's beef tallow. Which by the way, we don't have any evidence to suggest beef tallow is more beneficial for heart health than seed oil. So that doesn't automatically make that fast food any healthier.

And this argument that's important to know by the way. And I have a, I have a cardiologist coming on soon that I'm going to be interviewing. But about this, because there's been this argument about what actually causes heart disease has been going on for years. Some people blame sugar, some people blame saturated fats and cholesterol. It's like this, this has been going on since the 70s back Ansel Keys. It's like these is going back forever. And I think the seed oil is going to be one of those new topics where we just, we have these different sides. So I like that truth in the middle.

That.

Yeah, yes. When it oxidizes, when it creates inflammation, when it's too much and when it's ultra processed, that's the bigger problem there. So we, we agree there. And plus, like you said, there's benefit. Like olive oil has polyphenols. You're going to get benefits from some of these other, other oils too. Let's talk about another, another trendy one, but another one that I'm guilty of talking about. And I want to ask about raw milk and, and I want to share where my stance on raw milk came first. And then you can help help with some of the science here. So in my experience, a lot of midlife women that feel that they're lactose intolerant or are lactose intolerant when they actually consume raw milk, they don't have that same reaction. And it was my understanding it's because when it's not pasteurized, the enzymes are not broken down, so they're fully intact, so you get the complete enzyme. And that's why you don't have an issue with raw milk. However, I'm also very aware that if you have raw milk, you have a higher risk of parasites or bacteria or things that are not getting killed or off. So what's going on here with the raw milk? Why is it banned in some states and not in others? What's your opinion on it? And is it stupid to drink it? Is it healthy for some?

What's.

What's. Help us with your opinion and also some of the science here.

So raw milk is. I'll just define it. Raw milk is just a milk that comes from the cow and it doesn't go through pasteurization. Pasteurization is essentially just heating the milk in order to kill harmful pathogens. So the most common way to pasteurize is you heat the milk for 15 seconds, not even to boiling. It's 165 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 seconds, and then you rapidly cool it. And that's it. That's the pasteurization process. And the whole point is just to kill potentially harmful pathogens, right? And so this idea of pasteurization or cooking our food in order to decrease risk has. You know, we used to drink a lot of raw milk milk. And there was a reason that we started pasteurizing, right? And that reason is because people were getting sick from foodborne illness. And so there's a reason we cook our meat, right? We cook our meat because meat has the potential to make us sick if we eat it raw. And so Cooking, it significantly decreases that risk of getting foodborne illness. With raw milk, if you pasteurize your milk, it significantly reduces the risk of foodborne illness. I mean, there's some evidence to suggest that raw milk is 840 times more likely to cause foodborne illness this than pasteurized. So it's a much riskier thing to do. You know, if you want to choose that risk that, you know, I think that that can be, that can be your decision. So we, there was like, I don't know exactly back in history, but at some point very early on, like 100 years ago or something, we made the decision as a country that we weren't going to allow the sale of raw milk anymore because it was so dangerous compared to the pasteurized version, which is again, it's just heating for 15 seconds and rapidly cooling. So lots of states haven't changed that. Some states have and they've kind of changed their laws. It kind of goes state by state and they've kind of started allowing that because it's more like, oh, your choice if you want to do this. The problem is if you think about it on an individual level, you can make that choice individually. Again, from a public health perspective, which is kind of how I think about these systems. If you stop pasteurizing milk and you just have raw milk kind of like all throughout our society, there's just going to be a ton more foodborne illness. Illness.

Especially if people are already eating a highly processed food diet, they don't have the, maybe the immune system or the health to really get rid of things that we might. We could see more problems.

We would see way more problems. Yeah, yeah.

Do you, Is there any. What I just said about my belief and my understanding about you're not killing the enzymes is any. Do you see any holes in that? Is that a true thing? What, what are your, what's your thoughts around that? About Like, I'm literally not bloated if I eat raw, but if I the pastorized, I would be bloated. So I'm wondering around that.

Yeah, so I've heard this a lot. I've looked for evidence on it and there's not. I mean, there's not science on it. But that doesn't mean that it's not a real phenomenon. It's certainly because I've heard it so much and you've heard it so much. It's clearly something. And I think we shouldn't discount people's experiences. I think that those experiences, again, that's called observational data for us that that's used to. Then go do research and see, okay, why is this happening? Right. So we don't know from a scientific perspective why that might be happen. That's a really good hypothesis that it's potentially that some of the enzymes are allowing kind of the enzymes within your gut to then be able to tolerate lactose more. A lot. I see sometimes that people say like, oh, well, raw milk has lactase which allows you to, you know, break down the lactose. That's not accurate because your body makes lactase. Your, the milk doesn't have lactase itself, so your body makes lactase. If your body down regulates lactase production, then you have lactose intolerance. Right. Because lactase is that enzyme that breaks down lactose. So if there's potentially something in the raw milk that helps your endogenous systems build up more lactase to be able to handle the raw milk. That's a very interesting question that like, I think we should study, but there's not data to suggest that that's true right now.

So you personally, would you drink or eat raw cheese or raw milk?

No.

No, you wouldn't? Because from what, you know, because I.

I don't drink milk anyway, so that I think my, my opinion's a little skewed. I wouldn't let my children drink it for sure just because it's, you know, we. And I get my. I mean this is kind of. I get my milk from a local farm in Denver. It's. But it's pasteurized and it's great. It's so good. But my kids love it. They won't even let me buy like the stuff at the store because it's not as like good tasting totally. But you know, it's. I think a lot of people think you can only get that good taste from raw milk, but you can get it from like from. Again, pasteurization is just heating.

I don't eat a lot of dairy at all. But if I am going to have cheese, I was.

Exactly.

Especially when I was living in California, I would buy the raw because that would make it so I didn't feel that. But I hear what you're saying, that it's, it's, it's more individual, which is everything. A lot of things can be individual. Like it doesn't dismiss. Somebody listening might say, well, I feel this when I have this. That that may be very well true for you. She's not dismissing that. She's just saying for the masses, we have to pay attention to these things. I want to Ask you about. We had started talking about the FDA and your thoughts there. You said, I talk about them a lot. You defend them a lot. And then you also see some negatives. I'd love to hear, get some of your guidance around that and what's actually important from your perspective. What do we need? What are we missing there and what really does need to change?

So the FDA is the Food and Drug Administration. So they are housed within hhs, which is Health and Human Services. So they're housed under HHS with like the CDC and the USDA and the NIH and a bunch of other agencies. And so the FDA is really responsible for making sure that our food and our data.

Food and drugs are safe for the population. Within the nutrition department of the fda, it's a very small subset. So the vast majority of the FDA is kind of looking at the pharmaceutical industry and making sure that the pharmaceutical drugs in our country are safe. And then we have the food section of the fda, which is making sure that our food is safe outside of, like, poultry and meat and things, which is housed under the usda. So the fda, essentially, they are responsible for.

Basically allowing different additives into our food supply, ensuring that they're safe, and then also issuing recalls if things happen and those sorts of things. Just making sure what we are consuming is safe. If there is evidence that something that's on the market is not safe, they will go through the process to then take that off the market. So. So, you know, a good example of that is like, trans fats, like artificial trans fats. That's a more recent example. I think that was like back in 2015, somewhere under the Obama administration.

Even saccharine, I think saccharin had that to some extent. Was that part of that, too? Like, I know saccharin was like the big artificial sweetener of Choice in the 70s and 80s.

Yeah. And then it was taken off the market. Yeah. So that's. That's a similar thing. So Red Dye 3 is a really good example, too. Red Dye 3 was just taken off the market because a bunch of scientists kind of to petition the FDA to look at the evidence there. And so the evidence, actually, this was kind of like a unique situation. The evidence, it wasn't new evidence. It was old evidence that showed that a really high dose of red dye 40, about 4% of the body weight in male rats, caused tumors, thyroid tumors in those male rats. And so we have something called the Delaney Clause in the United States, which states that if something has been shown to cause, which is a really Important word, cause. Like directly cause cancer in any animal, in any model human animal, whatever, at any dose, it needs to be taken off the market. And so that's kind of why Red Dye 3 was taken off. Not because it had shown any evidence of harm in humans, but because of the delaying clause with those studies in rats. And so, yeah, that's kind of what the FDA does.

Well, what do they do wrong?

They're very villainized. And do you. I mean, I certainly don't think they're perfect. But I want to ask you, do you think they do anything wrong or what? Like I said, there's a lot of changes happening right now.

So.

And it's. People are very divided here. So do you. I mean, do you think it's perfect? Do you think there's things that do wrong? What would be like, your wish list with them?

Yeah, no, no, it's not perfect. A big reason why it's not perfect, though, and this is really important to understand, is it's chronically underfunded at the fda. And so here's a thing that I really agree with, like RFK Jr. On. I really agree that we have an issue with what's called growth, the grass loophole. So this is generally recognized as safe. It's a designation in the US where this loophole has allowed essentially a lot of ingredients in our food supply without proper FDA oversight. And I say proper from, like, my perspective. What would be proper? It's proper in terms of, like, how the FDA is set up right now. And I can kind of explain why that happened. So grass, the designation came in the 50s, 1958, and essentially it had really good intentions. So it was like, FDA oversight and approval for new food additives kind of is a pretty rigorous process. Right. And so they were like, let's have this designation that's generally recognized as safe for things like sugar and vinegar and flour, things that have been in the food supply forever and ever, and they don't need to go through this rigorous process for approval. And so those were designated as grass. And that's kind of how that approval worked in 1969 under Nixon, that he initiated this affirmation status. So, like, they went through all of the grass ingredients and said, okay, we have to make sure that they are affirmed. And they affirmed them as safe, as generally recognized as safe. And then until about. Until 1997, that's how it worked. So if people wanted to go through GRAS status, they had to go through the fda. They had to provide if a company wanted a new ingredient they had to provide the FDA all of the toxicology studies, all the safety studies. And then the FDA would go through the approval process and either approve or denote, and then it would get that designation. In 1997, that changed under the Clinton administration. There was this really big push in the 80s and 90s for deregulation from both Republicans and Democrats. And it was like this just real big deregulatory era. And I can talk about that with pharmaceuticals too. It happened with pharmaceuticals and with the fda.

They had something that kind of changed how they were approving drugs because it was just taking so long. There was huge backup. So Congress wasn't approving enough funds for the FDA to have enough people. And so these companies really wanted more food additives to be able to be used. And they were like, you guys are taking too long. So essentially what they did, what the FDA did was they said, okay, you guys, as corporations can essentially self affirm that these food additives are safe. And what that means is it's not as bad as it sounds, but it's not great. So it means that the corporations could essentially hire their own scientists and go through the whole process of the affirmation process, find all of the safety studies with their own scientists that they hired, and say if something was safe or not. And they didn't even have to tell the fda. So the FDA no longer was like approving things because there was this big backup. And so what that did is it created this loophole where now there's ingredients in our food supply that the FDA is not even aware of because they've gone through this self affirmation process. Now.

That seems ridiculous, and it is. But the reason for it was again, the FDA had this huge backup. So what RFK Jr wants to do is close that grass loophole, which public health experts have been wanting to do forever as well. And they've been quite critical of this entire system because it's really a pro corporation thing, not a pro public health thing, allowing these food corporations to just go faster essentially to get these food ingredients in. Now.

If there's evidence of harm again, the FDA will step in and they'll be like, oh my gosh, this particular ingredient is showing evidence of harm. You know, you petition the fda, the FDA goes through approval. But that's, that's a reactionary approach, right? Whereas a lot of us would like them to take a more proactive approach and be like, okay, well don't even allow it in the food supply unless it's been rigorously tested and shown to Be safe. And so that is an area where I've always been quite critical of the fda and I think they deserve criticism. But it's not necessarily corruption at the FDA level. It's that they didn't have, have the capacity to go as fast as they wanted. And because we had administrations both on, both in both parties who wanted kind of this pro corporation deregulatory agenda. That's why this happened.

Makes sense. Makes total sense. I'm loving asking you these questions because again, I've heard like completely different answers. But I love how you're explaining things because what I'm realizing is you're actually, actually more similar to other people that I've interviewed than, than any everyone realizes. Like you, you actually have similar things. It's just the divide is coming into. You're very factual. Like this is the fact. Let's talk about like you're saying this is what I do. Fine, but here's the facts here. And then also let's. How do we help the masses here versus just how do we help the, the, the person that's already optimal and is. Has the means to go to another level. So, so, but I realizing how similar things really are. It's just this different perspection perspective here. You had said earlier that you had there was like 25 things or there's a whole list of things that you would believe would be more of a priority. And you don't have to list all 25. But what would be if you were going to help, if you were going to. We're going to fix the health of this country. We want to really help people get healthier. What would kind of be your priority? What would you think we need to do?

Yeah, so I'll talk about it from like a individual health versus systemic health. And so again there's these categories. But let's just talk about food. So what would we recommend? This is probably similar to what you would recommend. Right. Let's eat a diet that's mostly whole nutrient dense foods. A lot of vegetables and fruits and beans and legumes and a variety of meats. And limit ultra processed foods, limit added sugars, limit all of these refined carbohydrates, these types of things. That's the gold standard of nutrition advice. Right. We complicate nutrition, but it's actually the basics have been the basics for a long, long time.

You know, what's wild Jasmine?

There's been a lot of variety.

Just to interrupt for one second, I've had this discussion having carnivores and what are vegans on? Like, at the core, they're both saying, eat unprocessed, healthy food. But it's like. But this big divide. I think it's the same thing happening right now. It's like you're still saying that. You're saying, eat healthy, unprocessed, natural, real food. For the most part, yeah.

And I think, you know, carnivores are over here, vegans are over here. I think the truth falls somewhere in the middle. And I think the truth is, really is just like a variety of whole foods as best as we can. So that's the individual advice. If I'm working one on one with somebody. That's what I'm saying. Right. But when you look at it from a public health perspective, again, you have to look at what are the root causes of not being able to do that. And so what are they? Well, let's talk about agricultural subsidies. So how do we. Why are our dietary guidelines recommending people eat a variety of whole foods and making half of your plate fruits and vegetables? But we don't subsidize fruits and vegetables. Our subsidies go towards corn, wheat and soy. We're a monoculture. We, we, you know, really prioritize corn, wheat and soy in this country. And that's where the vast majority of our subsidies go. And subsidies are essentially like, not necessarily direct payments to farmers as much anymore, but it's. It's like crop insurance. Right. So if like, something happens. So we, we're investing in corn, wheat and soy. Well, why are we doing that? Well, we're doing that because corn is a very good export for us. Right. It's. It's all about money. So that's what is good financially for us. We made that decision back in the 70s. The Department of Agriculture made that decision to go big or get out. I think it was what he was. He said the Department of Agriculture and it essentially decimated small farms. So we had this major farm crisis through the late 70s and 80s, and we took away local food systems and we started really just prioritizing monoculture. We started, which is really bad for our soil, by the way. We used to have these wonderful diverse farms where, like, there was all this wonderful turnover and nutrient, like nutrient density in the soil, and we just don't have that anymore. We have these giant agribusinesses, and that's what we prioritize in the United States. And so why. Because corn is a really good export for us. The vast majority of corn, by the way, doesn't even go for our Food in the United States, it goes towards animal agriculture, feeding animals and it goes towards fuel. And so that's what we're prioritizing growing in the United States. So because of that, we actually have to import a lot of our, like fruits and vegetables and things like that. But if we want to tell people to make half of your, your fruit, half of your plate, fruits and vegetables, but we're not incentivizing the growing of that. So we're artificially, the corn, wheat and soy that we do make goes into ultra processed foods to artificially make those things cheaper. And then produce in our country is quite expensive, right? Especially like berries in the winter, very expensive. So we are making it inaccessible to eat those nutrient dense foods through policy. Those are policy decisions, decisions. You know, we have food deserts. We have millions and millions of people in this country living in what we call food deserts, which are areas that you don't have easily accessible kind of, you can't get access to fresh fruits and vegetables easily. And I don't think a lot of people can conceptualize this who maybe haven't been into food deserts before, because I certainly couldn't before I had been into one. But I was talking to a colleague and she went through this exercise where she worked with women, single moms who are in these food deserts to try, try to go and get local fresh produce. And they had to take like four different buses to the nearest, like nearest.

Store to get exactly what you're talking about. And it's, it definitely that's. I mean, I saw that when I was in Nicaragua too. Like just when we were trying to help people, they don't, they're living in trash dump areas. Like there was, there was literally no way to get that in or to find it. We couldn't even teach them how to plant and grow it because the land is so bad right there.

Right? Yeah, exactly. And so we have, we have these issues, right, that, that are in our country. So how would you, you make those improvements? You would reform agricultural subsidies. You would strengthen local food systems, right? You would bring things in, like these carts, these farmers market carts to these food deserts. You would incentivize small farmers like the farm bill just came out and it does the exact opposite of that. And unfortunately, like how would we strengthen local food systems, incentivize small farmers to be able to produce a bunch of different crops, afford some of these subsidies to smaller farmers that are growing things that aren't corn, wheat, soy. Right. And kind of, and really investing in kind of like these Local food environments that can help address food deserts, which I said lots of people, millions of Americans live in, address things like what we call the social determinants of health, which are these non kind of medical factors that really directly impact health, like economic equality or economic instability. I should say the built environment, which are like our cities and towns, which aren't really walkable or bikable. And so people aren't able to get physical activity. But back to nutrition, investing in nutrition education from a young age because a lot of people don't realize.

How to eat well. Right. And so again we talked about corporations, make what people are buying well. How do you get people, how do you increase demand? You start them young, you start teaching them young how to kind of make these food choices and then you can increase demand by kind of like systemically through the, that way. So those are all like from a public health perspective, how do we get people eating? How do we get people actually following these guidelines? Because over 90% of Americans aren't meeting vegetable and fiber guidelines right now. Over 70% of Americans are eating more calories than what their needs are. Over 50% of Americans are eating too much added sugar. So we have the science, we have the guidelines, but a lot of people aren't following them. Gotta ask why? And then you have to address why.

Okay, now I'm going to ask you another, a bigger question here with the influencers that you see online and wellness influencers that I, that I really do think have the right intention and me included in this, where we have the right intention, where we're learning something, we're doing it for us, we share it, this is what we're doing. What do you want them to start paying attention to and looking at? Because like you said, this could work for them. This is great, this could be the ideal. It just doesn't work for everyone.

Everyone.

What guidance would you have for them? Because I do believe most people that are in that category, they're online, they, they, they want to help. They're not doing it just they, they want to actually help and they think they are helping. And like you've pointed out many times, it's just, it's making a lot of information more complicated. So what do you want them to know?

Well, I'll tell you why I got on social media to start with. It was because I was pregnant at the time and I started realizing how much misinformation was targeting that demographic of people. So I saw lots of misinformation and kind of like fear based information in the pregnancy space. And so I started just making content on like, you know, food safety and things like, because that's a very big thing during pregnancy. And so I think what a lot of people don't realize is that like, sometimes these good intentions are really rooted in like fear. And so that's why I think, think like these topics are really nuanced. And unfortunately, social media algorithms do not reward nuanced conversations. Right. They. They reward really like sensational and that.

Or they want to polarize. Like it's either the opposite or exactly what you believe.

Yeah. Or if you have something really like sensational to say, like, they reward that because it's like, oh my gosh. What? Like, I didn't know that. Right. And, and mo. And most nutrition science is not. Not sensational. It's not sensational. It's like there's just not that much sensation in it. And so, you know, because of that, a lot of people will, whether it's good intentioned or not, they will over kind of speak of what they're saying and that they will go from like, what, what maybe is they'll say something that's not really rooted in science and it causes a lot of fear. Right. So, and that's. I, I get DMS every single day from people just literally terrified of like, I don't even know what to eat. And, and I just don't think we need to be that. Right. And so that, that's kind of like when I go on and I'm correcting some of this misinformation. I really try to be very specific and target the information that's being said and just kind of correct what's being said because it helps people when you can hear kind of like, oh, the glucose test is not toxic and is not going to like kill my baby. Which, you know, or like I corrected a video the other day, or not the other day maybe a couple months ago, and she started the video by are you poisoning your kids? And like, that's just not helpful, you know, especially to a demographic of new parents that are just trying to do what's best for their kids. And you know, we all are parents. Well, we're not all parents, but we all like, parents come in all shapes and sizes. Right. They come in Democrat, they come Republican, they come every, in all, like different areas, all different socioeconomic statuses. And all of us at the end of the day just want to do what's best for our children, but we don't want to be terrified that we can't Feed our children and, like, food and like, you know, I buy some crackers for my kids, and because they have a little seed oil, my kid is gonna, like, be poisoned. Like, that's just not true at the end of the day. So I think, like, being really, like, careful that we are saying accurate things is, like, the most important thing on social media. And unfortunately, social media doesn't really reward accuracy. It rewards the most sensational thing that you say.

I think what I've taken from really researching lately, and I mean, gosh, your page was so helpful to me. Just like, just really opening my mind to an opposite side of how I'd been thinking and expanding my thoughts. Maybe that's a better word. Expanding my thoughts is I feel with what I do, I want to be more accurate in saying this is what I do versus just like, this is a blanket role. So this is what I do. This is why. And versus, like, everyone needs to stop doing this. So that's what I took from that. Because like you said, everything is very nuanced. There's kind of different sides. There's different levels of things. And you're not saying some of the things that wellness influencers or people are speaking about are not. Are necessarily not working for them. Like they might be working for them. We just need to be careful about telling the masses that they have to do something or why something is good for the masses.

Yeah, I think, I think that's really, really right. I also think it's why a lot of times, like, people like me, I think this happens with a lot of registered dietitians who have, you know, they've been thinking about these topics for a long time. And so they're very careful in their words. Right. So, like, when we talk about ultra processed, like, I'm very careful to talk about, like, I don't just say processed foods are terrible. Right. So I'm very careful to be like, you know, we want to really avoid as much as possible. I'll always kind of like, couch it in that, like, limit, limit these don't just, like, necessarily avoid them all because it's just, just not realistic for everyone in America to be avoiding ultra processed foods in a country that incentivizes you to eat ultra processed foods and your food environment. 70% ultra processed food. So I think. And that can get misconstrued sometimes by people as like, oh, she's not against ultra processed foods, or she loves ultra processed foods. So it definitely is difficult. And I just want to call that out. That, like, if you hear somebody kind of talking in a more nuanced way like that. It's not because they're necessarily pro you eating ultra processed foods or pro like poisoning America. It's more because we. It's like a recognition that like not everyone can can do this. Not everyone can eat and optimize and biohack their health, you know, and so, so just kind of realizing that Jessica.

This was so helpful. Where can people. I'm gonna obviously link your Instagram below, but where do you want people to go to find you? Is that the best place Instagram? Is there a website you'd rather them go to? Where do you want them to find more?

Yeah, my Instagram is probably the best place. I also have a substack where I publish Twitter twice a week on, on different topics. So that's. I don't really know what. It's just Jessica's substack. I'm not sure I'm. I should get better at that. But yeah, my Instagram is good to start.

Thank you so much, Jessica. Thank you for today.

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