FOOD AS MEDICINE to Live Healthy Longer

In this insightful episode, we embark on a captivating journey with James Polakof, Ph.D., and his esteemed guest, Dr. Robert E. Graham. Together, these experts delve into the profound connection between food and healing, offering valuable insights into how to live a longer, healthier life.

Dr. Graham, also known as "Rob the Chef," shares his innovative FRESH approach, shedding light on the transformative power of plant-based nutrition. He explains how incorporating more plants into our daily meals is not only beneficial for our well-being but also essential for achieving longevity.

Throughout the discussion, Dr. Graham and Dr. Jim explore various topics related to food as medicine. They delve into the science behind the healing properties of certain foods, debunking common myths and misconceptions. They also provide practical tips and strategies for transitioning to a more plant-based diet, making it accessible and enjoyable for everyone with the use of Fresh Med U. 

Dr. Graham's FRESH approach to healthcare, which stands for "Food, Relaxation, Exercise, Sleep and Happiness," represents a paradigm shift in medicine. FRESH Med Integrative Medical Practice embraces this approach, moving away from the traditional "a pill for an ill" mentality to one that seeks to address the underlying causes of disease. This holistic approach recognizes the interconnections between physical, mental, and emotional well-being in promoting overall health.

Dr. Graham and Dr. Jim offer a wealth of knowledge and inspiration, empowering listeners to make informed choices about their diet and lifestyle. They remind us that our health is in our hands and that by embracing a plant-based approach, we can unlock the potential for a longer, healthier, and more fulfilling life.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Live Healthy Longer, the podcast created especially for seniors and designed to enhance the quality of your life as you age. Our host, Dr Jim Polakoff, is a certified nutritionist who believes you are what you eat and that food is the best medicine. Now let's join Dr Jim.

Speaker 2: 0:34

Yes, I'm Dr Jim Polakoff, and in this episode we're going to take a step closer to discovering how to live healthy longer. Now, the definition of healthy eating changes as we age, For example. Our metabolism slows down, so we need fewer calories than before. Our body also requires certain important nutrients. This means it's more essential than ever to choose foods which give us the best nutritional value. But more about this. Following my interview, let's meet my guest, Dr Robert E Graham, a Harvard-trained physician and board-certified in both internal and integrative medicine. Dr Graham is also known as Rob the Chef and has taught over a thousand healthcare workers, mainly doctors, how to prepare healthy, delicious plant-based meals. Let's see what he's got cooked up for us. Welcome, Dr Graham. Hello Jim.

Speaker 3: 1:37

How are you today?

Speaker 2: 1:38

I am doing just fine and I can tell by your voice, so are you. But in any case, my first question for you I noticed that you did a TEDx presentation which I was very impressed by, and you stated a pill for an ill doesn't really work effectively. You need real food. So, in your opinion, what constitutes real food?

Speaker 3: 2:00

Well, it's actually an interesting question because I think if you ask my mother, my grandmother, they can tell you exactly what real food is. The real food is the stuff that's out there in our supermarkets, but today I would like to say that real food is the way food was made by nature. Real food is also not industrially processed or ultra processed, is also not industrially processed or ultra-processed. So, simple terms, real food is good, old-fashioned food that grows naturally in the world.

Speaker 2: 2:32

All right, and so growing. Naturally, that includes just about everything in terms of plants, am I correct?

Speaker 3: 2:39

Absolutely. I actually also consider, you know, eggs real food, meat real food, nuts real food, grains real food, fruits and vegetables are real food.

Speaker 2: 2:49

Your position is that 80% of chronic diseases like high blood pressure, cancer, heart problems, can actually be reversed by lifestyle changes. And you say it begins with food. Can you elaborate? Yeah, of course, of course. And you say it begins with food. Can you elaborate?

Speaker 3: 3:03

Yeah, of course, of course. Well, all of these chronic diseases that you mentioned let's just run through a couple of those the high ones, the big ones Diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, arthritis and, to a certain extent, cancer I believe they can actually be prevented and reversed with a food-first approach In medicine. That is the way we're taught, but unfortunately many doctors just don't prescribe food as medicine. We do learn about nutrition in medical school, but very minimally. You know roughly about two hours of nutritional education in medical school.

Speaker 2: 3:39

Zero. It's a shame. It's a shame yeah.

Speaker 3: 3:41

Zero in subsequent trainings. You know, once you become a resident or a fellow, there's really no minimal standards of nutrition in our training. So if you actually look at the science and it's just not my opinion, it's science from Harvard Medical School, harvard School of Public Health, cdc, who all basically say that these chronic diseases can be prevented and or reversed with a food, is medicine intervention?

Speaker 2: 4:09

Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to take you through a typical day, because I'd like to get your advice. I'm sure our listeners would as well, if we can break down a day. So we begin with breakfast. What's your idea of the ideal breakfast?

Speaker 3: 4:25

Well, I think food is really interesting, right, because we often hear the word food is medicine. But I think, you know, food is more than that. Food is love, food is culture, food is tradition, food is community. And so, you know, the ideal breakfast for me may not be the ideal breakfast for others, I think. Going back to your first question, I think if we eat real food as breakfast, that'd be a good first start, and so, you know, oatmeal is one of the favorites, with berries and nuts.

Speaker 3: 4:54

Sugar, minimally processed, minimally sugar, is important. I don't eat much breakfast. To be honest with you, I'll either have a juice, a green juice, or a cup of coffee, and so I kind of use that sort of opportunity to do some intermittent fasting, as they call it. Breakfast, to be honest with you, I'll either have a juice, a green juice, or a cup of coffee, and so I kind of use that sort of opportunity to do some intermittent fasting, as they call it, or I just skip breakfast in trying to limit my calories. But I think eggs on a whole grain toast is fine, avocado toast, as my mother used to call it, panco guacamole oh that sounds good.

Speaker 3: 5:24

Before the corruption of avocado toast for selling it for 15 to 20 bucks. I think you know we're looking at that sort of breakfast. I think it's a good idea as well.

Speaker 2: 5:33

Let's go to lunch. Let's say we're out shopping, we're on the go. It's always difficult what do you eat when? You're out Now. Likely we're going to skip McDonald's, I'm assuming, but Burger King has this they call it the impossible burger, which is made from soy and potatoes. Of course it contains fat from coconut oil and sunflower oil. But does that work? Or do you have a better suggestion if you're on the go and you're going to have lunch?

Speaker 3: 6:04

Well, listen, you know it's a question I get asked a lot about these phone meets or alt meets. Actually, a colleague of ours, chris Gardner out of Stanford, just wrote an excellent paper on. This is about you know instead of what, right. So an impossible burger instead of what. And he makes the argument that, you know, an impossible burger instead of a fatty burger, meat-based burger is probably better for your health. I'm not sure I don't know how I would comment on that, but for me it's simple. It's soups, salads and stir fries. I think those are the three sort of things I look for in lunch, again loaded with fruits and vegetables, as my sort of go-to, both at home and on the run.

Speaker 2: 6:52

Okay, and then what about? It's dinner time? We're hungry. We don't necessarily want to add a lot of calories, but we're hungry. What do you?

Speaker 3: 6:55

suggest as an example. Yeah, so you know this is where I think you should get your protein load right. In our home here, you know, we have about a couple beans a day and I think that's usually our staple in terms of proteins, and so I think proteins and greens, you know, I think that's a perfect sort of meal. Whole grain, maybe, like a brown rice, or actually a small amount of rice, is probably fine as well. Quinoa, but I also think you know this is where you have to sort of dig into what really feeds you and that old adage you know, this is where you have to sort of dig into what really feeds you and that old adage you know your latest meal should be the lightest meal. I think that's an important concept also, and earlier better than later. It takes about three hours for your food to digest, so I do recommend eating. You know, make sure your dinner is about three to four hours outside of bedtime.

Speaker 2: 7:44

Now, I didn't hear the word meat. Are we going to skip meat for dinner?

Speaker 3: 7:49

Yeah, well, we typically keep a vegan home. I may have occasional meat here and there when I know where it's sourced from, and so that's my sort of conjecture here. In our fresh model, which I know we'll speak about, when it comes to food, we say eat more plants and if you're going to eat meat, make sure you deserve good meat in your body if you're going to have it.

Speaker 2: 8:11

What about fish? How do you feel about things like salmon, wild or farm-raised salmon?

Speaker 3: 8:16

No, I think you know I put all that sort of I put fish, poultry and meats into the sort of meat, red meat, into the beef, into the same category, and so I think you know if you're going to make a choice. I think from a caloric point of view and from, I think, health benefits, I think a pescatarian, leaning, vegetarian diet profile is probably the healthiest that you're going to find All right.

Speaker 2: 8:40

Now your practice has a unique name Fresh Medicine, but each letter in fresh stands for an ingredient in your recipe for health. So now we've covered F for food, let's go to R, and I guess R stands for relaxation, and I'm guessing that, despite someone's age, I assume this targets the challenge we all face stress.

Speaker 3: 9:03

You know, science says that we should find 10 minutes of relaxation a day, and what I mean by that is that the good doctor Dr Herbert Benson up at Harvard Medical School discovered this relaxation response. Most of us know that we have a stress response and that we've all felt that stress response, but that subsequent relaxation after a stressful event is what we try to optimize, and the science basically says that 10 minutes of relaxation a day is what we should all aim for. Again, you know, some people believe two minutes, five times a day. I ultimately believe that it should be 10 minutes twice a day. So I prescribe relaxation as medicine 10 minutes a day, twice a day for your best sort of overall health and well-being.

Speaker 2: 9:50

So are you thinking in terms of medication or just simply relaxing, kicking back and watching the birds fly through?

Speaker 3: 9:53

the sky, that could be it For me. Practicing my knife skills is, for me, relaxation. To get that perfect sort of matchstick, that half moon, that chiffonade for me that's sort of relaxation. But yoga, meditation, sitting silently this weekend, you know, obviously there's a big, big, big album drop by Beyonce this weekend. It seems the world is talking about that and for my wife that's her form of relaxation. Listening to music.

Speaker 2: 10:21

All right Now, we almost skipped over, but we did not skip over E, which, of course, is for exercise. I'd like to know what kind of exercises you recommend, and especially for senior adults. Many of our audience members are seniors, so what do you? Recommend in that respect.

Speaker 3: 10:39

Well, I think you know one of the things that we say in our fresh model right exercise move, simple, move for 30 minutes a day. And you know, obviously that can be challenging as we get older, but I think we can actually push ourselves to get up, move in one direction 15 minutes and come back. That's the way you get to half hour and in.

Speaker 2: 10:57

Are you talking walking? Is that what you mean?

Speaker 3: 11:00

Yeah, walking is. I think it's a good first place to start. We are under exercise as a society and I think walking is probably the cheapest, quickest way to get that. 30 minutes of exercise, again, if you can bike, if stop and go particularly in elderly populations can be challenging, but for us we recommend, based upon the science, is 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity and that could be just walking. If you can walk and talk for about half hour, that would be a little bit better because it gets your heart rate a little bit higher.

Speaker 2: 11:40

Maybe it throws in the exercise or the relaxation at the same time. But I'm curious what about chair yoga? What do you think about that? Have you tried that at all?

Speaker 3: 11:48

Oh yeah, actually my wife does a lot of the sort of corporate trainings and classes in chair yoga no-transcript.

Speaker 2: 12:00

Now I certainly agree with this next one 100% sleep. The S for sleep is important In any case. How much sleep do you think we should get a night? And what about the quality of sleep?

Speaker 3: 12:14

Yeah, so that's two very important questions. So science says that people, to get optimal health, aim to seven to eight hours of sleep a night. Now, we do know that if you sleep less than six hours a night, you have an increased risk of death about 16% increased risk of death. So sleeping is why we prescribe it as medicine as well. Now, sleeping does, by definition, mean going to bed and closing your eyes, right, but as you probably know and your audience may know, there's different stages of sleep and what we're trying to get into, that sort of deep sleep that we all want to have and if you go to our website, you know on our intake forms, right, how do we know they're in that deep sleep?

Speaker 3: 12:53

Actually, dreaming can actually happen. So think about the last time you had a dream, and if you could remember it, even it's a bonus. But that sort of deep sleep happens only sleep, I'm sorry, dreaming only happens with that deep sleep. The other thing you remember the old-fashioned drooling outside of the mouth that's a deep sleep as well. And so if you haven't dreamed a lot and if you haven't drooled a lot lately, I would challenge yourselves to go try to get a good night's sleep.

Speaker 2: 13:18

All right, Well, good advice. Now, finally, we come to one of my favorite words H for happiness. Can you describe what's your formula for happiness?

Speaker 3: 13:28

Yeah, so happiness is really the creation and collaboration of my wife's work in positive psychology. She was a certified positive psychology practitioner. Let me explain a little bit of that because I think it's important.

Speaker 2: 13:40

Right and your wife is, so I'm sorry.

Speaker 3: 13:47

I didn't introduce her she's not on with us, but Julie Graham, am I correct?

Speaker 3: 14:00

And the science of positive psychology is the science and scientific literature of why people and populations, communities, thrive.

Speaker 3: 14:08

We all get some sort of bad news and they ever meet that person that gets that bad news and make they make it their mission to sort of help you know, help others with that sort of condition, or someone else that just becomes victim of that sort of condition, and that's positive psychology, right, it's the opposite of abnormal psychology, which, unfortunately, is what we hear a lot of lately. So one of the fathers of positive psychology mentions that in three simple words other people matter, and surrounding yourselves with others that make you feel better about yourself and or lift yourself up is actually what we should be sort of gathering as our tribe of people, and so happiness is probably the most important, you know, factor. I believe in sort of in optimal health and well-being. Many people want to be happy, but we don't know how to get there. So I think starting the field of positive psychology and working with our clients to identify things that make them happy is a really important part of our prescription.

Speaker 2: 15:07

Well and obviously I think you mentioned it at the beginning avoiding people who have negative influences or try to project those negative influences. You want people who really support being up and revitalized and happy and finding joy in life.

Speaker 3: 15:25

Yeah, and it's not happy ology, right, because I mentioned, you know, as I mentioned you know, bad things happen, you know, and it's really sort of looking the world half full, not half empty, and again, all these sorts of things that we just went through, the fresh model right, sort of nudge you in that sort of positive wellbeing state. And that's really what we want to sort of really work with our clients, our patients, right, because oftentimes you go to the doctor they don't have the time and or the expertise in each of those five pillars. But we all know those are really important and we have found in our practice that, through our patients and through our clients, is that if we really address these sort of five ingredients or five pillars, medicine is of less or no need. So I encourage everyone to sort of, you know, take a look at our site, take a look at our work and really sort of identify how you can actually get fresher.

Speaker 2: 16:16

And we're going to be publishing your site, your more information on our website, which, fortunately, most of our listeners actually do access the website and follow up on that, but why don't you tell us a little bit more I think you're just about to touch on it your FreshMedU, your online classes, and I guess one of the benefits of telemedicine these days is we can access your knowledge, your wife's knowledge, julie Graham, from anywhere in the United States correct.

Speaker 3: 16:46

Yeah, absolutely. You know, we have a brick and mortar here in New York City where I still see patients and my wife sees clients, but not everyone can get to New York, and so we do offer telemedicine services, but we also, you know, during right before the pandemic, a grocery store chain reached out to us. This is a true story. A CEO of a large grocery store chain was in the hospital room of his butcher and this butcher was getting open heart surgery, and he made it that day his mission to sort of help elevate the health of his entire associates at the supermarket.

Speaker 3: 17:28

So, as you can imagine, here in New York City it was from, let's say, westchester County to Long Island, down into Brooklyn, and how do we get all these associates at the same time? And so we turned our fresh pillars into a school, an online e-platform learning program where thousands of people have taken our courses to get fresher, and the idea there is there's a free course that, again, everyone can take, but there are also additional courses that really dive into those five pillars the food, relaxation, exercise, sleep and happiness. You can do it all one chunk or you can do it, you know, one letter, one pillar at a time, but it's really sort of that simple nudge to our patients who can get to see us in New York to come to them on their, you know, on their phone or on their computer at their own time, at their own space, at their own you know, sort of learning level.

Speaker 2: 18:21

Right, that makes it nice that you don't have to tune into the particular time, that you can access it when it's convenient for you and FreshMedU. You standing for the in theory university correct.

Speaker 3: 18:32

Absolutely, absolutely FreshMedU, meaning university right.

Speaker 3: 18:35

It's a digital e-learning platform which is really, really interesting about it too it is actually gamified and so, as opposed to just listening to lectures or PowerPoint, it actually challenges you to go through the course in about five to 10 minutes, let's say three to five minute chunks. So therefore you feel like you're getting through it and actually it's gamified so you can actually play with others. We like to joke around just like we did at the supermarket. It's not the biggest loser, it's the biggest user which we can identify on the back end as well. So it's a great thing for individuals, but also for corporations, to kind of challenge themselves in that well-being space You're known as.

Speaker 2: 19:17

Dr Rob, correct, dr Rob the Chef.

Speaker 3: 19:20

That's my nickname, Dr Rob the Chef.

Speaker 2: 19:23

All right, so you mentioned it earlier. Since our medical education system teaches doctors, as I know well very little about nutrition, can Dr Rob teach us how to choose the right foods? In other words, if we come again to FreshMedU, do you actually get into what foods you should eat and also you teach people to cook right?

Speaker 3: 19:46

Yeah, absolutely. I think you know we always hear food is medicine, but you know, studies have shown also that people and societies that cook more actually achieve better health. So that's part of the reason why I did decide to not trade in my lab coat for my chef whites, but really to get that secondary education of becoming a chef. And I did that about seven years ago after roughly 10 years of teaching doctors how to cook alongside a chef at a culinary school. And again, I know my background was that we learned our most important lessons in the kitchen, around family time, cooking time and eating time. And so I just sort of 10 years ago well, 15 years ago I thought maybe what if we took a group of doctors out of a hospital and teach them how to cook, not in a classroom but literally in a culinary school?

Speaker 3: 20:32

And there's been a great movement called culinary medicine, the intersection between the culinary arts and the science of medicine. And to your question, yeah, freshman U really dives into. You know what we should think about when it comes to what's on our plate, and I think it's an important sort of concept when we're thinking about, you know, how to make these sort of dietary changes for oneself. Again, we focus a lot on putting more plants onto your plate. That's a simple prescription we have.

Speaker 2: 20:58

I like that. More plants on your plate, that's a real jazzy number. Let me ask you this because I'm curious. I'm assuming, like you can buy recipes, books, I should say and there you find how to put this together and that together. I'm guessing that you go one step further and describe why you should eat certain foods and prepare them a certain way.

Speaker 3: 21:24

Yeah, exactly. So that's sort of the spin here. Right is that we all want to be healthier, but we also want I think people want to know why we want to be healthier and I think why we recommend certain things we should put on our plate and not put on our plate. I also would talk about techniques. Not put on our plate. I also would talk about techniques.

Speaker 3: 21:47

You know, the reason why chefs make food that tastes better than most home cooks is that we learn the techniques of how to optimize flavor and how to choose the finest of ingredients to cook with right.

Speaker 3: 21:53

And so I think using those principles of the culinary arts into sort of home cooking is really important, and I do believe that you know it was one of the silver linings of this COVID pandemic is that people started learning how to cook and it really became a survival tool, right?

Speaker 3: 22:11

My brother-in-law was never, you know, he was a guy in New York, a bachelor in New York, and would always eat out and take home some stuff, but he actually learned how to cook and I think more and more people are getting back into the kitchen, and I believe it is medicine, because it gives you control of what you put into that plate, even let's let's joke around a little bit even like fried chicken, right? I don't know if you guys ever made fried chicken, but fried chicken is a mess and you know, once you make it once, you're probably not going to make it for a long time because it's just a really messy job. And so I think if you're going to explore healthy eating, I think the best way to do it is by opening up a recipe book. Go to Fresh Made you and look to see a simple recipe that we all can incorporate into our daily lives, and I think you know we found that people really are open to that at this point.

Speaker 2: 23:01

And I'm sure it's not the way the colonel prepares it either. But in any case, I really I do actually have one last question. As you know, our program is Live Healthy Longer that's the name of it, and your synopsis is, I believe, the more plants you eat, the longer you live. So can you tell us how a plant-based diet actually affects the aging process?

Speaker 3: 23:28

Yeah, so we're learning a lot about aging, and it seems like every other week there's a new sort of doctor or expert, you know, giving you the recipe for longevity, and a lot of the work that we've done in the past 20 years has been influenced by the work that Dan Buettner and the team at the Blue Zones have done. Have you had Dan on this podcast yet?

Speaker 2: 23:48

No, not yet. But I'm certainly familiar with him.

Speaker 3: 23:51

Yeah. So you know, he's identified these five blue zones around the world where people live to 100 healthfully and happily, and so we don't have to sort of redesign what we found. Just take the best of his work of the blue zones and there you know, we found that people that tend to eat, you know, a predominantly plant-based diet again, predominantly plant-based diet tend to live the longest, and I think that's sort of a good message for us to share in a simple way of eating more plants. Right, half your plate should be plant at this point. You know, a question I get a lot is should it be organic? And if you can afford organic, then it should be. But I'd rather have people incorporate more of a plant-based diet, even non-organic, into their sort of daily menu planning instead of forgoing it for non-organic.

Speaker 2: 24:46

What really resounds to me and I think I can appreciate. Particularly I have a bit of a nutritional background. But I think from what you've said and I like the idea of a half plate or whatever you really haven't put down many people who advocate plant-based diets say that's it, you don't eat anything else, you stick strictly to plants and for some people that's going to be particularly after a lifetime of eating a certain way. I think that's kind of difficult to plants and for some people that's going to be particularly after a lifetime of eating a certain way. I think that's kind of difficult to do. And you've made a statement at least half your plate should be plant-based and I think you give people that opening to perhaps choose different foods here or there that they enjoy.

Speaker 3: 25:26

Yeah, again, you know we're not prescriptive in that sort of sense, right, and I think I think again, I try to use the science, but I was, I sort of use common sense as well. Right, I'll use my parents, my, my mother is 85 and my dad is 81, you know, and, and they explored with me Meatless Monday and they have sort of it's a great website too. It's a national movement. I had the great fortune of meeting the late Sid Lerner when he was around here in New York and really became a sort of an ambassador of that Meatless Monday movement. So it's one day you can actually swap out the meat and make it meatless.

Speaker 3: 26:04

And what we have found in our practice and working with our clients is that the more plants we eat, the better we feel. Right, it's a lighter sort of meal, but also it increases the amount of, oftentimes, fiber, which is, if you want to talk about a deficiency in our country, we are fiber deficient and if there's one thing we would actually recommend is adding more fiber to everyone's plate and that's the best form it's in terms of fruits and vegetables, and I think most people on Tuesday feel a little lighter, maybe have a better bowel movement and again making one's leaning into sort of feeling better. One day leads to another day and another day, and right now my parents are. I like to say that they're five days a week plant-based. I like to say that they're five days a week plant-based. And again, a couple things with that statement there.

Speaker 3: 27:01

It's challenging and I think a lot of people, particularly as we get older, we get stuck in our ways and protein is important and you can get this sort of a good amount of protein on a plant-based diet. But again, you just have to think about it a little bit more. But again, you just have to think about it a little bit more. Instead of a slab of beef on your plate, you have to think about how you're going to optimize the plant-based sources and again, in our homes it's mostly beans, legumes. Today we had a red lentil soup inspired by the flavors of Thailand, and it was delicious and nutritious and really satisfying.

Speaker 2: 27:33

And by getting into FreshMedU I'm assuming that we can get into some of those recipes that you have right.

Speaker 3: 27:41

Yep, yep, we have a bunch of recipes there. We have about 13 on our food section and, yeah, I encourage everyone to explore that sort of opportunity to dive into FreshMedU. Start with the free course. You know you, you got nothing to lose. Take the free course.

Speaker 2: 27:56

Right, we'll start with the free course and see what you get out of it and then you can take a step further if you wish, and all of this is going to be on our website. And if there's anything else that you can think of that you'd like to add, please send it to us, because you have some very, very enlightening information and I want to encourage our audience, please, to go to your website, and I believe there's a second website that you have, if I'm right. Am I correct that it's dealing with?

Speaker 3: 28:26

cooking. Oh yeah, so our brick and mortar is FreshMed NYC Fresh Medicine. Corresponding e-learning platform is FreshMedU. And then the other thing that I'd like to maybe talk to your audience about really is the idea of this food is medicine movement. You've probably been hearing a lot about it on the heels of the White House conference two years ago and it's really sort of changed.

Speaker 2: 28:54

And it's my slogan as well, by the way, but that's a side point.

Speaker 3: 28:57

Yeah, and you know it's really it's been. It's been 20 years. I've dedicated my entire career, sort of, to bring back the importance of food in our health care and I had the great fortune of teaming up with a company called Performance Kitchen to be their chief health officer. Let me explain a little bit about what we do there. And so these are frozen, healthy meals, again predominantly plant based. But you know, people eat what they want to eat, so we do have organic, we have, you know, good quality meats. Let's say that when it comes to pork, chicken, fish and beef, and they're ethnically and culturally inspired, because we all have these sort of cultural variances in our taste buds and we want to eat that food that tastes familiar and not food that we have to eat but want to eat. And so, about five years ago, I became their chief health officer to help sort of launch this sort of medically tailored meal, which comes a prepared meal that has been created by chefs, certified by a registered dietitian to hit the criterias of what a medically tailored meal is, and then prescribed by a doctor. And here's the best part it's actually part of a benefit in about 80% of Medicare Advantage programs. If you have a chronic disease, you will get up to, in some cases, 270 meals covered by your insurance, and so I urge everyone to take a look at what we do at performancekitchencom to learn more about our ethnically inspired, medically tailored meals.

Speaker 3: 30:47

And, for me, I love working with them because it takes the guesswork out of it. Right, I'm a big fan of shopping and produce prescriptions and produce meals, but you got to cook, and many in our society don't have the time, skill or money to go shopping for food. So that's part of the big movement that's happening. You start with a medically tailored meal here you have diabetes here. Eat this meal and you'll get a sense of what that meal looks like, the size of it, the taste of it, and then we gradually graduate that person to a produce prescription with corresponding nutritional education, either given by a chef doc, which there's not too many of us, but a registered dietitian as well. So that's where the food is. Medicine movement or pyramid is happening, with medically tailored meals on top, produce prescription in the middle and nutritional foundational knowledge as a foundation. And so I encourage your audience to take a look at our website and put your zip code to see which insurance companies do offer coverage in your zip code.

Speaker 2: 31:46

That's very interesting, I think. As a matter of fact, I'm assuming, that if you have coronary heart disease, which so many millions of Americans do, that might be covered as well.

Speaker 3: 31:56

Yeah, so any chronic disease right? Copd, heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes.

Speaker 2: 32:03

Perhaps Alzheimer's and dementia if you're at the touch of it are predisposed.

Speaker 3: 32:08

Absolutely. But you know, in this game it's so insurance dependent, right. So you know, go to our website, put your name, your zip code in there and see which sort of plans offer a medically tailored meal in your area. And you know, utilize what you pay for. And we pay high premiums for these insurances and we should be utilizing all the benefits that they offer.

Speaker 2: 32:37

Sometimes they don't tell us them. You know, and I think the onus is on us to go look for it. Excellent suggestion. So, again, all of this is going to be on our website and I want to thank you, Dr Graham, also known as Dr Rob the Chef, Thank you so much again for joining us.

Speaker 3: 32:47

It's been extremely valuable Well thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts, my platform and our website Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 33:03

You can learn more about Dr Robert E Graham and his practice Fresh Medicine at our website, jamespolikoffcom. Our website also has some great blogs, which are all designed to help you live healthy longer. Go to jamespolakoffcom. That's James P-O-L-A-K-O-Fcom. Now back to Dr Jim.

Speaker 2: 33:26

Thanks again to Dr Robert E Graham, who provided some great food for thought about healthy eating. I do encourage my listeners to discover more about Dr Graham and fresh medicine. As mentioned before, all you need to do is go to our website, jamespolikoffcom. And also, as I mentioned earlier, healthy eating becomes even more important as we age, so here's my tip for this episode I'd like you to think of what's on your plate as a rainbow.

Speaker 2: 34:04

Bright colored foods are often the best choice. For example, with fruits and vegetables, I'd like you to envision orange, red, green and purple. In the case of whole grains, choose brown rice. Also, be sure to read the nutritional facts on the label. Most people don't study those and choose foods that are high in fiber and low in sodium. Also very important calcium, potassium, vitamin D and particularly B12. Yes, very important as we age. This is Dr Jim Polakoff. Thanks for joining me once again, and remember, every week there's another episode of Live Healthy Longer, and please visit our website for more information, not only about our guests and other podcasts, but also you want to read some of the very healthy blogs we have, that's jamespolikovcom. And, by the way, also remember food is the best medicine. Thank you.