The Q&A Files
The Q&A Files drops A Wellness Explosion
💥 BOOM! Attention Wellness Warriors. The game changer you have been waiting for is finally here. Say hello to “The Q&A Files,” where wellness meets revolution and your questions lead to new discoveries. Spearheaded by Trisha Jamison, your host, a Board Certified Functional Nutritionist. Cohost Dr. Jeff Jamison, a Board Certified Family Physician, and featured guest, Tony Overbay, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. This podcast blends three diverse perspectives to tackle your questions on health, nutrition, medicine, mental wellness, and relationships. Dive into a world of expert insights and actionable advice, all sparked by your curiosity. Tune in, ignite your wellness journey, and join the Wellness Warrior community.
The Q&A Files
58. Fuel or Foul: The Real Cost of Processed Foods, Part 1
Are you tired of conflicting nutrition advice? This episode unravels the relationship between indulgence and health, highlighting the intricate bond we have with our favorite treats and how they impact our well-being. Join Trisha Jamison, a board-certified functional nutritionist, alongside Dr. Jeff Jamison and Tony Overbay as they navigate this engaging conversation. Delve into what it really means to indulge, from a personal perspective filled with anecdotes about ice cream and gooey cookies to a broader discussion on ultra-processed foods that flood our supermarkets.
As a listener, you'll gain insight into how the foods we consume affect not just our physical health but also our emotional well-being. Our featured listener question sheds light on concerns about dietary habits, including links to ADHD, mental health, and strategies for transitioning to a whole-foods diet without chaos at home. Understand the NOVA classification system to help differentiate between food types, and discover practical steps to clean up your diet without feeling overwhelmed.
With supporting humor and relatable stories, we tackle the real choices that shape a healthier lifestyle. Find encouragement and clarity in our discussion, and learn why what you eat can either fuel your well-being or perpetuate health issues. The more you understand your food choices, the more empowered you'll be to make transitions that last. Dive in, stay curious, and connect with this vibrant community for more health insights! Don’t forget to subscribe and share your thoughts with us.
Email us at trishajamisoncoaching@gmail.com
Hello and welcome to the Q&A file, the ultimate health and wellness playground. I'm your host, tricia Jamieson, a board-certified functional nutritionist and lifestyle practitioner, ready to lead you through a world of health discoveries. Here we dive into a tapestry of disease prevention, to nutrition, exercise, mental health and building strong relationships, all spiced with diverse perspectives. It's not just a podcast, it's a celebration of health, packed with insights and a twist of fun. Welcome aboard the Q&A Files, where your questions ignite our vibrant discussions and lead to a brighter you. Welcome, friends, to another episode of the Q&A Files. I'm your host, trisha Jameson, a functional nutritionist and lifestyle practitioner and a life coach, and, as always, I'm thrilled to have my two co-hosts here with me Dr Jeff Jameson, a board certified family physician.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:And Tony Overbay, a licensed marriage and family therapist. I'm so glad to have both of you here with me this morning.
Speaker 3:You are very kind to say, as always, being very transparent to the listeners. One of the three of us forgot to podcast last week.
Speaker 1:I'm just giving you the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 3:You're kind, you're so kind. How's that one? Yeah, I mean. But just to know, the boat full of old ladies and kittens was saved. I was.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's good.
Speaker 1:We're so grateful that you saved those old ladies and kittens.
Speaker 2:And that's your celebration too, right, that is absolutely the celebration.
Speaker 1:Well, we're actually not going to have celebrations today, because we're going to do something a little bit more fun.
Speaker 3:Oh.
Speaker 1:What could be more fun?
Speaker 3:than celebrations. Are you ready? Did that sound genuine?
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, hopefully you've eaten, because this might tickle your taste buds a little bit. I want you two to think about what is your ultimate junk food indulgence.
Speaker 3:I've got a bunch.
Speaker 1:You can only pick one.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay.
Speaker 1:I'm ready, Jeff. What's yours? It's got to be ice cream.
Speaker 2:I love ice cream, tillamook chocolate. It's called mudslide. Yeah, that's, that's my favorite right there.
Speaker 1:Do you have that in Arizona Tillamook?
Speaker 3:Oh, for sure yeah.
Speaker 1:Some places don't it's like shocking, it's like oh so sad for them world countries yeah, that's right okay do you have?
Speaker 3:much light. I really do, I really do. I was thinking of candy and it was funny, right before jeff said it, I had locked in because for honestly, well over 20 years of my life, no doubt, every single night of my life, I had vanilla bean ice cream with mini chocolate chips and I would stir it up until it was almost like a soup and then have the mini chocolate chips in it, and it was wild. And it was so wild because every single night, every night of my life, and I got to the point where I was convinced that if, for some reason, I couldn't eat it, I was really groggy in the morning. And so in my mind I thought okay, my body is adapted, so it needs that as energy. It turns it into fuel, because now we get up and run every morning. And and I really thought I had it all figured out Now I also had stomach issues my entire life, and when I finally stopped eating the ice cream, those went away. So I might've been lactose intolerant, but tried to power through it for two decades.
Speaker 3:That's not very smart.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, okay. How about you, trisha?
Speaker 3:Are we asking you Trisha? Oh no, is that not part of the game?
Speaker 1:What do you think mine is? What is it? I don't know what yours is.
Speaker 3:Lettuce apples, something like that, Something boring, Of course lettuce and apples, chocolate chip cookies oh.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Warm, moist gooey chocolate chip cookies. Yep.
Speaker 1:The gooier, the better. Absolutely, oh, so good. That's why I have a hard time when you bring in your warm chocolate chip cookies and you're eating it in front of us. It's so rude. I have done this, yes, I have. Okay, so, but on the taste-o-meter, zero to 10, 10 is like absolutely mind-blowing. Where are your ice cream bowls of ice cream on that taste-o-meter for both of you?
Speaker 3:I mean that's a funny way to put it, Cause mine is, I swear it's almost more of just a. It's a comfort, it's a, it's a habit, it's like so, maybe a little over five maybe six.
Speaker 1:It's nothing like blows my socks off, but it's I like it, Okay. No, did you say something?
Speaker 3:other than ice cream, tony, no vanilla bean, ice cream with chocolate chips.
Speaker 1:Okay, but you said that you can't eat that anymore. So what is it now?
Speaker 3:Well, ironically, it is a good cookie A chocolate chip.
Speaker 3:And honestly okay. Tricia, this is funny when you say the gooey are the better For me, when one of my daughters, mackie, makes cookies for me. Often, when she's making them and she knows that, she makes a special little batch and she puts semi-sweet mini chocolate chips instead of milk chocolate and then she basically takes them out when they're still gooey or she burns them. I like them either way, but the gooey ones I will eat with a spoon because they're so gooey. Yeah, even though it's a cookie, but I'll eat it with a spoon.
Speaker 1:So so good.
Speaker 3:Would you like that yeah?
Speaker 1:Totally relate to that, okay. So now on the taste meter what is that?
Speaker 3:Those are, those are, those are getting up there. There's maybe a seven, seven taste a meter. What is that?
Speaker 1:Oh, those are getting up there, there's maybe a seven, seven and a half Seven seven and a half.
Speaker 2:Okay, jeff, what is yours? Well, I think that the ice cream's probably about a seven for me. Seven, okay, but I have to say something. I don't get it very often, but, oh my gosh, we had it last night and it was huckleberry. It was.
Speaker 3:It was a cheesecake that was drizzled with huckleberry syrup oh my gosh, that was probably a nine right there okay well there you go that's perfect and that does zero to me, by the way, I don't even know where we're going today. But that is so funny. There's something like a cheesecake, but I I thought I made a guess that you were going to say a pizookie, because I had one of those a few nights ago, which was what is? That Okay, it's a giant chocolate chip cookie in a skillet that's warm, with vanilla ice cream on it.
Speaker 1:Oh, how come I don't know that A bazooki.
Speaker 3:A pizookie, pizookie.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:They're in here in California. And then we were in Arizona and we went to a restaurant and it was known for its pizookies as well.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, well, we have a, there's a place here that has those, but we didn't know. They were called pizookies.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:They were super good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, good, and probably my other one would be gelato. There's a place in Arizona and it's called Frost and it's amazing, we love it.
Speaker 2:You need to try it.
Speaker 1:It's Frost oh gosh, here's what ADHD looks like. While you guys continue.
Speaker 3:I'm going to be looking up Frost on my maps, but continue.
Speaker 2:Well, Frost is something that it is in Phoenix. I think it's in Scottsdale area actually is where I think there's one and there's one in.
Speaker 1:Tucson Yep, yep, I think you'll find them, but, oh my gosh, the best, oh, it's not ice cream, so much better for you than ice cream, but it's so, so good. All right, so mine is probably on 11, but if you find one of those really yummy cookies, just like you're talking about, with that ice cream, oh my gosh, that is my indulgent, and the more melty, chocolatey, the better. Okay. So now I want you to think about what is your go-to healthy food. What's something that you look forward to eating that's healthy too. I know you're going to have to think really hard.
Speaker 3:I think my mic's going out for me, I think it's apples.
Speaker 2:I really like apples, I like honey crisp and I like Fuji and I like oh, there's another kind recently Cosmic Crisp. Yes.
Speaker 1:Well, and we're the apple capital of the world, so we get phenomenal apples. We are very lucky.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're very fresh and right off the tree, or even during the year. They're actually really good because the warehouses around here are filled with nitrogen. Because the warehouses around here are filled with nitrogen, so apples don't oxidize, and so then when they take them out they're just as crisp as they were when they came off the tree.
Speaker 3:Incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so then they get shipped. And when they get shipped around the world then they start to oxidize and you don't have quite as crisp an apple. But the apples that don't have to be shipped very far because they're usually shipped from around central Washington and there's some around in other areas too. But central Washington is huge for the apple crop and so it doesn't have to go very far to get to us.
Speaker 1:Tony.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm okay, You're still looking at frost. I found it, though, frost gelato is in the Santan village, which is 28 minutes away from my home in arizona um it will be worth the drive.
Speaker 1:Oh, we will do seriously, it'll be worth it I will return and report I'm excited for you.
Speaker 3:I will turn in, so it's funny dr jeff, when, when trish asked this, I was thinking it had to be something bigger. And I'm not just trying to say me too, but uh, I am a huge apple guy and I do eat one or two a day. And I have a funny thing where cause I don't know, I don't remember all the names of them. So this is the one thing where, when I go to a store, I do see whichever one is the most expensive and that's what I buy. And so I recognize some of those names, like, yeah, I'm trying to think of the Cosmic Crisp and the. Yeah, the. I mean, I can't even think of other honey, something honeybee. And we just bought some apples that say they're lemonade apples, but those are more green. I didn't like them, they're a little too tart.
Speaker 3:And when I used to travel to Japan two or three times a year, which I did that for about a decade we would stay at this hotel and it had a little farmer's market behind it and they had perfect they were the most perfect apples for 100 yen, so like a dollar, and I would get one every single day. And I sometimes think I romanticized and confabulated my memory of those apples that they were the perfect apple. So I also have this odd thing where I'm continually searching for that perfect apple, and I think that's why I go for the most expensive apple, and there's nothing that drives me crazier than an apple that's soft, yeah, but I also don't like the green one. So I'm with you there. But I was going to say in Arizona there's a place called Salad and Go, and I'm not just trying to say that, oh, this is the healthy thing, but an amazing Caesar salad or a barbecue chicken salad, one of those two. It really is good. I really enjoy those and I think part of it is my mindset.
Speaker 1:I think part of it is my mindset. I think I am doing something good. Well, you are, that's good. Well, and that's what mine is. Mine is a well-made salad loaded with greens and roasted veggies, topped with grilled salmon. That's like my most favorite, All right. So both of you on your taste-o-meter. What is on your flavor scale zero to 10? What is your apples? Your salad? Where is that on there?
Speaker 2:Also about a seven, I think Okay.
Speaker 3:Okay, this is funny. I love this. This is you're providing with a muse, because that scaling is a real difficult thing for me as a therapist, and a lot of therapists scale so they're saying all right on the week on a scale of one to 10. And I often I struggle with that, so I don't do a lot of scaling.
Speaker 1:Like 10 is mind blowing, just like out of this world.
Speaker 3:But my my thought immediately with I wanted to go middle five, six with the apple and I thought with the barbecue chicken salad I could probably get it up to a seven and a half, maybe an eight, a Caesar sitting in there at a seven. But now I'm thinking, well, what is a 10?
Speaker 1:I'm not quite sure. I think it's like A 10 is warm chocolate chip cookie. That's a 10. I would do it.
Speaker 3:And then I like I really do enjoy Mexican food too, so get me something good there, but I just know it's not healthy for me.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, we're talking about healthy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay, so that helps.
Speaker 1:All right, perfect, gentlemen, this is great. So why do you suppose the ultimate junk food indulgence won the tastometer? For the most part.
Speaker 3:Because God is kind, he's still yummy things Well.
Speaker 2:I think it's probably has to do with our brain's connection and desire for sugar.
Speaker 1:Okay. Yeah, they're designed to hook us.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Exactly what you're talking about. So the ultra processed foods aren't just about convenience. They're engineered to be hyper palatable, meaning they light up the brain's reward system in ways that real whole foods don't usually do. And they're loaded with, just like Jeff said, the perfect culmination of sugar, fat and salt, and it creates a what?
Speaker 3:Dopamine, awesome time.
Speaker 1:Yes, an awesome time. Yes, but a dopamine dump. It's an addictive cycle that we go through and we crave more and more, while we truly never feel satisfied. But I have to say that with a warm chocolate chip cookie, I'm usually satisfied.
Speaker 3:How many do you have, though? I mean cause I will eat those to indulgence, though, and that's one of my problems. So I don't know if satisfied versus oh. I feel sick.
Speaker 2:Well, there is a difference, Barely there's a little fine line there that's like oh, I just love this. Oh, I've had too much, yeah, but that has been.
Speaker 3:You know the more that I do think about what we've talked about so often, sitting with the discomfort, growth and the discomfort. I have transformed that over into food and that has helped a bit where I've noticed that I am full and I'm wanting to taste this thing and I am observing that and every now and again then I'm also observing me shoving another bite in my mouth. But there are times where I have even said I'm done my wife and I call it eating for sport at the end of a meal.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Just because you like the experience yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's just something lovely about having something that tastes good and chewing and swallowing, and that whole experience is just lovely.
Speaker 1:And my body shows it.
Speaker 1:This goes right into. I mean so like food, scientists literally design these foods to override your body's natural hunger cues. So the crunch of a potato chip, the melt in your mouth, texture of a processed cookie, the perfect balance of sweetness in a soda. It's all so carefully articulated and calculated so to keep you coming back for more. And, the worst part, these foods replace real nourishment. So instead of eating something that fuels your body, you're consuming lab-made ingredients that can disrupt hormones, spike blood sugar and drive inflammation. So what's all this doing to our health? We're going to find out today. We have this amazing listener question from Amanda that's going to tie all this in together, and it's pretty packed, and so we may do two episodes here. We'll see how long this takes.
Speaker 2:Buckle up, tony, here it comes.
Speaker 3:I have a thousand jokes going through my mind right now and I'm uncomfortable, and I also have a hyper processed peanut butter chocolate bar right here that I want to look at those ingredients in a minute.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you actually have those.
Speaker 2:Hey, it says nature's way on it. So it must be good, it must be good.
Speaker 1:Anything that says nature or anything is good for you, right? Okay, this is her question, though she says hey, tricia, dr Jeff and Tony, I'm feeling so overwhelmed by the conflicting nutrition advice out there. I keep hearing that seed oils are bad, but they seem to be in everything. I also have a teenager with ADHD and I've read that diet can impact focus and mood. What should I be avoiding? On top of that, I struggle with anxiety myself and have noticed I feel worse when I eat junk food. Is there really a link between diet and mental health?
Speaker 1:I want to switch to a whole foods diet, but between my busy schedule and my kids being used to processed snacks, I don't even know where to start without a full family revolt. If I had to cut out just one thing today that would make the biggest impact on our health, what would it be, and are there any convenient, healthy alternatives that won't take forever to prepare? Please, please help. So, like I said, this is a huge loaded question and it's kind of like where do we even start? So where I would like to start first is I want to kind of break down what processed foods even are. There's a science behind ultra processed foods and chronic disease. So we're going to go through. It's called the NOVA classification system, and the first system is unprocessed or minimally processed foods.
Speaker 1:I want you to think about whole foods, so we talked about some of them, like salads and roasted veggies and salmon meat, eggs, whole grains anything that is not processed at all. Number two is processed culinary ingredients. These things are like olive oil, butter, spices and salt, and all these things are used in cooking to enhance the flavor. Number three is processed foods, so these are lightly altered foods, like cheese, canned vegetables and fermented foods. Most of these foods still retain their nutrients. Number four is ultra processed foods, or UPFs. Ultra processed foods Now, these are industrial products packed with additives, preservatives, seed oils and artificial ingredients and dyes. This is what I like to call Franken foods, and that's because they are so far removed from real whole food, and I want you to think of things like chips, sodas, frozen meals.
Speaker 2:You're not going after Oreos again, are you?
Speaker 3:No, those are vegan. Those are vegan. Yeah, they're all vegan.
Speaker 2:We're okay with the Oreos.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're so good.
Speaker 1:Well, and it's really funny, and if it's at Costco.
Speaker 2:if you get Costco chips, those are okay, right, yeah, exactly Because they say natural.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Brandon and I were at Costco one time and we were looking at we're not even going to talk about this, so I don't even I hate to even bring this up, but we're looking on a certain thing on packaged foods, and so we'll do this at another time but it's the bioengineered food. And he was like, well, I know that they don't have bioengineered food ingredients in Oreos. And I said, oh, let's go take a look. And so on our way there, we're looking at cereals. And he was just like getting more and more angry. He's like, oh my gosh, is there anything that doesn't have bioengineered ingredients on there? And I said, well, what do you think? Do you think it's going to have it on there? Well, I'm hoping it's not, but it probably is. We went, found his Oreos and, sure enough, it had bio-ingredients on there.
Speaker 3:Richie, can you take that part out? Trisha says that they have bio-engineered.
Speaker 1:Bio-engineered ingredients. That's right, and he was so upset, but I have to say he didn't have he's like he didn't even want it. So we'll talk about that at another time, but for right now, we're talking about preservatives and all the other stuff that's in our food supply and I want you to think about. If you even just flip over the package of your typical store-bought fast food chicken nugget, you'll find dozens of ingredients, not just chicken, but a long list of stabilizers, emulsifiers, flavors and preservatives, dyes. Talk about that too, but instead of something as simple as chicken salt and seasoning. So rather than you get this concoction of all these modified starches, seed oils, soy protein isolates and chemical additives so some of these are. I can't even believe it, but they're banned in other countries, and so it's so maddening that the FDA has allowed so much in our food supply. We should not have this in our food, but a lot of these things are linked to hyperactivity in children, cancers, all sorts of things. Any thoughts about that, gentlemen?
Speaker 2:So you're going to say to Amanda then we're addressing Amanda's question that can these foods interfere with or make worse a person's ADHD, especially in children? And the answer to that is undoubtedly yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, and we're going to talk about that later in the episode.
Speaker 2:So we're getting ahead of ourselves again. I like doing that. I love it.
Speaker 1:No, but such a great question and we are definitely going to tackle that in just a few minutes.
Speaker 2:Tony, have you noticed when we get there, think about, have you noticed, as a person who suffers but yet works so well with ADHD, if you have foods that interfere with that? I'd love to hear what you have to say about that.
Speaker 3:Well, just a sneak preview, though.
Speaker 3:I really appreciate this episode so far.
Speaker 3:I don't think I've ever paid more attention even while all the jokes are going on in my head because this is an area that I'm very aware that I don't know what I don't know, and my immaturity kicks in big time, like it doesn't matter. And then now, having the surgery coming up there's before I knew that I had structural issues that need to be dealt with. I did think it was all more around inflammation, and so I did read a book or two about that and I started looking at what that looked like and that I'm going to clean up my whole diet. And then I, immaturely, once I realized that it was structural and I was going to have surgery, I'm doing the thing where I will clean up my diet later, I will do it after and I'm not happy about it. So this is nice to talk about it, but this whole thing is I know that I need to know more, because in one breath I want to live forever, which is why I exercise, but I've never dealt with my diet and I know that that's the case.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, this is going to be an awesome episode for you.
Speaker 3:Or is it?
Speaker 1:Yes, no, it is. So there was a study done and there were two identical twins and they had the exact same calories but different diets. So one twin was on an ultra processed diet and that twin she gained weight, developed insulin resistance, experienced energy crashes and increased inflammation. This is within two weeks, two weeks that they did this study with these two twins.
Speaker 3:You see the study's flawed. If they would have carried that out for years, they would have found that she was much happier, and the other one fell off a cliff or something.
Speaker 1:Okay, the other twin she ate a whole foods diet. And this twin she lost weight, improved her metabolism and had better energy and sleep and satiety control. So the whole idea here is that not all calories are created equal. So often I get this question that a calorie is a calorie. A calorie is not necessarily a calorie. We're going to just talk about this for a second.
Speaker 1:The quality of food does affect metabolism, appetite regulation and long-term health. So this has been such an important conversation. Thank you, amanda, for your very detailed questions. We've covered how ultra processed foods impact our health. In our next segment, we are going to focus on chronic disease, mental health and ADHD and give you practical steps to clean up your diet without feeling overwhelmed. So we're not done yet. There's so much more to unpack about how food affects the brain, mood and even our hormones.
Speaker 1:If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who needs to hear it, like Tony. And remember your questions drive our conversation. Please send them to trishajamesoncoaching at gmailcom and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. My final words for today your food is either fueling your health or feeding your disease, so choose wisely. We'll see you on the next episode. Bye-bye everybody. Thanks for tuning in to the Q&A Files, delighted to share today's gems of wisdom with you. Your questions light up our show, fueling the engaging dialogues that make our community extra special. Keep sending your questions to trishajamesoncoaching at gmailcom. Your curiosity is our compass. Please hit, subscribe, spread the word and let's grow the circle of insight and community together. I'm Trisha Jameson, signing off. Stay curious, keep thriving and keep smiling, and I'll catch you on the next episode.
