Pharmaphobic
Pharmaphobic is a bold and thought-provoking podcast that challenges the status quo of health and wellness in America. Hosted by Dan, a veteran-turned-fitness professional, and Janie, a physician assistant, this show dives into the deep-rooted issues within big pharma, big food, and the healthcare system. With a mission to uncover corruption and promote sustainable, long-term health solutions, Pharmaphobic is for those seeking better answers, curious minds ready to question the system, and anyone eager to take control of their well-being. Join Dan and Janie each week as they explore practical ways to thrive, share transformative health insights, and inspire change. Follow Pharmaphobic on your favorite podcast platform and be part of the movement toward real health and wellness.
Pharmaphobic
Ep. 79 - Can We Trust Gummy Supplements?
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We started with creatine gummies and ended up questioning gummy supplements altogether. When some popular products tested far below their labeled creatine amounts, we started asking whether convenience is quietly replacing quality.
Then we got into Cyclospora, bagged produce, food processing, and why a “healthy” label or a Whole Foods shelf doesn’t automatically mean better sourcing. Sometimes the same supplier sits behind very different packaging.
We finish with something we actually loved seeing: parents building balance, coordination, grit, and confidence through play. If the basics matter this much, why do we keep making health more complicated than it needs to be?
Contact Daniel and Janie:
Email: info@achievethelifestyle.com
Website: achievethelifestyle.com
Instagram: @achievethelifestyle
Pharmaphobic is powered by Achieve the Lifestyle, a company dedicated to helping you empower your health, redefine your lifestyle, and all for the health of it. You're listening to Pharmaphobic, where we challenge the state of health in America. I'm Janie, a physician assistant, and I've seen how healthcare keeps people dependent instead of truly healthy.
SPEAKER_04And I'm Dan, a veteran turn fitness pro here to uncover the truth and explore simple and sustainable health solutions. From big pharma to big food, we're exposing the conflicts of interest, keeping us sick, and finding better ways to take back our health.
SPEAKER_01No fluff, no gimmicks, just real talk, real solutions, and a little bit of fun along the way.
SPEAKER_04Hello there. Welcome to another episode of Pharmaphobic, brought to you by Achieve the Lifestyle, where we help you become the strongest, healthiest, and most capable version of yourself. As always, guys, we're in good company here. We got Miss Maggie Moo, the podcast doggo, somewhere around here. She's by me. She's in she's in the wrong side. She's not by her daddy, but she's a daddy's girl. We've proven this multiple times over and over again. And I'm here with my lovely wife.
SPEAKER_00That's me.
SPEAKER_04Companion in life. And always, always special guest in the podcast and in my life. Miss Janie Brown, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_01Doing well. You didn't say special guest last time. And so I thought we thought we were over it.
SPEAKER_04I missed one?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Then that's bad.
unknownNo.
SPEAKER_04That means you weren't a special guest that day. Maybe, maybe, maybe you treated me a certain way at home. And I was just like, you're not a special guest today. Quit making up stuff. King Petty. Okay. How are you? How are you doing, man?
SPEAKER_01I'm okay. It's been a week, but we're here.
SPEAKER_04It's been a week.
SPEAKER_01It's been a year.
SPEAKER_04It's been a week. It's been it's been a crazy year.
SPEAKER_01Maybe at the end of the year, we'll do a recap of of all the stuff that happened this year. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_04It's interesting because it's you don't really, you know, when you are in a certain headspace, you don't really notice when things, you know, it's like up, down, up, down, and you're like, eh. You know, you're kind of like you feel it, but it's like you're not completely thrown off by it.
SPEAKER_06Right.
SPEAKER_04And then you just keep going, type of thing, right? And I I mean that's a good thing because you can take the ups and downs better than most. There's only one way to do that. You gotta be right up in here. You gotta be right up in here with God. Yes, man. Anyway, we got some stuff for you guys today. We always got stuff. We always have some stuff. We got some health stuff, some health-related stuff, and some more health stuff for you guys. First, we are going to start talking about vitamins and creatine and um a myriad of supplements that have now taken to come into the form of gummies.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Poof.
SPEAKER_01I am we were we were on that that gummy, gummy train for a while.
SPEAKER_04For melatonin specifically, which I have a note on that, on on the melatonin in gummies.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04But it's it's funny because it's like the gummy thing has blown up. I don't know if that's on the back of weeb gummies, maybe that inspired something.
SPEAKER_01I think it's just to make it attractive.
SPEAKER_04To make it more attractive to grown folk.
SPEAKER_01I personally like gummies, right? Like that kind of chewiness of them. And then it's like a little sweet treat, right? But it's good for you. So it's like a double whammy. You get a sweet treat, and then in your mind you're like, I'm doing something amazing for myself.
SPEAKER_03I'm taking vitamins, but they taste sweet.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So it's the same way people are like, I drink red wine because it's the flavonoids and the antioxidants. Yeah, and dark chocolate, which dark chocolate is actually really good for you. But um, you know, it's like it's that sort of mental and I don't know how to say it, like that feedback of both mental goodness and taste to full goodness. I'm sure it's like tactile.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but they they've like, I I feel like it's gotten like a little you know what I mean.
SPEAKER_01No, it's gone, it's gone off the charts.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's gotten like a little pop way more popular.
SPEAKER_01Did you take vitamins as a kid?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So I remember I was a Flintstones kid, Flintstones kid kid. So that's why I look the way I do today because I took Flintstones kids.
SPEAKER_01Flintstones, Flintstones were like a like a treat.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, they were a straight sugar bomb.
SPEAKER_01Right. No, no, no. But like I didn't have I didn't have Flintstones because we will pull. But um I just remember this like horse pill of a vitamin my dad would make us take. And what we would do is we would take it and then chug orange juice because it was the only way we could get it down. So it tasted so bad.
SPEAKER_04If we could go back and compare your vitamins to my Flintstones kids, I bet you you were taking the better thing. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because Flintstones kids were like just I didn't do Flintstones until college when um me and this on this um, because I was on the women's club soccer team and the men's club soccer team, a lot of times we all hung out, and this other guy and I were convinced that Flintstone vitamins cured hangovers. So we would like take half a bottle.
SPEAKER_04Wow. Why? That's a reach, fam. I don't even know how you like yo, how did you how did you land on that?
SPEAKER_01I don't know. It's why by one of the 7500,052 reasons I don't drink anymore because stupid things happen.
SPEAKER_04The reach there.
SPEAKER_01I'm like, man, I've reached for conclusions before, but that one is like but it's also like I'm hungover, but I'm doing something good for myself, right?
SPEAKER_05Flintstone's kids. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, I'm sure there's some science to it. Like alcohol depletes you of things, and the Flintstone vitamin maybe had like a whisper of some vitamins in my body.
SPEAKER_04My body was like, please, yeah, a whisper is correct. Like a little of it's like of vitamins in there.
SPEAKER_01Right. But but they the reason why I brought up Flintstone vitamins is because why do you think they made them in that? It's because it was attractive to kids. So now you're getting kids to buy in to taking the vitamins. And from one angle, it's like, hey, we're getting kids to take these vitamins because they need them, but another angle, it's just like the same reason they make cereals colorful, they make cigarettes, they made cigarettes like colorful and things like that, is because they want you to buy them, right?
SPEAKER_04Man, I now I'm, you know, I could go down a rabbit hole, but I'm not gonna do it. I because I need to deep dive into this. And part of it is inspired by this the book, the book. The book, the book I am reading, the book I'm reading, the food pollution book. And he they're they they're reaching to some conclusions about vitamins and stuff like that and synthetic forms of vitamins. So I'll I'm gonna shelve that until I can formulate a better opinion. But those vitamins that you were that, you know, the Flintstones kids and a lot of this stuff, especially if they're pressed pills, not capsules, it's a lower quality thing, right? Because to press a pill, you gotta put a bunch of fillers in there.
SPEAKER_01Exactly, and to make it hold together.
SPEAKER_04So that means less of the stuff you want, more of the BS, right?
SPEAKER_01Right. Um, and the same thing is that they just they just want people because it tastes like candy. Yeah, it doesn't. So candy, it was a sugar pill. Like, yes, please let me have it, right? Um, and so that's the same way they make a lot of things gummies, because some people out there are just like I'm it is wild to me how some people they're like, I don't drink water because I don't like the taste. Yeah, I don't do this, I don't take my vitamin because I don't like the taste. Like they know it's good for them, they know they need it, they know the health benefits, but if it doesn't come in this super sweet and you know, palatable, enjoyable form, they're not gonna do it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and and part of I think a lot of that has to do with like palate programming. They've probably been eating crap for so long that they're just completely disconnected from their taste buds, unless it's this hyper palatable, you know, synthetic thing. It's like the difference between eating strawberry flavored stuff and eating a strawberry. You're like, oh, strawberries don't taste good.
SPEAKER_01You know, one of the reasons why I joke around about growing up poor, but I'm very thankful for it is because I didn't have like I didn't know better, right?
SPEAKER_04You didn't eat fast food all the time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I couldn't eat fast food all the time. I'm not a picky eater because you didn't have a choice, you know. So it's so a lot it it I think it's benefited me in some ways. Sure, I had didn't have some advantages other people had, but I'm okay. But the like gummy vitamins or even the Flintstone vitamins, that wasn't even if I wanted a vitamin, which wasn't even all the time, it was yeah, it was like questionable. I have no idea what the brand was or anything like that, but tasted gross. And I know now like good quality supplements.
SPEAKER_04You're gonna smell a certain way. You got some functum. Yeah, yeah, they're they're gonna smell a certain way. Yeah, they they have a little, you open it and you're like, woo, there's just a lot of goodness in there. Yeah, they um the gummy thing is is mind-boggling, right? Because it's I just for the life of me, and it's adults, right? So I'm like, you you're literally marketing candy to adults, and we're taking up on it like we're kids. And it's getting really popular. It's been like a really popular thing. Now, I I don't know if like I said, I don't know if weed gummies made this a thing, like raised it up, right?
SPEAKER_01No, I don't I don't think so because I think the gummy supplements were more were already on the track before weed gummies, but I they may have been simultaneous because if you think about it, like with weed, you would bake it into stuff. So you would do like you know, brownies or the muscle.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but but the gummies are fairly new, right? And they're very popular. If they kind of I feel like they kind of came. Listen, I'm not a pothead, so I I wasn't aware of all the forms to get weed other than smoking it before. But I feel like on the back of legalization, the gummies started becoming more commonplace.
SPEAKER_01So I think it's the same thing as with the supplements. What do gummies provide? They're cleaner. You're not gonna get like you're not gonna smoke it.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_01You're not well, you're not gonna smoke it. It's not a tincture, so it's easier to handle and to store. The same way vitamins, like they don't, you know, a gummy doesn't smell bad, right? Um, you know, gummies aren't pills because some people have trouble swallowing pills. Um, with weed, again, it no gummy is just plain gelatin with weed in it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but they also figured out like the delivery of it because eating weed has always been like a more potent high, apparently. So, and then with the gummies, these the gummies hit.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Like my thing is my brief experience with taking gummies, I was like, yo, but they're flavorful, right?
SPEAKER_01And so they taste good. So you're hitting on another thing besides just the whatever benefit you're seeking from the weed. Same way with, I mean, they have gummies for melatonin, vitamin D. You can get your um multivitamin in a gummy form, creatine gummies, all these like gummy, gummy, gummy, because it's also hitting on something else. So and because you're you're not seeking that gummy because of the health benefits, you're seeking it because of that that taste tasteful goodness.
SPEAKER_05No, I wasn't. I was wondering what was inside. Like what it purported to do, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, yeah, but I'm talking about the main person out there getting supplements in gummy form.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_04That that that's a good question, right? Like, what is it because it's flavorful? But I mean, so what brought this on? Let's let's get to what brought this on is the creatine gummy thing. So creatine gummies are hitting the market left and right, and it's now I was watching freaking, you know how Amazon has ads now, annoying. Um but I swear commercial, can we can can I can a brother rant for a second on advertising? Like, bruh, stop. Is there a moment like you go to the gas station, you're pumping gas, the gas pump is advertising stuff to you while you're sitting there pumping gas. Your phone, you scroll in on Instagram, boom, every other post is an ad. You go on the stories, in between stories, there's ads. Now the streaming services are putting ads in it. Brother, can you stop it? Is there any place that we can go that you're not gonna market to us? Urinals in certain bathrooms, you have a TV right in front of it, and there's ads running.
SPEAKER_01You're gonna have to blue block while you're peeing?
SPEAKER_04It's wild. It's wild. So just please, marketing companies, stop it. Because what it makes me do is not want to buy a single thing from y'all. Makes me want to spend less money because you guys are in the business like that. Stealing data from people so that I can market. Oh my God. Whatever. Anyway, I'm done with it.
SPEAKER_06Okay.
SPEAKER_04The whole thing is I was watching Prime and a commercial came on. I was like, but there's like these creatine gummies are popping up. I'm like, oh, we need to look into this because they've been going on for a while. No, they've been going on, but I'm like But I could have sworn that But there's more companies popping up about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, because creatine's really catching it.
SPEAKER_04It's on fire. Yeah, and rightfully, rightfully. So you can't. No, it shouldn't. Everyone should be taking creatine.
SPEAKER_01It's one of those like magnesium and creatine are two supplements that hands down you should be taking.
SPEAKER_04Um as always, when there's something good, you know, big corporate companies are gonna inject an oakie doke into it, right? Right. So creatine's catching the okidok in the form of the creatine gummies. And that when I started looking into that, then it extrapolated into multivitamins and all this other stuff. You know, looking at blood work for people that they're taking multivitamins, but the, you know, their levels aren't reflecting certain things. And it's like, oh, which vitamins are you taking? Gummies. You know what I mean? And that now you start putting a picture together, right? So it opened up something I love, which is a rabbit hole. I see rabbit holes and I'm jumping, I'm whoop, jumping in there. I'm spelunking. And then I'm like, next thing I know, I was like, it's an hour, and I'm like, my I'm all crazy like this because I just started looking at stuff and tying, you know, little threads together, and and I I got lost in the moment. Happened a lot during COVID, too, for obvious reasons.
SPEAKER_01Anyway, funny, it happened a lot during COVID when you were consuming gummies.
SPEAKER_04Yes, when I was consuming gummies. Uh back when when I thought that we was gonna give you some benefits, I was like, oh, and it kind of did. It helped, it did help with my sleep a little bit, but not worth the trade-off now. Temporarily. Temporarily, yeah, not worth the trade-off now. Anyway, it uh it did open up some rabbit holes, and then next thing you know, it's two o'clock in the morning, and I'm just like like the meme with the board, like the from we sunny. Like, oh my God, look at this. Anyway, with these gummy vitamins and and creatine. So I looked into a study from this company called Subco, and they're an independent company with research capabilities. So their goal, Subco is basically they build a database, and they got bought out by somebody else who owns it now. A database of supplements, of course, of supplements, and they basically rank them and let and make recommendations like, oh, if you have this, then you take this, these are the supplements that are better, that sort of thing. Big database, I mean, hundreds of thousands potentially supplements in there. Uh, and they also what they do is they'll request samples from companies and test them for stuff. And they tested some of the top-rated gummies on Amazon. So the the ones that people are buying the most. One of them, Happy Yum, is a is a name of a company on those. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Happy yum.
SPEAKER_04Happy yum.
SPEAKER_00Happy yum. Happy yum.
SPEAKER_04Like happy and yummy. Um, the the gummies, they claim to have five grams, which is the standard serving of creatine, right? You want five gram. Usually the recommendations for creatine are in five gram increments.
SPEAKER_01So no, for women is three to five grams. For men, it's five to ten starting. And you can dose up higher. Um, some people think that you know, 20 to 30 grams a day is is beneficial. The thing you have to watch for is gastric side effects because sometimes if you either load up too high too quickly, you can get diarrhea, or at a certain dose, you can get diarrhea from it. But some people don't. I think there was one guy at the collective MCK who's like, I don't I take 30 grams a day, no issue.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And some people everyone else is like, oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_04And he says that a lot of the benefits, like for concussion protocols and things like that, happen at those higher doses, 20 grams and above.
SPEAKER_01But that's like if you're if you're a professional fighter, if you're you yourself or your kid or a loved one's in combat sports, thinking like football, boxing, um, not combat. Well, wrestling is a combat, but not a combat sport, but a um high impact would be like football, right? Or even judo. Yeah, judo. Things where you can get a head injury, which you could get a head injury in any sport, right? Soccer, you go to head a ball, so does somebody else, you two collide, right? That's head injury. Okay.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, military too. Like if you're, you know, jumping out of planes. Like I think the concussions that I clearly recall that what I now know to be like I was probably concussed, basketball at 14, uh landing from a parachute in 20, 2005, and 2010, and a judo throw in 2006. I got slammed.
SPEAKER_00Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_04Like it was like a standing knockout where I was like, I thought I was gonna puke immediately afterwards. Oh, yeah, it was bad. But it was a judo throw, really nice judo throw.
SPEAKER_01They found that those who were dosing creatine regularly weathered brain injuries better than those who didn't have any creatine on board. Um, now you can get creatine through natural sources, through meats.
SPEAKER_06Beef, right?
SPEAKER_01So if you are not taking a creatine supplement at all, but you have a high protein diet with animal meats, you are getting some creatine. This is just Dan and I personally take creatine for the added health benefits of it. Neurocognitive benefits, muscular benefits. Um and they find that dosing creatine in the neurocognitive space, if you are sleep deprived, which this guy is dosing creatine regularly can help mitigate the effects of that. So, anyway, so that's why creatine's important. And it's getting a lot more popularity, specifically in women because we don't have as much lean muscle mass. Therefore, creatine stores are less creatine stores or less, but we're, you know, we can get really great cognitive benefits at lower doses than men because of that, right? And so all women should have creatine. Well, then they came and they they bastardized it by making like here's creatine monohydrate, which is all you need, and then here's creatine monohydrate for women in a pink bottle. Yeah. Now, and here's creatine monohydrate in gummies, right? When all you need is just that white powder and it is getting more expensive compared to probably 10 years ago because it is getting, you know, the demand is more, but there's it's still relatively affordable. Um, but now they're putting it in all these different forms to try to get the edge on getting people to consume it more and consistently. And on one hand, you can say, well, if it's in a gun gummy form and the health benefits of it are there and it's gonna get people to take it consistently and they won't take it consistently in a powder form, okay, that's great. However, so much you have to weigh that against. Is it more important that you take it consistently? And does that outweigh what you found, the testing with the gummies?
SPEAKER_04I mean, before I even get there, like consider what you're getting with it, right? To make a gummy, fillers and nonsense have to go in there on top of the creatine, right? So is it worth it me taking just creatine monohydrate, single ingredient thing, versus me taking 25 other ingredients to get the creatine.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you can make healthy gummies. I've been looking at making some from home. You just take beef gelatin and electrolytes, and like I've been thinking about doing that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and that's fine, but the the stuff that you're gonna find in the mainstream is not that, yeah, right? Like you making your own gummy, if you want to do that, that's different than the stuff you're gonna find in the ones you make at home aren't gonna be shelf stable for. Yeah, you have to eat them within a certain amount of days, or not, it's all that stuff. But here's the thing with these um mainstream gummies that are telling you they have creatine. So the gummies, these happy young ones, starting out with these, they claim to have uh five grams serving of creatine, right? If you open up a thing of creatine monohydrate, the little scoop it comes with, that's usually five grams. Um every two gummies. So you take two gummies, you get your five grams. They found the subcoat testing revealed that the gummies had 0.05 grams of creatine. So they they're saying they're telling you they have five grams. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You said 0.05.
SPEAKER_040.005.
SPEAKER_00Okay, That's what I'm No you didn't.
SPEAKER_04Guys, gentlemen, you you're witnessing this? This is how we live right here. We're oppressed in our own homes. We're in our own homes. Anyway, so that's 0.1% of what they're reporting to have of the ingredient that they're claiming to have. Full stop. 0.1%? Not even half? My what? Are you serious? Are you kidding me? Okay.
SPEAKER_01So I wonder if, because I know with foods, when they say like total calories in a food on the nutrition label, they have like a percentage that they can fall within, right?
SPEAKER_04That is not it. Yeah, you're right. But that is.
SPEAKER_01But I wonder if supplements are the same.
SPEAKER_04No. I don't know. And that is, and and this is outside that way outside that window. Because it's not even half of what you're saying that you have in there.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_04Um, there's another brand, Divina Slabs. Divina Slabs. That one contained, this one's a little bit better. 0.025 grams per serving and claim to have five grams. Another one, EcoWise and Vita Baton.
SPEAKER_01I haven't heard of any of these brands.
SPEAKER_04Zero.
SPEAKER_01Just none.
SPEAKER_04They had none. They're like, they didn't even try to put creatine in there. They said, you know what? We're just, I'm just gonna utter the word creatine into the gummy, and it'll have the creatine it needs, right?
SPEAKER_01It's a real life placebo trial.
SPEAKER_04Insane. Now, what they did find was elevated levels of creatinine, which is a waste product created when creatine breaks down. So now let's look at this. So, and let's let's think about this. Creatinin in your body when it's in your blood is like a sign of muscle breakdown, right? It's like a marker of that. Elevated levels of creatine of creatinine, correct me if I'm wrong, point to muscle breakdown. Like if you've done hard workouts, hard workouts or whatever.
SPEAKER_01You can, but creatinine is also a kidney function marker.
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_01So if the muscle's broke down, that taxes are broken down, that taxes the kidneys, the creatinine will go up. But the creatinine can go up for other reasons. If you're dehydrated, your creatinine's elevated. If you have a lot of muscle mass in general, your creatin's gonna ride a little bit higher. And so, but if you feel like you have chronic kidney disease, creatinine's gonna be elevated.
SPEAKER_04Now, so these gummies, what they did find is elevated levels of that, not creatine, creatinine, okay, which is a waste product. Now, this um theorizing here, speculating, this could mean that they put creatine in there and then they cooked it. So to make these gummies, they got a big high heat has to come in and all this stuff. And then that creatine broke down and just transformed into creatinine. And now when you test for creatine, it's not there because during the processing it got lost. Interesting. That's a theory. That that's something that's a conclusion.
SPEAKER_01When they make the nutrition labels for the supplements, are they testing the creatine in the final product form? It doesn't sound like they are.
SPEAKER_04I think they're just telling you what they put in there, and that's what they're they're not even testing the final product. That's that's what I think it is. It's happening. Um, but now this reiterates the improcess, the importance, the improcess, the importance of minimally processed stuff. The more you process, the more you're breaking down nutrients, the more you're like basically turning, beating the life and the nutrients out of food, right? It just, I mean, this applies to steak. Like, if you over for all you that like steak well done, you literally cook the nutrients out of the steak, my boy. Don't if it's like the meme from uh King of the Hill. It's like, oh, what if somebody likes their their steak well done, Daddy? Then we kindly ask them to leave the barbecue. So yeah, anything when you cook it too long, you process it too long, so a lot of heat, uh certain things like animal fats will hold they can tolerate higher heats for longer, right? Because of their structure, their their molecular structure, but there's still such a thing as overcooking it. Right. And then you cook the nutrients out of it. So that could be something that applies to these gummies. The high heats to you know mass produce these gummies and all this stuff could be literally killing the creatine in there. This kind of jives with a warning that some people out there in the interwebs have thrown out about putting creatine in your coffee.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but from what I recall, Waldman was saying that creatine is a pretty like robust, has a pretty robust structure. Yeah, because it's a lot of people. So it's not broken down easy or as easy, right? And I don't think that for most people, their coffee or tea isn't hot enough to break it down.
SPEAKER_04That depends. Um, yes, it comes again, like I said, it comes from animals. Their the molecular structure has better integrity than the plant stuff, but you know, you can get to a certain point where you're gonna break it down.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um, it's just a matter of time or heat or temperatures or whatever. These mass-produced gummies, you are gonna, you know, the the they're just blasting them so that they can keep churning, right?
SPEAKER_01That's what I'm saying. I think to create a gummy, you're gonna heat the that heating point is much higher than to make a cup of coffee.
SPEAKER_04Yep. So I would that's that's a reiteration, right? And and again, we're speculating because we could assume that they didn't, they just didn't put the creatine in. They're like this one was zero percent. Or we can say give them the benefit of the doubt and say, hey, they put it in there, then they cooked it, and the creatine just got cooked away.
SPEAKER_01I know, but it's like but either way when you like it when you're baking stuff, you don't taste the batter and then like bake it, and then don't like and that's you know, the batter's not what the end result's gonna taste like. And so I don't like with supplement companies, they're not held to a standard that you have to test the end product.
SPEAKER_04Not independent testers. And they might remember, you made this, you spent millions of dollars or whatever investment to produce this stuff. You're not gonna if if you test it after you've made, you know, thousands of line items of this product, and you're like, oh, there's no creatine in there. You think you're not gonna unload that?
SPEAKER_00At that point, just roll it around in creatine powder.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and be like, oh, that's powdered sugar on it. It's the actual creatine. Hey, that'd be better than giving me 0. You got one zero zero five. Yeah, it'd be better than giving me 0.005 grams of creatine. Now, um, there's another company here that because this keeps going, right? They tested 12 gummies and found that five of them had little to no active ingredients and the others were below. So not little to no active ingredients, meaning all the stuff that they're claiming is in the gummy is not there. That's wild. Oh you can extrapolate, you know, we're using creatine gummies, right? But we're gonna extrapolate this to multivitamin gummy forms, melatonin gummy forms. Now, apparently there's an exception with melatonin. Like, supposedly melatonin gummies have even more melatonin than they say than have. Like they're stronger. That that was a point I was like, oh, that's interesting, because we used to take melatonin gums. Um, the the Ollie ones, which reading that label now, I'm like, ooh, no.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And I and I don't back then we weren't like we would read labels, but we weren't looking for the same thing we are now. So I wonder, this is when Ollie first started getting popular. So I wonder if it changed. And maybe maybe it changed, maybe it didn't. But now you read that label on the Ollie stuff, and it's like, oh my God, this is a bunch of nonsense that doesn't need to be in your body to get melatonin, right? Um, but if you're, you know, vitamin D gummies, multivitamin gummies, now we can start assuming again to make a gummy, they gotta put a bunch of other stuff in there. So now the stuff that you want in there becomes less, right? Because otherwise you'd have a gummy this big. So and cooking it is gonna wear nutrients out. Conclusion here most gummy products have a ton of added stuff. Again, read ingredient labels. We all you'll always hear this from us, and you'll start seeing you know, high fructose corn syrup, sunflower oil, um some other stuff in there that I mean I like it's just ingredients. When you read it, I was like, do I really want all of this to get this itty bitty thing of creatine or whatever? What's a better option?
SPEAKER_01Just taking the powder.
SPEAKER_04Take the powder. If you need multivitamins, find the capsules. Um, if you need whatever you're looking for, capsules are probably gonna be your better choice. Nine out of ten. With creatine specifically, the powder is better. Listen, make a little concoction, man. Squeeze a little lemon in there. You know, get your little fruit juice, you know, like a nice fruit that you you know, you yeah, and also you squeeze it, freshly squeezed juice, put the creatine in there, little creatine powder, it's flavorless.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, be curious about food sources, right? Because we have to eat, we don't have to swallow pills. And so, you know, I think multivitamins are important because they either have zero to a positive effect. And with the, you know, we know that our soil integrity is decreasing. We know that our food a lot of times is it is void of the nutrients that it once had. So I don't think it hurts to take multivitamins, but you know, look at, you know, like I said, magnesium is something everyone should take. What are food sources of magnesium? Do you like pumpkin seeds? Start putting pumpkin seeds on everything, right?
SPEAKER_02Cabbage.
SPEAKER_01Um, cabbage, yeah. Get you get you some sauerkraut, get you, get you some fermentation.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay. And now let's take a quick break. Have you heard about collagen and how amazing it is for your skin, hair, nails, digestion, and joints, but have no clue which one to choose. I've been there. A few years ago I stumbled upon Bub's Naturals, and let me tell you, I've been hooked ever since. Here's why I swear by them. Bub's Naturals keeps their quality standards sky high from the start to finish. Their collagen blends perfectly in coffee or really any other beverage you love. Plus, they've got convenient to go packs so you can stay on track wherever life takes you. And it doesn't stop there. They'll donate 10% of all of their proceeds to charities that support veterans. How awesome is that? Oh, and they've leveled up their electrolytes too. The Mixed Berry, that's my absolute favorite. It's light, refreshing, and not overly sweet. What sealed the deal for me? Their electrolytes are NSF certified, made right here in the USA. And just like their collagen, every purchase helps give back. So do your body a favor, head to BubNaturals.com and use my code Jane20 at checkout for 20% off every time you order. Tired of looking like you lost a fight with a powdered donut every time you work out? Yeah, I was too. That's why I ditched the messy chalk and switched to chocolates. Chocolate is a new, clean, residue-free grip enhancer that goes on in seconds and lasts for hours. No clouds, no cleanup, just a rock solid grip. Whether you're crushing it in the gym, dominating on the pickleball court, or hanging on a rock face like Spider-Man, chocolates has your back. I even hit my 350-pound deadlift PR at SummerStrong using chocolates, locked in, zero slip, total confidence. Ready to level up your grip game? Head over to chocolates.com and use code Jane Brown to snag 10% off your order. To me, it's just crazy that we, it's that whole convenience thing, right? How can we make supplementation more and more convenient for people? How can we make it more um appealing to people, right? Like, let me get my little gummy every day. No, take a vitamin like an adult.
SPEAKER_04Like, yeah, just I I keep saying it. And I'll I'll, you know.
SPEAKER_01It's the same way how there's fruit snacks.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right? Like little chewy fruit snacks. I personally I love that, right? Because I like that texture of that chewy thing, right? But eat fruit.
SPEAKER_04Man, and a like a perfectly uh ripened fruit, in season fruit.
SPEAKER_01I had a plum this morning, it was delicious.
SPEAKER_04In season, baby. Plummy plum plums are in season. Nectarines. When I have one of those delicious in-season nectarines from the boys, and I cut into that and the juices just fall out. Then I have a little piece of it, I'm like, numb.
SPEAKER_01Watermelon.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Very hydrating.
SPEAKER_04Melons hidden right now. Melons are hidden. Mike is out there slanging melons, and they sounded kind of crazy, huh? The way I just see slanging melons, that's kind of crazy.
SPEAKER_00I don't know.
SPEAKER_04I don't what is it's almost a pause, but it's not a pause. But well anyway. Just slow the speed. Melons are really good right now. So it's convenience. Okay, I was saying having a conversation yesterday, and when they hear this, they're gonna be like, the difference between being a conspiracy theorist and being right is time. Convenience, hear me out. Listen to me now and hear me later. Um, convenience is one of those things that will always be used to push some nonsense on you. When you hear the words convenience, sustainable is one that you gotta be careful with. Because when we talk about sustainability, I'm talking about long-term being able to hold activity for the long term, the original meeting. Other people are talking about sustainable, like good, it's good for the environment and all this other stuff. It's being bastardized, right? And convenience is another word. We like convenience. You want to make things more convenient, but it's being used in a way where hyper convenience, right? We're getting into this thing where we're making everything so convenient that it's detract, detracting from you, right? So be careful when you hear, oh, it's very convenient. Really scrutinize the whole thing. A lot of these things that we talk about here, I'm not like, I don't want to sound like I'm in this holier than thou, I'm better than you, position, who's like, oh my God, you peasant, you still don't know that gummies suck, right? That's not how I'm I'm talking. I don't want to talk to people. It's we've just been at this for a while. Yeah. And we've gone through the gamut. You just heard us say that we took, you know, we're taking melatonin in gummy form. Like we've been through the gamut of supplements of the because we've been in it for a long time, in this whole, you know, health optimization and all this stuff. So we've made a lot of mistakes, right? That we can look back and be like, oh yeah, that was stupid. So now on this platform, I'm sharing with you from experience, right? Like, hey, we kind of went down this rabbit hole. It wasn't worth it, it didn't pan out, right? Maybe in 10 more years, when we're in episode 500, I'll be saying something that I was like, hey, back then we, this is where we're at. We learned something new. This is this has changed, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, the thing is too, is if you do have gummy vitamins of any form, finish them out. Okay. But then just look, do a little bit of investigation. And what I is what I'm taking good quality. Do I notice a benefit from it? And then when you go to refill or rebuy, maybe try a capsule form. Do you notice a difference? Okay. If you're just like, I don't notice a difference. I enjoy the gummies. Um, I take vitamin D gummies and my vitamin D improved while taking it. I'm gonna continue to take it. You do you. Okay. We just want to bring awareness that gummies have a lot of unnecessary fillers in them. Some of the things in them could be counteractive to your health. A lot of artificial sweeteners can be in gummies. If you have issues with gas, like maybe some slippery poops, you know, things like that. Is it the gummy that you're taking every day with the artificial sweetener? Right. So it's just things to look into, um, just to bring awareness. And I had this conversation with my parents. The vitamins you get at Sam's Club are probably not the best quality. Yeah, a lot of if you can get vitamins like I don't know, Sam's Club, so you can get a case of it for like $2. Probably not the best quality.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, a lot of the, you know, you gotta call them out. Like Nature Made is one. Everybody's taking nature made supplements at some point because they're readily available. They're everywhere. You go to Target, they're there. You go to CVS, they're there, you go to your grocery store, they're there, they're everywhere, right? Walmart.
SPEAKER_01And you're like, nature.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Everybody stay like when fish oil started becoming a thing, nature made were the first ones you went and grabbed, right? But then when you start looking at people that have done, you know, analysis on nature-made stuff, it's rancid stuff. It's terrible. You know, it's it really is. So, congratulations. You took the first step. You said, you know what, I'm gonna take some gummies because I want some vitamins, cause health, right? We love it. You're here, you're in the tent.
SPEAKER_06Yep.
SPEAKER_04Now, you know, people that walked in the tent and made the same mistakes, like what we're trying to do, are gonna be like, hey, hey, come over here, buddy. Like those are that's great that you want those. Let me let me point you to some better ones.
SPEAKER_01And with creatine, so Dan and I use Bub's Naturals Creatine because it is creapure, which is a good, good form of it. It comes from Germany, not China. Thorne.
SPEAKER_05What's up, Thorne?
SPEAKER_01You're getting it from China. Actually, you become non-transparent about where you get it from. And Thorne was just bought out by Procter and Gamble, so keep an eye on those subjects.
SPEAKER_04Yo, so pause there. Well, I wanted to do a deep dive into this in another episode. But yeah, just pause right there. Thorn, which has been this medical grade supplement company for years, and a lot of people have defaulted the rec, people like us, defaulted the recommending them because they're like, hey, this is the most available. Go seek these out, and they have a lot of stuff. Got bought out by Proctor and Gamble. And what I was having this conversation with a friend of fellow coach who uses Thorn a lot and recommends it a lot, and I was like, yo, it's not only that they were bought out, it's who bought them out. Proctor and Gamble has been, they have one of the most insidious histories in the history of pharmaceutical companies. Proctor and Gamble are the originators of seed oils. Yep. They came out with the first seed oil for human consumption, aka cotton seed oil, in the form of Crisco.
SPEAKER_01Crisco is their ones that buddied up with the American Heart Association.
SPEAKER_04They're the ones that bodied up with the American Heart Association. They're the ones who sponsored freaking um what's it, Ansel Keys's seven country study that has been debunked 200 times over. They're like they have a very insidious history. Now here they are buying one of the quote unquote best supplement companies that we had.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Insane. They bought it was like a $3.8 billion deal or something like that. Insane. So anyway, we'll talk about that at a later episode.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, so anyway, we use Bubs Naturals. Bubs Naturals is a transparent company, they're a great company. I do have a code you can get 20% off using Jane20, J A N E 2020. Um, and their creatine, we like it, it mixes better. It is create pure. We like the brand, we support the brand. Proceeds, 10% of all proceeds go to veterans. If you buy it on Veterans Day, 100% of proceeds go to veterans.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, so it's just a great, great company.
SPEAKER_04And every interaction we've had with them is is phenomenal. They're great people.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, so that and oh, so right now you get a tub of creatine, but they're coming out with it, should be this fall, I hope, um, creatine travel packs, right? So you don't have to like put your creatine in a white in a baggie and it's white powder in a white baggie and it's like suspect through TSA. So hopefully that's coming out.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_04So guys, creatine. We beat that up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Leave the gummies alone. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Leave them alone.
SPEAKER_04Leave them alone. Just leave them alone.
SPEAKER_01But there is, are you gonna go into the now?
SPEAKER_04We're talking we're transitioning, we're doing a uh a left turn here. We're gonna go into diarrhea.
SPEAKER_01No, no, no. Right before the whole thing that got us into, I thought was that liquid salad. That new supplement that's out. You know, like the applesauce type packets.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, which it sounds terrible.
SPEAKER_01It's a liquid, like they call it liquid salad. Liquid salad. It's an all-in-one veggie supplement. It's like move over AG1. Get this pouch. Okay. And to my surprise, I looked into it. They are third party tested. They do screen for things like BPAs, heavy metals, glyphosate.
SPEAKER_04And I fully expected it to have either artificial sweeteners or to have seed oils in there, and they don't.
SPEAKER_01They use either stevia, or now they came out with one that uses, I think, apple juice.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, they don't, they don't, they they have concentrates in there, which it I mean, that's fine considering everything else you could get.
SPEAKER_01I was surprised by the the the liquid salad, which just sounds gross, but um, I was surprised of the quality. It doesn't look bad. No, it doesn't look bad quality wise. However, it's I had this conversation with my friend years ago about when AG1s was catching fire. Doing like a greens powder or this liquid salad is like wearing a weight belt with air squats. You don't need it. Okay. And if you need it, it means you're probably not doing the basics correctly. So eat more fruits and vegetables in your diet. If you have an allergy to fruits and vegetables, you literally cannot do it. And you cannot get the nutrients you need in food and you don't want to take a supplement. This could be a viable option for you. But first and foremost, basics over biohacking, basics over supplementation. Eat your nutrients. Okay. If you want to do this, great, do it. But if you're doing it and your diet is beige, the beige diet's the problem, not the fact that this liquid salad the lack of the liquid salad.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_01Also, it's like, hi, can we just make more airway disorders? Because you're taking away the mechanism of chewing. We're going to promote underdevelopments of jaws. We're going to develop improper airways. You know, weak jaws just look bad, especially on men.
SPEAKER_04And so there's a deep dive.
SPEAKER_01So you're just going to suck on a pouch. It's like sucking on vapes. Stop it.
SPEAKER_04There's a deep dive there between underdevelopment of jaws and brain function, too. There's something, there's a connection there that we should explore, probably.
SPEAKER_01And if you don't believe me, all you all you women out there with your dark romantic fantasies that you're loving, why is the men, man, always jaw? Square jaw, big, broad. Right? There's a reason. There's a reason. And also, why do plastic surgery people get jaw implants and stuff like that? They do.
SPEAKER_00Some people do.
unknownThey do. Oh my God.
SPEAKER_02Bro, bro.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Bro. Let's please. All right.
SPEAKER_01Now, pivot to diarrhea. Speaking of it, was it SNL? The diarrhea, diarrhea. Cha-cha-cha. When you're running into third and you feel a juicy jerk.
SPEAKER_04Oh my this is what I married. Yes. What are you? Seven? Oh no. That's what I used to send as well.
SPEAKER_01SNL is like, oops, I crapped my pants. Like the depends for ah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Oh, Maggie. Oh, she just boomed with her head.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_04She's a baby.
SPEAKER_01All right. So diarrhea is popular right now. Um because of a little little friend out there called Cyclospora. So I have mad respect for parasites. Parasites and cockroaches. Can't kill them.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Nuclear blasts may come, but cockroaches will still be here.
SPEAKER_01I took, and I'm I know I've mentioned this before. I took parasitology 101 in college, and it's fascinating. The life cycles of them. I don't remember it all the way, but I do know at one point they they get into your lungs, and that's like when like the egg or something happens, and then it travels up your lungs. You like cough up, swallow. Now it's in your GI tract.
SPEAKER_04That's scary. I got questions, God. I got questions.
SPEAKER_01I'm like, wow. So yeah, parasites are like little ninjas. They steal things from you in the form of nutrients, right? So cyclospora, it's tiny, tiny, microscopic. It's not like a tapeworm that you're gonna be able to see. Um it's single cell, right? And it is it causes diarrhea or intestinal issues called cyclospor sporasis.
SPEAKER_04Which this whole this whole thing started, like the the people that are getting this stuff, what we now know to be this stuff, it's more like a food poisoning that lasts a week type of thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So it's yeah, it's not the first time. So it's getting pop, it's getting popular right now. I've seen it so much on Instagram, people talking about it. And I'm like, where were y'all talking about it? It wasn't like four or five years ago when I was practicing in New York, so five, six years ago, and it was cilantro, is what it was spread on. And so it's, you know, it's not, it's not new, it's not the first time this has come around, but everyone's like, oh my gosh. And it's calm down, you're okay. Now it is, it can cause some pretty severe abdominal cramping, can turn your large intestine into a poop shoot, and just diarrhea comes out, mostly in the form of watery diarrhea, which is concerning because now you're dehydrated because you didn't absorb that water through the large intestine. Um, it is, it can be tested. Quest Labs has a stool test for it. And so what I told people back then, what I tell people now, is if you have diarrhea, it may be the cyclospora, especially if you were exposed. It's hard to really nail down if you were or not. Could also be just other food poisoning, could be a viral, it could be, you know, whatever. But if if it's persisting and it's not going away, or if you have access to stool testing, I would just go ahead and submit a stool test. And when it comes back, if it's positive, you receive treatment for it. And if it's not positive, your diarrhea may already be gone. Like it doesn't hurt to test if you have the means and the money to do so. Okay. The treatment for it is Bactrum. It's an antibiotic and it's a seven-day course of it. So then that opens up a whole new thing where antibiotics can disrupt the gut microbiome, which can lead to irregular stools. So that's why I would recommend testing before just firing off treatment for it. Unless you've been having wicked diarrhea for a long time, which you should just get stool testing anyway. Um, it is spread from food and water contamination. Okay. And then it when you're infected by food or water, it gets in your poop. And then the poop is how it spreads. Cyclospora cannot reproduce in soil, it needs a human host. Okay. And so if you if I have cyclospora and Dan and Dan, like I cough around Dan, you know, we kiss or whatever, that doesn't spread it. It's through my poop. So if I poop, I don't wash my hands after this is really gross, and like I got poop on my hands, and then I go and chop a chop a carrot that we use on our dinner, and I didn't wash my hands, and then Dan eats that. Now he's exposed. Okay. So that's how that happens. Now I then was like, okay, so how did it get on to produce? Well, there are some people who use human feces as fertilizer. So if that person was infected and then they fertilize their crops by pooping on them, that's a way. Okay. But more commonly and more likely is the fact that irrigation to water the plants was mixed with untreated sewage water or wastewater that had cyclospora in it, and they was just sprayed directly on your plant. Or if the field or the farmland or whatever was flooded, and that flooding came from an area that had infected like fluid from a septic tank or like runoff from a porta potty or other things. And then that got into the soil, then that it can be it because cyclospora is very clean. And so it'll get onto a plant and stay on their chemicals, won't get it away. Washing it, like if you really are like aggressive, abrasive with the water and washing that can get most of it, but may not get all of it, especially with things like cilantro, lettuce, um, what else? Things that kind of like fold. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_04Um, one of the cyclospora outbreaks previously was from raspberries.
SPEAKER_01Raspberries, yeah, because it has like divots in it, right? And so that's um that's basically how it happens. Um what else did I find? Oh, another way it could happen is if, say, in an area that has, we'll use cilantro, cilantro farms over like in the state in a state, and they all send it to a main processing place that does industrial washing. Well, they don't say, okay, this bin is for this farm, this bin is for this farm. They put it all together. So if one little farm had cyclospora, but they're all washed in the same tank, now all of it has been exposed to cyclospora, and then it goes out to all the stores. Yep. Okay. Um I think a little bit less likely is farmer or farm workers hygiene. You know, if they don't have exposure to running water, but they're out in the field all day. So they either dig a hole and poop or poop in a porta potty, wipe, and then come out and work the farm. That's a problem. So your biggest defense against this is wash your hands. Wash hands. Wash hands and wash your produce. That's gonna be your biggest thing.
SPEAKER_04More than that, um, because this this is gonna this points to a bigger issue, right? Now, people this started like a couple months ago, actually. And I, you know, people getting it's just like food poisoning, right? It's like I'm puking, I'm I got diarrhea, whatever, but it lasted days. Well, it adjusted like a 24 to 48 hour.
SPEAKER_01And I I was under the impression that it was persistent. It can come and go. And you can get low-grade fever, nausea, fatigue, weight loss. So the biggest thing with diarrhea, yes, it's unpleasant. As long as you don't have a fever and blood in it, you can try to self-manage manage it by staying well hydrated, letting it run its course. But that's why I said to get this tested, because it can cause severe cramping and discomfort. And you can get dehydrated, you can start to lose weight because you're just not absorbing nutrients.
SPEAKER_04So, with it, when the first person that told me that they had this issue early in the summer before it started hitting the news, and I was like, damn, food poisoning. But he's like, Man, but it's been a week.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_04And I uh and the thing is, I'm like, so which what you've been eating? And he starts telling me, he's like, Well, he's he's on the eat at home kick. He's like not really eating out. But then he said he mentioned he went to one of these places that do the bowls and the thing. And I'm like, hey, you might have gotten some crappy like vegetables in there, right? Because if you went to that place, crappy vegetables, pun intended. Anyway, a lot of these issues with the E. coli and the stuff when contaminated vegetables, you will find them in the bagged salad, mixed salad situation, right? It rarely, not saying that it doesn't happen, it's not from, oh, I bought this head of cabbage and I chopped it up, and it's like I bought this bagged salad kit thing, and boom, I got the poisoning, which goes again, processing, and what starts happening there, the margin for error that it opens up. And you're thinking, oh, they're just chopping it up and throwing it in bags, right? And then sealing the bags. That sounds like a better option because it's exposed to less, quote unquote. But really, it might just be in their festival. Have you ever noticed another thing? Because we've been there again, like we've worked through the gamut of health strategies, right? Um, when you buy bagged stuff or the cases of whatever mixed screens or whatever, it goes bad way quicker than when you buy the actual vegetable. Yeah, right. So if I buy bagged kale, it goes bad way quicker than when I buy the kale and rip it up myself.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because how long has it been in that bag? How long is it, like how long ago was it taken from the ground? And then it's been, you know, when they say pre-washed, right? Ready to eat, how washed was it? Because we, you know, you have some people who say like their bag lettuce is pre-washed, they find bugs in it, you know?
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so it's always good to wash your produce, but even the washing of the produce, I think accelerates it spoiling because like when you aggressively wash something like spinach, it like it deteriorates it, right? That's why I like iceberg lettuce and like kale, they're a little bit more robust, right? So they're easier to withstand cleaning.
SPEAKER_04But yeah, I um I it it it's it basically this thing opened up another rabbit hole.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04The deep dive on. Yeah, because it was traced back to so they traced it back to one farm. Yeah, but before I go there, it it just a lot of the places where you go get these bowls, where you pick a veggie, you pick a protein, whatever, you know, the Chipotle style places, but with other, you know, fresh kitchen or whatever, or these other places, these chains that seem present themselves, it's big stretch Maggie, that seem to present themselves as healthier options, right? Oh, we put veggies and you pick a protein and you a lot of these places buy from the same places, right? They buy their produce from the same people and they buy these huge bags of whatever, namely Cisco, um, Cisco foods, whatever, but you know, huge bags of this stuff, and they put it in these vats and it's sitting there while they make your bowl, whatever. So a lot of this stuff can be traced to that sort of thing: salad kids, bagged salads, whatever. So they traced it back. At first, they were blaming Taco Bell. Now, listen, Taco Bell.
SPEAKER_01Taco Bell will cause some diarrhea, but it's not Cyclospora.
SPEAKER_04Well, the Taco Bell is obviously like it. To those of you that still eat Taco Bell, you are some brave, brave mofos. Cause I just, it's, it's, it's a meme, right? Taco Bell, oh, I eat Taco Bell and then I have this wicked gastric distress and I'm blowing toilets up.
SPEAKER_01I'm surprised that like GI doctors don't have like a little pact with Taco Bell for colonoscopy prep.
SPEAKER_04I mean, yeah, that'd be a good idea. That's at this point, Taco Bell is like a meme, right? They're famous for causing this. So they blamed it on Taco Bell. Oh, it's the lettuce that Taco Bell's using. But this thing's like super widespread to people, again, the person that I know, the first person that popped up in my radar doesn't eat Taco Bell. So he didn't get it there.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_04You know, um, now what that opened up is the rabbit hole. Where does Taco Bell buy from? And this is where Taylor Farms came in. Now, Taylor Farms is catching the heat because they're they're big lettuce distributor, big lettuce processor, you know, and they make salad kits and all this stuff for multiple people. And this opened the rabbit hole even wider. Yes, they provide lettuce to Taco Bell, but they also provide lettuce and salad kids to a bunch of other places, like Walmart, right? So great value brand, salad kids type thing come from Taylor Farms. But also Whole Foods. Salad kids come from Taylor Farms.
SPEAKER_01So those of you who think you're better because you shop at Whole Foods, you just got ookie-doked.
SPEAKER_04So, and and this is this speaks like, yes, you know, we talked about the cyclospora, but this is something that I wanted to get to by way of this topic, right? So this same place, Taylor Farms, they have, I'll get into it here in a second, but they have a very um interesting background. Like they're the the oh yeah, the claims surrounding this company are not good, right? So if you can assume if they practice these things, you know that they don't give a single flying hoot about your health and your stomach health. So, anyway, um same place that sells let us to Walmart and bags, they're great value stuff that's super affordable, sells the same stuff to Whole Foods, and Whole Foods puts it in a 365 bag, and then they charge up to 50% more for the same crap, right? So this is where like this health washing of things where they they try to present themselves as healthy brands and then they upcharge for it. When people, when we start having conversations about eating healthier and buying better stuff and food quality and stuff, people automatically assume, oh, am I gonna have to shop at Whole Foods? No.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, not especially since Amazon bought it.
SPEAKER_04And Amazon bought it. Whole Foods is not the farmer's market that it was 20 years ago when it started in Austin, Texas. Okay. Now there are there are some good things that you will only find at a place like Whole Foods. Right. Some good things, you know, a certain oil type.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but also that's more local because like Zach's uh Zach's bread, is it Zach's bread that we were eating, the sourdough?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I think yeah, from I think I think it was Zach's bakery, yeah. I don't I don't remember the name, but it was it's a bakery from Miami.
SPEAKER_01Bakery from Miami, and they only sell it in Whole Foods up the East Coast of Florida, I think all the way up to West Palm.
SPEAKER_04Yep. So it's South, it's a South Florida Whole Foods thing.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_04That they where they distribute to, right? So there's a regional thing there, right? But and that's where we got into like, oh, sourdough, higher quality bread. And then from there we branched out and we get it from mom and pop's. Shout out Cindy, do you even lift our current uh sourdough dealer? Yep.
SPEAKER_00Bread dealer.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, she's she's the sourdough dealer. Go in their transaction, here you go. Give me that sourdough. Anyway, um, it just opened people to like, do you have to do I have to shop at Whole Foods? And they think that when you walk in those doors, and Whole Foods is capitalizing on this big time, that when you walk in those doors and you start looking at stuff, you can trust everything. Like they sell no crap at Whole Foods, right? Where actually the opposite is true. They're very much a grocery store, and there's all sorts of stuff that you have to sift through. If anything, you have to get more discriminated at Whole Foods because they are upcharging you for the same stuff that other grocery stores carry too, right? And they're switching labels and health washing it because it's at Whole Foods now, it's better quality stuff. Negative, as this thing with the with the salad kits proved that it's the same people selling same, same lettuce. I'm just putting it in different bags and charging something different. Kind of like the designer bags when China makes one, they're made in China. I send these over here, they're sold as knockoffs. I send these over here, they add uh, you know, two G's to it and a zipper, and now it's sold for a thousand dollars. Same bag, right? So don't be fooled by these things, right? You have to really consider the only way I would be like, oh, this is worth more of a premium, is if I know the farmer that grew it and I went and saw his farm, shout out Jake. And be like, oh yeah, look, look at him how he's harvesting this. Look at how he plants it. Oh, yeah. Oh, and then he sells it directly to me. That's worth more money for sure. Because you can put your eyes on that freaking supply chain, right? Um, so Taylor Farms, a little bit of a little bit of a history for them. They've been exposed for using prison labor.
SPEAKER_01Oof.
SPEAKER_04Prison labor.
SPEAKER_01And and not like, let's help these people in prison get some good hard work.
SPEAKER_04No, no, no. Let's pay them $1.50 to do work for us, literally. That's what they were putting.
SPEAKER_00People who are not in prison.
SPEAKER_04Well, no, but the prison workers. So there are states that use prison labor for things, you know, roadside work, building license plates. Like these are historically jobs that they they would use prison labor for. But what do what does making license plates and cleaning roadsides, what are what are the does that have in common?
SPEAKER_00Not food.
SPEAKER_04Well, not only that, those are like common, very minimal for common good jobs, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's almost like public service type job.
SPEAKER_04Ding ding ding. It's public service type jobs. We can debate the merits of prison labor later, but this is public service. You're not working for a private company that gets to violate all sorts of labor laws and pay you a terrible salary for their profit, pure profit remote.
SPEAKER_01So they're just paying general people, they're not contracting with prisons.
SPEAKER_04No, no, no. They've been caught for contracting with prisons as well.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_04So they've had prison labor working for a private company. I that's just flat out wrong. Because at that point, we're talking, we're playing around with slavery, my boy. Like actual slavery, right? If you are breaking your back.
SPEAKER_01I understand what you're saying, but they're they're prisoners.
SPEAKER_04Yes. But what are you saying?
SPEAKER_01So is it slavery if you're paying they're in prison, they shouldn't make minimum wage.
SPEAKER_04They're working for a private company.
SPEAKER_01I understand that.
SPEAKER_04So they're taking advantage of them as prisoners.
SPEAKER_01I mean, like if the company is because they're getting but having to pay little. But at the same time, if you're a prisoner, you have no rights.
SPEAKER_04No, you still have rights. You still have rights.
SPEAKER_01I don't think you should make minimum wage as a prisoner. But the thing is too many people go to prison already because it's like three meals a day. Now I get paid. I get it.
SPEAKER_04Yes, I understand that. And they and they should, they have rights, right? They lose certain rights, especially if you're a felon, voting, acts of Second Amendment rights, et cetera. But we're not just going to crush them because they're in there in prison, right? Now the thing is that if they do labor for the state for the benefit of public service labor, that's different because there's no profit in that, right? There's no profit. Somebody could bastardize the system and turn a profit, but you're working for the common good at that point. Right. Versus I'm working for a private company that is solely profit-based, and I'm helping them make even more money because they get to pay me under what they would pay, the minimum wage that they would have to pay to a rightful person.
SPEAKER_00Right. Okay.
SPEAKER_04Makes sense? Yeah. That's where the the ethical matter dies out.
SPEAKER_01So how is this allowed?
SPEAKER_04Good question. How is that allowed? Okay. That's terrible. Now when now this gives credence to people that think that the modern-day prison system is this slave thing and that we should get rid of all prisons and all this stuff. They, if they they could get that's a reach, right? That's completely cuckoo position, but it gives them credence. It gives them something to hold on to when a private company is taking prison labor for private profit-driven business. Like I firmly believe that they should be somewhat gainfully employed while you're in prison. You should be doing something useful. You should be picking up a skill in case you're gonna come out and that you have something to fall back on, right? Like guys that do vocational schools while they're in prison. That's great.
SPEAKER_01Well, how many people are gonna get out of prison and go open a farm?
SPEAKER_04Some of them do.
SPEAKER_01I know some of them do, but like is that like a common thing?
SPEAKER_04No, I but I think that would be a great rehab strategy, right? For guys that are in there for 10 years. If you learn to farm while you're in there, that'd be awesome. You know, if you could start a prison farm, hear me out. I'm I'm I'm spitting, I'm spitting. You could start a prison farm and you teach guys how to farm and whatever they're farming while they're there, you donate to homeless shelters. Oh my God. Listen, Dan for president. Stop right now. But if you see how this makes sense, yeah. And now you have a guy that's picking up a useful, necessary skill because we're always gonna need farming while he's in there, and you're feeding homeless people and people with less with good food, right?
SPEAKER_01I would want to know the people who run that prison that's allowing those workers to go and be paid pennies.
SPEAKER_04They're making money off of it. I'll bet my booty on it.
SPEAKER_01Like the warden or whatever is probably being paid to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_04Well, the owners of the prison. Because a lot of these, and this is another one that that hits me, you know, privatizing, there are certain things that shouldn't be profitable. They're necessary jobs, but they should not be grossly profitable. And and I don't, I'm not advocating for government regulation to a crazy point here, but there's something, you know, this is ethics, right? Right. War shouldn't be profitable the way it is, and imprisonment should not be profitable the way they've turned it into. This privatized prison system thing is insane. So there's and then we could start bringing in healthcare, the conversation about healthcare in there as well.
SPEAKER_01So there's privately owned prisons.
SPEAKER_04A lot of them.
SPEAKER_01Who regulates them?
SPEAKER_04We're getting into another conversation there.
SPEAKER_01But but there, no, so we don't have to get into the conversation, but it's not like this federal committee regulates all prisons, federal or private.
SPEAKER_04I'm sure there's some like that. I couldn't answer that question uh um wisely right now. Like I'm not well informed, but I know that there's a lot of privatized prisons, and they're there more and more happening. And there's a nice conspiracy theory about privatized prison systems and uh hip hop. There's a connection there. Not for this podcast, but hey, it's a nice little anyway. Um it is insane that you are allowing prisoners to work for a private company. That solely profit-driven endeavor. Like I said, oh, we're gonna make them work, we're gonna make them pick up a skill, clean roadside cleanup, that sort of thing. That's completely different. I agree with you.
SPEAKER_01All prison workers should be benefiting the community, which they yeah, that's a completely different thing.
SPEAKER_04That's public service, that's a completely different thing. We could argue there, oh, should they, should they not? But as long as there's no conflict of interest there, you know, like, hey, we get these guys to do it, they're in prison, we can save some money, tax money-wise, you know, because we're whatever, that's a different thing because that's for the common good. Now, these guys at Taylor Farms, they've been caught employing prison labors. Insane. Other things that they have been accused of sexual harassment, safety violations, the safety violations thing. This is so common with highly industrialized stuff. It happens in meatpacking places. I don't know if you guys, you remember the book The Jungle? You ever heard of this book? It's a book, it's from the start of the century, 1900s. This guy did basically like some an expose and put it in a book about the meat packing plants in like New York City and stuff. Crazy, you know, people getting chopped up by machines and they continue working.
SPEAKER_01I remember when I was working in the ER in Wichita, this guy came in. I was like, Wichita was in school. Doesn't matter. This guy came in, he worked for a paper towel like Bounty, and his hand got caught in the printing, and his that little like quilted design on Bounty was on his hand.
unknownCrazy.
SPEAKER_01Anyway, it made me think of that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so so these guys are denying breaks, 12 plus hour shifts that they force people into, like unpredictably. Like you come in for your eight hour and they end up making you work over 12.
SPEAKER_01Sounds like healthcare.
SPEAKER_04Yep. And then they're late on the overtime payments, um, late paychecks. Insane. So if you can imagine a company that's over the years, this isn't just now, they stand accused of these things. And the prison labor one really got me because I'm like, man, I'm not saying, I mean, if you're some pedo in prison or whatever, like you, it should be harsh sentence, right? A murder, whatever, it should be a harsh sentence.
SPEAKER_01But that's where I was going with that. No, it should, it should be harsh.
SPEAKER_04Prison should not be super comfortable. It should be a harsh sentence, especially for serious crimes like that. I'm not saying that we change that, but when you start going to prisons to for a private company to work for nothing for a private company so that they can increase their margins, that's wild. Yeah, little conflict of interest. That's wild right there.
SPEAKER_01I know you closed your book, but I think we should finish with that last thing on a positive note. Okay. We can just be quick with it.
SPEAKER_04Oh, we we were on a positive note. So I I found this video on Instagram.
SPEAKER_01Um we did not end on a pot. Prison labor.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that got we got viviated into social political issues there. Um at the Instagram handle, the Mickins fam. Yeah. So Mickins, M-I-C-K-E-N-S fam.
SPEAKER_01So I came across this and I sent it to Dan Um because it's this father with his I think it was two daughters, yeah. And he was showing the activities that he does with them, and they're amazing. And it reminds me of our friends, um, Sarah and Ayla, who have two daughters. And at the time, Sarah owned Martha's Vineyard CrossFit. And she had um, well, her oldest daughter and then the youngest daughter when they came along, but she had her in the gym, would build obstacle courses for her, had her swinging from bars, jumping over things.
SPEAKER_04Like, yeah, she was very young, and she could like monkey bar across the around the rig, which is crazy strength, right?
SPEAKER_01So, so cool, just so active. And this guy is doing similar things in his living room, backyard, wherever.
SPEAKER_02And in the backyard, yeah, whatever.
SPEAKER_01Um, we're not in his house, we don't know.
SPEAKER_02So I could see the stairs.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Could be a second floor. Anyway, so he has like a balance beam.
SPEAKER_04He's having the kids like hula hoops and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_01They have to like walk through the hula hoop while on the balance beam, using two hula hoops to hold something and set it down. And like they're outside playing t-ball or baseball, and these girls are just ripping the bat, not like a little, they're like as hard as they can. And he's promoting physical development, coordination, um, hand-eye coordination. Yeah, the girls are probably like I want to say I want to say one looks like she's like six, maybe. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And the other one looks like she's like four. I mean, it could be off a little bit there, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01Body awareness.
SPEAKER_04Um, yeah, it'd like he there's one, and he does it a lot, so he'll post it a lot, but it's like she's on, they're on a balance beam, and then they're carrying something, and they're also he's throwing stuff at them and they're catching it while they're on the balance beam. I I just I saw it, I'm like, okay, this guy's raising the next Venus in Serena Willems. Real talk. Um, because the amount of coordination that he's building in these girls, and here's the thing, you're thinking just physically, cognitively, the brain development that is happening when you're walking on a balance beam and catching stuff while holding something else, or walking through stuff while on the balance beam or jumping these things and these coordination things. And he's like got them ripping T-balls, but it's different, right? Like they're doing it from both sides. And I mean, it's insane what's happening there. So cognitively and physically, these girls are develop are gonna develop completely different, right?
SPEAKER_01So it's benefiting his daughters greatly. It's also benefiting him.
SPEAKER_04Yep.
SPEAKER_01So Dan went on his page.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I click I went through the whole page, and you know, they in the pinned ones, it's like he's got a before and after, like before when they did their gender reveal that they were having these girls. You know what? Come think about it. I think the girls might be twins.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I don't know.
SPEAKER_04But what um it's hilarious because he was he was heavy. He was heavy, and now he's all lean and stuff. And I'm like, okay, if you are keep challenging your kids with activity like this, you're building a monster. Like these girls, I would love to see them if they keep when they start playing sports. I would love to see it because they're gonna crush with the the amount of cape capacity and capability that they're gonna have to pick stuff up like that. Yeah, but he's getting leaner because he's running around with them the entire time and like challenge him, and he's doing the stuff. And and I'm like, yo, this is like a two-way street. He's pouring into them and he's also receiving, right? And it's a beautiful thing because one, it reminded me of stuff we old when I was growing up. I don't know if you guys knew this, but we didn't have iPads. We also didn't have cell phones.
SPEAKER_01But I think the most advanced thing we had was Nintendo and Game Boy.
SPEAKER_04Uh I was seven years old when I saw my first Nintendo.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So I think Atari was already out. Yes, it was, because I think Atari was like late 70s, but I was seven when I saw my first Nintendo, and it only had like two games. It had Mario and it had Duck Hunt. Um, and then Punch Out came out. So there's that part. And we didn't have, you know, computers weren't, internet wasn't around. So kids did stuff outside and they rode bikes and they made up games and they climbed trees and they, you know, try to do stupid stuff on monkey bars, like flipping, you know, flipping around and flipping off of them, and then somebody got hurt. But hey, all good. Hula hooping, you know, that takes some coordination.
SPEAKER_00Skip it.
SPEAKER_04Everybody jumped rope back then, and there was like this challenge at school, how many like in a row you could do jump rope for the heart, all that stuff, right? All of these field days, like all of this stuff, and you played sports at recess. There's like, oh, there's a basketball, and some kids go play basketball, there's a volleyball, there's this. You know, PE was a plethora of things of exposure to multiple sports all the time. You never played the same sport on the days you had PE. So you're you were constantly exposed to different forms of physical movement, right? And this is where things like athleticism are developed. The kids that you see that have more athletic capability, yes, genetics plays a part in this. You know, if your dad played a pro sport and your mom played Division I, whatever, the child that comes out of that will probably have a better probability of expressing some high-level athletic development, but you still have to develop it, right? And the right way to do this is with things like this guy's doing, where you're exposed to multiple coordination and balance challenges for a long time before you even start focusing on a sport, right? And while doing that, the cognitive capability that you develop is way higher. Crazy to watch. I love it. Go check them out on Instagram and you know, get some ideas, Matt.
SPEAKER_01And also one thing that I is hard to quantify um through like test scores or coordination, like measuring that is the ability to do hard things.
SPEAKER_05Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Some kids never have a patient right now. I don't think he understands how to handle a hard day and he freaks out or how to handle a hard task. And so that that's a problem. Okay. So problem-solving skills through athletics, I think is a huge, huge benefit. Some kids unfortunately don't get.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, grid development. And not only that, then you get into the nature of the relationship, right? Because you're spending all this quality time with your sister, it's fun, and with your dad. So now it's like memories, right? It's like, oh, I remember we used to play these games and it was all good and stuff. Um, yeah, I that that's it was it's beautiful to see that. Being in contact with a lot of teenage athletes and things like that, and 12, 13, all the way up to like 18 years old. It's easy to tell which ones have had an exposure to, you know, things like these games and multiple patterns and played multiple sports. It's easy to tell. And I can look at it and be like, this dude has been around the block. This dude has not.
SPEAKER_01And it breaks my heart to see people um as parents who take a backseat to their kids' athleticism. They they delegate it to other people and they themselves are unhealthy.
SPEAKER_05Oh, don't even get this.
SPEAKER_01That's a conversation for the good. Yeah, check out this guy. What was his handling?
SPEAKER_04Makin's fam. The Mickins fam.
SPEAKER_01The Mickens Fam. Um, it's really cool. And we just applaud all parents who take a very in-depth, active approach to their kids' physical development, cognitive development, and have fun with it. Um, one person we're gonna try to get on the podcast is my friend Kara, who's been a client of Dan's, because she's done that with her kids, not to the level that this guy has, but pretty close. Um and it's just amazing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Um with that in mind, guys, closing out. Jenny, anything you want to add?
SPEAKER_02Maggie, what are you doing?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, nope, that's it. So if you want to message us, um, I saw our friend Elise sent us a uh email about laughing at something you said on the podcast. So it's funny. But that's at info at achieve the lifestyle.com. Um, our website is achieved the lifestyle.com. But if you want to reach out to us most consistently, what we will respond to is at Achieve the Lifestyle on Instagram. So send us a DM.
SPEAKER_04Because they go down in the DM. Yeah. Uh guys, if you got any questions, go ahead and hit us. We'd love to take up some of your topics and hopefully give out some tips and useful information that you can share. Um, if this podcast has been useful to you, like and share. And with that in mind, guys, I need you to stay away from them gummies.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_04Get some capsules. Okay. Um, watch out for diarrhea lettuce. Defend yourself. Um, don't fall for the okey doke on the branding because it's from Whole Foods or whatever health brand it is when it's coming from the same crappy place. And stay pharma-free. Thanks for listening to the pharmaphobic podcast. If you found this conversation interesting, which I know you did, make sure to follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. And also make sure to check us out on Instagram at Achieve the Lifestyle. And if you're interested in pursuing a stronger, healthier, more capable version of yourself, check out our website at achievethlifestyle.com.
SPEAKER_01The pharmaphobic podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed are those of the hosts and guests and do not constitute medical, legal, or professional advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before making any medical or wellness decisions. While we discuss pharmaceutical, holistic, and alternative health topics, our content is not a substitute for professional medical guidance.