Good Neighbor Podcast: Rochester
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of Rochester
Good Neighbor Podcast: Rochester
EP#136: "There's a Food for That" with Mark Trudeau
Join us for an eye-opening conversation with Mark Trudeau, a data scientist who turns his analytical talents to the culinary world. Imagine discovering that your pantry holds the key to fighting diseases like type 2 diabetes. Mark's personal journey from diagnosis to recovery inspired his groundbreaking book, "There's a Food for That," where he meticulously maps out how specific foods can target and combat specific health conditions. Prepare to challenge conventional dietary advice as Mark shares how he used data science to sift through clinical studies to identify foods that aren't just beneficial, but transformative for health.
Curious about how the top 100 foods can tackle the top 100 diseases in the U.S.? We promise you’ll gain new insights into the power of food as a tool for disease prevention and management. In this episode, we break down the misconceptions and serve up practical tips for optimizing your diet. Whether you’re dealing with a health condition or simply looking to boost your wellness, Mark’s evidence-based approach offers a fresh perspective. Don't miss out on this invaluable resource that could very well change your approach to health forever.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Lisa Swiftney.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone and welcome to episode number 136 of the Good Neighbor Podcast. Today we have with us Mark Trudeau, and Mark is going to tell us about his new book. There's a Food for that. How are you doing today, mark?
Speaker 3:Great Lisa, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks for being a guest. So why don't we start off by telling us a little bit about your new book?
Speaker 3:Well, the book is called there's a Food for that the top 100 foods to fight the top 100 diseases in the United States. For that the top 100 foods to fight the top 100 diseases in the United States. And we worked on it for five years. It was a long project. It was my first book. I'm a data scientist. I'm not like a book author, but as a data scientist and we had a doctor with us we got this idea five years ago. It came about. I've got a story. Obviously, everybody's got a story and my story was that five years ago I visited my doctor and, to make it shorter, he said we checked your blood. We think you got type 2 diabetes. So I said what is that? You know, everybody's probably the same. Once you hear that you have something, you really don't know what it is and then you become an expert in it. So when he told me that, I said, okay, there must be something I can do to fix this. And that got me started on the book.
Speaker 2:That's great. So you, kind of like, answered. Our next question is to tell our listeners about your journey, so tell us a little bit more. So you started the book because of the doctor.
Speaker 3:Yep, the doctor said that and we started talking about alternatives and I said hold on, let me go back and figure this out. I'm a data scientist and everything I've done for the past 30 years was optimizing processes and understanding them and analyzing data and statistics and trying to come up with optimal answers for things I had never done food. But once I started looking at food, specifically type 2 diabetes, I found out that there were a lot of foods that would fight diabetes, that could actually reverse type 2 diabetes. So in my analysis, I found the foods. I ate the foods, and 36 days later I had lost 50 pounds and the and got rid of the type two diabetes. And it's been that way ever since, and that was five years ago.
Speaker 2:Good for you. So can you tell us about any myths or misconceptions that you hear about in this industry?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a lot of you know. There's all sorts of little stories I guess I have, but one is I've always been told you know, don't eat fast food, don't eat processed foods, eat fruits and vegetables. You know all that kind of stuff. All that kind of stuff, and what I found out was there's very specific foods that you need to eat for specific diseases. And when I started my analysis for type 2 diabetes, it started out with just type 2 diabetes.
Speaker 3:But then I had friends, colleagues, that were coming in asking what I was doing. They saw my dry erase board filled with data and I'm all busy on my computer and they said can you look up hypertension for me? Can you look up vertigo for me? Can you look up type one diabetes for me? Can you look up all these different diseases, diverticulitis? And after a while, many of those people were doctors actually, and they said you should write a book. So, and what the book consisted of again is another misconception that comes out is you'll watch the news and they'll say a study came out of XYZ and said eggs are good for you. You know, another study came out and said eggs are bad for you. And you know coffee's good for you, coffee's bad for you, meat's good for you, meat's bad for you. So it's like all these different studies. Well, my idea as a statistician was to get a large sample size of clinical studies and put them all together and see what everybody agrees on. And that was the whole idea of what I did for type 2 diabetes. And then I went and extended it to the top 100 diseases in the United States and my goal was, on each individual disease, to investigate all the clinical studies in the United States. And my goal was, on each individual disease, to investigate all the clinical studies in the United States by the good places Cleveland Clinic, mayo Clinic, university of Michigan, the big clinics that do studies and put all that data together.
Speaker 3:I make it sound easy, but there's a lot of statistics involved and up comes the answer of what foods you need to eat. So it's not just fruits and vegetables. It depends on what your disease is if you want to optimize that. And there's also foods that you can't eat, that you shouldn't eat if you've got certain diseases and those intersect. I mean, one disease might say you know, you need to eat grass-fed beef number one. And then another disease will say don't even touch grass fed beef because it's bad for this one. So you just need to know what your particular case is, and that's what the book's used for now is just look up your case and see what you need to work on.
Speaker 3:Another interesting story was with the fish. You know fish is a is a big food. That's good for you, but but it depends on which kind of fish. So a lot of misconceptions out there are. I could just go buy any fish and you know, as long as I'm eating fish I'm doing good, but really it's there's only four specific fishes that you need to concentrate on, because they have something called omega-3s, which is also in the book, but you don't really need to know that. You just need to know eat these fishes like salmon, mackerel, herring and sardines. Those are the four fishes. So people are eating fish thinking they're getting what they need and they're not getting what they need. They're actually getting negative of what they need.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, that's interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so when you're?
Speaker 2:not writing books or working. What do you like to do for fun?
Speaker 3:Well, actually statistics is my fun. Okay, so I do a lot of medical research. I'm retired I retired 10 years ago but I still do a lot of medical research and statistics for companies. My wife owns a local martial arts school so I help her with her school, troy Martial Arts and so that's how I interact a lot with people and helping with the business. So those are the kind of things I work on, I guess.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that is great. Yeah, so can you describe one hardship or life challenge that you rose above and can now say, because of that challenge, that you're better for it and are stronger?
Speaker 3:I have to say that that number one challenge was the type 2 diabetes. I mean, you know I didn't eat well my whole life. I'm just a regular guy, eat regular food pizza, hamburgers, steaks, potatoes, whatever I want. But as soon as someone told me you've got this disease you've got to worry about not to mention in my family it runs with hypertension, colon cancer, different things. But when he told me the type two diabetes, that changed me right, there was like hit me with a sledgehammer and I concentrated.
Speaker 3:I was obsessed with figuring out what foods affected that and since then, you know, I'm down almost 100 pounds. Since that day I've been able to keep it off. I also found that eating. You know, I can still eat what you would call bad foods. I can still go to McDonald's I don't do it much anymore, obviously but as long as you get these foods that you need as a baseline, the program works pretty good. But when I I've learned a lot about food and unless somebody told me I had type 2 diabetes, I probably still wouldn't know anything about food.
Speaker 2:Wow, so that is great. So with your book you're explaining that a little bit more.
Speaker 3:Yes, so the book. When the doctors came in and said you should write this book, the first thing we did was we came up with the top 100 diseases in the United States by prevalence. That took us a year just to come up with that list. Once we came up with that list, then we had to go to each individual and do a study on it. We looked at 60,000 clinical studies, did a study for each disease, wanted to know specifically what to eat, what not to eat, and it was interesting. We came up with almost 500 different foods over the 100 diseases. But a lot of the foods are similar. But again, each one's got its own equation. So if you're looking up diverticulitis, it's got its own equation. You're going to eat different foods for that than you are for type 2 diabetes. And we put all that together. So the book was done for 100 diseases. Then we did some statistics and came up with 100 top foods and basically combining all the disease foods together and coming up with a list of the top foods.
Speaker 3:And we also did a whole chapter on nutrients, because sometimes somebody will say you need more iron. So it's like, okay, how do I get iron? Well, you can look it up in chapter five and it tells you what to eat for iron Optimal. What to eat optimally for iron. Which brought up another neat little story was a lot of people when they when they're going for vitamin c, they always go to the same food. There's one common food everybody always thinks they should be running to and it's oranges. So they all run after oranges and I found out it's not oranges and I really don't know how that started, that you run to oranges to get all this vitamin C.
Speaker 2:I think it was a commercial years ago.
Speaker 3:Yes, I think it was marketing. We got the most vitamin C. That's what I'm thinking. So what I found out was, if you want vitamin C, yellow bell peppers have over three times more vitamin C than an orange does. So really you should be running after the yellow bell peppers for vitamin C. So there's lots of nice little things like that in the tables in here if you're after a certain nutrient.
Speaker 2:That is good to know. So what is one thing you want our listeners to know about your book?
Speaker 3:The one thing is how you would use the book. So a person buys the book it's on Amazon, so you can go to Amazon and get the book. But you would buy the book and you would either have two things reasons you're buying it I've got some diseases I need to deal with and I want to know what to eat or what not to eat. The other one is, if you don't have anything the chapter on the top foods you could eat the top foods, the 100 top foods, and fight all 100 diseases at the same time, and those would be the foods you would concentrate on. So the book would be used just to investigate what foods should I be eating and if I got a certain disease, which ones should I be eating for that disease? And if you got three things you're worried about because a lot of families have two, three, four things running through the family you would, you know, do all those, put them all together and come up with common foods for all four of them, or two, whatever you had. So that's the one thing.
Speaker 3:I think this is a book that I wish I would have had five years ago. If I had this book five years ago, I wouldn't have had to write it Because I went after the internet to find out how do I fight type 2 diabetes and I bought these books. I bought 20 books and they're all novels, and I didn't want to read novels, I didn't want to read everybody's, I just wanted to know what to eat. Just give me the answer. And that's what this book is. It's more of a data science type book. It just gives you the answer.
Speaker 2:And more simple.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So how far along were you with your type 2 diabetes? Were you on medication?
Speaker 3:I've never done medication. No, okay, the day he told me I had type 2 diabetes was the first day I ever looked at it and that's when I did the analysis ate the food got rid of it in 36 days. And that's when I did the analysis ate the food got rid of it in 36 days. And that's where I am right now. But as far as medication goes, or pharmaceuticals and stuff, I still have never taken anything for anything.
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 3:My whole idea was to fight it with this food, fight it with food, basically.
Speaker 2:So our listeners are intrigued. You said you can purchase your book on Amazon. Is there any other way to get the book, or is that the best way to go?
Speaker 3:That's the best way.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:It's very easy. I found out when I investigated how to write a book, because that was a whole process too. So here I started a whole research project on how to publish a book how to write a book?
Speaker 2:yeah, right, and I found that Amazon to publish a book.
Speaker 3:How to write a book? Yeah Right, and I found that Amazon was a fantastic way for anybody to write a book. They make it very easy for you.
Speaker 2:Oh, good, good, so our listeners just need to go to Amazon. The book is called there's a Food for that by Mark Trudeau, and hopefully they can find out the top 100 foods to fight. I'm looking at the book right here as I'm saying this. It says the top 100 foods to fight the top 100 diseases and conditions in the United States.
Speaker 3:Correct, yeah, great book.
Speaker 2:Good, well, I'm going to have to order this and read it, and I appreciate you taking the time and being a guest today on our podcast. Thank you, mark.
Speaker 3:Thanks, Lisa.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast, rochester. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPRochestercom. That's GNPRochestercom, or call 248-988-9648.