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Roots to Health with Dr. Craig Keever
Welcome to Roots to Health—where we dig deep into the foundation of lifelong wellness! Hosted by Dr. Craig Keever, Northwest Arkansas’ first and only plant-based pediatrician, this podcast unearths the power of nutrition, lifestyle, and holistic health to help kids, families, and adults thrive.
What can you expect?
Dr. Keever breaks down the science of nutrition and disease prevention in a way that’s simple, practical, and life-changing. From raising healthy kids to optimizing adult wellness, each episode delivers key insights that challenge conventional wisdom and empower you to take control of your health.
Whether he’s debunking nutrition myths, explaining how food shapes long-term well-being, or sharing actionable tips for disease prevention, Roots to Health is your go-to guide for vibrant living—one bite, one step, and one conversation at a time.
Get ready to rethink everything you thought you knew about health—and discover just how powerful roots can be!
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Roots to Health with Dr. Craig Keever
Plant-Based Nutrition: Beyond the Misconceptions-Episode 2
"What is plant-based nutrition?" seems like a straightforward question, but misconceptions abound. Dr. Keever dismantles the myths that plant-based eating means endless salads and bland food, sharing his transformative health journey that reversed serious conditions through whole food plant-based nutrition.
Our bodies are carbohydrate machines, designed to thrive on complex carbs found in whole foods—not the refined carbs that deserve their bad reputation. Dr. Keever explains the critical distinction between various plant-based terms: vegetarian (no meat), vegan (no animal products), and whole food plant-based (emphasizing unprocessed plant foods while avoiding meat, dairy, eggs, refined sugars, oils, and processed foods). The conversation tackles why even "healthy" oils like olive oil are problematic when consumed directly rather than eating the whole olive with its fiber intact.
The podcast delves into the optimal macronutrient balance, revealing that excess protein isn't stored but converted to fat and carbohydrates—contrary to popular fitness advice. For most adults, a diet of approximately 60% carbohydrates, 25-30% fat, and 10-11% protein provides optimal nutrition, though those with metabolic conditions benefit from limiting fat to 10-15% of calories.
Perhaps most compelling is the evidence behind plant-based nutrition's power to reverse disease. Dr. Keever references documented cases where this eating pattern opened previously blocked arteries—the only approach proven to reverse heart disease. The conversation highlights the importance of gut microbiome diversity, achievable by consuming 7 different plants daily and 30 weekly, and addresses supplementation needs (vitamin D, B12, and magnesium) in our modern environment.
Ready to transform your health through the power of plants? Join Keever's Plant-Based Tribe for community support and practical resources to make this life-changing approach sustainable and enjoyable.
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The information provided in this video is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have seen or heard in this video. Dr. Craig Keever is a licensed pediatrician, but the content shared here is general in nature and may not be applicable to your individual health needs.
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So, basically, the first question that I want to address here is what is plant-based nutrition? That might seem like a duh question, not really.
Speaker 2:I think we've experienced it so much that we think that people it's a mystery to a lot of people. I think.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, when I first came on board with this, I had many of the common misperceptions. The first misconception is how many salads all the time? Are you kidding me? We do eat salads. Some, and some really wonderful salads. It's not the bulk, but not all the time. We eat them when we want to. Okay, the second common misconception and we've joked about this a lot along our ride I'm going to be eating grass and cardboard all the time. This is not going to be tasty, it's not going to be satisfying, it's just not going to be good or enjoyable. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. Big misconception.
Speaker 2:I think you do have to be okay with your health being a priority over what someone. People will laugh about us packing up our food for a vacation, or, but it makes the vacation wonderful if we can just have our foods. We precisely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the other bigger thing that we'll talk about here in terms of macronutrients is carbohydrates. Now carbohydrates, I think, gets a bad rap in a lot of the press. The fact is, our bodies are carbohydrate machines. We are made to metabolize carbohydrates. Here's the problem, as I see it in a nutshell.
Speaker 1:There's a huge difference between refined carbohydrates ie sugar, and complex carbohydrates, which are within the food we eat. The benefits of the complex carbohydrates are that it hasn't been stripped of all the nutrients and all the fiber and because of that, its absorption into the bloodstream is much smoother. By in large, youre not going to get the big blood sugar spikes unless you're eating refined carbs. So what are refined carbs? Table sugar, white bread, white rice those are the primary ones I can think of. Those are the things that tend, for people that have issues, tend to cause significant spikes in blood sugar, maybe even in a significant percentage of people who don't have any obvious issues as well. I've learned so much about carbohydrate metabolism and insulin resistance that it's interesting to think about, and I can't go into the details of it really at this point yet, but there are a number of people who appear to have normal blood sugars but have significant insulin resistance.
Speaker 2:Like a keto diet. They're pulling themselves away from any kind of carb.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, just to put that emphasis on there is that the types of carbs in terms of healthy carbs that we're going to be talking about are going to be in whole foods as opposed to being processed foods and refined foods. That brings us to a topic of the different types of terminologies that are used to describe plant-based eating.
Speaker 2:Marketing is using that plant-based word for it Exactly. A lot of things that don't show is a whole food plant-based.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the first word that I was familiar with was vegetarian. What does that mean? Pretty much as I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, but vegetarian to me means you just don't eat meat. Any other kind of animal-based product is okay, for sure Eggs, fish, whatever.
Speaker 2:And then there's the pescatarian.
Speaker 1:The pescatarian. That's a different. Yeah, yeah, so that's the first term that I was familiar with. Then, as near as I can recollect on, the next term that I became vaguely familiar with was vegan. Vegan, as I understand it, basically means we have zero to do with any animal-based product. Now there is a common misconception that if you're eating vegan, you're eating healthy. I know plenty of people that eat vegan that are not very healthy. Yes, the problem is the processed foods. We can make a lot of processed foods with zero animal-based products. Oreo cookies are vegan. That's not very healthy. A big buzzword these days is a lot about the impossible meats, the vegan meats, the vegan meats, and while I would say if you're thinking about using that as a step towards getting off of animal-based products, I think that's not a big deal, but if you're being a purist to whole food, plant-based again, just like Oreo cookies, it's your mission.
Speaker 2:What is the ploy of what you're doing?
Speaker 1:for your health, Exactly To the point of a whole food plant-based diet. There's a lot of processed foods and a lot of junk within the fake meats.
Speaker 2:We hear people say a lot I don't want to interrupt you on where you're at about oils. As far as what olive oil is healthy, can you explain to people why that's not the case as far as?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, so what's the difference between eating an olive and pouring a little olive oil, or a lot of olive oil, on your salad or cooking in it or whatever? Here's the problem. The process of making olive oil is processing. That food makes all the nutrition out, say, it strips away all the fiber, it strips away a lot of the nutrition and all you're left with is a big old glob of fat. Within the context of the olive, just like with the complex carbohydrates, your body can handle that. Your body metabolizes that at a much slower rate. That's what's personal.
Speaker 2:The fiber helps helps with the fiber that's in a fruit makes it all the same, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:So some would argue in the plant-based world that there is no oil that's healthy, because I hear a commonly used phrase. What about the healthy?
Speaker 2:oil not sure that there is one, I'm not ready to thousand olives to make that little bit of olive oil as well, which is just the remaining junk in that absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:So what does my diet then look like? Okay, a true whole food, plant-based diet means no meat, no dairy or other animal byproducts, no sugar, no processed food and no oil What's left?
Speaker 2:I think people are interested, as you as a man in particular like how are you doing this? And it's like I've always said give me your standard diet and I'll whole food, plant-based it for you, baby.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you, this little vegan chef sitting right here is the reason that I'm still sitting here with no heart disease, I don't know. She has made being plant-based extremely enjoyable, because she's done much of what she just said making making a comfort food that I was used to eating, only making it out of things that fit within my framework and it can be done. One of my favorite examples of that is I was a huge ice cream hound. I could eat ice cream, in fact, for a of time, did eat ice cream after every meal. There was a research project that went on when I was in med school. Of course I signed up for it because the research project was testing cholesterol levels between and Haagen-Dazs ice cream and this new product that was coming out. That was, I think it was called sim plus. It was a fake ice cream. For all I can remember again, this is 30 years ago or 40 years ago, whatever, anyway, long time ago. So my mission was to eat every meal.
Speaker 2:I've not heard this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, every meal in the medical school cafeteria. Okay, and after every meal.
Speaker 2:You love a challenge.
Speaker 1:I love a challenge. Every meal we got ice cream. One month it would be Haagen-Dazs, oh my. And the other month it would be the other product, poor little heart, oh my gosh. And they measured blood tests after so many weeks on, yeah, so I never got my results and I wonder if they threw them out because I already had high cholesterol. That I didn't find out until after med school. Maybe it's because of this study, I don't know, but I got to eat ice cream breakfast, lunch and dinner after every meal. That was the how do now.
Speaker 2:It's just different, but yes.
Speaker 1:I digress, I digress. Yes, so we now have nice cream and basically what that consists of. If you can write real fast, you'll get the recipe. That's right. Take your bananas and let them overripen on the counter for a couple of days, not too badly. Slice them up.
Speaker 2:Freeze them. Banana pudding level.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Slice them up and freeze them the next day, throw them in your blender. I've got the Ninja little bullet thing. Fill up my single serving cup with bananas and then throw a little plant milk plant-based milk my favorite is oat milk and then throw in a tablespoon of cocoa powder and a little shot of vanilla and a little shot of almond extract and sometimes, maybe not, a little maple syrup.
Speaker 2:I do maple syrup.
Speaker 1:You don't do maple syrup and blend that down until it's completely pureed and voila, you have a Dairy Queen soft serve chocolate ice cream.
Speaker 2:It reminds me of a Wendy's Frosty to the T. It's so good, it's amazing. It feels so bad, like you're doing. It feels terrible and yet it feels good.
Speaker 1:It feels like my blood sugar. It's amazing and it doesn't cause. It has zero fat.
Speaker 2:And sometimes we've talked about fasting. Sometimes we're even doing that in the afternoon, and that's all we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's amazing, all right.
Speaker 2:We've done some coffee ice cream that way.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, various flavors. She again, my vegan chef, my own personal vegan chef. We've tried several different flavors, but I've latched on to that one because it's simple and quick and I can do it, and I just have to watch her do some of the others.
Speaker 2:People from Walmart. When we get deliveries we look like we're monkeys because we have tons of bananas that we order to have them always frozen.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So the next question I want to address is exactly what is meant by the words processed foods, and is it all bad? The reality of that is pretty much anything you do to a food is processing. It to a food is processing. So not all processed foods are bad, so to speak. Okay, what are the types of processing that aren't problematic? Freezing you can go to the freezer in the grocery store and pick out frozen vegetable, bags of frozen vegetables, bags of frozen fruit. That's all perfect, but that is a processed food. It is one level of processing. Then, on the other end of the spectrum so there are several other things that are okay. I mean, you probably go down the ladder each step by step, but then, on the other end, then you have foods that are basically mass-prepared with tons of refined sugar, added fat, added salt, packaged really nicely and are hyper-palatable.
Speaker 2:Like the "supersized meat Happy Meal that stayed there for years or something.
Speaker 1:That is what's called ultra-processed foods years or something. That is what's called ultra-processed foods. Now, the book that I studied to get my certification in lifestyle medicine divided things up into actually four different stages. You have your unprocessed, which would be like an apple. Sometimes they'll combine unprocessed with minimally processed, so this particular example really had just three levels. So your unprocessed or minimally processed would be your apple. Processed could be considered applesauce. There is a process to get it there. You'll probably lose a few nutrients making applesauce. How important is that to you? Yeah, may not be a big deal. Applesauce is a fine thing, not adding a whole lot of things, yes, maybe taking off.
Speaker 1:Wouldn't put applesauce in my list of processed foods, to avoid, okay. And then, lastly and sadly, you have apple pie, which is considered an ultra-processed food. Really, I'm waiting for the day when my lovely vegan chef makes me a compliant apple pie.
Speaker 2:Hey, don't challenge me, I'm up for the challenge, or? Do I'm totally up for that. Or cherry pie. I've not heard this request, by the way. Yeah all right the thing is, if you're gonna go off the rails at all, if you want a little bit of treat, then you know. Hey, have some apple pie. That's a vegan option, right, better than. Or an impossible burger.
Speaker 1:That's a better option, better option, and I think what most of this really comes down to is how do you make this way of life sustainable?
Speaker 2:And we're totally wanting to lead by example in that We've been walking the walk for sure.
Speaker 1:We could make this much more miserable if we said we always have to be 100% compliant or we're not eating.
Speaker 2:Right, we'd never go out to a restaurant.
Speaker 1:We'd never go out to a restaurant. Yeah, within this culture we have to live. Am I making excuses? I don't think so, because when I'm able to enjoy certain things in and admittedly I have to take some of these things in really small amounts, which can be the bugaboo for many people because, I'll tell you, when I first started this journey, I came face to face with my food addictions, and there's no other word for it. It's not talked about a lot in many circles, but the fact is, when I found myself saying I can't give that up, it was a really strong sign that I was addicted.
Speaker 2:It's so predominant in our culture and to that point, as far as being compliant I've got a trip to Pennsylvania next week it's like I can't pack that food on the flight. I can to a certain extent, but I can't pack my whole thing. We get whole food deliveries and things, but, like when we went to New York, that is part. We understand where people are coming from. It's such a cultural thing for us. You want to experience some things too. So it's not to say that we're doing that in moderation, because that wouldn't serve our bodies well.
Speaker 1:But there are those moments where you take in a little oil and you get right back, or if you fall a little bit and that's right, yeah, I and I've thought about this and I don't have any science to what I'm actually saying here, but if I were to think about putting a number on how compliant I am to have achieved the results that I have achieved loss of 100 pounds blood pressure now, by the way I didn't really mention is completely normal without any medicines that I used to be on. Yeah, this morning it was 98 over 64 after exercise and it's been a big part of your healing.
Speaker 1:That's been a big part of my healing. I have normalized cholesterol. Like I said, my blood sugars are just a hair outside of the normal range, but that's without medicine.
Speaker 2:And I also want people to know that you have lipoprotein A, which is a genetic component which most doctors would tell you. There's no way that your cholesterol will ever be normal and it's perfect, it's spot on. This is to bring people not like what are you going to have to give up? But how hopeful is it? We've seen people that have had lupus markers completely wiped away. We've seen people that had MS completely wiped away and we're not getting into that today, but it's just. It's such a healing thing for the body.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. A famous quote or saying that goes around the plant-based world is genetics may load the gun, but nutrition will pull the trigger. That's so true. So, basically, that's telling me, of course, that I may have a genetic setup to have high cholesterol problems, ergo leading to heart disease, but if I eat all the right things, my risk then drops dramatically.
Speaker 2:And how we are taught that all these things are like, these mysteries of, like stroke and heart attack, and it's like Dr Esselstyn said, heart disease need never. It's like a what a toothless paper tiger.
Speaker 2:And so it's like how encouraging is that? And Gigi the vegan? We went to her. Gigi is very well known in the plant-based community. We met her at her restaurant and her young son said is it really worth more than 15 minutes of eating something? And that is like, stuck with me. Here's this young man who's really and it's so true. Like you have all, we are trike riders, we love to be out on the greenway. Is it worth taking that away? That's what I want people to know is to be hopeful of all the things that I've seen people with. It doesn't always work this way, but I've seen people with sugars in the 400s in two days be down to a regular level. Yours did not work that way initially.
Speaker 2:Mine did not, but that's okay, it's like it is down.
Speaker 1:Another point I wanted to make. We've digressed a little bit and gone different directions, which I've loved related to ultra-processed foods. There was a study and I don't know anything more about it because this was a little blip that I took out of my lifestyle medicine book, but they were referring to a study that documented the increase, the marked increase, in use of ultra processed foods between the years of 2001 and 2018. And I would argue that probably actually started, I'm going to guess, back in the 50s or 60s with the advent of fast food. Regardless, what is the problem with ultra-processed foods? It's been very well documented that a high intake of ultra-processed food maybe not even a high intake, an intake of ultra-processed foods increases your risk factors for chronic disease. What chronic disease am I talking about? Anything metabolic related, basically all the list of stuff that I had hypertension, obesity, type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, high cholesterol, which then leads to heart attacks, strokes, cancer and diabetes. I think.
Speaker 1:The one other point that I wanted to make here, too, heart attacks and strokes are essentially the same illness. It's related to plugging of your arteries, whether it's your heart or your brain. Same kind of stuff. How does cancer fit in this? One of the things that I learned in my plant-based nutrition course that I took in 22,. Really, it was an excellent story of how nutrition really does play your body like a symphony. Dr T Colin Campbell refers to it as a symphony. A nd so the things that we eat will determine many times which genes are expressed and which genes are not.
Speaker 2:And the China study was his book.
Speaker 1:Yes, he was co-author of a book years ago, I think in the 90s.
Speaker 1:It was released the China study where and it'll probably be never able to be duplicated again because it was done Dr Campbell hooked up with researchers in China who, under the orders of the prior leader of China I don't remember which one it was, but it was the one who died of bladder cancer he ordered that this study be done and, of course, in communist China, as, of course, in Communist China. As a member of the population of Communist China, you had to do what the government said. So they put this study together in the interest of public health and came up with some astounding information about the nutrition of each area, because they calculated what each area, how their nutrition oh yeah, unbelievable amount of data how their diets were different you could not argue it. You could not argue it how their diets were different in rural areas versus city areas, what diseases were more prevalent, and they correlated diet to many diseases no, I make it this wrong, but a lot of the people that were in that high level of society were getting sicker because they had more animal-based products.
Speaker 1:s rural person tended to do better because they tended to focus more on fresh fruits and vegetables. Yes, all right, as if we haven't answered most of this question already. Why is plant-based nutrition so important? And I think to sum it up in one way would be just to say simply that the nutrient density of plant-based nutrition gives our bodies everything it needs for healthy functioning, and at a lower calorie density. That's one thing that I wanted to address here for sure is, why is it that fats are so bad? And we'll get into more about the combinations of percentages, of what your diet should look like, but the big problem here is that, okay, you've got your carbohydrates, which gives you four calories per gram. You got your protein, which will give you four calories per gram. Then you got your fat oops, nine calories per gram, more than twice. Okay. So that's why low-fat diets, you can eat a lot more.
Speaker 2:You actually aren't nutritionally deficient either, because you're getting full.
Speaker 1:Exactly exactly, and that's why diets that are higher in fat are more problematic. You get full or you don't get full when you reach the number of calories that you need and, to Dr Fuhrman's point, once you reach that certain level of calories that your body needs, you go over it and your body's revved up in a negative way and burning itself out.
Speaker 1:So the other factor involved with the whole food plant-based diet is really just plant-based, even if you can't go yet all the way whole food plant-based. But there's been a lot of astounding research over the last recent years. I don't know exactly how many two to five, I'm guessing, maybe longer in the gut microbiome, and how important that is to our overall health, and many people that are in this research area are considering this almost like a second brain Between your normal germs that live there and the absorption layer, your lining of your intestinal tract. What happens is, if you give your good germs the fiber that they need, they will create all kinds of communication markers. Many of them are called short-chain fatty acids. I'm sure there's more to it than just that. Many of those will communicate directly with your brain and affect mood. They communicate directly with your immune system and affect how well you fight off disease or cancer or illness infection.
Speaker 2:Even genetic predispositions can be turned off with the right, proper nutrition, which I did not know before.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really amazing. So what does a healthy diet look like? We've alluded to it a little bit before in terms of talking about our macronutrients. One of the biggest tools that I was able to use early on, and still use occasionally when things seem a little bit wonky, is the app that I use is called Cronometer C-R-O-N-O-M-E-T-E-R. We've used that together with good success, and the light bulb moment to me happened pretty early on, because remember when I told my story earlier and I talked about how I was eating plant-based but still not getting control of my blood sugars, and I'm wondering.
Speaker 1:I eating so healthy what's going on here, and so one day, as we're just getting hooked into this chronometer app, we decided to start googling some of the old restaurants we went to.
Speaker 2:Which we won't name. Which we won't name.
Speaker 1:Okay, that we loved at one time, but suffice it to say that probably any steakhouse has a similar profile. So we took an average meal, very average meal, from most of your steakhouses A lot of steakhouses, steak houses. You go in, you'll have some peanuts while you wait for your meal.
Speaker 1:You'll go in and they'll seat you and you'll get a salad the biscuits first, that's right, yeah, biscuits with whatever kind of buttery honey, what all kinds of stuff to put on it. Wonderful, oh my goodness. Then the salad caked with dressing, then your slab of meat, and then the vegetables cooked, drowned in butter.
Speaker 1:Drowned in butter or cooked in oil or bacon grease or whatever, and then, oh, there has to be a little dessert, right, okay, now keep in mind that I'm just starting to wrap my brain at this point around the idea that my total fat intake for a day should be less than 23 grams. In order to reverse my insulin resistance as a type 2 diabetic, I need to keep my fat intake less than 23 grams a day. I was astounded, me too, looking at this average steakhouse meal and I won't ask anybody out there to guess, I'll just throw the number out there because I'm not going to get any answers it was nearly 400 grams of fat 400.
Speaker 2:In one meal. It's no wonder the body is so taxed.
Speaker 1:In one meal.
Speaker 2:And before people think, oh my gosh, I'm not going to be able to do anything For instance, our salad dressing. I'm a Hidden Valley Ranch girl. I love it, love it. I've been on the hunt for a great recipe, plant-based, for years. When I found the one that I tweaked and made my own. But Hidden Valley Ranch has about eight grams of fat per tablespoon. Ours has one gram of fat, so you could easily have 50 to 60 grams, because I'm not going to put just a tablespoon, but it's every bit as good. So people just have to know they can make those transitions. It would not be sustainable if we were not able to do that.
Speaker 1:That's right. Yeah, I mean there are definitely many ways in the plant-based world that you can have a very tasty, satisfying dressing or pretty much anything. Sauces are the key. Really, sauces are the key. Yeah, I say pretty much anything. The only thing and I'm not sure I even really miss this anymore I did miss it for a while the only thing that I haven't been able to replicate on the plant-based diet is a filet mignon.
Speaker 2:I don't miss meat, I really don't. Yeah and truly, I really don't, I never thought that day would come, but it's like everything else has made me want to. You're exactly right.
Speaker 1:And yeah, there's a number of other reasons that we do plant-based. My number one reason was nutrition and what that was doing to my health and I don't think right here and right now is the time and place.
Speaker 2:But there are other reasons to go plant-based and if those things help you it's like I've said about how you prepare food do it to your personality. One lady we talked to at the potluck last night we have a plant-based potluck that we were a part of and we've been doing some she's. I just want bare minimum, I just want to just get in there. I'm an artist, so you know I want the pretty platters and so there is no one way to do this. That's right, you have to do it to your personality.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so another tool that I've recently heard about to implant in my brain. That has been pretty helpful and really I think this can apply whether you're plant-based or not, even your average omnivore. This would really help, because the daily recommended minimum allowance of fiber that a person should have is about 30 grams, and that's minimum. Okay, people are not getting that on the standard.
Speaker 1:The average American on the standard American diet gets about 10,. All right, that does not do well for our gut microbiome. That does not help us with any of these chronic diseases. So the tool that I have, that I've heard and bantered or around in the plant-based world, is if you can get seven different plants a day and 30 different plants a week.
Speaker 2:Which could be spices.
Speaker 1:Exactly, it's not near as hard as it's not near as hard as yeah. So garlic use of garlic A lot of times we could get it in one meal. Exactly, it's not near as hard as garlic. It's not near as hard as yeah.
Speaker 2:And why do they do that? That's just helping their diversity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, diversity the different types of fiber in the different types of food will stimulate growth of the different types of good germs that we need. So we need that variety to have all the different kinds of germs that we need. Because you could give it a ton of one type of fiber. The problem would be in that scenario even if you gave your gut 30 grams of one type of fiber. Okay, you'll help a certain group of germs that you really want there to grow.
Speaker 2:And to that point I don't want to interrupt you, but to that point some people say, oh, I can't have that much fiber. It's really that your body needs it more than ever. It's just not adjusted yet. So it's really actually you will adjust.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Yeah, and that's a very good point. I want to say that if you're currently on the standard American diet and you're thinking, oh, I need to increase my fiber, and you've been getting 10 to 15 grams of fiber, and all of a sudden you boost it to 40 or 50 grams of fiber, you're going to be unhappy for a little while.
Speaker 2:Okay, do you speak from experience?
Speaker 1:Just saying, just saying. So. A more comfortable way of doing this would be to just slowly increase your fiber, and again, an app like Chronometer can help immensely with that, because Chronometer will divide up all your macronutrients, your micronutrients, in terms of vitamins.
Speaker 2:If you think we aren't nutritionally sound, try Chronometer.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:You will be astounded at how much nutrition you're taking.
Speaker 1:In fact I even had one guy tell me oh, if you don't eat meat you're going to have weak bones, and it didn't really register at first. I'm not a lawyer so I don't often think fast on my feet in conversation like that. But I went home and I thought about that and I thought wait a minute, my bones weak bones? Vitamin D doesn't come from meat. Calcium doesn't come from meat. Why is not eating meat going to cause me weak bones? It's not.
Speaker 2:And can you talk to that protein? As far as the amino acids that are necessary to make a protein in an animal can only come through the plant sources.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I've had a difficulty with how this is worded sometimes.
Speaker 2:That's why I'm setting it up for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because the bottom line is, as a mammal, we make proteins. That's part of what our cells do. We make our hormones and structural proteins and all that. But the point that many of these people are trying to make is that, ultimately, in order to make those amino acids, our plants make the amino acids A plant does not eat anything to try to make that happen.
Speaker 2:That's right, whereas an animal does, that's right. It's almost a little bit of a leftover protein.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so in expounding a little bit more on what this healthy diet looks like, so we'll start with fats. I think fats are very important. We've got many fats that our body really needs to ingest, some what's called essential fatty acids and stuff like that, some what's called essential fatty acids and stuff like that, like the omega-3s and omega-6s. How much of a percentage of fat should the average american have in their diet? I think that depends on if you have some kind of metabolic or chronic disease or not. If you have no insulin resistance, if you are active, you have no heart disease. You have no diabetes. You have no high blood pressure.
Speaker 2:You're not trying to get rid of excess.
Speaker 1:Right, I would say the average adult should do extremely well, with 25% to 30% of their total caloric intake coming from fat Monitoring the omega-6 to omega-3 ratios. I think that's a big deal To interject here about saturated versus unsaturated fats. One of the things that really I locked onto early on was the fact that plants almost never have saturated fat. What's the cause of all these plaques in our arteries? Saturated fat. Now there is one plant that does have some saturated fat. That's the coconut. I'm not a huge fan of coconut, so that really doesn't bother, okay coconut oil would not be a good thing.
Speaker 1:Coconut oil would not be a good thing, but we've already addressed that. In terms of oils in general, just not real great because it's an ultra-processed.
Speaker 2:It's a really bad one, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, I guess I shouldn't say bad, how do you put that in there? But it's not a good one, it's not a particularly healthy alternative, yeah, to ingest.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, the kind of thought process that I ended up having, and one of the factors that really Made me realize that plant based eating is really the way to go, is because, really, the only source of saturated fats and the only source of cholesterol that I'm aware of Is in animal based products. I'm not aware of any plants that have cholesterol, no, and coconut is the only saturated fat.
Speaker 2:Maybe a little bit in avocado, but not it's not. I think it has some saturated.
Speaker 1:I'd have to look that up. Yeah, I'm not sure, but the amounts are going to be minuscule. Okay, so love me some avocado, me too. The problem is, if I maintain a 23 gram of fat a day, I can't eat much avocado, but I can have some.
Speaker 2:And that's our goal too is to be able to give moms some menus and some recipes that the kids can love. To break that down, it's hard at first.
Speaker 1:Let's see Stepping forward. Related to fats, as I had mentioned, without any of those chronic metabolic diseases, I think 25% to 30% of your total calories from fat is pretty reasonable. With those diseases. What I've learned from the Mastering Diabetes program and I think many other people in the field not just supporting Mastering Diabetes but working with people with these chronic diseases would agree that limiting your fat intake to 10 to 15% of your total calories.
Speaker 2:We should also say that Robbie and Cyrus are both type 1 diabetics. That's right. So this book is very helpful to regulate type 1 diabetes as well.
Speaker 1:Yes, just as a plug for that, they and I don't remember, it's been a while since I've read it but they reduced their insulin requirement dramatically. That was incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Because, and he eats fruit all day long, all day long, which endocrinologists a lot of times say no to. A lot of times they say no, but yeah.
Speaker 1:the issue there again is that type 1 diabetics are hit on multiple levels A. The big cause initially, is their pancreas doesn't produce the insulin. However, the problem with eating all the fats and meats because the doctors that are untrained will tell them don't eat fruit, don't eat any of that stuff, but just stick with fats and meat the problem is those fats get stuck in your cells and, just like other people that are developing insulin resistance, they will get insulin resistance as well and they helped thousands of people and they have a private coaching if people need that, and I can't say enough yeah, yeah, it's pretty fabulous.
Speaker 1:So we already told that story. All right now about protein. My eye-opening moment just a few months ago we watched a documentary on the twin study, and was it out of that study? It may have been another resource, but the guy that did the twin study is a nutritionist named Christopher Gardner, part of the Zoe project. I think I got this little tidbit from a different video source. It may have been a Zoe video, in fact, I think it was a Zoe video. But my eye-opening moment came when he said okay, let's think about this. Our bodies process carbohydrates. And when our blood sugar starts to dip a little bit, then our body takes care of that and activates some glycogen which produces glucose and keeps our blood sugar stable. All right, what happens when we take a little bit excess fat? Our bodies have an infinite supply of storage space for fat. They do?!?!? LOL Hence I became very fat. So, yes, it's an infinite storage supply, all right. Okay, what happens when you take excess protein? We have no storage system for protein.
Speaker 2:People are not aware of this.
Speaker 1:Right, there is no storage system. What happens? That's right. What happens to excess protein once you've taken care of your muscles needs and your amino acid needs for your body? So if you're a bodybuilder and you're building big muscles and working out eight hours a day in the gym, once those immediate needs are taken care of, your body says oh, we're done, we're going to convert the rest of these amino acids to carbohydrate and fat so we can store them. Oh, so that means if I'm taking 200 grams of protein a day, my body's going to use for a guy my size and build, probably about 70 grams a day. So that extra 130 grams of protein that I take in on a daily basis is getting converted to carbohydrate and fat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's not being talked about.
Speaker 1:So it's not being talked about, it's misunderstood and I think the problem is a lot of these guys in the gym particularly don't have a good understanding of that fact. And you're really, you are, you're really, if you're really in the bodybuilding world or really concerned about your bodybuilders there, yeah, but if you're into that, then you're really concerned.
Speaker 1:You want you do want to get enough protein, okay. So what is that magic number? And it's really been pretty well researched for your average adult who's not working out eight hours a day and trying to build muscles on muscles If you're not an adolescent and going through growth spurs or a child with different protein requirements, the average adult in our situation needs about 0.8 grams per kilo. Now if that person taking 0.8 grams per kilo decides, okay, I want to work out more, I want to get more bulk, they bump that up to 1.1 grams per kilo and you'll do really well. You'll build muscles. As long as you put the time in the gym, you'll build those muscles. That will happen, okay. But you take more than that and guess what? It becomes carbohydrate and fat. Crazy, and that's where the body stores it. Yeah, so that was a real eye-opening moment for me. Crazy, and that's where the body stores it. Yeah, so that was a real eye-opening moment for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the same scenario with not the same thing. But if you've got all this extra fat and you've got high blood sugar, your body's just trying to get rid of that. So, it's like the body works really well when we know how to feed it.
Speaker 1:So where does that leave us now? We've got the three major macronutrients. We've got about, for easy computation, about 30% fat. We've got. Actually, what those numbers work out to is an average of about 11% of our total calories on a daily basis. Should be protein. There's a give or take there. So basically what we're looking at here is between fat and protein. We need about 40%. That's about 40% of our diet. That leaves 60% for complex carbohydrates which have had a really bad rap. But again, and somewhat related to Dr McDougall, who really hammers the idea that we are starchivores we are made to metabolize carbohydrates.
Speaker 2:By studying other countries Exactly. Yeah, there was a lot of science behind that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, other countries, other cultures, other diets. Yeah, the Blue Zone is a very good thing, exactly so, yeah, so the average healthy American diet should be in my estimation and there is some wiggle room in all of these numbers but roughly 60% carbs and, for people without metabolic disease, 30% fat and about 10% 11% protein.
Speaker 2:And I feel like the body tells you that, because how you feel after the standard diet meal is sluggish and sleepy versus. We just don't feel that way after a meal.
Speaker 1:Not at all All right, and I think we've talked a little bit about this. So again, why is plant-based nutrition such a big deal? And I'd like to reiterate the fact that four of the top 10 killers in this country are directly related to nutrition. All right, heart disease is the number one killer of adults in this country and according to Dr Caldwell Esselsty n, it's a should be a toothless paper tiger if we can teach people to eat the right way. I will say this movie forks over knives documents really eloquently how this strict whole food plant-based diet reversed heart disease. It's the only eating plan ever.
Speaker 2:Where they showed veins opening up. Exactly, we talked to a lady last night who had so many stents she could not get well before plant-based. Now she's not had any kind of I mean like any kind of issue.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. Dr Esselstyn, as is outlined in the movie Forks Over Knives, was given kind of an end stage group of heart disease, About 20 people-ish as I recall they call them the walking dead.
Speaker 2:They call them the walking dead.
Speaker 1:Their doctors, they're given a hope. That's right. Their cardiologists have said we've given you stents, we've given you medications, we've given you everything that we know. The only thing that's left is to find your rocking chair and sit on your porch till you die. Literally that's what they said to them.
Speaker 1:And yet many of these, most of all of it, there was one that went off because he went off the plan yeah, were alive, years later and in the couple of people that ended up, for whatever reason, needing a new angiogram to look at their, they were having some issues, so they looked at their vessels again or just checking. There was documented proof of the vessels that used to be blocked that were open again. It's the only way of eating that has been documented proven to do that which is why I think dr Ornish's book is called Undo it.
Speaker 2:Everything is about undoing that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, and we already mentioned the cancer issue and how food will dictate what genes can be expressed.
Speaker 2:And we might want to just let people know we do have the plant-based resource page on Ozark Pediatrics. We have a group called Keever's Plant-Based Tribe if they'd like to join that and we have lots of those resources in there.
Speaker 1:A word about supplements, one of the last topics I have here. A lot of people are concerned about adding supplements, being afraid of not getting all the right vitamins and minerals and whatnot. I fully believe that if you eat a well-rounded, eat the rainbow kind of thing in a whole food, plant-based diet, you'll get almost everything your body needs. I say almost. Vitamin D is something that we get from exposure to the sun. Most people in the United States are not going to get enough exposure to the sun. We need some vitamin D. It's a very simple thing to take. I take 2,000 units a day, so it's not a big deal.
Speaker 1:Vitamin B12, definitely important on a plant-based diet, which everybody's deficient in it, right, which, yeah, which is just moving to. Even a lot of omnivores are probably going to need a little supplement of vitamin B12. And then, lastly, it's a very important element that helps in a lot of countless body metabolism pathways and it's being taken out of our water supply just by the processing and filtering of water and the number of places we used to get it. So it's, I think, important to take a magnesium supplement. Now, having said that, the supplement industry is not a regulated one. Use caution the labels may say something that isn't the full truth, and how do we guard against that? There are a couple of organizations that do testing to verify if what's on the label is actually in the bottle, and if you find a label that is stamped with the NSF seal or the USP seal you can count on they've really got what's in there.
Speaker 2:And I'd realize the others were so unregulated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very unregulated. So you may have a bunch, a big overdose of what you're looking for, or you may have almost nothing. You may have contaminants, heavy metals, other things like that. These two organizations will testify that what's in the bottle, is on the label, is in the bottle. And the last thing I want to address is what is lifestyle medicine? So it's very different than functional medicine. I think my limited understanding of functional medicine is they do highly support the supplement industry. I find that a little disconcerting, trying to be in sales as opposed to actually, you know, especially an unregulated business.
Speaker 1:Lifestyle medicine focuses on evidence based practices, researched, and it focuses on six main areas of what constitutes health. Nutrition, exercise, stress management, sleep, avoidance of toxic substances and relationships. Those are the six basic pillars of lifestyle medicine, and then I would love to get into that more, but time is of the essence. So the other, the last thing I would say about lifestyle medicine is it is a different style of practice. So in this country we're used to going to the doctor because I have a problem and I want the doctor to fix it Fast, fast. Yes, in dealing with chronic disease, lifestyle medicine takes a different approach. Yes, I have a little bit of expertise and I would love to share those things. But our patient doctor relationship is different in that my patient has to take more responsibility for doing the things that they need to do which is encouraging too, though, because they're buying it.
Speaker 2:It's empowering, yeah absolutely, to know that you can get rid of a majority of all these things that I would say. As far as the brain, I know we're not talking about that, but just a little caveat to when the brain's inflamed, there's a lot of things with depression and things that can just really be affected by that.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I think we're pretty much wrapped up.
Speaker 2:Okay, this is the introduction to Roots to Health, roots to Health, and we're excited about this podcast. Thanks for everybody coming today.
