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Nutritional Gray Areas

Unfortunately, there are many, many nutritional gray areas and I think this is where we get hung up a lot and so I just want to address a few of the most common one just head on seafood anybody have ah anything seafood good or bad? Good, right? So that's the problem that we run into we start running into is if you just look at the science of eating fish eating you know they talk about the omega three fatty acids even though I don't like to get hung up on you specific nutrients he's clearly you're doing something good for people and in both the heart health and brain health uh however, so those were those specifically d h es and epa actually these air to specific types of omega three fatty acids that are only found in fish you know, I I often hear people saying that you could get vegetarian sources of these, which actually isn't true vegetarian omega three fatty acids are is a alfa linolenic acid and your body does convert some ayla into d h s epa but it a very, very inefficient level. ...

So I actually do recommend that if you are vegetarian and you could, you are concerned about things like heart disease and and brain health they getting a little more dhhs epa in your diet even if it is through supplements is not not a bad idea because it does it does seem to have some specific benefits that seemed to be really good like I mentioned we tend to think of omega three fatty acids in terms of heart health, but we've been told their heart healthy fish but the brain is just as important and and I'm talking about, you know, likelihood of getting dementia I'm talking about depression and mood I'm talking about development, you know, no development for children you know, these these seem to be in particularly important for that and hard and the biggest bummer, however, is that for seafood like other things the data is fairly consistent for people who eat fish and seafood. You know there's clearly seems to be some sort of benefit for these people supplements has been a more of a mixed bag sometimes this so there's a whole there's a whole mess of issues of supplements some studies have shown a benefit others have shown no benefit also there's a huge array of quality of supplements and they aren't as rigorously tested and regulated by the fda as I wish they were unfortunately they sort of it's like an honor system what they put on their label and if you ever are concerned about your supplements there's an amazing resource called consumer labs and it's kind of like consumer reports, but they specifically attests dietary supplements and they will d'oh uh they what they do is they compare it to what they say on the label and what's actually in it on whether or not it's contaminated with things like mercury or pcbs versus whether or not it's just sort of clean and pure dhhs epa so it does cost money unfortunately to get access to some of those reports but if you're serious about this stuff and you're really concerned let's say you're vegetarian and you really want to make sure you do have the proper nutrition from fish definitely that's such a good resource for you to have so that you know exactly what you're getting and again the higher quality supplements tend to tell us more money unfortunately those of the potential benefits of seafood but there's a lot of serious serious environmental concerns with seafood and you know, well I'm normally a quite selfish person I dio you know, obviously care about our planet and that we eat things that are healthy and that the animals that we get from our food are healthy to and are going to make us sick so we have serious overfishing problems which is really unfortunate um you know, fish are also high it like fisher also highly subjected tio pollution from mercury so mercury comes from coal plants like, you know, energy plants that use coal and it it goes into the atmosphere and then it settles in the water and then the fish eat the plankton and the bigger the fishes, the more and mercury mercury takes a long time to decay so the bigger the fish is, the more it'll accumulate in the body of the fish and because it eats small, efficient it accumulates. So you know, the biggest concern with mercury is giant fish like swordfish or sharks the big big tuna and but, you know, it's in to some degree it's in almost all fish, which is bad because mercury is really bad for your brain and other things, but, you know, probably not really low doses let's put this higher doses, you have to be concerned, especially women of reproductive age because you really, really don't want to be exposing and new developing nervous system if you happen to get pregnant to mercury it's much, much worse for small children and so women of uh, reproductive age need to be very concerned about that as well. Um, pcbs so you're like, ok, well, all ignore I'll get around this whole mercury contamination stuff by just having farmed fish, you know, those air surely cleaner, but now unfortunately, farmed fish tend to be higher and pcbs, which is a it's an environmental pollution that was actually a lot a while ago, but it's still remnant in a lot of and a lot of the the water systems we have and a farm fish tendon has a lot of pcbs in them compared a wild fish unfortunately I tend his shoes wild fish for myself personally just cause I think it tastes better that I am aware highly aware of the mercury is well yeah what is pcb it's an environmental pollutants that has gone it's something that gets gets accumulates and fish and you know I mean this I could talk it like something not me somebody could talk about this stuff alone seafood all day long like it is a very complex thing I'm just giving you a very very brief overview of the things to be concerned about so my point here is that you know the wild fish and a mercury the farm fish and have pcbs I know that there are companies working on this you know trying to get a cleaner farmed fish that's more sustainable for the environment but all that stuff is just starting you know whole foods is actually doing great work I'm tryingto trying tio get around these issues but you know not everybody has a whole foods and not everybody can afford to shop at whole foods so we're still struggling with how to get around these issues and I honestly don't have a good answer all I can do is tell you what to be aware of and understand the risks and benefits from each thing um radiation about that I mean you know, there was a big does that nuclear disaster in japan not too long ago and there's been all sorts of questions about radiation? I don't know what to believe honestly, I still don't know, and it bums me out because I had a lot of sushi on I go to japan fairly regularly, so you know, seafood is just one of those things that that accumulates aa lot of a lot of toxins because you know, they're wild in the ocean, you know, we're not getting them from a farm where we have more control over fishing is a big, big issue like we discussed earlier, my favorite resource, I have so much trouble keeping up with this stuff on that. I rely heavily on the seafood watch produced by the monterey bay aquarium, and they will constantly have an updated list of the fish that are going to be the safest in terms of mercury and contaminants but also the most environmentally sustainable and friendly fish teo teo, so they'll have best choices, worse choices and that's I find the best way to make the decisions because I mean, you're going to be taking some risk, but not eating fish is some risk, too, because then you'd be lacking those nutrients, and so I just try to do my best I don't know what else to say anybody have any questions you look a little confused yeah do you think it's better to get the what is that the d h es and the epa from a supplement source as opposed to fish that just because of all the million issues of well like I said in the in the last slide the data for the supplement hasn't been as good as the data for seafood itself so I mean if you're vegetarian I think is better than not doing it but if you aren't I know I still I I also really enjoy fish like when I whenever I like whenever I'm confused on a topic I just go with my taste to some extent because what you're going to do like I could spend all day worrying about this so I could just get on with my life and know that I eat a lot of vegetables and that counter acts a lot of the bad stuff were exposed to so and I wish I had a better answer I really do and the other part of that are there and some cultures in history that didn't have any fish and they survived and thrived without those teo essential um not sure it's possible um the question I mean it's like low d a cheney is associated with depression so it's like you might be alive you might be happier if you had all if your brain was functioning optimally so I mean again nutrition is very, very biology is very, very complex, and it depends what your goals are and and I don't like I said, I don't have the answers, which I did yeah, cheryl, no difference between scaling fish and shellfish. Ah, yeah, there is definitely a different nutritional profiles. Like I said, my goal is variety, so oysters are actually one of the best choices you can have. They are very, very nutrient dense, very good for you. They don't have a central nervous system, so I've actually heard some vegans and vegetarians recommend oysters as a very healthy source of vitamin b twelve and vitamin d and epa and d h a because they're ninety five percent of oysters air, sustainably farmed and they don't have a central nervous system so it's hard to argue that you're doing a lot of you're creating a lot of suffering and they actually help the environment they're cleaning area and and that doesn't they detoxify things that are in the environment that are bad for you, so oysters seem to be a great choice that might change in you might discover something different, but that seems to be the case for the moment. Usually I mean made out of fish oil, so are they subject to the same contaminants they can be and that's why? I recommended that consumer labs because it depends on the brand yeah, because some of them were very good about filtering that stuff out others just want to make a quick buck so yeah it's really tricky I mean, navigating this seafood world is really tough all right? So let's move on to meet yea another super highly controversial topping so just a quick summary of the state of affairs with me I mean, it was demonized for a long time it was always what was bad about it were two things saturated fat and cholesterol way we're told for decades that those are going to kill us. The most recent concensus by the nutrition scientific community is that saturated fat is not nearly as bad as we thought it depends entirely on like so if you say like ok saturated fat maybe associated with higher cholesterol definitely does associated with slightly higher cholesterol the bad kind of cholesterol I'll deal it's also associated with higher good cholesterol by the way h deal however the question is ok, so should I take saturated fat out of my diet and we've done these studies now and what happens is when you were take we take saturated fat out you have to replace it with something people pretty much the same amount of food. So so what they found is that if you replaced saturated that with carbohydrates it's actually much, much worse for your heart you know it does not help your situation? It lowers your hdl and doesn't really budge your ldl very much if you replace saturated fat with mono unsaturated fat olive oil not much benefit again very surprising results people scientists were like, darn it! And then if you replace saturated fat with, um specific kinds of poly unsaturated fats, specifically kinds and fish, there is actually a small benefit of having more of that and less saturated fat. So it doesn't seem that saturated fat itself is the demon that we all thought it was. So hey, we didn't meet again. Yeah, um, so I just wanted tio point that out. I mean, it's still a highly controversial topic. Obviously if you go on any form, you're going there's going to be people. I'm sure they're very angry with me right now for saying this. I'm just telling the science like I read it s o I just is clearly not as bad as we thought it was. You put it that way not that it's completely inert, but I my opinion is that it's not as bad as we thought, um down to cholesterol so this is something that is very confusing to people. Dietary cholesterol actually has very little impact on your blood cholesterol those are two different things the cholesterol in your blood is actually a protein as that high density lipoprotein and it carries cholesterol with it and there's several different kinds there's more than hdl and ldl there's the ldl and a few other different kinds the important point I want to make here is that, like some just because something says low cholesterol on it that actually means almost nothing in terms of the health benefits of it. Similarly, nothing that comes from a plant is going to have cholesterol in it, so if you see a cracker but there's no cholesterol like great, I'm glad there's no animal in my cracker that's that's awesome! I mean, I suppose there could be better or something, but but just generally I don't freak out about things like saturated fat and cholesterol nearly as much as I used to and I get my personal blood lipid assesses every single year and they're exceptional. I meet almost every day I eat eggs almost every day and I'm okay that said, there are people with sensitivities you know, genetically sensitivities tio cholesterol in foods saturated fat in foods so the best thing for you to do for yourself it is not listening what everyone says but launder your own eating habits and talk to your doctor and get your blood tested and try different things and see if you can get it moving in the right direction and that's really the best advice we have that makes sense anybody would fight with me and wait in line when a fight with me I don't think so right? And winning another issue with me is we have always tended to eat focused mainly on the muscle doesn't mean you know you get like a steak is like different parts of the leg or the shoulder or whatever there seems to be some evidence that there's a lot of benefit from eating organs and darker meats and other parts of the animal we call this nose to tail eating so I think these are some of the most underrated forms of health foods is that they tend to be really, really dense and nutrients and his remember we talked about historical our traditional diets being more healthy they almost always ate nose to tail you know, they almost always is the bones for stock always eat the organ meats do different things with them people tend to think it's gross um but let me tell you something if you get a good chef I mean here in san francisco I know for sure the chefs could make do amazing things with things like liver things like sweetbreads things you know, like bone marrow, delicious delicious foods highly highly nutritious and the other thing one of the reasons I think that we're so meet phobic in our culture is that there's there are you confined studies for days that explain how people who eat all this meat in the western diets um, have these problems, you know, they have heart disease, we have cancer, we have stroke, we have all these things it's important to remember that, yes, like that, it tends to be a more meat heavy diet sometimes compared tio more traditional cultures, but remember what we said about traditional cultures? Um, they're also very like the western eyes, also very much lacking vegetables, and you can't control for that. When you're doing observation, I'll study when you're just saying yes, meet correlates with poor health is like, well, so it is processed food, clearly with poor health, so does lack of vegetables because of poor health, and they go together it's a syndrome like it's, all all the entire diet is a hole that's bad. So you know, so many of the studies that they point to and say this is why I made is bad. You have to remember that if if you're comparing people with a western diet to anybody else, of course, it's going to be more bad is that the meat? I'm not convinced, and I think the science is start starting to show that it's not as as convincing as it used to seem. All right, cool. So I just wanted to put some context in there because you will see studies where the conclusion is that meat is bad, but when you actually go look at it, you realize they're just showing that western diet is bad. Cool. Oh, gosh. Now, more more with me so saturated, fat and cholesterol and all that stuff might not be that bad, but industrial meat is a different story. So you guys know about factory farming and high density feedlots, so obviously there's like humane issues associated with treating animals like that very dense situations. But health wise animals raised in an industrial setting tend to be pumped with hormones and tend to be pumped with antibiotics and other things to get them to grow faster and grow bigger and get you know and and and the quickest time is possible so they can get more profit right? For for that animal, they view animals is a commodity. Basically, the problem is that hormones are very, very, very dangerous to mess with, you know, core moment imbalances or what caused breast cancer and ovarian cancer, another like sex driven, you know, sex hormones and men and women when you start and you can definitely see the effects of having a hormone based type foods in your diet, I'm dairy is actually one of the actually the on ly food source that is associated with acne and agnese a hormonal thing right so clearly there is an it on effect a meeting hormone food like who food that had been treated with hormones can definitely have an effect on your body so that's when you're when you're thinking about in terms of meat again the quality is really important so you know industrial meat in particular and made this grown and these concentrated animal feedlots are going toe are gonna have some risks associated with them so well it might not be the saturated fat it might be the hormones or the antibiotics on obviously they're not very nice places to be either have you ever driven by one like the delta five freeway there smelled I mean like sam crow's it smells about and they're just standing in that their own feces you know and that's why some one of the reasons they need too much antibiotics skip something s o the next big gray area is beans and grains and this didn't used to be a gray area but has anybody talked to a cave man yesterday were recently a paleo person made these guys hate grains I mean they hate think they're pure evil and there's a few decent reasons why we will discuss but first I want to point out again we talked about this briefly on the difference between a whole grain and an intact brain so the way I approach grains personally is yes, whole grains are they're better than pure refined flour but far, far better as a intact grain that actually still looks like a grain and you could imagine it coming from somewhere like rice or faro arquin law or a note so that is going to be your your if you're when you're thinking about grains, I would lean that way more toward real food and away from processed foods um there's I mean there's a lot of talk about gluten free, I think wouldn't I think one of the biggest reasons this has become so popular it is because if you go gluten free, you are virtually requiring yourself through to remove all processes from your diet and again that's a really good way to get healthy and feel better so there are certainly people including sensitivities and you should test, you know, go ahead and do experiments on yourself to see if it makes you feel better and, you know, if you have a serious scrutiny allergy, obviously that's a life threatening and very scary thing, but but I do think people tend to overblow this a little bit, and I think one of the reasons I feel so great when when they cut it out is because they're really just cutting out a lot of processed food so the reason the paleo crowd often talks about grains and and even beans legumes pulse is what we want to call them is that they contain and anti nutrients called fight a gas and specifically in lecterns and there's some truth to this. So yes, if you have if you're eating a lot of grains and you're on a very, very restricted diet, so for instance, people in some third world countries that you're very limited to just corn and a few other food's fight a gas and confined up certain minerals and and create deficiencies and people who eat a lot of grains and don't get those minerals made up somewhere else they can absorb iron and and other other minerals and that's that's bad, but for like a normal western culture where we eat everything all the time in massive amounts, you're fine like this is not associated with deficiencies and somebody like anyone here elect ins are slightly different they irritate the gut, so if you have got problems that's certainly worth experimenting with a cutting that out a little bit in seeing how it works for you. But that said again, there's very little data that it's actually has a negative impact on people who are already healthy and well nourished makes sense, so I don't I don't freak out about anti nutrients I ate them and I'm perfectly healthy perfectly fine, not deficient in zinc or anything like that all right moving right along isn't this fun nutrition class fun? Um so another nutritional gray area dairy so it's really I think natural to think of dairy as a whole food a real food however, the milk that we get and most western cultures especially in the us in particular is highly highly highly processed when you think about a cow right? Like remember talked about the grass, right? They eat grass and then in the winter that you hey and when you think about it that what they eat is going to change the flavor in the nutrient profile of their milk have you noticed your milk changing flavors or nutrient profiles throughout the year? No there's a reason for this is because they run it through may homogenize it they run it through this centrifuge and they their goal is to make a very, very consistent product. So when you go to store, you know exactly what you're gonna get and that's how they were able to create things like low fat milk one percent mel non fat milk but because they can add those things back kind of like the whole grains, you know, the whole grain flour where they just add stuff back to make it have a certain profile it's unclear how this changes the milk, but it does seem to change it quite a bit from a nutritional perspective similarly, milk is pasteurized, which is going to kill some of the nutrients I'm not advocating. Raw milk is a lot of dangers with that as well, but just be aware that milk isn't exactly this like super riel whole food that, like we get the impression it is from watching got milk ads makes sense again. Uh oh, I did. I didn't mention the hack anything with with the products also, milk is definitely a hormonal product. Something to keep in mind, you know, comes from a cow's mammary gland. So calcium, everybody wants calcium right again. Natural moat does come with vitamin d, so it is a good source of calcium and vitamin d. Well, they actually usually fortify it with vitamin d, but, uh, there isn't, but I think we get told and it's easy to believe that the only the best and only place to get calcium is from dairy, right? I mean, that's, I feel like what we're told to believe, and but the reality of the situation is that seventy percent of the globe is lactose intolerant and don't drink milk and and they actually have lower rates of osteoporosis than we do for the most part, so it's hard to argue that the dairy is essential for your bone health, I mean, it's a it's a tool like anything else but if if you have issues with it I don't think it's absolutely necessary and so you know and you don't if you're eating plenty of vegetables if you're eating plenty of beans and and other whole foods like we've been talking about, you're getting plenty of calcium and you can all if you ever question that you can always go to the doctor and have your blood levels tested and they will tell you whether or not you're deficient calcium I'm not no I hardly every day because I'm lactose intolerant so calcium is good but you don't have to get it for milk there's lots of other sources again one of the big things that comes up with the area's saturated fat you know I don't want to touch better I don't want to touch cream I went low fat please you know I'm healthy but we talked that you know a little bit that saturated fat isn't the demon we thought it was and moreover actually more recent studies have shown that low fat dairy isn't as good as regular dairy which is sort of shocking because it's like the number one thing was recommended I feel like like low fat dairy vegetables, fruits and it's not necessarily better and I just want to take a one quick moment to talk about a special case so we talked about saturated fat a little bit but I actually have found some really interesting research lately about hard cheeses has anybody heard this stuff it's really cool so you know cheese is actually a very traditional product it's fermented and older cheeses are fermented longer until they're very very hard and the way that fermenting process happens is there's you know bacterial cultures associated with it and those actually produce a vitamin called vitamin k two which is ah cheese is actually the number one source of it in our diets which is really interesting and that vitamin has been associated with reduced risk of heart disease and a reduced risk of cancer to actually very very new research I've only seen a few studies on it so I wouldn't you know about the farm on this yet however you know I think we returned demonized cheese as as a fattening product but when is created in a traditional way there does seem to be some special benefits things so this is one of the best things I ever discovered was like cheese is good for me yes yes we've been discovered that very high cheese eaters were very high diet have incredibly good teeth hears it actually forms incredibly good plaque and even a dentist will tell you you know you don't want plaque goes people actually cheese plaque you just so called him into your teeth all day amazing thank you for that ok but I don't know what it's doing to your heart but it's going great stop beauty what good things apparently, but at least the hard jesus yeah you mentioned raw milk really briefly can you speak about that just a bit um my my issue with raw milk is the risk of contamination with listeria e coli there's a reason we pasteurize things and it's to keep us safe and there has been enough outbreaks from raw milk farms that I personally wouldn't feel I mean if I'm drinking right from the cow fine, but if it's in a bottle and I take it home and it's been a few days like I would personally be worried about drinking around milk that said they're people who swear by it there people that are lactose intolerant that could drink raw milk there are people that have tremendous they have a coal cult around raw milk I'm not going to tell people how to live their lives but I I don't want listeria or you call I personally so I am cautious about it there's heating it killed those things yeah, but it also changes the properties of the milk that's what pastors? That chastising is right, right? Yeah what about the middle crisis cheese russell's? You're good because I think there is the storm une different variations off during I don't drink milk but I do have greg you good and and hot cheese ever confront yeah, me too I think that's fine I don't think that gary is bad I don't think it's this like panacea that we were told it was in the nineties um yeah so whatever works for you like I said that there's benefits definitely benefits yogurt because of the cultures and the probiotics and they're definitely benefits to some hard cheese in moderation it's also high calorie food you know? So keep that in mind but I think it's great it's great so I just I like this quote right here this is from alfred e newman who is the mascot of mad magazine and he says we're living in a world today where lemonade is made from real lemons and furniture polish is we're limited has made from artificial flavors and furniture polish is made from real lemons it's not those hilarious so true all right, so just these are some I find these amusing I like to just put a few overrated health foods appear just to show you guys so do you think people talk about all the time is being like really, really good for you and I I have my doubts so yogurt is fine if you're talking about plain greek yogurt but most yogurt turn around look at the ingredients sugar, sugar, sugar, yogurt or milk sugar some fruit paste on maybe some cultures plain yogurt doesn't taste as desert like as as um sweet stuff but the sweet stuff really is think of it more as dessert you know like you're right you rent your regular grocery store fruity over ts are more like desert than health food whole grain flour we talked about that a lot egg white eggs are great egg whites are fine but I get so frustrated when a pc people throwing away their yoke as if they're being virtuous um theo csere great and like I'm not I'm totally not impressed when you order an egg white always f y I shoot margarine the fake processed oils I mean this is we're saturated that came from they thought they were doing us a favor they thought they were giving us heart healthy foods they processed it and made some magical new thing and then everybody got worse heart disease so be careful with overly processed stuff protein bars I mean, first of all they just taste bad second of all, you don't need to get your protein from a bar you know every once in a while if you're like really in a hurry and you're you need to get something that's fine but not not amazing food um and low fat salad dressings that is good for you actually what's really interesting is a lot of vitamins or good number of vitamins or fat soluble which means that in order for you to integrate them into your body they need to be in a fatty medium and actually that I've seen of several studies that show that you get more nutrition out of a salad if there's fattal in benefits low fat so enjoy your nice fatty salad dressings and skip the low fat stuff is a little fat stuff tend to be jammed assault jammed with either shrill sugar or fake sugar um and taste like crap so let's let's go with flavor and you win every time um underrated health is to be there some of my favorite and some of the surprise people um you guys know about probiotics and that's kind of a buzz word these days if you don't know probiotics are a bacterial cultured food that is supposed to be very, very good for your gut health so they they helped create bacteria in your stomach that help you digest food, get more nutrients out of your food and really, really good for you in all traditional diets there's almost always fermented food sauerkraut kim she if they're made from these natural processes are awesome things might be in the book by the way you might not have to wrestle tio see mushrooms you know we tend people say the generic statement like tony white food but mushrooms are white food in their amazing for you was cauliflower seaweed a great source of iodine uh if you're worried about thyroid issues I mean unless you're most people don't eat a lot of iodine and that's why our salts tends to be supplemented with it but seafood is the original source of iodine and I highly recommend it very good people in okinawa which is the longest lived people on earth in a lot of sea vegetables, organ meats we talked about that already on there that could be highly nutrient dense beans and lentils I think are some of the most underrated health foods on earth they're so delicious so good for you when I started eating more of them that's what completely quenched my sugar cravings on diet is a very, very excellent alternative to grains if you're trying to go that way coffee good for you yeah it's really actually really, really good for you I mean the sugar bombs that you get it neighborhood coffee chain can be very very high calories but if you're just talking about playing about coffee can actually be really, really helpful and good for your liver raises your metabolism helps you concentrate give you more energy it's great egg yolks we talked about that hard cheese we talked about that we actually did talk about oysters and I just wanted to give a shout out to root vegetables because everybody's always talking about the leafy greens and those great don't forget the root vegetables they're going to they're wonderful and they're different you need both you need all of them awesome. So we talked about this a little bit earlier um but it's just I just want to re emphasize that it's important to keep in mind that there are a lot of interests of people who want to convince you that certain things are healthy and that you should buy them a lot and just keep in mind that they're like the government recommendations by the usda and the fda are often more marketing by lobbyists than an actual health recommendations. So be careful of any health claims like if you ever see a you know, heart healthy stamp of approval on something there is literally a heart healthy stamp of approval on lucky charms with like seventy or forty one percent sugar is like that's ridiculous that causes heart disease that is ridiculous but that's allowed because there's whole grain flour in there right? So just wait I mean actually a heart healthy claim is a very good sign that you're barking up the wrong tree in terms of health um food labels and nutrition facts can also be really confusing and what I want you to do basically the message here is to just skip over those and just look at one thing the only thing you should be looking at on a box is the ingredient list because that is what's going to tell you what's actually in there and they can't lie about it and whatever's first is what this the most of so if any of the first three to five ingredients are sugar or a form of sugar listen it's not good for you and the fewer ingredients the better and you want as many of the ingredients as possible to sound like real foods that came out of earth you know real grains riel animal products really vegetables real fruits that makes sense so ingredient labels is number one oh and I kind of mentioned it earlier but of all the of all the labels that you can't trust the one that actually is really, really rigorous is organic that's a great label if you see it's organic and will not have gm owes you know it will be raised to certain standards and that's that's a good place for you to trust so I just want to give you a quick summary of how I recommend your plate looks so this is the usda my plate much, much, much better than the food pyramid but I found it was a little confusing so I sort of re imagined it for my own readers first of all remember like when fat was like the worst thing on earth there's took it off this one they're like never mind don't worry about that but I find that's really confusing also I think protein is really confusing to like what does that mean? It's like all the rest of our foods, right and then proteins down there and then the dairy industry made sure that was up in the corner, but let's, take a look at mine. This is the food ist plate so much, much simpler. First of all, note that the plate has a size like ten inches is a great size for a plate you don't need more than that, and that will help you feel satisfied with less food. Um, half your plate should be vegetables, and I highly recommend cooking them in naturally on processed oils and then the other side of the plate. You can sort of do whatever you want any mixture of some sort of, you know, animal based muscle like a fissure meet ideally not industrial, but whatever works for you and then some sort of being or grain as a starch to help round out the meal, and I think you should be drinking water most of time and a little wine is good for you to actually, and then I put fruit on the side, so I don't know why the usda thinks we should, like, eat strawberries on our dinner plate, but I think they make a great snack, but I think when you tell people there's been this has been studied, when you tell people to eat more fruits and vegetables, all they do is eat more fruits. So I really, really want to emphasize the importance of vegetables or fruits are great, but really focus on veggies, ok? And last I just want tio summarize, I give people this plate and then they flip out there like, does this mad? Does this count? Does this count? I don't know what should I d'oh? And I just want to emphasize that keep some perspective so there's an aspiration, not a commandment and there's a zillion ways to a healthy meal. And really, what I want you to do is just focus on real food is the most important thing, and on the big picture, the things you do every day makes sense. Um, and if for some like and I also don't like when people freak out about organic or local, all these things like those things are nice tohave, and if you care, go ahead, make it a priority. But for the most part, if you're focusing on real food and eating a lot of vegetables, you're you're in a good place.