Brenda Davis, R.D. – Vegan Diets – Offstage Interview

for people unfamiliar with you please just tell us your name a little bit about your background and really what you’ve been doing for the last several years well I my name is brenda Davis I’m a registered dietitian and I became a registered dietitian in 1983 so I have been doing this a long time I became vegetarian pretty much vegan by 1990 and and it was an interesting little journey because I was a actually a public health nutritionist in Northern Ontario I had met one real ly vegetarian in my whole life and that was it and I remember making the decision and my husband asking my husband if he would be willing to become vegetarian with me we had been married about 10 years at that point well at that yeah 99 we were married in 78 so anyway he he looked at me and he said I thought you’d never ask oh I would love to be a vegetarian so I count myself a very very fortunate in that regard because he grew up in Northern Ontario where it’s it’s hunting fishing territory so anyway my journey was I became vegetarian moved out west to the west coast and in 92 wrote my first book with my writing colleague vesanto melina and Victoria Harrison and within probably six or eight months it was a national bestseller and and then we you know we just my writing partner vesanto and I continued writing and so I’ve done I would say ten now ten of edge eteri in classics if you will and I’m working on my eleventh which is a diabetes book and and so have been very actively involved in the plant-based world for about thirty years and the books becoming vegetarian and becoming vegan and now we’ve got the big becoming vegan and and I’ve done diabetes books and so on

and and the other thing that I’ve done that I think is kind of interesting is in 1990 No 2000 and six it was I was asked to be a part of a research project in the Marshall Islands where they have the highest rates of diabetes on the planet and and so I became involved in that work and I’ve still I’m still involved in that work and in it it’s been quite an experience of lifestyle medicine has really come into the picture for me in fact last year I along with dr. John Kelly who was the founding president of the American College of lifestyle medicine we actually did an intervention in Lithuania as a demonstration for the medical school and the government what you can do in 10 days using a pretty carefully designed plant-based diet and and then we proceeded I had a press conference afterwards and so that’s a direction that we’re moving in is did you know these sort of demonstrations to allow physicians to see how powerful this form of medicine can actually be

are you familiar with any of these studies and if so can you tell us what they concluded number one the more recent meta-analysis of all the best studies that showed a 31 percent increase in mortality for people who ate a ketogenic diet number two Gary Frazier’s adventists health studies number three regarde studies showing the African American diet is deadly and number four Walter Willett Nurses Health Study and the health professional follow-up study okay that’s a lot the first one regarding ketogenic diet I actually don’t believe it was a ketogenic it was a low carbohydrate diet that they were looking at we don’t actually have really long-term studies of people on ketogenic diets but definitely we have them on people doing low carbohydrate diets and consistently there is there are no exceptions that I am aware of in all of the meta-analysis the 2018 study in particular was was were quite interesting but they all show increased mortality of at least 30% some even higher we’ve got some that show increased mortality of 51% so but but in the lowest carbohydrate eaters but what you have to understand is they’re really three places you get macronutrients carbohydrates fat and protein when you lower carbohydrates it means you’re increasing fat and protein where do people who are doing low-carb tend to get their fat and protein often from animal products because animal products are free of carbohydrates with the exception of dairy products which contain some lactose which is a carbohydrate of course so a lot of meat and and we know that meat is linked to increased risk of cancer diabetes heart disease and so forth so it’s not any you know surprise in my view that we’re seeing increased death rates and people eating low carb diets because they’re eating a lot of meat and and I think that the other thing for people to realize is that you know ketogenic diets in particular do work to accelerate waist weight loss people lose weight on these diets but what we have to understand is that weight loss you can achieve weight loss doing anything that produces a caloric deficit in this case you’re not providing enough glucose for the body so it has to resort to an alternative fuel you you can lose weight smoking cigarettes you can lose weight going on chemotherapy doesn’t mean it’s a good idea and and I think that’s that’s the key with a ketogenic diet you’re eating mostly fat you’re eating 75 to 80 percent of calories from fat generally you’re eating about 5% at most carbohydrates while plant foods provide between about 60 and 90 percent of calories from carbohydrate even non starchy vegetables average about 58 percent the only exception is nuts and seeds at about 12% when you’re trying to get down to 5% so what you’re reducing is the most protective foods on the planet plant foods the foods with the most fiber phytochemicals antioxidants plant sterols and stanols and all of these protective the prebiotics that feed healthy gut microbiome so in time you’re gonna pay the price for doing that we need to maximize protective components not minimize them

and and so that’s that’s you know the whole bit about the low carb diets with the Adventist Health Study – they’re actually you know I want to bring in a couple of other studies here because there are actually three studies that have followed populations who are sort of similar health-conscious individuals over a period of time to see who develops what disease the biggest is the Adventist Health Study – with about ninety six thousand participants started in 2002 and is has been ongoing ever since and in this particular population what we see is so we’re comparing meat-eaters with semi vegetarians with fish eaters with lacto-ovo vegetarians and then vegans so you’ve got all of these different groups of people eating different diets but living similar lifestyles so they smoke the same amount they exercise the same amount they drink the same amount of alcohol you know we’re controlling for all of these variables so it’s a very fair comparison in the end so in this case in the Seventh day Adventist Health Study what we see is that is that the more you remove animal products the better people seem to do in terms of a variety of of endpoints and so hard endpoints so we’re looking at diabetes rates are about believe it’s us 38% lower for lacto-ovo vegetarians than the meat-eating the similar health-conscious meat-eaters and about 62 percent lower for the vegans and so diabetes we see lower rates of heart disease not so much in the women in the seventh-day adventists hell steady but huge differences in the men with the vegans having by far the lowest rates of heart disease about 42% lower than the meat-eaters we see lower rates of cancer in the Adventist Health Study to was about 16% lower for vegans and about 8% lower for the lacto-ovo vegetarians and specific cancers were even more pronounced kidney disease was about I think it was 52% lower in the vegetarians and vegans combined

in no epic Oxford a very similar kind of study following about 65,000 individuals since 1993 they saw a reduced risk of cataracts you know 40% less in the vegans 30% less and lacto-ovo vegetarians they saw lower rates of what is it though shoot him I’m blanking right now a gastro intestinal polyps are these kinds of things and it was twenty seven percent lower in lacto-vegetarian 72 percent lower in the the vegans so a very profound difference and and then in in the Taiwanese study which was over six thousand people they they’ve had similar reports they’re comparing their the Buddhists vegetarians versus the and this is the suci group the sushi Health Study and and again lower rates of diabetes and the vegetarians compared to the similar non vegetarians about 51 percent for the men and about 74 to 75 percent in the women and they just had a brand new study 2018 that just came out showing about a 21% lower rate of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in the in the vegetarian and the vegetarians in that community are almost vegan there might be a live little bit of egg that sneaks in there are tiny bit of dairy but very very minimal so we’ve seen I think these studies are really among the best studies we have long-term looking at the consequences of eating you know living relatively healthfully and eating slightly different dietary patterns from you know the extreme of the meat eaters to the vegans

and so it’s interesting and the other things that these studies have looked at particularly the Adventist Health Health Study and epic Oxford is nutritional status of the individuals and and in the Adventist Health Study the results have been very positive in that regard even calcium and b12 are they’re in good shape aware is an epoch Oxford the calcium and b12 they weren’t as in good shape there are fewer fortified foods you know see the non-dairy milks and so on that would provide those nutrients they’re not fortified as much so we saw more b12 deficiency and more fracture rates higher fracture rates in the vegans in that study but with the fracture rates what was really interesting was that the the the people that were consuming under five hundred and twenty five milligrams of calcium a day they had about a 30% increased risk of fractures but the people who were consuming more than that didn’t have any difference in fracture rates compared to the meat-eaters so I think that the lesson in that one was really that we still need to be conscious about including good sources of calcium and we you know most of our nutrition education for the public teaches you that dairy products are your source of calcium and so we need to take it upon ourselves to learn about good dietary sources of calcium in the plant-based world

and then the other studies the third study what was that one again the because that one I wasn’t as familiar with the regard study the regard study I’m probably familiar with it but not familiar with the name yeah regarde studies showing the African American diet is deadly oh yeah so okay yeah I mean we’ve we’ve got dozens of he’s showing the African or the you know the African American diet is is deadly it’s very similar to what we call the Western diet but in some ways it can be even worse because we’re looking at often even more sodium and even more fat because there are a lot of deep fried foods and just a lot of right foods period and so it’s hugely concerning because it is certainly genetically there’s an increased risk for higher blood pressure and that increases your risk for all the cardiovascular diseases and peripheral artery disease and so on and so forth so it’s a huge concern and I’m you know heartened to see so many people in the african-american community who are really getting on to understanding this and and being advocates for a really healthy whole food plant-based diet so I I can see changes will come but it really is a greater challenge there I think in some some respects

and then the fourth study that you mentioned was the Walter Willett Nurses Health Study oh well the Nurses Health Study has been a study that you know people have been followed they’re two studies they’re really there’s a health professionals follow-up study and the Nurses Health Study and these studies have been combined in you know meta analyses and so forth to provide the results of following groups of individuals nurses and physicians mostly for about 30 years in most cases 27 to 32 years and looking at again the health outcomes and again we’ve got some powerful evidence that meat increases risk of heart disease and diabetes and other other diseases and we’ve got a lot of evidence for you know of higher fiber higher fruits and vegetables reducing risk of disease very consistent in these studies and there are literally dozens these studies that are out and and one of the things people can always do you have an interest in a specific area is to go to PubMed all you need to do it’s free you just type in whatever you’re looking for heart disease Nurses Health Study just simple words press the Go button and and the studies start popping up and you can actually read at least the abstracts these studies aren’t always free but they are some of them are free but the abstracts are always free and you can get an idea of what the findings were so it can be really really interesting to do that

the media often reports that alcohol in moderation is part of a healthy diet what do you think about alcohols impact on our health oh it’s so interesting it’s such a story really you know the reason that alcohol is sometimes said to be advantageous is I think mostly the heart disease story because alcohol would increase HDL a little bit and and there are also some phytochemicals in certain you know red wine for example is fairly high in resveratrol which is a powerful antioxidant compound which may be protective but I think what people need to understand is number one we’re now recognizing that not HD not all HDL is protective and and so the whole HDL all of the drugs we use to try to increase HDL have not I mean really have not saved lives in the end and so that whole piece is has come into question and then the other thing that I think people need to understand is alcohol is a potent toxin to the liver it can destroy your gut microbiome which affects every body system we know of and it is there is no level of intake above which you will not increase your risk of cancer so it is a houghton carcinogen in my view the optimal intake of alcohol is zero however that having been said even the cancer organizations who clearly state it is a potent carcinogen no safe level of intake they still suggest not more than one serving a day for women not more than two for men and I you know in my view that’s too much it’s one thing if you’re having a small glass of wine occasionally at a special event it’s another if you’re drinking every day and I think it’s dangerous I think it’s dangerous to your gut microbiome I think it’s dangerous for your liver I think it’s dangerous for your risk of cancer especially in women breast cancer but a variety of cancers it increases risk for so I think we need to be very very cautious where alcohol is concerned I use alcohol for cooking sometimes a little bit of white wine in a sauce for example but the alcohol gets cooked away so and it’s just a flavoring it’s a small amount

other than that I you know I I have to tell you this story because I think it’s kind of interesting I the first time I ever got inebriated I was 11 years old I was at the home of some Europeans I was with my parents and they served us like everybody else drinks before dinner during dinner and after dinner and I remember thinking it felt pretty cool and I started drinking with my friends on the weekends we’d sneak a little bit of this and that from our parents and and I started getting by the time I was 14 not liking the person I became when I drank on the weekends and I can remember and I can’t remember if I was 15 or 16 but it was right in that neighborhood I think I was 16 I remember one day I walked down to the water I was sitting by the water’s edge on a big rock it was probably about six o’clock in the morning I’ve always been a morning person and I remember thinking about my my association with alcohol and I started thinking about all of my uncles who were alcoholics I started thinking about my best friend’s father who was an alcoholic I started thinking about the people the innocent people who had been killed by alcoholic drivers about all of the people that destroyed their livers with alcohol I didn’t know a lot about it at that time and I thought to myself let’s really think about this here what is your life all about and I remember thinking I don’t know yet but what I do know is I want to live a meaningful life and I want to survive and I want to make a difference in the world and I thought to myself the last thing I need to do is become addicted to anything and that day I swore off anything I could become addicted to and that was the last time I really drank any amount of alcohol once in a while oh do a toast and have a sip but I I really don’t do alcohol and I and I I’ve never had a cup of coffee I just I just decided I that there’s something that I don’t like about being addicted to things and so that was it for me and and I think we need to think about that addictions alcohol is an addictive substance as well and we just we need to be thoughtful and conscious when we’re when we’re really trying to live a meaningful life especially which I think most of us are

some people say beans and grains didn’t exist until 10,000 years ago and therefore are not really our natural foods in our bodies aren’t programmed to eat them and therefore we’re actually meant to eat animal products what is the best science have to say about this I love that question it’s a great question I guess science has two things to say about that number one is it’s not true that we didn’t eat beans and grains back then as a matter of fact we probably have at least it doesn’t study showing that you know in in even middle paleolithic period people were consuming grains and beans as a matter of fact I believe it was Mount Carmel Israel there are there’s very specific locations where they show the predominant foods at certain seasons were actually beans or grains so they were used in in in in those times in Paleolithic times and the second thing that I would say is just because something wasn’t consumed in Paleolithic times doesn’t mean it’s not healthful or an important food for humans today people lived about two to four decades in Paleolithic times and I think obviously the you know the wild diet whatever people were we’re eating back then was probably reasonable for human health like the diet of other animals that eat in the wild we eat what we’re meant to eat to some extent but I think the mistake that people are making is assuming that humans just lived on animals first of all during the first 20 preserve first 80 percent of the Paleolithic period humans were vegetarians they didn’t have the skills to consume to kill and consume animals so they might have gotten a little bit of dead meat from something that had died or you know or or some insects but that was about it for the first 80% of the Paleolithic period if you look at nutritional anthropology research the work by Melvin Conner and Boyd Eaton is very very interesting during the the the last 20% is when they gain skills to add hunting and started eating consuming animals but even with that the estimated intake of fiber was about 70 to 150 grams a day that’s more than what vegans consume where does fiber come from comes from plants period just plants so they were eating a lot of plants secondly vitamin C was around five to six hundred milligrams the estimates for potassium were in the nineteen ninety seven they were estimated over over ten thousand Milgram’s and then in the in the 2010 study at about 7:00 I think 6700 or 7000 no it was about seven thousand milligrams I believe that that’s way higher than vegans consume and and where where does potassium come from mostly fruits and vegetables and and so you know really and truly this idea that they were just chewing down on these big chunks of animals is is a myth certainly there were some hunter gathers especially in the northern parts of the world that you know probably only consumed 35 or 40 percent of calories from carbohydrates and were consuming more meat but even those people were consuming about 500 milligrams of vitamin C and 70 grams of fiber sorry you know this is this is a large amount of plant food plant matter a people closer to the equator we’re probably consuming closer to 65% of calories from carbohydrates which means the vast majority of their calories came from plants and probably closer to 150 to 200 grams of fiber so there’s no question that I think that the the idea of what Paleolithic people actually consume is not quite accurate and of course even if it was the animals today are not the same as the animals you know the wild animals they were catching today our domesticated animals are about you know thirty to forty percent of calories from fat in their meat whereas it was closer to ten percent and it is closer to ten percent in wild animals very big differences even the levels of persistent organic pollutants that are you know all of the all of the chemicals that you know the hormones that are added the antibiotics that are added into our you know domesticated animals today this is not the same as as the animals people were eating in Paleolithic times and even the wild plants were very different they were more concentrated in fiber they were lower in sugar they were more concentrated in trace nutrients and so it’s it’s not you know you’re not eating the same thing if you think you’re eating the same thing you’re not eating the same thing as people did in Paleolithic times and it makes sense that if you want to get to that to the levels of vitamin C and potassium and fiber where the people were eating in Paleolithic times you need to up your produce intake big time and and your consumption of whole grains is not a bad idea because that’s one of the more and beans is the most concentrated source of fiber it helps us to get to those numbers so you need to really look at how we’re evaluating the Paleolithic diet

our hemp flax and olive oil is good for us to eat should we try to include these oils in our diet or should we try to avoid them oh this is a good question too so so hemp olive and flax oils I think these oils are wonderful but they’re the best when they come from the whole foods because when they come from the whole foods these oils come packaged with fiber and phytochemicals and plant sterols and stanols and all of these beneficial components so to me extracting oils from foods pouring them onto our foods is not as helpful as using the whole foods for example I make hemp seed dressing all the time for my salad I use hemp seeds so I get not just the omega-3s and the wonderful fats that are there in the hemp seeds I get the protein I get the fiber I get them trace minerals you don’t get that from the oils and so that’s you know and it depends there’s some people that can afford those extra calories but what we have to remember is that those extra calories are 120 calories a tablespoon and they don’t have any you know they don’t have the same kind of satiety value as when they come with the fiber so my you know if you’re an athlete and you’re burning 5,000 calories a day you’re getting a ton of nutrients you might be able to afford a little bit of that you’re diabetic who’s overweight who’s trying to reverse insulin resistance you don’t have room for highly processed foods oils are fairly highly processed foods just like white flour is it to me oils are to the sort of fat world as sugars and refined carbohydrates are to the carbohydrate world we want as much as possible to be getting our fat and our carbohydrate and our protein from whole foods and so I I’d say eat your flax seeds eat your hemp seeds eat your olives and with some caution with the olives because they can be very very salty but it’s it’s just you’re getting so much more value for your calorie when you think about nutrient density the foods that have the lowest nutrient density of all are well pure sugar is at the bottom of the barrel and close behind is is pure oil because there just is not a lot of nutritional value left now I believe that the oil if it’s a fresh pressed high-quality oil I think there’s more redeeming value to that oil than there is to the sugar because the sugar there’s nothing there with the oil you actually help to enhance the absorption of fat soluble phytochemicals and vitamins like vitamin D and vitamin E and so forth and carotenoids and such and there’s a little bit of vitamin E there and when it’s fresh pressed you may get some phytochemicals remaining in in olive oil for example and in flaxseed oil and so there are some components that provide some advantage so if I were to have to choose a little bit of one of the other I don’t think either is poison I think I think in small quantities as part of a whole food diet and in very tiny amounts as a flavor they could have some you know use but I wouldn’t use them as a food I’d use them as a flavor in the tiniest amount possible and for myself I use very very either very very rarely I have sugar in my house I use it to feed hummingbirds otherwise I use fruits for my sweeteners I use either whole fruits or dried fruits and I dry my own you know pears in the summer in the fall really it’s it’s usually vote fall when they come around and I use dates and and because we get fiber and vitamins and minerals and it makes more sense to use those as our sweeteners and in our treats

author Chris Kresser who believes in paleo diets says that according to studies eating dietary cholesterol does not lead to higher rates of blood cholesterol in most cases and even if eating saturated fat and dietary cholesterol does lead to higher saturated fat rates or blood cholesterol it still doesn’t correlate to higher death rates do you agree with this why or why not you know I’m gonna start out with saying I have tremendous respect for Chris Kresser I think he is one of the sameness voices in the paleo world I think he has he’s very astute and he looks at research very carefully so I really do i I do have a lot of respect for him however I think he’s wrong on that one and I and I think he’s wrong for this reason we have many decades of solid research that shows saturated fat increases blood cholesterol levels and particularly LDL cholesterol which increases your risk of heart disease the studies are strong and consistent in our you know the American Heart Association in American College of Cardiology guideline reports they suggest saturated fat be limited to five to six percent and the the level of evidence is the highest grade of evidence that exists and and it I mean I think it’s really quite indisputable now the study that most people are quoting to suggest that we don’t have to worry about saturated fat is the Chowdhury trial that came out in 2014 and the Chowdhury trial was so riddled with errors and omissions that Walter Willett who’s probably the most quoted nutrition expert on the planet made a very strong statement that people need to discard the you know the findings essentially and and just to give you some examples of the issues in that study I think I think there were really two too big you know big well one big issue is in many cases the studies that were included in the meta-analysis were controlled for cholesterol so you can’t control when you’re looking at saturated fat you can’t control for the thing that saturated fat increases which increases risk of you know or that you can’t control for a variable that’s on that chain of of what causes the disease it doesn’t make sense and so that that was one thing and then the other thing I think that is really important to mention is 19 out of the 20 studies were looking at pop is sort of comparing within population so comparing say in the United States people eating you know 11 percent saturated fat versus those eating 12 or 13 or 14 then they were looking at the Japanese some of whom were eating 5 percent 5 percent saturated fat some eating 6 or 7 percent they didn’t see big differences because the amount of saturated fat was so the differences in the consumption were so small there was one study included that actually looked at huge differences in saturated fat intake within the population they were studying that was epic Oxford the the of course the meat eaters were eating much more the vegans eating much less the vegans who were eating the slowest amounts which I think were around 5 or 6% about half the saturated fat of the meat eaters actually had to point 7 7 times less a you know lower rates of disease than the highest saturated fat eaters then the other thing that’s really interesting is if you compared the population that had the highest intake of saturated fat which were the I believe the people from Finland they actually had a four point four times higher rate of heart disease than the people eating the lowest in Japan they didn’t do those cross-cultural comparisons at all and and so you know the other thing that I think is interesting about that study is is that when the study was first done they actually did show an increased risk with higher saturated fat in takes and this study was rejected originally from the first publication they you know they went to and then they actually reworked the data a little bit and and got something different before it was actually published and so I think they’re there there are some things that people need to understand that sometimes the headlines you know and the headlines were huge after that study came up butter is back saturated fat vindicated you know all of these headlines came and people came away thinking wow saturated fats been vindicated and in fact that study vindicated nothing as matter of fact I actually a spoke via email with one of the co-authors of that study who said to me very clearly in an email this study does not show saturated fat has been vindicated she said nothing that that has been said for for several decades about saturated fat has changed because of this study saturated fat increases LDL increased LDL increases risk of heart disease period and and so I think that’s that’s very important to know

and then the other thing to know is the American Heart Association put together a panel of the leading experts on diet and heart disease and and it was I actually spoke to one of the lead authors of this report it was the most comprehensive report I’ve seen it was called the presidential report 2017 and they went through all of the research and they were very very clear about a saturated fat and I’ll tell you what the message is the message is this if you replace saturated fat with refined carbohydrates you will not reduce your risk of coronary heart disease it it’s a wash they’re both bad and so that was the new information that we got from these studies however if you replace saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat you reduce your risk about 25% if you replace saturated fat with monounsaturated fat you reduce your risk about 15% if you replace that trait of fat with whole grains you reduce your risk about 9% and to be honest in my opinion that would be much higher if the whole grains they were choosing we’re truly whole grains as they’re picked off the plant not flour turned into whole wheat bread I think we would see very different results so I think we need to be you know we really need to be cautious about this you know put butter in your coffee and you know cook with all sorts of oil and pour it on your foods this is not a good plan and it will it will backfire so people need to be very careful about this

how does someone protect their thyroid so so the question about what we can do to make sure that we protect our thyroid a few things number one I would say is that we need to make sure we have a source of iodine in the diet and you know the vehicle that that has been used to to provide the population with iodine is iodized salt and when people become more concerned about health they get concerned about using iodized salt because of some of the components that are added to the salt to keep it flowing sometimes things like aluminum can be added so they’re eliminating often iodized salt and and so they need to make sure they have an alternative source of iodine if they’re not using iodine you can buy some iodine salt like iodine sea salt and other I’d I saw that don’t use the the harmful agents that allow the salt to be free-flowing but if you’re not using that and and we want to limit our salt intake so I can understand people not wanting to use that we can you see we but again seaweed is actually really concentrated in iodine especially certain types of seaweed like kelp and so you have to be a little bit knowledgeable about how much to use so for example the dried kelp powder that you can buy as a sort of a sprinkling for your food we’re looking at between probably a tenth and a sixteenth of a teaspoon it’s not a lot the upper limit for iodine is eleven hundred micrograms the recommended intake is about a hundred and fifty it’s a little higher during pregnancy and lactation but for most people it’s up for most adults it’s 150 and so it’s just a small amount that’s needed if you are you know averse to using seaweed of any sort then probably iodine drops or multi with iodine would be a reasonable option there is some iodine in our food depending on the soil content and so on but it can be a little bit of a risky thing if you’re not if you’re not getting some sort of more concentrated iodine source and in Europe it’s actually even worse because the the soil content tends to be lower than it is in North America so that’s number one

number two is I think it’s really important to protect your yours body’s ability to produce hormones and so we don’t want to be over consuming refined foods we don’t want to be over consuming sugars we don’t want to be getting too much visceral fat which can compromise our whole system of hormone production we want to be exercising regularly we want to be eating a lot of healthy foods and some people worry about what we call goitrogenic foods because a lot of healthy foods are have boy trojans in them and so things like um soy and flax and and all kinds of cruciferous vegetables which are our primary provider of of you know things like isothiocyanates that induce phase two enzyme systems to help us get rid of armful compounds that float around in our bodies and so these are powerful foods they contain goitrogens but boy Trojans I just want to say this boy Trojans are not a concern if you have enough iodine in your diet so we can have a variety of these foods are not worried about them it’s when were iodine deficient or we’re not eating enough iodine that goitrogens can just compound the problem so I think that you know basically we we need enough of the the key you know a number of key nutrients which are important for hormone production but those nutrients generally we get enough of when we eat a variety of whole plant foods and I think it’s a valuable thing to include enough nuts and seeds as well because they tend to be really good sources of some of the trace minerals that we don’t get in as great of quantity in other plant foods

in dr. Stephen Gondry’s best-selling book the plant paradox he says lectins are microscopic proteins that plants evolved to defend themselves from predators including insects and animals that includes humans they are essentially indigestible and have the unique ability to increase the permeability of your intestines that means that they can pass through the wall of your gut and will and be treated as foreign invaders by your immune system this causes an inflammatory response which can set the stage for a host of diseases as well as weight gain what foods are rich in leptin is generally speaking all grains and legumes have more lectins than anything else in some cases pressure cooking can destroy the lectins nightshade vegetables squashes and select nuts and seeds are also rich in lectins do you agree with dr. Guthrie why or why not I I would say I agree with the first part of what he said that lectins are compounds in plants that help to protect the plants and and those basic bits of information about lectins but i I don’t agree that they are the issue that he’s making them out to be and and in fact if they were the issue he making them out to be I don’t think plants would be the foundation of the diets of all of the longest-lived people in the world and the one food that is consistently consumed in every blue zone you know there are two things about diet that are that are said that are the sort of the golden threads of diet that we can weave through every single blue zone one is the plant-based diet and two is that they eat legumes if legumes were so toxic they wouldn’t be the foundational one of the foundational foods for every single blue zone on the planet so I think that is really important to recognize the second thing to recognize is all lectins are not created equal so there are many lectins some of which have been actually found to be highly protective to health they there have been studies done particularly particularly out of Japan showing that they’re highly anti-carcinogenic and they they’re they’re you know they’re they’re they’re doing studies to look at using them to treat cancer even so there there are a variety of lectins they’re not all the same and in the legume family for example the lectins in small legumes like lentils and even in peas are not as toxic as those in say red kidney beans which are the hemagglutinin in red kidney beans are actually very toxic and but you almost never see toxic reactions from them why because lectins are destroyed by soaking sprouting cooking and it takes about 30 minutes of you know boiling or cooking at a reasonable temperature to pretty much destroy all the lectins and so that’s why I think they haven’t been found to be an issue you don’t destroy necessarily a hundred percent but you destroy the vast majority of them and I can remember one study that came out showing kidney beans you know having this horrible reaction and people well it was a study of people in a hospital that had been fed undercooked kidney beans you get a kind of a your symptoms are like food poisoning a horrible stomach upset vomiting diarrhea the whole nine yards you’re sicker than a dog for about five hours and then you’re okay but it’s not a good thing you don’t want to go through it cook your kidney beans so one thing that does concern me is I do see people sometimes selling sprouted kidney beans and sprouted black beans and sprouted large beans as part of a mix and that is not you are not gonna get rid of enough lectins just by sprouting you get rid of you know a percentage of them but they’re not as completely taken away and and I think that that’s very risky so I would definitely for the larger beans larger beans need to be cooked period

there are so many Paleo Kido Atkins low carb authors and books why are so many people who are well educated credentialed and smart concluding that the low carb diet not the whole food plant-based diet is best for human health what are the most compelling important and convincing studies that make you believe that a whole food plant-based diet is the proper diet for humans and that a diet that includes animal products is not well this you know it’s true Messiah to become wildly popular they’ve become wildly popular because they work for weight loss they induce fairly rapid weight loss so when you put your body into a state of ketosis especially and so here we’re talking about the ketogenic diet you you burn fat and and it works for that and and with a Paleo diet you have to remember with the Paleo diet you’re eliminating refined carbohydrates you’re removing dairy products you’re removing grains you’re removing beans but you’re removing a lot of processed foods what are you eating you’re eating meat and you’re eating a lot of vegetables and fruits this is better than the Western diet that’s a lot of fried foods a lot of fast foods a lot of soda pop there’s no soda pop on on a paleo diet so yes we’ll see some improvements and yes we see some you know short-term improvements in a keto diet and and so what I would say about these diets is that they’re they’re short I think especially a keto diet but even the Paleo diet is there a little bit short-sighted I think a really well-planned Paleo diet if it really is paleo and it’s getting 100 you know grams of fiber 70 to 100 grams of fiber and 500 milligrams of vitamin C if it really is akin to a Paleo diet it’s a diet full of plants as a matter of fact I did an analysis where I I actually I actually did an analysis using a some software of three days of recommended paleo menus and then three days worth of recommended vegan menus and the vegan diet actually came way closer to the nutrition profile of a paleo diet then then what people call paleo today as a matter of fact the only nutrients that they get closer to a true Paleo diet on are cholesterol because we don’t have any cholesterol on a vegan diet they were closer in protein because the diet contains about 30% of calories from protein they were a bit closer on zinc and vitamin A otherwise all thirteen other nutrients were closer on a vegan diet which I thought was quite interesting so so basically I think what people need to understand is what we’re calling paleo isn’t as close to a paleo diet as what they sometimes assume it is and and to get to more closer to the paleo numbers they need to be thinking about more plant foods more fiber more vitamin C more potassium added to the diet

and what we know about the connection is that the concern I have is the 30 percent of calories from these domesticated animals is a huge mistake because we know we have you know so many studies it was a study and nurses health professionals and health professionals follow up study that actually quantified the increased risk if you replace just three percent of your calories from animal products with plant proteins so animal protein with plant protein you reduce your risk of death by I think was 32 percent if the replacement was from processed meat it was I think 19 percent from eggs it was like 12 percent from meat it was about 9 percent from from poultry and about 6 percent from from fish or or maybe it was 6 percent from poultry or fish anyway it was in those numbers but you replace 3 percent of calories from animal protein with plant protein and you reduce risk of death no matter what kind of animal protein you’re replacing then there was another study out of Canada from 2014 where they found in people 50 to 65 years of age if you ate more than 20% of calories from protein you increase your risk of mortality was I think 74 percent you increase your risk of diabetes and and and cancer by about 400% it was incredible and no we didn’t see quite the same numbers with people over 65 but but what they did find what they did find was the we only saw the increase when it was animal protein when it was plant protein it was the the the results were no longer valid and plant protein didn’t increase risk it was just animal protein we have multiple studies showing high animal protein increases risk of disease diabetes heart disease cancers and and so diets that focus on that so Paleo diet is very high in me because they’re trying to reach that 30% protein no a keto diet it’s fat I mean you’re talking 75 to 80 percent of calories from fat so it is literally some meat which doesn’t contain any carbohydrate and a bunch of oil poured on the meat or coconut oil or I mean they do include a little bit of avocados a little bit of nuts and seeds but since these they’re 12% of calories from carbohydrate they only allow five so you can only put so many of those in and then the other food they allow is is non starchy vegetables now non starchy vegetables while leafy greens have only about a gram of carbohydrate per per cup they are allowed about 20 grams of carbohydrate so you could have a good amount of greens but other non starchy vegetables contain between 6 and 12 grams per cup of carbohydrate so it’s not like you’re eating cups of vegetables I you know a cup of Brussels sprouts is 11 grams of carbohydrate you’re not eating a ton of that stuff when you’re eating a keto diet you’re eating mostly fat and meat this is not a good plan because what we need to remember is we need to remember that the components that are most protective to human health that we’ve seen time and time again to be most protective to human health are fiber phytochemicals antioxidants pre and probiotics you know all of the trace minerals and vitamins that are needed for health protein coming from plant foods carbohydrates coming from whole plant foods and when people eat that way like the people of the Blue Zones like the people in the Adventist Health Study – and and and and in you know epic Oxford when people are eating more plant foods we actually see better a health long-term comparing in the Taiwanese how study again we see better results long-term on the people eating more plants because plants contain most of the compounds that are associated with better health and longevity better brain function better gut microbiota all of those things are improved on a plant-based diet

what do you see as the importance of the real truth about health conference the real truth about health conference is the one conference I speak at many many conferences it’s the one conference that provides all of the information that comes in during the conference free to the world and that is quite a gift in my view I I don’t know of any other conference that does that provides the YouTube videos of all of the talks so people can go to at their leisure whenever they want and access them and watch them five times if they want to at absolutely no cost and I’ll tell you this takes an incredible amount of work an incredible amount of I mean they have sponsors and so forth but to be able to give you this information free of charge for a long period of time is just incredible to me and I’m very very grateful that they’re doing that there are many people who would never have access to this kind of information otherwise so thank you truth about health conference it’s great

hi I’m Brenda Davis and I’m doing a little bit of a different kind of interview this time I’m actually just going to show you a little bit of the fitness of a 60 year old vegan woman I’ve been vegan for about thirty years and several times when I’ve been in lectures I’ve been challenged to do something physically one time I was challenged to do push-ups but the last time I was actually challenged to when I said I still feel like I’m 30 years you know still physically feel much like I did when I was 30 to prove it so I’m here to prove it so I’m gonna start with doing that a little bit of the flexibility and balance piece and flexibility wise I’ve always been relatively flexible so I’ll just show you that and that feels really good by the way and so I have to tell you I my push-up skills have reduced slightly because I tore my rotator cuff and I’m still building back up so I’m not sure how many I can do but I’ll see what I can do give it a go stuff a 50 so now I’m gonna just do a little jump rope for you it’s one of the things you said I I actually to be honest don’t do it that often I should do it more often but it’s one of those tools you can bring with you anywhere and you can get a workout in 15 minutes of good jump rope and that’s I’m just gonna give you a little demonstration because normally what I do my routine is 500 of these and then 500 double unders so but not $500 every tenth one is a double ender the whole point of this is really one of the things that people often say about vegans is they lose muscle they’re not as strong they’re not as fast and in my experience it’s not true I don’t think I I’ve lost much muscle since I was 30 I’m just as strong I’m dressed as fast and I’m more flexible than I probably I am at least as flexible as I was when I was 30 so vegan 10 support excellent health being vegan and support excellent health and can support optimal fitness at every stage of the lifecycle