Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Beyond Diet Dogma: A Conversation with Jon Engelson
Ever feel overwhelmed by conflicting nutritional advice? Our conversation with Jon Engelson cuts through the noise with a refreshingly balanced perspective, gained from over 30 years in the fields of diet, nutrition, and holistic healing.
Jon's journey began with a medical misdiagnosis in his mid-20s, sparking his exploration of alternative approaches when conventional methods failed his mother, who suffered from multiple sclerosis. What separates his philosophy from most health experts is his commitment to finding "what works" rather than dogmatically following a single approach. He's witnessed remarkable results from wildly different diets—from macrobiotics to carnivore—because different bodies have different needs.
We dive into the problematic economics driving our food and healthcare systems. As Jon aptly notes, "If you're healthy, there's zero money for companies," explaining why food quality declines while processed options become cheaper and more addictive. This creates a cycle where poor nutrition leads to health problems requiring pharmaceutical interventions—a profitable cycle for industries, but devastating for public health.
Most powerfully, we explore how disconnected modern society has become from food sources. Many people have never seen vegetables growing or understood where their food originates. Both Jon and I share our experiences reconnecting people with food through gardening, cooking from scratch, and slowing down to appreciate meals in community rather than rushing through drive-throughs.
Ready to discover your personal path to better health through real food? Learn why "you are what you eat eats" matters more than following the latest trend, and why finding joy in the process creates lasting change when strict diets fail.
To order the best air-dried, grass-fed, pasture-raised steak slices, go to:
And use code at checkout: thankyou15
To get 15% off your order.
Intro for podcast
information about subscriptions
Here is the link for Sunday's 4 pm Pacific time Zoom meeting
Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and today we have a very special guest. His name is John Ingleson and he's a seasoned expert in diet, nutrition and holistic healing. He's got over 30 years of dedicated study to the field and since the mid-90s John's been instrumental in helping his clients, family, friends, embrace natural healing through dietary interventions. And that alone connects us deeply because, as anybody knows, I'm all about the food and the diet, and as a primary pillar of health. So, john, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. A little bit hot here in New York, but it's all good.
Speaker 1:I've heard you guys are really getting baked. Right now I'm in Southern California and in the Inland Empire and generally it's, you know, 100 plus degrees and it's been seasonably mild for us lately, so I think we switched places.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess we did. I mean, I'm from, I grew up in LA, in West Los Angeles, so I know it very, very well, and I went to school at UC San Diego.
Speaker 1:So got it, got it. Well, I you know it's been a crazy weather dynamic the last few years and apparently it's on track to keep getting crazier. So hopefully we can start figuring some things out as a race of humans and maybe turn some things around.
Speaker 2:Great to be with you. Thank you again.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. Food is obviously one of, if not the most important pillar of health and today, you know, we live in this information world where information's everywhere good, bad and sideways and every kind of diet these days is touted as the way to health. And you know, you've got the raw vegans and then you get the carnivores, on both sides of the spectrum. And it's my opinion that there are so many different kinds of people that probably each of these diets might be the perfect one for a particular person. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your experience with diet, nutrition and holistic healing?
Speaker 2:Sure, I like to grab that because those are very similar thoughts that I have and I'll go into some of the details. So I grew up in a very medical family. My father was a doctor and professor of medicine at USC. My grandfather was a doctor. My uncle was a doctor head of Chicago Medical School. I was pre-med at UCSD but I did not. I ended up with a degree in economics. I kind of bucked trend. That's a big twist. Yeah, I, you know I. Just you know I. I guess I have a very short attention span and I didn't think I could make it through seven or eight years of medical school or even more. I just didn't have the dedication that you know a lot of my friends did at the time. I was more, you know, boogie boarding the beautiful coast of La Jolla and Del Mar and, you know, study here and there. That was my motto. I play music, I play piano, I played in a rock and roll band.
Speaker 1:I have quite a bit in common. My dad was a surgeon and I didn't like school much at all. I turned out to be an entrepreneur and started a bunch of businesses and, you know, went my own way. But you know, knowledge and intelligence generally don't have a whole lot to do with school, and intelligence generally don't have a whole lot to do with school.
Speaker 2:Correct. Correct, I mean, and we find that out later and that the school system, that system, you know, works for some people. But for the entrepreneur, which I share your thoughts and your feelings with, having started the company from scratch a couple of companies and so I really went in that direction, but in my health and nutrition, let's just say genesis. In my mid 20s I was misdiagnosed by by some of the best doctors in the world, so to speak, in Beverly Hills. My father sent me I had at the time, they said, an enlarged liver and spleen and we had all the testing and, thank God, at the end of the whole process, which went on for a number of months, they said they made a mistake and that sort of set me on a path that I always thought like there was something in the system that wasn't quite right. Unfortunately, my mother had multiple sclerosis, so I had to. You know she had to deal with a lot, just as her son seeing her slowly debilitate over the years in walking with crutches and then wheelchair and then becoming paralyzed. So then, dealing with that, not seeing her helped with all the standard medical treatment. So I sort of hit a journey.
Speaker 2:At that point I was about 25 and I met somebody named Mayor Abisera who is a master in macrobiotics, and I had some small health issues you know, coughing a lot mucus and he put me on this particular diet and I started to get very interested in diet and nutrition from that point, and also alternative we learned a lot about, because he knew a lot of other things, including herbal supplements to take and homeopathy, and that just started my my path and I went very, very strongly since then, then that I feel like I'm on that journey, uh, now almost, uh, 40 years from that and uh, you know, learning along the way and and and changing paths and learning about things and what I found and in my own seminars that I've given. Uh, you know, here in, here in New York and in other places, um, my mantra is two words and that is I think it will resonate to where you started the conversation with this what works Right. I've seen things people in macrobiotics work very well.
Speaker 1:I've seen carnivore work unbelievably well, sure, and I think you know God has blessed us with many, many paths to the golden, golden ticket and it's interesting Just recently we were had a group of people over we're building a sweat lodge in my gardens and this amazing community that I've been cultivating for for a little while, and we were sitting down sharing a meal and I looked at one of them and we were talking about, you know, similarities and you know how people say, oh, you're just like me and this, and that I said you know, the only thing that we have in common is the fact that we're entirely different, and I think that that's an important thing to remember.
Speaker 1:You know, you're talking about your journey of health and the different facets of it. Again, we share a lot of common things. Maybe one day we'll share some stories about how we came to where we did, but it sounds like we walked down a similar path, and the thing about holistic wellness and health and healing is that it's people think oh, you're all about herbs, you're all about supplements, you're all about homeopathy, whatever that one thing is, and there's no one thing. There's so many things and you can spend probably many lifetimes, you know, just getting to know these things, much less becoming an expert at it. So I really like the fact that you seem to be on the journey and and probably never leave it just, like me.
Speaker 2:Well, well, yes, and I think I, in a certain way, I was. I was lucky that I didn't get pigeonholed into one way of thinking. And this is the issue in you know, you have the allopathic medical world and you tell that you speak to somebody about alternative things and they look at you like you're, you're crazy, I don't know about that. Yeah, and in the even in the homeopathy world, they don't like the herbalist, the herbalist like the homeopathist Nobody. They're kind of opposites. You know the homeopathy is about Nobody likes the supplement, vitamin people, oh, yeah, so, and I'm like, I've seen this stuff work well for everybody. You know, I've seen you get a bruise. You take Arnica Montana, sure, you start to feel a little bit of nasal congestion. You take Echinacea, golden seal Okay, one is homeopathic, one is herbal. You know, things like turmeric, other things that can induce inflammation, unbelievable, unbelievable herbs.
Speaker 2:So I'm like, I'm like you're stuck, people get stuck in these corners, right, you're, you're stuck, people get stuck in these corners, right, and even people that are, you know, look, I, I, I really got into diet, uh, study, I mean like I accelerated in the last few years.
Speaker 2:Okay, because it's because the diet that fascinated, fascinated me the most recently is carnivore, because to me it went against all of my thinking of uh, just it, just sort of it, just sort of subterfuged my whole way, and I said I got to be open to this and then I saw person after person after person after person being helped In one way or another, you know they. So I wasn't, I wasn't, I didn't care so much about the met, the messenger. I was caring about like I would watch the messenger and then I would look at the comments and each comment was like you know, I'm 68 and I had high blood pressure. I changed like this, and now I'm, I'm feeling and I was like, wow, that's amazing. But even in that world you have people like you have people more extreme and less extreme, and you have people like Anthony Chaffee that that if he touches a vegetable it's like the world is going to come to an end. But that's not the way it is for a lot of people. You know so exactly.
Speaker 1:And you know, frankly, there's a there's a whole nother twist to that is that if somebody has cancer, that's the opposite of what they need. So you know there are these caveats and these different facets of things. And again, you know, I tell people all the time, you know you've got to pay attention to you all the time because we change. Somebody can go along and have a metabolism a certain way, and then all of a sudden, tomorrow they might be allergic to the very thing that they used to give them nutrition. And if you don't pay attention to it, you know you can have a world of problems.
Speaker 2:And yeah, and nobody's in. You know this idea that, like everybody, like blood, normal blood pressure should be 120 over 80 for everybody. It's like saying everybody should be 6'2", 203 pounds. You know Exactly. He says, oh, the doctor wants me to put on blood pressure medicine. Right, I'm thinking he's got really high blood pressure. What's your blood? He goes 135 over 85. I'm going you've got to be kidding me. I mean, are you joking me? You know, like I mean, if you're not 160 or 180, you know like what is that?
Speaker 2:And so, look, we can divert to the philosophical discussion of, you know, the FDA, food Drug Administration. Like, what does food have to do with drugs? I always say, what's the two? And then you realize the junk in the food because they're putting so many chemicals God forbid the bad health which leads to the drugs. And it's just. The cycle is over, over and over again. And as an economist, I have and have an entrepreneur, and you can share this. I love the free market. I think it's amazing. You know, I buy a bottle of water or whatever I buy, and I pay a dollar or two dollars and I'm happy and they're happy. But the place where it doesn't work well is in two places, and it's the place where we're discussing, and that is in the uh, in the food industry and in the health industry. Because you're healthy, there's zero money for any of the companies, exactly zero, exactly. So the issue is the bar keeps lowering because they have to keep themselves in business. So what people they gave at 50 now is 45. That 45 is 40.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Like eight, now it's you know less. So between the spectrums, they keep telling you you've got to have this and they, and they use the two primal uh emotions, uh, which is fear. I mean the two primal emotions that we have is fear and greed of human beings. So they use fear. If you don't do this, this is going to happen, this is going to happen, and uh, and in, the uh, in in the, in the food companies. The only way they can raise their profits is by lessening the quality of their food. So it used to be three ingredients in the food, now it becomes six or seven of really bad ingredients like maltodextrin and all these things that are made from corn and just highly refined things to get people to continue to sort of addict them to the products and the sugar the sugar.
Speaker 1:That's a whole. That's a whole world.
Speaker 2:The whole world of sugar is just unbelievable.
Speaker 1:The other side of it is that the price of things the more processed it is, generally the cheaper it is. And the more pure and close to source generally, the more expensive it is, and so you start to get into these dynamics of. You know the people that can even afford to eat quality food unless they grow it themselves, and you know how many people have the space and the wherewithal to do that. Not nearly as many as used to, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yes, they've taken that out of our hands, so it's become so. You know, they've addicted us to bad food because it's really tasty and addicting, oh yeah. And then they've made it inexpensive for us, right, so we can go to.
Speaker 1:It lasts forever. You don't have to worry about it going bad, you just Well don't think about.
Speaker 2:and it's amazing because people don't think about the quality of the food, they just they think they're just getting full in the morning, you know day after.
Speaker 1:It's good, yeah, it tastes good and it's filling. Exactly there you go, it's good, it's easy, you know. You drive down the road and you look at where the food information is coming to you and it's incessant and it's all fast food. It's all quick and easy and competitively cheap, if you will and you're never going to see a billboard that says apples Right, exactly.
Speaker 2:You know, I had this discussion with somebody the other day. It was like and even the price of things, people don't care, they'll go to a Starbucks and they'll get like a coffee and a donut and a date whatever it is Danish, it's like 20 bucks on it, yeah, whatever it is. So I particularly like eggs that are soy free and corn free. I buy very high and for eggs I might pay 80 cents to a dollar an egg. It's crazy, yeah, but if I have three eggs for breakfast, that's 33 dollars. Yeah, it's really nothing. That's one quarter the price. And I have 18 grams of protein, choline, I mean all sorts of healthy eggs are a beautiful food, a beautiful nutrition, yeah, and the guy's like, oh, that's expensive.
Speaker 1:But you just spent $10 for nothing. That went into you. $12 on a cup of coffee with some sugar in it. Yeah, crazy.
Speaker 2:So the mindset of health has to you know. So if we have to pay a little bit more, so isn't that important? You know what's valuable to a person and that's what I try to instill in people Like, don't be cheap on that. You know you, you'll go about and you'll buy all the things that we buy ourselves. Uh, you know here and there and, and you're going to be chintzy on, you know if you've got to go a little bit better, go a little organic things like this and support people, uh, who?
Speaker 1:because it does cost more. You know that's a big point. You know I have a little farm and I have chickens and people you know don't have any idea really how much it costs to to feed animals and things like that, especially if you're going to feed them. Well. And you know, you know that's to me. Actually I'm blown away at how cheap eggs are when you look at the price of food and you know we feed our chickens well and those eggs are worth every penny that somebody might pay for them. I guarantee you that. And then the work it takes to grow good vegetables without putting a bunch of poisons and fertilizers on it requires quite an effort. And when somebody you go to a farmer's market or some local store that supports local growers, you know what, whatever they charge, it's worth it, I guarantee you.
Speaker 2:I agree, and this is again, this is a mentality that I'm trying to help people with to get out of this. I got a deal or I'm going to get something cheaper, or something like that.
Speaker 2:You know, value means that we pay for what we get, so if you want garbage and you want junk and you want to buy a giant the exercise cereal that has no nutrition in it $4.99, you know, from Costco, right, go ahead, I mean, you can do that, but you know you're. But no, you're, you're not getting any nutrition and you're just, you know, putting empty calories into your body and you're just putting empty calories into your body. And for you to have nutrition, you need to have the right whole, fresh and real. I call those three things whole, fresh and real foods Agreed and move to that. We're going to see.
Speaker 2:You know, I have clients that come to me and it's very hard for people to change. That's why, by the way and this is we could sort of segue into this better I'm a very, very, very, very powerful believer in anecdotal evidence when it comes to health and nutrition, over empirical, because I can tell you this people will pay me money as a health consultant put them on a particular way of eating right and they're paying good money right, and they can't hold on to that for one week or too many of them, and I can go into reasons why, but it's very difficult.
Speaker 2:So when they tell you a hundred people did this in a study two months, they ate like this right, I'm like you're joking me.
Speaker 1:I totally appreciate that I'm on a ridiculously rigid diet right now as I'm overcoming my cancer and, trust me, most people couldn't handle it for a week, much less it. And it doesn't even matter. People will know these things and their life is at stake, and they still won't do it. It's worse than an addiction, really. I think your eating habits are some of the most deeply ingrained patterns that you have in your brain and they're real hard to unwind.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and two clients that come in mind in particular, one was, and both of them have the same issue. A lot of people have the same issue Overweight, sympathetic, right overweight sympathetic high triglycerides A1c at 5.8, 6, whatever. And here I'm trying to change it, so one relatively simple solution.
Speaker 1:It's not easy to do.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly. So one guy is a single guy older guy, single and he doesn't know how to cook. He never knows how to cook for himself, you know. So I'm like I try one of them, and he wouldn't even know how. One of our sessions was just going to one of the supermarkets to show him what type of foods.
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually man. It's the easiest thing to do.
Speaker 2:You can't really, you know it's like second nature, like I'm like I can't really, you know it's like second nature, like I'm like I can't believe this. And the guy who was married had four or five kids and he was like, oh so I have to have my chicken without those sauces and out this thing, and like it became complicated it's not so simple of how to change your change this.
Speaker 2:So agree when I look at somebody, um, and I say anecdotal, I say like this if somebody comes to me or I hear of a story and they have these issues, then I try to ask the questions what led up to these issues? What are you eating at this point? And if that's what's leading up to the issues, then I'll say, listen, maybe we need to move obviously to a different way, sort of the opposite way. If something's going this way, we got to turn it around Right and usually that does the trick for a lot of people.
Speaker 1:So if you get to the source of a problem and make a slight adjustment, then kind of the compound effect takes care of it after a minute. But if you're busy trying to make these big changes to patterns the brain just goes ah, I don't want it, I don't want it, I don't want it. It's like trying to quit an addictive drug or something, a really ingrained habit.
Speaker 2:And I 100%, and I tell people all the time I try to drill this in. It's not a zero sum game, it's not all or nothing, it's incremental. If you walked five floors instead of take the elevator that day, you did something positive. Exactly that's what it's about you. There's no. That's why all these things fail. By the way, because the guy says I'm gonna go to the gym five times a week, right, they, on january 1st, they buy the, lose the weight get ripped in a month, it's like yeah, no, you're not they buy the clothing, they get all the stuff, and then you know, later they're like they're petered out.
Speaker 2:So you gotta work into these things and you have to do. Uh, one of the one of the influencers I kind of like is this woman named I don't know if you've heard of her lily kane name sounds familiar, I don't know very bubbly and very uh and she's like I just saw a video from her today.
Speaker 2:She's like you're not going to stick to anything unless you like to do it. So if you want to, exactly yes, fun. You like ping pong, do ping pong. Yes, you know. And if you 100, he goes. I can't eat liver if they paid me, so don't tell her because I can't stand it. So if you can't stand something, you're not going to keep eating it. So you have to work around people and make it more of a happy, and attitude also plays a great part in this.
Speaker 1:I could not agree more. I call it vitamin J. If you can find some joy in a thing you're doing, you'll do it. And you know, for me, I have a little stream in my property and I dig that stream. That's my gym. I go in there and I dig it out. I find water comes up that keep the fish alive and I just I'm like a little boy and it I get a big workout anytime I want it and I keep moving and it's it's. It's my crazy little thing but works and I find my way, you know, to health that way. But anybody you find anything that you enjoy doing and and and determine that it's helping get you on your path, even some. Then you know, go after it because you'll do it, because it's fun exactly, exactly and again it has to look.
Speaker 2:It's like everything else, everything in life there. What? What a lot of these people in the diets world don't take into account? I don't see enough of it, you know, and I look at a lot of people. They don't take into account the social aspect.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know it's like okay, I'm on this incredibly amazing diet, I'm super, super healthy, but you know a couple you want to go out to dinner with. You know a couple.
Speaker 1:So when you don't?
Speaker 2:have to dinner anymore. You don't do it.
Speaker 1:You become that guy. You know you can't go anywhere. Or you're that jerk at the restaurant that's like do you have this crazy thing? Or you know I got to take all this stuff off of my thing.
Speaker 2:I was just like yeah, so so the social aspect. I think that's why, uh, uh, I'll speak for a country that I love a lot, because is italy and the italian, uh, you know, they have, they have a lot of joy around their, their, food is culture, it's all part of the very healthful food, meaning it's all fresh, you know, it grown, and it's.
Speaker 2:It's like, uh, there's actually a restaurant in italy somewhere I was looking at one of the one of the um history things and uh it is. They don't have any food for that day, except for the food that they're going to serve that day, right, all fresh. Yeah, crazy. They've no refrigerator in the place, exactly it's. It comes in and they're they're serving it and it's like, wow, it's like. So the joy around food, the time around food, the idea that we made, you know, this one hour lunch break where the person takes 10 minutes to run to get to lunch, order your food and eat in 10 minutes and then run back, this is insane, crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they'll spend two, three hours in a meal and half of it's preparing sitting around talking about it.
Speaker 2:The idea of preparing food is such a beautiful thing. My wife is a great cook she's Lebanese, actually and she has a lot of great recipes. But I love to cook and it gives me a lot of you know. After a day of you know, let's say you know working. I do a lot of marketing and you know I want to just go to the kitchen and put fresh food in and and and try different things and it's it's. It's a joy and it's very sad. You know the young people today. I don't think they even know where food comes from. They don't.
Speaker 1:I have a garden and we we offer what we call therapeutic horticulture and education. And people come to the garden and they see, you know, vegetables growing and I watch their eyes get big. They're like, oh wow, I didn't know that. You know that happened. That's where food came from. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like unbelievable. The miracle I mean God's miracle of food is like you didn't put the seed, you didn't make the seed. You didn't make the seed. You didn't make the seed, you didn't make the ground, you didn't make any of this the water, the grow, everything and all of it.
Speaker 2:You just try to tend it and put it together where it works exactly any of it, yeah, and all these things come out, this one comes out, a tomato, comes out a celery, this it's so unbelievable, like the wonder, the wonder, the wonderment of it lost. And I think you know if we can sort of get that back grassroots to help I mean anybody and everybody and anybody, but to particular young people. And I like to, you know, help young people in that way, because I feel like it's very, very important for them to know, you know, where things come from. I mean, it's just, it's crazy, you know.
Speaker 1:I think that's entirely important. So we're running a little thin on time and I wanted to give you a chance to kind of really wrap in. You know all the things that you wanted to, and I'd like to hear a little more about your consulting and you know how people find you and really how that all works.
Speaker 2:So you know, I'll show you the product here. Let me just get it out here. So I work with a company called Joburg Steak Slices. Okay, they are grass-fed pasture-raised, air-dried steak slices.
Speaker 1:And we have a number of flavors.
Speaker 2:They're really delicious and I help them with all their marketing and their branding. And you know we go to low-carb shows, we go to, you know, people. Is it like a jerky sort of a product? Well, I think, but it's. You know it only has three ingredients. You know it's beef, apple cider vinegar and some spices. So you know, jerky is usually, you know, full of a lot of junk.
Speaker 1:All the nitrates and all the stuff that you're not supposed to have.
Speaker 2:Right, we have no nitrate. So what I've tried to do is help in look making the world is. The reality of the world is people are on the go and that's not going to stop. They're not going to be able to sit down every time to have a square meal, but if we can help them along the way with something you know, that's, you know, packed with nutrition and protein and, you know, not going to spike your blood sugar, and so this is, you know. It's been a great, great journey for myself, and the company again is called Joburg Meats.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that I've always. I got this from Dr Gundry, but it was a good saying that came through some of his work and you know the idea is, you are what you eat and people can go yeah, that makes sense. But the other thing is you are what you eat. Eats makes sense, but the other thing is you are what you eat eats and that's where sourcing. You know things like meat and poultry and dairy and all that you know. If you, if you are eating an animal that's raised on soy and corn, you're eating soy and corn, and if that's good for you, then great. If it's not, you know you got to be mindful of that. So is this a company that takes care of their cattle in a good way?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that's you know, that's why right here, pasture raised, grass fed. So this is excellent. Yeah, this is what we've, we've, we've prided ourself in, and those words ring very, very warm to my heart, because the company I started in 1991 was called you Are what you Eat, and we had that. The entrepreneur side was we. We were pioneering, putting health products into schools and mass market, and we built it up to we were 441 on the Inc 500 fastest growing company in 1998. And so the saying rings a bell. Dr Gundry is an interesting one. He's one like, for instance, I, you know, just because you mentioned him, you know. So like he hates tomatoes, and I'm like I don't know, you know, just because you mentioned him, you know. So like he hates tomatoes, and I'm like I don't know, you know.
Speaker 1:Well, actually he hates tomatoes if they have peels and seeds.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm like you know, come on, you know.
Speaker 1:So what I'm, I'm saying like I respect a lot what he says but's got a double-edged sword and you can take anything too far, so like.
Speaker 2:I'm saying to myself look, you know the tomato. Okay, you know. He says it has a lot of lectins. You know, but it has all the nutrients. I mean it has a lot of you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1:You know what the key is. Some people are very sensitive to lectins and it can be a problem, I don't know. He had an experience for himself. He lost the weight, he got himself healthy and what he did works for him and a lot of the things he did. I have taken some of it, but I've dialed way back, just like you're talking about. I'm like you know I'm not going to be a slave to this stuff either. You know, I cook my beans in a pressure cooker and it makes a great pot of beans and I can say it doesn't have lectins in it. But I skin my zucchinis when I can and do things like that. But I'm not going to be a slave to this and I'm not particularly sensitive to lectins that I can see. And so you know we balance things as we can. That nutrition you're going to get, in my opinion, way outweighs the negative side of it, and if it didn't have the nutrition, I don't know that I would eat them, but it does.
Speaker 2:And listen. So the other side of the coin is that I agree with him wholeheartedly about olive oil and cooking in olive oil. Italians have done for thousands of years yeah, the staple, right. Italians, the Greeks all the way back, yeah. So people are like, no, don't use olive oil for cooking because it's going to oxidize and do this. But that's all they cooked with and there was no issue with it. Exactly. So to me, again, I take a common sense, look at that. So I was like I was wavering a lot of times on olive oil for cooking. You know, obviously use a lot, lot, lot. But then when he said that that just made total sense, like this worked for a country for years, all they had was olives, exactly, and when it was low heat, high heat, was olive oil and nobody issues, right. So therefore, I am, I am, uh, I. So this is why I say take people, I look at the good things you know. Overall, there's a lot of great things. I love when he does those things you know, like, like superfood and you know, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And you don't take anybody as the be all and end all. You add information into your experience. Like you said, that anecdotal understanding is really where your big picture comes from and how it applies to you. And you know, pay attention to what you're doing and how you feel, and I think that that's where you're going to find your answer. And you know what works for the other guy. Maybe it works for him, but you're worried, not in something in a box, in a you know just real food, I understand what's in your food?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, everything is in it.
Speaker 2:Your health- dramatically, dramatically, the better.
Speaker 1:You know.
Speaker 2:So I think that if we can leave our audience with, you know one good point.
Speaker 1:I think that's a fantastic point. Well, let's give you your parting shot. How does somebody get a hold of you if they want to learn more or reach you as a consultant or anything like that?
Speaker 2:Thank, you so much. So my email is John J-O-N at joebergmeatscom J-O-B-U-R-G-M-E-A-T-E-Scom and can reach me by email my phone number directly. I'm happy and or marketing which in in the health and nutrition world and, um, if they want to order some Joe Berg meats, uh, there's joebergmeatscom, j O B U R G ME A T S, meatscom Andcom, and we'll give a special to your listeners of thank you 15. If they put thank you 15 in the discount code, they'll get a 15% off.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure to speak with you. I very seldom meet somebody who we have this many things in common. So, as I mentioned as we were getting started, if you feel like you want to come back up and continue the discussion, I'd always welcome that and I wish you the best.
Speaker 2:I wish you the best too. I think it was great. Thank you, joe and feel good, feel better, and I wish God bless you for what you're doing.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well. This has been another edition of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and we will see you next time.
