The Critical Role of Gut Well-being and Enlightened Eating with Josh Dech

Uncover the mysteries of your gastrointestinal universe with our special guest, Josh Dech, a holistic nutritionist who's a wizard at simplifying the complex world of gut health.

Did you know your gut isn't just a silent worker, but a key player in your body's symphony, harmonizing processes like weight management, hormonal balance, and even your mood? It's a part of you that's too important to ignore, and throughout this episode, we travel through the layers of understanding how diet is the conductor of this incredible internal orchestra.

Forget the one-size-fits-all approach to probiotics and dietary fads; we're talking a personalized nutrition concerto, with each note tailored to your body's needs. As Josh  shares his knowledge, we venture beyond the gut to look at the wider implications of food choices, the quality of our produce, and the potential pitfalls of the food industry. We shed light on the confusing debates around meat and plant-based diets, organic versus non-organic, and how to navigate the ever-changing landscape of food and health with wisdom and care.

By the end of this conversation, you'll walk away with a treasure trove of insights into nurturing your gut health, making informed choices, and why it's time to cut through the noise of food elitism and contradictory nutrition advice.

We're not just talking about eating well; we're advocating a revolution in how we view our plates, our health, and our society.

You can find Josh's podcast by clicking this little link

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Email peter@healthypostnatalbody.com if you have any questions, comments or want to suggest a guest/topic

Playing us out this week "Fallout" by Cira Grandi

Transcript

Peter : 0:00

Hey, welcome to the Healthy Post Natal Body podcast with your Post Natal Expert, Peter Lap. That, as always, will be me. This is a podcast for the 28th of January 2024 and today I am talking to Josh Dech and we are talking Gut Health. Oh, yes, indeed, it is that episode. I know Gut Health is huge at the moment, so we are doing a whole hour on this.

Peter : 0:26

Josh is an ex paramedic. He is a holistic nutritionist specialising in Gut Health. He is also the host of the reversible podcast, which is why I had him on. We are talking about how common Gut Health issues are the things that are issues, the things that aren't. Because, you know, the Gut Health field is full of people that want to sell you very expensive stuff. Josh isn't one of those guys. He has got nothing to sell, which is why I was delighted to have him come on. So we discuss everything, why Got Health matters, kind of diet you should have for Gut Health. Josh has some interesting ideas on this stuff. I think it is worth listening to. So, without further ado, here we go and awesome. So that is me just starting the recording. So I will just start with the intro question. It is very, very straightforward, but it will take us in a nice direction. So Gut Health is very popular right now, but does it really matter that much?

Josh: 1:53

It is one of my favourite questions does it really matter? I think, when we get down to it, one of the questions we could reframe that as is what things in the body doesn't? The Gut Effect? And that simple answer is nothing. And so we talk about Gut Health. You know, so many people are so worried about.

Josh: 2:09

Well, what is Gut Health? To begin with, is it as simple as just feeling good when you eat. On a very, very basic level? That is exactly what it is. It is making sure that when you eat, you break down, digest and absorb your food efficiently. You are not gassy, you are not bloated, you are having regular bowel movements. They are not too hard, not too soft. It is one to two a day, fully formed, and that, to me, is sort of the quintessential production of Good Gut Health on the back end. How does it come out? The other side, that is how we say Gut Health. We talk about how important is it and why does it really matter?

Josh: 2:41

I break it down this way your guts, your intestines, are the house where your bacteria live, a lot of your gut back, or all your gut bacteria. Now we have this gut microbiome. A microbiome just means tiny community and you have them on your skin. It has its own microbiome in your mouth, in your nose, sinuses, hair, eyebrows. They are everywhere. All of your organs now we are realizing have their own microbiomes. They are like neighborhoods that communicate with each other, and your gut is the house, or the neighborhood where your gut microbiome live.

Josh: 3:11

Now, your gut bacteria, I argue, are more important than your DNA, and a lot of people may be clapping back at me for that one, peter, but what I say is this you have 23,000 genes in the entire human genome. Your gut bacteria have over 3 million genes, and so we have 130 times more genetic material that interact with every aspect of our being. Our weight gain and weight loss is dependent on healthy gut bacteria, hormonal health, but you digest, break down, absorb, detoxification. All these things matter. 70 to 90% of your immune system, up to 90% of your neurotransmitters are made in your gut, and so if you don't, at the very basic level, have healthy bowel movements, low inflammation if you're, you know, gassy, bloated, whatever it is, any abnormality, you are rocking the foundation of this neighborhood where your gut bacteria live and require a nice home to do all their jobs. So your gut health is extraordinarily important. It's more important than almost any other system in the body.

Peter : 4:11

Bill. Now we've established that. Then why do we keep making such a mess of it? And how do we keep making such a mess of it?

Josh: 4:19

I think that comes down to humans being humans. I mean, we all know one day we're going to retire. Why don't we save money now? Right, a lot of it's just, it's just poor planning and education. I think it's one thing to be told, it's another thing to truly understand and believe, whether that's religion, whether that's finances, whether that's health, whatever it is. It's one thing to be told to go care and understand, it's another to truly dive in, get educated enough so you can make the belief for yourself. A lot of us go, well, yeah, my gut's important. Yeah, well, saving money is important, but do we really understand the ramifications? Can we really truly see it?

Josh: 4:54

As a gut expert, seeing this left, right and center and the problems it causes for people either in pregnancy or postnatal, or children and adults and disease processes, I know 93% of the leading causes of death in the USA are directly connected to our gut. That's 14 out of 15. According to the CDC. The 15th cause of death is going to be your suicide homicide, and so that means every top cause of death. We're calling a quote normal cause of death. We're talking everything like heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes, alzheimer's, respiratory issues, kidney and liver disease, chronic liver disease, septicemia, parkinson's, influenza's, recurrent infections these things are connected directly to your gut and so if we look at this and we can understand truly what it actually means to have an unhealthy gut, or truly what that McDonald's meal or that can of pop is actually doing in the long run, then maybe we'll have a different perspective on it.

Peter : 5:56

Yeah, that's a good point, because, obviously, I went onto your website and it did say that, something about the 93%, and I wasn't quite sure what you meant by that. You know because, let's be honest, there's a lot of nonsense out in the world, right, and? But you're saying that, yeah, listen, if you don't take care of your gut, especially Parkinson's the link to Parkinson's is, I believe, fairly clear by now. But if you don't, we know, for instance, if you don't, that there is a link between heart health and gut health, right, and that's what you're talking about. You're not saying, listen, your heart attack was caused by poor gut health. You're just saying that, listen, if your heart, if your gut health is bad, your chances of heart problems are significantly higher.

Josh: 6:47

Absolutely.

Josh: 6:48

I think it's a really important distinction.

Josh: 6:50

Yeah, in these cases we can't say guarantee your gut caused your heart attack. However, we do know that inflammation in the gut is directly connected to what we call EIMs, or extra intestinal manifestations, which creates issues everywhere else in the body. Right, if we look at the spectrum of someone who's just bloated, that's the very low end of the spectrum of gut issues, the very severe end being inflammatory bowel disease, where I specialize, which is Crohn's and Colitis. And so somewhere along that spectrum, the more severity you have, the more increased risk profile you have for autoimmune disease, inflammation in other areas, poor digestion and absorption, toxins building up within the body causing problems in the liver and you're metabolizing, or your metabolism and how you're managing cholesterol leading to things like gallstones, leading to inflammation in the arteries, leading to, of course, aposclerosis and other potential for heart attack risk, and so all these things are directly connected in every single way, and the gut across the board is the common denominator and, truthfully, the easiest, most actionable thing that we can actually take control of right now.

Peter : 7:55

Yeah, that was indeed going to be definitely one of the things I was going to ask. So what are some of the things that everybody can kind of do to look after their gut just a little bit better, right? Because, like you said, everybody kind of understand gut health has become a lot more recognized now as an important thing.

Peter : 8:16

I think 10 years ago you would have been classes completely out of your mind to even bring it up, whereas now people are like, yeah, turns out, turns out they should be doing it Right, as I did quite often goes with quite a few of these things I used to have. I did an interview a while ago with T Foynton Barnes, who's a lovely lady who was like a household toxins sort of person and, to have her on, I did some investigating into studies about sprays and febri sprays and all that type of stuff. I just had to start with, yeah, sorry, for 10 years. Turns out I was full of shit.

Peter : 8:56

She, the crunchy one from California, turned out to be completely right Because the science was now firmly on her side that all of this stuff is bad, and I think gut health has kind of gone the same way, hasn't it? So, unlike you said, a lot of people are now Kind of aware of it being important, but not necessarily to the extent that they are. So they're much more likely to make small changes than immediately give up their daily kind of I don't know Coca-Cola or eating the daily Big Mac or whatever it is.

Josh: 9:32

Well, when it comes down to managing the gut health, I have one golden rule If your great-great-great-grandmother wouldn't recognize it, don't eat it. That would mean the Big Mac, that would mean the pop, and unfortunately there's a lot of addictive tendencies. Some people I'm just treating myself as just the thing, and there's always room for improvement. Right To go from, we'll say, a poor diet, or generally considered poor diet, all the way over to stark, perfect in every sense, is really hard to do and oftentimes takes years and years to apologize. I have a dog here.

Peter : 10:04

No, it's okay, my listeners are aware of the noise and it's okay.

Josh: 10:08

It's okay, it's my little wiener dog, bruce.

Josh: 10:11

So when it comes down to making those shifts and those changes, it's very important to do those. It's very important to do those in a very reasonable way and sometimes it's just a matter of making better than options, right? So somebody's having that craving for, say, a can of Coke, for example, changing over to maybe a can of Zevia, where it's sweetened with Stevia instead of high-fructose corn syrup, which junks up your gut and your liver and everything else, and so you know it's oftentimes it's going better than or it's finding options that we prefer over. But if you can slowly make that shift, you recognize the severity of what's going on and the severity of the foods we're eating and the repercussions that they're going to have during, you know, the rest of the span of your health. It's very, very important to make those changes at the pace that is consistent. I would rather someone do 1% every single day the rest of their lives than go on and off 50%, 100% back and forth and never actually get there. That's much more important to me.

Peter : 11:11

Yeah, that's very much just similar approach to what people should be taking with any sort of health and fitness right. I mean, it's nice to sign up to a gym and immediately go for five days a week for two hours a day for three weeks, but after the three weeks you're going to stop is much better to do 10, 15 minutes a day. So where are you then? On probiotics and all that sort of stuff, you know probiotics have become a really big business in the last few years. In the UK we have a company called Beautiful Biotiful right. I'll pronounce it correctly. They sell kefir and all that sort of stuff, supermarket kefir right, so not the homemade stuff. And you know it comes in nice flavors and, funnily enough, always a sugars right which, according to one of my friends who's got a little bit kind of completely defeats the purpose of taking a probiotic. But where are you now? Should people be buying that kind of stuff or is it much better to just make the dietary changes first?

Josh: 12:18

It's a really good question. I look at probiotics as I do supplements. Sometimes they're necessary, sometimes they're not. Sometimes they turn into really expensive pee right. So that is to say, if you don't need them or they're over consuming, you know you're just going to waste a lot of their byproducts. On the other hand, if I get somebody and I look at GI mapping quite a lot it's a large part of what I do in the inflammatory bowel disease space and a GI map, for those who don't know is a stool sample, not just the ones your doctors do.

Josh: 12:47

They'll come in if you have gut issues and look at your stool and say, okay, you have no bacterial issues, you're highly inflamed, but you're fine. What they're looking for is pathogenic bacteria C, diff, E, coli, salmonella, varicilla, maybe H pylori. They might look for a denovirus or Epstein bar, really basic stuff, even rotovirus, which can cause a lot of that gastroenteritis. But that's about it. What we want to look at is actually the broad spectrum of bacteria, as much as we can see inside the gut. Right, we have one to 2,000 species, seven to 9,000 different strains, which means we have upwards of 18 million different bacteria inside of our gut. But on the other hand, we can really see inside of our gut bacteria through a GI map. We can see maybe 50 to 100.

Josh: 13:32

And so what I want to know is understand, in the balance of all, what is high, what is low. If you come in and you have too much good bacteria, it's as problematic for you as having too much bad bacteria. So it's all about ratios and harmony. And so, to answer the question, do I take probiotics? I will recommend them if somebody is low on certain bacterial strains. We need them for balance. On the other hand, we can also use bacteria very specifically. If someone has Candida overgrowth, for example, I might give them Saccharomyces boulardii, another yeast base that actually combats Candida. Or if somebody is dealing with C diff, there are certain strains of lactobacillus or bifidobacterium that can actually help balance out that clostridium difficile, and so they all have certain benefits in their ratios and ranges. It's just a matter of what we choose.

Peter : 14:22

You don't start off with supplementation. You start off by, first of all, diagnosing what the potential issues might actually be and then taking action according to that. So what kind of foods, for instance, should people really be trying to add to their diet that will have a positive effect on their gut health?

Josh: 14:43

Well, priority one is exactly what we talked about. It's real food. So many of us eat so much in the way of food. That is just not food If it didn't exist a thousand years ago. It's not something that we're accustomed to eating now. Most of us are eating petroleum products and seed oils and canola oil, which is honestly going to do a lot better off in the engine of your car than it would inside of your gut.

Josh: 15:04

And so we're eating a lot of these fake foods and so just to simply make the ship from something that's frozen or packaged or deep fried to something that we actually have to make ourselves can be a wonderful shift or change to actually having some beneficial things for your gut bacteria. As we talk about that house where your bacteria live, if you're highly inflamed, the house is on fire. Nothing can live in a house that's on fire but fast food, fried food, sugars they are gasoline on that fire. The water is going to be your real products, your animal products, your fruits and other things that are beneficial to the gut bacteria, rather than these other things that contribute to the, the burning and inflammation.

Peter : 15:44

So that's an interesting point, because a lot of people right now are people that I've come across say to really improve your gut health, you should go completely vegan. You know I am diet agnostic. People can eat whatever they want to eat. I genuinely don't care. People want to go keto, people want to go just eat well, for yourself. That's kind of what I say. I wouldn't go as far as like bullet coffee and all that sort of stuff and kind of work, however you know. Then there is when you say in meat products, there is some benefit to having meat products as far as you got, health is concerned.

Josh: 16:29

Oh, absolutely. I wouldn't say I'm necessarily diet agnostic, I am more diet prescriptive. Somebody comes in, for example, and they have a ton of overgrowth.

Peter : 16:38

Think about it this way, I'll back it up a step.

Josh: 16:41

We're familiar with the term probiotics and even prebiotics. There's also postbiotics Probiotics. If you picture fish in a fish tank the living organisms that's your probiotic. That's your fish, the food is the prebiotic and the fish poop is your postbiotic. That poop is either good things or bad things. They poop things that benefit your body as a whole and your gut biome and your hormones. They produce these vitamins or they pooping out pure toxins.

Josh: 17:06

If somebody comes in to see me and one of the causes of their gut issues is a condition like SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, if they've had a long history of antibiotic usage and they're bad bacteria or what's called opportunistic, is overgrown and creating inflammation throughout the body. My job isn't to give them a vegan diet. It will make it substantially worse because that prebiotic is all those fibers, those carbs, those starches that we find in vegetables. I might actually go carnivore because I don't want to continue feeding the bacteria that are creating the problem. On the other hand, I have had people come in who have benefited from a more fiber-based, plant-based diet, who needed maybe extra microbes to grow. As a gut practitioner, I do find that in my practice, people dealing with gut issues. An animal-based diet goes a lot further than a plant-based diet, for sure, particularly vegan. I never have and never will recommend a vegan diet to any of my clients because I find it could be so hard on the gut and the nutrient profiling is so difficult.

Josh: 18:05

I have this debate sometimes with people and I'm still in the air with it myself. I'm not going to say one is necessarily worse. I won't say vegetables are bad. I don't inherently believe that our vegetables are bad, but our food production around these vegetables are bad. We're consuming two to four times the amount of pesticides that we ever did 30 years ago. We're consuming we have 17,000 different types of pesticides allowed and chartered in the United States, for example, we consume 19 times more the variety of pesticides we ever did. In the 90s there was 800 to 1,000 pesticides, now there's 17,000. I don't think so much. It's the plants and vegetables per se, but I firmly believe and clearly can understand the implications of consuming so many chemicals and pesticides and that being hard on the gut.

Peter : 18:55

Yeah, no, that's an interesting, that's a really interesting point, because one of the first things most people start doing when they start air quotes eating healthier. Eating healthier is always. Most people who start eating healthier eat healthier. From a generic point of view, they just go with the well, this is healthier and therefore this is what I should be doing, rather than taking any sort of personalized approach. So when people who aren't feeling great start eating healthier, they usually mean I'm going to eat my fruit and veg, and I've seen this in various people people with bloating issues and all that sort of stuff and bloating is a thing which also is all most of my listeners will know the first thing they do is they massively, drastically, up the fiber intake, and that as in just by adding, I don't know, a bag of spinach a day or something like that. Relatively speaking, they're getting a lot more fiber in all of us, and that doesn't necessarily, like you said, it doesn't necessarily make them feel any better, because it's so ridiculously hard on the body to take such a massive change, such a massive increase in fiber and, like I said, I'm nowhere near a gut health expert.

Peter : 20:13

But is that, then, what you're saying? Is that because what I always thought is yeah, you're asking the body to work a lot harder all of a sudden and that's the same as me asking you to go from zero to squatting 100 kg, right. So the stress that puts on your system means that your system just massively oversimplifying it. Your system just collapses, it just goes dude. I just can't do this. What you're asking me to do is insane. Yeah, start with an empty bar and then build that up a little bit, but what you're saying is it could actually be the fibrous content, so to speak, that is causing a problem in some of these people and therefore, instead of upping it, they should drop it a little bit maybe.

Josh: 20:57

Potentially. And so my statement there isn't to confuse people further. Because there's so much food nutrition confusion all over the world it's so hard for us to try to figure out. Do I go animal-based, do I go plant-based? Do I go this food, that food? Who knows? It is so complex and so bloody convoluted that it makes it extremely difficult and unreasonable people to sift through the weeds. And so my thought is this if you're eating well balanced, they're all natural foods, it's nothing to worry about, it's not a issue, you'll be fine.

Josh: 21:26

But people who do eat a lot of packaged and fried foods and aren't accustomed to having fiber, for example, I don't recommend jumping into 50 grams a day because you'll probably get diarrhea and so it is an easing in process. For example, like I went full start carnivore one time, I was like I'm going to try it out. I was encouraged to, I said, okay, I'll give it a go, and I had loose bowels, very loose bowels, for a week, and then I balanced out and I never felt better after that. Any dramatic diet change will do it, and the argument is well, if you weren't eating so much meat, go plant-based.

Josh: 21:55

Well, anybody who doesn't eat plants, who goes plant heavy, will have the same problem, and so it isn't a bit of an adjustment period for your gut to learn how to digest things, for your body to figure out what enzymes it doesn't doesn't need, for it to figure out its motility and speed and pacing and bacteria to start balancing themselves. There's a lot of things that need to change and move, just like adapting to anything. The body is designed to adapt. We just have to adapt at a pace that is reasonable, and so anybody looking to make changes just go slow. But if you are adding plants and vegetable matter, I recommend abiding by the EWG. Check out the Environmental Working Group. They update their list every year and they have the dirty dozen in the clean.

Peter : 22:35

Oh, that one yeah.

Josh: 22:36

Right, the dirty dozen. If you've talked about that before, peter, that's just the 12 most pesticide-laden fruits and vegetables out there every year Strawberries, spinach, blueberries, apples, those types of things. So those ones in the dirty dozen bioregonic. So you're not getting as much pesticide in your system and that's a great place to start.

Peter : 22:53

Yeah, and I'm sorry, sorry, bang my mic, which I'm not going to edit out for anybody listening. That's what the noise was. The organic versus non-organic is an interesting argument Because, first of all, if you can afford organic, great. A lot of people can Bup Usually. Because I know I'm going to get some emails about the organic versus non-organic thing, because the argument that a lot of people make, that say it makes no difference whether you buy organic or non-organic, is because they say well, first of all, there's still pesticides on organic food and, secondly, the nutritional content doesn't change. But that is not what your core argument for buying an organic is, is it? Your core argument is there are fewer pesticides and therefore the cumulative effect is less.

Josh: 23:53

Am I right?

Peter : 23:55

And yeah, because that is the thing, right, if we again, I'm going to get slated for this and I don't really care that much. It's the same argument that D Fountain Barg's made. She said, yeah, the stuff, all the pesticides are individually. They have been tested and they say, okay, you can have this much of that pesticide and it's completely fine. That's fundamentally how the process works. Right, you can have this much of that pesticide and you'll be fine. But how they don't test is say, you can have this much of that one and that one and that one and that one and that one and that one, and then still you'll be okay, a combination of that.

Peter : 24:32

Yeah, and that is where most people that I come across that advocate organic over standards, standard food. That's where they tend to come in, whereas a lot of the debate online and I'm not necessarily saying that one is wrong when one is right I'm just saying that this is my understanding of it and I'm not a food scientist and I'm not a got health expert. I'm just here trying to translate something a little bit. It's saying that, yes, the nutritional content of spinach is still. It's still spinach, right, it doesn't matter, right, if it's a black paint, it'll still be spinach. The nutritional content wouldn't necessarily change. However, whether it's then still a good idea to eat it if I paint it all black with paint is a completely different matter, and the cumulative effects really, really matters Absolutely. That's what I'm saying.

Josh: 25:29

Yeah, precisely. I mean, there's a lot of arguments to be made about certain types of food and there are nuances in everything, and I think so much in the health and wellness space, especially in the influencer sphere. So many people try to come up with the next big idea, the next viral video, the next shocker and this content. We're really taking very nuanced topics Like maybe, for example, don't eat spinach because of the oxalates. The oxalates are bad. Maybe, maybe not right, maybe people, a lot of people, don't have trouble with oxalates. But to say all spinach is bad always, it really starts to confuse people, and so many people can do so well eating a mix of fruits and vegetables, provided they're reducing their chemicals. The problems we do truly have.

Josh: 26:09

This is the base level stuff. Everything we're seeing on social media is typically the top of the totem pole. It's way up there, I should say the bottom of the totem pole. It's less of a concern, right? Whichever way we want to flip the analogy, but for me, though, say the bottom of the pyramid, the basic stuff to handle is getting our chemicals down right. I mean, we're so focused on counting calories, right? 50 calories in a lunch sounds a whole lot better than 50 chemicals.

Josh: 26:34

So if you look at a Beyond Meat, burger and other junk, to realize none of that food is actual food. All of it is processed and modified and refined, which messes up our cellular metabolism and all kinds of really basic processes a body has been doing since the beginning of time, and so, instead of being focused on our calories and being focused on the nuanced topics of that's too many oxalates, this is too many of that. This has too much B vitamin. Too many of these ones will give you, you know, x problem with your skin. You might turn orange and eat too many carrots who cares? No one's eating 40 pounds of carrots a day. But we are all consuming way too many artificial foods and way too many chemicals and that is ultimately costing us our health and wellness.

Peter : 27:13

Yeah, and that is a fascinating point, because I couldn't agree more my wife is vegetarian, right, my biggest problem with a lot of the stuff that she likes to buy every now and again is that it's all atrocious food. And I'm the one that does the shopping. So I go to Tesco and I go to the meat aisle because, you know, I'm not vegetarian. I'm very much not vegetarian. And I look at my burgers right, I'm too lazy to make my own burgers. I'm not buying mince, but I'm buying good quality burgers for myself.

Peter : 27:51

And I go to the other side of the aisle because now a lot of the plant based stuff is in the meat aisle section now at Tesco, or at least at Tesco, I go to, obviously in an effort to convince us that that is a meat replacement product. Right, that is a straight up. And her burgers I'm not going to name the brand because they're all terrible, but if I look at what they contain, I look at their salt levels, I look at their calorie levels, I look at all the fat levels and all that sort of stuff they're significantly higher than my burgers are. My burgers are actual burgers and, insane enough, they're more expensive than my burgers are, which, if you know anything about rearing cows is absolutely crazy that my cow essentially costs more, costs less than the vegetables that they put in the vegan burgers, the vegetarian burgers.

Josh: 28:55

So then we have to understand about the food industry is there is not much money or profit to be made from real food. The money gets made from the chemicals, from the artificial, from the stuff that comes from a factory, in a lab, and so the science that we start to see I use air quotes, science that were pushed is cherry picked and modified and really bastardized to make it look and to push the agenda of these foods being good for you, because that's where the money is. And if we truly look at health and wellness around the world, sickness is way more profitable, and I know people get upset about this and it's kind of becomes politicized. Well, you're a conspiracy theorist. The only way it makes sense that all this garbage can be in our food especially. I'm in Canada, thank God, but still it's getting closer to the USA.

Josh: 29:40

But think about this McDonald's French fries in the United Kingdom. Okay, you got three ingredients oil of whatever kind, canola or whatever they use, potatoes and salt. That's it Over here. There are 17 ingredients in French fries here.

Josh: 29:54

Why, why do you, lucky charms, need trisodium phosphate? That's what they use in rat poison. Why do we need these chemicals like bromelain, or is it bromine? Anyway, one of them that's used enough to put in Mountain Dew. Why do they need those things in there? They are poison, like it doesn't make sense. And when you start to trace it back you start to notice and actually follow the connect, the dots. You see, the people who used to work for big pharmaceutical companies go and work for the FDA, who go and work for big food corporations, and all these CEOs just change jobs. They're between the same companies. They all start approving each other's things and they all hang out together and you start to realize very quickly that all it does is drive up share prices, driving up sickness, driving up pharmaceutical sales, driving up medical bills and making people ill because it's so insanely profitable. The USA alone spends four and a half trillion dollars a year in healthcare, but they're the one of the sickest nations on earth. Explain that to me.

Peter : 30:49

Yeah, and the USA has a pretty terrible record for all that sort of horrible.

Josh: 30:56

We celebrate that, like, oh, people are living longer with cancer. Yeah, but we have more cancer now than ever before. People are just living longer with that cancer, yeah. So you know, we cherry pick the data again. It's just like that. We'll look cancer, cancer rates or survival rates are better, but there's more of it, and so we're only talking about one half of the stat. And this is the problem. We're not counting our chemicals, we're counting our calories and we ignore that food doesn't. It's not real food. My dog wouldn't eat that stuff, and yet we do because we've been sold it. And that's one of the biggest problems for our health and what we can do to manage our gut.

Peter : 31:29

Yeah, sure, because this is one of the things that I came across. Again. I shop at Tesco and if I go to Tesco, if I buy normal bread there and by normal bread I mean the normal priced bread I get a list of ingredients that's fairly fairly long, sure, but the bread also doesn't taste the way it used to when I grew up, although that might be my nostalgia talking. But then when I buy the Tesco finest bread so they're top end range that they bake in store and this is a good quality stuff all of a sudden the list of ingredients dramatically drops and the bread tastes like the bread used to. It's significantly more expensive, so I completely understand that a lot of people can't afford to buy the type of bread.

Peter : 32:12

So I'm not shaming anybody not buying the bread, I'm just saying that it is funny distinction how the other stuff is significantly cheaper and therefore probably has still has a much larger profit margin. Huge, because you don't need to throw a lot of stuff out. They should put a ton of stabilizers in it, right?

Josh: 32:32

That when you're talking about it's show Stable.

Peter : 32:34

Yeah, exactly when you're talking about how. Why is this chemical in that particular product? Probably, say, can stay on the shelf for about two weeks or three weeks without ever falling apart in the supermarket, doesn't lose as much money on it.

Josh: 32:48

Well, that's the thing, though, is, if it won't break down on the shelf, it's not going to break down in your body. Now will it. And that's the thing is we are. We are being priced out of good, healthy choices. There's a reason. You say you can buy a bottle of water for two, three bucks, but a bottle of coke is 99 cents. Right when you go to the store and you're, you're, you're low for breath. You're talking about, with the yeast, flour, water and salt might be, you know, $9.00. But a regular loaf of wonder bread that's got, you know, 17 to 30 ingredients cost you $3.00. We're being priced out of good, healthy choices, and on the back end, it makes a lot more money when people are so bloody sick.

Peter : 33:22

Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean listen, I'm not a huge conspiracy theorist. I think everybody has one or two, don't get me wrong, but it is.

Peter : 33:35

I'm sure there's always somebody making money somewhere, and you know we know from, from Dr Von Toliken in the UK, who's one of those guys. He did a couple of former UK distance, but Toliken did a whole series for the BBC on ultra processed foods and all that sort of stuff. And then you know, he went to Brazil and all that sort of stuff, where people never used to buy ultra processed foods along the Amazon. And then Coca Cola, believe it or not, set up a little bloat and they where they started selling ultra processed foods to all these tribes that they've never bought it before and all of a sudden all their obesity rates and all that shot up because people were all, instead of having their normal lifestyle there was all of a sudden they were buying all this stuff. There's money in them, their hills. Otherwise Coca Cola doesn't sponsor a boat to go up and down the Amazon to do that sort of thing.

Peter : 34:29

It's fascinating character from Toliken. He still works for the BBC. So you know, like I said, this is something to consider. Okay, so get back on track a little bit, because you know I can almost hear people zoning out thinking I want to learn about gas health, pete. So we're going to cut back on the ultra process foods a little bit. We're going to cut back on basically the prepackage stuff, but it does mean we need to learn how to cook.

Josh: 34:58

Yes.

Peter : 35:00

Because, let's be honest, the main reason we buy all that stuff and we've been told to buy all that stuff since like the 90s means that we have to learn how to cook a little bit. So what are the four basic things that you think everybody should have in their diet that they can then try to figure out how to work around? Because it's fine to say listen, products that your granny knows are products, but my granny is from the north of Holland. She only ate potatoes and carrots and it's a terrible cuisine and we would die very, very young, whereas now we can get lentils and all that sort of stuff.

Peter : 35:42

My granny never would touch a lentil. That's fancy foreign food. Chickpeas are not a thing in Holland. So what's four things? Do you think this? Just add this to your diet whenever possible.

Josh: 35:53

Sure, you want to say a great, great grandmother. Of course I do mean that you know food that would have existed on earth.

Peter : 35:59

Yeah, I understand, I don't mean it literally.

Josh: 36:03

Good, I clear that up for me if there's any confusion there. But we're talking about, say, four things. Number one I'm a big advocate of more animal products, so that's going to be more meat, more fatty, fatty meat. It's extremely beneficial, especially if you get your gut and your liver in check. A lot of people might have trouble digesting it because their livers are full of toxin and their guts are all messed up, so they have poor bacteria and they have poor digestion and all kinds of issues. So that's why the food caused you a problem. The food isn't the problem, you are the problem, and that's something that can be hard for us to go. Okay, well, I am the problem because I have these toxic buildups. So, number one more fatty meat. Number two if you can handle them, I kind of have an actual sensitivity issue with eggs. I get acne if I eat them. But eggs are great, they're a phenomenal source, phenomenal source of everything, and a chicken will put out an egg a day. So if you can get a couple of your own chickens, get your own eggs. Let them eat bugs and junk and worms and whatever else. That's great. And if you're into fruits and vegetables, that will be my three and four is fruits and vegetables. But you notice, on that list none of that was a bar or a protein shake or supplement. Yeah, right Now I will add the caveat here that we have studies showing that was.

Josh: 37:15

One came out of the University of Texas back in 2004, I believe, and they had done some studies on food and fruit in the agriculture industry and they found that you might need up to eight oranges today to get the same level of nutrients that your vitamins, minerals and you would have that your great great grandmother would from one orange back then. And so that's simply because we don't have this biogeochemical cycling anymore, right? So great example, that one, peter. If you have a farm, you have an apple tree, apple falls off the tree, it gets into the ground, it decomposes, grass grows from that nutrient. The cow eats the grass, you eat the cow. Right, that is biogeochemical cycling, that is carbon cycling and all those nutrient.

Josh: 37:54

That richness gets into the soil and it gives more food for this rich thing to grow. It's no different than an infant in womb mom eating really healthy, nutrient, nutrient dense foods to feed her baby and let it grow naturally and healthfully. That's very important. Same with all life on earth. It needs nutrients to grow, but today, with modern agriculture the way it is, we are monocropping the shit out of our food.

Josh: 38:17

Right, it's dirt to hold a seed, it's no longer soil. We till all the soil, so all the microbes, all the bacteria, all the life and all the oxygen, all the carbon and nitrogen that would have been cycling through the soil properly is gone, and I mean earth just can't breathe. This entire layer of skin has Saran wrap on it now, and so this is a big problem with our food, and so, for those who can, I recommend a nice high quality vitamin or mineral and or mineral supplement to supplement in the basic nutrients we're no longer getting from our food, while we try to make better choices that don't deplete our vitamins and minerals that are already low, like packaged foods, fried food, junk food, alcohol, sugar, all of that.

Peter : 38:57

Yeah, because that sounds like a healthy diet to me. I know some dietitians will push back a little bit on the fatty food but then on the fatty meats, but then again we know one of the benefits of fatty meat is that it contains all the fat-based minerals and vitamins, absolutely. So you have your water-based ones C and D Is it C and D? Yeah, and A, b, e, k and all that sort of stuff are the fat-based ones. It's been a while since I did my vitamins.

Josh: 39:27

Oh, but you bang on, you did great. Yeah, lots of fat-based I mean, even though it's too much cholesterol. Well, almost every cell, every cell in your body contains cholesterol. We need cholesterol for everything, but if we're not utilizing it properly, the problem is these studies that we do, the data we pull from certain populations. They're from a sick population. Arguably up to 93 to 97% of all the United States, for example, is not metabolically healthy and metabolism being defined as any chemical process in the body used to maintain life. So if we have an entire population of sick people that we're doing studies on to pull data from, then we're using a sick population which skews the positive data, say, oh, if that's bad, well yeah, because their livers are full of junk, their gut bacteria are destroyed, they've had 40 doses of antibiotics in their life, they were C-section and bottle-fed. They have all these problems and their guts aren't proper. They're not going to handle the fat.

Josh: 40:22

But look at native tribes and populations of the Inuit people in Canada. They eat an enormous amount of fat. They're pure carnivores, because that's all they have access to and a lot of them will eat raw meat, raw animal products, and they don't have the same issues we do. They don't have dental issues. They don't have heart disease the same way, and this is largely due to the junk we eat and the problems we create within our body, which lead to an inability to digest and break down these foods. There's nothing wrong with red meat and fatty foods and fatty meat. It's sick populations, inability to utilize these foods properly that we then villainize the food for, rather than the food in agriculture industry that is making us sick.

Peter : 41:01

Yeah, and that again it's it's. There's a lot of fascinating stuff there. It's one thing I heard somewhere and I can't remember where, so apologies if I get this slightly wrong, but they were saying something going on the lines of a steak eating eaten with a vegetable is a fundamentally different product from a steak eaten with fries. The same steak, so you can make, you can make a rib eye, cut it in half, give half with spinach or whatever vegetable you want with it. That steak will get digested completely differently. We'll have different health benefits will be less, will be more bio available than the steak with chips steak with fries.

Peter : 41:52

And that's an interesting point that you're making. When you're saying, okay, the fatty meats thing are fine for you if you eat it with a good quality other product rather than if you're eating it with rubbish, then again most of the studies will be done in that say, actually, that steak is completely fine, right, nutrient wise, that steak is the steak, it doesn't matter what you put next to it. And if that's how you then run the test, then that steak will come out as a steak and it will be the same steak as next to spinach. But at the other end, the way you use that steak is that has completely different results.

Josh: 42:37

Well, there was a study that came out of Harvard recently trying to prove that red meat was bad. But it was an embarrassment when you actually look into it. They came with the conclusion and said those consuming red meat had worse dietary blood sugar outcomes than those who work.

Peter : 42:50

Yeah, that was a really funny study. That was a study that claimed that red for anyone listening, because I had a fit about this and I thought red meat causes type 2 diabetes. That was from the mentally what the headline claim from the Daily Melodies was.

Josh: 43:05

But here's the question, peter what did they consider as red meat? It was lasagna and sandwiches with red meat on them, whereas everything else was tested as an individual food. So right away you've skewed the data because you're not testing it individually. And in, type 2 diabetes is a blood sugar problem, but you're not going to have these spikes in blood sugar from consuming meat.

Peter : 43:25

You're going to have it from the white bread?

Josh: 43:26

Yeah, you're going to have it from the white bread and the sugars and the junk which is going to spike this. So I mean there's clearly an agenda to say eat less meat, right, and I'll throw in a sidebar here. Some will say, well, it's climate change and humans produce 14% of all carbon emissions. Well, that's also a cherry pick study. It's not true. What it actually is is all human global emissions are 0.4% of the entire global emissions. 14% of that 0.4 is animals and in cattle industry. So it's actually miniscule in the grand scheme of everything, and so it doesn't make any sense. The data is all cherry picked and it's being spun in such a way to villainize and bastardize real foods, which is quite a travesty.

Peter : 44:07

Yeah, it's a funny one Because I mean I'm a big file of doing what we can for the planet and all that sort of stuff, but I think it's interesting. There were some influence. I'm on threads you know the Twitter replacement thing and there were some vegan influencers on there that really, and one of them was a doctor and he always records his thing with a little status stethoscope around his neck and all the sort of stuff to point out to you that he is a doctor, Right, and he always records from the hospital to point out again that he is a doctor. And he was very big on. The study shows you how red meat causes type two diabetes. And I asked him the simple question how explain to me just the process? Then explain the process how a fat and protein product causes type two diabetes, which is indeed a blood sugar spike. So therefore, by definition, almost carbohydrate sort of the other macro side of thing. And of course I mean I was blocked within like two seconds, but it is.

Peter : 45:21

That was a really weird study that came out and I've had some questions about about that and it just from from clients and I just listen to. Study just doesn't make any sense. It's, or at least, maybe the study did, but the conclusion didn't. The conclusion to that red meat causes type two diabetes didn't make sense. And then we did dive into it. Indeed, they found lasagna was included and sandwiches, yeah, but with the sandwiches, the white bread that's causing the problem. And we also know, to be fair, when you just say things like people who have a diet ridiculously high in animal products, right, and if you make it as vague as that, you're not looking at quality meat consumption necessarily, and it's. There are a lot of people, much like you said, they eat a lot of burgers in a day and they've. Therefore their meat consumption is high. But they might also make other poor lifestyle choices. Right, If I have a burger every day, you can bet your, as I'm drinking too much as well.

Josh: 46:29

Well, perspective though I mean, you look at a burger, it's typically on a white bun, paired with fries, paired with, maybe a diet, you know, a Coca Cola or something which is high fruit, toast, corn syrup, and so, yeah, we're not looking at the grand scheme to say, well, yeah, it's burgers causing the problem, but it's not the meat causing the problem, but we villainize them, it's all the other stuff.

Peter : 46:47

Yeah, exactly, and you know you drink a bit more, you smoke a bit more after your poor diet and all that sort of stuff. You have to take that stuff into account when you, when you publish a study like that, which is that a homemade burger, a fast food burger?

Josh: 47:02

is it a burger from the Donald's? Yeah, sure, a fill-in junk, like right, like that's the question. Yeah, yeah, quality. If it's all you know, this is what I always tell my clients.

Peter : 47:08

This is why I always say I'm kind of diet agnostic. If you buy the best quality food you can afford to buy right, Because not everybody is as lucky as I am. I mean, I've got three dogs so lucky in itself right and I cook for my dogs and that tends to be a roast of some sort. So tonight they're having roast beef and I realized I'm ridiculously lucky that I'm, that I don't have to buy cheap, shitty dog food. So you buy the best you can and as soon as you do that, I think your quality of life and your quality of health definitely will will improve.

Peter : 47:53

So we're buying the meat products, we're buying the vegetables and all that basically eating like humans, right? That's fundamentally all you're saying. Is that's kind of eating the way my dad used to eat, except he used to have more vegetables than we. Have a slightly different shape plate, so to speak. We have half vegetables and then a third meat and then a little bit of carbohydrate. That's kind of how we used to eat at home. So that's fundamentally what you're saying. To go back to that, isn't it?

Josh: 48:22

Yeah, keep it basic. And it's unfortunate because socially speaking, there's a lot of issues. There was something coming up all over Instagram and TikTok and all the socials where influencers and dietitians were saying, well, sucralose isn't that bad for you, or aspartame is not that bad for you, and these are known to cause genetic issues and aspartame is a well-known classified neurotoxin. But there actually turns out they're conflict of interest. They were being paid by food producing companies to say these ingredients weren't bad. And we also have a new one coming around called food elitism. Now there's a bunch of thing.

Josh: 48:57

Dong is out there saying, well, processed food is good for you. I saw a study again cherry picked. They're saying it's elitist of you to say that healthy food and to shame people for making cheap options and blah, blah, blah. I'm like that's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. It's not food elitism, that would be. I could extend that out and say well, teaching the English language is elitism of language, because grammar matters. Or teaching engineers how to do math is structural elitism, because you're looking for a better option. Education is nothing elitist about education.

Josh: 49:27

On the other hand, these people now turns out, even these people calling it food elitism are being paid by food producer companies to promote junk food because it has higher profit margins. So people are giving this junk to their kids. We wonder why so many kids are hopped up on ADHD medication and can't sit still and can't learn and they have learning disabilities because they're full of pesticides and junk and chemicals. I mean back in early 2000s, the, the uh wasn't EWG, was a Red Cross had actually done a study and they dissected a bunch of stuff. They took 10 freshly cut umbilical cords and found more than 287 chemicals of pollutants pesticide, waste products, burning coal, cigarettes, garbage stains, oil repellents all kinds of chemicals 287 in newborn babies. Freshly cut umbilical cords. 180 chemicals were known to cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 were known to be toxic to the brain and nervous system, 208 known to cause birth defects in animals. The average adult has over 500 or 550 chemicals, petroleum and waste products and all kinds of plastics in their system.

Josh: 50:31

And so to look at these things and go well, it's food elitism, I'm just like that's such bullshit. It's the people making billions of dollars off of selling garbage food that make people sick that are pushing these narratives that unhealthy food is truly healthy and cherry picking the data. And so we have to be so careful who is giving us our information, and just look at the basics and realize that if it's not a food grown somewhere somehow on planet earth in nature that could have been existing over the last thousands and thousands of years, it's not a good food for us, right? Or the notion that we need pharmaceutical drugs to be healthy is absolutely asinine. Otherwise humans would be long extinct, and so we just have to go back to the very basic things. That's what I advocate.

Josh: 51:14

All the issues we have today, these issues of diabetes and fertility issues I mean, there used to be some here and there, but, um, you know, cavities and all these problems that we're having, they're modern diseases of modern food and modern lifestyle. It's nothing to do with traditional, real foods that have been around since before we were born.

Peter : 51:31

Right, well, that is a clear message. If ever there was one Cool, so on that happy note was anything else you wanted to touch on, cause I think we covered quite a lot of ground there.

Josh: 51:41

Yeah, I think there's so many ways we can slice this one. There's so many ways, peter, to talk about the gut and gut health, and that's, of course, what I do as a specialty through my show and everything else. But if people want to learn more, I just recommend get educated and don't be afraid to look at another side or another opinion. If you're vegan, talk to a carnivore. If you're carnivore, talk to a vegan and try to learn something as best you can, because that's the only way we can really educate ourselves further and better our, our knowledge and understanding around nutrition.

Peter : 52:10

Hopefully. Well, on that happy note, I will press stop t c here, which is exactly what I did. Thanks very much to Josh for coming on. Check out the reversible podcast. I will link to that as well. He is. He is one of those guys that just came on. He's got nothing to sell, he just wants to get some, get some knowledge out there, educate a little bit, help people out a little bit, and I genuinely appreciate people like that.

Peter : 52:39

I know I'm going to get one or two emails about from people saying you know, is meat heavy diet really the best way to eat? And we might address that on one of the next one of the few podcasts coming up, because you know everybody has a different opinion on this stuff. But his overall message of you know you eat whole food and you eat as best you can and all that sort of stuff, stay away from ultra process type stuff. I think that is key. And you know, like I said, he doesn't he doesn't sell you expensive supplements and all that sort of stuff which in today's world of nutritionists and all that sort of stuff, is not necessarily a bad thing. It's a rare find. Anyways, like I said, thanks so much to Josh for coming on. I got a reversible podcast. I will link to that as well. And, my friends, here's a new bit of music and I'll be back next week. Bye now.

Peter : 54:08

So give it to me, give it to me now. Get away from the madness. So give it to me. Give it to me now, because I'm feeling the fallout. I see darkness when I open my eyes and I feel myself fall into the illusion. So give it to me. Give it to me now.

Josh: 55:04

Get away from the madness. So give it to me. Give it to me now. So give it to me. Give it to me now. I'm feeling the fallout.