Podcast Rewind: What's Wrong With the Standard American Diet

Dr. Robert Rountree:

This is The Thorne Podcast. The show that navigates the complex world of wellness and explores the latest science behind diet supplements and lifestyle approaches to good health. Hi, I'm Dr. Robert Rountree, Chief Medical Advisor at Thorne and Functional Medicine Doctor. As a reminder, the recommendations made in this podcast are the recommendations of the individuals who express them and not the recommendations of Thorne. Statements in this podcast have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Any products mentioned are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

               Hi, everyone and welcome again to The Thorne Podcast. We're really, really glad you're here and we're excited to talk about what we hope you'll find to be some fascinating topics today. I'm joined again by a friend of the pod and Thorne Executive Director of Medical Affairs. Love that title. Dr. Amanda Frick. How is it going, Dr. Frick?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

It's going great. Happy to be here today.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Yeah. Are you excited about the holiday season?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

I am. I think I get a little bit of mixed feelings. So first of all, it's the self restraint, not putting up decorations too early or being inappropriate so we're dealing with a little bit of that. And then of course, to see family, have some quiet time, fireplaces and mulled wine even, but don't tell anybody. And then of course, some new foods and comfort foods, which are really important to the season, I think.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Yeah. I also look forward to the holiday season. Again, it's all about family and friends and food and sitting by a warm fire, hopefully, at some point. So it should be a fun time. So let's go ahead and get into the main topic for this week, which is appropriate given the holiday season and the fact that people tend to veer from what they normally eat. We're going to talk about the Standard American Diet. Yikes. So it's always been interesting to me that the abbreviation for that is the SAD. Standard American Diet is SAD. So what is considered the Standard American Diet? Dr. Frick, you're on.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

I think what we're talking about is a diet high in refined carbohydrates, maybe unhealthy fats, and then sugars and other things like high fructose corn syrup, about as far from nature as you can get as far as the food goes, stripped and depleted of nutrients and fibers and really just simplified foods, processed, packaged, boxed foods.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

And how did this happen? How did we get to the point where this was considered to be a standard? Has this been the standard diet in America forever or is this a development, a relative development?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

I think it's a development over time. Things that we thought were really great and exciting and we probably made a big deal out of... I remember getting a microwave and how that was amazing. It was going to save so much time, which I would avoid a microwave as much as I could at this point. But anything that made something easier, we add more working hours. I think as a society, we're trying to push more and work more, higher amounts of stress, having our children in sports and after school activities, as well as our own enjoyment and anything that makes something a little easier and faster, I think, was really welcome to sort of reduce that amount of labor, clean up, or preparation time in the kitchen. And so I don't think the intention was for it to cause a health issue. It just has occurred over time with the need for quick, easy, and ready to go food.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

My sense is that it... A lot of it started in the 50s.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Exactly.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

And it sort of paralleled the space age. Like you said, people are getting busier, you got the development of the soccer mom phenomenon, people are getting busier. And at the same time, there was this whole idea that science was opening up into a whole new realm. It wasn't like science had all the answers, but there was kind of a glow about the use of science in food technology, where people thought, "Boy, if it's already prepackaged and ready to go and all you have to do is put it in a device and push a button, isn't that the best thing?" In other words, whatever the astronauts are doing, they're drinking Tang, then that's what we want to be doing. We want to be drinking Tang and we want instant meals and all that. And there was no sense at all of the nutrition involved.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Well, I think that's right for the most part, although... When did we get margarine? So you go back to when did we decide that we were smarter than Mother Nature because we've been trying to do that for a long time?

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Fat is bad and synthetic versions of it are going to be better.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Butter is terrible. You should have margarine.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Yeah. It's interesting because the whole development of the processed food approach to the American kitchen also parallel with the whole idea that fat is bad. That you shouldn't eat fat. You shouldn't eat butter. The low fat products really reigned in the marketplace. And so I'm not exactly sure when that started, but I think it was right about the same time as the space age kitchen.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Yeah. I think you're right.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So what happened? That became public health policy to tell people to eat low fat diets to prevent heart disease. What happened?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Then I think we went too far the other direction or just like anything else, when we start messing around with thinking that we know better, we learn something different later, which definitely is the case with something like margarine or trying to replace a natural fat with a trans fat, which now we know is the most terrible things you could eat.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

One of the worst things ever. Yeah.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

And so I think, just like anything else, we had to learn. We had to learn by doing and we learned that these were really bad things to do.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

He used to be a head of the School of Public Health at Harvard, a guy named Dr. Fredrick Stare and apparently, when you walked into the lobby, the School of Public Health at the time, there were these big plaques thanking the American sugar companies for all their support of research. And they basically opened their arms to the sugar companies because the thought was fat is bad, sugar is good. And I remember reading articles that had been written by Dr. Stare that basically said, "Ah, sugar's fine and it doesn't matter if you have a sugar sweetened beverage with 10, 12 teaspoons of sugar in it. There's no evidence." And they would say, "There's no evidence that that's bad for you." And I have to say, we're still kind of dealing with that.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

I do. I think we've turned a corner a lot, but I do think we're still kind of dealing with that. I don't know exactly when we started learning about things like glycosylated end products and some of that sort of approach, but how much sugar is aging us and how much fat may be protecting us from aging actually, the right kind of fat of course. I'm surprised though. That's news to me, actually, that someone said sugar is good for you. I can see the argument that sugar didn't hurt you, but who said sugar was good for you and what was that [crosstalk 00:07:56]?

Dr. Robert Rountree:

[inaudible 00:07:56]. As the old comedian, writer, Dave Barry used to say, I am not making this up. And it didn't change until Dr. Walter Willett took over at the Department of Public Health and Dr. Willett is... I've met him and he's a very levelheaded guy. He's much more balanced and reasonable in his approach and he is another one that has said, this emphasis on low fat diets is really wrongheaded, that to say all we have to do is focus on taking out the fat and ignoring the sugar, it's just crazy. So I really handed it to Walter and then the other guy, Frank Hu, that's at Harvard has done a lot of research there. You were going to say?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

I was going to say, one of the things we talked about in nutrition classes is low fat equals high carb or low fat equals high sugar, which is really what happened. We took fat out and replaced it with sugar or we changed the glycemic index completely by removing the fat. So yeah, that low fat fad phase, I think, is mostly resolved.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

I would say, and the other comment I make is my friend, [Mark Hyman 00:09:05], has written a lot about what food choices are best for us. And he's pointed out that a lot of the animal studies that claim to show that high fat diets were bad for the rats or the mice, he said, "When you look at the diet, it wasn't just a high fat diet. It was a high fat, high fructose diet." So it was a terrible diet. It was a junk food diet. And so a lot is based on that.

               So what do we recommend? And so I know Thorne has got a blog, Take 5. What do we consider to be the best diet of all the diets that are out there? You got ketogenic diets, so you can go to the other extreme. You can say, "Eat low fat. All the carbs you want," or you can go to the other extreme and say, "Carbs are terrible. Eat all the fat you want." That's the whole other side of the pendulum. Does Thorne have a favored diet or one... Do they talk about the Mediterranean diet or anything along those lines? What do we advocate?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Well, that's the only place I was going to go. So we don't advocate necessarily any particular diet. Though, if we were to look at the recommendations that come out of a lot of our health solutions or in our diagnostic solutions, the most common thing that you're going to see is Mediterranean diet. So if I had to say we advocate for anything, I think by proxy, I would say that we most often would advocate for a Mediterranean diet.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

And how do you define that diet because I've seen different definitions of it? But if you had a client that you said, "I want you to eat the Mediterranean diet," and they go, "Well, what's that?" does it just mean chugging the olive oil or is there more to it?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

I guess that could be part of it if you want. It's high in monounsaturated fats. It's high in whole grains, which means it's high in high fiber, low in red meat, and other sort of inflammatory foods with a focus on fish, fatty fish. So healthy fats from fish and nuts, seeds, olives, things like that, low in the inflammatory foods and then higher in fiber, really low in processed carbohydrates.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So it's a whole foods diet, basically.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Yeah. Whole foods diet with the focus on the right nutrients and balance.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

And it's not a vegetarian diet, but the emphasis is on plant-based food.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Emphasis on plant-based foods with addition of some fish or other kinds of seafood and then really limited amounts of other kinds of protein.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

It's interesting. I have to say this, but I remember reading an article a couple years ago that said a lot of places in the Mediterranean, they're not eating the Mediterranean diet anymore, that the kids are eating the Standard American Diet, that they've switched over to the crappy diet. And we're saying, "Well, we want to eat what your parents' generation ate. We don't want to eat what you're eating," because they have succumbed to advertising and processed foods and all that stuff, which is a bit ironic.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Yeah, it is. It's a little bit depressing actually.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So what do we tell people to do around the holidays? It kind of starts with Thanksgiving and the candied sweet potatoes with the marshmallows, the little baby marshmallows on top. You know those? I grew up eating those a lot. God, marshmallow... Is anything less healthy than a marshmallow?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Well, you're going to get the most subjective answer from me because I eat almost anything, especially healthy food, but I have a couple of things that I just can't tolerate and marshmallow is on my cannot tolerate list.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Yeah. I mean, the s'mores, that brought back fun times in summer camp growing up and everything. But now that I know... You mentioned advanced glycation end products, which are these chemicals that are formed when you cook sugars and actually they happen when you cook meats at high protein. You also make these AGEs and it's interesting to me that our immune cells have receptors for AGEs that are called RAGEs which is RAGEs. Our immune cells have rages in response to eating these cooked marshmallows and sticky buns, things like that, that they're so good. They taste so good. Why is it the stuff that is so tasty is so bad for you?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Well, I think you could reprogram. You could reframe and reprogram a little bit. But I think that people that make those kind of products are doing it because they want it to taste good. So you're activating the receptors on your tongue that are going to taste good so there's that. And then there's a lot of the dopamine release sort of argument. So it's a drug.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

They're addictive.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Yeah. It's making your brain so happy that it just keeps asking for it over and over, just like a drug.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So what do you tell people who say, "Well, it's Christmas time and I've got to go home and have dinner with my family. I eat a healthy diet, but I'm going to have to spend time with my parents who get offended if I don't eat the stuff that they're going to serve." For me, growing up with lots of fat back in the food, where you boil. And I don't even know if it was the fat back that was the problem, but you boil the green beans for hours with a big chunk of fat in it. And then again, the candied sweet potatoes and the marshmallows. What do you tell people if they have to do it?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Well, let's not set me up for the hate mail issue that we discussed before.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there anything you can do to compensate? I guess that's maybe a better way to put it. Let's say, taking supplements. Is that potentially helpful?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Yeah, I do. I think there's that. I think there's also a... I would talk about the 80/20 rule or the 90/10 rule, whatever's working for you. But why deprive yourself of something that's causing you joy, especially if it's a social aspect which is really important with holiday meals and home cooked foods and things like that? So going to the extreme and saying that you won't ever do those things because of a health related reason, you do what's best for you, but there's taking that to an extreme. We have DSM-5 diagnosis for people who overly obsess about their healthy diet and restrict their diet.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Orthorexia.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Exactly. And so if someone asked me to give them advice about the holiday, I would say, do what makes you happy and then choose where you can cut back and where you can move forward. Have your favorite vile marshmallows on your sweet potatoes, but maybe skip the pie if it doesn't do it for you. You can cut back on the things that don't make you as happy. And then, like you were saying, you can do things that help with the digestive effect. You can support with digestive enzymes, you can help calm your stomach after, the things you can do from that perspective. The likelihood that your meal with your family is going to cause long-term health effects is really, really small. So I don't think you have to run and take some antioxidants in the bathroom between courses or anything like that. But over time, those things add up. And so then you start basically offsetting your nutrition. You can't out supplement a bad diet, but you can help offset a bad diet in a way.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Well, that sort of raises the question. It begs the question of what's the role of taking micronutrients, a multivitamin, multi-mineral for the general old population? I think it's a loaded question because you keep seeing these articles in the news and say, "Oh, multivitamins don't do anything. Most people don't need them. The studies show that multivitamins increase cancer." Every now and then, you see one of those and I'm like, "What?" When I look at the research, and I even have to put a quote when I call it "research," it's usually not research. It's a meta-analysis where somebody analyzed lots and lots of data and did what I call statistical pyrotechnics. If you look at this data and you play with it enough, you can make some fireworks go off. You can make it look bad. So the question is what about the benefits of a multivitamin, multi-mineral for the general population that doesn't think they're unhealthy, doesn't feel unhealthy, but is eating the Standard American Diet?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Yeah, I think that's your key point. So some people are eating a diet that isn't as deplete in nutrients. But if you're eating a Standard American Diet, you're deplete in almost any nutrient except maybe carbohydrates as a macronutrient. And so I think that's a big component. If you don't have time for fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains, you're missing out on fat soluble and water soluble vitamins. You're missing out on fiber, which is an essential component. And so that's not in a multivitamin, but that's another thing to watch for. And then even if you're eating healthy or attempting to eat healthy, I don't have it at my fingertips. We definitely have data about how much our food supply is depleted of nutrients in the soil because of the way that we've farmed and some of the practices that we've utilized. So your plate of broccoli has X percentage less nutrients than it would have at some other point in the past. And I think that all of that becomes more and more important as far as getting some sort of minimal supportive level in with something like a multivitamin, multi-mineral.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Absolutely. Now we have to take a short break and when we get back, we're going to dive into some questions from our audience.

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               And we're back. So now it's time to answer some questions from the community, as always. Our first question this week comes from a listener who asks, "Can supplements help replace what we miss from eating less nutrient dense food?" So this is a kind of a continuation of what we were talking about before the break, that if we're eating the Standard American Diet, then there's a lot of things that could be missing. So what's your take on this question, Amanda?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Yeah, I think as a continuation, like you said, it definitely can be an assistant. So you can't out anything, a bad diet, but you can support what may be missing or support your lifestyle as needed or whatever your specific challenges may be because of lifestyle, genetic stress, et cetera. And so really the answer is yes, you can supplement, help assist from eating foods that are less nutrient dense. But really, it's about the quality of what you're taking in, which I think is going to be a repetitive focus today, but not every supplement is created equal. So some are more difficult to absorb. Some are causing an issue with your system. Some are delivering doses in a format that your body can't convert because you either can't break it down in your system or there's something within it that's binding it together that makes it completely unavailable for absorption or some kind of genetic co-factors that if you don't have, you can't utilize the format that's in your... the format of the nutrient that's in your multivitamin. So yes, they can help if you're choosing wisely and choosing good quality and clean supplements.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So part of my response would be talk about a client I saw recently, who is a young college student. She was complaining about having trouble focusing for her classwork and exams and that sort of thing. And the obvious question for me to ask is, "Well, what do you eat?" And she said, "Come on. I'm a college student." She said, "Sometimes I eat and sometimes I don't." I'm like, "Well, do you eat one meal every day?" "Well, not always. I'll have a snack." "Well, are you eating like a protein bar?" "No, I might have a slice of pizza. That's all I eat all day." You know what college students... I was a college student. You know what they eat? Junk food. And so I said, "Well, I think, at minimum, I want you doing a protein shake."

               So I actually put her on Medi-Clear with SGS and I said, "Well, will you do..." She's like, "I don't know. Protein powder?" I'm like, "If it tasted like chocolate, would you do chocolate?" And she goes, "Well, yeah. I would do a chocolate shake every day, especially if it tastes good." And that particular one tastes really good and it's got the nutrients in it. So to me, it was a trick. If I can't get her... I would prefer that she eats at least two meals a day and every day, have a salad and fresh fruits and vegetables. But if she's not going to do that, at least if she can get one of her meals as a shake that's got the basic nutrients covered, then I think that's going to feed her head. And I actually used that word. I said, "Do you know, [Grayslick 00:23:25] said, 'Feed your head.'" I don't know if the door mouse actually said that, but Grayslick used to say, "Feed your head."

               If you've got ADD, then you need to feed your brain. And I don't mean you got to feed it with the stuff that Grayslick talked about. You got to feed it with nutrients. You've got to feed it good food if you want it to work well. How can you think your brain's not going to work if you're not feeding it well? So yes, supplements can help replace and that word, help, is really important. It's not a replacement, but if that's the best you can do, then that's a good start.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Yeah. It's an adjunct, not a replacement.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

It's an adjunct. So what about dairy? This person asks, "How bad is dairy? Should you avoid yogurt, cheese, et cetera, for extra protein?" So obviously this person has heard that dairy is poison or dangerous, et cetera. What are your thoughts?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

I would like to start with my financial disclosures and say that the dairy industry has not contributed to this podcast or my profession in any way whatsoever.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Okay.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Because to me, dairy is not completely bad. It's really, again, like we mentioned, about quality and source. So some dairy is bad. You could have dairy that's loaded with pesticides or herbicides. Depends where it's coming from, what's the cow eating, where does it live, how is it treated, is it full of hormones? So I think dairy as an entity is not bad. I think the way dairy is produced or sourced could be bad.

               To me, again, you mentioned whole foods before, dairy is a whole food. It's supplied by nature. If you don't modify it in unhealthy ways, then it's a whole food. So I do think for a lot of people, it's a great way to get extra protein. I think especially if the answer is adding processed foods to get plant-based protein or adding more meat to the diet to get protein may or may not be the best option. So I think we're back to no, it's not bad if you make the right choices about it.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

I totally agree with you and I do eat a lot of dairy myself. We have to point out that lactose intolerance is one of the most... is the most common of all food intolerances. Lactose intolerance affects a huge percentage of the population and a lot of people don't know that. Now that mostly applies to milk and cream and certain cheeses, but yogurt, it auto digests the lactose so it's not an issue. But it is something that I bring up when a person comes to see me that's complaining of GI issues. Do they have gas, bloating, diarrhea, cramping, that usual stuff? Then dairy is often a suspect. Should be at the top of the list when somebody's got chronic GI symptoms and dairy is also a very common cause of allergies.

               There's a lot of different things in dairy that people are sensitive to. I find that people are much more sensitive to casein than whey. Whey protein seems to be really well tolerated by a lot of people that tell me they can't handle dairy. Well, try this. It's a whey protein and they're fine. They don't have an issue. So I think that casein is often the issue. So yeah, that removes a big chunk of the population that has lactose intolerance or allergy. But for everybody else, if a person says, "Yeah, I eat cheese and I do fine," then I'm not going to say, "Well, dairy's bad. You should stop," just because some authority, somebody on the internet said, "Dairy's bad. You should not eat it." Well, I asked, "How do you feel when you eat it?" For me, I tolerate cheese really well and I just love a good brie.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Brie is the first thing I would've said too.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Oh my God. I was in Paris a couple of years ago and I bought this cheese from a guy who had a stand right on the street and it was from his family's farm in Switzerland and oh my God, that stuff was so delicious. So I love truffle goudas, all this really flavorful cheeses, and I eat yogurt all the time. Although I am really fond of goat yogurt and I recommend goat yogurt to people that can't handle regular yogurt. But yogurt for people that can handle it is a fine food, I think. So that segues into what are your thoughts on the quantities of meat and fish in the average diet?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Yeah, so just like you're saying, the original question was is dairy bad? And dairy in and of itself is not bad.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Not inherently bad.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Yeah, but it may be bad for you. So again, I think that's going to apply back here to meat and fish.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

And eat organic if you can.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Yeah.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Try to source organic.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

And I think that applies to the same. You can't get organic fish? Maybe, but you could get some organic other options. And again-

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Wild fish, right?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Yep, wild caught. And so, same. It's not inherently bad, but is it bad for you? That depends. It depends on how much that you intake. It depends on what underlying conditions you may have or what your health challenges are that you're trying to face. But I think that at least more safely you could say that having a healthy quantity of fish in your diet is actually a good thing. People, I think, may go back and forth about red meat, which is fine, probably not what we're here for today to discuss. But like we were saying earlier with the Mediterranean diet, fish has so many good things that you're getting and can't get in the quantity anywhere else like you can get from a fish source. So I don't think that many people, unless it's part of your lifestyle or religious or otherwise choice to not include fish in your diet, I think most people would advocate for adding healthy fish that's wild sourced into a diet.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

And I would say that not all farm raised fish is bad, but you have to be... A lot of the commercial fish is farm raised and the problem is that they feed them pellets and the pellets are... Some of them are scraped from the bottom of the ocean and that's where the PCBs and other chemicals accumulate. So these farm bred fish actually have higher levels of certain toxic chemicals. So if you're going to get farm raised fish, find out the source. There's some farms, sea farms or aquacultures, that are actually quite good.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

I was just going to ask you that. Do you have a resource to recommend? If you don't have options to get a good wild caught source, how can you to identify which farm sources are better than others? Research?

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Well, yeah, you got to research. It's got to be individual. If you're going to go to a big grocery store that doesn't tell you about sourcing, then you're kind of stuck. So wherever you shop, if you shop at Whole Foods or someplace like that, they should be able to tell you, "It came from this farm in this place. It came from Scotland, came from Norway. We buy from this farm." And I think that's fine, actually, because responsible farming, I hate to say it, but that's what the future's going to be.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Yeah, practicality.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Right. The wild fish stocks are really dropping and so what do we do?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

I just want to say, I'm glad you brought up the toxicity thing too because I should have clarified before when I said I think most people would advocate for fish in your diet, but even if you're choosing fish and even if it's wild caught, there are still fish that are better than others because of their size or their predatory status or how they store and maybe accumulate toxins. So that's another big thing to consider as far as the fish in your diet and certain populations needing to be more sensitive about that, like those trying to conceive or women who are pregnant, things like that, mercury, which almost everyone's heard about at this point.

               The good part about that is, even from the environmental standpoint, the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California has a really good website that talks about the ecology and the sustainability of fish species and then the environmental working group and I think some other groups offer easy identification cards or advice about which kind of fish are most toxic or which carry the most mercury and how to avoid those. I think when people ask, the easiest way to remember is the bigger the fish, the more other fish it eats, and then the more things it accumulates that maybe you don't want. So avoiding those larger species fish...

Dr. Robert Rountree:

I hate to say it, I love sushi.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

I do too.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Got to be really careful because the fish, the tuna that they use in sushi is often... The bellies of the big tuna...

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Exactly what I was going to say.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

There is an issue. And so maybe we can make the case that people should take modified citrus pectin. If you must eat sushi, then take a few capsules of modified citrus pectin afterward. Do you think that's a reasonable thing to do?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

I don't think it's unreasonable. That's for sure. Add brown rice to your sushi instead of white, which can help bind some of that up too, right in the food source. Yeah, I think I had people look at me a little sideways when I told them if they needed to eat tuna, that actually tuna, canned tuna, had less of the toxins than a big, nice piece of ahi or something and they kind of shake their head at me.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Yeah, they're like, "You're crazy," but there are cans that are not lined with the bisphenol, et cetera. You got to be careful about your source. So here's an interesting question. "Fruits and veggies are so expensive. What healthy options are affordable?" So boy, I don't even know where to start with that question. So it's too expensive to eat fruits and veggies, so I should eat instead, what, French fries? I'm not sure what else would you eat or what's more affordable? The problem is that we have this... The way that farms and foods are subsidized in this country is the reason French fries are cheaper and potato chips are cheaper is because they're subsidized. So you go to a farmer's market, those farms are not subsidized and that stuff is going to cost more. So what's your take on that?

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Yeah, I think it goes back to really does it cost more? If you're going to eat processed foods... First of all, from a practicality standpoint, maybe it really doesn't cost more. So you can watch produce prices. Seasonal produce is going to be less expensive than some other sort of rare choices you could make. But the theoretical or I guess the philosophical standpoint is does it cost more than what you're going to end up paying in your healthcare costs or long-term health effects and things like that? You're investing into your health, which I think is arguable to save you money in the long run. Not that people don't have challenges on a weekly, monthly, or a regular basis as far as what they can afford.

               So I think that if you need to take affordability into account, you can choose certain fruits and veggies that are the most nutrient dense. So if that's all you can get with your budget, getting the most bang for your buck, so dark colored things, dark leafy greens, dark berries are going to be more nutrient rich than something like a potato, which doesn't have a lot going for it other than carbs and a little bit of fiber. Pick a red potato even or a sweet potato or yam some other kind of option.

               So I think that's a place to start. And then if you're really trying to eat organic and you want to have that as part of your budget, I think that's a really legitimate concern. We talked about the environmental working group before. They have a list that you can print a little card and put it in your wallet or your purse or whatever, but they have something called the Dirty Dozen and a Clean 15. And every year they update this to tell you what foods are most important to get organic because of the level of contamination or pesticide that may be present and which foods maybe have the least. And so if you need to budget out how you're going to spend your funds, then you want to get something like strawberries or spinach in an organic state, whereas it doesn't really matter so much if you're going to get something like corn or pineapple or onion.

               And if you don't want to memorize or carry around the list, I think the easiest thing to remember is if you're eating the outside of it and it has a thin skin, it's taking something inside and you can't get it off. So if you're going to eat the skin like an apple or a grape or a cherry or a leafy green like spinach, then you're going to take more in because you can't get it off. But if you have something like an avocado or a pineapple or corn where you're taking the outside of it off before you're ingesting it, then it's got that sort of natural barrier from that getting into your food. So that's a place you can start too is just choosing wisely what really needs to be organic and what maybe is not as important.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Good. Really excellent point. So I think the only thing I would add to that is that the studies I've seen show that the biggest difference that you get from dietary changes is when you go from processed food to fresh. So yeah, I prefer that people eat organic as much as they can, even though it costs more, but it's much more important to simply eat fresh fruits and vegetables than processed things in a can, peaches in sugar sauce in a can. There's just nothing beneficial about that. So when somebody says, "Well, a peach is more expensive," I really have no answer for them because I'm going, "Well, it's a whole different food and it's really worth the investment to go to fresh. And then if you can afford it, when you can afford it, go for the Clean 15, organic when possible." So one last question that maybe we can do quickly, "Are there healthy preservatives we can put in our foods?"

Dr. Amanda Frick:

You can approach it two different ways. There are healthy ways you can preserve foods, but I think that this question is more about what you can put into your food. Arguably, salt is a natural preservative, if that's not a barrier to some other health issues that you have. Certain spices, especially spices that would be pungent are going to have natural antimicrobial properties so they're going to help preserve food. Like we were talking about, maybe spicy foods or things like curry can help preserve your food. That's how we ended up-

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Rosemary.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Exactly. That's a great one. Herbs, other antimicrobial herbs, they're great for your gut and good for your health, but also they can help preserve your food just because of the way they work because of antioxidation or because of antimicrobial effect.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So how did our ancestors start using those herbs to begin with? They used them as preservatives.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Exactly.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

So now we think they're culinary foods. Oh, yeah. Rosemary adds this flavor, but people put that stuff in with their meat, in with other things that they prepared because they had a natural observation that it kept them from going bad, kept them from molding up.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Even garlic.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Yeah. Well, I was going to say, when I make my own burgers and I don't do that every day, but every couple weeks, I make my own burgers and I use organically raised beef, grass fed, and I mix garlic and onions and rosemary into the beef before I cook it. So there are practical ways that you can do all of that.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

You think that rosemary needs to be fresh? Or is this a jarred rosemary?

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Oh, I think it's ideal and it is one of the easiest herbs to grow.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

That's true. It's like a weed.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

It's like a weed. You can grow it inside. It puts up with a lot. So go buy a rosemary plant and put it in your kitchen if you got any sunlight at all. Yeah. Try to do that. But we grow rosemary in our garden. It's not hard at all.

So I think that's all we have time for this week. We hope you've enjoyed the show and that it helps you have a healthier holiday season. Be sure to leave a comment and go ahead and subscribe to the show. We really appreciate it if you do that. And thank you, Amanda, for podcasting with me and talking about so many interesting things.

Dr. Amanda Frick:

Thanks Bob and happy holidays to everyone. Have a great season.

Dr. Robert Rountree:

Thanks for listening to The Thorne Podcast. Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing to the show on your podcast app of choice. If you've got a health or wellness question you'd like answered, simply follow our Instagram and shoot a message to @thornehealth. You can also learn more about the topics we discussed by visiting thorne.com and checking out the latest news, videos, and stories on Thorne's Take 5 Daily blog. Once again, thanks for tuning in and don't forget to join us next time for another episode of The Thorne Podcast.