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January 18, 2025 13 mins

Join us for an eye-opening conversation with Mark Trudeau, a data scientist who turns his analytical talents to the culinary world. Imagine discovering that your pantry holds the key to fighting diseases like type 2 diabetes. Mark's personal journey from diagnosis to recovery inspired his groundbreaking book, "There's a Food for That," where he meticulously maps out how specific foods can target and combat specific health conditions. Prepare to challenge conventional dietary advice as Mark shares how he used data science to sift through clinical studies to identify foods that aren't just beneficial, but transformative for health.

Curious about how the top 100 foods can tackle the top 100 diseases in the U.S.? We promise you’ll gain new insights into the power of food as a tool for disease prevention and management. In this episode, we break down the misconceptions and serve up practical tips for optimizing your diet. Whether you’re dealing with a health condition or simply looking to boost your wellness, Mark’s evidence-based approach offers a fresh perspective. Don't miss out on this invaluable resource that could very well change your approach to health forever.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place
where local businesses andneighbors come together.
Here's your host, Lisa Swiftney.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hi everyone and welcome to episode number 136 of
the Good Neighbor Podcast.
Today we have with us MarkTrudeau, and Mark is going to
tell us about his new book.
There's a Food for that.
How are you doing today, mark?

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Great Lisa, Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Oh, thanks for being a guest.
So why don't we start off bytelling us a little bit about
your new book?

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Well, the book is called there's a Food for that
the top 100 foods to fight thetop 100 diseases in the United
States.
For that the top 100 foods tofight the top 100 diseases in
the United States.
And we worked on it for fiveyears.
It was a long project.
It was my first book.
I'm a data scientist.
I'm not like a book author, butas a data scientist and we had
a doctor with us we got thisidea five years ago.

(01:01):
It came about.
I've got a story.
Obviously, everybody's got astory and my story was that five
years ago I visited my doctorand, to make it shorter, he said
we checked your blood.
We think you got type 2diabetes.
So I said what is that?
You know, everybody's probablythe same.

(01:22):
Once you hear that you havesomething, you really don't know
what it is and then you becomean expert in it.
So when he told me that, I said, okay, there must be something
I can do to fix this.
And that got me started on thebook.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
That's great.
So you, kind of like, answered.
Our next question is to tellour listeners about your journey
, so tell us a little bit more.
So you started the book becauseof the doctor.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Yep, the doctor said that and we started talking
about alternatives and I saidhold on, let me go back and
figure this out.
I'm a data scientist andeverything I've done for the
past 30 years was optimizingprocesses and understanding them
and analyzing data andstatistics and trying to come up
with optimal answers for thingsI had never done food.

(02:05):
But once I started looking atfood, specifically type 2
diabetes, I found out that therewere a lot of foods that would
fight diabetes, that couldactually reverse type 2 diabetes
.
So in my analysis, I found thefoods.
I ate the foods, and 36 dayslater I had lost 50 pounds and

(02:27):
the and got rid of the type twodiabetes.
And it's been that way eversince, and that was five years
ago.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Good for you.
So can you tell us about anymyths or misconceptions that you
hear about in this industry?

Speaker 3 (02:44):
Yeah, there's a lot of you know.
There's all sorts of littlestories I guess I have, but one
is I've always been told youknow, don't eat fast food, don't
eat processed foods, eat fruitsand vegetables.
You know all that kind of stuff.
All that kind of stuff, andwhat I found out was there's

(03:04):
very specific foods that youneed to eat for specific
diseases.
And when I started my analysisfor type 2 diabetes, it started
out with just type 2 diabetes.
But then I had friends,colleagues, that were coming in
asking what I was doing.
They saw my dry erase boardfilled with data and I'm all
busy on my computer and theysaid can you look up
hypertension for me?
Can you look up vertigo for me?

(03:24):
Can you look up type onediabetes for me?
Can you look up all thesedifferent diseases,
diverticulitis?
And after a while, many ofthose people were doctors
actually, and they said youshould write a book.
So, and what the book consistedof again is another
misconception that comes out isyou'll watch the news and

(03:45):
they'll say a study came out ofXYZ and said eggs are good for
you.
You know, another study cameout and said eggs are bad for
you.
And you know coffee's good foryou, coffee's bad for you,
meat's good for you, meat's badfor you.
So it's like all thesedifferent studies.
Well, my idea as a statisticianwas to get a large sample size
of clinical studies and put themall together and see what

(04:07):
everybody agrees on.
And that was the whole idea ofwhat I did for type 2 diabetes.
And then I went and extended itto the top 100 diseases in the
United States and my goal was,on each individual disease, to
investigate all the clinicalstudies in the United States.
And my goal was, on eachindividual disease, to
investigate all the clinicalstudies in the United States by
the good places Cleveland Clinic, mayo Clinic, university of

(04:27):
Michigan, the big clinics thatdo studies and put all that data
together.
I make it sound easy, butthere's a lot of statistics
involved and up comes the answerof what foods you need to eat.
So it's not just fruits andvegetables.
It depends on what your diseaseis if you want to optimize that
.
And there's also foods that youcan't eat, that you shouldn't

(04:49):
eat if you've got certaindiseases and those intersect.
I mean, one disease might sayyou know, you need to eat
grass-fed beef number one.
And then another disease willsay don't even touch grass fed
beef because it's bad for thisone.
So you just need to know whatyour particular case is, and
that's what the book's used fornow is just look up your case

(05:10):
and see what you need to work on.
Another interesting story waswith the fish.
You know fish is a is a bigfood.
That's good for you, but but itdepends on which kind of fish.
So a lot of misconceptions outthere are.
I could just go buy any fishand you know, as long as I'm
eating fish I'm doing good, butreally it's there's only four
specific fishes that you need toconcentrate on, because they

(05:30):
have something called omega-3s,which is also in the book, but
you don't really need to knowthat.
You just need to know eat thesefishes like salmon, mackerel,
herring and sardines.
Those are the four fishes.
So people are eating fishthinking they're getting what
they need and they're notgetting what they need.
They're actually gettingnegative of what they need.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Oh, wow, that's interesting.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
Yeah, yeah, so when you're?

Speaker 2 (05:52):
not writing books or working.
What do you like to do for fun?

Speaker 3 (05:57):
Well, actually statistics is my fun.
Okay, so I do a lot of medicalresearch.
I'm retired I retired 10 yearsago but I still do a lot of
medical research and statisticsfor companies.
My wife owns a local martialarts school so I help her with
her school, troy Martial Artsand so that's how I interact a

(06:20):
lot with people and helping withthe business.
So those are the kind of thingsI work on, I guess.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Okay, so that is great.
Yeah, so can you describe onehardship or life challenge that
you rose above and can now say,because of that challenge, that
you're better for it and arestronger?

Speaker 3 (06:41):
I have to say that that number one challenge was
the type 2 diabetes.
I mean, you know I didn't eatwell my whole life.
I'm just a regular guy, eatregular food pizza, hamburgers,
steaks, potatoes, whatever Iwant.
But as soon as someone told meyou've got this disease you've
got to worry about not tomention in my family it runs

(07:07):
with hypertension, colon cancer,different things.
But when he told me the typetwo diabetes, that changed me
right, there was like hit mewith a sledgehammer and I
concentrated.
I was obsessed with figuring outwhat foods affected that and
since then, you know, I'm downalmost 100 pounds.
Since that day I've been ableto keep it off.
I also found that eating.
You know, I can still eat whatyou would call bad foods.

(07:28):
I can still go to McDonald's Idon't do it much anymore,
obviously but as long as you getthese foods that you need as a
baseline, the program workspretty good.
But when I I've learned a lotabout food and unless somebody
told me I had type 2 diabetes, Iprobably still wouldn't know
anything about food.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
Wow, so that is great .
So with your book you'reexplaining that a little bit
more.

Speaker 3 (07:56):
Yes, so the book.
When the doctors came in andsaid you should write this book,
the first thing we did was wecame up with the top 100
diseases in the United States byprevalence.
That took us a year just tocome up with that list.
Once we came up with that list,then we had to go to each
individual and do a study on it.
We looked at 60,000 clinicalstudies, did a study for each

(08:19):
disease, wanted to knowspecifically what to eat, what
not to eat, and it wasinteresting.
We came up with almost 500different foods over the 100
diseases.
But a lot of the foods aresimilar.
But again, each one's got itsown equation.
So if you're looking updiverticulitis, it's got its own
equation.
You're going to eat differentfoods for that than you are for

(08:41):
type 2 diabetes.
And we put all that together.
So the book was done for 100diseases.
Then we did some statistics andcame up with 100 top foods and
basically combining all thedisease foods together and
coming up with a list of the topfoods.
And we also did a whole chapteron nutrients, because sometimes
somebody will say you need moreiron.
So it's like, okay, how do Iget iron?

(09:02):
Well, you can look it up inchapter five and it tells you
what to eat for iron Optimal.
What to eat optimally for iron.
Which brought up another neatlittle story was a lot of people
when they when they're goingfor vitamin c, they always go to
the same food.
There's one common foodeverybody always thinks they
should be running to and it'soranges.
So they all run after orangesand I found out it's not oranges

(09:27):
and I really don't know howthat started, that you run to
oranges to get all this vitaminC.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
I think it was a commercial years ago.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
Yes, I think it was marketing.
We got the most vitamin C.
That's what I'm thinking.
So what I found out was, if youwant vitamin C, yellow bell
peppers have over three timesmore vitamin C than an orange
does.
So really you should be runningafter the yellow bell peppers

(09:56):
for vitamin C.
So there's lots of nice littlethings like that in the tables
in here if you're after acertain nutrient.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
That is good to know.
So what is one thing you wantour listeners to know about your
book?

Speaker 3 (10:09):
The one thing is how you would use the book.
So a person buys the book it'son Amazon, so you can go to
Amazon and get the book.
But you would buy the book andyou would either have two things
reasons you're buying it I'vegot some diseases I need to deal
with and I want to know what toeat or what not to eat.
The other one is, if you don'thave anything the chapter on the

(10:31):
top foods you could eat the topfoods, the 100 top foods, and
fight all 100 diseases at thesame time, and those would be
the foods you would concentrateon.
So the book would be used justto investigate what foods should
I be eating and if I got acertain disease, which ones
should I be eating for thatdisease?

(10:51):
And if you got three thingsyou're worried about because a
lot of families have two, three,four things running through the
family you would, you know, doall those, put them all together
and come up with common foodsfor all four of them, or two,
whatever you had.
So that's the one thing.
I think this is a book that Iwish I would have had five years
ago.
If I had this book five yearsago, I wouldn't have had to

(11:12):
write it Because I went afterthe internet to find out how do
I fight type 2 diabetes and Ibought these books.
I bought 20 books and they'reall novels, and I didn't want to
read novels, I didn't want toread everybody's, I just wanted
to know what to eat.
Just give me the answer.
And that's what this book is.
It's more of a data sciencetype book.
It just gives you the answer.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
And more simple.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
So how far along were you with your type 2 diabetes?
Were you on medication?

Speaker 3 (11:39):
I've never done medication.
No, okay, the day he told me Ihad type 2 diabetes was the
first day I ever looked at itand that's when I did the
analysis ate the food got rid ofit in 36 days.
And that's when I did theanalysis ate the food got rid of
it in 36 days.
And that's where I am right now.
But as far as medication goes,or pharmaceuticals and stuff, I
still have never taken anythingfor anything.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
That's great.

Speaker 3 (12:02):
My whole idea was to fight it with this food, fight
it with food, basically.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
So our listeners are intrigued.
You said you can purchase yourbook on Amazon.
Is there any other way to getthe book, or is that the best
way to go?

Speaker 3 (12:19):
That's the best way.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
It's very easy.
I found out when I investigatedhow to write a book, because
that was a whole process too.
So here I started a wholeresearch project on how to
publish a book how to write abook?

Speaker 2 (12:30):
yeah, right, and I found that Amazon to publish a
book.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
How to write a book?
Yeah Right, and I found thatAmazon was a fantastic way for
anybody to write a book.
They make it very easy for you.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
Oh, good, good, so our listeners just need to go to
Amazon.
The book is called there's aFood for that by Mark Trudeau,
and hopefully they can find outthe top 100 foods to fight.
I'm looking at the book righthere as I'm saying this.
It says the top 100 foods tofight the top 100 diseases and

(13:03):
conditions in the United States.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
Correct, yeah, great book.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
Good, well, I'm going to have to order this and read
it, and I appreciate you takingthe time and being a guest today
on our podcast.
Thank you, mark.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
Thanks, Lisa.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast,
rochester.
To nominate your favorite localbusinesses to be featured on
the show, go to GNPRochestercom.
That's GNPRochestercom, or call248-988-9648.
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