April 27, 2021 • 38 mins
Are you confused about nutrition? Should you be drinking celery juice daily? Do you need collagen or fish oil supplements? Nutritionist Monica Reinagel, host of the Nutrition Diva Podcast, serves up simple, painless ways to upgrade your eating habits! Get ready to explore, clarify, and debunk nutrition questions about sourdough bread, kale, salt, and how to detect nutrition deficiencies.
Nutrition advice is not one that fits all, but there are plenty of things that improve most people's health and wellness. In this episode, let’s explore together so you can feel more informed and make better decisions for yourself and your health. And remember: if a food fad, diet, or service sounds too good to be true, you can assume it is.
Episode Timestamps:
2:02 Monica shares about why she started working in the nutrition industry
3:32 The necessity to have more protein the older you get
5:04 How do we translate ‘what we know’ into solid habits for ourselves?
7:45 Setting yourself up for success in nutrition
9:38 Replacing bad habits with FUN good habits
13:32 Is sourdough bread really a healthier choice?
16:32 Do we benefit more from using certain kinds of salt in our food?
18:55 Monica shares why fish oil is actually not as great for you as we originally thought
21:48 Is celery juice the cure all daily drink that its been poised as?
24:00 Monica shares that collagen supplements aren’t as effective as you might think
28:05 Should the average person be purchasing an at-home test kit to screen for nutritional deficiencies?
30:45 Is raw kale the new villain its been made out to be?
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Hosted by: Jill de Jong
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
UU (00:02):
From CatCo media.
S1 (00:05):
Coming up on this episode of Life Done Better,
S2 (00:08):
we've collected a lot of evidence, we got millions and
millions of people who have been taking fish oil every
day for decades. And what that's revealed now that they
are actually crunching the figure is that it has had
approximately zero effect.
S1 (00:24):
Welcome to Life Done Better. I'm your host, Joe the Young. Today,
I'm talking to nutritionist Monica Renagel, she is the host
of Nutrition Diva podcast and serves up simple, painless ways
to upgrade your eating habits. I invited her to explore,
(00:44):
clarify and maybe debunk some of my most burning nutrition questions.
Nutrition advice is not one that fits all, but there
are plenty of things that improve most people's health and wellness.
Let's explore together so you can feel more informed and
make better decisions for yourself. Welcome, Monica.
S2 (01:02):
Thank you, Jill. I'm delighted to be with you today.
S1 (01:05):
You are an expert. You are an authority and I
want to know everything. Of course, we don't have time
to talk about everything because, you know, nutrition is so diverse,
it sets a great variety to talk about. But personally,
I have dealt with nutrition challenges in my life. I
was working full time as a model and I was
jet lagged, constantly sleep deprived, did not eat very well.
(01:27):
My main source of food was at restaurants, dining out
all the time, processed foods, diet products.
S3 (01:34):
I really,
S1 (01:35):
really didn't know how to take care of myself. And
so I ask a nutritionist for help. And that really
changed my life. I needed to learn about nutrition. I
needed to learn how to cook. And that has healed
my body. And that's why I'm so, so, so excited
to share everything. Me and Monica have learned in our
(01:57):
professional life, but also our personal life with you now. Monica,
what are some of your personal challenges that you've dealt
with
S3 (02:05):
and what started this
S1 (02:07):
career for you?
S2 (02:08):
Well, first, I just want to say how much I
love the way you framed this as a way for
people to empower themselves and make better decisions for themselves,
because I think that's really key. Sometimes people do have
this idea that there's just one right way to put
together a healthy diet, and then it's just about having
someone give them that golden ticket, that magical prescription. But
(02:28):
of course, it's exactly what you just suggested. It is
an individual thing. We do need to take into account
our needs, our lifestyle, the demands that we're placing on
our body and what's going to work for us and
find our way to a solution that not only makes
us feel good, but that's sustainable for us. Right. That
we can actually pull off with whatever else we're doing.
(02:50):
And that's going to look so different depending on, as
you said when you were modeling, you were traveling constantly,
very rarely at home, cooking your own meals. So you
probably needed slightly different strategies and solutions than a mom
who not only has to feed themselves, but is also
feeding their children and has to get meals on the
table for them. So it's so important to realize that
(03:11):
it is going to be a one size fits one solution.
And that, yeah, my role is really just to kind
of help you curate all that information so that you
can make those good choices that support your health.
S1 (03:23):
So you use that one nutritional advice suits one person, right.
Is so
S3 (03:27):
individual. Like we talk a lot
S1 (03:29):
about bio individuality and so can you name a few
things that you were dealing with yourself just to get
an idea of your personal
S3 (03:36):
challenges? Absolutely.
S2 (03:38):
And I think they've changed over the years. You know,
I've been feeding myself for a long time now, and
as I've gone through different phases of my life, the
challenges have changed. And one of the things that I'm
conscious of right now is I'm getting a little bit
older is how important it is for me to continue
to get enough protein. In fact, we need more protein
as we get older just to kind of hold steady. Right,
(03:59):
in order to prevent the loss of muscle mass and
everything that leads to that. So I'm aware that this
is a challenge that I need to pay attention to.
And the only reason that is challenging
S3 (04:08):
for me is that I'm
S2 (04:09):
not really drawn to meat. I'm not a vegetarian. I'm
perfectly willing to eat meat. It just doesn't excite me.
I find it kind of boring, boring to eat and
boring to cook. And so for me, I always have
to be conscious of, you know, am I including some
protein in this meal? Did I get enough protein today?
That's something that's kind of always running in the back
of my mind. But that certainly wasn't anything that I
(04:32):
was worried about in my 20s and I probably didn't
need to be. Then, though,
S1 (04:36):
it always does change. Right. And the challenges change and
also the level of being healthy changes because maybe 10
years ago I thought I was pretty healthy and because
I was buying most food at Trader Joe's and I
was now cooking my own meals. And so when I
look back now, I'm like, oh, that's funny. I thought
it was healthy then. And I'm sure in five years
that we speak again like it's a whole other level
(04:57):
because there are constant upgrades that we can implement in
our lives. But how do we translate what we know
into what we do to how does something new become
a real habit?
S2 (05:09):
That is actually the key to everything? Right. Consistency is everything,
but a lot of people struggle to be consistent with
the things that they want to do. And I think
one thing that undermines us here is this myth that
if you just repeat something for 21 days or 30 days,
you will have created a habit. You've probably heard that right.
It takes 21 days to create a habit. I don't
(05:30):
know where that came from. I don't think there's really
any actual evidence to back that up, but it's become
this ingrained belief. And so people will do things like
sign up for a 30 day challenge and they'll figure, well,
if I just do this for 30 days, by the
end I will have established this new habit. But learning
what you need to do to do something for 30
(05:51):
days is completely different than figuring out what you'd need
to do to make it an ongoing part of your life.
You know, during that 30 days, you're counting down right
to day one today, zero when you get to stop.
I mean, it's a completely different mindset to if you're
just thinking like, how do I get through this 30 days,
then if you're thinking what is going to make this
(06:11):
important to me so that I will continue
S3 (06:14):
to do it. And so I think that's
S2 (06:15):
why that boot camp and challenge and 30 day this
and that culture sometimes actually works against our ability to
be more consistent with our habits because we put all
our energy into some big dramatic thing for 30 days
and then we go back to more or less what
we were doing before. And another aspect of learning to
be more consistent is to keep your changes small enough
(06:37):
that you can actually sustain them.
S1 (06:39):
Yeah, that they don't feel overwhelming, that you're not getting
cranky and you're like, God, I can't wait to be
done with this. Right. It's going to actually make you
feel better on a daily basis. For me, being consistent
means to have a really strong desire, really strong. Why
are you wanting to do this thing that you're wanting
to do? Right.
S2 (06:58):
Absolutely. The heart of it all. And sometimes people skip
over that step. They have a kind of a superficial
goal or they've absorbed somebody else's goal, you know, a
societal or a cultural goal.
S3 (07:10):
But you know what?
S2 (07:10):
Doing hard things or even just doing easy things consistently
takes a lot of effort. And as human beings, we're
sort of hardwired to avoid effort to avoid unnecessary effort.
We're kind of evolutionarily designed to be lazy. So in
order to be willing to make that effort on an
ongoing basis, we have to have that compelling why that
reason that drives us, that makes it worth our while.
(07:34):
So the fact that you're so clear on what it
is that you want and why it's important to you
is half the battle right there. And then, of course,
there are other aspects of that. You know, like when
you go to your refrigerator, 95 percent of the stuff
in there is healthy. So you don't then have to
battle yourself like, well, I should have this fruit salad,
but I want to have this éclair or something. Like
(07:55):
what you're looking at is all food that you've chosen
that is going to support your goals. So you've also
set yourself up for success there. You've really put a
lot in place that helps you be consistent. That's a
prescription for success.
S3 (08:08):
But unfortunately, Jill, you're the
S2 (08:10):
exception to the way people go about trying to make
positive
S3 (08:14):
change. You're right.
S1 (08:15):
I'm disciplined in some ways, but I make it easy
on myself because I won't have the things that I
was going to eat that I shouldn't be eating in
my house. I don't have it. It's not there. So
when it constantly pulls open, a drawer or the fridge
is nothing. Nothing different is in there, right? A tenth
time you're like, well, that's another carrot then, right? There's
no cookies today. And there may be a day that
(08:37):
I want cookies and I make some homemade cookies, but
it's not there every day. And also talk to some
friends of mine who were saying, well, we really need
your advice. And I said, well, tell me what you need.
They actually already
S3 (08:49):
had the answer. They just came
S1 (08:50):
out of the water. They were kiteboarding. And it was
4:00 p.m. in the afternoon and they already had a beer.
And they said, well, we probably should drink less alcohol.
I'm like, why do you drink alcohol after, you know,
you do sports anyway? Well, it's fun. It's relaxing, you know,
for hanging out.
S3 (09:04):
Well, I said then you
S1 (09:05):
exactly know where you need to start. And oftentimes, though,
we already know what we should reduce to less of
and replace with other habits. What do you do after
7:00 p.m.? Like what I do at some point? Well,
I love my tea. I drink hot chocolate would rock
a cow. I may have a kombucha or a lemon
tea with honey. I mean, I have plenty of beverages.
(09:26):
I don't prefer alcohol over over those. So it's up
to you to find out what you like, because what
I do is not what you should be doing. It
just wonderful to actually understand that sometimes we really feel
like we don't know where to start, but we do.
S2 (09:42):
You couldn't be more. You know, when I first started
in this profession of nutrition, I thought that one of
the ways that I would really help people would be
to give them information about what they needed to do.
And I very quickly realized exactly what you just said.
They kind of knew what they needed to do, but
they were having trouble making themselves do it and they
needed help. More on the implementation and the behavior change
(10:05):
part of it. Then they needed me to tell them
you should maybe have a cup of tea after dinner
instead of three beers. You know, they knew. But, you know,
this is such a prevalent thing that there's actually a
scientific term for this. It's called the intention behavior gap.
And that doesn't sound too official, but it is there
are whole areas of scientific research devoted to the intention
(10:28):
behavior gap you can go to whole conferences on. It
and they have kind of figured out some of the
things that help close that gap, that help people make
that leap from, I know what I should be doing.
I just don't seem to be able to make myself
do it. And one of the things that they talk
about is self efficacy. And that kind of has two parts.
One is we have to believe that what we're going
to do is actually going to benefit us. We have
(10:49):
to have some confidence that it's going to have a
positive effect or we're not going to bother. But the
other thing is we have to believe that we can
do it. We have to feel confident in our ability
to do it. Or again, we're just not going to bother.
We're going to give up because we feel like it's
just too much. And so it's really sort of a
sweet spot when you're looking for a change that
S3 (11:09):
you want to make. You want to stake
S2 (11:10):
something out that you feel like, yeah, that's meaningful, that
will actually translate into a meaningful benefit for me. But
not so ambitious that you're not really confident that you're
going to be able to stick with it. And that's
going to make it really easy for you to bail out.
So it's an interesting insight when we're choosing what kind
of a change or behavior or goal that we want
to set for ourselves to look for that sweet spot between, yeah,
(11:33):
that would really make a difference. And I can do that.
And I think there's another aspect of that. And you
already have kind of hinted at this. You said, oh,
in the evenings after 7:00 p.m., I love my kombucha.
I have this favorite tea that I so look forward to.
So you're not just saying like. No, I told myself
I wasn't going to have any wine, so I'm just
going to sit here on my hands not drinking wine
(11:54):
and thinking about how much I would rather be drinking
a glass of wine. You've actually come up with something
that is equally enjoyable that you can also look forward to.
And I think we forget to do that sometimes when
we're trying to take something out of our lives that
maybe is not serving us that we're overdoing, but we
don't take the time to decide what's going to replace that,
what's going to bring some pleasure or some reward into
(12:15):
that moment of my life so that I'm not just
here missing my treat or my enjoyment. You know, I've
actually come up with a creative way to create a
special moment for myself or a ritual or a pleasure
to replace that. So when people try to go alcohol free,
like make sure you got some really fun and creative
(12:35):
alcohol free options to look forward to, not just your
glass of, you know, tap water,
S1 (12:40):
but non-alcoholic Moscow mule party. And it does require some creativity. But,
you know, that actually makes you honor when you do
drink away, you don't drink more and you feel good
about yourself. You know what? Look at me. I said
I would, and here I'm doing it. But if you
do deprive yourself too much, it is going to fire
right back at you. Now, Monica, I would love to
(13:02):
dive into some burning specific nutrition questions with you. One
of the first questions is about sour dough. Sawadogo has
been a big trend during covid. I was already making
my Cerrado bread before covid, but it definitely, you know,
increase in the amounts. And I love getting it fresh
out of the oven, melt some butter. I mean, it
(13:22):
really doesn't need much. It's so good for my happiness.
I hear the fermentation process makes it healthier. Can you
explain it a little bit?
S2 (13:32):
Absolutely. And you know, this has been such a burning question,
not just for you, Joe, but for seemingly everybody in
this last year. And so I just happened to do
sort of a deep dive into this research to see
is there anything new since the last time I checked
this out. And I did find some interesting stuff. And
so the answer is there are some ways in which
that fermentation process does makes our dough bread a little
(13:52):
bit healthier for us and a couple of specific ways.
It's kind of not what a lot of people think, though.
We've heard so much about probiotic foods and beneficial bacteria
and all of that, that people think that that's what
makes our dough healthier is that it's a probiotic food.
Not exactly, because, of course, those little yeast beasties, they
die at a fairly low temperature. So although your sourdough
(14:15):
starter may have a lot of live bacteria in it,
by the time you've baked that into bread, they're all
long gone. So it's not a probiotic food, but that
fermentation process does produce lactic acid as a byproduct of
their fermentation. And that has a couple of health benefits
and mostly in the realm of releasing some of the
mineral content that's naturally present in those grains and making
(14:37):
it a little bit easier for you to absorb and
sort of deactivating some of the compounds that can sometimes
be a little irritating or inflammatory for people who are
a little reactive to wheat and some of the fibers
in wheat. So it does make it a little bit
more
S3 (14:51):
digestible, a little bit
S2 (14:53):
more nutritious. But there's a big caveat, and that is
that it's still bread. And so it's still not a
super nutrient dense food. It is not something that we
should be eating a lot more of just because it's sourdough.
And it's still kind of important to be emphasizing the
whole grain varieties of Salvado over the white flour, or
(15:14):
at least not overdoing it with the white flour. I mean,
there's nothing better than a sour dough baguette. I'm not
going to say that a whole wheat baguette is completely
the same. Yeah. So I think it's just a matter
if you enjoy sour dough, you can take pleasure in
the fact that there are a. Couple of little extra
benefits to it, but it's still basically the same category
of food, it's still bread, it's something that you want
(15:35):
to enjoy, but in moderate quantities. And we just want
to make sure that that health halo that is maybe
around sour dough isn't leading us to eat a lot
more of it because we're thinking like, well, you know,
it's like chocolate and red wine. They're good for my heart. Right.
So I'm going to go ahead.
S1 (15:51):
Yes. I love that you say that. And I do
think you're so right with the you know, in the moderation, like. Sure.
Enjoy it. Used the best flours more to the whole
grain kind. Less white flour is less refined, but don't
eat too much of it, right. Yeah. We'll be right
back with Monica Renagel. Welcome back. I'm chatting with nutrition
(16:27):
expert Monica Renagel, and that also leads me to salt.
Do we actually benefit from using salt in our food?
And what kind of salt? Because my husband grew up
in a household in which salt was kind of the devil,
like he barely ate salt until he met me. And
I love salt. And I put it on most of
our dishes and I use mineral sea salt. And I
(16:49):
always say it's good for you and you're an athlete.
You're sweating a lot. You need salt. So maybe you
can tell me if I'm right or if I'm wrong
or somewhere in the middle.
S2 (16:59):
What we do need our bodies do need
S3 (17:00):
salt for nothing
S2 (17:01):
else to replace the salt that we lose when we sweat.
So if your husband's an athlete
S3 (17:05):
or guys are really
S2 (17:06):
active and sweating a lot, then that will increase, you know,
the amount of salt that you need just to replace it.
But it's really hard not to get enough salt even
from an unsalted diet. Like nobody is really in danger
of salt deficiency. So we don't need to be adding
salt to make sure that we're not deficient. But then
the question is how much is too much? Right. And
that's a really individual question. And there was a long
(17:28):
time when salt we were really afraid of salt. We
thought everybody that had any salt was going to have
high blood pressure. And that turns out not to be true.
Most people can tolerate a pretty healthy amount of salt.
If your blood pressure is high, then you might need
to moderate salt. If it's not, then there's not necessarily
any reason to to worry about it. I mean, if
your fingers are so swollen, you can't get your rings off,
(17:49):
you might be overdoing it a little bit. But that's
a sign. Yeah, except for people who have like a
medical sensitivity to sodium and their blood pressure responds, it's
not a big deal. As to the mineral salts, those
are great. I use them, too. We have all kinds
of fun little fancy salts from different places around the world.
I don't think that they are significant nutritionally for us.
(18:10):
I mean, if the teeny teeny teeny tiny amounts of
minerals that are in those salts were enough to move
the needle on your nutrition, then I'd have much bigger
worries about your diet than what kind of salt you
were eating. So, you know, we don't need those tiny
amounts of minerals to make up any kind of gap.
We should be getting plenty from the other foods that
we're eating, but they certainly are fun, you know, colorful.
(18:31):
And they can be if you have a very refined palate,
you may actually be able to taste the difference between
a Hawaiian sea salt and a Himalayan sea salt and
just
S1 (18:41):
that, just like how people love their wines from all
different regions. I actually just added a triple salt to
my collection.
S2 (18:48):
Oh, yeah, of course. Now that that's not about salt.
Another level.
S1 (18:51):
Chuckles That's right. Everything truffle from it. So next question.
Fish oil, is it enough to eat fish twice a
week or do we need to supplement for heart health
and lower blood pressure? What is the ideal dosage and
how do you understand the difference in quality?
S2 (19:08):
Jill, if you had asked me this question a year ago,
I would have had a very different answer for you,
because fish oil has been one of the least controversial
nutritional supplements. Pretty much the whole time I've been in
this profession, we've just accepted these are great for you,
these omega three fatty acids that you get from fish.
Most of us aren't getting enough of them. This is
a good idea for everybody. And it's been so popular.
(19:29):
It's the third most popular nutritional supplement now for twenty
or thirty years. So we've collected a lot of evidence.
We've got millions and millions of people who have been
taking fish oil every day for decades. And what that's
revealed now that they are actually crunching the figure is
that it has had approximately zero effect on people's risk
of heart disease, people's risk of having a heart attack
(19:51):
on people's mortality. It doesn't seem to have generated any
positive benefit whatsoever. And I you know, you're saying, hmm,
S1 (20:00):
yeah, that's disappointing.
S2 (20:02):
The entire nutrition community, not to mention those who sell
fish oil supplements, are making a similar face. Like what?
That just doesn't even add up. So it's really not
looking like such a great investment anymore was not cheap. Right.
Especially to get a nice quality fish oil that doesn't
make you burp and, you know, has been filtered and
tested for contaminants because, you know, we don't want to
(20:23):
be taking in mercury or whatever with our fish oil.
So a nice quality fish oil is not inexpensive and
it doesn't look like there's much return on that investment. Now,
that doesn't mean that eating fish is not worthwhile. See,
what I think we've learned from this is that there
was some health benefit to eating fish more frequently, to
incorporating fish and seafood into our diets that we couldn't
(20:44):
get just from sucking the oil out of the fish
and taking that as a pill. Yeah. So it's still
recommended to have a couple of servings
S3 (20:51):
of fish every week.
S2 (20:52):
And the data still show that that health habit right
there can have a really positive effect on your long
term disease risk and on your mortality and even things
like your risk of depression and joint pain and brain health. Unfortunately, though,
it doesn't seem to have been exportable into a supplement
the way we all kind of assumed that it would.
S1 (21:12):
Well, that is absolutely new to me. And I'm so
glad I asked you this question because I do have
a new supplement of fish oil in my fridge ready
to go. And I'm sure I'll just use it. But I.
We prefer myself to get some fresh face court here
in Maui, and I much prefer that than taking supplements.
S2 (21:28):
Well, and you really have no excuse with that kind
of fish supply available to you know, I have people
here that are in the landlocked Midwest. And believe me,
that is not their their reality. But, yeah, the fish
oil supplement, it was a big disappointment to everyone. Really.
S1 (21:43):
Well, then I would love to hear your thoughts on
celery juice, because that has been the trend for a
couple of years now. It's been said to be a cure.
All of a lot of chronic illnesses. It helps digestion.
It increases your energy. It clears your skin. I was
wondering what your thoughts on constantly juicing. Is it something
(22:05):
you have to do daily? Is it something that, you know,
you recommend once a week, or do we really even
need it at all? Or should we just be eating
the celery sticks and other fruits and vegetables?
S2 (22:14):
Yeah, that whole celery juice thing is kind of a
mystery to me. I don't understand how these ideas about
what celery juice could do for you or would do
for you got started. It really does seem to have
been just an invention on the part. And, you know,
it really certainly became a fad and people were doing it.
There's no reason to believe that anything that we know
(22:37):
is in celery juice would be curative of anything whatsoever.
I mean, it's got the same kinds of nutrients that
other vegetables have. And whenever we can increase our vegetable intake,
that usually has beneficial effects on us. But there was
nothing special about celery. I'm sure that people did feel
like if they did that consistently, they felt differently. I mean,
(22:59):
there's nothing wrong with a good placebo effect, right?
S1 (23:02):
My goodness. I wish I could, you know, should have
could have bought stocks in, you know, in celery growing.
I mean, every time I went to the store, it
was gone. I'm like, I got my hands on the
last one.
S2 (23:14):
Did you enjoy the way it tasted?
S1 (23:15):
I know I actually didn't not enjoy the taste at all.
It was really hard to get used to for me.
I was just kind of like drinking it fast and
diluting it with some water or biting into a lemon afterwards. Oh,
my
S2 (23:27):
goodness. Well, maybe that's part of what drove that phenomenon,
because sometimes if something's really awful, then we think like, wow,
this must be good for me because I'm really not
enjoying it. You know, I
S1 (23:37):
think we can say in general, if a food fad,
diet or service sounds too good to be true, you
can assume it is. The next thing I would love
to touch down on is collagen, because collagen is a
big thing and everyone is buying collagen powder and pills
and capsules. Now, I know that tons of food provides collagen, too,
without having to supplement. What kind of foods are your
(23:58):
top three that provides most collagen? And what do you
think about supplementing with collagen? Does it work?
S2 (24:05):
Foods don't really provide collagen. Collagen is a protein and
it's a big protein. Collagen is is in foods. You know,
we have foods that like bone broth or otherwise known
as stock. OK, we were making bone broth for a
couple of centuries before we branded it that way. It's
just boiling meat bones to make a stock out of that.
(24:27):
That contains natural collagen, but it doesn't provide collagen for
our bodies because it is such a big protein that
when we take it in our bodies as part of
the digestive system, we're going to break it down into
much snip it up into little peptides and little amino
acids so that it can be absorbed into the body.
And then the body is going to do with that
what it does with all protein, which is take all
(24:49):
of those little snippets and recombine them as necessary to
make the protein it needs. So when we take in
college in our food, that doesn't mean we're then going
to have more collagen in our skin, more collagen in
our joints. That is much more dependent on our bodies, collagen,
producing software. And the reason that our skin tends to
(25:09):
sag a little bit and our joints get a little
bit achy when we get older is that our collagen
production slows down. It's like an old hard drive that
just takes a lot longer to boot up its program.
You know, it's just not as spiffy as it used
to be. And, you know, I think of this like
think of a car factory, you know, a factory where
they're manufacturing cars and the workforce has gotten kind of
elderly and they can't assemble the cars as fast. And
(25:31):
so fewer cars are coming out the end of the line. Well,
speeding up the rate at which the parts come in
to the factory is not going to help this situation
because the workers can still only go as fast as
they can go. And they've slowed down a little bit.
And just it's just going to create a big pile
of raw materials at the front of the line. It's
not going to get more cars spitting out the engine.
(25:52):
It's a little bit like that with collagen, our collagen
making factories just slow down as we get older and
supplying a whole bunch more raw materials isn't necessarily going
to make those workers make collagen any faster. So what
we can do to have more impact is to try
to prevent the breakdown of collagen. The biggest thing that
we can do is UV protection. UV, especially on the skin,
(26:13):
really accelerates the breakdown of collagen, and that's what's responsible
for a lot of skin aging. So rather than try
to stuff more collagen into your cheeks from the inside.
Through your diet, what you want to do is make
sure that you're protecting your skin from UV rays to
try to keep the collagen that you have from breaking down.
I'll say this about the dietary steps that we can
take to enhance our ability to produce collagen, and that
(26:35):
is that getting enough protein does that. That's one of
the ways in which we benefit from keeping our protein
and take up as we get older. It doesn't have
to be protein in the form of collagen because remember,
we're going to disassemble that anyway. Yeah, just any form
of protein, making sure that we're getting protein is going
to help as much as it can. And the irony,
because collagen is such a big supplement right now is
(26:56):
that as protein sources go, especially animal based protein sources,
it's one of the lowest quality protein sources in terms
of the completeness of the amino acids. So I can recommend,
you know, watching your protein intake. But if you're looking
to increase your protein, quality and quantity, I don't think
I'd send you to a collagen supplement. I think I'd
send you to eggs or whey protein or chicken or fish.
S1 (27:18):
Salmon. OK, well, that's clear. I'm just crying a little
bit here. On the other hand, as I'm nearing 40, obviously,
I want to hear that it works. Yeah, but no,
I totally get it and it totally makes sense. And
there is no quick fix. And yes, we are constantly fraud,
a new thing that we need in our life, something
(27:39):
that has not even been talked about maybe eight years ago.
And then all of a sudden it becomes part of
everyday everyone's life. And then we have to ask a question,
is this really necessary? This is actually working and what
is the quality of it? It sounds like we need
to just look at better quality protein that are the
building blocks of our body and will continue to upgrade
(28:00):
that can collagen software. Right. And it actually leads me
to the next question, too, because when we think about
nutritional deficiencies, how can we detect them? The do we
actually need to do some blood work at the doctor's
or do we get at home test kit and feel like, hey,
you know, every now and then, would you recommend a test?
S2 (28:22):
No, I really wouldn't, only because a lot of the
things that they sell for home users have not been validated.
And we don't know for sure what the meaning of
those tests are and what they indicate and how they
should be interpreted. So I would definitely leave that for
your doctor. But it may be useful to distinguish between
an actual nutritional deficiency where your body is too low
(28:43):
in a nutrient, which your doctor could detect with blood
tests usually, and then they would know how to interpret
the results of those tests and what other tests might
need to be done and how to correct it. And
they're actually pretty rare. Jill, I mean, with a couple
of exceptions, people are often deficient in vitamin D because
that's not a vitamin that we generally get from our diet. Yeah,
(29:03):
iron is another one that especially women and childbearing years
can often be have an actual deficiency. But the list
of nutrients that we are likely to be deficient in
is pretty short and pretty specific. It is true that
there are nutrients that people are likely not to be
getting adequate intake of, and that's a different situation. So
you may have seen statistics that, you know, 80 percent
(29:25):
of Americans don't have adequate magnesium intake. You know, I'm
not sure I just made that up. It might be
60 percent. I can't remember what the percentages. But, you know,
a lot of Americans aren't getting enough magnesium or or
a lot of Americans aren't getting enough calcium or whatever.
And we may hear that statistic and think, oh, my gosh,
we're deficient. We have a nutrient deficiency. It's a different term.
(29:47):
So a deficiency would be when we're actually too low
in our body supply in order to do our bodies work.
Pretty rare. And the other is your intake is is
not ideal, you know, to make sure that we meet
your nutrient needs. So we just want to distinguish between
the two. But no, I, I don't have a lot
of confidence in at home testing either in the validity
(30:09):
of it or in the ability of a non-professional to
interpret and respond to whatever's coming out of those results.
But I also don't think that we need to worry
about nutrient deficiencies.
S1 (30:20):
Great. Well, then we don't need to waste money and
we can leave or worries behind. Now, that leads to kill.
We've been eating kale for years. It's been a go
to superfood. Now I hear that kale contains
S3 (30:34):
oxalate oxalate to when
S1 (30:36):
not cooked, it can have some toxic effects on your
body or help.
S2 (30:42):
Well, I don't think anybody needs to worry about kale.
And there are several things that people have brought up
as concerns about kale, especially raw kale oxalis were one,
some people worried that it might be absorbing heavy metals
out of the soil like cadmium or arsenic, because kale
is a crop that tends to sort of attract those metals.
They're just in the soil naturally occurring and more of
(31:03):
them end up in the kale than in other vegetables.
People worried that it might have a negative impact on
thyroid function. So there were a lot of various concerns
expressed about kale. And I think it was kind of inevitable.
Kale was riding so high for so long, like sooner
or later people are going to have to take it down.
So there are a number of charges and I'm not
worried about. Many of them, because they would not be
(31:25):
a factor for anybody who was eating even a marginally
healthy diet and consuming kale and even marginally reasonable quantities. Now,
if you were in a famine ravaged country in Africa
and had no access to proper nutrition and you ate
nothing but kale for two weeks, I could see a
(31:47):
scenario in which that exotic acid could lead to some
mineral deficiencies or something. But I can't see that scenario
happening anywhere here where people have reasonably good diets. They're
not eating their weight in kale every day. We can relax,
we can go ahead and we can eat our kale
cooked irra.
S3 (32:04):
But you know, these
S2 (32:05):
questions that you've been asking me about the kale and
the fish oil and the salary, you know, I field
so many questions
S3 (32:11):
like this.
S2 (32:12):
These are the questions that people have. And I think
that people get tangled up in all of these sort
of minuet details and worried about things that are really
not posing much of a concern. And it kind of
distracts them from the basics, from what they can do
just to make their diets healthier on an ongoing basis,
something that they can be consistent with. And a little
bit earlier in our conversation, you were saying, you know,
(32:34):
look around and see, what about your diet? Could you improve?
And I loved that you said that instead of this
quest to make our diets perfect, the goal is not
to have a perfect diet. It's not necessary. But most
of us have areas where we could improve. And there
are usually a lot less complicated than I really need
to avoid kale, because I think I might be overdoing
it on the oxalis. You know, most of us just
(32:56):
need to concentrate to get five servings of vegetables every day.
Most of us need to concentrate just to make sure
that we are incorporating fish into our menus on a
regular basis, the super basic stuff, and not get so
in the weeds with these details that are ultimately not
that impactful.
S1 (33:14):
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Monica, for taking the time
to talk me through all my burning questions. And I
have more, but our time is up. And so if
I may conclude this and just say to all the listeners,
stay true to yourself, do your own research, feel your body,
talk to your body, feed it well, take excellent care
of yourself and your family. Don't worry too much and
(33:37):
do the best you can every day when you think
you fall off the wagon for one meal, it doesn't
mean the whole day is a waste. Just eat better
the next meal. Choose again. Well, you know, we don't
need to be perfect, but we would all benefit when
we take better care of ourselves, because when you feel good,
you have a ripple effect on everyone that you're meeting
(33:58):
and surrounding yourself with daily. And that is the difference
that you can make in your life.
S2 (34:04):
I love that, Joe. What a what a positive message.
S1 (34:06):
Monica, thank you so much. Everyone that needs more nutrition
information and has more questions for Monica. Please listen to
our own podcast show, the Nutrition Devar podcast. And what
is the other podcast that you're cohosting, MANICKAM?
S2 (34:23):
Yes, well, you know, I am all about right now
helping people translate information into action. You know what we
are talking about at the beginning of the hour or so?
And and so my other podcast is called Change Academy.
And it's really and it's with Brock Armstrong, who was
on your show a couple of months ago. My good
friend Brock and I teamed up to create the Change
Academy to do exactly what we started out today talking about,
(34:43):
like how do we take this information and these things,
these thoughts about what we want to achieve and translate
them into sustainable, positive change in our lives. That's kind
of where the rubber meets the road. That's where I'm
most excited right now and putting all of our energy. So, yeah,
if people are looking for more tools, they can pop
open whatever app they're listening to us on right now
(35:04):
and look for the change academy or the nutrition diva. And,
you know, you said it's so hard to just know
what to focus on and what to start with. And
I thought so much about this. And I a few
years ago, I came up with a little game and
we turned it into an app. It's called the Nutrition GPA.
And basically it just asks you ten question, yes or
(35:24):
no questions about what you ate today and you get
a grade for the day based on your answer to
those ten questions, and then it tracks your nutrition grade
point average over time.
S3 (35:34):
And so for
S2 (35:34):
people who were just like, it's too much, I don't
know what to focus on. I don't know what's most important.
It's like, you know what just answered these 10 questions
every day. And if you can keep your grade in
the B range long term, then you're done. You know,
you're eating a good enough diet. So for those that
just really want to boil it down and get super simple,
they can check that out in the App Store and
(35:56):
see if that makes it a little bit more fun
or a little bit more approachable.
S1 (35:59):
Oh, thanks for that. It's only makes it more simple
and easy, and that's what we need. And and do
you have an Instagram account?
S2 (36:06):
I do. It's called the Nutrition Deba.
S1 (36:09):
Done. I'm already following you and I will continue to
follow you. And I may send you a couple of
emails and call you and text you for more questions.
You bet. Thanks to Monica Renagel for joining us on
the show today. This episode was produced and edited by A.J.,
mostly mastering by Steve Rexburg. I hope you enjoy this
(36:30):
nutrient packed episode as much as I did if you
like this episode. Make sure to subscribe to life done
better on whatever platform you listen to podcasts. Have a
wonderful day, my friends, and I'll see you soon. And.
(36:57):
Kurt Comedia. Media, for your mind.
From CatCo media.
S1 (00:05):
Coming up on this episode of Life Done Better,
S2 (00:08):
we've collected a lot of evidence, we got millions and
millions of people who have been taking fish oil every
day for decades. And what that's revealed now that they
are actually crunching the figure is that it has had
approximately zero effect.
S1 (00:24):
Welcome to Life Done Better. I'm your host, Joe the Young. Today,
I'm talking to nutritionist Monica Renagel, she is the host
of Nutrition Diva podcast and serves up simple, painless ways
to upgrade your eating habits. I invited her to explore,
(00:44):
clarify and maybe debunk some of my most burning nutrition questions.
Nutrition advice is not one that fits all, but there
are plenty of things that improve most people's health and wellness.
Let's explore together so you can feel more informed and
make better decisions for yourself. Welcome, Monica.
S2 (01:02):
Thank you, Jill. I'm delighted to be with you today.
S1 (01:05):
You are an expert. You are an authority and I
want to know everything. Of course, we don't have time
to talk about everything because, you know, nutrition is so diverse,
it sets a great variety to talk about. But personally,
I have dealt with nutrition challenges in my life. I
was working full time as a model and I was
jet lagged, constantly sleep deprived, did not eat very well.
(01:27):
My main source of food was at restaurants, dining out
all the time, processed foods, diet products.
S3 (01:34):
I really,
S1 (01:35):
really didn't know how to take care of myself. And
so I ask a nutritionist for help. And that really
changed my life. I needed to learn about nutrition. I
needed to learn how to cook. And that has healed
my body. And that's why I'm so, so, so excited
to share everything. Me and Monica have learned in our
(01:57):
professional life, but also our personal life with you now. Monica,
what are some of your personal challenges that you've dealt
with
S3 (02:05):
and what started this
S1 (02:07):
career for you?
S2 (02:08):
Well, first, I just want to say how much I
love the way you framed this as a way for
people to empower themselves and make better decisions for themselves,
because I think that's really key. Sometimes people do have
this idea that there's just one right way to put
together a healthy diet, and then it's just about having
someone give them that golden ticket, that magical prescription. But
(02:28):
of course, it's exactly what you just suggested. It is
an individual thing. We do need to take into account
our needs, our lifestyle, the demands that we're placing on
our body and what's going to work for us and
find our way to a solution that not only makes
us feel good, but that's sustainable for us. Right. That
we can actually pull off with whatever else we're doing.
(02:50):
And that's going to look so different depending on, as
you said when you were modeling, you were traveling constantly,
very rarely at home, cooking your own meals. So you
probably needed slightly different strategies and solutions than a mom
who not only has to feed themselves, but is also
feeding their children and has to get meals on the
table for them. So it's so important to realize that
(03:11):
it is going to be a one size fits one solution.
And that, yeah, my role is really just to kind
of help you curate all that information so that you
can make those good choices that support your health.
S1 (03:23):
So you use that one nutritional advice suits one person, right.
Is so
S3 (03:27):
individual. Like we talk a lot
S1 (03:29):
about bio individuality and so can you name a few
things that you were dealing with yourself just to get
an idea of your personal
S3 (03:36):
challenges? Absolutely.
S2 (03:38):
And I think they've changed over the years. You know,
I've been feeding myself for a long time now, and
as I've gone through different phases of my life, the
challenges have changed. And one of the things that I'm
conscious of right now is I'm getting a little bit
older is how important it is for me to continue
to get enough protein. In fact, we need more protein
as we get older just to kind of hold steady. Right,
(03:59):
in order to prevent the loss of muscle mass and
everything that leads to that. So I'm aware that this
is a challenge that I need to pay attention to.
And the only reason that is challenging
S3 (04:08):
for me is that I'm
S2 (04:09):
not really drawn to meat. I'm not a vegetarian. I'm
perfectly willing to eat meat. It just doesn't excite me.
I find it kind of boring, boring to eat and
boring to cook. And so for me, I always have
to be conscious of, you know, am I including some
protein in this meal? Did I get enough protein today?
That's something that's kind of always running in the back
of my mind. But that certainly wasn't anything that I
(04:32):
was worried about in my 20s and I probably didn't
need to be. Then, though,
S1 (04:36):
it always does change. Right. And the challenges change and
also the level of being healthy changes because maybe 10
years ago I thought I was pretty healthy and because
I was buying most food at Trader Joe's and I
was now cooking my own meals. And so when I
look back now, I'm like, oh, that's funny. I thought
it was healthy then. And I'm sure in five years
that we speak again like it's a whole other level
(04:57):
because there are constant upgrades that we can implement in
our lives. But how do we translate what we know
into what we do to how does something new become
a real habit?
S2 (05:09):
That is actually the key to everything? Right. Consistency is everything,
but a lot of people struggle to be consistent with
the things that they want to do. And I think
one thing that undermines us here is this myth that
if you just repeat something for 21 days or 30 days,
you will have created a habit. You've probably heard that right.
It takes 21 days to create a habit. I don't
(05:30):
know where that came from. I don't think there's really
any actual evidence to back that up, but it's become
this ingrained belief. And so people will do things like
sign up for a 30 day challenge and they'll figure, well,
if I just do this for 30 days, by the
end I will have established this new habit. But learning
what you need to do to do something for 30
(05:51):
days is completely different than figuring out what you'd need
to do to make it an ongoing part of your life.
You know, during that 30 days, you're counting down right
to day one today, zero when you get to stop.
I mean, it's a completely different mindset to if you're
just thinking like, how do I get through this 30 days,
then if you're thinking what is going to make this
(06:11):
important to me so that I will continue
S3 (06:14):
to do it. And so I think that's
S2 (06:15):
why that boot camp and challenge and 30 day this
and that culture sometimes actually works against our ability to
be more consistent with our habits because we put all
our energy into some big dramatic thing for 30 days
and then we go back to more or less what
we were doing before. And another aspect of learning to
be more consistent is to keep your changes small enough
(06:37):
that you can actually sustain them.
S1 (06:39):
Yeah, that they don't feel overwhelming, that you're not getting
cranky and you're like, God, I can't wait to be
done with this. Right. It's going to actually make you
feel better on a daily basis. For me, being consistent
means to have a really strong desire, really strong. Why
are you wanting to do this thing that you're wanting
to do? Right.
S2 (06:58):
Absolutely. The heart of it all. And sometimes people skip
over that step. They have a kind of a superficial
goal or they've absorbed somebody else's goal, you know, a
societal or a cultural goal.
S3 (07:10):
But you know what?
S2 (07:10):
Doing hard things or even just doing easy things consistently
takes a lot of effort. And as human beings, we're
sort of hardwired to avoid effort to avoid unnecessary effort.
We're kind of evolutionarily designed to be lazy. So in
order to be willing to make that effort on an
ongoing basis, we have to have that compelling why that
reason that drives us, that makes it worth our while.
(07:34):
So the fact that you're so clear on what it
is that you want and why it's important to you
is half the battle right there. And then, of course,
there are other aspects of that. You know, like when
you go to your refrigerator, 95 percent of the stuff
in there is healthy. So you don't then have to
battle yourself like, well, I should have this fruit salad,
but I want to have this éclair or something. Like
(07:55):
what you're looking at is all food that you've chosen
that is going to support your goals. So you've also
set yourself up for success there. You've really put a
lot in place that helps you be consistent. That's a
prescription for success.
S3 (08:08):
But unfortunately, Jill, you're the
S2 (08:10):
exception to the way people go about trying to make
positive
S3 (08:14):
change. You're right.
S1 (08:15):
I'm disciplined in some ways, but I make it easy
on myself because I won't have the things that I
was going to eat that I shouldn't be eating in
my house. I don't have it. It's not there. So
when it constantly pulls open, a drawer or the fridge
is nothing. Nothing different is in there, right? A tenth
time you're like, well, that's another carrot then, right? There's
no cookies today. And there may be a day that
(08:37):
I want cookies and I make some homemade cookies, but
it's not there every day. And also talk to some
friends of mine who were saying, well, we really need
your advice. And I said, well, tell me what you need.
They actually already
S3 (08:49):
had the answer. They just came
S1 (08:50):
out of the water. They were kiteboarding. And it was
4:00 p.m. in the afternoon and they already had a beer.
And they said, well, we probably should drink less alcohol.
I'm like, why do you drink alcohol after, you know,
you do sports anyway? Well, it's fun. It's relaxing, you know,
for hanging out.
S3 (09:04):
Well, I said then you
S1 (09:05):
exactly know where you need to start. And oftentimes, though,
we already know what we should reduce to less of
and replace with other habits. What do you do after
7:00 p.m.? Like what I do at some point? Well,
I love my tea. I drink hot chocolate would rock
a cow. I may have a kombucha or a lemon
tea with honey. I mean, I have plenty of beverages.
(09:26):
I don't prefer alcohol over over those. So it's up
to you to find out what you like, because what
I do is not what you should be doing. It
just wonderful to actually understand that sometimes we really feel
like we don't know where to start, but we do.
S2 (09:42):
You couldn't be more. You know, when I first started
in this profession of nutrition, I thought that one of
the ways that I would really help people would be
to give them information about what they needed to do.
And I very quickly realized exactly what you just said.
They kind of knew what they needed to do, but
they were having trouble making themselves do it and they
needed help. More on the implementation and the behavior change
(10:05):
part of it. Then they needed me to tell them
you should maybe have a cup of tea after dinner
instead of three beers. You know, they knew. But, you know,
this is such a prevalent thing that there's actually a
scientific term for this. It's called the intention behavior gap.
And that doesn't sound too official, but it is there
are whole areas of scientific research devoted to the intention
(10:28):
behavior gap you can go to whole conferences on. It
and they have kind of figured out some of the
things that help close that gap, that help people make
that leap from, I know what I should be doing.
I just don't seem to be able to make myself
do it. And one of the things that they talk
about is self efficacy. And that kind of has two parts.
One is we have to believe that what we're going
to do is actually going to benefit us. We have
(10:49):
to have some confidence that it's going to have a
positive effect or we're not going to bother. But the
other thing is we have to believe that we can
do it. We have to feel confident in our ability
to do it. Or again, we're just not going to bother.
We're going to give up because we feel like it's
just too much. And so it's really sort of a
sweet spot when you're looking for a change that
S3 (11:09):
you want to make. You want to stake
S2 (11:10):
something out that you feel like, yeah, that's meaningful, that
will actually translate into a meaningful benefit for me. But
not so ambitious that you're not really confident that you're
going to be able to stick with it. And that's
going to make it really easy for you to bail out.
So it's an interesting insight when we're choosing what kind
of a change or behavior or goal that we want
to set for ourselves to look for that sweet spot between, yeah,
(11:33):
that would really make a difference. And I can do that.
And I think there's another aspect of that. And you
already have kind of hinted at this. You said, oh,
in the evenings after 7:00 p.m., I love my kombucha.
I have this favorite tea that I so look forward to.
So you're not just saying like. No, I told myself
I wasn't going to have any wine, so I'm just
going to sit here on my hands not drinking wine
(11:54):
and thinking about how much I would rather be drinking
a glass of wine. You've actually come up with something
that is equally enjoyable that you can also look forward to.
And I think we forget to do that sometimes when
we're trying to take something out of our lives that
maybe is not serving us that we're overdoing, but we
don't take the time to decide what's going to replace that,
what's going to bring some pleasure or some reward into
(12:15):
that moment of my life so that I'm not just
here missing my treat or my enjoyment. You know, I've
actually come up with a creative way to create a
special moment for myself or a ritual or a pleasure
to replace that. So when people try to go alcohol free,
like make sure you got some really fun and creative
(12:35):
alcohol free options to look forward to, not just your
glass of, you know, tap water,
S1 (12:40):
but non-alcoholic Moscow mule party. And it does require some creativity. But,
you know, that actually makes you honor when you do
drink away, you don't drink more and you feel good
about yourself. You know what? Look at me. I said
I would, and here I'm doing it. But if you
do deprive yourself too much, it is going to fire
right back at you. Now, Monica, I would love to
(13:02):
dive into some burning specific nutrition questions with you. One
of the first questions is about sour dough. Sawadogo has
been a big trend during covid. I was already making
my Cerrado bread before covid, but it definitely, you know,
increase in the amounts. And I love getting it fresh
out of the oven, melt some butter. I mean, it
(13:22):
really doesn't need much. It's so good for my happiness.
I hear the fermentation process makes it healthier. Can you
explain it a little bit?
S2 (13:32):
Absolutely. And you know, this has been such a burning question,
not just for you, Joe, but for seemingly everybody in
this last year. And so I just happened to do
sort of a deep dive into this research to see
is there anything new since the last time I checked
this out. And I did find some interesting stuff. And
so the answer is there are some ways in which
that fermentation process does makes our dough bread a little
(13:52):
bit healthier for us and a couple of specific ways.
It's kind of not what a lot of people think, though.
We've heard so much about probiotic foods and beneficial bacteria
and all of that, that people think that that's what
makes our dough healthier is that it's a probiotic food.
Not exactly, because, of course, those little yeast beasties, they
die at a fairly low temperature. So although your sourdough
(14:15):
starter may have a lot of live bacteria in it,
by the time you've baked that into bread, they're all
long gone. So it's not a probiotic food, but that
fermentation process does produce lactic acid as a byproduct of
their fermentation. And that has a couple of health benefits
and mostly in the realm of releasing some of the
mineral content that's naturally present in those grains and making
(14:37):
it a little bit easier for you to absorb and
sort of deactivating some of the compounds that can sometimes
be a little irritating or inflammatory for people who are
a little reactive to wheat and some of the fibers
in wheat. So it does make it a little bit
more
S3 (14:51):
digestible, a little bit
S2 (14:53):
more nutritious. But there's a big caveat, and that is
that it's still bread. And so it's still not a
super nutrient dense food. It is not something that we
should be eating a lot more of just because it's sourdough.
And it's still kind of important to be emphasizing the
whole grain varieties of Salvado over the white flour, or
(15:14):
at least not overdoing it with the white flour. I mean,
there's nothing better than a sour dough baguette. I'm not
going to say that a whole wheat baguette is completely
the same. Yeah. So I think it's just a matter
if you enjoy sour dough, you can take pleasure in
the fact that there are a. Couple of little extra
benefits to it, but it's still basically the same category
of food, it's still bread, it's something that you want
(15:35):
to enjoy, but in moderate quantities. And we just want
to make sure that that health halo that is maybe
around sour dough isn't leading us to eat a lot
more of it because we're thinking like, well, you know,
it's like chocolate and red wine. They're good for my heart. Right.
So I'm going to go ahead.
S1 (15:51):
Yes. I love that you say that. And I do
think you're so right with the you know, in the moderation, like. Sure.
Enjoy it. Used the best flours more to the whole
grain kind. Less white flour is less refined, but don't
eat too much of it, right. Yeah. We'll be right
back with Monica Renagel. Welcome back. I'm chatting with nutrition
(16:27):
expert Monica Renagel, and that also leads me to salt.
Do we actually benefit from using salt in our food?
And what kind of salt? Because my husband grew up
in a household in which salt was kind of the devil,
like he barely ate salt until he met me. And
I love salt. And I put it on most of
our dishes and I use mineral sea salt. And I
(16:49):
always say it's good for you and you're an athlete.
You're sweating a lot. You need salt. So maybe you
can tell me if I'm right or if I'm wrong
or somewhere in the middle.
S2 (16:59):
What we do need our bodies do need
S3 (17:00):
salt for nothing
S2 (17:01):
else to replace the salt that we lose when we sweat.
So if your husband's an athlete
S3 (17:05):
or guys are really
S2 (17:06):
active and sweating a lot, then that will increase, you know,
the amount of salt that you need just to replace it.
But it's really hard not to get enough salt even
from an unsalted diet. Like nobody is really in danger
of salt deficiency. So we don't need to be adding
salt to make sure that we're not deficient. But then
the question is how much is too much? Right. And
that's a really individual question. And there was a long
(17:28):
time when salt we were really afraid of salt. We
thought everybody that had any salt was going to have
high blood pressure. And that turns out not to be true.
Most people can tolerate a pretty healthy amount of salt.
If your blood pressure is high, then you might need
to moderate salt. If it's not, then there's not necessarily
any reason to to worry about it. I mean, if
your fingers are so swollen, you can't get your rings off,
(17:49):
you might be overdoing it a little bit. But that's
a sign. Yeah, except for people who have like a
medical sensitivity to sodium and their blood pressure responds, it's
not a big deal. As to the mineral salts, those
are great. I use them, too. We have all kinds
of fun little fancy salts from different places around the world.
I don't think that they are significant nutritionally for us.
(18:10):
I mean, if the teeny teeny teeny tiny amounts of
minerals that are in those salts were enough to move
the needle on your nutrition, then I'd have much bigger
worries about your diet than what kind of salt you
were eating. So, you know, we don't need those tiny
amounts of minerals to make up any kind of gap.
We should be getting plenty from the other foods that
we're eating, but they certainly are fun, you know, colorful.
(18:31):
And they can be if you have a very refined palate,
you may actually be able to taste the difference between
a Hawaiian sea salt and a Himalayan sea salt and
just
S1 (18:41):
that, just like how people love their wines from all
different regions. I actually just added a triple salt to
my collection.
S2 (18:48):
Oh, yeah, of course. Now that that's not about salt.
Another level.
S1 (18:51):
Chuckles That's right. Everything truffle from it. So next question.
Fish oil, is it enough to eat fish twice a
week or do we need to supplement for heart health
and lower blood pressure? What is the ideal dosage and
how do you understand the difference in quality?
S2 (19:08):
Jill, if you had asked me this question a year ago,
I would have had a very different answer for you,
because fish oil has been one of the least controversial
nutritional supplements. Pretty much the whole time I've been in
this profession, we've just accepted these are great for you,
these omega three fatty acids that you get from fish.
Most of us aren't getting enough of them. This is
a good idea for everybody. And it's been so popular.
(19:29):
It's the third most popular nutritional supplement now for twenty
or thirty years. So we've collected a lot of evidence.
We've got millions and millions of people who have been
taking fish oil every day for decades. And what that's
revealed now that they are actually crunching the figure is
that it has had approximately zero effect on people's risk
of heart disease, people's risk of having a heart attack
(19:51):
on people's mortality. It doesn't seem to have generated any
positive benefit whatsoever. And I you know, you're saying, hmm,
S1 (20:00):
yeah, that's disappointing.
S2 (20:02):
The entire nutrition community, not to mention those who sell
fish oil supplements, are making a similar face. Like what?
That just doesn't even add up. So it's really not
looking like such a great investment anymore was not cheap. Right.
Especially to get a nice quality fish oil that doesn't
make you burp and, you know, has been filtered and
tested for contaminants because, you know, we don't want to
(20:23):
be taking in mercury or whatever with our fish oil.
So a nice quality fish oil is not inexpensive and
it doesn't look like there's much return on that investment. Now,
that doesn't mean that eating fish is not worthwhile. See,
what I think we've learned from this is that there
was some health benefit to eating fish more frequently, to
incorporating fish and seafood into our diets that we couldn't
(20:44):
get just from sucking the oil out of the fish
and taking that as a pill. Yeah. So it's still
recommended to have a couple of servings
S3 (20:51):
of fish every week.
S2 (20:52):
And the data still show that that health habit right
there can have a really positive effect on your long
term disease risk and on your mortality and even things
like your risk of depression and joint pain and brain health. Unfortunately, though,
it doesn't seem to have been exportable into a supplement
the way we all kind of assumed that it would.
S1 (21:12):
Well, that is absolutely new to me. And I'm so
glad I asked you this question because I do have
a new supplement of fish oil in my fridge ready
to go. And I'm sure I'll just use it. But I.
We prefer myself to get some fresh face court here
in Maui, and I much prefer that than taking supplements.
S2 (21:28):
Well, and you really have no excuse with that kind
of fish supply available to you know, I have people
here that are in the landlocked Midwest. And believe me,
that is not their their reality. But, yeah, the fish
oil supplement, it was a big disappointment to everyone. Really.
S1 (21:43):
Well, then I would love to hear your thoughts on
celery juice, because that has been the trend for a
couple of years now. It's been said to be a cure.
All of a lot of chronic illnesses. It helps digestion.
It increases your energy. It clears your skin. I was
wondering what your thoughts on constantly juicing. Is it something
(22:05):
you have to do daily? Is it something that, you know,
you recommend once a week, or do we really even
need it at all? Or should we just be eating
the celery sticks and other fruits and vegetables?
S2 (22:14):
Yeah, that whole celery juice thing is kind of a
mystery to me. I don't understand how these ideas about
what celery juice could do for you or would do
for you got started. It really does seem to have
been just an invention on the part. And, you know,
it really certainly became a fad and people were doing it.
There's no reason to believe that anything that we know
(22:37):
is in celery juice would be curative of anything whatsoever.
I mean, it's got the same kinds of nutrients that
other vegetables have. And whenever we can increase our vegetable intake,
that usually has beneficial effects on us. But there was
nothing special about celery. I'm sure that people did feel
like if they did that consistently, they felt differently. I mean,
(22:59):
there's nothing wrong with a good placebo effect, right?
S1 (23:02):
My goodness. I wish I could, you know, should have
could have bought stocks in, you know, in celery growing.
I mean, every time I went to the store, it
was gone. I'm like, I got my hands on the
last one.
S2 (23:14):
Did you enjoy the way it tasted?
S1 (23:15):
I know I actually didn't not enjoy the taste at all.
It was really hard to get used to for me.
I was just kind of like drinking it fast and
diluting it with some water or biting into a lemon afterwards. Oh,
my
S2 (23:27):
goodness. Well, maybe that's part of what drove that phenomenon,
because sometimes if something's really awful, then we think like, wow,
this must be good for me because I'm really not
enjoying it. You know, I
S1 (23:37):
think we can say in general, if a food fad,
diet or service sounds too good to be true, you
can assume it is. The next thing I would love
to touch down on is collagen, because collagen is a
big thing and everyone is buying collagen powder and pills
and capsules. Now, I know that tons of food provides collagen, too,
without having to supplement. What kind of foods are your
(23:58):
top three that provides most collagen? And what do you
think about supplementing with collagen? Does it work?
S2 (24:05):
Foods don't really provide collagen. Collagen is a protein and
it's a big protein. Collagen is is in foods. You know,
we have foods that like bone broth or otherwise known
as stock. OK, we were making bone broth for a
couple of centuries before we branded it that way. It's
just boiling meat bones to make a stock out of that.
(24:27):
That contains natural collagen, but it doesn't provide collagen for
our bodies because it is such a big protein that
when we take it in our bodies as part of
the digestive system, we're going to break it down into
much snip it up into little peptides and little amino
acids so that it can be absorbed into the body.
And then the body is going to do with that
what it does with all protein, which is take all
(24:49):
of those little snippets and recombine them as necessary to
make the protein it needs. So when we take in
college in our food, that doesn't mean we're then going
to have more collagen in our skin, more collagen in
our joints. That is much more dependent on our bodies, collagen,
producing software. And the reason that our skin tends to
(25:09):
sag a little bit and our joints get a little
bit achy when we get older is that our collagen
production slows down. It's like an old hard drive that
just takes a lot longer to boot up its program.
You know, it's just not as spiffy as it used
to be. And, you know, I think of this like
think of a car factory, you know, a factory where
they're manufacturing cars and the workforce has gotten kind of
elderly and they can't assemble the cars as fast. And
(25:31):
so fewer cars are coming out the end of the line. Well,
speeding up the rate at which the parts come in
to the factory is not going to help this situation
because the workers can still only go as fast as
they can go. And they've slowed down a little bit.
And just it's just going to create a big pile
of raw materials at the front of the line. It's
not going to get more cars spitting out the engine.
(25:52):
It's a little bit like that with collagen, our collagen
making factories just slow down as we get older and
supplying a whole bunch more raw materials isn't necessarily going
to make those workers make collagen any faster. So what
we can do to have more impact is to try
to prevent the breakdown of collagen. The biggest thing that
we can do is UV protection. UV, especially on the skin,
(26:13):
really accelerates the breakdown of collagen, and that's what's responsible
for a lot of skin aging. So rather than try
to stuff more collagen into your cheeks from the inside.
Through your diet, what you want to do is make
sure that you're protecting your skin from UV rays to
try to keep the collagen that you have from breaking down.
I'll say this about the dietary steps that we can
take to enhance our ability to produce collagen, and that
(26:35):
is that getting enough protein does that. That's one of
the ways in which we benefit from keeping our protein
and take up as we get older. It doesn't have
to be protein in the form of collagen because remember,
we're going to disassemble that anyway. Yeah, just any form
of protein, making sure that we're getting protein is going
to help as much as it can. And the irony,
because collagen is such a big supplement right now is
(26:56):
that as protein sources go, especially animal based protein sources,
it's one of the lowest quality protein sources in terms
of the completeness of the amino acids. So I can recommend,
you know, watching your protein intake. But if you're looking
to increase your protein, quality and quantity, I don't think
I'd send you to a collagen supplement. I think I'd
send you to eggs or whey protein or chicken or fish.
S1 (27:18):
Salmon. OK, well, that's clear. I'm just crying a little
bit here. On the other hand, as I'm nearing 40, obviously,
I want to hear that it works. Yeah, but no,
I totally get it and it totally makes sense. And
there is no quick fix. And yes, we are constantly fraud,
a new thing that we need in our life, something
(27:39):
that has not even been talked about maybe eight years ago.
And then all of a sudden it becomes part of
everyday everyone's life. And then we have to ask a question,
is this really necessary? This is actually working and what
is the quality of it? It sounds like we need
to just look at better quality protein that are the
building blocks of our body and will continue to upgrade
(28:00):
that can collagen software. Right. And it actually leads me
to the next question, too, because when we think about
nutritional deficiencies, how can we detect them? The do we
actually need to do some blood work at the doctor's
or do we get at home test kit and feel like, hey,
you know, every now and then, would you recommend a test?
S2 (28:22):
No, I really wouldn't, only because a lot of the
things that they sell for home users have not been validated.
And we don't know for sure what the meaning of
those tests are and what they indicate and how they
should be interpreted. So I would definitely leave that for
your doctor. But it may be useful to distinguish between
an actual nutritional deficiency where your body is too low
(28:43):
in a nutrient, which your doctor could detect with blood
tests usually, and then they would know how to interpret
the results of those tests and what other tests might
need to be done and how to correct it. And
they're actually pretty rare. Jill, I mean, with a couple
of exceptions, people are often deficient in vitamin D because
that's not a vitamin that we generally get from our diet. Yeah,
(29:03):
iron is another one that especially women and childbearing years
can often be have an actual deficiency. But the list
of nutrients that we are likely to be deficient in
is pretty short and pretty specific. It is true that
there are nutrients that people are likely not to be
getting adequate intake of, and that's a different situation. So
you may have seen statistics that, you know, 80 percent
(29:25):
of Americans don't have adequate magnesium intake. You know, I'm
not sure I just made that up. It might be
60 percent. I can't remember what the percentages. But, you know,
a lot of Americans aren't getting enough magnesium or or
a lot of Americans aren't getting enough calcium or whatever.
And we may hear that statistic and think, oh, my gosh,
we're deficient. We have a nutrient deficiency. It's a different term.
(29:47):
So a deficiency would be when we're actually too low
in our body supply in order to do our bodies work.
Pretty rare. And the other is your intake is is
not ideal, you know, to make sure that we meet
your nutrient needs. So we just want to distinguish between
the two. But no, I, I don't have a lot
of confidence in at home testing either in the validity
(30:09):
of it or in the ability of a non-professional to
interpret and respond to whatever's coming out of those results.
But I also don't think that we need to worry
about nutrient deficiencies.
S1 (30:20):
Great. Well, then we don't need to waste money and
we can leave or worries behind. Now, that leads to kill.
We've been eating kale for years. It's been a go
to superfood. Now I hear that kale contains
S3 (30:34):
oxalate oxalate to when
S1 (30:36):
not cooked, it can have some toxic effects on your
body or help.
S2 (30:42):
Well, I don't think anybody needs to worry about kale.
And there are several things that people have brought up
as concerns about kale, especially raw kale oxalis were one,
some people worried that it might be absorbing heavy metals
out of the soil like cadmium or arsenic, because kale
is a crop that tends to sort of attract those metals.
They're just in the soil naturally occurring and more of
(31:03):
them end up in the kale than in other vegetables.
People worried that it might have a negative impact on
thyroid function. So there were a lot of various concerns
expressed about kale. And I think it was kind of inevitable.
Kale was riding so high for so long, like sooner
or later people are going to have to take it down.
So there are a number of charges and I'm not
worried about. Many of them, because they would not be
(31:25):
a factor for anybody who was eating even a marginally
healthy diet and consuming kale and even marginally reasonable quantities. Now,
if you were in a famine ravaged country in Africa
and had no access to proper nutrition and you ate
nothing but kale for two weeks, I could see a
(31:47):
scenario in which that exotic acid could lead to some
mineral deficiencies or something. But I can't see that scenario
happening anywhere here where people have reasonably good diets. They're
not eating their weight in kale every day. We can relax,
we can go ahead and we can eat our kale
cooked irra.
S3 (32:04):
But you know, these
S2 (32:05):
questions that you've been asking me about the kale and
the fish oil and the salary, you know, I field
so many questions
S3 (32:11):
like this.
S2 (32:12):
These are the questions that people have. And I think
that people get tangled up in all of these sort
of minuet details and worried about things that are really
not posing much of a concern. And it kind of
distracts them from the basics, from what they can do
just to make their diets healthier on an ongoing basis,
something that they can be consistent with. And a little
bit earlier in our conversation, you were saying, you know,
(32:34):
look around and see, what about your diet? Could you improve?
And I loved that you said that instead of this
quest to make our diets perfect, the goal is not
to have a perfect diet. It's not necessary. But most
of us have areas where we could improve. And there
are usually a lot less complicated than I really need
to avoid kale, because I think I might be overdoing
it on the oxalis. You know, most of us just
(32:56):
need to concentrate to get five servings of vegetables every day.
Most of us need to concentrate just to make sure
that we are incorporating fish into our menus on a
regular basis, the super basic stuff, and not get so
in the weeds with these details that are ultimately not
that impactful.
S1 (33:14):
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Monica, for taking the time
to talk me through all my burning questions. And I
have more, but our time is up. And so if
I may conclude this and just say to all the listeners,
stay true to yourself, do your own research, feel your body,
talk to your body, feed it well, take excellent care
of yourself and your family. Don't worry too much and
(33:37):
do the best you can every day when you think
you fall off the wagon for one meal, it doesn't
mean the whole day is a waste. Just eat better
the next meal. Choose again. Well, you know, we don't
need to be perfect, but we would all benefit when
we take better care of ourselves, because when you feel good,
you have a ripple effect on everyone that you're meeting
(33:58):
and surrounding yourself with daily. And that is the difference
that you can make in your life.
S2 (34:04):
I love that, Joe. What a what a positive message.
S1 (34:06):
Monica, thank you so much. Everyone that needs more nutrition
information and has more questions for Monica. Please listen to
our own podcast show, the Nutrition Devar podcast. And what
is the other podcast that you're cohosting, MANICKAM?
S2 (34:23):
Yes, well, you know, I am all about right now
helping people translate information into action. You know what we
are talking about at the beginning of the hour or so?
And and so my other podcast is called Change Academy.
And it's really and it's with Brock Armstrong, who was
on your show a couple of months ago. My good
friend Brock and I teamed up to create the Change
Academy to do exactly what we started out today talking about,
(34:43):
like how do we take this information and these things,
these thoughts about what we want to achieve and translate
them into sustainable, positive change in our lives. That's kind
of where the rubber meets the road. That's where I'm
most excited right now and putting all of our energy. So, yeah,
if people are looking for more tools, they can pop
open whatever app they're listening to us on right now
(35:04):
and look for the change academy or the nutrition diva. And,
you know, you said it's so hard to just know
what to focus on and what to start with. And
I thought so much about this. And I a few
years ago, I came up with a little game and
we turned it into an app. It's called the Nutrition GPA.
And basically it just asks you ten question, yes or
(35:24):
no questions about what you ate today and you get
a grade for the day based on your answer to
those ten questions, and then it tracks your nutrition grade
point average over time.
S3 (35:34):
And so for
S2 (35:34):
people who were just like, it's too much, I don't
know what to focus on. I don't know what's most important.
It's like, you know what just answered these 10 questions
every day. And if you can keep your grade in
the B range long term, then you're done. You know,
you're eating a good enough diet. So for those that
just really want to boil it down and get super simple,
they can check that out in the App Store and
(35:56):
see if that makes it a little bit more fun
or a little bit more approachable.
S1 (35:59):
Oh, thanks for that. It's only makes it more simple
and easy, and that's what we need. And and do
you have an Instagram account?
S2 (36:06):
I do. It's called the Nutrition Deba.
S1 (36:09):
Done. I'm already following you and I will continue to
follow you. And I may send you a couple of
emails and call you and text you for more questions.
You bet. Thanks to Monica Renagel for joining us on
the show today. This episode was produced and edited by A.J.,
mostly mastering by Steve Rexburg. I hope you enjoy this
(36:30):
nutrient packed episode as much as I did if you
like this episode. Make sure to subscribe to life done
better on whatever platform you listen to podcasts. Have a
wonderful day, my friends, and I'll see you soon. And.
(36:57):
Kurt Comedia. Media, for your mind.
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