Eating the Rainbow - A Colourful Path to Wellness with Dr Deanna Minich

In this latest episode of Functional Medicine Bitesized I was very privileged and honoured to be given the chance to interview Dr. Deanna Minich, a pioneering functional medicine expert, Linus Pauling Award winner 2025, nutrition scientist, international lecturer and published author! 

In this enlightening conversation, discover the powerful connection between phytonutrients, mood, and well-being. Learn why eating a rainbow of foods isn't just about nutrition, but about creating a holistic approach to health that nourishes body, mind, and spirit. From the science of color to practical strategies for incorporating diverse, seasonal foods, this episode will change how you think about eating forever.

I trust you will enjoy listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it. 

For more information and resources visit www.deannaminich.com 

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Transcript

Peter Williams  0:02  
Welcome everyone. Welcome to new episode of functional medicine. Bite sized. I am interviewing Linus Pauling, award winner, 2025 for the Institute for Functional Medicine. It's a pretty prestigious award. Dr Deanna Minich, I got that right, Deanna, didn't. I was like, your pronunciation. So look, I've known Deanna, actually, not personally, but walked past the many IFM conferences, and I would probably say going back over 20 years, she's been one of the original IFM faculty. I've read her papers in the journal of Nutrition and Metabolism. She's wrote many papers with sort of everyone's hero, Dr Jeffrey bland. But Deanna is noted in the sort of functional medicine space, but in the clinical space, really, for, really the person who came up with the rainbow of colors. And I would say to you, in the world of increasing technology and increasingly understanding how we can test people, and the detail that we can go in with regard to testing, it still comes back, back to, well, what can we do clinically? And a lot of time is, well, maybe we should just be eating more of her rainbow of colors. And this is deanna's sort of whole area, whole specialization. So Deanna, thank you so much for coming on. It's a real pleasure to have one of the IFM big wigs on. And obviously, how did you feel about winning the Linus Pauling Award? 

Dr. Deanna Minich  1:42  
to be, oh my gosh, I was. I was so humbled and honored, and it was really a bright light in my professional career. I don't think that that is one of the most memorable events ever. And as you could probably tell from my reaction to being the recipient, I had not anticipated

Peter Williams  2:00  
it. So I no idea at all. I

Dr. Deanna Minich  2:03  
well, I knew two months before, but when I was called and you know, that announcement was made, I mean, I just started crying, because this is something I never, had ever imagined that I would be the recipient of. And the beauty of the award was not just that it's the Linus and Ava Helen Pauling award in functional medicine, but it was the first year that Ava Helen, his wife, was brought into the naming of the award. So it just felt, really, I would say, timely, beautiful to have this full inclusion of two pioneers in peace and in biochemistry. So it was great, and I'm glad that you were there. And you know, great to be carrying on this message, because one of the things that I love to bring to functional medicine teaching is not just the information, but also the inspiration, because we can get bogged down by so much information and having to remember pathways and laboratory tests, and I have felt that, you know, that's just one side of functional medicine. But then on the other side, there's also the story that we talk about through the timeline we talk about the art of healing. So to me, it's like this full spectrum approach, which really then distills into how I got to the rainbow diet in the way that I talk about it.

Peter Williams  3:27  
So as you say, You're famous for, I suppose, bringing us all. And I was speaking to you offline because I was talking about how, still our most successful tool with patients is an A four that we ask them to stick on the fridge, which is, you know, tick the colors of what colors have you had today? It's so incredibly simple, but so incredibly and scientifically validated from a point of view of the more ticks that you can make with the different colors every day, the more we know we're probably taking you down a, you know, a health and a longevity pathway. So how did you get into it? It'd be great to give us your your history, your story and and how you've got into it before we start getting into the nuts and bolts, regards to phytonutrients and all that. So what's your story?

Dr. Deanna Minich  4:17  
Yeah, well, my story with the rainbow, and how that came into being is that I would say that it started when I was a child. So I was a product of the 1970s I was born in 70s, so I'm 54 and at that time, during the 1970s it really wasn't cool to be into healthy eating, but my mom was one of those disruptor people. She She was really into food and faith. I must say, it wasn't just the food. It was also kind of looking at her whole life. And so there was this whole thing about, you know, reading labels and not having white bread and making sure that we were eating nutrient dense foods. So I would say that the true Genesis. Of how did I even get into food? First and foremost, was really through my mother, and then separately, I just kind of geeked out on science. I think that through school, I was always very drawn to the human body and trying to understand even what was happening for me personally, because I had some health issues, and I must say that I veered off the track of healthy eating when I was a teenager, and I started to binge because I felt like I was so restricted from so many different foods that I almost swung the other way. And I just, I love chocolate. I loved sweets. I liked cookies. We have a certain cookie here in the States. I don't know if you have it over there, but it's Oreos. Yeah, I loved Oreos. I mean, they were, I mean, I would just take them, sneak them, and so, you know, I kind of, I developed this kind of dysfunctional pattern with food. I then went on to study biology and English literature in college, because I was always kind of, I would say, dual minded. I loved science, but then I also was very drawn to literature. I was drawn to Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, and I was drawn to classes on philosophy and language and art history and world religions. So I kind of had this fusion that happened very early on. I took my first yoga class when I was 19, and I was introduced to, I would say, a more holistic way of thinking. So I grew up Catholic, and I grew up, I would say, just with a lot of restriction and rigidity, not just in the way of food, but with everything. My father was a police officer. So I give you that as a little bit of context, because when some people hear me talk about food and eating like I do now, they often hear my personal story and feel like, wow, restriction is not the answer, that perhaps there is a more expansive way To connect to food that won't cause dysfunction eating disorders, you know, I'm glad for my path to have unfolded as it has, because it led me to where I now am. But I, I would say that it came from a place of restriction, defiance, polarity, you know, like you know, it was more on a focus of what you can't have to eat than it was on what you can have to eat. So and I think from there, you know, I thought it was going to go and become a medical doctor. I was pre med, and so I started working for medical doctors during the summers that I would have free from school. And I soon came to realize that I don't think I want to do this, that it wasn't as preventative as I thought it would be. So then I went into graduate school, and low and behold, I go and study human nutrition. I started researching plant compounds, the plant compounds that actually make plants very pretty. They're called the carotenoids. So things like beta carotene, alpha carotene, lycopene, there are actually 700 different carotenoids, but I studied just a handful of them, and from there, I went on to do my PhD in essential fatty acids. So I did stay on this track of nutrition and foods. And from there i i eventually landed into functional medicine and saw a talk from Doctor Jeffrey bland, who is the father of functional medicine. But when you ask about, well, Deanna, how did you get to the rainbow? Per se, that was a journey. And I would say it wasn't just my mother that started the path, but as I went through I began to see that eating was this ground for righteousness. It was kind of like this land of diets. You know, you go on a diet, you wed yourself in a personality way to the diet. You become the diet. And it kind of felt like, if you were following a diet, you would exclude everybody else or like, it's like, okay, I'm a vegan, so I can't make friends with an omnivore, you know? And I actually did this. I was a vegetarian for 18 years, where I was extremely righteous, and so that framed all of my therapeutic encounters. It was kind of like, okay, you need to eat this way, and here's the handout, and only eat these foods. And I was like the nutrition police. I was like my mother and my father combined. I mean,

Peter Williams  9:31  
this is such the problem with social media at the moment, isn't it? Is that there is a there is such problems with regards to attachments. And I think it just pushes people into more and more disordered eating patterns based on, you know, the messages that you get. And for me, this is the, you know, your work is. Nothing should be out of out of limits here, you know, we can, we can have. Sure. And so do you feel? Do you feel as though that all clinicians have to go through this? I mean, you have to get yourself dirty, in effect, to realize what the what the right messages or the right path. And it takes, usually, 2530 years to realize that what you've been told, maybe that all those years ago is probably not far off the truth now, just maybe with a bit more science to back it up,

Dr. Deanna Minich  10:25  
yes, yes and yes and I would say too that every diet that I tried for myself was like a path to personal growth. I learned about myself being a vegetarian for 18 years, then I learned about myself when I tried a more ketogenic diet. So everything that I was transitioning to, because food is so much a part of our daily lives, right? Like we are engulfed in food, I would say that we eat, but the act of eating eats us. We are consumed by it, and it so much defines who we are, right, like the restaurants we pick, the people that we eat with. So I would say, so I got to a point where I was thinking, I don't really like this feeling of food being a separation. And I was looking for what I would call the unifier, what unifies people rather than fragments them into all of the different diets, right? And like, is there a Venn diagram where we could say, like, Okay, here's where we can all meet in the middle. We can all find our common denominator, and we all come together as people in the eating experience, very simply. So when I looked at the literature I was looking for, because I noticed that whenever I would go and give a lecture, people would just want a yes or a no. So I would lecture on soy, Deanna, soy, yes or no. Deanna, meat, yes or no. Eggs, yes or no. And it was always like this. And so eventually I was I had to bust out of this and start teaching to the spectrum. And when you look at the science, what is really difficult to arm wrestle is the preponderance of data on plants. Plants just, you know, we could say it's fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, whole grains. It's the whole spectrum of plants and nature. And when you look at nature, the intelligence of nature is informing us at that cellular level, right? So when we talk in in functional medicine, about it, food is information, when I I like to qualify that a little bit, because it's not just food is information, because that can mean a lot of different things, colorful plant foods, having these colorful compounds that we're going to talk about as phytochemicals, are actually changing up how our DNA expresses, the proteins that we make. It changes who we are, constitutionally. And it was very, I would say it was one of the strongest messages that I could find in the literature, whether we're looking at epidemiological or population studies, we were looking at observational studies, where you just observe a population and look at what they're taking in and what their health effects are, or it was even a prospective study where people were on certain things deliberately to see how their outcomes would be. But plant foods and the whole spectrum thereof seem to be okay. This is the unifier, even omnivores could connect to plants, because ultimately, animals are eating plants. 80% of the biomass on this planet is plants. So I refer to plants as nature's intelligence and how it informs us. And when I was in graduate school, yes, I studied carotenoids, but we kind of bucketed those carotenoids into being just antioxidants, right? Like, yeah, just protecting the cell. But in the 21st Century, we went beyond antioxidants, and we realized that, wow, these phytochemicals are not just making food look pretty. They're doing multiple things. We started to learn about genetics and Nutrigenetics, nutrigenomics, we started looking at the functional roles of these individual phytochemicals. It wasn't like nutrition. Now was just about the macronutrients, protein, carbohydrate and fat. We were moving beyond that into the 1000s upon 1000s of compounds which are non caloric, but yet helping our our cells to actually function better, down to the DNA.

Peter Williams  14:50  
And isn't that? Isn't that the main thing, again, is that, you know, these compounds have no color caloric value at all, and yet they are creating an incredible. Pleiotropic systems wide approach to sending all these messages across to all of these genes and multiple biochemical pathways to do something that is good for us. So can we? Can we jump into because, as I said to you, I keep coming back to us the the rainbow colors a four page that we give to all of our patients, IFM has changed it, by the way, it's not as good as it used to be. They've made some changes to the A four one that I'm not as keen as it was beforehand. But can we talk about just really in simple terms, what certain colors mean, as far as the phytochemical spectrum and what they're associated with as well. And look, I appreciate your, you know, your split in peas here. This is sort of, I know it's quite simplistic, but again, as I was saying to you, off off Mike before, the simplicity of this is where we're all, where all the big stuff is, because it's so so important,

Dr. Deanna Minich  16:03  
exactly so. And again, it's good to be simple, but not too simple, where we reduce it to where it doesn't mean anything. So I know Doctor bland has mentioned this word simplex, which I really like, which is taking complex concepts and simplifying. So I think of this as a very simplex concept and application, right? Like,

Peter Williams  16:26  
yeah, I actually stole Simplexity, but I stole it off Mike Ash. I saw Mike Ash, I thought, I'm going to steal that one, because I think

Dr. Deanna Minich  16:35  
Jeff actually took it from somewhere else. So okay, credit, where credit is due, and I don't know exactly where it comes from, but in conversation, Jeff would mention the Simplexity idea. So one of the things with fruits, vegetables, plant foods of various types, you know, nuts, seeds, the whole gamut, is that many times, you know, we we look on social media and yes, it's like, eat the rainbow. I'm not the only person that's talking about eating the rainbow. What makes the message that I talk about more unique is that I talk about the color code of foods, and I think that this helps people to remember things a little bit better. So you're talking about the A4. I have a variety of teaching tools as well, like one of them I'm holding up right now. This is like my operating system, so you know. And I'm going to walk you through each of the colors, seven colors, and what is the code? And this code came from me, looking at the literature, looking for patterns. Like, when I look at red colored foods, I'm looking at things like, whether it's apples, I'm looking at beets, radishes, red bell peppers, or, in the UK, I think you call them paprika, tomatoes, tomatoes, strawberries, watermelon, these kinds of foods, right? Red, colored foods. So the color code for red, from what I can see, and again, it's not in a box. It's like, just think of blurred lines. Red is about healthy inflammatory response and supporting the immune function. I think of adrenals, right? Vitamin C, red, polyphenols. Orange, whether we're talking about carrots, tangerines, persimmons, mangoes, all things orange, I connect to carotenoids. I connect to reproductive health, or overall, I would say, even adipose tissue, and we'll talk a little bit more about that, like the fat soluble aspects of the body. Yellow, I connect to the gut, digestive health, whether we're talking about acids, enzymes, prebiotic starches. And I don't just talk about yellow as like the bright, shiny yellow of the sun, but there's a spectrum within each of these colors. So I want us to keep that in mind too. So when I'm talking about yellow, that could be everything from a pale yellow, from an intense yellow of a lemon. It can be into a beige, a tan and a brown. So this is where we get into more of the fibers and the brand coatings of things like a whole grain. So when you're thinking Brown, Brown does belong as part of the spectrum. It's, I see it as like a little mini spectrum within Yellow. Green is the connected to the heart and the vasculature. We think of nitric oxide, nitrates. We think of vitamin k1, we think of Folate, Magnesium. We move into blue green. There aren't many blue green foods, but the way that I talk about Blue Green and as a way to get these foods in is I talk about green plants that grow in the blue ocean that are enriched with things like iodine and other minerals to help with thyroid health. Then we go into blue purple. Blue purple is about the brain that one's easy. I could do a whole podcast with you just on the science of blue purple and the Brain, because there's copious science on this right. So looking at the role of these different polyphenols, flavonoids, anthocyanins, pro anthocyanidins, and navigating that gut brain access. But just think blue, purple brain. Then I also, and also, I do include black as part of that spectrum, like I did with yellow. So it goes blue, purple, black. And Black would be like a black berry. Sometimes you look at the the skin of an eggplant or an aubergine, and you see that it's almost it's so deeply hued that it is now black and so that. But if you were to look at those colors you would see, you know, there, there's a fine line here, as far as, like, what is blue versus purple, but just think of it in that that hue. And then I bring in white. And you know, what's interesting about white is that white, you could say, embodies all colors. If you take a, you know, just white light through a prism, you get the whole spectra of different colors and wavelengths. The way that I talk about white within the rainbow diet is to talk about white foods that have medicinal properties in the way of whether it's nourishing the gut microbiome, helping with the immune system, sometimes it's helping with detoxification. But I also bring in white as it relates to clearing, fasting, cleansing, no food, white slate, blank slate. So I have a little bit more of, I would say, some nuance that goes along with each of these in a symbolic way, a food way, and also thinking about it in a more of a lifestyle type of application.

Peter Williams  21:49  
The interesting thing for me on this again, is that, where do you So, the beauty, I suppose, of the data sets that we can build with patients is that you're going from, I suppose, generalized health, which comes back to a rainbow color, to and again, I want to ask your opinion on this. We do. We've done a lot of genomics over the last 15/20, years. I don't know what you think about using genomics. What? Where do you sit on that?

Dr. Deanna Minich  22:17  
I'm a strong advocate of using genetic information to inform personalized food choices. I think it's, it's a shortcut. It's getting you there faster, rather than the trial and error of things. I think it's, it's an intelligent way to prime food choices, absolutely.

Peter Williams  22:36  
So my question on that is that it gives you in, I suppose, a sort of, I don't want to suggest that there is a genetic blueprint that you need to follow. I think what it does is defines, maybe your template a little bit more. But I come back to and again, it'd be great to have your opinion on this. We see a lot of people were they come in proud that, you know, that all they do is eat green vegetables. And I'm like, listen, that's great, but, um, it's only one part of the rainbow, and maybe we're missing out on quite a lot of the other stuff. So whilst that's great, I would prefer it if that we are, you know, trying to expand and eat a little bit more of the rainbow of colors, with some emphasis on what we found, on the genetics, with regards to maybe there are certain other food groups that we want to try and amalgamate in there, is that sort of how you look at it?

Dr. Deanna Minich  23:36  
Yes, and you're speaking to diversity. So, you know, I talk about the four concepts, and so it's color, creativity, diversity and rhythm. So the diversity message is a big one, because, like you said, many people get green foods, and oftentimes people are in what I call food ruts. They're eating the same thing every day. They'll tell me, Deanna, I'm getting my colors. I'll look at pictures of their foods, their meals, and they are getting color. But if you look over each day, it's pretty much the same foods, the same colors, and you get different phytochemicals within the spectrum of a color, right? So let's, let's just take red. You're going to get different phytochemicals from a beet compared to a strawberry, compared to a cranberry, yeah, so if you're just doing the beets all the time, that's good for those nitrates and the betalaines, but then you're not getting the phycitin from strawberry. You're not getting, you know, some of the the pH effects from the cranberry and the microbiome effects. So yeah, what you're speaking to is something that I commonly see, and there have been surveys. Actually, one particular survey showed that of the population that was surveyed, which amounted to something like 1500 people, 88% of them, did not fulfill. Fill their phytonutrient quotient for blue purple foods. So eight out of 10 people did, did not get all of the colors. And of all of those colors, it was blue purple that was in short supply. And many times people do get green. Usually that's the color I see a lot of in people's diets. And I think it's just because we have a lot of green foods to choose from. We don't have a lot of blue, purple, black foods to choose from. So that becomes more challenging. Do you

Peter Williams  25:32  
Do you think that's because it's probably more noted generally, that green foods are good to eat, as opposed to the black. I mean, we're, I suppose we're quite lucky in the UK, because we're summer months now. So summer fruits are those very dark colors, blueberries, blackberries, the raspberries are out. And so we're overwhelmed with these amazing, super dark and you call them the dark matter of nutrition, don't you? Is that? What's some of the that I just we do, we did a we did an AI search to look for some of your key, some of your key, sort of notes here. So is that because, what do you think? What do you think the dark blueberries, blackberries are bringing to the table, particularly from a from a brain health perspective.

Dr. Deanna Minich  26:24  
So the reason why we get certain colors at certain times of year is, I think, to inform our physiology to have different support. So we need certain things in summer that we don't particularly need in winter. So when we have berries like these blue, black or even purple berries, they are helping us to, I would say, stay in seasonal rhythm. And there's a whole body of literature that is now looking at how seasonal eating of certain plants helps to connect even at the hypothalamic level, so at the brain level, to help to signal things like circadian rhythm better. So when people eat out of season, it's giving the cells different messages. So I used to work with a physician by the name of Doctor Jack hornberg, and the way that he would explain this to patients, I thought it was genius. He would say to people like, let's just say, for example, eating oranges in the winter, he would say that when you eat that orange in the winter, over and over again, it's like telling your body it's summer and that you need to store fat because all of those higher sugar fruits in the summer, they're preparing us for the winter, and they also contain a lot of antioxidants, sun protective agents, right, protection from UV in the summer. But we don't necessarily need some of those nutrients in the same way as in the winter. So when we constantly keep giving the body the message that it's summer but it's actually winter, it's like an environmental disconnect. And I'm not the only one talking about that, by the way. I mean, goodness, there is literature. We look at even ancient traditions. My husband is in traditional Chinese medicine, and you look at the energetics of food, seasonal foods, and how they have certain properties, certain aspects. You look at Ayurveda, which is very much aligned to seasons and how people eat. And I think this is just something that we have lost in our industrialized modern life, because we can have blueberries from Peru in the dead of winter. You know, up here in the northern hemisphere, it's like, you know, we haven't always had that ability, but now we have the ability to tap into foods all over the world at any given moment. We might pay a little bit extra for that, but, you know, and we're losing something here. We're losing something. I think that there's a happy medium where it's okay to have an occasional orange in the winter. I don't want to scare anybody from that, but to constantly be eating foods out of the season in which they are grown and that you're locally connected to. I think again, frames a disconnect between your body and the environment and ultimately, your DNA, right, what you're signaling through.

Peter Williams  29:30  
So, I mean, if I look at this, I mean, you know, the the evidence on circadian rhythm biology, I think again, is that, you know, living with when it's light, it's light. When it's dark, it's dark. And putting everything onto that, from a point of view of how that runs over the year, I mean, I only have to see it with some of our execs who are flying in and out of, you know, transatlantic crossing all the time, just how, just that circadian rhythm disruption is all over the place on that, you know, we microbiomes never normal, even though they eat in the. You know, as healthy as they can do. So I, I suppose my question on that, though, is that it comes into that point where, whilst we're trying to eat seasonally, I would rather them being trying to do as much as the rainbows colors, as avoiding it. And my question, my question to you on that then, is that obviously, would you suggest that this gets more profound on so because what we're talking about here, aren't we, we're talking about eating a food out of season, maybe causing some degree of signaling to tell the body that maybe this is not the time of the year that you think it is. And I think on that, if I think, if we do this in a in a very calorie positive manner, does that mean that we're creating more problems with that?

Dr. Deanna Minich  30:56  
There's no proof of that scientifically. But what I can say is that the more we can say the opposite, the more that we can align with the foods of nature during respective seasonal periods, I think the better off we will be. So let me give you some examples from animal studies, because this is the best we have where you can actually study animals under conditions which mimic summer or winter and in short succession, so you can actually compare them against each other. I think in humans, it's really difficult to do that because you have so many variables. You know, people live in different places in the winter, potentially, you know, just different activity patterns. So in animals, there have been a number of studies on Cherries. Cherries are a seasonal food, and what some of the the research and I'm thinking about they're probably like five to seven different studies that have been published looking at this model of having animals, whether mice or rats, where they constrain their what's called their photo period, or the amount of light that they are exposed to, to mimic either summer or winter, and then they feed them the cherries in those respective photo periods. And what they see is, when cherries are fed out of season, it actually leads to changes in gene expression related to fat oxidation as an example. There are a number of other things, but essentially, there's a metabolic ripple through effect that can happen so we don't see this optimized metabolic profile when cherries are fed out of season compared to when they are fed during the season that they belong in, which is spring. So it that's kind of interesting, right? Like, gosh, if we just look at even the the repercussions of one food fed within its seasonal time, and how just looking at certain markers related to gene expression of fats, and how that can be modified just through this one food. Now you start to layer on all of these different foods that people are eating that are not seasonal foods, they're available throughout the year, or they're out of season. And you can only imagine that the chrono nutrition, right, the timing effect of this nutrition is not it's almost like it just adds to the overall burden, or the load on the body for what it needs to overcome. And I would say, you know, we want to make things easier for the body, especially as we get older and things start to decline, we start to see more dysfunction. We see that it takes more work to get back to our homeodynamic baseline. So what I would say is, by eating more in season, just feeling more in that rhythm of nature, I think that we alleviate some of the strain on the body in whatever way that an individual might be picking that up.

Peter Williams  34:12  
In your opinion, obviously, we've got the What would you think is the most overlooked and under consumed phytonutrient in sort of average diet these days. Or would you say there's a

Dr. Deanna Minich  34:30  
in I have some thoughts. Well, first of all, I think we need to unpack a little bit about the phytonutrients so that people understand these because if we just say that there are 1000s, let's just say 25,000 phytonutrients, eight to 10,000 of those phytonutrients are one particular category called polyphenols. That's a large chunk. I mentioned that the carotenoids are about 700 Mm, hmm. So the Polyphenols are in great supply, and within polyphenols, you have many different kinds. These are where you start to see the blue, purple ones, right? But then you have the organo sulfur compounds, like the the kind that you would find in broccoli, cruciferous vegetables. And I have an affinity for those, because I see their role in processes related to detoxification as an example, right? Yeah, and then we look at we could go over to the nitrates and say, well, goodness, you know, we need those naturally occurring nitrates in green leafy vegetables to connect to our oral microbiome in order to convert, ultimately, to nitric oxide to help with healthy vasculature. So that's like a whole other category. So when you say, well, which of these phytonutrients are in short supply, I think we need to understand the types, what they're intended for. I mean, like, as you mentioned, they have pleiotropic effects. They don't just have one effect. They have many effects. But the polyphenol category is one that I think is getting more and more attention. So if you're going to corner me and just say, well, just give, give us one, one class, I would say the polyphenols, because they coincide with the black, blue and purple, which I know from surveys and just from looking at people's diets, that this is the category that people have too little of. So I would say that the Polyphenols are really important, and also how we cook food can modify the levels of polyphenols and different phytochemicals. So it's not just getting the food in season at the time when a lot of those phytochemicals are at their peak. It's how do we keep that going and then connect that into our bodies? Because much of how these different phytochemicals are working in our body is a dance between the phytochemicals from the food and how their gut microbiome is metabolizing those phytochemicals, which is why, just to give an example of this, not all women respond to soy isoflavones in the same way we see that there is a gut microbiome effect where some women are able to convert certain of those isoflavones to more active compounds that help with skin health, bone health and other aspects. But not every woman is doing that because she has a different gut microbiome. So I think it's a dance. It's not just the food, it's not just the phytochemical. It's that phytochemical. It's connection into our bodies. It's processing through the gut microbiome, and then ultimately, what you said before, our genetics, our cellular material, and how it's all being received and taken up.

Peter Williams  38:04  
So again, I think you're just revealing the complexity, particularly as as those clinicians are trying to make decisions with regards to the foods that we choose. But then, and again, to be fair, we have very little control of understanding how the microbiome chooses to do what it does. So there's a and I know, as I say, the amount of research going into the microbiome is pretty amazing. As I say, it's amazing what's coming out, but I still think we're very much at the beginning of having any understanding of what's going on and what happens to foods from the microbiome. I want to ask a couple more questions on this one. So I suppose my question is, can we do it all through food, or do we need to? Do we need to to supplement? What would you I mean? I suppose my my my conversation is always Well, again, I'm going to say it's always food first, but it really is patient dependent, from a point of view of, if there's something that's really missing, then we might have to give you something for a period of time, if we're if you've got the resilient, resilience and the time to be able to make the changes that we need to make. And what do you think? Because, as I say, I said, I know it is again people say, Well, you know, should never, you should never need it. But I've never come across anyone in over nearly 30 years now who've been able to get everything from their diet. I don't know whether that is because just the quality of what we can produce, as far as basic farming or plants, or, you know, even coming down to the bigger concept with regards to even even bacteria, and the loss of diversity within just the planet and the soils, etc, is really, actually, you know, the. Answer, because again, I look at most of my patients, and you know, you're probably like me, you'll either do red blood cell magnesium, or you might run to, you know, one of genovas tests. And I never, I've never, ever seen anyone who didn't need more magnesium. And I just almost sort of think, well, that's just part of where we are with how we interact with the planet and what we're doing to it at this time. What's your thoughts on this? Because obviously you're you're much more trained to understand where the literature is, where the science is on all of these aspects.

Dr. Deanna Minich  40:32  
I would say that we're very aligned everything that you just mentioned, I would agree with. So just to back up to what you were saying, food first, if you don't have a fundamental foundation of nutrient dense foods, then you're missing a lot of the complexity and a lot of those different micronutrients and phytonutrients in the perfect ratios in that food, right? And many times that's important for the bioavailability, for the metabolism and for the efficacy of the the different components within the food. So the food matrix is perfect, right? It is intelligent. It is the way that it's intended, yeah. But to your point, why do people still get sick, even if they are on a nutrient dense diet, they're doing all the right things. And I have seen this over and over again, especially even in for five years, I taught at a cancer retreat center, and I would come in and give the nutrition talk. And I remember one time there was a woman in the audience, because I would give them this talk about organically grown food, I would just give them a basic talk about nutrition. And, you know, I remember this one woman who was very upset, saying that she did all of those things, she did all of those things, and she still ended up with having this condition, right? You know, she had a particular cancer. And so there, there is so much that goes into our health, right? It is physical in the way of all of the inputs, how we sleep, and we talk about this in functional medicine, right? This is the personalized lifestyle medicine factors at the bottom. So we've got the sleep, the relaxation, we've got what we're eating, we've got all of those things. However, I do think there there are other aspects that we need, by way of our modern lifestyle that oftentimes necessitate the need for additional support from dietary supplements, and in some cases, the supplements are just filling the gap. They are like, as Doctor Kornberg would say, like filling the potholes on our road of life, right? You just gotta smooth out those potholes. You get overall, like a good foundation of that road because of the food and the lifestyle. But sometimes you're going to get potholes even the best of us where we're following everything to the letter. We're doing everything, but yet we may have additional needs because of genetics, or we may live in a part of the world where we incur increased total toxic load, so we need additional nutrients to move those things out. Now all of that said, I want to go to the other side, because you mentioned social media, and many times, what we see on social media is people showcasing that I take 100 supplements every day, and I need this in order to optimize my physiology and to feel my best. I think that there's a point of diminish diminishing returns where now we have all of these substances that are human, designed and formulated, and you know, whether they've got different casing around them. Some, you know, dietary supplements aren't always, I would say, pure. Sometimes there can be contaminants, depending on the quality. Sometimes you even get the introduction of certain endocrine disruptors because of coatings and things that are lacquered on the supplement to make it in a sustained, released format. As an example, right? So what does it say, if it takes us 80 to 100 supplements to make our way through the day. I feel like this is not sustainable. It's not accessible to most people, and I truly don't know whether or not that can make a difference, right? It's like we can't just patch the gap through the supplements. We really need to be looking a little bit deeper than at what is, is creating that, that need, and why? Why do we, you know, see the excessive need for certain supplements, so, you know, and we talk a lot about that in functional medicine, you know, what is excessive, what is reasonable, also what

Peter Williams  44:58  
is, you know, it's a. Again, this comes down to the crux of being in clinic, I suppose. The question is, is there a need for it, and do you have data to back that up, that for a certain set of time that we might need to do this because of x? But we're going to do that, and we're going to monitor, and we're going to measure the difficulty with that, as you know, Deea na is the cost. So we try to run, we're always trying to run people through three or four month protocols from a point of view of, here's what we found, here's what we want to do, here's what we're going to give you, here's why we're going to give you at the dosage that we think is appropriate, but, and we're going to run that for a period of time, and then we've got to, at some stage, we've got to look at the accounts again and decide whether we keep you on that or whether we bring you off. I mean, again. I mean, I don't know about you, but again, you, I think you sometimes look at haven't you, and you're using your clinical intuition that you're making the best guesstimate based off what your patient presents to you, what state they're in again, and I look at the supplementation is that is it? Are they capable of being able to go down the road in the way that you want them, in a fashion that they're going to be able to get better outcomes? And as you've probably not a lot of people are sick because they're stuck in a rut, and they're so time pressured that maybe giving them external supplementation based off test data is the right thing to do for that period of time. But that's where you've got to develop that long term strategy to say, I'm not so sure we should be doing this long term because I don't know what the outcomes are on that. I think, I sadly think, I think there's two things you have to buy quality on supplements, but I think also, I think it's big business now, particularly the longevity side. And I'm not convinced that most of it is helpful on that side against some of the big parameters that we know. As I say, you manage your stress, you're physically active, you sleep well, you have I mean, I'm very clear on on the data and the evidence that a rainbow of colors is almost exclusively the right thing to do for absolutely most people, and your capacity to do those main five, I still find it very difficult to move away from them, because that's where all the majority of the literature is. What's your what's your thoughts on that?

Dr. Deanna Minich  47:35  
Again, I think you and I are on the same page, and as you're talking, I'm almost having this flashback to when I was at the Functional Medicine Research Center, and I can remember a client coming in with a grocery bag of all of the supplements she was taking. You know, she would just go online and, you know, it becomes very attractive. I call it the shiny object syndrome, where it's like, oh, you know this, this new supplement is here, and it's going to solve all of your woes. And then you need this. And then it's like, it never stops. And then before you know it, you've got this big bag of supplements that you don't actually know what each of them are doing. So back to what you said about I want to go back to it, because it's a really important concept in functional medicine, and I think it's very streamlined, and it is called sequencing, right? So when you're doing testing, targeting supplements to whatever that test result is in a very streamlined way. So even within the Environmental Health module that I teach for for IFM we talk about sequencing, starting with food, first getting the elimination diet, then doing the reintroductions of foods, and then moving into a longer term, sustainable way of eating that incorporates foods to enhance detoxification processes in the body, more long term. But then by way of doing that, in addition to having the foundation, also layering in different supplements if there are indications where it would be needed in order to optimize or create efficiency, where there is inefficiency, an example of that would be something like methylation. Two out of three people have some kind of gene variant as it relates to one of the processes in the body, referred to as methylation. Methylation is used throughout the body. But if we're just talking about detoxification, it's really important for the ultimate removal of toxins, different toxins of various types, even hormones. So if we are short on B vitamins, we could be short changing methylation. One. So if we know that somebody has a snip and they're not eating enough in the way of B vitamins, we may need a supplement to help to patch the gap. And that's really easy to assess. We can actually look at methylation markers to see, okay, is this the right level? The one example I often go back to is omega threes. Okay, so since this is, you know, the topic of my, my PhD, I mean, I haven't this affinity to looking at fatty acids. They're really important because they form the foundation for our cells. Right? What goes in, what comes out, is determined so much by the composition of fat. So we want to get that right, and we don't want to predispose the body to a pro inflammatory state, which is through that omega three omega six balance. So very easily, people can measure their Omega three index to get a gage on what percentage within their blood they have of certain omega three fats like EPA and DHA. I just recently had mine done, right? Because I just automatically take two soft gels a day that give me about two grams of omega threes. And so I just recently had my levels tested, and my levels were just a little bit over 12% that's pretty high. Yeah, we want, we want levels to be at around eight and, you know, sometimes I think that the window of that is extending into upwards of, like maybe 12. But you know,

Peter Williams  51:36  
as far as I'm aware, the optimal levels is eight to 12% as far as I was aware from the reduction in cardiovascular disease. Can you carry on this? Because I'm going to pick your brains on a few things on it. Number one, what we see in clinical practice, but number number two, the oxidation of omega threes and all that. And again, I'll try and keep this simple for the for the audience, but if I can have someone like you on our podcast, and I can pick your brain on this, I think it's really quite, quite an important subject. Let me ask you, so I probably do. I'll probably do 10 fatty acid tests a month maybe. And I'm going to sort of argue that maybe the balance of the population group that comes in to see me is probably slightly different from normal, from a point of view of they're interested in health, and they're probably more socio economically. They have, they have probably more money than the most. But here's the message, and here's where I see Deanna all the time. It's pretty obvious the supplementing, because I see the Omega three levels, not fantastic. It's rare that I see an eight to 12% for sure, that's rare, but what I do see is consistent deficiencies across the sixes. And I think what that's telling me is that there's, there's a there's a message out there that is not telling the truth with regards to what sixes do. From a point of view of all the I pro inflammatory, and I'm almost literally test by test by test, I have to tell them the same story, that it's all about the levels. And again, the big argument with regards to seed oils, etc, etc, again, is driving what I see is, you know, inappropriate fatty acid levels consistently. It's literally, they almost like, look the same when they come in. It's like, not enough one, you know, and what they're missing, of course, is that the anti inflammatory effects of some of the six is the pro inflammatory punch of Arachadonic acid when you need it to be, how it helps your immune system at certain points. And it's all a question of balance. So what do you, I mean? Do you see the same or,

Dr. Deanna Minich  54:05  
yeah? Well, and what I was going to say, you know, just to piggyback on everything that you just mentioned, is that. So in my case, I have, you know, adequate levels, even a little bit more than adequate. So, you know, I would have to be thinking about my supplementation, because I also do eat fish. So then it's like, well, maybe I don't need as much, but I have seen clinically just the opposite, actually, where people are supplementing and they have levels around four to 5% so well under that minimum threshold of 8% EPA and DHA,

Peter Williams  54:39  
yeah. I mean, I see that all the time, even though you were saying you were saying,

Dr. Deanna Minich  54:46  
yeah. So that leads me to think, okay, it could be a number of things. Are they not taking up the fatty acids? So there's the absorption aspect. Are they metabolizing those fatty acids, or are they storing them in their own tissue? Issues and not accessible. And you know just what? What is the issue? Are they excreting them? So I do think that looking at that omega 3% can help to clue you in as to whether or not you need to do more on this aspect of dietary sources of Omega three and Omega six, or you need to change your supplement or your supplement regimen. Now you're asking a separate question within that about the importance of omega six and how that's getting overlooked. Because there's so much talk about omega threes and hammering on that nail that we're missing the fact that omega sixes are also essential fatty acids that the body cannot make and need to be in proper balance. Now, the reason why the whole thing on seed oils, I think, is taking off, is perhaps twofold. One is because the standard, I would even say, all over the planet, diet is moving more in this ultra processed, refined kind of food, way where we're starting to see more refined oils making their way into these lower quality, lower nutrient level foods. So we see a lot of soybean oil. I can speak to what I see in the United States. So soybean oil, we have a lot of corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, and many times in order to get the those oils, there is a whole process that has to happen in order to actually extract them from the foods. And some of those extraction methods are what are being called into question, is that really safe? You know, aren't you introducing you know, you oxidize those fats, and even when you cook with oils, you can get damage to the oil and create these oxidative byproducts, right? That are actually pro inflammatory. So fats break down in heat, light and oxygen. So that's why having fats in a non plastic container in the dark, away from the heat. And when I used to do home visits, I would see, you know, people putting their oils right next to their stove top. It's like, Ah, no. And even talking about, like, how to cook with oil. So I want to answer your question about the Omega six, however, because that is something that I have talked about before as well, where I don't actually tend to see that as much, where the ratio comes in in a way that is tipping the scale over to having more omega three relative to omega six, you know, I feel like it's still where people are getting a lot of omega six. However, that doesn't negate the aspect that within the Omega six fatty acid cascade, there are certain types of those fatty acids, like one of them is called GLA Yeah, which we know is really important for the skin, for the immune system. You mentioned arachidonic acid, which is important for the brain, especially for infants, as their brain is developing a year after they've been born. You know, it's really important to have proper levels of EPA, DHA but also arachidonic acid, but I think where the scales get tipped is when we have too much of the Omega six, which I do think people need to continue to look at that and make sure that we're not getting oxidized fats. To me, the bigger message is oxidation of these fats, which can then lead to a pro inflammatory effect in the body. So it's not just taking the fats in. It's what our bodies do with the fat and the milieu, the environment that the fats are in. Are they in a, I would say, the blood with a lot of pro inflammatory cytokines that are interacting with these fats. You know, fats have many different points of interaction. And so that's why things like carotenoids, these fat soluble plant compounds, can be very protective of places like the skin, the breast, the brain, anywhere where you have fat tissue, because otherwise you could have a lot of this. This the the oxidation, which is a good thing, you know, you want to burn fat, but then you have peroxidation, where you create free radicals. You're you're creating rancidity of the fat, and that's where fat becomes a problem. Like, like Jeff bland would say years ago, you can have happy fat, where, you know, fat is just like a depot of storage. You can have angry fat. And he was calling it angry fat from the aspect of the the pro inflammatory cytokines that can be made within fat tissue that create the problem. So I think it's it's not about and this is why fat has been maligned. It's not so much the eating of fat. It's about the quality of the foods that we're taking. In that contain those fats, how we're preparing the food, and then what does our body ecosystem look like in terms of the pro inflammatory, anti inflammatory balance scales? It because, if we're in a pro inflammatory state, could we be more apt to create free radicals and these breakdown products from from a lot of this interaction. So let's

Peter Williams  1:00:26  
ask you a clinicians question. And I'm sorry for everyone in me if you're getting a bit lost here, but sometimes you never get the choice chance to ask, so I'm going to ask. So let's assume you've got a pro inflammatory patient and their omega threes are low, and you want to dose them accordingly. Are you going to use some kind of antioxidant protection? Because you're worried about whether the Omega threes are going to preferentially oxidize, or more readily oxidize in that situation,

Dr. Deanna Minich  1:01:02  
first, I'd be looking at their food, their dietary intake, to be sure that they are not having a pro inflammatory diet, because those are the largest amount of signals that you have, right? So I'd want to be sure, like, is there something dietarily That I can correct to move that person into a more anti inflammatory state versus a pro inflammatory state. And then to bring in, you know, some of the the better quality fish oil supplements actually have antioxidants built in. So one that I'm thinking about, I really love what Jeff did with big bold health, because he has his when it first came out, it was called Fire and Ice, and I really love He doesn't call it that anymore, but it is actually the fish oil matrix. So it's kind of like we could liken it to like cod liver oil, where it's not just the fatty acids, but now you get vitamin A, you get vitamin D, you get the other constituents that are in the oil that can be protective and like built in antioxidants. In fact, even back to my my grad school days, even though I was studying carotenoids, we did do this experiment with fats. And you know, you look at corn oil and a lot of these processed oils, but many times they also do contain naturally occurring vitamin E, if they're from a seed which tend to be enriched. And I'm not advocating and condoning seed oils for that reason, but what I'm saying is, like, your question is a good one, that many times good quality oils will already have more than just the isolated fatty acids, there'll be more in it, and that's what you would be looking for. But you've gotta layer that as best as possible with a better foundation. Is my take,

Peter Williams  1:02:51  
and it's almost what you're saying them. It's going back to the pleiotropic effect of the whole plant, rather than the isolated compounds that are drawn out of the plant. That's sort of what you're saying with the fish oil there, aren't you? It says, the more we can have this, well, I suppose the more we we eat those oily fish. Of course, the problem is there is that, you know that the bigger the fish, the more likely that they're going to have some degree of pollutant in them. Unfortunately, you're in it for time.

Dr. Deanna Minich  1:03:24  
I am okay for time. Yeah, just five to seven minutes.

Peter Williams  1:03:30  
Let me sort of just come, not quite sure where to go next on this one, but there's a couple of things on this. Is that, obviously you've written quite a few books, and I'll put everything on the on all the details, the rainbow diet, the whole detox aspects, we'll put those, we'll put those on the show notes. But can we talk about some of the things where you're integrating nutrition, spirituality, psychology, and how they all how do they? Because this is a, as you say, systems approach. Can you, can you give us a bit more understanding of how they interact with each other?

Dr. Deanna Minich  1:04:11  
Absolutely, I have a phrase that I've come to which is, colorful foods make for colorful moods. And so what this means is that the foods that we're eating that are these colorful, phytochemically enriched foods are not just good for lowering the risk for chronic diseases that we're all kind of like living in fear of or want to avoid. What we also see is that these plant foods help with things like mental health. In fact, I was over in the UK, I think it was last year, where I gave a talk on this whole aspect of nutritional psychology, and looking at how there are studies now showing that these phytochemicals are playing a role in the. Brain axis  to the aspect of looking at improving improvements in mood, improvements in cognition, improvements in learning and memory. So overall, just our psychological distress can be reduced. We can have increased creativity, increased curiosity, increased flourishing. There's one really neat article that talks about, I think the title is on carrots and curiosity, and it's a scientific publication where the authors, and I believe that they're British, they're going into their findings with a population and eating plant foods and essentially having markers of greater well being. So I would say that the message is not just, you know what we've heard for so many years, like, Okay, five a day. Just get your fruits and veggies and reduce your risk for all these different diseases. It's not just that these colorful, beautiful plant foods enriched in phytochemicals are having real mood effects. So I often wonder, you know, we look at whether it's the pandemic, we look at kind of like the the stresses of the day, could we be better modifying our responses and our mental health, which are definitely at an all time low. I mean, so many, even children now, you know, having lots of different behavioral mood disorders at a younger and younger age. What if we brought in things like, just like the purple, black, blue foods like blueberries, like, if we started to modify the brain, we started to create a brain protective effect. You know, even these polyphenols that we take in through these foods, very I would say they're, they're protective against even some of the micro plastics that we hear about with the brain, which we do need to be, that has to be on the forefront, is like, how do we reduce toxic load that could impact brain function? So there's that. We also know that there are studies where the researchers actually looked at eating more of these different foods, whether it is a blueberry extract or anthocyanins from red cabbage, and seeing real changes in the gut, brain access, you know, having greater anthocyanins in the diet from these blue purple foods tend to be associated with lower depressive symptoms. I actually gave a whole talk on it's it was called The Power of purple, and it was talking about the brain effects of these purple foods, and how the flavonoids, these polyphenols, help to modulate and promote consciousness. And so what I would say is that it's not just food is not just about our physical body. Food is about our emotional mental mental wellness. It's about our quality of life. And for many people, you know, once they get their basics of life, you know, they start thinking deeper into like purpose and meaning. And in functional medicine, we call that the spirit aspect of the matrix, which is all about, you know, giving people a sense of awe, giving people a sense of hope and connection with things like nature. When we're eating nature, we become and become more aware of those impacts, right? We start to align better. So that's what I would say, in terms of the psychological aspects, I think for me personally, this became really important, that food became a path to personal growth. And so many people want to feel healthier, but the reason why they want to feel and be healthier is so that they can reach this level of happiness, contentment and satisfaction and fulfillment with their lives, right? It's like a method and a means to get to that state of being. So what I would say is that, again, the colors of food track to the colors of our mood and I know that you're all about tools, one of the things that I created because of this connection was a food and mood tracker. So it's very simple. It's one page, and you're free to use it if you want. You can put

Peter Williams  1:09:26  
it in the show notes, or, you know, we will definitely do that.

Dr. Deanna Minich  1:09:29  
Okay, so it's just all the days of the week. Then I have two tracks of colored circles for each day. The first track of colored circles is for the colors of their food that they check off. And then the other set of circles are the colors of their moods, which I describe in the instructions of how to do that. So like blue is feeling blue or kind of down, red is more reactive and kind of stressful. So it's the whole spectrum of those emotions. And so. The intent here isn't as much about quantifying. It's about looking at the quality of our lives, how we feel emotionally, and is there a connection to the colors of food that we're eating? Because what I have found, and again, this is just more anecdotal and clinical, not scientific, is that typically people are eating a lot of brown, yellow and white foods. And to me, that translates into being lackluster, devoid of phytonutrients, right? They're kind of like the temporary feel good foods.

Peter Williams  1:10:34  
A question for you, then, God, as I say, we could be rare all day. There's so many questions, so I'm pretty sure that I know that you know. So if you're an interior designer, you use certain colors to change certain moods. So what I'm trying to get, get is is that, is that, because the brain registers at that color in some way, shape or form by just seeing it and that has a physiological response, does it I mean? And what I'm trying to say is, does that also happen through food, even though that color is representative of some degree of phytochemical that is causing the change? So my point is, is there a double aspect to colors in food.

Dr. Deanna Minich  1:11:25  
I love the question, because you're getting at the psychology of color beyond the phytochemicals. And so I would say yes, is what I sense. There is no data to support that. But look at social let's go back to social media. Look at all of the foodies out there that are making all of these dishes. And you know, there's kind of this foodie culture of just looking at the art of food, looking at the beauty of food. And I don't know about you, but I love looking at, like, the bright hues, how people put things together on the plate. To me, the plate is like a palette. It's like all of these colors, how they all sync up, how they all come together. That's part of the experience of eating, right? And I think that we have not emphasized that to the same level that we talk about nutrition. So I think of it in two ways. I think of nourishment, which is the company that we eat with. Sure it is the growing of the food and feeling connected to maybe that food, where it came from, the farmer, where we got it from. It's like, you know, the whole aspect that surrounds the eating and even after the eating. So, you know, kind of like, how did that food make us feel? So that could be the colors on the plate that we see, but it's it's more than that too. It's the art, it's the beauty, it is the creativity. It's the the sea that we didn't talk about in the four different pillars that I talk about, which is creativity, creativity and food can be like the a whole aspect of of healing and enrichment for somebody? Yeah, I

Peter Williams  1:13:05  
look at this from a point of view of the more. So I'll give you an example. We do quite a lot of genetics on gene variants, on behaviors, and because, as you probably know, it's not that people don't know what they should be doing, but they tend to sabotage behaviors that becomes problematic from them. So we'll do quite a lot of gene variants across dopamine, we'll do comped, we'll look at GABA, we'll look at serotonin. And what that brings me more and more to is I'm going to example, the reason why people become addicted to the sex, drugs and rock and roll is not is, I think, is in part, because there is a genetic predisposition that pushes them that way. And so what I'm going I'm going a bit round in circles here. But what I'm trying to say is, is that I think there's always a reason. And what word I'm going with this is that I just believe that everything we've talked about a color serves an eve potential evolutionary benefit to us. So when we're looking at it, there's some again, and this could be from from the way we've evolved, that there's an evolutionary benefit that we sort of know our body sort of recognizes, that maybe we just certainly know it from plants, and certainly all your workers, has infused all of us functional medicine practitioners, to recognize how important the the phytochemical rainbow of colors is, but do you think that is, again, why we like looking at the foods that you were talking about on social media? Because there's it's not just that esthetically, it's pleasing, but the esthetically pleasing aspects is, there's more. There's got to be. More to it. For me, there's, there has to be something that is driving genetics, or I or some kind of benefit to is on a on a very deep level, whether that is because it's, it's, you know, it's, it's priming some biochemical pathways, and this, that's what I was talking when you were talking about the mood aspect as well. Do you think there's anything there?

Dr. Deanna Minich  1:15:23  
I think that's beautiful. I think it's a beautiful premise. To look at it from an evolutionary stance, or from a way to benefit our survival, by looking for those red berries in the forest or avoiding those red berries in the forest, if they would not lead to our survival, right? That color became a cue. And even within the animal kingdom, you can see this, that color is a lure to reproductive function and also fertility. So as an example, and I even talk about this because I was always fascinated with the color orange. And when you look at guppies, so the small fish you know, the the aspect of color and the intensity of color acts as a reproductive lure that you know. And this is my human brain imposing a thought process upon something within the animal kingdom. But essentially, that you know, what has been postulated is that when you have the plumage of a flamingo, yeah, yeah, of a bird, right? Like that in some way signals reproductive fitness and makes that a very attractive partner, right? So, like, color is wired into us very deeply. And why is it that we have three cones in the eye that see these colors and then combinations of colors. But then you have, you know, a certain kind of shrimp that lives in the bottom of the ocean with like 22 cones, and can see all these different spectra of of light and different colors because of their survival and needing to look at something in a certain way, and they're going to have a different refraction of light in a space of darkness, right? So yes, to to answer your question, yes, I think that color is much more than looking pretty. I think it is signaling something about our survival, and even going further into creating more and having that aspect of creative or reproductive fitness. So I think that there's a lot there under that hood of color. And you know, it starts with food. It starts with also what colors we wear, what colors we're looking at. You know, when, when people do so one of the programs that I do, it's called Whole detox, and it's every three days, we move into a different color. And so I've taken, you know, so many people through this program, and one of the things that ends up happening, it's really funny how this occurs, but I get people that tell me that even when they start eating colorful foods, they start to change their environment, whether they paint the walls in a room of their house, or they change their furniture from gray to some other color, or they're wearing a different color, they're looking at color in a Different way. Somehow, there's always this connection to like taking the food experience and amplifying it through their environment and their personal take on on life, because food is like a window into the rest of our lives. So what we eat, how we eat, when we eat, is all connected it into how we live, what we are living, how we are living, like they're interconnected, so like one begets the other. So when we start to pay attention to color through food, we start to pay attention to color in our lives. So I've actually palpably seen that with people going through an experience where they simply eat more colorful foods.

Peter Williams  1:19:03  
We could be here for days. So let me. Let me get you, and I really appreciate your time. I know you're way over it. Let me get you to what would be your piece of advice for people who are listening into this, who maybe haven't heard much of this before, what would be your one main piece of advice from an expert? Of course, that's why we've got you on.

Dr. Deanna Minich  1:19:27  
Well, I would say I want to leave everybody with the four concepts that I talk a lot about, which are actually nature's principles, color. You know, explore color for yourself. And you know whether it means getting those colors on your plate, diversifying the colors that you're getting, explore color. Start wearing different colors. Number two, creativity. Get creative around your food and eating. Experience new combinations of things. I think that you know, playing in the kitchen, having fun in the kitchen is a more. Sustainable practice than just making meals or like, seeing food as an analysis, paralysis of a function. The third one is diversity. Change it up. You know, really try to get out of your food ruts. Because when you get out of food ruts, you get out of life ruts. Yeah. So aiming for different foods. And, you know, the number that has been floating around is, you know, something on the order of 30 to 50 unique plant foods in a week that benefits the gut microbiome. We know about that from the American gut project. So diversify your foods. And number four is rhythm. Eat seasonally. And if you don't know what seasonal foods are look them up. You know, there are so many websites now where you can key in your location. You can find out what is local, what is seasonal. Ask your neighborhood grocer. Go to a farmer's market, because then you'll tend to see what is seasonal and what is actually appearing in your area. So use that smorgasbord of four things, color, creativity, diversity and rhythm. And just pick one you know, don't feel like you have to pick them all, because any one of those will lead to all of those. So just pick your path up the mountain, and eventually you're going to arrive at the same destination.

Peter Williams  1:21:20  
Brilliant. Deanna, listen. Obviously we went on a bit bit there, but I'm really appreciative that was just such a fantastic podcast for us. So I'm really, really thankful that we got you on. I really appreciate your

Dr. Deanna Minich  1:21:35  
time. Oh, absolutely my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Okay,

Peter Williams  1:21:39  
thanks so much.

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