Boston Marathon Secrets, Super Shoes, Ultra Processed Foods & a Ridiculous Trail Recipe

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Probably five to eight minutes. Holy crap, it's going to
take off my marathon time.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
I think that if you're running much slower than say,
like three and a half hours for the marathon, you're
probably not getting much of a benefit.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
You could take a pizza Hut pizza, which is not
the same one that they had when we were kids.
If you had no teeth, you could still eat it.

Speaker 4 (00:29):
Right, you can gum that And I'm going to blow
your mind with the most ridiculous, heinous recipe you have
ever seen in your life. Welcome to two Percent. I'm
your host, Michael Easter. This is a podcast about health,
wellness and how to improve your life. I'm a best

(00:51):
selling author, I have the two percent substack, and I've
been thinking about these topics for about twenty years now.
And we have a really great episode for you today.
So this Monday, Patriots Day in Massachusetts, we are going
to have the one hundred and thirtieth Boston Marathon. It
is the oldest marathon in the United States of America.

(01:11):
It is also arguably the most important influential marathon in
the world. So to talk about that, we are bringing
on a guy who ran it last year. And ran
it really well. His name is Brady Holmer. He runs
the physiologically speaking Substack. He is a self described want
to be running influencer, but he's also a very bright

(01:34):
scientist in the realm of endurance. So he's going to
walk us through what it was actually like running the
Boston Marathon, how he trained for it, and how you
can think about training for your own runs. He's going
to talk about fueling his runs, and we will also
just talk about all the crazy things that might happen
in this year's Boston Marathon. It's a big one. There's
a lot of balls up in the air about who

(01:54):
will win this year. After that, with the idea of
fueling for endurance and the runs that you're going to
be doing this spring this summer out on the trails,
on the roads around your home, we're going to bring
in doctor Mike Russel. He is a PhD nutritionists, got
his nutrition PhD at Penn State. Now you might think
this guy, given his nutrition training, says you should never

(02:16):
eat ultraprocessed foods. That is what you hear from everyone
these days, but he takes a more nuanced look at
the topic. It turns out there might actually be times
when ultra processed foods are the healthiest thing you can eat.
So he'll describe when those moments are. Then after that
we are going to go inside the two percent kitchen

(02:37):
and I am going to blow your mind with the
most ridiculous, heinous recipe you have ever seen in your life.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Now.

Speaker 4 (02:44):
I ate this when I was doing a very long
hike across southern Utah. I was talking about twenty five
miles a day this time last year, for days on end,
and so I would make this recipe.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
It is ridiculous.

Speaker 4 (02:57):
It sounds like the worst thing you will ever eat,
but I will tell you in the depths of an
endurance binge, it is the greatest thing ever. It will
change your life as it changed mine. And so with
all that said, let's get into it.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
All right.

Speaker 4 (03:12):
I have Brady Holmer here. He is a science writer.
He is a hell of a runner. He writes physiologically speaking,
a sub stack that I subscribe to and I absolutely love.
And in twenty twenty five you ran the Boston Marathon.
So that's what I want to talk to you about.
Because this coming weekend is the one hundred and thirtieth running.

(03:33):
It's going to happen on Monday, April the twentieth, and
so you ran it in twenty twenty five.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
What was the experience, like, Man, it was I think
I would say more than I expected in terms of
the like fanfare in the I mean, it's a national
holiday in the city of Boston for sure. I mean,
they do shut down the whole city for it. It
definitely exceeded my expectations. To be honest, I was never

(04:00):
you know, I've been a runner my entire life, running
Boston was never something where I was.

Speaker 5 (04:04):
Like on my running bucket list.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
But a bunch of friends and I qualified for it
and we decided to run it together. All of our
families went out there, so it was a huge, fun,
sort of family trip.

Speaker 5 (04:15):
And you know, I was excited about it.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
But until I got there, I didn't really realize the
scope of the Boston Marathon.

Speaker 5 (04:20):
And yeah, I mean it was incredible.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Not only you know, the race itself was obviously fun,
but just the excitement around it, all of like the history,
all of the shopping, all of just the events a
ton of fun, and then the race itself was just,
I mean, unlike anything I've ever experienced in a road race.
It was people, you know, fans five to ten rows deep.
Basically the entire race. You were never no quiet spots,

(04:44):
never without people cheering for you. So it was just
an incredible experience. Definitely something I want to do again.
That was my first Boston first and only one so far,
but it was an incredible experience.

Speaker 4 (04:53):
Okay, we're going to talk about why this race is
significant among runners. I want to go through a list
of factoids that I found. I like, I'm probably gonna
throw some trivia at you as we go along. Okay, So,
number one, it is the oldest marathon in the country.
It came in the year eighteen ninety seven. This was
after the success of the very first Olympic Marathon, which

(05:17):
was held in eighteen ninety six. Can you guess how
many runners the very first Boston Marathon had?

Speaker 5 (05:25):
Oh gosh, okay, so I want to say, like fifty.

Speaker 4 (05:30):
Less it was fifteen? Wow, fifteen. Can you guess the
first place time for males for well, we'll get to that,
because there was no women until the nineteen seventies.

Speaker 5 (05:44):
Yeah, that's right, that's right.

Speaker 4 (05:46):
Eighteen ninety seven fastest time for Boston.

Speaker 5 (05:50):
Yeah, I'm going to say three and a half hours.

Speaker 4 (05:52):
Actually faster. This surprised me. It was under three It
was two fifty five. Guy named John McDermott second place
nic three hours, two minutes. I was surprised at the
speed at that point in time, I am as well, Yeah,
they didn't have super shoes, they didn't have like specialized gear.
They're just holling. That's pretty good.

Speaker 5 (06:11):
They didn't have anything. No, and funny story about that, quick,
quick aside.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
I know we're in the middle of our trivia, but
I actually interviewed the winner of the nineteen oh gosh,
I believe it was sixty eight marathon, Amby Burfoot. So
he was a writer for Runners World, and we were
talking about the history of the Boston Marathon, and he
was telling me that when he ran it and when
he won it, they didn't even have water stops, no
water stops, no fuel. So he's like, I didn't drink anything,

(06:37):
I didn't eat anything during the entire race. The only
water stops that they had people people stood on the
side of the road and basically sprayed hoses at them.
So up until I mean, who knows, probably the mid seventies,
they didn't even have water stations at these marathons, which
is just insane to think about, because people would not
even think about running a marathon these days without water

(06:57):
or you know, a pocket full of energy jails.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
So they would just open their mouth and get water
sprayed in.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
I guess, so, yeah, just a little spray of water,
which actually you probably get more than those little cups
that you get anyway, those are so ineffective, it's it's terrible.

Speaker 4 (07:09):
Yeah, and you're trying to run with them in your hand.
What was what was his time? What year did he
run in?

Speaker 5 (07:14):
What was his first he ran in sixty eight? I
believe you won it with a two twenty two.

Speaker 4 (07:19):
That's moving, especially in that which.

Speaker 5 (07:21):
Which is fast.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
But I mean that won't even you know, that wouldn't
even win the women's marathon today at Boston, you know.

Speaker 5 (07:28):
So it's I mean, I'm that's close to what I
It's funny, it's close to what I ran last year
in twenty twenty five. I ran two twenty four.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
So if you would think about it, I'd be close
to winning the Boston Marathon when he ran it, And
these days, I mean, to twenty two is kind of neat,
not even your you know, like a recreational amateur is
running that time, so things have.

Speaker 5 (07:46):
Changed for sure.

Speaker 4 (07:48):
Next factoid, the first Boston Marathon was not actually twenty
six point two miles. It was twenty four point five miles.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
Why.

Speaker 4 (07:57):
I don't know. I just found that interesting. Okay, Next factoid?
Can you guess the age of the oldest finisher ever?

Speaker 1 (08:08):
I want to say I feel like that was recently
and I think I saw something about that.

Speaker 5 (08:12):
But I'm going to say eighty.

Speaker 4 (08:14):
Five you nailed it. Eighty five a lady named Catherine.
I'm going to say this name, last name, wrong buyers
B E I E. R S. That was twenty eighteen
her finishing time. Honestly, why did we carre at eighty five?
But I'm just going to say it was seven hours
fifty minutes, which is way faster than I would be
able to finish that when I am eighty five. But

(08:36):
I'll also say last year, the year you ran it,
there was a guy named Oscar Commodoran. He's from Chihuala, Mexico,
age eighty one. He ran a sub four.

Speaker 5 (08:47):
That's that's absurd.

Speaker 4 (08:49):
Yeah, three fifty eighty three, fifty eight seventeen at eighty
one years old. I'll be honest, I don't even know
if I could run a sub four right now.

Speaker 5 (08:57):
Yes, so, Ed Whitlock believe is his name.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
He was the oldest person ever to break three hours
in the marathon when he was seventy three years old,
he ran a two fifty four for the marathon, and
then recently so I think he's eighty five now, or
at least he was eighty five when he ran this time.
But he ran a three fifty six for the marathon
at age eighty.

Speaker 5 (09:15):
Five, So pretty incredible.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
There the fact that you know he could have qualified
for Boston as an eighteen year old when he was
seventy three years old, pretty remarkable.

Speaker 4 (09:24):
I feel like your long term running goal should be
to beat his time when you were seventy five. It'll
give you a long time horizon.

Speaker 5 (09:32):
It's funny because I think about that a lot, because.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
I'm kind of at the stage in life where I mean,
I'm never I'm never going to be a professional athlete,
and I really am trying to think of like the
long game at this point, and it excites me to
think about trying to sort of run those times, like
how long can I run?

Speaker 5 (09:47):
So I'm a two twenty four.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
Now kind of run faster than that for like the
next five to ten years. But then you know, how
long can I run a two thirty marathon? For how
long can I run a two forty. It's it's fun
that you can kind of start to set goals because
most most guys don't get faster as the age, but
it's like, how can I still run fast and maintain
my speed at these different ages? It becomes a different game.
So yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Not that I'm wishing,

(10:09):
you know, I don't want to be seventy years old
of them. Have you been thirty three right now? So
not wishing that time away, but fun to think about
doing that eventually someday.

Speaker 4 (10:17):
I like it. So to go back to the point
you made earlier, men's are women. Women were not allowed
to run Boston until nineteen seventy two. One that surprised me.
Two we're going to give a shout out to a
person named Catherine Switzer. So nineteen sixty seven, she signs

(10:38):
up for the marathon under the alias kV.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Switzer.

Speaker 4 (10:43):
She starts off running the race, obviously the only woman
in the race. A race official actually tries to grab
her and stop her. He manages to get a hold
of her, she breaks free, and she finishes the marathon.
I think she had I think it was like a
four something time, so very first woman to do the
marathon illegally, I guess you would call it.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah, there's like a very famous picture of the guy
trying to get her off the course. It's pretty it's
pretty cool. But yeah, it's very interesting story there and
go her, right.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Go her.

Speaker 4 (11:14):
So you mentioned how there's people ten deep for most
of the race. How many people do you think watch
the race, stand on the course and watch.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
Gosh, I mean it has to be okay, is this
something you have a fact for the answer? Okay, gosh,
I mean I gotta. I have to feel like it's
like one to oh maybe I'm overdoing it. What at
one to two million.

Speaker 4 (11:39):
You're you're overdoing it? It is okay, five hundred thousand,
But in context, that is eighty percent of the population
of Boston. Now, obviously it's not everyone in Boston. It's
coming to people from all around the world come. But
that is a huge influx of people. You might have
experienced this running, but this is a giant party day.

(11:59):
If you're not running in Boston. So the bars in
Boston on Marathon Monday, which is a big holiday, beer
sales jump two hundred percent compared to other weekends. Vodka
sales jump three hundred and seventy percent, which I believe

(12:19):
because when I was in college, I went to college
outside of Boston. People would go into the city and
it was just like a big day, and all my
friends who were going were living in Boston during the marathon.
They're like, that's the biggest party day of the year. Also,
final fact, you can fact check me on this. I
believe it's the hardest marathon to qualify for.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
Right.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Actually, I think that the New York Marathon may be
a little bit harder in terms of the time standards.

Speaker 4 (12:45):
Now yeah, okay, yeah, what's the qualifying time for New York.

Speaker 5 (12:48):
It's actually faster than Boston.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
It's two fifty three, So almost a little bit harder
to get into New York than it is to Boston.

Speaker 4 (12:54):
Holy crap, And Boston. The qualifying time for this year
eighteen to thirty four age group which you fall under
is two fifty five. For women, it is that's for men.
For women, it is three twenty five. You might know
the pace off your top of your head. I don't
know that pace. What is a two fifty five. What
does that relate to?

Speaker 5 (13:14):
Oh gosh, that would be yeah, two fifty five.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
I think that's somewhere around US six forty to six
forty five minutes per mile pace. And that's for the males.
It's going to be harder for me to do the
female conversion there. But yeah, And an interesting thing about
that is that the qualifying time, so say the qualifying time,
meaning you have to run this time to even have
a chance to get in, that's a two fifty five,

(13:36):
But because of the amount of people signing up and
the quality of the people signing up, you actually have
to run faster than that.

Speaker 5 (13:43):
So the actual the people who made it in this year, you.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
Had to run four minutes about four and a half
minutes faster than the qualifying time. So that means if
you're a male eighteen to thirty five, you don't get
in unless you ran a two fifty one. So you
qualified for the race with a two fifty five, but
you did actually get run the race unless you ran
a two fifty one. Because of the sheer number of
applicants Can.

Speaker 4 (14:05):
You imagine if you had spent years trying to qualify
for Boston and you get your you run the marathon
in two fifty four whatever qualifying marathon. You're like, oh
my god, this is it. I've accomplished this feat. I
can't wait for Boston. And then you submit your application.
They're like, nah, you're actually too slow because everyone else
is faster than you.

Speaker 5 (14:23):
It's funny because one of my friends when we yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
He he ran a two fifty two qualifying time and
so the cutoff I think for was like a two
fifty two thirty so he got in by like a
thirty second margin or something like that, which was which.

Speaker 5 (14:37):
Was pretty close. We were all happy about that, but yeah,
it's kind of a bummer.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
And what do you say, you know, do you do
you say that you were a Boston Marathon qualifier or
do you not, like if you're if you're somebody who ran,
say a guy who ran a two fifty three, but
you think it in do you say, oh, I qualified
for the marathon because you didn't really you didn't really get.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
To get to race it.

Speaker 4 (14:56):
So what do you think this suggests?

Speaker 5 (14:58):
Semantics?

Speaker 4 (14:58):
I guess what do I think this for running. Is
running becoming more popular or people just the training methods
are better? What do you think.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
I think it's a combination of both. I mean, it's
certainly becoming more popular. If you just look at the
number of people applying for these marathons, I mean thirty
four thousand, and I think people applied for Boston in
twenty like for the twenty twenty six cycle, So just
the number of applicants exploding.

Speaker 5 (15:21):
But obviously people are getting faster.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
I mean, if you have more people, you're obviously going
to have a larger talent pool. But I just think
people are putting in more time to train. You know,
there's technology, so I think, but technology is sort.

Speaker 5 (15:34):
Of still level playing field at this point because people
will say, well, it's it's the shoes.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
Well, sure, so that kind of explains why the times
are getting faster. But everybody is wearing super shoes these days,
so you would think that would be kind of like
a way to level the playing field. I think training
methods are getting a little bit smarter and people are
just putting more time into it. I think they're just
enjoying it, and marathoning is like a I mean it's
kind of coming like a status, a status symbol simply almost.

Speaker 5 (16:00):
It's like your marathon time is.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
People will flaunt it, you know, and where they're metals
and where their jackets.

Speaker 5 (16:06):
So I don't know.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
I don't know whether it's a running boom or a
bubble that will eventually burst, probably, but right.

Speaker 5 (16:11):
Now it's just super popular and.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
I think people are training hard and putting a lot
of time into it.

Speaker 5 (16:15):
So it's just people are getting faster across the board.

Speaker 4 (16:18):
Before I ask you about your qualifying time and how
you trained for everything, you mentioned super shoes, how have
those terms of sport and how much how do they
actually affect running times. I've never actually run in super shoes.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, I mean they are. Until you've run in them,
I think you will sort of. I think a lot
of people maybe dismiss how they actually work or if
they actually work. But I mean, essentially, what these what
the super shoes are doing. It's it's a very broad term,
but essentially it refers to a shoe that either has
some sort of specialized foam, so like a foam in

(16:51):
the sole, a carbon plate, so a carbon fiber plate
that's embedded within the sole, or like a combination of
the two.

Speaker 5 (16:59):
Most have a combination of the two. And so what they're.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Doing is they're not really making I mean, they're making
you run faster, but indirectly, so basically they're just giving
you energy return, So they're increasing your running efficiency. So
when you put force down into that carbon plate, it's
essentially acting like a spring. So you put a lot
of force into that plate, into that foam, and it's
going to give you energy you return, And hence the

(17:22):
four percent kind of labeling that Nike came out with
when they first introduce.

Speaker 5 (17:28):
These super shoes. It's like, they make you four percent.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
They don't make you four percent faster, but they make
you four percent more efficient. So they're just going to
basically make it at the same pace, you're going to
be using less energy, less effort at the same pace essentially.

Speaker 5 (17:41):
So that's kind of how they're working. They definitely work.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
But what the interesting thing is and a lot of
the you know, not to get too deep into the research,
but a lot of what the research is sort of
showing these days is that.

Speaker 5 (17:52):
There are people respond differently.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
It's not everybody who puts the shoe on is going
to experience the same benefit. There are quote quote responders
to super shoes and non responders. I think it has
a lot to do with how you run, So your
biomechanics certainly play a role in how well you're going
to respond to these super shoes and how much of
a benefit you're going to get.

Speaker 5 (18:12):
And your speed.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
I really think if you basically go to any marathon,
everybody pretty much is wearing super shoes. I think there's
a lot of fomo going on there where people think
I have to wear these because everybody's wearing them. I
think that if your male or female, and you're running
probably much slower than say like three and a half
hours for the marathon, you're probably not getting much of
a benefit from the super shoes because it takes a

(18:36):
certain speed for those things to really give you that
energy return.

Speaker 5 (18:39):
Either you need the force to get that energy return, yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
But they definitely feel good on your feet, so there's
something to that as well.

Speaker 4 (18:48):
Do you have any idea how they would impact your
marathon time? And it's a sense of like how much
time are they actually taking off for you?

Speaker 1 (18:56):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (18:56):
Man, I know it? So it's so hard to quantify that.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
And I would love to run a marathon without them
and then do one with them kind of while I'm
in like the same course, same relative fitness level, super
shoes versus none.

Speaker 5 (19:10):
I think I think that a.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
Reasonable estimate is probably five to eight minutes.

Speaker 5 (19:18):
Holy crap, it's going to take off my marathon time.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
Yeah, I mean that's and I think that's pretty reasonable
that maybe even like undershooting it five minutes at least
ten eight minutes might be kind of overestimating it, but
it's certainly at least five minutes. I mean I ran
so in twenty twenty five, I ran a two twenty
four at Boston. I think if you put me in
regular shoes, I run a to twenty eight maybe something
like that. So it's it's big, it's not an insignificant difference.

Speaker 4 (19:43):
How did what was qualifying for Boston like for you?
How did you go about that?

Speaker 5 (19:48):
I ran my qualifying time?

Speaker 1 (19:50):
I actually, I mean I ran two marathons that both
would have qualified me for Boston and in twenty twenty
so I ran them.

Speaker 5 (19:56):
In twenty twenty four, I ran a.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
Two thirty seven minut marathon, and then I ran up
to twenty six at the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon. So that
was I guess my true one that I submitted to
get into Boston was the Indianapolis one and then to
twenty six.

Speaker 4 (20:12):
Yeah, that's awesome. What was the training, What was the
training like for this and how where was your head
going into this with training? Did you change anything because
it was Boston, if the stakes felt a little higher
or what?

Speaker 5 (20:23):
No, nothing special.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
I wish I would have altered my training a bit
to tailor more to the Boston course. So so, Boston,
as I mentioned, is a net downhill.

Speaker 5 (20:34):
There are a lot of hills.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
So there are downhills, and there are obviously uphills, Heartbreak
Hill being the so called Newton Hills, I guess are
the quote unquote toughest part of the course. But what
I think people underestimate, what I myself underestimated, was you
know these the first half is a lot of downhills,
and what the downhills do is damage your muscles a
lot because you're going down, You're getting these eccentric contractions

(20:57):
and it just it ruins your quads.

Speaker 5 (21:00):
It ruins your quads.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
So by the time I was done with the first
half of the race and got into the uphill section,
my quads were kind of just ruined because I went
out a little too fast, you know, to be honest,
a little too aggressive, as it's impossible to avoid that.
But I would have done some specific downhill training, so
probably found some areas and done downhill intervals where you're

(21:21):
basically just running hard downhill to sort of train your legs.
It's essentially almost like providing like this armor to your
legs when you do those in training. Because during the
end of the race that kind of really affected my
form and stuff. So at one point I thought I
was gonna have to stop at like mile twenty to
twenty two just because my legs were just so so
sore and like almost unable to pick them up. So

(21:44):
I would have changed that. Other than that, you know,
training is training. I think you just regardless of the race,
you do pretty much the same thing. But you do
need a tailor if you're doing a.

Speaker 5 (21:53):
Downhill course, kind of work on that and train the.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
Uphill stuff as well, because there are those Newton hills
which are notoriously difficult walk us.

Speaker 4 (22:00):
Through the day of the race, so morning you wake up,
what do you do with Boston?

Speaker 1 (22:07):
It gets very complicated too, so and to be honest,
compared to a lot of other marathons, the pre race
stuff kind of sucks because it's logistically it's very very difficult.
So the people what, no, not the people, just the
just because there are so many runners, they have it.

Speaker 5 (22:24):
It's a well oiled machine. I will give them that.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
I mean, they've been doing it for you know, one
hundred and thirty years, so you would expect that. But
it's basically just the process of getting to the start
line is just hard and it's time consuming. But I'll
go through, you know, the day there. So I think
the race doesn't start till when it started to at
ten I think ten or ten thirty in the morning,
which is actually a pretty late start for a marathon.

(22:47):
So I woke up, oh gosh, probably five thirty something
like that, puttsed around, had some coffee, had I think
a bagel.

Speaker 5 (22:55):
And a banana with some peanut butter.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
That's my typical pre race breakfast, like before a marathon,
and for a lot of races, even if it's a marathon,
I generally won't have a lot to eat beforehand, just
because they start at like six am. So you just
I'll have like a banana and then you're gonna eat
during the race. You're gonna have energy jails, so I
don't really find the need to eat a breakfast. But
with Boston, you're not running till ten o'clock, so you

(23:18):
wakeing up.

Speaker 5 (23:18):
At six, you got to you gotta have something.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
You're gonna be starving by the time you get to
the get to the start of the race. But obviously
you don't want to have like a full continental breakfast.
So wake up, have breakfast, kind of chat with my friends,
and then you basically have to start the process like
two or three hours before your start time of getting
go to the race to get to your corral because
you have a designated coral based on your time that

(23:40):
you submitted.

Speaker 5 (23:41):
But most runners will take a bus, so you.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
Have to get on a bus a couple of hours
before they're gonna take you from downtown Boston.

Speaker 5 (23:47):
Because we actually didn't stay in downtown Boston. We stayed
halfway in between.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
But if you're staying in downtown, you get on a bus,
they track you the twenty six miles you know, to
the start line.

Speaker 5 (23:58):
Then you get out, you go to the waiting.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Area basically where all the runners are, you know, all
the anxious energy. Runners are sitting around, they're jogging, they're eating,
they're just you know, waiting for thirty minutes to use
the porta potty a few times before the race, as
you know everybody typical has to do. But basically wait
in this holding area for I guess however long you're there,
but you know, generally I think we were there for
sixty to ninety minutes basically, and then they will call

(24:23):
you to the corral. So they'll say, okay, if you're
in coral A, now's your time to go. So then
you will go to the corral or to the entrance
to the corral. You'll wait in a line to get
to the corral, and then you'll walk half a mile
through basically just this shoot to the start line.

Speaker 5 (24:39):
So that takes another half an hour.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
So I mean, this whole process pretty much takes by
the time you get to the starting area, the loading
dock we'll call it, it takes like two probably two
to two and a half hours of just sort of
waiting around.

Speaker 4 (24:53):
They don't talk about this in all the aura and
glory of Boston.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
They don't talk about it. It is not it is not glamorous,
it's not glamorous at all. It sounds unless you're an
a lead athlete.

Speaker 4 (25:04):
Yeah, it sounds like you're going through like TSA. Like
this just sounds to me like, well, I had to
drive to the airport. It took forever. Then I had
to do this and this, and I had to get
in this cattle shoot to go through this process. This
does not sound fun.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
But yeah, no, it's funny that you mentioned that, because
it is. It's like it's like almost going through through TSA.
You know, you drop your stuff off before you get
into the line. You know, all your clothes that you've
been wearing to stay warm, you ditch those. As you
walk to the start line. You sort of are like
taking in your energy jels. You're using the portal at
one last time before you actually get to the start line, because.

Speaker 5 (25:33):
Once you're there, you're not moving.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
Like once you're at the start line, you're in this
big group of people, you're not there. But then you
do get to the start line, and then that's kind
of where you start. It's funny, like I'm getting like
the chills, kind of like thinking about when I was standing.

Speaker 5 (25:45):
There on the start line.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
But you'll stand on the start line again, once you
get there, you're standing for probably another thirty minutes.

Speaker 5 (25:53):
And this is kind of why I say it sucks.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
Compared to a lot of the other races, because for
most marathons eat, unless it's like a major marathon, most
low key marathons, I'm going to be able to just
do my warm up and pretty much just like hop
the fence and get on the start line where I
need to be two minutes before the race starts.

Speaker 5 (26:10):
I'm all warmed up. My routine is sort of dialed in.
Throw everything that you know about that out the window
when you get to Boston. And that's why you just have.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
To be flexible, which for type A runners who love
their routine, love their fueling, love their warm.

Speaker 5 (26:23):
Up, you have to like throw that out the window.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
And I just had to like get that mindset out
of my head because you're not you're not going to
be able to do any of it. You're going to
be standing for thirty minutes and then you're just going
to be expected to go when they shoot that starting
gun off cold basically, so I'm going from standing to
running a five minute and twenty second mile, you know,
within the span of seconds. A little uncomfortable, but you
know that's what you do and everybody does it, so
you're you're just kind of in it with the crowd.

Speaker 4 (26:47):
Did you see anyone just mentally spiraling about this because
I couldn't do all the things I had planned to do,
Like they didn't understand that it was going to be
this tsa like process.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Not really, but I'm sure that within the mind of
all the runners, Like there are some who are sort
of freaking out. And I joke about it now, but
it's really something that I was like, Okay, you just
have to be cool with this, And that's why I
talk about like the whole pressure thing. I'm like, you
know what, the time I run today doesn't really matter,
and you're gonna run good no matter what. You just
got to like, because you could freak yourself out, you

(27:17):
could just totally psych yourself out.

Speaker 5 (27:18):
And think you're gonna run bad.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
You just have to sort of enjoy it and go
with the flow, really and realize that everybody's doing it.
I think that helps a little bit. You're like, it's
me and thousands of other runners who are doing the
same thing. Like, unless you're an a lead athlete, you're
not going to get that special treatment of all I
can do my warm up and just get right on
the start line.

Speaker 4 (27:37):
So gun sounds you start running. You said you came
out of the gate hot. Were you trying to PR
this or were You're like, I'm just going to see
what happens.

Speaker 1 (27:45):
It was mostly just going to see what happens. But
I mean, like I said, in the back of my mind,
I kind of knew that I was. I knew Boston
was a hard course, but I'm still relatively new to marathoning.
I've that Boston was only my third ever marathon, so
I was pretty confident that I was going to PR,
just with regarding my training and just the fact that
I had run into twenty six earlier and I knew
I was in better shape and that Boston it's a

(28:07):
hard course, but it's not a slow course. It can
be fast if you run it right. So I was
kind of confident I was going to PR. And after
I went through halfway pretty fast. I think I ran
the first half marathon in an hour and eleven minutes,
so I was a slight positive split. I ran slower
in the second half, but I figured I would PR and,
especially after going through the first few miles.

Speaker 5 (28:29):
I mean, I think I was running under five minutes
and twenty seconds per mile for the first three or four.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
Granted you're going downhill, and I think that's what set
me up for disaster later.

Speaker 5 (28:37):
But it feels easy.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
And that's the trap that marathons get you into. I mean,
it should feel easy, but you know, you're running five
minutes and twenty seconds per mile and it's like, oh,
I could talk to the people next to me, and
you're in a crowd.

Speaker 5 (28:50):
So the adrenaline there certainly helps.

Speaker 4 (28:53):
Yeah, what were your most memorable sections of the race,
for better or worse?

Speaker 5 (28:59):
Yeah, not really any.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
I wouldn't say there were any bad sections, but definitely
the most memorable section was you pass. Oh my gosh,
the name of the college, I can't remember. It's an
all It's an all women's college, Wellesley College. Yeah, and
basically just the sororities are lining the course and they're
all just there screaming and giving I think I gave
like five hundred high fives at that point.

Speaker 5 (29:23):
There are pictures.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
Of me on the website, like because they take photos
during the race of me just like high fiving these
sorority girls. The entire time, So that was definitely one
of the most memorable sections. I would say the Newton
Hills were more of a fun section. I this was
one of my hot takes about the Boston Marathon, but
I think the quote unquote Heartbreak Hill sort of overrated.

(29:46):
I mean, I didn't find that it was that much
of a hill at all. I think it's the positioning
of the hill versus the actual hill itself. It's at
mile twenty, it's at mile twenty. I think mile eighteen
to twenty is when it happened. So yeah, you're if
you run a dumb race, you're gonna be tanked by
then and it's gonna be a terrible hill. But I
try to at least, you know, race where conserving energy

(30:07):
first half kind of stronger the second half, and.

Speaker 5 (30:09):
So the hills were The hills were more fun because
I was.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
Passing a lot of people who went out a little
too hot, So those were pretty memorable. And then obviously
just that finish I mean insane.

Speaker 5 (30:20):
You basically go kind of up this hill.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
Under a bridge, and then you turn this corner and
then you basically just have a half mile straight shot
to the finish line and I mean, it's just like
you forget everything that's just happening because people are and
you can't even hear anything that's going on, and you
just like sprint your ass off to the finish basically
so you can.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
See it half mile away.

Speaker 4 (30:40):
You can see it, which is.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
It's good and bad because it just feels like it's
forever off. But it's so fun because you're at the
top of the hill and you're basically just descending into
the finish line and running as fast as you can.

Speaker 5 (30:50):
Yeah, so it's fun. It's a lot of fun.

Speaker 4 (30:52):
What did you eat along the way?

Speaker 5 (30:54):
Just energy jails, so like carbohydrate energy jails.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
Basically I had, oh man, five or six of them probably,
so you know, carbon fueling and marathoning is like a
whole hot topic these days. I probably took in about
like two of those, two of those gels per hour,
which is about six sixty to seventy five grams of
carbohydrates per hour, which was kind of my goal.

Speaker 4 (31:17):
What is your go to gel for Boston?

Speaker 5 (31:19):
I used so I actually use a combination.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
There's a brand called Science and Sport that I really
like because they're sort of like a watery consistency.

Speaker 4 (31:27):
Not super doing, not very.

Speaker 5 (31:29):
Viscous, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
And then there's a brand called Morton, which those are
sort of the premiere energy gels. But the problem is
they are designed in a certain way. They're in this
very viscous gel, and you kind of have to chew it,
which I don't really like because I don't want to
chew anything while I'm running five minutes per mile.

Speaker 5 (31:47):
It's kind of difficult.

Speaker 4 (31:48):
Where do you think people go wrong with fueling for marathons.

Speaker 5 (31:51):
I think in a couple areas probably.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
I think the first would just be not not practicing
the fueling enough in training. So there's the whole idea
of gut training. Basically, your your gut can train to
handle more food or more carbohydrates while you're exercising, just
by using carbs when you're exercising. So when you're out
on training runs, when you're doing your long runs in

(32:14):
preparation for the marathon, you need to basically try to
mimic what you're going to do on race day so
that your stomach can tolerate it.

Speaker 5 (32:19):
Because if you are just.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
Say, you know, maybe fasting during your runs or you're
just taking in a little bit of carbohydrates when you're training,
and then you show up on race day and expect
to pound two to three jails per hour, Like, it's
not going to work. You're going to get gi distressed.
Your body just can't absorb that many carbs. But the
gut can be trained. It's pretty well known.

Speaker 4 (32:39):
Number one thing. Well, obviously you want to fuel the work,
but also the main issue is that people's guts go
south mid race and now you've got you got to
stop because your stomach is just in a nod and
you got You're done.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
It's funny.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
I've been running for so long, I've never experienced anything
during a race that has actually caused me to stop. Generally,
you know t M I, but I take care of
business before the race actually starts. I feel like by
the time the race is happening, you know, there's a
there's not much left left to do.

Speaker 5 (33:08):
But it really just does.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
Come down to that smart feeling, like don't don't feel
certainly more than maybe you have during during training.

Speaker 5 (33:15):
That's kind of a recipe for disaster.

Speaker 4 (33:17):
I think, do you think about what you eat the
day before as it relates to that, or do you
not care?

Speaker 2 (33:23):
Yes?

Speaker 5 (33:23):
I think more so the the day before.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
Not only it's complicated and this is still something that
I haven't really honed down, but and it's not just
the day before, Michael, I would say, it's probably the
entire week before. I don't really I don't make I
don't make drastic dietary changes, but I cut a lot
of stuff out. So basically, five days out from the marathon,
I will pretty much try to start cutting out like
any vegetables and lots of fiber, just to kind of

(33:49):
like reduce you know how much like both you're eating.
I don't know, just I think not it's not like
for like a weight perspective, but just from like a
you got less to to get out, I guess, and
less anything that has a chance of maybe upsetting your
stomach you basically just cut out.

Speaker 5 (34:03):
So like keep it simple, but obviously don't change.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
It too much because your body's used to eating what
you're used to eating.

Speaker 5 (34:09):
So I think the day and then yeah, so five
days out.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
I'm kind of like trying to cut out a lot
of fiber, and I think the day before, you know, again,
just kind of eat what you normally would. I tend
to reduce protein a little bit, just kind of eat
a little more carbs just to make sure you're going
into the race with enough carbohydrate stores. But if you're
going to be fueling the day of, I just I
don't think maybe it's as important.

Speaker 5 (34:31):
Avoiding stuff I think is more important.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
Than what you actually eat, to be honest, don't eat
anything weird, but like just eat what you normally would
and make sure to.

Speaker 5 (34:39):
Get the carbs you're normally eating.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
And then on race day, you know you're gonna eat
a good breakfast, you're gonna fuel during the race, so
kind of what you ate the day before isn't that
important and you're tapered.

Speaker 5 (34:51):
I think a lot.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Of people discount so I'm sure you've heard of carbloating,
you know, the idea of carbloading, like oh, you just
want to pound the pasta and rice and stuff the
week of the marathon.

Speaker 5 (35:00):
I have my thoughts about it.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
I don't really think the way most people do it
is ineffective, and I don't really even think it's necessary
because if you're eating adequate carbs during training, you're already
sort of you're trying to fuel your training, So going
into the race, you know you've been fueling your training good. Well,
the week or two before the race, you're you're decreasing
your training volume. It's called a taper, and it's pretty
common before a marathon. So you're gonna reduce your training volume,

(35:24):
you're gonna run less. So that's automatically if you eat
the same and run less, your glicogen stores are just
they're gonna be saturated going into the race because you are, say,
eating the same amount of carbs, but you're running less,
so you're just not depleting your your glycogen stores. So
I think people overthink. I think runners overthink carbohydrate loading.
Just like, eat enough and you're gonna be good going
into the race, and if you feel correctly, you'll be

(35:46):
You'll be fine.

Speaker 4 (35:46):
It's like that famous scene from the Office where Michael
Scott runs a five.

Speaker 5 (35:50):
K ten minutes before. Do not do that?

Speaker 1 (35:56):
Yeah, And I and I think the and I think
the idea too. It was just like, oh, you need
to pound like plates of pasta. But the idea is
really just you're gonna eat a little less protein and fat.
You're just gonna make your diet more carbs compared to
those other sort. You don't need to eat more calories overall.
I mean you can, that's fine. You probably should, like,
you know, fuel yourself good before the race, but you're
just eating more percentage of carbs versus protein and fats

(36:20):
in your diet in that week, and you're going to
kind of go into the race pretty pretty carb replete.

Speaker 4 (36:25):
Sounds very practical. So you cross the finish line. What
was that like and what was the first thing you
did after crossing?

Speaker 1 (36:34):
Well, it was obviously I mean when you cross any
finish line, it's like it's like a relief. I was
obviously stoked because I ran, you know, a two minute pr.
I was also celebrating. So the guy, the guy who
finished like right behind me, he was part of this.
It was called the Project three and it was sponsored
by Puma. Basically, Puma took a bunch of kind of
recreational level runners guys like myself and sort of sponsored.

Speaker 5 (36:55):
Them for this race. So they gave them shoes, they
gave them gear.

Speaker 1 (36:59):
I think they paid for the trip probably, and then
there were incentives basically, So if you were the fastest
out of that project, I think you got like a
thousand bucks and if you ran a personal record you
got I think it was like two thousand dollars and
he pr'd by I think a minute, so he was
like he was all happy. I think he was from
France and he was all excited. I'm like, oh, good, joh.
You know, you're congratulating him each other, and he goes, yeah, man,
I just a pr and I got like that two

(37:19):
thousand dollars or something. So I was celebrating with him,
kind of relishing it. You know, they put the metal
on your neck and then you're you're walking a lot
and you're basically just kind of like flooding, flooded with
endorphins for about the next five to ten minutes, and
then panic set in because I had to find my
family and friends. As large was it doesn't have my phone,

(37:42):
you know, you because it's a point to point so
it's not like it's not like you started where you
finished and you have your bag that you can get.

Speaker 4 (37:48):
Do you think that anyone could qualify for Boston with
enough training? What are your thoughts on that with especially
in the context of decreasing qualifying times, the times and
shorter what are your thoughts there.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
I think that many people have the potential to do it.
I don't I certainly don't think that everybody has these
just the innate ability to do it. And I don't
say that and to try to be like elitist or
gatekeeping and running. I just think, you know, there are
just some people who probably aren't naturally born to run

(38:22):
in regardless of how much time they put in, they
but just might not qualify for Boston. And I think
that's okay, that doesn't need to be a goal for everybody.
But I think most people, you know, if you really
set it as a goal and are willing to put
in the time because it will take time, unless you're
like an outlier in terms of talent, I think that yeah,
they could probably qualify. I do think that it gets

(38:44):
relatively maybe easier, the older you get.

Speaker 5 (38:46):
Because the pool, the pool narrow is a little bit right.
So if you're in my age group eighteen to thirty.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
Five, pool is huge, lots of talent, lots of young guys,
lots of young gals with a lot of talent.

Speaker 5 (38:57):
Okay, it's hard, but if your mainting fitness when you're.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
Forty fifty sixty, if you're a sixty year old, then
you're a pretty fit, kick ass sixty year old. You
might have an easier time getting into Boston because the
pool is lower, the times maybe get relatively easier to
sort of achieve. But yeah, so I guess the short
answer there is I think yes, you know, if it's
if it's really a goal of yours, if you have
some experience in sports and are willing to put in

(39:24):
several you know, several hours per week is what it's
going to.

Speaker 5 (39:26):
Take, then yeah, I think most people could.

Speaker 4 (39:29):
Yeah, because you were running, would you say about eighty
miles a week. That's a lot of time running.

Speaker 5 (39:33):
Yeah, it is a lot of time running.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
And I mean a funny story is just like I said,
you know, I've been a runner my entire life and
the first marathon I ever ran, so I technically run
four at this point. I ran one in twenty eighteen,
just I want to say it was on a whim,
but I was injured during it. I think I was
running ten or twenty miles per week and not even
training for a marathon. But I mean I ran a
two fifty five and like the first marathon off of
off of note trading, but so you know, I for Boston,

(39:58):
now I was running eighty miles per week or somebody
with some talent. I mean, I don't think it requires
eighty eighty miles per week.

Speaker 5 (40:04):
I mean it just.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
Depends on like the goal you want to run. But
you know, probably you're not going to get anywhere closed
with less than you know, fifty probably miles a week.

Speaker 5 (40:12):
I mean, there's a certain level it just takes to.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
If you want to train for twenty six miles of running,
you know, you have to run run a certain amount.

Speaker 4 (40:18):
Yeah, are you following the top runners.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
A little bit?

Speaker 1 (40:23):
I mean, pro running these days is gosh, I don't know,
it's kind of a shit show, you know, for back
of a lack of a better term, I think just
because every time you turn your head, it seems like
another one of these top runners is getting busted for
using performance enhancing drugs. You know, somebody wins a marathon.
A couple months later, you know, prior to New York
City Marathon, Champer, one of the guys just got busted,

(40:44):
I think, for using performance enhancing drugs.

Speaker 5 (40:46):
So it kind of sucks to be a fan of
the sport sometimes.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
Luckily, none of the none of our American guys have
or gals have gotten really busted for anything like.

Speaker 5 (40:56):
That, so, but I do follow the sport.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
So you've the.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
Boston we have. On the men's side, we have Connor
Manson Clayton Young. These are two guys from BYU bring
them on. They both ran, they both ran in the
Olympics this year. They're like best friends. They both post
a lot on YouTube, which is kind of fun. So
they're like, you know, men of the people. They like
to kind of interact. So I would keep an eye
out for both of them. That should be exciting. Connor
mans especially so he's the American record holder. I mean, heck,

(41:22):
he's got a shot to win it. I mean it's possible,
like he could possibly win win the Boston Marathon, which
would be insane and that would.

Speaker 5 (41:28):
Be very cool.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
So I would keep an eye out for that. And
then on the women's side, there's a woman named Emily Sisson.
She's the American record holder. She's going to be running it,
so keep an eye out for her. And then I
think both the returning champs of Boston are running. They're
both from Africa. I think Kenya is where Kenny are
Ethiopia from both of these runners, So two.

Speaker 5 (41:47):
Returning champs coming.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
But yeah, the men especially I think there's a lot
of hype around Connor and Clayton. Both of them are
returning from injury, so there's kind of a fun story there.

Speaker 4 (41:56):
Whether it'll happen or not.

Speaker 5 (41:58):
Yeah, yeah, it'll be exciting to root for him absolutely.

Speaker 4 (42:01):
All right, man, well thanks for coming on to talk
Boston with us, and I will also note before we close,
you got your Boston jacket on right now?

Speaker 1 (42:08):
I do.

Speaker 4 (42:08):
That's awesome.

Speaker 5 (42:09):
The Boston jacket.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
I refer to it incorrectly, I guess on X at
one point as a finisher's jacket. I mean, you don't
really get it when you finish. You can we were
talking before we started. Anybody can buy it. I mean
you obviously don't want to be a poser wearing this
jacket when you haven't run the race. But yeah, you
get this at the expo. It's sort of your right
of passage. And they have a different one every year,
so you can get this. I think the colors change

(42:33):
and stuff every year. But you can also get patches
so you can keep this jacket and put like your
years that you ran and on there.

Speaker 5 (42:39):
So a lot of people you'll see these.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
You'll see these like seventy year old guys walking around
the expo and they have like this jacket from nineteen
seventy with like twenty five patches on it.

Speaker 5 (42:48):
So it's cool. I mean, there's so much history of
the races. It's awesome. And so I wouldencourage everybody to
watch it.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
You know, it's weird that it happens on a Monday,
but you know, just stream it secretly at work.

Speaker 5 (42:58):
I guess while you on your phone or something.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
I like it.

Speaker 4 (43:01):
Well, may there be many more Boston Jackets in your future.
And thanks again for coming on man.

Speaker 5 (43:06):
Yeah, thanks Michael.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
This was fun.

Speaker 4 (43:10):
Welcome back to the show. So The New York Times
recently ran an opinion piece that was rather pro ultra
process foods. Ultra processed foods we often think of as
junk foods, so this was a kind of surprising piece,
but the authors made some great points. But of course
this led to all sorts of drama, with plenty of
readers writing in and The New York Times ran their rebuttals.

(43:32):
Big old drama over ultraprocessed foods. Now, ultra process foods
are obviously a very hot topic in the health world.
I'm sure you've seen the word pop up on all
sorts of stories and places telling you to never, under
any circumstances eat those foods. But it turns out it's
actually a lot more complicated and ultra processed foods can
actually be useful if you think about them in the

(43:53):
right way. So in order to help us think about
them in a more productive way, I'm bringing on an
old friend. His name is doctor Mike Roussel. He got
his PhD in nutrition from Penn State. He has gone
on to work with NBA players, with really busy tech executives,
and with everyday people and he is really great and
helping people dial in what they eat in a way

(44:15):
that helps them reach their goals. And doctor Mike, by
the way, also has a really fantastic substack with an
even better name, and it's called dad bod Rebuilt. And
this guy would know because he is a father of
four teenagers. They are great kids, but they are a
lot of work. Yet he has managed to stay extremely
fit and eat very well. So he's going to give

(44:35):
us some lessons. Now, doctor Mike, thanks for joining us.

Speaker 2 (44:41):
Yeah, of course, thanks so much for having me. This
is awesome.

Speaker 4 (44:44):
So we're going to talk about ultra processed foods, which
is a hot topic, became somewhat hotter because the New
York Times, these two scientists run this piece called we
Shouldn't Want to Eat Like Our Grandparents, and they basically
point out there's this push towards eat real food, which
is what our grandparents and great grandparents ate, but malnutrition

(45:05):
was rampant in the past. So they're pointing out how
basically this modern food system takes a ton of crap.
At the same time, it's really been sort of a
miracle overall for human health in terms of getting people
fed avoiding malnutrition. Now, of course, when you publish a
piece like this, there's going to be people who clop
back and people are like, yeah, but why is everyone obese?

(45:29):
Why is diabetes rampant?

Speaker 2 (45:31):
Why is xyz?

Speaker 4 (45:33):
So what was your take when you looked at those pieces?

Speaker 3 (45:36):
I sort of feel similar to the authors in that
I think what we've done with food is amazing. You know,
when you look at the like the landscape of food
and nutrition and malnutrition, it is and we were talking
in the US specifically, it's so much less than it
ever was, Like it's not eradicated because there's still you know,

(45:59):
people deal with this, but compared to what it used
to be. And if you look at even just the
tenor of nutrition research, it's so much fewer research is
about preventing malnutrition, right right, and it's and it's all
about actually dealing with diseases of overnutrition.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Right. We've had to shove and so we had to shift.

Speaker 4 (46:20):
Yeah, in the past, it was like people were dying
because they weren't getting enough of nutrient x y z,
and so we start to realize this, and the government
comes in and goes, Okay, well maybe we should add
nutrition xyz to wheat or whatever it might be. And
then all of a sudden, you start to see all
these people surviving because we've solved that problem with sciencing

(46:42):
our food effectively.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
Right, yeah, one hundred percent.

Speaker 3 (46:46):
You know, if you look at even just how the
RDAs are determined from a micronutrient perspective, it's what's the
level that we need to make sure that, you know,
two standard deviations above the mean gets enough of this nutrient, right.

Speaker 4 (46:59):
Soda RDA is basically the recommended daily allowance of vitamin's, minerals, protein,
those sorts of things.

Speaker 3 (47:06):
Yeah, and it's all and the I think The telling
piece about it is the definition is purely around preventing
disease of malnutrition. So when when those were created, that
is what everyone was focused on. And I don't think
oftentimes ultra processed foods and food manufacturing and food science

(47:29):
all kind of get lumped in together as one thing
where and then it becomes negative, right. But I think
what we've done from a nutritional perspective to eradicate you know,
they eat like the easy pickings of malnutrition is incredible.
The like the Steve jobs unattended consequence of that is

(47:54):
companies got really good at doing different things with food.
And then these companies, you know, their jobs are to
make money. You make money by selling food. How do
you sell more food?

Speaker 2 (48:02):
Right?

Speaker 3 (48:02):
You make it less expensive, you make it last longer
on the shelf, you make it taste better, and you know,
all of those things and that's what brings you into
ultra processed food. And I think it was funny because
we were gonna, you know, sit and talk about this
and I have my youngest as eleven, and he gets
on the bus right now, later than everybody else, so
in the morning we just kind of can chop it

(48:23):
up while he's getting ready for school, and he said
to me, He's like, Dad, He's like, why don't because
what did I do? I made there's a like a
chicken finger chain called raisin canes.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
And so.

Speaker 3 (48:39):
I made for the kids like this knockoff high protein,
low fat raisin caine sauce with Greek yogurt and like
low fat sour cream instead of mayonnaise, and they thought
it was amazing. Myself, I was like, whoa wait, wait,
high protein raisin caine sauce.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
How did I not know this existed?

Speaker 3 (48:59):
So so Joseph, my youngest, he had this in devices like, Dad,
what if we go to the store and get all
of the ingredients to make cool ranch doritos and then
we make them tonight after school. And I was like, Joseph,
it's like, that is a great thing to do. However,

(49:21):
cool ranch doritos are ultra processed foods and by definition,
we cannot make them in our kitchen, Like we don't
have the tools the machinery.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
To actually make that.

Speaker 3 (49:33):
I was like, because if I'm sure you've had a
tortilla chip and a tortilla chip and a cool ranch
to rito, they do not taste the same.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
At all. And you know, for me, like that's the crux.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
And I do a lot of work with student athletes,
high school student athletes, collegiate student athletes, and then also
you know, with my own kids. And that's one of
the things like with ultra processed foods, you know, don't
really talk about like ultra like the word ultra process
food with them as much, but it's these are things
that we can't make in the kitchen.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
Yeah, and we have to be aware that these things
are also really easy to consume.

Speaker 3 (50:08):
Yeah, Like you could, like I laugh, like you could
take a pizza hut pizza which is not the same
one that they had when we were kids, right, and
you could if you had no teeth, you could still eat.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
It, right.

Speaker 4 (50:21):
You can just gum this right down.

Speaker 3 (50:23):
Right, which is one of the things, like one of
the characteristics of with ultra process foods. There's a research
study showed that you can eat more calories per bite
like faster.

Speaker 4 (50:32):
Yeah, so let's actually talk about this. Are you talking
about the Kevin Hall study? Yeah, yeah, yeah, So we'll quickly.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
Walk through that.

Speaker 4 (50:39):
This guy and I'm probably gonna get the specifics wrong,
but basically what this guy did is he took a
group of people put him in like a metabolic word, right,
and which is where you're counting. Actually you walk us
through that you have the PhD.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
What am I doing here? Those good nos like does
drink in my tea?

Speaker 3 (50:57):
And getting ready to hear it? So basically these metabolic
wards up there aren't a lot of them because they're
pretty extensive, but it's an extreme controlled environment where they're
measuring gas exchange from the people that are there, they're
weighing and measuring all the food that's going in, so
they truly know what has entered the human and what
has exited the human from that down to the down

(51:20):
to the periodic.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Table of elements.

Speaker 3 (51:22):
And you could do some really cool you could do
some really cool research, but there aren't a lot of
places that have these facilities, as you can imagine. Yeah,
and so what they they started. One of the things
they did was they were looking at ultra processed foods
versus non processed foods and consumption patterns and when they
provide people with food what happens. And I one of

(51:43):
the most interesting findings is that with ultra processed foods,
you can just eat more calories per bite and more
calories per time than non processed foods, and that is
something that people don't consider.

Speaker 4 (52:00):
In the study, they fed them meals that were matched
very similar meals they're matched for like protein, and they
basically like you know, shove the food into the ward
and they say, okay, eat until you're full. And so
for whatever it was, a week they're eating these non
processed versions.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
Of the food.

Speaker 4 (52:21):
The other week they're eating the ultra processed versions of
the food. And then they're saying, okay, well, how much
did people actually eat? And we told them, like, just
eat until you're full. When they eat the ultra process version,
they eat about it's like five hundred extra calories a day.
And it goes back to the fact to your point
about you can just gum this stuff down and it's
not as filling. People just eat the food faster, and

(52:44):
there's more calories per bite in general. So if you're
eating faster and the food has more calories, all of
a sudden, you've eaten a lot more food without necessarily
meaning to or realizing. And then that in turn where
the whole health argument comes in, is that you get
people who end up eating more than they're burning food wise,

(53:05):
so people gain weight and then health problems come in
when people tip into obesity more or less. So it's
not like the ultra processed food. I mean, maybe you
could argue it is. It's not like it's inherently evil.
It's more just people tend to eat more of it,
and when you eat more of something, you might tip

(53:26):
into obesity, and then there's health implications with that.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
Yeah, So I think your verbiage of inherently evil is
a good one because I think when we start putting
this like evil versus good veil over foods that we eat,
companies that make the food, et cetera, it's not very

(53:51):
useful because I actually think these different kinds of foods
have utility in different places and.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Young athletes.

Speaker 3 (54:01):
It's a wonderful dichotomy because for a young athlete who's
burning a lot of calories to meet their calorie needs
to do it with what I would consider minimally processed foods.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
So these are foods essentially in their.

Speaker 3 (54:19):
Natural is such a loaded term, and so I apologize
for using it like natural state. Like imagine a carrot, right,
or something that's been manually processed to extract a nutrient
like olive oil, right, so the all of has been squeezed,
the oil is extracted, and so you have olive oil.
So those two there's like this four tier system for

(54:40):
food processing. Those are the first two tiers, and I
group those together and just call them minimally processed foods.
So another example, like oats, for example, would be a
minimally processed food, like it's been manually mashed so you
can actually you know, consume it.

Speaker 4 (54:54):
Yeah, just so people kind of understand the ultra process
version of like, let's oats for an example. If you
just have the oats that have been rolled over so
you can have them in your eat, in your oatmeal,
that's minimally processed. But when you take the oats and
you bind them in sugar, and you throw in chocolate
chips and raisins and like sugar dusting and frosting on

(55:17):
the top, and now you have the sort of like
oatmeal bar. Now we're getting into.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Ultra processed territory.

Speaker 4 (55:22):
And you're wrapping it, you're throwing in all these preservatives,
you're doing all these things. So it'll sit on the
shelf for a long time. One Two, it will taste
so much damn better. Then you're playing oatmeal like it's
just like this explosion of flavor in your mouth.

Speaker 3 (55:38):
So the yeah, So the next one would be so
there's there's unprocessed, and then it's depending on how you
look at it, like culinary or manually processed, which is
like the oat And then there's processed foods. Processed foods
you could still make in your own kitchen, and they
usually have a salt, sugar fat added to them, or

(55:59):
some percentservatives. Right, So salt is often a very common preservative.
So processed foods that generally people love, like a nice salami,
you know, like that sort of thing, sausage like that
food is also delicious, but it's a processed food because
they've added the salt and some of the maybe nitrates
for the preservative. So in your example of oatmeal, you know,

(56:20):
something I grew up on as a kid just because
we hadn't know any better, like the apple cinnamon instant
oatmeal packets, right, So they take that they've added sugar
to oatmeal that becomes processed. Ultra process would be one
step further, which you know, which you further elaborated. They've
added other things. It's now a bar. It's coated in
this delicious coating. You could not make this because you

(56:41):
don't have an extrusion machine in your kitchen, right, so
you couldn't make it. And it'll last on the shelf
for two and a half years. So that would be
ultra process and that's like the evolution of these things.
And just because it could last for two years and
is coated in sugar and you could probably eat it
without teeth, that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. Because if

(57:03):
I'm looking at an athlete who is playing two games
in ninety degree weather with a fifty minute break in between,
what I need that athlete to eat in between is
something that they're going to be able to consume very quickly,
taste good because they're going to want to eat it
because they're too hot to really want to consume. But
we need to get them the calories, something that's going

(57:25):
to be digested quickly, like basically most of what would
check the box for an ultra processed food. And so
it really becomes down to where are you going to
use this food in your life. That's where ultra processed
foods can be really good. Protein powder is a great
example protein powders is definitely like try making way protein
isolate in your kitchen, like good luck, right, Like you

(57:47):
can't get you can't get an ion exchange way extractor
off of Facebook marketplace, but oh.

Speaker 4 (57:54):
Vegas, I think I could probably get you one about
twenty minutes.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
But it's a great that is a great food.

Speaker 3 (58:01):
That's a great nutritional tool to have, and it helps
all kinds of people meet their protein needs on a
consistent basis. So you know where we started talking about this,
talk about the the Kevin Hall study and ultra processed
foods that you can eat them faster and they taste better.
That's really where the problem comes in because you would
look at something and say, I'm going to eat this

(58:23):
because it's less expensive, more convenient. Oh, by the way,
it also has five hundred calories and you can eat
it in six and a half seconds.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
Yeah, I think they're good. Like that's the problem.

Speaker 4 (58:36):
An extreme example would be let's say you had two
slices of Domino's pizza. Anyone could eat that in two minutes,
and you would go, you know what sounds great right now?
A third slice of Domino's pizza. If you had five
hundred calories and apples, Oh my god, you could probably

(58:57):
only eat three of them, which would be three hundred calories,
and they'd be like, oh my god, I'm so full
off of these apples. I do not want to eat
another apple for at least twenty four hours. And so
then you do the math and you're like, oh, I
could see how if you were eating mostly less processed food,
you're just going to eat up end up eating less
over the course of a day compared to if you're
getting your food mainly from ultra process stuff. And so

(59:20):
it just pushes people into too much prospectively exactly.

Speaker 3 (59:25):
And I think one of the other interesting pieces about
that too, and it's on the food business side, is
one of the things that gets stripped out of food
is as it moves down the processing chain are vitamins
and fiber, right, because in order to consume it faster
and easier, you need to remove the ruffage. And oftentimes

(59:47):
the ruffage, especially like in grains, is where these nutrients
contain are housed. And so right now, like I was
just talking to someone who is at Expo West and
he was saying he expected it to be all about creating, right,
because creatine is like really hot right now again.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
But it was all about fiber.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
And I think that, to me is really interesting because
I have long felt fiber is like one of the
most underrated nutrients. Like if you were to look at
what should you focus on to improve your overall nutrition,
and you focus on your protein intake and you focus
on a fibrin fiber, well, because fiber tracks with other

(01:00:30):
food properties, that's really helpful.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
So if you are choosing higher fiber.

Speaker 3 (01:00:36):
Foods, So you're eating broccoli, you're eating spinach, you're eating beans,
you're eating lentils, You're you're eating brown rice, you're eating
whole grain bread. So you're eating all these these foods
that are going to require a lot more chewing and
they're going to require a lot more time to eat.
It's like kind of basically the opposite of the ultra
processed foods. But what's happening now is that fiber is

(01:01:00):
becoming an additive. And this was I mean, god, this
was years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
Ten years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
I was giving a talk at the Pea Performances chim
in Manhattan that was run by you know, one of
my mentors, Joe Dowdell, and was talking about and that
was right when Quest bars came out.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
In Quest they were like really popular, like when they.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
First hit and they were one of the first brands
to really make it with these functional fibers to make
up a lot of the bar. So if you looked
at the bar, it had twenty grams fifteen twenty grams
of fiber. And so one of the trainers raised their
hand because we were talking about fiber, and he's like, yeah,
but is this all the same? Because if I eat

(01:01:40):
a Quest bar and get fifteen grams of fiber, or
I eat a cup and a half of beans and
get ten to fifteen grams of fiber, I feel a
lot different. And so how science will then talk about
this differently is they call it intact fiber, right versus
functional fiber. And so you really want to on intact

(01:02:01):
fiber because just like protein was such a buzzword, it
started getting added to everything and it was like if
it had protein, it had to be good. That's where
it's going with fiber now. But it's all of these
ultra processed foods that are having prebiotic fibers or other
types of fibers added to them that aren't well. I
really think what we're gonna find.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
They don't.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
They're not gonna have the same effects. They're not going
to have the same society effects. They're not gonna have
the same effects on your GI track. And so there
is such a value in these minimally processed foods because
of the nutrient package that they all bring. But ultra
process and processed foods definitely have a place because they
have a really good functionality in.

Speaker 4 (01:02:39):
Our lives, meaning they're convenient. It's like, let's give protein
as an example. If I was to try and carry
around the least process type of protein I could, I
might fill a ziplock bag full of grilled chicken and
carry it around in my backpack as I fly around,
which is weird and also like is it is it

(01:03:01):
gonna smell weird? Whereas if I go, all right, I
got a fifteen hour flight, I want to eat something
that's not terrible. I want to get some protein. Here's
your protein bar And it's like, okay, that makes sense,
it's in the package. I can eat it. You know what,
would the grilled chicken be better? Yeah, but I'm on
a fifteen hour flight, Like that's not going to work.
So a lot of these foods that are kind of

(01:03:21):
like the I guess I would call them fitnessy foods
just sort of give you an option that's more practical.
Is it optimal? Probably not? Is it more practical? And
is it better than going, well, I'm just gonna sit
on this flight and eat Doritos and Checks mix and
Coca cola?

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
Yes? Probably.

Speaker 4 (01:03:37):
So it just sort of comes down to, like, don't
let perfect be the enemy of good in a way.

Speaker 3 (01:03:43):
Yeah, well, I think what it also does is it
doesn't give you the form in which you consume nutrients
changes the experience.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
And so we've known you know this.

Speaker 3 (01:03:56):
We talked about the vin Hall study, but this is
really goes back to Barbarolls was a professor when I
was at Penn State with her energy density work, which
was that basically, if you know the volume of food
that you eat, it drives you know, which is the
weight of the food that you're consuming is the main factor?

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
Not the calories yea?

Speaker 4 (01:04:13):
And how much room it takes up in your stomach
per calorie effectively.

Speaker 3 (01:04:16):
Yes, yes, yeah, yes, And so like if you ate
a pound, like they would do this with kids, so
they would give them macaroni and cheese, and then they
would give them macaroni and cheese, but they would blend
in like zucchini and squash, and they would give them
the same amount of weight, but the calories were different
because there was you know, zucchini and squash has like

(01:04:37):
no calories and the kids would be just as full,
but they would eat significantly less calories when there was
the vegetables blended into it. So it just goes to
show we lose Infants have it because they can actually
regulate calorie and take if they manipulate calorie content of formula,
like infants will stop based on the calories consumed, but
they're very quickly in life that goes out the window

(01:05:00):
and it's all weight and volume.

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
And so when we.

Speaker 3 (01:05:04):
Think, hey, I'm going to have this protein bar twenty
five grands of protein and then in your mind you're
thinking I'm eating protein.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
It's satiating and all these other things.

Speaker 3 (01:05:13):
You lose that when you eat it in the bar
form or you drink it in the shake form. Like
research from Heather Lady, who's just a prolific protein researcher.
She showed years ago that the satiety or the fullness
that you feel after drinking a protein shake versus after
eating whole protein is significantly different.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:05:31):
One of the reasons, like people taut protein is because
it's satidy. But when you drink a protein shake, it's
like nothing. You know, it's like drinking it's like eating rice.
Like there's a tidy value is extremely small.

Speaker 4 (01:05:42):
So when you're working with clients and you've worked with people,
you've worked with NBA players, you've worked with busy tech execs,
you've worked with just everyday people, how do you tell
them to use this? And I remember at one point
you did like an ultra processed Food Challenge where you
challenge all these people you work with, like, donate any
ultra process food and you've got some really interesting results.

(01:06:03):
So tell me what that is like and what you
tell people to actually do.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
Yeah, so I have a challenge.

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):
I call it like the thirty Day Minimally Processed Food Challenge,
which basically walks you through a new lesson every day
on increasing your awareness around food processing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
And then also, how do you do this. One of
the things that.

Speaker 3 (01:06:24):
I do when I work with people in this is
for the most part, everybody is in the I need
to control the amount of calories that I'm consuming. Business,
there are very few people that need more calories.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
You know. It's more athletes younger, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:06:40):
Student athletes or college athletes, like they need to consume
more calories. Everybody else is how do I control or
hold back calorie consumption?

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
And except for maybe a guy like you, And so
for those you know, for us mere mortals who are
looking to not over consume minimally processed foods, be comes
the battle cry because it allows you to eat more
while maintaining that calorie consumption. And then we layer in
ultra processed foods, which I consider convenience foods to help

(01:07:14):
us marry our nutrition goals with our lifestyles. You know,
you gave a great example of when you're on a plane,
that's you know, that's the way to go. One of
the things, like the office with the company that I
work for is in Rhode Island, and so when I
travel down there, I will do prepackaged overnight oats which

(01:07:36):
has the protein carpie like everything just in there.

Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
And I can make three and I throw out my bag.

Speaker 3 (01:07:40):
And I know it can sit in the refrigerated at
the hotel and it's take breakfast taken care of, and
so it's use it for convenience so you can maintain
your your plan.

Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
But I don't rely on it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:54):
As the primary source of nutrition because I really find traveling,
you know, it is extremely difficult because fruit and vegetable
consumption is is hard and everything has sold sugar. You know,
even when you go out to eat. You go out
to eat and you're like, this salad should have no
business being twelve hundred calories. And it's so especially restaurants

(01:08:19):
that will have the calorie you know counts there count
and you're like, man, can I can't get anything for
five hundred calories? Where I could go into my kitchen,
I could make a plate of food that you would
look at and be like, I am never going.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
To finish this that has five hundred calories totally.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
That's that That really for me is the challenge between
minimally processed and then processed or ultra processed in your
everyday life.

Speaker 4 (01:08:44):
So when I was writing my book Scarcity Brand, we
talked about this a lot, and you had a really
interesting and I think important point where and this came
up in these New York Times pieces that the food
industry gets so much crap for making food that tastes good,
and you were kind of like, well, what is their job?

(01:09:07):
Should they all of a sudden go, oh, you know what,
You're right, We're gonna make you a shittier version of doritos.
Here's these bad tasting doritos. Please enjoy your food. You've
got what you asked for.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
Like, no, but by the way, they're more expensive.

Speaker 4 (01:09:20):
And by the way they're more expensive, we made them
in every employee made them in their kitchen, And how
do you navigate that?

Speaker 3 (01:09:29):
So, like I said, I don't have it, and you know,
rearticulated from the conversation we had. However many years ago,
I don't really find the food industry at fault for
as for profit businesses making food more tasty, right, I
don't find.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
The fault in that.

Speaker 3 (01:09:48):
But I think it becomes it's a behavior challenge for
us because I don't think people have ever seen food
companies as someone as organizations doing something other than providing
things to you know, nourish your body. Like all of
a sudden, it's like you have to be concerned and
there's so much there's so much marketing around food, and

(01:10:10):
I think we just we need to be better advocates
for ourselves.

Speaker 2 (01:10:14):
And I find that it's the taste.

Speaker 3 (01:10:16):
Part that people struggle with the most, because ultra processed
foods are so good, and when you go out to eat,
the food is so good because the amount of butter
and salt that is used in a restaurant is mind blowing, right.
You know, no one's using two tablespoons or two teaspoons

(01:10:37):
of olive oil to cover your broccoli if you got
it at a restaurant, And so the food just tastes
so good. And I think one of the best things
that I ever did was when on a very low
sodium diet, and so I was consuming about seven hundred
and fifty milligrams of sodium per day.

Speaker 4 (01:10:52):
And just for context, what does the average American probably
take in.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
Thirty six hundred?

Speaker 3 (01:10:56):
Yeah, and so I was at seven fifty, right, So
this is the American Heart Association recommendation for someone with
heart disease. So fifteen hundred is their recommended level, which
people think is crazy, right to twenty five hundred is
the level for normal humans. And so I was at
around seven to fifty, which is basically just what you're
getting from minimally process foods that you're consuming and you

(01:11:19):
you end up using a.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
Lot hot sauce.

Speaker 3 (01:11:21):
But what it does is it takes several weeks. The
food tastes gross because salt is delicious, but it takes
several weeks and then your taste buds start to change
and how you enjoy food like starts to change. And
that's one of the biggest switches that people get. If
you can stay away from the regular, unregulated consumption of

(01:11:46):
ultra processed foods and focus more on minimally processed foods
for a while, it just doesn't taste as good, but
once you give it some more time, then all of
a sudden, it does taste good. Like blueberries taste delicious,
but if you're used to blue raspberry flavor, it's not
going to and so you have to give your body
a little bit of time to adjust. And if you
can get through that weaning off period, for lack of

(01:12:09):
a better phrase, it really opens up a lot of
different options for enjoying food. And I think one of
the biggest things that people run into at first is
minimally process foods just don't taste as good. I mean,
you get a protein shake that tastes like fruity pebbles.
Like that's crazy, right, And it's not like when we
were kids and it was protein powder. It tastes like
chicken feed, but you're just choking it down because it

(01:12:30):
was protein. Like nowadays, it's unbelievable the flavoring. And I
think one of the biggest things that people can do
just as a palette reset if they're having trouble, you
know with minimally processed foods and ultra processed foods, is
really weaning off ultra process foods focusing on these minimally

(01:12:51):
processed foods, you know, herbs, spices, not too much salt,
and you give your palette time to adjust, and then
that food becomes much more enjoyable. That food becomes the
preferred food and you can then use ultra processed foods
to support the flexibility, the portability, and the shelf life
that you need in your day to day life. And
I found that to be a really winning formula for

(01:13:13):
a lot of people.

Speaker 4 (01:13:14):
Yeah, I've noticed this myself, Like if I got I'm
a big diet soda guy, big, but if I go
off diet soda for a month, the first time I
have a diet soda again, I'm like, oh my god,
this is so sweet, Like it's just it almost a lot, right,
it's a lot. Yeah, But then you have another one,
and then you adjust, and then when you try to

(01:13:34):
get off it, nothing tastes sweet for a while. It's
like your your palette really does sort of adjust to
how in I guess i'll use the word intense of
a flavor you're giving it, but to your point, when
you get off, when you get off that nothing really
tastes good for a while. But if you can kind
of sit with that, just being like, all right, I
mean my meals are going to be kind of be
boring for whatever it is, two three, four weeks, then

(01:13:57):
all of a sudden, this health food that you once
thought was awful, you're like, oh, this is actually pretty good.
And if you can keep that up, then it becomes
so much easier.

Speaker 2 (01:14:05):
But you can't.

Speaker 4 (01:14:05):
You can't get there without kind of going through the
suck for a few weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
Yep, exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:14:11):
And I this is something with children like with my kids,
you know, which trains eleven to almost eighteen. I'm I'm
always talking to them about this. They love to give
me the hard time. Oh dad, these these peppers are amazing.
They taste so good.

Speaker 2 (01:14:25):
I'm like, yeah, like they're always making fun of me.

Speaker 3 (01:14:28):
But if you can give yourself that time, Like, if
you ever want to have just like a chorus of
people to give you a hard time constantly, you should
have teenagers. If you could get through that, it just
it makes all the difference, you know, just have to
wean off that intense intensity of flavor is a great description.

Speaker 4 (01:14:46):
Yeah, I have two final questions. First, what is your
favorite ultra process food? This is like your dad's mel
Warden comes in. He's like, well, doctor Mike, you got
eight more hours of life. We've sent you to death

(01:15:07):
for telling us to stop eating Domino's pizza. What is
your final meal?

Speaker 3 (01:15:16):
Oh boy, I don't even know if it would be
an ultra process I mean, my final will come on.
It would probably be it would be brisket, if I'm
being honest, awesome, it would be like a It would
be like a Texas smoke brisket, which you could technically
make at your house, so it's not you know, but
with more than seven hundred and fifty milligrams.

Speaker 2 (01:15:34):
Of salt, well salted.

Speaker 4 (01:15:36):
Yeah, we're on seven thousand, five hundred milligrams assault on
this backboard. Just AsSalt crusting, send me away that might
kill you before the electric chair man.

Speaker 3 (01:15:46):
Yes, yes, yeah, I mean I would say, like day
to day in my practical life, ready to drink protein chacks. Okay,
so up, nowadays you can get these ultra filtered milk. Yeah,
protein shakes life and yeah, fair life.

Speaker 2 (01:16:05):
Nury Nerry is my favorite, and thirty grads of protein.

Speaker 4 (01:16:08):
It's like one of those little shot Ury shout out
to Nuri Costco. It's like twenty dollars for like twelve
or fifteen of them, and they are Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:16:18):
So I'm usually on my kem like, look, we can't
do the ready to drink protein shakes because you know,
like they're not cheap and these kids like just NonStop
the and then we I was looking at I'm like, well, actually,
I'm like at Costco, I'm like, they're pretty cheap. They're
like a dollar fifty apiece maybe you know when you
look at it, and I'm like, all right, go for it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
So yeah, like that's probably my favorite.

Speaker 3 (01:16:37):
That's my that's my ultimate ultra processed is the Nerri's
for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:16:42):
And then finally and this one might open up a
can of worms, but we're going to open it anyways.
What are your thoughts on gop wants.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
I'm actually I'm all for them.

Speaker 4 (01:16:50):
Awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:16:52):
I you know, I was reading something last week about
concerns around like hedonic drive, what do you mean? And like,
so one of the things that these they impair your cravings, right,
So I think the beauty of glp ones is that

(01:17:13):
for the eighties, late eighties and nineties, everyone thought, let's
just get people to burn more calories, and so weight
loss drugs were all stimulant based. Turns out that kills people, right,
So like they're like, what's the other part of the equation.
Then they went to let's get them to us absorb
less food. That also didn't work, right, So that was

(01:17:34):
the alestra era.

Speaker 4 (01:17:35):
Yeah, basically just.

Speaker 3 (01:17:40):
Ye And and now they're like, okay, what if we
just got people to eat less, like they just weren't hungry,
And that's what gop ones do, right, And so they reduced.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
That drive for food.

Speaker 3 (01:17:53):
And so there's some thought that this the same pathways,
because everything in your body is interrelated, might also be
reducing drive in other areas, such as relationships and and
other points of connection. So I think that is a
interesting potential connection. But otherwise I think they're amazing. Like

(01:18:14):
if we've been looking for we've been looking for a
drug to help people lose weight for however long, and
now we all of a sudden we have one.

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):
It's safe. Doesn't call a heart attacks right.

Speaker 3 (01:18:23):
If anything, there's a potential for lean mass loss, which
is a which is a concern in any sort of
weight loss situation when you're eating less and all of
a sudden, now it's like, oh, we shouldn't do this,
Like we shouldn't we shouldn't be eating these food or
we shouldn't be taking these drugs. Like it's cheating. It's
all this other stuff. I do like, give it, like
the food. I know we've been saying good things about
the food industry. They've been cheating for decades, making chips

(01:18:46):
taste like they shouldn't, like like a McDonald's french fry.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
That's not how a potato should taste.

Speaker 4 (01:18:51):
I have somewhat a friend named Tamar Hospital. She's a
nutrition columnist for the Washington Post. She based said, our
food system has become so technological that we are fighting
against technology, and we should be using technology to fight back,
and that is what GLP wants allow us to do.

Speaker 3 (01:19:14):
Yeah, I think that's great. It's an unfair fight. And
you know, now all of a sudden, it's like our
muskets have rifling and so you know, and so if
you follow like the war reference, so yeah, we can
fight back.

Speaker 2 (01:19:27):
I do.

Speaker 3 (01:19:27):
I really I have a hard time, especially with the
tone that sometimes people take around discipline and hard work
and all this other stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:19:37):
Everybody's lives are complicated, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:19:38):
And there's all sorts of things going on metabolically, and
if you're in a situation like minimally processed foods, it
takes it takes effort, like you have to be committed
to it. I mean, as fast as the meal prenp
videos are on TikTok, it still takes time and effort.
And so for this to support you to eat less
is I think a really good thing.

Speaker 2 (01:19:59):
So I don't have any but good things to say.

Speaker 4 (01:20:01):
Yeah, what I've heard most from I've had a lot
of people who read my sub stack that are on them.
They've said, what it's really done is it just reduced
The wording that I hear all the time is food
noise to just go. When I was trying to lose weight,
all I would think about is food and what am
I gonna eat again? Oh, I gotta not eat that.

(01:20:21):
Oh the m and ms are calling.

Speaker 2 (01:20:23):
I gotta just not.

Speaker 4 (01:20:24):
Listen to them, and they're like, I just don't even
think about food anymore. It's just not taking up my
brain space anymore. And it's just been so much better
day to day.

Speaker 3 (01:20:35):
And now you know, there's a pill version, So it'll
be interesting to see kind of the proliferation of that
because I think sticking yourself is a show stopper for
some people, so I think it's Yeah, I definitely think
it's a move in the right direction and via a
mechanism that makes sense. You know, we're not speeding up metabolism,
we're not stubbing it, you know, increasing heart rate any
of those things.

Speaker 4 (01:20:55):
Well, thanks for coming on, man, this is great.

Speaker 2 (01:20:57):
Yeah, no, this was a lot of fun. I appreciate
me on.

Speaker 4 (01:21:01):
Welcome back to two percent. We are in the two
percent kitchen in my house. I am wearing my grateful
dead apron. That's when you know some culinary badness is
about to go down. So in today's episode, we talked
to Brady Homer, who told us about all the sugary
gels he ate during his Boston Marathon run. We talked
to doctor Microcell, who told us about how ultra processed

(01:21:22):
foods can actually be beneficial in an endurance context, which gave
me traumatic reminders of my time last year in southern
Utah when I did this super long hike where I
was hiking twenty five miles a day. So I talked
to the Duke scientist. His name is doctor Herman Ponzer,
and he's the expert. He's the guy for telling you

(01:21:43):
how many calories you're burning during exercise. He did a
little bit of back of the hand nath and he
told me, you, my man, you were burning about seven
thousand calories a day on this hike, which meant I
had to eat a lot of food. Not to mention
all of the food I'm eating, it has to fit
into a back pack that I'm dragging through the heat,
and so it has to be stuff that is not

(01:22:04):
going to spoil, that has as many calories as possible
for its weight. So during the day, I'm eating a
lot of energy bars, I'm eating beef jerky, I'm meeting
trail makes I'm eating all this stuff, but at the
end of the night at camp, I wanted to sit
down and I wanted to eat something that was a
little bit savory. There was a nice little break and
reprieve from eating all those energy bars. So what I

(01:22:25):
landed on was the most insane thing I've ever eaten
in my life. Sounded absolutely terrible, but I will tell you,
after twenty five miles a day, oh my god, most
unbelievable thing I've ever eaten in my life. And we
are going to cover it now. So here's what I
would do. One, I would take a giant tortilla, and
I mean giant, the biggest one you can buy at
the store. So this is a burrito size. It's a

(01:22:48):
burrito Grande size. Correction, this tortilla has three hundred and
ten calories in one tortilla, so that means it's got
to be bigger than a plate. If you get a
burrito and it doesn't cover the entire plate and flop
out over the sides, too small, So you get your
giant tortilla. And then what I would do so I

(01:23:10):
would get salami. The reason I'm bringing salami it is
because it is one of the only meats that will
not spoil in the heat, it didn't have to be refrigerated.
It also was a little more savory, a nice little
salty texture to push back against all the sweet stuff
I'd been eating all day. So get the salami. Let

(01:23:30):
me tell you, smelling this right now, it's given me
some flashbacks that I don't necessarily like. It's a terrible
smelling food. I would get about two servings of this,
which is about twelve slices. Then I would slap those
down in the middle of the breedo. You gotta line
them up nice and perfect, just pretty maids of cured
meat all in a row. And then from there I

(01:23:52):
would get dried and mango, and then I would take
two servings of that. It's one hundred calories of serving,
and I would line that up as well, bam bam bam.
And what the mango does so it adds a nice
little sweet texture to combat the spiciness of the salami.
Truly the ying and the yang of this caloric spud missile.

(01:24:15):
And then for proper burrito rolling, you fold the top
and then you fold that over and you roll it.
And that right there was my dinner every night on
the trail. I would sit on my sleeping pad half
in a day's from all of those miles, and I
would eat this and it would be the greatest moment

(01:24:35):
of the day. I would eat two of these. Now,
if you do the math on that, one of these
has about six hundred and fifty calories, all ultra processed,
all completely heinous, mixed into something even more terrible. Two
of those it was about thirteen hundred calories. But let
me tell you, it was exquisite in those moments, just
totally exquisite. Now, as we covered with doctor Russel, this

(01:25:00):
is not something I'm eating in my everyday life. I
am not eating this as I'm doing my writing, as
I'm doing my podcasting. But it is something that makes
a ton of sense if you were doing a long
backpacking trip, if you're going for a very long run,
because you can just wad.

Speaker 2 (01:25:13):
This sucker up.

Speaker 4 (01:25:14):
It's not going to get beat up in your backpack
or your hip belt or whatever. You're keeping the sin
and you will eat it and it'll be amazing. And again,
if you were sitting here thinking no one should ever
eat ultra processed foods, this is terrible for a human being.
I suggest you walk eight hundred and fifty miles across
the hot desert of southern Utah trying to carry chicken, apples, banana,

(01:25:35):
and broccoli, and then you call me back and ask
me for this recipe. Now, I have a request for you.
If you have your own version of a trail food,
your own lack ass mango, salami, burrita, whatever, it is,
the food that you eat on the trail that seems
heinous in everyday life but has totally changed your life
when you're out in the wilderness, I want to hear

(01:25:56):
all about it. Drop in the comments what you eat,
and we might just end up talking you about the
best submissions in a future episode. Thanks as always for
checking out the show. We are in your feeds twice
a week, so keep an eye out for more. If
you have a question, please submit it in the comments
or send us an email. Even better, send us a
voice note, or send us a video of yourself asking

(01:26:19):
the question, and we will do our best to answer
that question. As always. In closing, how Fun, Don't Die

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Boston Marathon Secrets, Super Shoes, Ultra Processed Foods & a Ridiculous Trail Recipe

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

All Episodes

Boston Marathon Secrets, Super Shoes, Ultra Processed Foods & a Ridiculous Trail Recipe

Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb