Prepare to have your assumptions about dieting and nutrition turned upside down, as we're joined by Chuck Rose, author of Customize Yourself Nutrition. Boasting an impressive track record of researching over 3,000 books, articles, and reports, Chuck takes us on a groundbreaking journey through the realms of healthy eating. You thought you knew it all about dieting? Think again!
Chuck enlightens us on the shocking truth about our favorite diets - the Mediterranean, Keto, and Paleo - and their real impact on our health. He decodes the mystery behind the annual diet studies released by the US News and World Report, and it's not what you'd expect. He also gives us a reality check on the hidden sugars lurking in the corners of our so-called healthy diets. Brace yourself, as Chuck busts some major myths around the consumption of fruit juices and their supposed benefits.
But that's not all. Chuck opens up about his personal dietary choices and shares his inspiring journey from being an overweight child to a fit adult. He delves into his own experience of not eating meat for a whopping 30 years, and alerts us to the dangers of factory meat consumption for our health and the planet. Wrapping it all up, he emphasizes the significance of making little dietary tweaks and how they can lead to big differences in our overall health. So, ready to customize your nutrition with Chuck and transform your life? Sit back, relax, and let's get started!
Prepare to have your assumptions about dieting and nutrition turned upside down, as we're joined by Chuck Rose, author of Customize Yourself Nutrition. Boasting an impressive track record of researching over 3,000 books, articles, and reports, Chuck takes us on a groundbreaking journey through the realms of healthy eating. You thought you knew it all about dieting? Think again!
Chuck enlightens us on the shocking truth about our favorite diets - the Mediterranean, Keto, and Paleo - and their real impact on our health. He decodes the mystery behind the annual diet studies released by the US News and World Report, and it's not what you'd expect. He also gives us a reality check on the hidden sugars lurking in the corners of our so-called healthy diets. Brace yourself, as Chuck busts some major myths around the consumption of fruit juices and their supposed benefits.
But that's not all. Chuck opens up about his personal dietary choices and shares his inspiring journey from being an overweight child to a fit adult. He delves into his own experience of not eating meat for a whopping 30 years, and alerts us to the dangers of factory meat consumption for our health and the planet. Wrapping it all up, he emphasizes the significance of making little dietary tweaks and how they can lead to big differences in our overall health. So, ready to customize your nutrition with Chuck and transform your life? Sit back, relax, and let's get started!
Hello and welcome to Health and Fitness Redefined. I'm your host, anthony Amen. Join me today as we take a dive into the world of health and fitness, where we learn to overcome adversity, to pick back first fiction and see health and fitness in a whole new light. I hope you enjoyed last week's episode. We were diving in all about diet, all about the microbes, and it was very intriguing to learn from somebody who was saying eat this, not that. Well, guys, today we're going to bring in a very special guest, today's guest. His name is Chuck Rose, and we're going to dive into all about diets, then get a whole new approach and hopefully get you going. So, without further ado, guys, I'd like to welcome to the show Chuck Rose, author of Customize Yourself Nutrition. You learned from how old is your mother? Now, chuck?
Speaker 2:My mother just turned 111 yesterday 111 years old the title of the book. The subtitle. It's Customize Yourself Nutrition and what I learned from my 110 year old mother I wrote it when she was 110, but yesterday she just turned 111, but I'm not going to change the title.
Speaker 1:Well, happy birthday to her and welcome to the show. I'm super excited to have you on. Talk about a lot. I mean, we've got a lot to cover, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Without further ado, I want to say I love your show. There's like hundreds of health and fitness podcasts out and there's not that many really good ones. I love your show, I love your podcast. I've listened to it. I'm a fan. I know that. Before we go.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that a lot actually. Thank you so much, and I hope others take from it, learn from it and we can start making people healthy, because that's literally the point of this show.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Let's do it. So let's talk a little bit about you. Take us back to why did you write a book? What got you into this field?
Speaker 2:I'll tell you it goes way back. I mean I've been interested in this, you know, my whole life and I have been. I mean I learned about nutrition like just gradually, step by step by step. I was an overweight kid who ate too much garbage. I'm now a lean, athletic adult with 8% body fat who has a very good diet. I wouldn't say it's perfect, but it's pretty close and I, you know, just step by step, learned it.
Speaker 2:And part of that process, right before the pandemic, I thought, well, how do I further my education, how do I get better at it? I think I have a system that works pretty good. I bet you there's a bunch of books that are way better than what I'm doing and I can really improve on it. So I went to the Giant Barnes and Noble bookstore in my county, monmouth County, new Jersey, and they had about 500 books in the health related section and I love books. I said, all right, I'm going to come back here until I can figure out which 100 books are the best books and I'm going to read or skim those 100 books and I will get better educated, which I did. It took me 20 visits to that store. I read or skim what I perceived to be the top 100 books and you know I probably got a bit late 80, 90% correct.
Speaker 2:And I was appalled because, first of all, out of those hundred books, 90 of them weren't even worth reading. They were all really completely written to promote products or services and they were poorly written and they had a lot of misinformation. I was just appalled. Some of them bestsellers. Maybe there was 10 books I could recommend out of that whole bunch and None of them articulated the very simple approach I have in customize yourself. Customize yourself is just based on doing a very Gradual improvement of your diet. It's really simple, it's really basic and I've just done it all my life. So I realized, since none of these books articulate this very simple, successful thing, I would just do it, but I would research it thoroughly.
Speaker 2:I read over 3,000 books and articles and studies and I have footnoted it heavily. So everything I say I'd I say don't take my word for it. Here's the study. There's 295 footnotes in the book. It's not, it's not even a long book, but I want I don't want any MD or pH. And then I gave it to a bunch of MDs and PhDs and I said, okay, take this apart and every one of them said it's fine, there's, you got it. These, these are all the best studies. In fact, several of them said you know, I was relying on a study that was older than this study you quoting here and now I'm I'm More up to date, so I'm very confident that it's very solid. And if any reader wants to say, hey, this is wrong or whatever, let me know. You can Send me an email and I'll fix it, you know. So I just want to get it right that that's. That's my only interest.
Speaker 1:I love that you took First of all the time and effort to check the market. Then you took the time and effort to Really look into studies because, for those that may or may not know, diet changes our health recommendations. About every second in this country there's different studies coming out that go against the popular one. That was xyc. We've talked about a bunch of times on the show In the 70s how they were promoting that sugar is really good for you and that I was fat that was causing the obesity epidemic. Long behold study was sponsored by Coca-Cola and then the USDA. Had it been changed their study over to, maybe? Hey, it's sugar and not fat. But it changes, is my point every, I would say.
Speaker 2:When I went into this I Thought, well, this is a hundred percent correct. I found out I was about 90% correct, but I found some startling things. I was gonna write a whole thing on psychotoxic testing, about being allergic to things, because in the 70s it was a thing and there was studies and there was what I didn't realize. In the 90s they just proved all that. I missed that, you know so, but I learned it, you know. And then so there's nothing about psychotoxic testing in my book, because it's been and I've been kind of running my life on that and but it doesn't work. So I learned that. So it's I. I love reading and I love learning and every new study that comes out. I mean, there was. I just read. Now the books been published, I just read a thing that I should have put in the book but I didn't know it. Let me ask you this what percentage do you think the average American, what percentage of their diet is sugar percentage?
Speaker 1:of Rage.
Speaker 2:How are you a number? What take a guess if you don't know?
Speaker 1:Average American, I'm going about 60% how much 60, 60% sugar.
Speaker 2:Really I was. Yeah, I'll tell you the number. The number is 16% sugar. I would have said 5% or 10%. It's 16% sugar. I was appalled by that. It's so easy to cut down to 8% or 4% and you won't even notice it if you do it in steps, you know. But sugar is so bad and we know it and it's like literally.
Speaker 2:I have a couple of chapters in my book comparing sugar to cocaine, which I find really, you know, if there's a lot of similarities at pharmacologically and Not that anybody should do cocaine, but like, if you think cocaine is a bad thing to do, you should also think sugar is, you know, got its problems. But the point is I'm appalled at how much sugar people on average do consume and it really is easy to reduce that. And again, a lot of dieters would say, oh, you got to eliminate it. Well, no, that's too hard, you're gonna freak people out, they're gonna go back to their doughnuts and cookies and you lose. But if you could just cut them down like two cookies a week, you've accomplished something and they'll be, you know, healthier and they'll function better.
Speaker 1:I love that approach because that's how I teach my clients. It's not hey, eat this, it's okay, let's take what you normally eat. I don't even recommend Diet at all for the first week or two. I just have them start writing down what they do eat so I can have an understanding of the foods they like. Then we take their foods they like and everything they're eating in a normal day and we say, alright, let's just hypothetically say they're drinking for Kansas soda. I'm like right next week You're gonna drink three. And then we do that Exactly what I'm talking.
Speaker 2:We are on the same page, anthony, exactly the same page. If you just gradual that's the customize yourself approach right there, you reduce it 25%. I go a little bit further. If you're drinking four cans of soda a week, I say just take one out now You're done a 25% reduction. And but do something else on your calendar, whether it's on your wall or on your wrist or on your laptop or on your tablet or your phone.
Speaker 2:On your calendar, six months from that date, write 25% less soda. And when, six months from now, when you reach that date, you do two things. You throw a party for yourself. You celebrate just think about those. That's one you know Six months, 180 cans of soda that you didn't consume. Just a Visualize 180 cans of soda on the floor there. That's not on your gut, it's not on your thighs, that's not on your butt, that's 180 cans of. So I mean that you celebrate and then put on your calendar, for six months hence, 25% less soda, or just optional, if you want, you don't have to do it. You can put 50% less soda, maybe knock it down another can. In that way you can reduce and eliminate soda over time. But if you say to somebody, as most dieters will, that's it no soda for you. You'll be back on soda within a few weeks or a few months and you fail.
Speaker 1:You know and it's not exactly why diets don't work, and I think Because they say you have to eat ABC, defg and you're super restricted. And then you do it for like a month and your body changes because it's like, oh my god, what's going on with my diet? It's just the metabolic effect from it. So then you start losing some weight and then after a while you're like, oh my god, I really miss this. And then you over consume back to everything else and you just destroyed your metabolism. So now you're burning at a lower metabolic rate and consuming more calories there for gaining more weight.
Speaker 2:Not only do the, the people pushing these diets who make money off them or whatever they make off them, don't tell you that. They probably don't know that, and they also don't explain or don't know that there's a very natural process going on in parts of your brain You're unaware of. Now, consciously, you're like wow, I know, I have a bad diet. This guy is a good diet, I'll do the good diet, I'll lose weight. That's the conscious process. That's explained. Everybody gets that.
Speaker 2:What's not explained is in these subconscious and unconscious, unconscious parts of your brain and in the involuntary functions of your body. Everything's going haywire. Everything's going hey, this is different. This Whoa, this feels. What is this wrong? This is right, what's going on here? And you have this voice in your subconscious or unconscious not in your conscious Screaming at your conscious I hate this. This is wrong. You know, and you're mostly unaware of this until you get to that point, as you described, like gee, I really do hate this. You know it finally gets through. I hate this and that's why you stop. Even if you're convinced it's a good thing, even if you love being ten pounds lighter, all those things, you are overwhelmed with this. I hate this and you go off it. It's just human nature and if you look at the studies on diets, you will see this happens about 95% of the time in every study.
Speaker 1:You referenced pre-show, which I kind of want you to talk about. They did a rating based upon best diets to worst diets. Do you mind glancing a little bit? Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I just I covered this briefly in the book because I just thought everybody knows this. But if you don't know it, there's every year. Us News and World Report does the most comprehensive annual study of diets that I know of and I've looked all over the world, I spent years looking. This one is the best. I think they publish it every January. What they do is they bring together a group of eminent professors from the best universities in America and they say here these are the top 35 diets according to popularity. Take these 35 diets and analyze each one, Give it a point score for safety, Give it a point score for efficacy, all these things, and then we'll give it a final point score from 1 to 5. And we'll rate them from number 1 to number 35.
Speaker 2:Every year I've looked at this study. The number one diet is the Mediterranean diet. So as much as I'm anti-diet and explain to you why diets don't work, if you're hell bent on doing a diet, do that one. That really is the best diet Mediterranean diet.
Speaker 2:But the other thing that I found really interesting in the last three or four years number 29 through number 35, the bottom of the list, the worst diets with the lowest point scores, the keto diet and the paleo diet have never risen higher than number 29. And I think in the most recent study, one of them is number 35, dead last. And keto and paleo are two of the most popular diets. They have always ranked between number 29 and 35 out of 35, not out of 100 out of 35. They've ranked between number 29 and 35. So if you are a paleo or keto fan, just you can search US News and World Report Diet Study. It'll pop right up on your Google page and read it. It's free, it's online and just read about these 35 diets. You don't have to take my word for it, and that is, I think, amazing considering how popular those two diets are.
Speaker 1:I mean, we've pretty much talked about keto for almost two hours on our keto diet debate, which you guys should definitely check out, because you will hear both ends of the good, the bad, the ugly, all about keto and how it has helped. Paleo is definitely something you do want to do in the future, but I think the study is a great reference point. From what you're talking about and your approach where you're taking that, all right, just slight reduction off of this. Slight reduction off of that, I think really goes a long way, because it's not really a diet. It's more lifestyle change, and that's what most things are about. They're about creating habits, creating a lifestyle change, of things you can do for the rest of your life, not something that you can do Absolutely, and that's what diets don't do.
Speaker 2:Because, again, if you're one of the 95% of people and all the studies go off diets, if you're one of those 5% super discipline people who can stay on the diet, well good for you. But it doesn't even mean it's good for you. It just means you're one of those 5% super disciplined people. Maybe you or I could do it. Because we're stubborn or we're disciplined. It doesn't mean it's a good thing. And just getting back to your example, the four cans of soda, that is the perfect example. I love that and you go along.
Speaker 2:I used to drink one can of soda every day until I think I was in my 30s and it's just like. It's not that bad. I like it. I have it with dinner. It's just one can until I started really getting into what that was a can of acid and sugar period. That acid is just way too hard on my gut and that sugar is not good for me. What if I switched to water? Wouldn't that be amazing? I haven't had a can of soda in decades. I mean I can live without it. But you have to go through that process. I was having seven cans of soda per week. Now I'm having zero. I'm much healthier for it that all that waste, that sugar that is just making my organs freak out and stress, and from brain to ass, I mean everything, has its sugar issue. I mean it's just the difference between. The reason sugar is so so popular is because it sells food products. People who make food products know that if they put sugar in it they sell more food products.
Speaker 2:If I may digress just a little bit, as part of my study I went into one of the biggest supermarkets in New Jersey, which shall remain nameless because I hope to get the CEO to change this whole layout of his market. They have a giant natural food section, which five years ago didn't exist, which I've been so happy that they have this big natural food. It's organic, natural. It's like two aisles, three aisles. It's really great.
Speaker 2:I looked at I mean there's a lot of issues with cereal and flour and you really should cut down on that and again customize yourself, gradual, reduce it. But you want to bowl a cereal? You go to the natural foods aisle. I read every package, every box of cereal in that aisle, every single box, just like I'm Barnes and Noble. I read 100 books. The lowest amount of sugar in any one of those boxes was 6%. There was not a single box of cereal or package of cereal that had less than 6% sugar. And if you go over to the other aisle with the Cheerios and the corn flakes, I found a box of corn flakes over there with only 2% sugar. But in this natural food section they did not sell anything with under 6% and I don't think it's the fault of the supermarket. The producers of these products, these food products, know they sell more product if they put more sugar in it. A lot of them had 8% and 10% sugar. Most of them had 8% to 10% sugar. These natural food, organic granola, healthy- overpriced.
Speaker 1:I'm going to jump in on this because this is something it irks me. My blood is boiling just kind of hearing you talk about it right now, a part of a transformation challenge I run, I go grocery shopping with two of my clients. Oh I love it.
Speaker 2:I want to go with you. I'll do one.
Speaker 1:It is mind-boggling that they never and you mentioned this in your book they never look at labels. And I'm showing them this is natural, the, our big soup supermarket here they have, very like, certain aisles that say this stuff is natural and healthy. And you go and you turn the labels. You're looking at cereals 14 grams of extra sugar, some have 20. And they're like what the heck about this is healthy? Maybe their marketer is just saying it's healthy because they know people lean towards it. Suddenly, play to the naivety of people that just assume just because it's healthy means it's good for you and they're gonna go grab these products that are just horrible and are worse than some overly processed foods.
Speaker 2:Absolutely they're worse. And let me tell you just, you probably do this on your trips to the market, but do things like look at like. They'll say pure cane sugar it's still sugar. Or they'll say brown rice syrup it's still sugar. They had come up with all their maltodextrin, dextrose, fructose, every possible thing it's sugar, it's all sugar. Just look at the one line that says total sugars. Don't even read the rest of it. And then the other tip I would give all your like.
Speaker 2:I find a lot of people when I say, just read the label, they're like oh, I don't have time to read a label, I'm busy, I'm not gonna go in there and read a hundred labels. Are you crazy? I don't do that. Just read one label. When you go in there and don't read the label, just read the black and white box that has the percentages. Just read that part of the label. That takes five seconds. Don't read the whole thing about how it's healthy, how their uncle lived to be 200 years old eating this product, or the pretty pictures or the script, or the natural or the location. Just that one line takes you five seconds. Make it even quicker, then you can read like five things instead of one.
Speaker 1:I gotta say grocery shopping is a nightmare when I go because I read every label.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too, but you only have to read it once. You don't have to go back every week and read the same label.
Speaker 1:You're going around and I don't buy a lot of food because I'm not buying garbage, and I see people shopping carts that are filled with the brim and mine has like seven items in it, because I'm sitting there reading labels, I'm like, wow, only 3%. I'm just picking your arbitrary number. By the way, about 3% of stuff in this grocery store is actually good for you, where the other 97% is just not even worth looking at.
Speaker 2:To put a moniker on it and I probably mentioned it somewhere in the book there's two things in a store there's food and there's food products. Just like you said, it's 3% food and 97% food products. See if you can buy all food, try it, or at least mostly food, and just don't buy food. Anything that has a label on it is a food product. Anything that has more than one ingredient is a food product. See if you can stick with food.
Speaker 1:Really good point and I'm probably gonna get in legal trouble for mentioning this. But tropical smoothie is my perfect example and I only bring this up because it's really big pet peeve and a lot of people can relate to their menu. You go into and try to buy a smoothie. You're looking at now they have the amount of calories in each smoothie. You'll see most smoothies range from anywhere between 400 and 600 calories per smoothie. They don't show you any other information. Then you look at their detox island green. That one has about 160 to 180 calories in it, as opposed to their typical island green. That's not the detox version that has about 400 calories. So you have a difference of.
Speaker 2:I bet it's mostly sugar.
Speaker 1:I bet it's mostly sugar and actually they call it Turpanado, which is their healthy alternative. I'm doing quotations for those that are not watching video of sugar, so that means they're putting in, because it's the same ingredients. 300 extra calories of pure sugar blows my mind. So when I go in, you can still get a smoothie from shopping the smoothie. I go in and say no sugar, no turprinado. But it's turprinado, I don't want any. And then all of a sudden that 400 calorie smoothie has dropped down to like 160.
Speaker 2:You know I, when I talk to people about smoothies and I'm not a smoothie freak for many reasons I say just skip the smoothies. You'll be like people who can't lose weight, but they do the smoothies because somebody in the gym tells them to drink smoothies. You know, this is, this is better for you. I'm a smoothie cotosaur. He doesn't need to be selling the smoothies there. So that's just a slight reason why they might tell you to drink smoothies. I think it's because but again, like you say, if you do it right, if you do the right smoothie, it's fine. But so many of them are wrong. I mean, you know the ingredients. The other thing is I'm really against juices in general. Eat the whole fruit.
Speaker 2:There's a reason why it's whole fruit. It doesn't come juice out of a tap, out of you know, like maple syrup, it's. You need the pulp, you need everything that's in there. It all works together. If you separate it, you have a very high sugar, very high acid drink, which is going to be it's, it's going to get absorbed too fast. The. You need that pulp for a lot of reasons and just eat the whole fruit. I mean, that's a really simple thing.
Speaker 1:This drives into an episode I did by myself about all about fiber, and this is this exact example I use. You take a juice, you juice it and you say this is 100% organic. I juice this orange, I pulled off this tree and then I put an orange next to it. This juice is still going to cause a blood sugar spike. This is not fiber.
Speaker 2:The other thing it'll do is it'll cause it. The next best sellers you're going to see in 2022 are books written by MDs about acid acid in your gut. This is a subject which I talk about in my book, which I discovered. This is the first thing I discovered about nutrition when I was a kid, and I describe it in the book. Every day we'd have a glass of orange juice. My mother would give us a glass of oranges Once in a while. It'd be fresh squeezed orange, but usually it was the frozen stuff or out of the drop of can or whatever it was.
Speaker 2:Every day, seven days a week, everybody in my family brother, sister, father class of orange juice. Every day I'd go to school and I'd have a stomach ache. I thought, well, school is stressful, kindergarten's rough. Maybe it'll go away in first grade. In fourth grade I was like well, this fourth grade class is getting really difficult, maybe that's something. But the stomach ache would go away by the afternoon. I thought, well, this is what school does. What I couldn't figure out is why do I still get the stomach ache? Every morning in the summer I'm not in school. It took me until I was 19 or 20 years old when I thought, wait a minute, all this acid in this orange juice is not being absorbed by the pulp. What if I didn't drink a glass of orange juice? No stomach ache. I haven't had a glass of orange juice since then, but I eat an orange every day. I have a clementine or an orange every day, no problems. I don't have that acid explosion rip in my stomach.
Speaker 1:I got to say after reading that section I'm just like I related so personally to it, because I and you were talking about the naiveness of when you're younger and you're just doing what your parents tell you to do and you just don't understand why you have a stomach ache and you don't put two to two together. I didn't realize to the seventh grade that I was super lactose intolerant. Where I would go, my parents are just like have a bowl of cereal with milk.
Speaker 1:You figured it out Right. It took I would go home every day in elementary school because I had stomach issues and I had like the runs. It was horrible and everyone just assumed I was making it up in my head that it wasn't realistic because my mom would say you'd call about a tummy ache, you don't come home and then about a half an hour later you start feeling better. So we started just not stop believing you. But nurse didn't believe, my parents didn't believe me. And in seventh grade we're learning about lactose intolerance at health class and I'm like, huh, let me try not having milk. Guess what?
Speaker 2:No stomach ache Never sit around in elementary school or junior high school and some kid in the class farts and the whole class breaks up. It's the most hysterical thing in the world. And the teacher is like I'm going to send you the principal for farting because you disrupted my class. Probably the kid was lactose intolerant or something like that that's. You know it was considered humor or class disruption in those days, not a medical issue, but easily solved Change the milk thing. It's simple. It's not rocket science, it's really simple, but you had to figure that out.
Speaker 1:No doctor, no one told me listen, hey, if you just stop eating. My dad didn't even mention that he's lactose intolerant. He didn't tell me till I was like 30. Oh, by the way, I'm lactose intolerant and explains why you have it Like oh, thank you. Oh, we should have figured out over Sicilians. Sicilians didn't grow up on cow milk. You're only only the Northern European. Genetics really can process dairy, so if you're not from that area, you're most likely lactose intolerant, which explains the high numbers.
Speaker 2:But but let's refine it a little more. Milk, even if you're not lactose intolerant. Milk is arguably good for children. Maybe not, maybe not too much. But when you're an adult, you should not be drinking lots of milk. I mean maybe a little in your coffee or something like that, but you shouldn't be drinking glasses of milk or dumping loads of milk in your cereal. It's not, it's it's arguable. I'm not. I don't think it's generally good for kids, but it may not harm all kids, but I certainly any adult, should not be drinking large amounts of milk.
Speaker 2:I mean, cow milk is designed for one thing and one thing only. It's designed for calves. It's really not even made for humans, it's made for small cows, and so we're adopting that to our diet and we're just assuming that. Well, if as a kid, you can benefit from the protein and milk it, basically it was cheap protein that the dairy industry could push on us really hard when we were young. And the other thing, and the reason it's so big now also is because the dairy industry has been able to place their executives and their lobbyists within the Department of Agriculture to keep it on the food chain. So it's like hey, everybody consume a lot of dairy. I don't think you should consume a lot of dairy? You?
Speaker 1:should. I want to mention a point you brought up in your book, actually, which references cows and something that I've known about but a lot of people know nothing about. You want to solve climate change. People Stop eating cows, absolutely Applying demand. Why cows? Well, what you're not realizing is the methane gas they released from their behind that they're consuming. The amount of grass they're eating is actually the highest. It's the highest percentage of methane in our atmosphere and the reason global warming is happening so fast. Not all of it, but majority they're saying it's about 50% it's from cows farting Well, actually, the studies I've read put it at about 15%.
Speaker 2:But let me add to this and I think I mentioned it in the book what's just as bad. I mean that's 15% and tailpipe emissions is only like 20%. I mean it's almost as bad as tailpipe emissions, but what makes it worse, even perhaps than tailpipe emissions, is in Central America and in South America they're plowing millions of acres of trees and forest and natural habitat to make fields, to grow grain, to feed cows, and that raping of the trees we need to produce oxygen on this planet is part of the meat industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Maybe they took the meat industry as a whole. Maybe that's what I was looking at for the higher number.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I'll tell you for those who are politically aware I know it's dangerous to talk politics now there actually is a bill in the Senate that the senator from my state, cory Booker, introduced that would ban factory meat by 2040. I don't think it has a chance in hell because there's so many senators from factory meat states. I mean, if we could ban factory meat by 2040, that might save the planet as much as electric cars. Yeah.
Speaker 1:There's opportunity and I think that the biggest thing that we could help ourselves as a society because I mean cardiovascular disease we talked about this 100 times is the number one killer. So you want to help cardiovascular disease, you want to help the planet. I think the biggest thing is everything runs on supply and demand. Thank you for having the world we live in. No one's telling us what to eat. We're eating what we want. So you stop eating enough cow meat. You're going to help your cardiovascular system because you're not getting that super amount of LDLs, the higher saturated fat content you're going to find in cow meat. And now there's less supply, there's less demand for cows. So what's going to happen? They're going to have less supply and then everything else is going to trickle out that way.
Speaker 2:So we're just going to keep it simple, just get more plant-based. I mean, I haven't had meat in 30 years and when I was a kid I ate meat twice a day. I screamed for meat. If I only had meat once a day my head would explode. I had to have meat twice a day. I haven't had meat in 30 years. I don't miss it.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying everybody should quit meat. I think it'd be fine if they did Just cut down and grass-fed, organic beef, not factory meat. Factory meat is full of besides killing the planet, it's full of hormones. It's full of steroids, it's full of antibiotics. You're eating hormone steroids and antibiotics every time. You eat a hamburger steak everywhere except for organic meat locations which are small.
Speaker 2:So how much of that can you consume along with bad cholesterol and sugar and not wind up with cardiovascular problems? It's impossible, almost. I mean it's like you've got to be some kind of unique freakish organism to handle that. I don't know how you do it. Maybe we'll evolve into that. The other thing I don't want to load your audience with statistics but if you're interested, before the pandemic the CDC found that the obesity rate in America was 42%. The overweight rate was 72%. The New England Journal of Medicine just came out with a study a couple of months ago that predicts in 2030, 29 states in America will have obesity rates over 50%. That means overweight somewhere between 80 and 90% when Jim is going to be packed with customers. And by 2030, that's all I can tell you.
Speaker 1:Be good here in business. No, I'd rather people start taking care of themselves. Yeah, the biggest pre-no-motion I've talked about a lot. There's two sides to this and I think this is going to appeal to everybody, regardless of where you're from One side is you can live longer. You can help save the planet. There's a bunch of different advantages to eating healthier. The flip side if you're somebody who's more about your own money and trying to save it, you want to help our national debt and help the price of healthcare. It's something ridiculous. The cost of obesity is over $200 billion.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. The cardiovascular problem, overweight problem, is like half of the expense of healthcare. Once we get past the pandemic, this is going to be in the headlines. Right now it's all pandemic, but what you're saying is going to be the headlines in six months.
Speaker 1:We don't think about the amount of money. This is my favorite part. Everyone's about all about helping others, and I do things for other people, for their safety. Well, if that were true, I'm going to start going around slapping McDonald's that I've everybody's hands every time they eat it, because it's for my safety and it's my money that you're now affecting because you're raising the cost of healthcare. You're taking rooms in the hospitals and overworking these poor doctors and nurses that are already overwhelmed. Then you're costing more and using more gasoline for flying on a plane or driving a car. It actually adds up to be significant over the course of your lifetime. You're missing more days of work because you're super unhealthy. You're getting sicker more often, Therefore again going back to the hospital with other diseases or taking more time off from it because metabolism isn't working well. Your immune system is down. It just adds up.
Speaker 2:That's why they come up with this $200 billion Let me add some guilt to it For all the Jewish and Catholic listeners here who know what guilt is. One pound of beef takes 2,000 gallons of water, takes eight pounds of grain. Is it one pound? Eight pounds of grain, 2000 gallons of water and one gallon of gasoline to produce. So every pound of you think you're reducing by getting an electric car, every pound of beef you eat is a gallon of gas. So add that to the equation.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't mean to. Everybody wants to learn how to do this.
Speaker 1:I think simplistic for mediators out there like myself, kind of going what you said, sticking to the non-factory farm foods, and kind of changing. Something I would love to see is more than just cows Like, I love bison meat it's one of my favorites actually but the bison market's so low, there's such a little demand for it that it's very hard to find. And that's a really lean to healthy meat and it's all naturally raised. They're not farming them like. They are cows Right.
Speaker 2:I'll give you another example. This is even more ridiculous, like I would wish, I think, if somebody went into the bison meat business really big like 10 years ago. Was it Ted, what's his name who was married to Jane Fonda? I can't know, I owned CNN and everything. I can't think of the guy's name. He went big into bison meat but it really didn't catch on. I'll tell you what I would do if I was pushing meat.
Speaker 2:I don't eat birds either. I stopped eating chicken because I was sick of it. I mean there's so many problems with chicken Talk about hormones and antibiotics and living in filth and everything. I mean the whole factory chicken industry is worse than the factory cow industry. But what I would do, along with the bison thing? You live in Long Island, I live at the Jersey Shore. There's geese all over the place, crapping all over everybody's property. Why don't we start eating geese? People used to eat geese. These are wild geese. They're probably better than eating. You know, farm raised I mean factory raised chickens. But nobody wants to eat a goose. I'm not gonna eat one, but I just the same thing with the bison.
Speaker 1:I mean around here. They just kind of like kissing you and attacking you. That's what you get.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, get them in the restaurant and feed them to people.
Speaker 1:I want to just start wrapping up and talk a little bit about your book. I want to bring it on up here for those that get, familiarize yourselves with what it looks like, customize yourself nutrition and what I learned from my 110 year old mother, who is now 111,. Chuck, just kind of give us a synopsis. I know we've talked about it in the beginning about this book and how much of an impact that can make people's lives.
Speaker 2:I think it's. I see it as the reason I wrote it is as an alternative to the diet books and as an alternative to all the things out there that are just completely designed to promote products and services. And I'm not saying there's no good products and services, I'm not saying nobody should ever take any kind of supplement, but there are so many bad ones out there and it is so hard to figure it out. This is the alternative. This is the simple way. Take what you eat now and, just like just today, just eliminate one can of soda and then, as you go along, eliminate two cookies and then, as you go along, I'll give you a replacement. You're eating too much bread. How about skipping that role and trying a sweet potato instead? Sweet potatoes are phenomenal. I just learned in the last two years that I love sweet potatoes. Now I eat them four times a week. I mean, it's just that simple, step by step by step, and it's finding things that you like. Not somebody tells you to eat. Somebody can say you should eat a ton of broccoli. Well, cruciferous vegetables don't digest well with me, but I discovered that kale does. Kale works great. So now I eat lots of kale and I love it. It goes in a salad. It's terrific.
Speaker 2:It's everybody's an individual. You customize yourself. Don't take somebody else's plan, don't take somebody else's word for it, just figure it out for yourself. It's really easy if you do it step by step. If you do it all at once, like with a diet, it's really hard, but if you just do it step by step, it's really easy. So I just describe the process and I say, hey, I used to be an overweight kid that spent too much time on the couch. Look at me now. I work out with lifeguards on the beach. I'm 69 years old and I'm looking forward to working out until I'm my mother's age. Maybe I'll outlive her, maybe I'll get lucky.
Speaker 1:And just a quick little sign. I'm sorry. I love these articles, but it was a 103-year-old who just broke the dead lift record for her age. I think she pulled up like 150 pounds. True inspiration man Right there, you're never too old, she said. She picked up powerlifting at 85 years old.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. See, that's the most inspirational. Somebody walks into your, you know, you get a client who says look, I'm 45. I really can't do anything. Hey, this woman's 85 and she just got started and look what she's doing. That is the best. That's the best. I love those stories. That's so inspirational. I love it.
Speaker 1:And where can people find you, get a hold of you, and where can they find you?
Speaker 2:booked. Easiest thing go to Amazon, customize yourself nutrition you're there. Or you can go to my website, which is also very easy customizeyourselforg or RG.
Speaker 1:Thank you, chuck, and thank you for joining us on this week's episode of Help and Fitness Redefine. Don't forget, hit that Subscribe button and join us next week as we dive deeper into this ever-changing field. And remember fitness is a journey, not a destination. Until next time. For us, we know what it's like to feel unhealthy, depressed and downright defeated. We want to show others there is a right way and through fitness you could do anything you set your mind to. Fitness can give you that motivation, confidence, energy you need to bridge that mental gap and prevent you from missing important life events. We understand it's about feeling better, living longer and being good examples for our kids. We understand this because we live it, and for us, that's the redefined difference.