Part Two: Dr. William Li on The Foods You Must Add to Your Diet to Heal Your Body, Stop Inflammation and Prevent Cancer
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Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik. I'm Jonathan Cohen. Welcome to part two of our interview with Dr. William W. Lee. He's an internationally renowned physician. He's a scientist. He's the author of Eat to Beat Disease and Eat to Beat Your Diet. He's

done a ton of groundbreaking research that's led to the development of more than 40 new medical treatments, including over a dozen specifically for cancer. His TED Talk, Can We Eat to Starve Cancer, has more than 11 million views. He's an incredible authority on

And he's all about empowering us to understand what we should be eating, what we shouldn't be eating, what are the simple ways that we can take control of our health, and what are the ways that we can actually tip the scales in terms of how sick we get, how diet can...

support an immune system, a gut-brain connection that facilitates the best way to fight disease. He says we're encountering cancer all the time, but our bodies are designed to fight it off. What goes wrong and what can we do to keep the system working well? We're going to tackle that in part two of this episode. Also in part two, we get very specific the types of foods to eat, what not to eat. He talks to us about the blue zones and what expands our health span and our longevity.

This is a fantastic second part that gets extremely practical in the ways in which we can increase our natural defense systems to help us stay healthy. Without further ado, here is the second part of our interview with Dr. Lee. Break it down. What are some of the foods that help metabolism? Ah, okay. So, um...

First, let me just tell you that one of our body's own secret weapons for better metabolism is body fat. And you're like, wait a minute. No, body fat is not for metabolism. It harps metabolism. Yes, certain kinds of fat are, but there's a specific kind of fat called brown fat, which

Brown fat is actually not wiggly jiggly. It's not close to the skin. It's not under the chin, not under the arm. It's not the muffin top. It's not in the thighs, not in the butt. Nope. Brown fat is not wiggly jiggly. It's wafer thin and it's not around our waistline. It's actually plastered around our neck.

It's under our breastbone, a little bit between our shoulder blades and a little bit tucked inside our belly. All right. Brown fat. Now, brown fat is not white fat, which is the wiggly jiggly stuff or visceral fat, which is packed inside the tube of our body. But brown fat is amazing because brown fat is like a space heater that when you turn on brown fat,

Just like a space heater, it's going to draw energy from someplace to generate the heat. Okay, that heat is called thermogenesis. Thermo meaning heat, genesis making heat. So brown fat generates heat. And so basically it fires, when you fire it up, it generates heat by drawing down the energy from your harmful white wiggly jiggly fat. You can burn down bad fat with good fat. You can burn down white fat with brown fat. Now, why is brown fat brown?

Well, because the energy generating, heat generating engine of brown fat is our mitochondria. Now, mitochondria, I think most people who are like biohackers and following longevity probably heard about mitochondria. These are the tiny little batteries that are powering our cells and they generate energy.

Okay, it turns out brown fat is packed with mitochondria because it's actually like a space heater. It's got a lot of heat generating, energy generating things. Now, how do we know that there's a lot of mitochondria, brown fat? Well, it turns out mitochondria are loaded with iron.

The element iron, kind of like nails are made of iron. And what happens when you take a pile of shiny silver nails and you stick them outside for a couple of days? They turn brown. It turns out that the iron-rich mitochondria packed in our brown fat oxidizes just like a pile of nails on a porch.

And that's why our brown fat is brown because it's got these battery packs that are in there. So what are the foods that actually turn on our brown fat? Turns out beans, white beans, brown beans, black beans, fire, a Pinto beans, kidney beans. There you go. I am. You are, you're golden. And actually studies have done have been done showing that simple grocery store can beans. Like if you have them five days a week, uh,

can actually help you burn down, activate your brown fat to burn down that harmful white fat. In fact, one study showed that you can lose an inch of waist circumference. Think about one extra notch on your belt you can tighten just over a month of eating beans like five times a week. All right, another food, onion. It turns out that quercetin is a natural bioactive, a polyphenol that's found in onions.

By the way, most of a lot of the quercetin is found in the outer layer of the onion. So when you get your onion, if you want to get most, if you want to get the highest levels of quercetin, don't go over, don't be too aggressive and peel off all that outside stuff.

Get the papery skin away, but keep as much of the outer layer as possible because that's where the most potent quercetin actually is. That will turn on your brown fat as well. Green tea, matcha, and some black teas will actually turn on your brown fat as well. A fermented tea, there's a probiotic tea called Pu-erh tea. P-U-E-R-H.

E-R-H, Pu'er tea comes from the village of Pu'er in China. Back in the days of the Silk Road, when trading was occurring between the East and the West on Camelback, they wanted to bring tea over there. They figured, you know what? It'll actually preserve a lot better if we actually ferment it. So it's a really, really smoky tea. It's known as a digestive. When I was a kid, I remember going to my grandfather, great-uncle's house

kitchen and they would be sipping after dinner a little thing of pu-erh tea. I'm like, no, it's really smoky. Oh, it's a digestive, helps your gut. Yeah, it helps your gut. It is a probiotic tea. It's got its own bacteria that's actually evolved over thousands of years to be in pu-erh tea.

that actually helps you burn, turn on your brown fat as well. So you can kind of see, and this is in my book, Eat to Beat Your Diet. Eat to Beat Your Diet is not a diet book. It's an anti-diet book because it tells you how you can actually leverage and harness your bone, your own body's hardwiring in terms of metabolism to be able to

activate, turn, fire up your brown fat to burn down your white fat. So those are just some examples. There's more than 200 foods in my book that actually could do that. Love that. What are the top foods that you would tell people to avoid? Avoid. Okay. I spend most of my time telling people what foods they can add, but for sure there are foods that people should avoid. And just, you know, for the record,

I'm somebody who chooses not to demonize brands, and I don't like character assassinate entire categories of food because, you know, hey, look, we all love to eat something. There are things that we like to eat that we don't that aren't so good for us. And it's OK. That's you know, that's human nature. You got to accommodate that. But on principle, what are some of the areas that things that you should definitely avoid? Well, I would say number one is regular soda.

Regular soda packed with added sugar is a metabolic overload. There's no reason to actually have to regularly drink soda because there are so many other ways to actually get what you really need, our water, the liquid for hydration. And you can actually have other choices that have good things in it as opposed to those empty calories, so to speak, of sugar and soda. Second is a kissing cousin of soda, regular soda, which is diet soda.

Artificially sweetened sodas, to me, I've never liked them. I've had them before. They make me feel not so good inside. And it turns out there's a reason. The aspartame, the sucralose, all these kinds of artificial sweeteners and non-nutritive sweeteners, yeah, they're not nutritive. They don't actually get absorbed into our bloodstream and raise our blood sugar. But you know what they do? They tumble all the way down our gut.

to feed our gut microbiome. And guess what? They're toxic to some of the good bacteria. So by having non-nutritive sweeteners, we're actually poisoning some of our good bacteria. Uh-oh, that good bacteria lowers inflammation, tries to text message our brain, like, no wonder I didn't feel so good. Second, all right? Third thing I would say is ultra or processed meats. Now look, we all, I know you're a vegan now, but think about it.

We all grew up, you know, at the carnival, on the 4th of July, on some holiday. A hot dog. We love a hot dog. The hot dog. Right? I mean, think about it. It brings us back to childhood or the grill, you know? Well, it turns out that

Oh, what about the deli? You know, the lunch lady at school or the bag of lunch that we got our moms packed for us, you know, that deli. Here's something, you know, like, you know, the salami or the sliced ham. Do you think that ham pigs actually come in the shape of that circle disc? You know, bologna, it doesn't come in the shape of a tube, you know? So that's...

And although we don't know exactly why it does this, these processed meats as a category actually are harmful to the DNA in our gut and are associated with a higher risk of developing colorectal cancer, gut cancer, and other types of cancer as well. So in fact, the World Health Organization says,

looks at processed meats, deli meats, sliced meats, sandwich meats, you name it, as a class one carcinogen. So there's enough evidence to actually throw them under the bus of cancer causing. So if you have it every now and then, that's fine. But that is not my choice that you go out to a sandwich shop to go get a sandwich whenever I want to eat something for lunch because it's just not good. So that'd be another thing to cut down or cut out.

Every now and then, if you really want one, knock yourself out, but do not do that regularly. Other thing I would actually say to be really careful about and to cut out is alcohol. Now, I have a very specific position on alcohol. First, no matter what it is, red wine, beer, liquor, whiskey, vodka, alcohol,

In no case is the alcohol, which is a chemical known as ethanol, okay? In no case is ethanol ever good for you. Ethanol is a potent cell toxin. It kills what it touches, okay? It kills everything in its way, in its line of sight when it comes to your body. So even when they say red wine is okay or drinking a beer might be okay,

Okay, listen, it's not the alcohol. It's the other stuff extracted from the skin of the red grape or the hops of the beer. That's actually beneficial. All right. That might be beneficial for you. But the alcohol in every single case is toxic. If you drink too much of it over time on a regular basis, you are going to be poisoning your liver, your brain, your heart, your muscles. I mean, all kinds of your nerves, all kinds of things are going to start to go. All right. So what's my...

other position on alcohol besides stating those scientific facts is that ever since humans started to grow and cultivate grains and we've been fermenting them, we've actually been using some type of alcohol to celebrate events in our lives. - To numb the pain of being human.

Well, to numb the pain, true. That's well said. But also to celebrate the joy of being human too, right? Your graduation, your wedding, your holiday, your job promotion, whatever it is, something or some accomplishment, we do it. So I think that it's also important in this conversation about food and health to celebrate our humanness, to allow us to celebrate our humanness as well.

And so I think for alcohol, that's another one that I would say cut down or cut out. But that's actually not something that I would say you should really kind of avoid. And then the last thing is really ultra-processed snacks.

And I grew up with them. You know, I mean, I surrounded by boxes of candies and things that squirt, you know, little jellies and jelly liquid and, you know, that and the chips with the barbecue and all these interesting flavors that are really kind of addictive to have. Cool ranch.

And listen, again, if you pick one of those things up now, even once in a while, it's not going to kill you. But please, if you're in a grocery store and you feel tempted to pop something into your cart, pick one up and really look at that ingredient label and say, is this something I want to be feeding my health defenses? Do I want to be feeding my children, my family, these elements? And the answer is probably no. Put it back.

There are other healthier choices in almost every category of food that doesn't have all those additives, artificial preservatives, artificial coloring, artificial flavoring. And what I'm hopeful on is some of the

moves that are being made, even at the health policy level, is to try to reduce our exposure after decades of just nonstop use of these dyes, food colorings, that have been banned elsewhere in the world. Why on earth are we okay with that? So I think that those are some of the foods that I would say are on the no-go list. Yeah.

Very, very helpful. A few clarifying questions, because as we learn about the dangers of, for example, artificial sweeteners,

new quote-unquote natural alternatives come up to help people get around the fact that they don't want to have the diet sodas. So for example, what are your thoughts on Stevia? I know there's a couple different forms. Is that safe? Because that can be added to a lot of natural products or products that are marketed as natural. Yeah. Well, listen, I think you said the magic word that really pins

pins the tail on the donkey here, which is marketed. Marketing is what a company should be doing to help its shareholders make more money. And anything they do to sell more product is what companies are set up to do. Makes sense to me. As a consumer, though, we're on the other side of the fence there. We are the people that should be smarter than marketing.

We should follow our gut, literally. We should actually follow our brain. Oh, gut and brain are connected. All right? And we should really make good judgment. We should make good decisions. And that means that whenever we're picking up something, we should be thinking, is this something that we should be doing? And where you're talking about like these –

alternatives to synthetic sweeteners. It's also monk fruit extract gets marketed as a sugar alternative. Yep. Aululose is another one that's been out there now. Okay. That's the newest one. So here's what I would tell you. Stevia, monk fruit, those are actually plant-based sweeteners. They're super, super sweet and they seem to be okay. They don't seem to damage the gut microbiome.

Well, we're still studying that, but so far, so good. So if you're one of those conservative people that's saying, you know, I'd rather not until we have more information, then don't do it. And if you're like, okay, until they find a problem, I think I'll try that as an alternative. That's probably okay to try right now in moderate levels. You've got to be moderate. However, I will tell you, here's where the trick is.

Some packages, some manufacturers that have stevia labeled on the front or monk fruit labeled on the front, actually, it's not 100% stevia or 100% monk fruit. Look at the ingredient label. You'll see stevia is pretty expensive, pure stevia.

So they actually add aspartame or sucralose instead. And then they add a little bit of stevia. And because it's an ingredient, they make it really big letters. And you, the sucker, actually just pick it up and take it hook, line, and sinker, right? I mean, that's like, you know, like, don't be the fish swimming by the dock

with a fisherman on there with a worm that's just dangling right in front of you to take it, right? You're going to get caught. And so to me, what you want to do is you want to pick up that package and look at the ingredient label. And if it's stevia, make sure it's all stevia and don't use too much of it. So, you know, by the way, there's some other natural sweeteners like, hey, listen, who doesn't have a sweet tooth? I think that if you use some honey,

That might be another way of sweetening without like going too far over the edge. Maple syrup is another natural sweetener. Agave, lower glycemic index. Agave is another one. But again, you know, like agave is a good choice as well. But again, everything in moderation. You don't need to make it cloyingly sweet.

That's the key thing. I think some of the things that we're used to that we grew up with that are, you know, really, you know, like they really tickle our brains sweet tooth. They are just cloyingly sweet and that's not good. What are your thoughts about grass fed beef? I was curious to see that it is not on there. A lot of, you know, alternative health experts are saying no.

that it has a very high nutritional value. And if we also want to caveat, obviously factory farmed beef has its issues, but what if it's grass-fed and what if it's organic grass-fed? What are your thoughts? And what if you're eating it every single meal of the day, which seems to be what a lot of people are doing these days? Yeah. Well, okay. First of all, as I said, I'm an omnivore, so I'll eat

different types of meat and but although i eat mostly plant-based uh food um and uh as it relates to beef i would say beef is actually a good source of iron it's a good source of amino acids um

And so those are good things. And there's some minerals that it can be good for as well. Obviously, grass-fed is going to actually have more of the natural sources of omega-3s that are found in the tissue of the meat. So that's a good thing as well. More humanely treated and it's a healthier cow, going to be making a healthier meat. But I do think that

In the era, the decades of abundance that emerged in America after the 1950s, the whole idea that we can go out and all you can eat steak or the three-inch Texas steak that are out there, more is not more. And if you look at – by the way –

They eat beef and pork in the blue zones, you know, the healthy places around the world that live long. They eat pretty diversely there, actually. But if you take a look, for example, in healthy cultures,

when they eat meat, it's not the entree with the vegetables on the side. Usually there's a whole variety of dishes you can sample from diversity, anyone, with a lot of really cool, tasty cooked plant-based foods, not the salad bar, by the way. And you get all these interesting flavors mixed together and so delicious and cooked in so many sophisticated with seasoning. And if there's meat,

it's sliced up for everyone to share. And so meat becomes kind of a side or kind of a condiment. And that's probably the better way to think about it. If you're going to, if you are a meat eater and you want to actually get the protein and the iron from beef, get the best quality beef you can. By the way, I do have something to say while you, while you bring this up. Because the alternative, and it has to do with moderation. This idea like

If you're going to eat meat, if you're going to be a meat eater, I would say don't eat too much, 100%. Make it your condiment. Make it your side, not your main. Or do it Asian style so it's sliced into other veggies that you actually cook together. And now you've got the whole mix. You're going to enjoy the whole thing. It's going to be a bit healthier for you. And don't eat too much of it.

But there are some people that believe, oh, well, I want my burger, so I'm going to have an artificial – a synthetic burger, a plant-based burger. There is no ultra-processed food that is more ultra-processed than an artificial burger.

or whatever else they're making these days out of artificial meat. Take a look at the ingredient label. It's all ultra-processed soy and all that kind of stuff, and it's even genetically modified GMO-ed in order to bleed when you actually cook it with artificial – well, not artificial, with hemoglobin that they put into the soy so it bleeds under heat. It sort of oozes this red stuff like a hamburger patty would. That is –

you know, it's not the right idea. And so I always tell people that if you really want to enjoy meat, get the highest quality meat you can afford and you can get access to and don't eat too much of it and don't do it all the time and make it part of a diverse meal. That's the best way to actually handle people who are... And that's, by the way, why I also know that

if you overeat in one area, it's going to be at the expense of other areas, which is why, you know, the carnivore diet, okay, you can do it for a little while, but it's not going to be good for you if you do it for a long time. You really need that diversity and a diet should be really mostly plant-based. Is soy and tofu considered highly processed in this equation? Interesting question. So soy is a legume and there's, there are like

thousands of soy products. So you go to an American grocery store, you get your soy milk and you have maybe some soft or hard tofu and that's it. You go to an Asian store and look at soy, it's overwhelming how many different choices there are. So yes, there is processing involved with soy.

it tends not to be ultra processed, meaning that they'll do one or two moves to it to create tofu or they'll sell it as edamame and it might be fresh or it might be frozen or they might ferment it and turn it into a soy sauce, you see? And so I think that, again, try not to make things black or white, good versus evil. I think for the most part, Asian types of soy products are,

tend to be pretty good. Now, by the way, those plant-based meats, a lot of soy, but it's ultra processed soy. They manufacture it, they machine it, they extrude it. They mix all kinds of other things with it. They genetically modify it. That doesn't actually count. So that's why when you say soy foods, I think we need to be really specific. Now, if you go to an Asian market, by the way, here's a little pro tip.

A lot of Asian foods have additives in there. Okay. So again, you want to avoid those things that we know you don't want to be putting into your body. So even in an Asian store, even if you've got soy products out there, please pick up the label, even if it's tea.

Pick up the box, pick up the bag, pick up the jar can and read the ingredient. Make sure you're comfortable with everything you're putting in your body. It's just being an informed consumer. Really very helpful. I heard you talking about the grill and I'm fascinated about this because it's

I think a lot of people are trying to be really healthy and are doing things inadvertently without knowing it. You don't have to do the whole spiel. The short version was if you're not cleaning your grill, you're leaving residue on it that is carcinogenic. Sure. Listen, nothing is more elementally human than actually having something char-grilled, right? I mean, that like harks back to our caveman days probably. Yeah.

And you can grow vegetables as well. The key thing is that the fat on meat

when it actually gets to a certain temperature and it drops into the fire and it smokes, that's by the way, what gives you that incredible barbecue flavor actually turns into a chemical in the smoke. That's a carcinogen. So if you're, if you're the, if you're the, you know, if you're the griller, you know, the, the, the dude who actually has to be standing by the grill every day. I mean, like when you're, when people are coming over, I would strongly recommend you back away from that smoke because it's

It's all carcinogen. But that stuff also accumulates not on your food, but it can actually accumulate on the grill itself. And so I always tell people, if you go to a restaurant, you'll notice that if you're closing the restaurant at the very end, you watch how they clean it. They really scrub down their grill, their griddle. They take away all that stuff to make sure there's a clean surface.

That's actually what everyone should do with their grill. Don't just like close, turn off the gas or put out the fire and walk away. You really want to clean it well beforehand. Now, another way to neutralize some of this carcinogen, by the way. This was fascinating. Is to marinate whatever it is you are actually grilling.

in a fruit-based marinade. Could be mango, could be pineapple, could be oranges, could be lemon, could be whatever it is. I mean, think, by the way, think about all the barbecue recipes, marinades, traditional Greek, Italian, Spanish, you know, how they treat their meats, right? They've been doing it for thousands of years. It's like in traditional recipes, but the antioxidants that are found in fruit-based liquidations

liquids can help counter some of those carcinogens. So that's a little pro tip that anyone can follow. And it's true for vegetables as well as me. Before we let you go, if you kind of had, you know, one piece of advice for people to take from the research you do, the work that you do, how can we empower people to believe that they have more control over their health than they may think they have? Wow. Okay. So I will tell you that, you know,

Here's something really, really easy that anybody can do that clearly is like the low-hanging fruit for anybody. So we all need to be hydrated. We all know that. You need to drink enough water so that you have enough blood in your system. And when you don't are hydrated, you feel lightheaded because you don't have enough blood pressure, frankly.

And so you can drink, we already talked about this, don't drink soda, regular or artificial. I think, you know, if you enjoy fruit juice, you can do it once in a while, but be careful of what's in the fruit juice and fruit juice can be from real fruits, can be really, really sweet. So, you know, probably not the best regular thing to do, but there is a holy trinity of

of beverages that everyone should understand is these are the legs of the stool for your health that anyone can do. So this is, I'm synthesizing a lot of research to boiling it down to three things that anyone can do. And this is telling you about the Holy Trinity of beverages for health. Good for metabolism, activate your health defenses. Good for longevity too, by the way, that's like my latest research in this area. And so what are they? I'm going to give you the most boring one first, which is drinking water, but

But please, if you're going to drinking water, try to get drinking water that is filtered so you're not avoiding heavy metals and microplastics as much as you can. We want to just get hydrated with regular H2O water. Okay. So that's one. That's the boring one. But it's important and it's available to everyone. Second is tea.

green tea, black tea, oolong tea, okay, but made with real tea leaves. That's actually, the polyphenols from tea have been found in every single study to be good for cardiovascular health, to lower the risk of cancer, lower the risk of dementia, lower inflammation, improve your blood sugar, your insulin sensitivity in every single instance.

This is tea straight. Obviously, you dunk sugar in it and you pour all kinds of other crazy stuff in it. You'll be changing this nature. Elementally, it's healthy. My great uncle lived to 104, independent, sharp in mind. And he attributed one of the things to his longevity and vibrancy to the fact that he drank tea out of a thermos every single day, all day long, green tea, picked from the mountain, the tea mountain that he lived at the base of, you know?

I mean, he also exercised. He also had a good mental attitude towards things. But tea is the second one. The third one is coffee. Coffee is good. And coffee has polyphenols called chlorogenic acid and caffeic acid and other types of natural chemicals found in the coffee bean. And those coffee beans, the chlorogenic acid, slows down cellular aging. So it lowers inflammation.

Turns on your brown fat to burn down harmful white fat. Improves your vascular health. Cuts off the blood supply to cancer. And so there's not a lot bad about coffee except of your sense of the caffeine. Yes. Or if you fill it full of sugar and fat. Well, and here's the thing. I'm telling you the Holy Trinity in its purest form is really what is good. There's no pumpkin flavor. No.

All right. In the drive-thru for the healthy coffee. All right. You know, it's a whole other conversation if you wanted to. There is healthy stuff in pumpkin. But you want to actually, you know, brew some pumpkin in your tea. That's a different – in your coffee is a different thing. But again, you know, by the way, these polyphenols – here's a little – I like to give little pro tips because people always ask for practical things. For tea and coffee, don't put dairy products in it.

milk, cream, half and half. Don't do that. If you want to get the most out of the polyphenols, all right? And the reason is the fat, cow fat in dairy, all right, actually binds to the polyphenols. So when you drink it, you won't, you'll, most of them will wash right through your system. You won't absorb most of those polyphenols into your bloodstream. You might get 20%,

But you'll have washed out about 80%. But let's say that you like to actually have your coffee cut down. You don't want that super strong double espresso kind of flavor.

Okay. Use a nut milk. Okay. Use a soy milk, almond milk, any of those kind of milks, macadamia, whatever, cashew milk, whatever kind of milk you have, almond, it's fine. That actually doesn't have the cow fat that will bind to those polyphenols. And you'll actually get that cut as well. Now, if you're going to bite those plant-based milk, please, let's,

Look at the ingredient labels to make sure that even though it says soy milk or it says almond milk, they haven't had other additives in there that you don't want in your system. You see, this theme comes up over and over again. It's super easy to avoid the bad stuff. You got to look at the ingredient label.

And it's really easy to find the good stuff because you're probably having a cup of Joe every day, you know? And if you're not, you should be thinking about it or a cup of tea or drinking water. So if I had to boil down everything, I mean, there's, listen, I write about more than 200 foods that, you know, if you were a chef and I have a lot of chef friends or if you were just like a home, good home cook and you just like to eat or if you're somebody who just goes to restaurants, I

If you pay attention to all those food lists, you know, Miami, we're talking about, you're going to be in good shape. Just don't eat too much of it and make sure that, you know, whatever else is cooked with is, is, is healthy, as healthy as possible. But I will tell you that beverages, we all need hydration. So remember water, tea, coffee, they will take you the whole journey. And because they can actually help counter the ravages of aging and

They also are part of the secret of using food as medicine for longevity. Wonderful. It's been such a pleasure to talk to you. We're so appreciative of all of the work that you do and the way you present the information. It's really, it's approachable and we just really appreciate it. So I recommend Eat to Beat Disease, but Eat to Beat Your Diet is also great. And just thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Well, thank you. It's a real pleasure. And, you know, we'll keep the conversation going.

I've never met someone more hopeful and also presenting me with more devastating information about diet in my life. What were some of the things that felt devastating? Well, as I said, I kind of feel like he should be like ringing a cowbell. Like, guess what, people? Like, there's a real problem. And, you know, I mean, I have friends. I have I have more than five friends that I know who've had cancer as young women.

And it's like, you know, I think about how terrifying it is, how excruciating, you know, if you have kids and you get cancer, like it's it's unbelievable. And I don't think anyone would I don't think anyone would want to have that conversation with a doctor where they would say, guess what? It sucks. But our environment and the way we've been taught to eat and live likely gave you cancer.

And even this came up with Gabor Maté. It blew my mind in his book when it was like, guess what? Most cancers are not like luck of the draw genetics. It's what we're eating. It's how we're being treated by a work environment that we're expected to keep up with. It's about a culture that doesn't value, honestly, the health of a mother and her child, the health of relationships. It doesn't value free time, vacation, like all that shit matters. Right.

Like when people are like, oh, people in Europe. Yeah, they walk most places. They have access to fresh food. It's part of the culture to get fresh food. It's available to people, even if you don't have lots of resources. Right. The thing about the American diet is that wherever we export it, people start getting sick and dying. That's the big secret. And I want Dr. Lee to be like, people die.

It's like, guess what? It's us. Even if you don't cook extravagant meals, cooking as part of a health routine. Oh, it's it slows down everything about the process of consumption. But even the pro tips he's offering, like I peeled an onion the other day and I took off two layers because the top layer underneath the skin didn't look great. If I had known that all the nutrients I need are in that top layer. No, that's not what he said. This is also the problem with America. Yeah.

He didn't say, all you heard was, I only eat the outer rind of the onion. No, he just said that there was the extra. He said the most quercetin tends to be in the outer layers. Doesn't mean you don't get any. I want all the quercetin. Why do I want to give that up? You want all the quercetin you can get. One of the things that I really like that he said is,

You know, I like how he approaches not demonizing entire categories of food. Like he understands people are human.

a Cool Ranch Dorito. There's nothing like it. Like, you know, we all know that experience. He's not going to demonize all categories of food except for imitation meat burgers. He did. It's a very specific brand he was talking about that has a heme protein. I didn't appreciate his analysis, but I get it. You felt called out. I did feel called out, but I don't, I do not, I do, I no longer purchase that.

those products. And I just don't. But what I was going to say is one of the things that, that I got most from, from what he talked about, if you can condition yourself out of one dietary desire, it would be to condition yourself out of the need for sugar beverages. Soda is one of the most toxic beverages that are out there. It seems like,

Yes, you can do it once in a while. Everybody likes a little treat. But what I found is that once I conditioned myself out of it,

It's like it doesn't taste good anymore. And that's a big bummer because I used to love once in a while an ice cold Coke. When I get migraines, before I finished menopause, when I would get migraines, for some reason, the sugar, the fizz, the flavor of a fresh—it had to be fountain—fountain Coke—

would like cure the migraine. And now when I try and drink soda, even like a sip once in a while, it's like my body won't take it anymore. And honestly, I think it's a great gift that my body has given me because it's really something that I wish people could not feel a compulsion to drink. It used to be that we would see smokers everywhere.

Right. You would see them outside of restaurants and be wafting through smoke as you walk down the street. You used to see them in bars and restaurants. There used to be smoking section. They roamed around. Do you want to be in the smoking section or the non-smoking section? And they were right beside each other. And you would be like, no, I want to be in non-smoking. On airplanes. There was a smoking section. As the next table would blow it into your face.

And we began to realize the dangers and the health risks associated with that. Very bad to smoke, apparently.

It may be a stretch to say that soda is in that category, but when you stop drinking soda, and I don't say this like I'm bragging or anything, but at a young age, I kind of lost the taste for soda. I never really was a Coke person. I just, I used to like a root beer quite a bit, but it was never Coke or Pepsi. And

When I sort of got away from that and I began to realize the amount of sugar and I lost the taste for it, when you look around at people who are drinking 32 ounces, 64 ounces of soda, and it's just a regular practice, you kind of have to look at them. I'm like, it's like you're chain smoking. Yeah.

The physiological impact of having that amount of sugar is really, really intense. But also that there is a need that certain bodies have acquired and have gotten accustomed to. Oh, you build up tolerance for the sugar? And it's a caffeine drip.

And it's a sugar drip. And I get it. I mean, you know, we can abuse sugar like we can abuse any other drug. But it is one of those things that, yeah, if there's any way and it takes time to shift your palate. You know, I say the same thing about switching from a dairy milk to a non-dairy milk. If you hold them side by side on day one of trying, you're going to be disgusted. What happens is your palate shifts.

As he said, the microbiome of your tongue can shift. You, over time, can learn to kind of lose that association. The one thing it doesn't work for for me is ice cream. Ice cream will never taste good unless it's like Haagen-Dazs, unless it's Baskin-Robbins peanut butter chocolate. Neither are associated with advertising the show. No.

The thing about the sugar and having that much sugar is we are learning, as he said, more and more that it does impact your microbiome. And you can have bacteria living in your gut that is the result of an overgrowth of sugar that is actually telling your brain to go get that sugar because it needs to eat and it only eats that sugar. You're feeding that bacteria. Yeah.

And you're killing out all the other positive bacteria, which then has the downstream consequence of lowering your other defense mechanisms. And then your defense mechanisms get lowered and then you get something and you don't realize what the cause was in the first place. The thing about this episode, every time we try and think of something positive and hopeful, it devolves into that. Well, here's where I think the hopeful part is that.

For example, having pomegranate and I was actually just taking a shot of pomegranate juice. I wasn't even doing it consistently because I was actually realizing how much sugar is in it. And I thought, well, what's the balance there? But knowing that eight ounces can help us grow that healthy gut bacteria. That's that's great. Learning. I actually always had a propensity towards dark meat chicken. Just it was more tender, juicier. I don't want to think about it here.

Here are things that I know people still have questions about. They have questions about the best protein, how much protein. We didn't get into that yet. The difference between animal protein and plant protein, which is a conversation I think, you know, from his perspective, move as much towards a selection of food as possible. I appreciated that. He said mostly plant-based. Like, let's not mince words here. Look.

He said mostly plant-based, but this mirrors what Dr. Hyman said, what Dr. Andrew Weil said, meaning that, you know, Dr. Hyman was...

He has protein, but it's a section on his plate. It's not the whole plate, as he said. Make sure he has a diverse range of supporting vegetables. Yeah, for me, and Dr. Hyman is literally on the cover of Dr. Lee's book. For me, Dr. Hyman leans much more into the biohacking and optimizing protein and muscle mass and all those things, which I think are very...

very important things. But I think Dr. Lee is more about so much of your health is actually in your control. No matter where you live, no matter what you have access to, there are ways to, you know, like you said, eat to beat your diet, not about dieting, but about what are actually the best foods for all these different components of your health. So, yeah. What I was struck by and I still am hopeful for is that each of us have the ability to make

positive choices to help build our microbiome, to help our five defense systems, and that we can maintain health over a long period of time. Also, I can't help but mention that people like Bono and Cindy Crawford and The Edge are clients of Dr. Lee, and I did not know that. I'm not really, I don't know these things, but I was like, two members of U2? Yeah.

Like Dr. Lee? That's awesome. That's why they have been as successful as musicians. They've had the longevity of their career because they're eating properly. Yeah, really, really great to have him on. So from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time. It's my and Bialik's breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD. And now she's going to break down. It's a breakdown. She's going to break it down.