Episode 134: The Truth About Food That Could Change Your Life with Brian Sanders

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Dr. Rob Whitfield, the board certified plastic surgeon specializing in explant surgery. Breast implant illness is a topic that is not often talked enough about, especially in medical community, but is something that affects many women. In this podcast I'll be discussing the latest research, treatment options and personal stories of women who have undergone explant surgery in an effort to heal breast implant illness. In this podcast we'll explore the symptoms of breast implant illness and delve into the latest surgical techniques for explantation and the recovery process. Whether you are currently experiencing breast implant illness or are considering explant surgery, this podcast is a valuable resource for anyone looking to take control of their health and wellness. So let's dive in. Very special guest today, Brian Sanders is a filmmaker behind the Food Lies documentary, host of the Top 5 Nutrition Podcast be Human and an international speaker. He graduated from UCLA with a degree in mechanical engineering. He the founder of Sapien Center, a popular health club in Austin. He also owns grass fed meat and beef tallow body care company Nose to Tail. Welcome to the show, Brian. All right, welcome Brian. We've been talking about doing a show and finally we've got things scheduled. I know it's been a long time coming. So your documentary is getting finished and we saw like a little snippet at a recent event. So why don't you kind of give us your backstory and rather than me try to go into the details, I'll let Brian explain how he got so interested in food and how his Food Lies documentary A is coming to fruition finally.

Yeah, well it's been seven and a half years in the making, so a lot of people have been asking me when it's coming out. And we finally have some news that trying to sign with some production companies. There's two that we're looking at right now. So it's finally happening as of seven and a half years. But my journey started ten years ago actually. I lost both my parents around then and obviously that's a wake up call. And I was 30 at the time, 31. Now I'm 41 and I was 31. I was kind of turning into the average American, which isn't great. The average American is on medications, overweight, you know, having all these problems and going to have chronic disease soon enough. And that was me. And I just made some simple changes to my diet and all of a sudden my life changed. Everything got better. My body just worked properly.

Let's pause that because obviously I've seen pictures and they're up on your instagram page of, like, before you made those changes and can maybe just for everybody listening who's obviously not on. On video, kind of give us a physical representation of what you're experiencing so they can understand that transformation. Because those are sometimes hard to grapple with if you're not seeing the actual picture.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was like every other 30 year old. I. I knew I was, like, kind of puffy, right. I was just, like, inflamed. I was overweight. I had 20 to 25 pounds of extra fat on my body that I didn't really know about. I was like, I was always played sports. I thought I was athletic, and I thought I was in shape. And compared to, you know, other people these days, I was sort of in shape, but I was inflamed, sick, had overuse injuries, had allergies, had. What is it called? Indigestion, you know, like, oh, it's had a heartburn, reflux. So many. Yeah, acid reflux. So many little things. And. But physically, I was just, like, round and inflamed. It's. Yeah, you got to see these pictures. You can go to my Food Lies Instagram, just search for Food Lies and I'm there. And then I'm 41 and I have visible abs. Apparently. That's a. It's a thing. If you look at the Internet, it's less than, you know, whatever percent of people have. There's more millionaires than people with visible abs. So that was my transformation. And it's all without counting calories or doing anything that extreme. It was very easy. I. I just eat what I want to. And this is just how humans are supposed to exist. This is my, my theory.

You know, we talk to patients about this a lot, Brian, and, And for you and I, it may seem fundamentally easy because you've made those habitual changes. Right? These are like tiny things to you and I that become bigger. More like transformational habits. But most people. You. For instance, I had a patient come to me recently, and we'll go off to, you know, off script here for just a second. She came in to see me and she said all of her children between the ages of 7 and 13 have ADHD, and she didn't feel well, had a lot of fatigue, et cetera. And so, you know, I, I do kind of the basic, all right, what are you eating? Drinking all these things? And she said, well, they all drink Monster and Red Bull, and the kids really like candy. And I said, okay, well, you actually can't be a patient of mine because I don't take care of people with those habits. So we start by just making. Just like you made some modifications in diet but. And those affect your behavior, right? So if you're giving a kid monster, which I can't even fathom giving a kid monster or Red Bull for that matter, anything like that, you have to like help them make some choices, right? So you and I are aligned with. You got to make better choices and then it helps you physically feel better and make behavior modifications in addition. So I just, I said okay, and I'll give you the disclaimer. I was just trying to get her to stair step down from what she was doing. Like, you can't give kids monster Red bul. You can't drink Monster Red Bull. So you can have black coffee and you want to have mold free, toxin free coffee if that you. Is going to be your drink. And if you're going to give the kids, if you feel strongly that you know they're going to freak out if you don't give them a soda now that you've been giving them all this stuff, then use something like Zevia, which is not perfect, but a lot better than what you've been using. And instead of, you know, we're in Austin, Brian's in Austin like I am and the Human Chocolate Company was basically in Austin. And I said, you can use human chocolate. The ingredients are good, way better, you know, Skittles and M and Ms. And things like that. And you know, I just. And Brian's aware of the well in Austin. So I have to kind of steer people to go experience these things so they understand they're actually possible to eat good food, high quality foods that are, you know, from local farms. Like Ryan will go on and talk about his company knows the tail. But it's just, it's a complicated thing that starts early on. Like, you know, you have to decide to do this, then you have to impart that on your kids or friends or peer groups and then those decisions can be made.

Yeah, actually it starts with that decision of I am a healthy person. Like that is the ultimate thing that someone needs to do. I can tell them how to eat and how to do this sustainably and how to make it enjoyable and how to make food that tastes good. And so many things that stem from the ultimate decision of someone needs to first decide that. Because I know people, close friends that have all the information and they have me as a free resource.

Right.

That should be a huge resource, right. That usually people have to pay someone like me many Thousands of dollars to like handhold them through something and I would do it for free. Yet they won't do it.

Right.

It's because they have not decided that this is their new identity, that this is something that they do now that I am now this healthy person that does not drink. Monster.

Right.

It's just that initial decision. I don't know if you've gotten through to people, like, how to make that initial change.

Well, since people are flying in to see me to have surgery, there's really no choice. So I just engage with people. So just like you said, it costs thousands of dollars to talk to someone who's got your experience and understands the, you know, if you want to say the game plan. You know, I wrote a book about it, Sharp and Channel. We're almost, I think, 2 million subscribers now. But like, we don't engage with people who can't actually take these steps because you're talking about just daily life, which is incredibly important to be present for yourself and your family and, you know, show up to whatever you're doing. Like, you have to do these things. But now I'm going to operate on you. So you're really going to be behind if you don't follow instructions. And there's no. I've become so rigid now, Brian. I'm not a fun person to deal with. So, you know, like, you're saying people don't want to do it, you know, now it's for you to participate in the program. These are the things you're going to do. And, you know, like, you're probably worried about, like I'm worried about, will those things stick? Will they be transformational enough? Will they feel they've gotten enough out of it for those to become the way they live. Because really there's that healthy way to live if in fact you choose to do that.

Well, yeah, it's a new lifestyle that you have to adopt. And it's not worse. I think some people think it's going to be terrible because they're used to standard information, which is eat salads with no dressing and eat low calorie foods, avoid meat, avoid, you know, all these instructions that are terrible. And so they're used to having to. They think that if they do what we're talking about, it's going to be miserable and they're going to hate it. Or, oh, maybe I can struggle through it and fight through with all my willpower for a month just so I can do a surgery with you, or just so I can go on vacation and Then I'm going to go back to my old ways and my main message and this docu series is my life. It's been almost eight years making it. And we're putting this ultimate message in there, after we give you all the information, is that this is something that is enjoyable and sustainable and you can do. And you're not going to have to like, struggle with and use all your willpower because that doesn't work.

Right.

There's, there's no way that someone can just fight through something they don't want to do for life or for a year even.

Right.

Some people can do it for a month. And that's why the statistics say 97% of diets fail.

Right.

Because it's the wrong information, it's the wrong diet. It's just arbitrarily cutting calories and just doing the wrong things. So it doesn't work. But if you get into what we're talking about, then it is not hard. Once you, the transition might be a little challenging.

Right.

Transitions are always challenging.

Right.

If you do something new, if you get a new job, it's kind of terrible. You're scared, you don't, you don't know the systems, you don't know the people. But then usually you get, you finally get into the habit of your new job and it's amazing, it's better. And you're like, wow, I can't imagine having that old job because this new one's so much better. So that's kind of what I use as analogy for the, for changing your life with the diet and lifestyle and the clean living type of thing is once you get to the other side, it's easy. It's amazing. You feel incredible. You're not using your willpower and, you know, just holding on by a thread, you're just feeling amazing. Yeah.

I find it interesting how. And I was at a recent event of, of Brian's at the Sapien center and somebody stood up next to me and said they would like to have doctors learn more about nutrition in medical school. And I recently had a conversation with them. I don't know if you remember that comment that was made.

Yeah, I do.

Saw me getting all cringy next to the person who made the comment and I said, well, okay, I'm not going to say anything because this is not the forum to do that. So I had a separate conversation with them recently and I wanted to let them know that I don't think those decisions should be made in medical school about curriculum. They need to start early on in life so that they become imprinted and they're just part of the fabric of who you are as a person so you can make better and better decisions. Because just like the patient I spoke about previously, those children are being, that's their example. So how are they ever supposed to go on and make better decisions if those are the examples you're given?

Well, that's all they know. I mean, yeah, they say obesity is genetic and they, they always the mainstream, they throw out the stat. They're like, well, look, you know, this obese family, it's 90% chance that the kids are going to be obese. I'm like, yeah, of course. That's the habits that the parents have instilled in them. It's not the genetics.

Absolutely. Like you just, I mean, that is. So I had the conversation with that, you know, person and I said, hey, if you want to make a difference, then those people who become doctors, you need part of the prerequisites to get into medical school, because that's far easier to change than the medical school curriculum. But going back further and further and further is I have kids, they know the differences between the macros. Not because I'm a doctor, it's because I'm super interested in a higher protein diet. I don't really care what your protein source is. I'm not going to argue that that doesn't matter in, in the grand scheme to me because I have patients of different diets and I have to respect all those different things. But I want their source of protein to be, of course, the highest quality and I want enough of it. I cause extreme disturbance in someone's metabolic system overall and I need to get you into anabolic or healing as quickly as possible. So we're always talking about and harping on good, high quality protein sources with, you know, basically a gram per pound of body weight. Yes, that's what I said. A gram per pound, baseline. And then up, up, up, and then people, what do you think? They ask me, brian, am I going to get bulky? Am I going to.

I love that. That's like, oh man, I bought a Porsche and all of a sudden I'm in the Grand Prix.

Yeah, it's, it's kind of weird. I get asked these questions. I was like, first of all, I don't think you understand the effort it takes to actually put on muscle. Like, it's not magical.

There's people trying still. I'm still like a thinner person. You know, I'm, I'm in the gym and it's hard.

It's super hard. Like, when I hear people like, oh, if I eat a lot of protein, I'm going to get big. I'm like, no, you're not. You're going to get lean. You're not going to get big. That's the opposite. You're. You're like this. That's dystopian. That's not going to happen.

Yeah, no, you have it. Right. I definitely gram per pound. I mean, I think most of the world needs to do that. The world would change if, if people ate a gram per pound of body of protein.

Yeah. And we didn't talk about the kind of underlying thing that I, I see commonly as a real problem with just an addiction to sugar, you know, that is. And I, I don't underestimate addiction at all. It's a very difficult thing once you have that. And some of that obviously is a genetic predisposition. And the way the food is, it panders to that. It, it makes you want more of that because there's so much sugar in the food. And so yesterday, you know, I think my daughter was asking me something, can I have this much? We had some. A cut of meat for dinner, and she's like, can I have this much? I'm like, you can eat as much protein. I don't care how much protein you eat. You can eat the whole thing. I don't care. It doesn't matter. That's great for you. Like, you'll feel better. You'll be satiated. You won't then come and snack and do all these weird things that then undermine what you did, you know, for the meal.

That's it. I mean, it sounds so simple, but it's been 10 years going through the science, talking to 250 doctors and scientists that research this stuff. And after all that, it really comes down to that. Like, if you want to get really simple, it's eat like double your protein. Yeah, I always, I say that to people, too. I'm not going to change your diet. I'm not going to change your entire preference menu of what you want to eat. There's so many different cultures, different ways of eating, but what we can do is double up your protein intake and get rid of the most processed parts of your diet. So if you're doubling up on the protein part, that's going to automatically, you're not going to be able to eat all this other filler.

Right.

So if you do this intentionally, it's like, even in, okay, I'm from Hawaii, we Eat plate lunches. They're called plate lunches.

There's.

They're like box. Like Styrofoam boxes of food that you can take to the beach or something. And people use. Growing up, it was three scoops of rice, some chicken, and macaroni salad, which is basically just mayonnaise and pasta noodles, right? And people just eat this every day. This is just like a common thing. And now if I go back to Hawaii and want to eat somewhere, I would get one scoop of rice. I order double protein, just double meat. And instead of macaroni salad, I can get kimchi.

Right?

Hawaii, they always have kimchi as an option. It's great. So my meal is 10 times better than the other meal. I've doubled up my protein. I've gotten rid of the most processed parts, right? That's what I'm saying is like, let that fall off. Like, if you're eating a certain way and you're eating tons of bread and pasta, get rid of just some of that bread and pasta and eat more meat. And all of a sudden, your diet's so much better. It's basically you've doubled your nutrient density of your diet. Almost like your body doesn't care about the name of your diet. Your body doesn't care about tons of things. It just wants nutrients and energy. It wants protein, vitamins and minerals, and it wants the right amount of fat and carbs to get you through the day and in the right form, right? You need to get these things in the right form. I'm not saying you can get your carbs from Skittles. I mean, you want your carbs from whole food sources, right? So it's so simple, though. So we're saying we're talking about satiety. You're talking about just not snacking, talking about being full, talking about protein. That's all it is. Like, after all this, I've looked at every diet. I've tried tons of them. Like, I said 250 doctors and scientists, I've talked about this. And it can be as simple as just double up your protein, get a gram per pound. Like, get rid of the most processed parts of your diet. And people don't understand that pasta and bread are processed foods. I'm not saying you have to go low carb, right? I mean, that's one way to do it. You can go low carb and you can go keto. But that's not. I'm not saying you have to. It's just like you need to get rid of the processed Parts of your diet. And a lot of times that that tends to be carbs and just filler stuff like bread and pasta.

And for all the folks who get really picky about terms, what Brian is, is getting on this ultra processed things because a lot of things get processed. His meat gets processed and packaged and those things like that. That's. I get the like the people who word Smith this, but he's talking about ultra processed things where it's not really food, it's in a box or a bag and you don't really want to have those things in your diet. That's how I refer to it, as as much as or as plainly as possible. Because people, they try to nuance it too much.

Oh, I know. And I hate those nutrition war. And there's like influencers that are, yeah. Like trying to be like technical about it. Be like, you said this, okay, this. I'm actually publishing a paper, I'm working with a PhD and this other nutrition guy. It has a lot of components of what we're talking about today and satiety. And it goes against this like calorie in calorie out paradigm because there's way more to food than calories. And I just hate the like simple, oh, just cut your calories. Like that's just so meaningless. That's such terrible advice. It's like, okay, what are you going to pay a financial advisor? It's like, okay, this financial advisor, it costs a couple grand and they show up and they just say, oh, make more money than you spend. You're like, oh, wow, you're a genius.

Right?

There's so much more to it. So in this paper I'm also putting forth a new way to describe processing and food and categorize it. Okay, so that's, yeah, that's how I got on this tangent here. So there's, right now there's a NOVA classification. And you know, it's like these four levels and it talks about like some of it, it's somewhat arbitrary of like what makes it into each category. Because I don't agree with it. They're saying, oh, just because a sausage like you mentioned is processed, that doesn't mean it's bad.

Right?

I mean there's probably bad sausages out there that have added sugar and MSG and nitrates and all this weird stuff.

Right?

But if you're eating like we used to do at Nose to Tail is pasture raised pork sausage and seasonings and that was it. There was no additives. We're not stuffing things in. Right so that's the big difference that people need to learn about is, and they were putting in the paper is how to think about food. And there really is. There's three categories of food. And I think people will really understand and know how to shop from now on and know what is processed and what's not. There's whole foods, right? And that's clear. It's. It's single ingredient foods, right? That's very clear. And that actually includes something like frozen vegetables, right? Like that. I don't have a problem with someone. They actually, I heard if they. They freeze broccoli and put in a bag, it's actually fresher and it retains more nutrients because they froze it at the prime of its ripening. And so it's captured a lot of those nutrients straight from harvest, and you do it. So that's not a process food. So we have whole foods that are single ingredient, right? You can buy a bag of frozen broccoli that just says broccoli on it. Then there's modern. There's traditionally processed foods. So traditionally processed foods is something completely different. That means what people have done for hundreds of years, if not thousands of years. So traditionally processed foods is like sauerkraut or kimchi or sausage or yogurt, plain yogurt, cheese. These are all traditionally processed foods. That means they're not adding just buckets of flour or sugar or vegetable oils, right? They are just taking a food and making it even better. Actually sauerkraut, you know, now it has more probiotics and it's more bioavailable, some of these nutrients. So if you have a food that is traditionally processed, it's fine. It's totally fine. It's not bad at all. And then you have industrially processed. So this is like category three. And industrially processed or modern processing is basically just adding in sugar, flour and oil and food dyes and MSG and crazy stuff to it, right? So this is what people are used to seeing in the grocery store. And like you said, anything in a box or package is usually this. And the worse, the more of this. Usually it's sugar, flour, oil. I always use that little, like, quick phrase because these are the three ingredients that are added to most processed foods. And this is what is making them bad, right? Part this is like a big reason of why they're bad is because you're taking a food from nature and stripping it down and building it back again with a whole bunch of extra processed carbs or fats, right? You're adding in a bunch of processed oils or processed carbs into a food, and that's what's making us bad. Your body does not recognize it as the same thing. If you're eating a whole apple, your body recognizes this is an apple. This is in its whole form. I'm chewing it. There's water in it, there's structure to it, right? This is an intact food. Your body, like your whole system recognizes. There's all this more complicated stuff that goes on in your gut with incretins and there's like GIP and GLP receptors. This is actually how the GLP1 stuff works. The shots that people use is, you know, leverages these satiety receptors. And you, when you eat whole foods, intact foods from nature, they have the correct satiety signals in your body as you digest them because you're chewing through an intact food, right? But when you break it down, especially carbohydrates, when you process them down into flowers and sugars and seed oils too, when you process these seeds down into these unnatural oils, your body interacts with them differently. It doesn't recognize in the same way and it doesn't fill you up the same way. That's why I'm saying it goes back to satiety too. It's like, why do people overeat? No one wants to overeat, yet everyone does. Does, right? And no one's overeating steak, like you said to your daughter. No one's overeating meat. That's not the problem. They could eat a bunch of meat and then they'll eat a bunch of dessert too, right? So what's the problem here? The problem is the dessert. It's not the meat. It's like very hard to overeat real foods if you left someone. I love this Dr. Ted Naiman, one of my inspirations, friends of mine, he's like, do a thought experiment. If you left someone on a deserted island and all they had access to was meat and fruit or whatever was on that island, some vegetables, some fish. They would, anyone, almost anyone in the world would come to their natural body composition and opt like natural metabolic health, right? They would just over a matter of time would come. Maybe it takes years, right? If you're very overweight and very sick, it could take years. But if all you had access to on this deserted island was meat and eggs and fish and fruit and whatever leaves you could find, you know, herbs or something, you would eventually come to your natural body weight and natural health, right? And this is, I love this thought experiment because you can't prove it, but I pretty much know it's true because this is what happened for all of history. This is what happened for humans. This is why we exist.

Then you would have the other aspect, which is we haven't discussed, which is on that island, if you're alone and you're trying to think and all right, how am I going to go get what I need to survive? I'm going to forage or I'm going to fish, or I'm going to whatever it is. Those people are walking around.

Oh yeah.

So that's their form of exercise. I think the or I feel like, and I know this is the case is people underappreciate the value of just walking.

Oh yeah, this is so huge. I was just talking to this PhD yesterday about this. How important it is that, okay, we have the paradigm a bit backwards right now in society. I don't know if you've heard of, you've probably heard these studies. It's like, oh, 10 minute walks after meals. That lowers your blood sugar. You know, all these metabolic benefits from taking a 10 minute walk after you eat a meal. I'm like, absolutely, yes. But the framing of modern societies is like, oh, this is like a good thing that you should do, or like, oh, I should exercise or yeah, I should do this more. It's kind of the opposite framing. It's if you're not doing that 10 minute walk, if you're not moving your body, you are actively doing harm. People have to think about it the opposite way. It's not like, oh, I should go to the gym more or I should do a walk. It's no, your body requires that and if you're not doing it, you are actively doing it harm. So I kind of flipped this script in my head because, well, just there's tons of science on this that shows this. But also just traveling around, like, I have gone to Africa and spent time with the hunter gatherers. They are not sitting around, they're just moving. I've been to, to Copenhagen and Tokyo recently. Copenhagen and Tokyo are great examples. Two places I've been in the last seven months. And they are incredibly healthy in these two places. And they're not like on special diets. They're not, you know, doing something crazy. They're eating whole foods. They're eating like traditional diets. They've just, they're, they're not, you know, that's one side of it, right? They're eating correctly and they're moving before and after every single meal. Copenhagen, famous for the bikes, right? Everyone's riding their bike everywhere. It's incredible. It's so fun. Yes, I was riding a bike everywhere. Or they're walking everywhere. You, you go, you walk there, you bike there, you get your meal, then you bike or walk somewhere else. Tokyo, famous for subways. How do you get to those? To get to any destination, you're going to have to walk out of your place. Walk, walk, walk. Go downstairs, go downstairs, go on the subway. Walk, walk, walk, go upstairs, walk, walk, walk. You know what I mean? Like you are walking all day and these societies look great and they're not. Yeah, like I said, they're not on special diets. They're not going insane. They don't even go to the gym that much. These two cultures, there was not like gyms on every corner like in America. They just eat traditional diets, eat simple whole foods mostly, and they just move around. That's it.

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So powerful. I'll say it again. Interviewed over 250 doctors and scientists over eight years full time. And that's the simplest way to boil it down, right? You don't have to get caught in all these different diets. You can just do that part. Yeah, Lean into the protein, cut out the processed stuff and realize the walking, the movement is a requirement, not a nice to have. It is a requirement for your body.

Right.

And you got to be adaptable to. I, you know, when I go, like you said, you go to different destinations and probably been in Spain more than any country for various reasons. Very easy to eat there. Depending on, you know, where you are, you know, you're going to have all this seafood that you would not get in our country that's just readily available. It's obviously high quality. It's getting, you know, caught. If you're on the Atlantic side versus the Mediterranean side, it's going to be different. But I remain because I'm only focused on protein in my diet, like wherever. I don't care. If I was in Hawaii, I just have poke bowls all day because they're so fresh and good. Like it's never like it is in Hawaii when you're having poke. I haven't been to Japan, but I'm sure I'd be in the same kind of situation where I just go and swim. Source protein of the highest quality and highest amounts. And I'd be very happy because I don't really care about the other stuff. It doesn't drive me mentally to go find those things. Like, I don't get done eating, go like I need to go have something sweet or something. Yeah, I don't get super motivated by that. I like, like sorbet or something, you know, something like that. That's a little bit.

Yeah, I mean the. Your body changes, your microbiome changes. If you start eating this way, you'll have left cravings for all the sweet and sugary stuff.

Right?

Because your microbiome will change. The. Those gut bacteria will die off that we're feeding on all that sugar, flour, oil. Right. All those processed foods. It. That just. It's like a cycle. I mean, there is a gut brain connection.

Right?

This is real.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely right.

Yeah. Like people don't understand. Like it sounds. Sometimes it sounds a little woo woo. You're like, oh, this gut brain connection. There's like actually, you know, you're no. Your body can talk to you. Your body. If people are addicted to junk food, it's their gut bacteria wanting to be fed and not die off. And if you stop eating it, those gut bacteria will die off and you will not crave it anymore. It's amazing.

I did forget one thing. Like, I know for a fact that some people are super addicted to chips. That is like a very snacky food for a lot of people. So I've tried to step them down from their. What is it? Takis and crazy chips to like siete, which is a little bit better. It's made with avocado oil or something like masa, also made with avocado oil. So just, you know, try to like make a little bit better, you know, choice. That's still very good. But those things that are in those other chips are obviously part and parcel to what you're describing, where it's like, oh, they really crave those things and want to have them, but they're absolutely horrible.

Well, chips are one of the worst things you can eat from a nutrient density perspective, from a health perspective, from everything. So there's a great book called Dorito Effect. So I suggest everyone read this. It's actually like a fun book to read. There's many nutrition books that are not so fun. I've read hundreds. You can see a lot of them behind me. If you're on YouTube, there's a lot more that aren't pictured on my screen right now. And Dorito Fact is one of the best. And it's Mark Schatzker, he's an author. Like a author author, not like a nutrition expert that just decided to write a book. And it talks about why, why these foods are addictive. Like you're saying they're engineered to hijack your taste buds and make you eat more. And they're. It's so interesting. I'll spoil it for you. So you don't have. No, you still have to read the book though. But the Doritos are a classic example of the worst food you can eat. And it is a processed cornstarch, basically like crushed up, highly processed corn that's covered in fake flavors, MSG and some sugar and salt, right? And so for all of history, so the main thesis of the book is for all of history, when you tasted something like a Dorito, right, that's savory, right? Like a classic Dorito that's tastes savory, that meant you were getting nutrients, you were getting protein and you were getting vitamins and minerals, right? So if you tasted something like that in nature, it would have been a delicious cut of meat or some eggs or these savory things, fish, right? And when you eat a Dorito, you're getting all of that flavor, but you're getting no nutrition, okay? So it's kind of like an analogy for the entire food system. And what's going wrong with everything is that if you're eating these modern processed foods that have fake flavorings and all this stuff added in, you are tricking your body into thinking you're getting nutrients, but you're not. And so it keeps eating. So it goes beyond. Of course, there's the hyperpalability part about how they engineer the foods to make you overeat them. But there's a more important component, is that your body is just trying to get protein and nutrients from foods and you're not giving it to your body, so it's just wanting more. Does that make sense? So it's different than yes, I get it. Doritos have a hyper palatable taste. And there's engineers that have engineered that taste to make you want to eat more. But also my steak is hyper palatable, right? I make a delicious steak. I use great grass fed cut, I will use truffle salt, I will cook it perfectly medium rare. And it is hyper palatable. But guess what? I stop eating it at a certain point because I can't eat anymore because my body has gotten all the protein and nutrients it needs, right? And then the classic, the Dorito example, you can eat a whole bag of Doritos partly because, yes, they're hyper palatable, but partly more because your body thinks it's getting nutrients, it's tasting a savory flavor, but it's getting nothing. There Are no nutrients in Doritos. There's no protein, there's no vitamins or no minerals. It's one of the most empty foods you can get. It's just a bunch of seed oil and fake flavors and corn powder.

So that's why you can generation is like talkies. My generation, it was Doritos because I grew up in the 70s.

Exactly. Okay, so Takis are the exact same thing, probably worse, because they have more fake flavorings on them. And so your body is more addicted to it and getting less real nutrition. And so just think about that with any food. It's like, that's why people are in this situation. That's why people gain weight. No one wants to gain weight, but they do. It's because you're constantly eating these foods that are not giving your body what it needs. And so it keeps eating them. So this is spelled out in the Dorito effect. It's great book. It's fun read. But also in another book, actually, it's called Eat like the animals, Drs. Robinheimer and Simpson, they developed a protein leverage hypothesis, which you are a fan of just by everything you've said today. Maybe you didn't even know about Drs. Robinheimer and Simpson, but they coined this decades ago. Been studying it forever. They've seen this in all animals. They started doing stuff studies or, you know, looking at other people who have done studies. And in every animal up to humans, they can do actual experiments. And if you dilute the protein out of the food, right? If you take two groups of mice and you give one group of mice the correct rodent chow, right? It has whatever 12% protein and whatever carbs and fats, the mice will eat it. They will be the normal weight, they will live the normal life, and they will have the normal amount of offspring. Then they can take that same food, dilute the protein down to, say, 9%, and then there's more carbs and fat right, in that food. Give them the same thing, right? Scientific experiment, very controlled. The group of mice with the lower protein, the diluted food, will eat more of that food to get the same amount of protein. They'll be forced to eat more of the rodent chow to get that same amount of protein because they lowered the protein percentage. Now all of a sudden, they have to eat more of that food. That group got overweight, got sick, died sooner, and had less offspring. And when they calculated it, and both groups say it was 10 grams of protein per day that a little mouse needs, whatever it is, I have no idea. Both groups ate the same amount of protein.

Right.

So it's like if the food was proper and was the food that the mice should eat, they ate the right amount of it and they got their 10 grams of protein. The other group that had the diluted food that had less protein, still ate 10 grams of protein, but they had to eat far more carbs and fats, basically empty calories. There was excess in the food. Does that make sense? So that's like what's happening in the entire world is the modern processed foods are basically just diluted of protein and nutrients, so people have to eat more of them to get the same result.

Yeah, that's the fundamentally, you know, going back to the discussion we had earlier where doctors were being called out for not understanding nutrition. And some of it, to me, I feel like it's a product of training and there shouldn't be a surgeon that walks who's not adept at understanding the requirements of fundamentally protein for their patients. Like that should just be a non sequitur. They should all know that. And so when I hear those things, I get like cringy because that bothers me. Right. And you know, trying to then, like, everybody should understand what you and I have been talking about, like the three macros, basically, and we're just talking about eating, particularly the one over the other, in order to maintain a better state of health overall. And we know this from taking care, whether it's the study you're quoting that you're referring to, or me taking care of critically ill patients during my career. You can't get them to heal if you don't give them enough protein. So fundamentally, what does your body want? Protein, the breakdown of that or the simple product of that is amino acids. So if you don't have those things, you can't heal a cut. So, you know, intrinsically, we talk about and enforce this in our patients and they're worried, like I said, like, oh my gosh, too much protein. What's going to happen to me? And nothing bad is going to happen to you if you eat clean, quality, sourced, you know, protein. Now, some of it, as both Brian and I know, that's easier said than done. There's a lot of confusion in the marketplace about what's good, what's not good. And in terms of costs, you know, everybody appreciates the cost of these things, but there are ways to do and get higher amounts of protein. And if you can't, like Brian's alliance, you get, you know, grass fed, grass finished, because that's the highest quality. You can, can source, period. Then you can just get the best available quantity that you can get and, and try to cook it simply. And maybe Brian, just give us your little basic cooking of some steak. Not your grass fed, grass fancy stuff, but just, hey, I'm going to cook steak. How are you going to do it? What are you going to do?

Yeah, well, yeah, I spread the same message too because a lot of people can't source or afford the highest quality stuff. And even though I'm someone that's. Well, I don't sell anymore. I used to sell the highest quality stuff. I'm going against my own interests and telling people you can just go and get normal meat if that's all you can afford and you really aren't going to change, go and get the grocery store meat and you will be okay. Because grocery store meat is better than anything in a box or package.

Right.

The alternative is people are going to get Mac, boxes of Mac and cheese and this and that. Any grocery store meat is higher quality and better for you than any processed food.

Right.

Highly processed food. So just know that. And I actually eat a lot of ground beef. Like someone can go to the store and get a thing of ground beef very cheap and just make patties out of it and it's delicious and you can put cheese on it and I eat that almost every day. For one of my meals I will eat some kind of ground beef in any format. I'll eat like a pile of ground beef with some eggs on the side, some pickles, sauerkraut, some jalapenos, you know those ferment, like, you know, pickled jalapenos. It's delicious. I don't even need sauce. I used to use like Mark Sisson's ketchup, you know, their primal kitchen ketchup with no corns.

Right.

It's a natural. It's like the healthy version of ketchup. No sugar, all that. I don't even need that anymore. If you can cook up a decent ground beef patty and season it with some salt and pepper and maybe, yeah, have some pickled jalapenos on the side. You are set, you have some egg yolk on that. It is delicious. And then if you're asking about steak, I mean you can get any cut of meat. I sear it. I have cast iron pan. I have actually like a titanium like kind of hexclad type of pan that is like a non stick pan but without Teflon or any toxins.

Yeah, let's just make sure we highlight this you know, something that's stainless, something that's cast iron, doesn't have a weird nonstick surface on it. So you don't get things into your food from that.

Absolutely. That is huge too. Stainless, cast iron. And now they have these news. If you can afford a titanium pan. This has changed my life. You know, there's a couple brands out there that are just super good. They have like the hex pattern on it and it just doesn't stick. I've used it for months and it still is perfectly good. Some of these things that it's like, they'll still stick. They'll work a while and then they'll stop. But invest in a good pan and yeah, hit it with some high heat, some salt and pepper, and then hit it with some lower heat.

Right.

Make it go more low and slow. You're done like any kind of meat. If you kind of just sear it and then like turn down the heat and slow it down, you can even put in the oven. You can sear it on a cast iron, right? Hit a steak on a cast iron at high heat, hit it on both sides and then just put in the oven at 350 and just let it sit there for 10 more minutes. You're going to have an amazing steak.

So let's take a little bit of what I consider to be nonsense out of the equation too. I think I've gotten feedback that folks are really concerned. It's very expensive to do what you just said, but actually it's not. It's more expensive to buy something processed than it is to do what you just said just by.

Absolutely. So my weekly actually don't really know my weekly total. All I know is it's gone down from my old diet, my old way of eating. And I was being healthy, too. What I thought was healthy back in the day, when I was 30, when I was talking about me being overweight and just getting all the chronic conditions, I was doing the food pyramid diet. I bought into that. My family bought into it. They were eating low fat products, avoiding meat. Tons of fruit, like, tons of fruit and vegetables. It's like lean chicken, you know, this whole thing, it's like whole grains. I was like eating whole grains. Like, I thought it was helping me. And I was spending more money though, because I was spending. I was buying all these ingredients. I was buying some of these, like kind of prepackaged, like versions of these foods. And then also just, you know, you're out there buying like a coffee or snacks or. I don't know, you know, if you're eating this way, you just get more hungry and then you're, you're buying more snacks or whatever. So now I don't buy anything. People ask me, they like, oh, man. What restaurants do you go to in Austin? I'm like, I don't know. What's a good restaurant? I don't know. I go to the. Well, I guess sometimes there's like one restaurant that does like no seed oils and gluten free and all the good stuff. I've barely been to other restaurants, so I changed this way of eating. I spend way less money on food because I'm just buying a few ingredients. I'm just buying some cuts of meat, some things of eggs from the farmer's market and you know, some things of sauerkraut, some things of kimchi. It's so simple. You get like a bag of apples. You can get organic apples. They're like free.

I'm glad you said that because I was going to wrap this up and say like, I don't ever eat out during the week for lunch or breakfast, ever. I never eat out. I prep on the weekend. I take everything. I use caraway now instead of like any kind of. I used to just use glass, but now I have caraway. Caraway products are ceramic to carry your food you prepare. And similar to you, I have these patties. I'll cook them up. I get them at the farmer's market. Does it. You don't have to. You can get them wherever you force a nature beef or whatever, whatever. You can get fine ground beef. Like you said, super cheap. One day I forgot all of my, my stuff, Brian. I was like, got out of the house just without it. And so I was like, well, I could order food and somebody could go get it for me, but I had a member of my staff at the surgery center that day and I said, hey, I want you to go to grocery store. I'm not going to say which one. Doesn't matter. Just want you to go pick up rotisserie chicken, some apples and some bananas. And I said, I want you to keep the receipt. So I know exactly, you know, how much it costs because you know if you order that meal from somewhere, you're going to get not just screwed on how much it costs, you're going to get taxed and all this nonsense.

Delivery charges, it's crazy. There's three delivery charges. I've never even used Uber Eats. I had to use it once. There was three different delivery charges. It was like a Delivery fee, a delivery something, and a tip and tax. So it's four extra charges.

Yeah. So just for listening, like, they think this is that complicated. If you go to Trader Joe's and buy a damn banana, it's like whatever, 60 cents. If you, you bought an apple, same thing. And if you got a rotisserie chicken from somewhere, it's like 699. But if you had got a bag of apples, a thing of bananas, and a rotisserie chicken and you just cut it up and used it for the week, I mean, what is that? It's under 20 bucks for the week.

It's insane. It's so cheap if you actually do it right.

So, I mean, then you got like Brian was alluding to, you know, kimchi feeds the gut, sauerkraut feeds the gut. Those are all fermented foods have been around forever. Those are great. Cheap. They're not cheap in the sense that they're like not good for you, but they're just low cost. I mean, those are low cost items. Like, we're not giving you anything other than a way to do it. That's both cost effective and improves dramatically what you're putting into the system. Like, you only have one system and you put garbage in, you get garbage out, your performance suffers, your sleep suffers, your. Your cognition suffers.

That's it. Just give your body what it needs, what it recognizes. It's so simple. It's like, I hate even talking about it because it seems like so trite. It seems so, like, man, this guy spent 10 years of his life, 8 years full time, and all he's telling me is the simplest information. I'm like, well, that's what it is. Your body expects certain things, and for all of history, it's gotten those things. It's gotten clean air, clean water, whole food and some movement and, well, yeah, sleep and community. These are all the things and that's all it needs. And if you. The modern environment just gives your body what it doesn't expect and it doesn't run properly. If you give it what it doesn't expect. And by expect, I mean what it.

Requires, I think that's a great place to end. I really appreciate it having you on the show and I want you to tell everybody where to find out more information regarding your documentary Nose to tail. Any more information you want to share.

Yeah, just follow me on Food Lies. I'm on every platform, so if you just search Food Lies on whatever, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or X or YouTube, I'm there. And then Nose to tail. Yeah, I do beef tallow body care. So I've transitioned away from the meat because it's just not a good business. It's just too hard. I'd rather have people get their meat locally than for me to try to send it out. It's like I was doing regenerative stuff from Texas and we're sending it out to the 48 states. Just not the greatest business. That's actually why the world is the way it is, because there's no money in whole foods.

Right.

There's no profit margin on whole foods, so I couldn't make it into a business. The money's in processing. If I had a processed food company, it would have worked a lot better. So, yeah, now I do really high quality body care products because your body absorbs all of the stuff you put on it. It is an organ. Your skin is an organ and it will. If you put aluminum deodorant in your body, that is terrible. It is soaking up that aluminum and it's accumulating your body and causing you harm. So yeah, we make products out of beef tallow and like essential oils and almost nothing else.

Well, we'll have to have Brian back to discuss that. That's the other corrupt industry I like making fun of, which is skin care. So thanks again, Brian. Thanks for joining me today. I hope you found the information and stories shared on this podcast helpful and informative. Remember, taking control of your health and wellness is key to recovery from breast implant illness. If you're looking for additional resources and support, be sure to visit our online store, Dr. Rob's Solutions. At drrobsolutions.myshopify.com you'll find a wide range of wellness products and supplements to support your journey to recovery. From specially formulated detox supplements to personalized skincare products, we have everything you need to aid your recovery. Visit Dr. Rob's Solutions today at drrobssolutions.myshopify.com thank you for listening and we'll be back with another episode soon. Remember, remember, you're not alone in this journey and together we can overcome breast implant illness. Take care.