Stay Healthy when Eating Out, with Nicolette Richer

Welcome back to the five Journeys podcast. Live like youe Matter Today. Our guest is Nicolette Richet. She is. I love her to pieces by the way. She is. And I'm so sad she lives so far away from me. She is a regenerative medicine educator, entrepreneur, author, doctoral student, and speaker turned endurance athlete. Did I mention she's wicked cool. She's a savvy wellness facilitator and a renowned environmental and sustainability expert with an insatiable desire to research and educate. Nicolette speaks regularly to captivated audiences on how to use food as medicine to reverse their chronic degenerative illnesses so they can reclaim their lives and realize their peak potential. Hi, Nicolette.

Hello, Wendy. Hi, Ed. Really, it's a pleasure to be here with you.

It's our pleasure. And Wendy's been raving about you, so I know.

I'm like, she lives so far away.

I know. I was telling my husband the same thing. I'm like, I found another soul sister out there. We need to be closer.

Yep.

Come on down. Come on down.

If you come to New York, you tell me. Cause I'll come to New York and meet ya.

That's fantastic. Well, we'll be coming to New York soon. We just opening up those locations. It's exciting.

So we want to talk about food today because I know you're a total foodie and passionate about food and illnesses and. So you look like you had a question. No.

No.

Okay. You just had that look. So what I want to. I think what we want to really dive into is how do people live in the world and eat out and yet not get completely tanked from doing so?

You know what? I lied.

See, I knew it.

I lied.

I totally knew it. You too are.

We have this really cool bio.

Yeah.

So I want to know first, like, what you do and how you do it. Like, what. What do you do in the world?

Hold on. She does everything.

I know, but I want to know, like, wicked cool. And you, like, get right into the question and I'm like, wait, I want to know. I want to get to know you.

See, we should have your husband on too. And then the four of us can chat.

Yeah, exactly. We just need to get together over an amazing, delicious, nutrient dense dinner. Yes. So who do I answer first? Should I go with X question? Yeah. Yeah. So you know, I've been in this space for the last 15 years. I was fortunate to know my friend's dad, who was diagnosed with cancer at the time. He had almost 25 years ago and he was 72. And he was diagnosed with stage four cancer and metastasized to his bones. They said three months to live. And they said really like other treatments wouldn't really extend his life. So he ended up turning to food. Now at the time I was working in government, doing toxicity policy work, environmental management of several policy programs at all levels of government. So I knew about human health, but I did not understand the power of nutrition to regenerate the body, put it back into its ultimate innate healing capacity so that it could reverse some of the leading and most advanced chronic diseases. So he ended up doing this therapy that I teach. It's all plant based, whole food as medicine, but in, in high, high, high quality and high dose. And he ended up living another 22 more years. So he lived to be 94 years old. 94. So that was my first foray into this. And ever since then, I mean I couldn't deny what happened to him cause I witnessed it firsthand. And so that's when I dove into the research and I started to realize there, there, there's 200 years of evidence based medicine published work going all the way back to, you know, back then to the very present. Every day studies are being pub. Our body needs an ample amount of nutrients just to survive. But if you want to thrive in reverse disease, you need more than that. So that's how I got into this space. And one thing led to another. I was coaching clients and then all of a sudden we had restaurants and then we had a wellness center and a book. And you know, now we have a documentary that's just coming out. So it's all kind of just flowed from there. And the way I do it is because I also live this lifestyle as well and it just gives you unlimited energy. So I think, I hope that answers your question.

Well, it does, but it leads to a couple of hundred more questions.

I hope so. I hope so.

What's the name of the documentary?

Oh, it's called Grounded in My Roots. And it's the first documentary of two documentaries that are coming out. So I just got to see it yesterday for the first time.

Wow, that's very cool. Where can people see it?

Well, right now it's just going out to film festivals and then we've partnered with the Food Revolution Network who will be our distributor. So they will be distributing it in June so people can go to our website to get on our wait list to be the first to know when it gets released. And it's being released with a education package for teachers and parents so that they can watch the documentary and then actually get started in turning their health around.

So exciting.

Sounds amazing.

It is. Yeah, it's pretty.

And what's the website? Just. We'll do it in the show notes, but since we're here, what is the website so people can look.

Yeah, yeah. So greenmustache.com and mustache is spelled the French Canadian way. So it's m o u s t-a c-h e.com and I know you'll have the links in the show notes, so.

Yeah, but now we have to know what green Mustache is all about.

We'll get to your question.

Maybe.

Wendy.

I'm very patient. I'm used to this. It's all good.

Yeah. So the green mustache is a collection of plant based, whole food, 100% organic, nutrient dense food restaurants. And so we have four locations and we have 10 more coming to New York. And I think we're still the only restaurant chain that serves complete, unrefined whole foods. So, you know, the food comes from our farmers and our distributors. And we basically cook it, juice it, turn into smoothies, desserts, dips, dressings. We make everything from scratch. No oils, no salt, no sugar.

You beat me to the punch. Because that was going to be. Why? Because one of the challenges, and that's why I'm so excited about this conversation, is going out to restaurants. No matter how good restaurants claim to be, usually the oil is inferior. So just that alone is going to be trouble. And then the quality of food is, even though it might be organic, may not have the farmer's touch.

Let's say someone else cooked it. I think that's like the nicest thing to say often is that you didn't have to do the cooking or the cleaning and it was done for you. That's often the bar where we're looking. I don't have to do it.

Well, it's true, but I'm talking about quality.

I know.

Yeah. And that's the hard part is going out and getting the quality of food that you need made somewhere else. And this quality of food is. Should leave you feeling better and should be healing your body. But unfortunately, that's not true in 99.9% of cases out there. It's. You have to be very discerning when you go out or you have to be very, and I don't want to use the word aggressive, but you have to prioritize you and you have to prioritize your own health. So therefore, you need to demand that, you know, the chefs just Prepare the foods in the way that you want them, and they will do it if you ask. But most people don't even know to ask for that.

Self advocacy.

Advocate for yourself 100%. Exactly.

So full circle. Yeah. See, it's a circular thing. So what do people have to ask? How should they be advocating? What do they need to know? Because I think most people really look for taste and maybe the organic. If it says organic, then they just trust everything's organic and they leave it at that. So what do people have to watch out for when they eat out?

Yeah, yeah. So I'll speak to the people who want to reverse a chronic disease, and then I'll also speak to the average individual, which is not average, actually, they're only about 40% of the population that are not living with a chronic disease right now. So really, this part is speaking.

We're in the majority, then.

Yes, I'm in the majority or I'm the. Yeah, well, am I in the minority? Not suffering from any chronic health issues? So when you go out to eat, organic is vitally important because of the fact that you do need to have clean, real food that's not sprayed in pesticides, herbicides, insecticides. So that should be a priority. Now, when you go out to eat, it's hard to get restaurants that, you know, like ours, that just use 100% organic ingredients 100% of the time. So. So you need to do your research. So you're going to research some people. You might have to go out of your way to go to a restaurant. So, okay, so you find a place and maybe the food's organic or not great. The second step is you want to make sure that the restaurant doesn't use refined, processed ingredients. So, for example, everybody raves about this one restaurant, I won't mention it in Canada. And they're like, nikki, you're going to love it. So when I was biking and running around B.C. as part of our campaign, it was really hard to find clean, real food. And people used to make suggestions for us all the time. So then I get there and, for example, I'd order, you know, the vegan cheesecake, or I, you know, want to have an amazing sandwich, or I'd want to have, you know, a delicious Buddha bowl or, you know, like a big vegetable bowl smothered in oils, sugars, and sodium. Okay. And we have to really get clear on the definition of salt. So I like to say sodium instead of potassium or magnesium, you know, phosphorus, all of that. So tons of sodium. So if you can go to a restaurant and you see that the food is just smothered in that, then you might not want to opt in for that. Unless you're. The chef is willing to actually not add the excess sodium, not add the refined oil, and not add the refined salt. These three things are what is contributing to the demise of our entire system. Your cells do not thrive on that. They actually get quite sick when you consume those refined products. So those are the three things you absolutely need to look for. Now, every che is trained in using those three ingredients to flavor their food. So this is the challenge. So you really need to just really do your research and find the restaurants that are minimizing those ingredients or that are, that are willing to leave them out.

That's a lot. Because salt is the flavor.

Yeah.

Oil makes it filling, filling. And then sugar. I mean, everybody's addicted to sugar.

So yeah, now it's time we turn those addictions around and you can do it. So when my clients do the therapy that I teach, that's all 100% organic plant based, whole food eaten in abundance, huge diversity, 350,000 plant species that they are allowed to consume. So it's not a minimalism diet, it's not a limitation diet. It's nothing like that. It's literally a lifestyle of abundance. And when they cut out those three ingredients and including the dairy and including the animal products, because that is not going to allow you to regenerate your body and reverse your chronic disease. So when you cut those things out in three weeks, your taste buds are completely regrown. It's amazing. They come back to life. The brain connections are like alive. And so when you go to eat a tomato or a carrot or even romaine lettuce or any of the abundance of vegetables and fruits and grains out there, all of a sudden you can taste 10 different flavors of sweetness and you can taste all these different levels of salts, even though you never added those into there. You'll taste an avocado and you'll actually be able to sense the actual fat in the avocado. Your taste buds come alive. It's amazing.

I would say for myself, I don't know if I shared this with you last time we talked, but last April I essentially said, okay, if it comes from a package. I've been for many years, mostly no sugar and I've been gluten free for 16 years, but I'll have gluten free products here or there. So my son loves our son. I'm like, not in practice of us being together. On the podcast. So, okay. Our son loves those little rice crackers. They're just rice, salt and water, and he loves them. And so he'll always have a package in front of him. And I walk by and grab a handful, then walk by again, grab another handful. And what I recognized is I had not just gotten off what works for me, but I had basically dived headfirst down the greased slide of eating too many processed things. And it was very interesting. My taste buds changed quite quickly. My emotional attachment to those foods is still going. And the really strong ones occurred for about. It actually took about five months before those cravings really quieted. But I noticed recently, I don't think this will be a surprise to Ed, but we haven't spoken in a few weeks. But I was so stressed, and all of a sudden I was, I need that. I want that. And the cravings came back. And so it's absolutely, at some level, both a biochemical and also an emotional attachment to the foods. That was the hardest one.

And that's an interest. I'm really glad that you brought that up, because what happens with my clients is after they start the program, and within a few days, they come back to me and they're like, it's weird. I'm not craving a bag of chips, and I'm not craving junk food, and I'm not craving, you know, a burger and fries or whatever food, or even healthy food that's been covered in salt, oil and sugar, refined ingredients. And so what happens, and this is my theory about this, because obviously we'll need to do some clinical trials to test this one out. But what happens is when you're. You're an animal, and your brain, you. You, you are still have your dinosaur lizard, you know, amygdala firing up, telling you to fuel yourself with food, you need. Need to survive. So in our society, where our food is so highly processed, denatured, it's not nutrient dense, it's filled with so many fillers and preservatives. Your brain is constantly looking for food. It's constantly looking to calm the nervous system. It's constantly looking for comfort. So in the sense of, like, going back to those, you know, socially acceptable foods, those comfort foods. So then what happens is you can't fight your brain. You're not going to win. Your brain will reach for the bag of chips, those, you know, beautiful seaweed crackers or. Or whatever else. But my clients, that doesn't happen to them. And you said it took about five months. So when your brain is when your body is saturated with nutrients at the maximum level. Okay, so where you're literally peeing out all those water soluble, you know, vitamins. Because you've consumed so many nutrients, all of a sudden your brain is able to calm down and stop looking for food. And it stops looking for it for all reasons. It doesn't need the comfort anymore. It doesn't need the nutrients anymore. And so they're so shocked that all their cravings completely disappear. And of course, their taste buds have come alive. So they're willing to eat, you know, an apple for dessert because they can taste the 90 different flavors in there right now.

Nicolette, here's the problem. As you're talking, I'm thinking about Green Mustache. And you said it was going to have a different name in the States because that was already taken. So now I'm like, okay, have you gotten the name yet so we can know in advance? But really, I'm not clear that there are very many restaurants. We're in the States. I'm not even clear.

Well, Boston barely has gluten free restaurants.

I know.

We're not talking about organic, we're talking about fairly gluten free.

I mean, we don't even. What everyone considers to be a really great restaurant. It's a local chain. It was started in Boston. I'm not going to name it. It was started in Boston. It's a seafood company. And it used to be sort of the epitome of how you eat. And what we found is, I mean, I often react when I go out to eat. So don't use me. But even for you, after eating there, we didn't feel good.

Well, it's become a chain.

Yeah.

And when, when things become a chain, then they lose quality. And they.

But she didn't.

No, they have a different commitment.

Truth.

Yes. We have a very different commitment. And ours is. My problem is I know too much. And so when I sometimes wish I could just unknow some of those things, but not really. But I mean, do you eat out? Yeah, I eat out for sure. Yeah. I love eating out, actually. I'm like, you know, I used to be the person, I would say before I learned all about this, when I'd eat out, I would never return a meal if it was bad or if there was too salty or, you know, I would just keep my mouth shut. My friends were like, oh, I need it to be gluten free. And can you substitute this for this? I was not that person. But when I started to learn about this and of Course, seeing my clients reverse some of the, like, most advanced illnesses, diseases, be able to cancel surgeries, get off medications, some of them, you know, my clients wanted to take their own lives because the pain of their illness was just too much. And when you see those people fully come back and now they're living, truly their peak potential. They're like innate human potential. You can't ever go back from that. So when I eat out now, you'll hear me. Actually, I won't go to the restaurant first and ask them to substitute. I'll call the restaurant in advance and I'll tell the chef, hey, listen, I can't eat anything at your beautiful restaurant, but I want to go there with my friends or my family. So I. Could you make me a meal that doesn't have any refined oil, salt and sugar, and sometimes they're like, we don't make substitutions. I'm like, well, I'm going to bring you a lot of business, and if I come to your restaurant and eat anything like that, I might drop dead from it. And I know this seems extreme, but I eventually, I eventually, I eventually would drop dead, right? Maybe it would take me 20 years to develop, like, if I ate there every day, to develop a chronic disease from, like, eating that food.

But.

But. So it's partially true, but, you know, it's because I put my health first, and so it's beautiful. I can go to, like, fine dining, French cuisine, and the chefs will make the most beautiful food for me. They already have all the ingredients. The beets are already cooked, but they just don't have to sprinkle the salt and toss it in the oil. So they'll just put it on my plate. And usually they whip up an amazing dip or something like that, like blending together some herbs and vinegar and, you know, and then drizzle that on the beets. And then I'll get a beautiful, like, you know, baked coffee, cauliflower, and on a bed of greens. And then I'll get, you know, some quinoa and rice and potatoes and, like, all the local seasonal vegetables. So I can still eat there. They have all the ingredients, but I'm just gonna catch them before they destroy the quality of the food.

So I have a question, then.

What? You.

You have a question, too, But I have a question about refined oils. Because my question. Oh, we've been married a long time.

You guys are in sync.

This year is Prime. We're 19 years this year.

So anyway, refined oils.

When you say refined oils, what are our listeners? Because if you Call the restaurant and say, no refined oils. Are they going to know? Because I might not know to rattle off this, this, this, and this. So is there a list of. Here's the nos. And are there any oils that fall into the yes category that are fine?

Yeah. So for the specific therapy that I teach, because it is a lifestyle, dietary, metabolic, nutritional therapy. Okay, so this is for somebody who has advanced chronic illness. The only oil they would consume on that therapy is a flax oil. That's it. Not even flaxseed, not even flax meal, but just flax oil. And that's medicine to them. We use it because there's so many properties in that flax oil that contribute to their body healing and reversing their disease. So it's medicine. We would not use that flax oil just for fun, you know, because we want it. So for a restaurant, though, 99% of restaurants don't carry you flax oil at all. So you just leave the oil out. And you cannot cook with flax oil. It must be consumed cold. So when I'm talking about oils, I want people to have lots of fat in their diet. Fat in your diet is wonderful, but carrots have fat. You know, there's lipids in every vegetable, fruit, grain, you know, bean, like, you know, everything. It's the building block of life. So you can consume all the fats you want, but they just need to be in their whole form. So when I say refined oils, I'm talking about no olive oil, no avocado oil, no grapeseed oil, no oil whatsoever. Now, of course, I. I know you guys are looking at each other now. If you knew how these oils were made, you'd realize that there's very, very few oils out there that are truly what they say they are because of the chemical process that they need to go through to main integrity so they don't go rancid within the first few seconds of being exposed to heat, air, Right. Light. These are the things that make any fat that's extracted from your, you know, whatever, it's extracted from olives, let's say it starts to go rancid. So then that when you consume it, you're consuming products that your body really, really struggles to.

She's looking at me.

I know most people are like, what? What? No, my avocado oil. So the thing is, is I have an olive oil in my house that we use, but it comes directly from Italy, and it was pressed in the fashion that it's meant to be pressed in, not mixed with any other Chemicals not mixed with any other. Any other oils. Because a lot of olive oils out there are mixed with canola oil. And people don't know that. Don't they have to list that?

They don't have to say that.

Nope. The labeling laws for food in North America are some of the worst.

There's been a lot of reports on that.

But you can't really cook with olive oil at higher temperatures either because that breaks down.

You're not supposed to. But now every marketer out there is saying, oh, this is a high temperature cooking olive oil or coconut oil or whatever it is, it doesn't matter.

Yes.

So you're saying it's all mixed. And it's funny because I don't usually like olive oil. I always feel like it smells rancid and I won't use it because I don't care for it. And we use an avocado oil that I've recently started to be like, it doesn't smell right. It shouldn't have any smell.

You too? Me too.

You too? Yeah. It makes our popcorn smell, which maybe is a no food, but like when we make popcorn, you have to pop it. Well, you could air pop it, but we make it in the pot. But so, yeah, I've noticed that. I'm now, you know, you know, we have four kids and now I'm like, how do we do this?

Yeah, and it's. You do it in baby steps is the way you do it. So for example, you know, popcorn, I remember when we switched from using, you know, we had gone from butter back in the day when we used to eat animal products products to then switching to coconut oil. And then I had that same intuition about coconut oil. It took 10 years for the research to come out on coconut oil and now no more coconut oil. And trust your intuition on this, because I've been right, I'd say 100% of the time, but sometimes I have to wait 10 years for research. And so then you transition away from not using any oil and then you just put apple cider vinegar in a spray bottle and you spray that on your popcorn and then put nutritional yeast on top of it. You can put dulse, which is an amazing seawee, very finely ground, and you sprinkle that. So you're getting not just sodium, but you're getting all of the healthy salts but not this refined sodium product. And so it still tastes salty. A bit of sweetness from the nutritional yeast, a bit of the acidity from the vinegar. It's delicious. So it's just baby Step transitions.

So here's the question.

I have mind blown. Hashtag mind blown.

Here's. Here's my challenge. I'm going to say, so I know if I go on a three or five or seven day fast, slightly steamed cabbage is the best food, the best taste I've ever had in my life. The taste, it's fully rich and fully amazing.

I love how you glossed over those three, five or seven days to get.

To the end point.

I didn't say it's for everybody, but I think it's a useful therapy. Anyways, moving on.

Fasting is a wonderful therapy. Yeah.

Not for your family, but for you.

Yes, yes.

Anyways, so that's opposed to. We have a. I'd say better than 95 or 99% of diets of most people. And when you talk about, then you go to. Even the people that are 80 or 90%, they're still having a lot of sugar, salts, oils. How do. If your restaurant is really that refined, most people aren't going to have the palate for it. So how does that work?

Right. Like, how do you straddle commercial appeal with your commitment to high quality food?

Well, but it's also, how do you make taste palatable?

How do you make it taste good.

For the general public? Maybe not the general public, but at least the top 10 to 20% of people that care about their health.

Yeah. So we serve about 150,000 people a year at each restaurant. And so that's a lot of customers coming through. And I can guarantee you lots of these. These people are meat eaters. They eat refined, processed food. We had a mom eating Kentucky Fried Chicken inside our restaurant. Like, while she was eating our delicious meal, her kids were eating that. And we had to say, excuse me, but that's not going to work here. So, you know, we know that their palates are not as refined towards the art like the, the food that we serve, but they still find the food delicious. So that's a great question. And this is wonderful because if you think about all the vast amount of flavors that are out there in the world, cinnamon, nutmeg, cilantro, parsley, onions, garlic, you know, turmeric. Like there's just so many different flavors out there. So we just use those to make sure they're included in our food. And it's not even hard, you know, as a little bit of vinegar, lemon, that goes a long way in flavoring food. Lime goes a long way in flavoring food. So there's all of these beautiful things. And so we make everything from scratch. And so, you know, we do use maple syrup because we consider that as a whole food, we use dates, which is. Are incredibly sweet. Like we make this amazing caramel sauce from literally dates and water caramel sauce that goes on our desserts and our pancakes. We make, you know, we serve incredible waffles with a cashew whipped cream. And most people don't even know that it's not dairy. And basically it's so cashews with I don't even know what the ingredients are in it or staff do. I think there's some like lemon that goes in there and the cashews and some. Probably some dates, I imagine. And that gets blended up into this gorgeous whipped cream. Minimal ingredients. It doesn't take much to make food taste delicious. And even just roasting, the way you cook your food, when you cook it slow enough, the flavors naturally come out and the nutrients don't get released. So then the nutrients are kept in the food to give the food this delicious flavor. So we make sure that a lot of the nutrients are still contained within the food. I mean, our soups are delicious and there's, you know, no added sodium in there. Sometimes if we need to add that extra little kick, we'll juice some celery juice, because that is high in sodium, but it's also high in 125 other nutrients and different salts as well. So you're getting the perfect balance of salts versus undoing the natural state of what your body's supposed to be at. Your cellular intake of sodium. We don't want to disturb that. So there's lots of different ways to use all of the abundance of nutrients to flavor food.

How about. So there's white table salt, sodium chloride, but then there's all sorts of flavors of salts. Pink salt.

Yeah. Potassium, magnesium.

Well, there's the Himalayan pink salts and things like that.

We don't use that.

We don't behave that way. Edward.

Sorry.

Nope. Yeah. And again, it's because we want. So what we're trying to undo is the damage caused by society to our customers bodies. And with the five, six different types of sodium compounds that are used to preserve food, to give food its color, give food its flavor, give food the texture, make sure it actually holds together. You know, like this is what the packaged processing food industry does. They use mass and mass amounts of sodium compounds to basically make food taste good and hold it together. Because it's so processed and refined. People would not buy it if it didn't contain those salts. It would look like Cardboard. So we're trying to undo that damage. And what we're trying to do is actually bring people's cellular potassium levels up here to 70% and reduce their sodium levels with inside their cells to 30%. So by adding Himalayan crystal salt, we'll.

Never got it cool like it.

So your restaurants are vegan, right? Or they're vegan, but other restaurants are also vegan. And how do people tell whether their vegan place is actually healthy? Because it may not be. From what you're saying, it sounds like there's a lot of options, that it's probably not healthy.

Yeah. So I don't even like. Even though we have vegan on one of our signs on our windows, I don't really love using it. If anything, I would call ourselves the nutritarian restaurant. We're nutritarians. We're all about maximum amount of nutrients and minimum amount of toxicity, chemicals, refined ingredients, all of that. So, you know, I can drink whiskey and snort cocaine all day long and call myself vegan and gluten free.

These are pure. They're pure forms. Pure forms of genetics.

It's whole food.

You should really chew the coca leaves, not snort the cocaine. It's better for you.

I had coca tea in Peru, actually, from the leaves.

I'm gonna Google that. So I can also eat in a bakery every single day, muffins, donuts. I could eat all of that food, pastries, everything. And it can be vegan and gluten free as well. And I will create an autoimmune disorder. I will create a disease. I potentially give myself heart disease by doing that if I were to consume those ingredients even though they're gluten free and vegan. So people, again, need to be discerning about those labels. Vegan does not mean healthy. Gluten free does not mean healthy at all. At the end of the day, what you're looking for is whole foods. So you can have Fruit Roll Ups, right? Fruit Roll Ups only contains fruit, but it's not a whole food. The water has come out of it. A lot of the nutrients have been lost in that dehydration process. You know, the skin has been taken off, and that's where the maximum amount of nutrients are actually contained right underneath the surface of the skin. So Fruit Roll up is not food. You could also have an applesauce, Right? So let's take it up a notch a little bit better. Applesauce. Applesauce is still a very highly processed, refined food. It's been overly cooked, and then again, preservatives added. And even if the preservatives aren't added, it's still not the whole food. It's not the same as eating the apple. So at the end of the day, call yourself what you want to call yourself. Vegan, gluten free, vegetarian, whatever. At the end of the day, just go for the whole foods and be the whole food, vegan, be the whole food, gluten free, you know, consumer. And that's what you are going for because that is what's going to keep you free of disease until you're 110.

So I have another question. It's politically incorrect. So I'm good.

Okay, Brace yourself when it gets that.

I'm holding the table. All right, where's my microphone?

I know for. You're obviously a huge advocate for no meat, nothing vegan based. Well, high nutrient dense food.

Yes.

My. In my practice, I found that there's no one diet that works for everybody. And that may or may not be what you're in agreement with. And I get that when you start.

In agreement, you're not in agreement.

No, not in agreement. Okay, And I'll get. And I'll explain why.

Okay, why?

Okay, explain that right now. Okay? Like I said, brace yourself, right? So I want you all to brace yourself, okay? Because what I'm about to say is gonna hopefully blow your minds, okay? So I want you to think about the entire existence of the human species on the planet from the very first day. I don't care if you're a creation theorist or if you are the big bang theorist. It doesn't matter how humans got here. From the day the humans existed or life existed on the planet to now, we are in this time. And this is a spectrum. We are in this tiny little blip over here. It's literally one little tiny line. And that line equals about the last 450 years of colonized food. Okay? So all our lands were colonized all over the world. But prior to that colonization and prior to agriculture, what we know is that there weren't bags of chips living on grocery store shelves. People didn't carry flour around with them. People. And if they made flour like my grandmother does or did up until she passed away last year in Malawi Africa, little village that I was born, okay? Only whole foods. So when we talk about there's not one diet that works for everybody. What we do know from the research communities around the world that still eat food the way that the humans have eaten it prior to colonization, when it was really an abundance of Just whole foods, real food. There was an apple, you picked the apple and you ate it. If there was ginger root underneath the ground, you picked that and you made something with it. So we know, and that's not a diet, it's a lifestyle. So we know that lifestyle. The research shows us that when people eat this way, they actually can live to be a centenarian. So older than 100 in huge population numbers. So and this is happening still today, there's communities around the world that still eat this way, clean, real food every single day. And they might have a little bit of wine, they might have a cake once every, like, you know, when there's a celebration, for example, but they're not consuming it every day. And these people, the most important part about the story is that they live disease free. So that's why I'm not in agreement with there's not a diet that works for everybody, because we actually do know that there is. But what I do want to say about that, the caveat, it's how do you get people to live that way? That's what doesn't work for a lot of people in our society because they're so busy, they don't have the education and they can't access the food.

I'm a thousand hundred thousand percent in agreement with you.

Well, that's an agreement.

100,000% agree. And in those communities, some of those communities still ate meat occasionally.

Yeah, but very few. That's what they found through the blue zones research. That's what they found through the China study. It's what they found through big mass population studies. Yeah, they still consumed a little bit of meat, but not enough to justify that the meat was the reason why they also lived that long.

Correct? Yes. Okay, fair. Yeah.

And some communities don't eat it at all. My grandmother, you know, she died at 92, chronic disease free. She maybe ate meat, I don't know, four times a year when there was a funeral or when there was like cause for a big village, you know, gathering. And if they did eat meat, this is the other difference. It's the volume of meat and animal products that are consumed. She would share a chicken with 70 people. So the chicken, you know, would be butchered and it would be cleane and then it would really just be flavoring or garnish to the meal. It wasn't eating two barbecue chicken breasts smothered in barbecue sauce. You know, not like the quality of.

Food they will be. Wild animals eating wild foods, etc. Would be a very different quality than Even, Even our grass fed beef, it would be very different.

Yeah, so very, very different.

So do you, I'm assuming, get questions about how do I get enough protein?

I love this question.

So are you incorporating legumes and soy? Well, which is a legume, are you incorporating those in? You're definitely doing cashews, which is a source.

Yep. Yeah. So I love this question. It's actually my most favorite question because I love breaking it down. And physicians ask me this question as well. So it's not going.

Doctors.

Yeah, so. And it's a valid question because we have been literally raised to believe that protein, protein, protein is the most important nutrient that we need. And actually it's the nutrient that we need to really manage the most carefully. Because once you get above 12% protein intake in your diet daily, this is when you get to trigger cancer, growth. And most people don't understand the association between protein intake, cancer growth, protein intake and osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, these illnesses, protein intake, acidity and inflammation in the body. So we do need to talk about protein and really help people understand. So I was at a neuroscience conference, I was the keynote speaker, and there was lots of medical experts, professionals in the audience, and one came up to me and he's like, you can't live on a diet like that. There's not enough protein. And I said, why not? Your carrot, your romaine lettuce, your onion all has protein in it. And he's like, no, it doesn't. I was like, what do you mean it doesn't? So I said, can you please look it up on your phone right now? And he looked it up and he's like, carrots have protein. And I said, yes, they do, because you don't actually eat protein. Okay? So I'm going to let that sink in right now. You do not eat protein. You eat foods that contain amino acids that are, yes, protein, but the minute your saliva touches it, it starts to break down that protein in your mouth, in your stomach, in your esophagus, in your intestines, and it breaks it down back down to the basic building blocks of life, back to amino acids. Now, what happens is if you eat, let's say rice and beans and carrots and I eat that same meal at the same time, those amino acids that we break down, you break down and I break down, they will not go back into the same protein, okay, for you as they will for me. My body will create protein out of that that's needed to heal my shoulder injury. Let's say, well, you might build protein that needs to go towards fixing your eyesight and helping to maintain good eyesight or to, I don't know, maybe you're going to have sex tonight. So a lot of protein is going to be built towards going towards all of that. So the thing is, people need to understand that you really consume amino acids and that and every single food that you eat, there's not a single food on the planet that doesn't contain protein. So you can get everything you need through 100% organic plant based diet. And it's going to be more efficient for you.

Hashtag mind blown.

What else should we know?

I'm not sure I can cope with anymore.

Okay. So one thing you should know is I'm running and biking across Canada next year. I did the run bike ride across British Columbia. It's a huge province. And so I did that this summer, last summer. And I'm doing this fully on a plant based whole food diet. And I have more than enough protein in my diet through consuming these vegetables and fruits. But I don't worry about the protein. I'm more concerned about getting the zinc, the, you know, all the other minerals. Like if you look at the periodic table, I want to get all of those elements into my body. This is what people actually should be concerned about. If you eat food, you'll be getting your protein. If you eat whole foods, you'll be getting the right amount of fats. If you eat whole foods, you'll be getting all the good healthy sugars, whole food sugars that you need. So I want people to stop talking about macronutrients and you need to start thinking about the micronutrients. This, this is the difference between you dying with heart disease, diabetes, you know, autoimmune disorders, and it's the difference between you living medication free and having tons of energy. Because at the end of the day, these micronutrients are what fuel your mitochondria and actually build energy. And the number one thing everybody wants on the planet is energy. Because that energy liberates you from mental health, disease. That energy in your body liberates you. And so that you can shed weight easily, that energy detoxify, detoxifies you, it builds strong muscles, it allows you to do every single thing that you want to do in your life. So that's the shift that we need to be making in our life right now.

Okay, I'm really upset.

Talk to me, step into my office.

And I'm really upset because we have to complete this conversation Because I have about 100 more questions.

Not to be.

A Rob, we're gonna have to have you back because tbc.

Yeah, tbc.

So I think what I really want to know is when are the green mustache, AKA to be named, not yet released name gonna open in New York?

Yeah, I can release the name for sure. I don't know if it's gonna be our permanent name, but it takes about two years to trademark a name, so we had to just choose something because we still weren't sure what we're gonna call it. But my last name is Rishe and it's spelled, spelled like phonetically spelled Richer. And so it's called Richer Health. That's been my company for the last 15 years. So we're calling them the Richer Health Cafes. And it's where you go to get better health. Richer health. You can even become financially more successful. Because I know my clients that heal themselves of their chronic disease, they're able to actually be more productive at work, start their own businesses. Yes. So it's richer in all areas of your life. So that's the name that we're dancing around right now. So, yeah, we'll have a website up soon actually, so people can sign up to know when we open up the first cafe in New York.

More importantly, when you're coming to Boston.

Yeah. Oh, well, you know, that's a great question. So we know because of COVID it really slowed down our ability to open up our cafes quickly because it takes about a year and a half for a brick and mortar store to literally get up and running. And so what we've actually done is we're just about to launch it in two weeks. And what we're doing is we're actually training 1200 restaurants across North America. So we have a list of restaurants that we're going to be reaching out to in your community. Exactly. So we are going to train them on how to add menu items to their existing menu with the existing ingredients that they already have and how to make sure that those foods are healing their customers instead of harming them. And then we're going to give them a green mustache approved, Richer health approved stamp so that you can go to these places and get get super delicious, nutrient dense foods now at 1200 different locations across North America this year.

So where can people find you? We'll put this in the show notes, but where can people find you?

So definitely head to our website, greenmustache.com the link below. And we're not the same green mustache that's in the States because you will find an organic food company in the States called the Green Mustache. But they are the refined version, so lots of refined ingredients. That's not us. Not us. And they're so lovely. They're doing for all the right reasons. They're doing what they're doing. So I can't say anything bad about them. It's a lovely story behind their story. So go to greenmustache.com we have green Mustache University on that website as well. So you can see all the courses that we offer, the programs, the teachings we teach physicians, if you ever want to. Yeah. So please go there. And then also check out our podcast because we cover a lot of client healing stories. We interview amazing experts. We interviewed you, Wendy. Your podcast is coming out soon. So, yeah. Eat Real to Heal podcast. And if anybody wants to learn more about reversing their chronic disease and they maybe can't afford my service, my consulting our courses, then just get the book. I think it's $24. Eat real to Heal, it's called. It was an Amazon bestseller for years. Get the book. Do what it says. You will reverse your chronic diseases.

Sweet.

Amazing. Amazing. Thank you. It's really been an honor.

Thank you very much. I love your questions. They're brilliant, especially for audience members, too, that are maybe just hearing this for the first time. So I really appreciate being on your show.

We love having you, Nicolette.

Thank you.

You want to say it, you say it. No, I dominated all the, like, intro stuff. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Live like youe, Matt. Thank you. Our guest today was Nicolette Richet.