Mat Lock
So chef, Dr. Mike, welcome to The Unleashing Potential Podcast.
Chef Dr. Mike
Thank you so much for having me, man. I’m delighted to be here. I was out doing a little mountain biking in the mountains of Montana here in the state. So I feel like a little bit of an everyday athlete because parts of me are really sore.
Mat Lock
That’s the telltale sign, isn’t it? That you and I are both everyday athletes very much. So. So has life in Montana at the moment? what’s the what’s the situation with COVID?
Chef Dr. Mike
weren’t actually doing well. So I Montana’s quite a rural area. And when COVID originally came out, and in the States, we shut everything down. Montana did very well. I mean, really was hard to notice much of a difference, honestly, because we’re, we’re, as I said, kind of a rural area. And we had very few cases. And then an interesting phenomenon happened as the states started to open up. Everybody left the states where there was lots of COVID and decided that this summer, they were going to, you know, vacation in rural Montana where they could be isolated. And of course, they ran into everybody cuz they all go to restaurants, they go to grocery stores, they’re filling up their campers. They’re on top of each other at the campsite. And so our cases actually went up tremendously during the summer. But now they’ve come back down and and thankfully, the tourists are on their way. Oh, yeah, sure
Mat Lock
enough, said I guess it’s full at the time of recording for where you I absolutely spring for you guys. Yeah, absolutely certainly isn’t. We were chatting just off mica. It’s that picture perfect spring morning here in jervis. Bay. It started a long weekend. But Dr. Mike, I’m very, very grateful and appreciative of your time. And whilst there are many, many subjects that we could talk about today, we are going to talk about the fallacy of the calorie and why the modern Western diet is killing us. But before we dive into that specific topic, maybe you could share with the viewers if they’re on YouTube or the listener on the podcast, a little about your background, your your training, your history and your passion in life professionally.
Chef Dr. Mike
Okay, sure. So, um, I actually got my start in the kitchen. Before I got my start in medicine. I actually in the states to help pay for college. I started as a dishwasher in a restaurant. Back in the days before there were any celebrity chefs. And it was really the last job he wanted. Because all your friends in college, were going out on a Friday night and Saturday night Sunday course that’s when you had to work in a restaurant industry, because those are the biggest one. And you know, I would finish it at 2am in the morning smelling like dirty dishwater. I’d be Hey guys, I’m ready. I can go out they’d be like Mike, we’re done. Thanks. But no, thanks. I want you to take a shower. We’ll catch you next week. And eventually I worked my way up from dishwasher all the way to what would be we call an executive chef today.
Yeah, well, that’s,
that’s kind of where I got my rest professional restaurant chops as it were. And after finishing college, I went on to medical school and eventually went into the field of Cardiology and specializing in what here in the states we call interventional cardiology and, and that simply means it’s a little bit of extra training. But at 2am when somebody has a heart attack, I’m the guy that call to go in there, open that artery up, put a stent in, I do those kind of emergency, more invasive procedures. Okay, and my love of food, obviously, you know, started even before I was a dishwasher, and and I sort of had a bit of a personal epiphany that set me on this journey to culinary medicine. And that’s as I was working as a cardiologist. I’d had some, not some a lot of joint damage, because not only am I an everyday athlete, I’m an everyday bad athlete. So when I was much younger, I thought it was much better than I was, which led to a lot of torn ligaments and broken bones and the kind of destroyed joints, which you know, when you’re in your youth, you recover really quickly unawares, that they will come back and haunt you as you progress in decades. And I actually went in to see a podiatrist who looked at my feet and asked me how I could even walk. My joints were so bad and told me I needed joint replacement like yesterday. And so I started to look into what were the alternatives to that and I knew my die. It was very suboptimal at the time. Like most everybody, you know, it was a physician crazy hours hectic schedule, long work, you’re tired when you finish, you’re looking for the convenient food, lots of snacks available. You know, where I was at that point of states was the home of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts in the US, you know, and you’d finish at 6am out of the emergency room. And that red light would come on saying hot Krispy Kreme Doughnuts that melt in your mouth, and you get about three of those and a jumbo cup of coffee, and you were ready for the next 12 hours. And that just wasn’t cutting it. And so, you know, I did a personal expert exploration of what the recommendations were and what the data really said about, you know, food and health and inflammation, and changed my approach to food, and kept exploring that because it is a passion of mine, and found that we really were pursuing a lot of myths, and they weren’t working. And I think that’s evidence certainly here in the States. You know, in the half century, since recommendations came out in the 1970s, we’ve only become more obese over here, seen a tremendous epidemic, you know, talk about pandemics, we have one of a type two diabetes, and that sets the stage for neurodegenerative diseases, inflammatory bowel diseases, IBS, certainly heart disease, the number one killer in the United States, it kills one out of every three people in the states and, and it’s a leading cause of death in many other countries as well. And when I developed this coronary medicine program, I started writing some books. And it came to the attention of one of the deans of the College of Health here at the University of Montana, in Missoula, Montana, and we got to talking and, and, you know, now where we are several years later, is a development of really one of the first if not the only, you know, kind of academically vetted courses in the states are looking at culinary medicine. It’s called introduction to color medicine. And we just recently made that available to anyone in the world because it’s now an online course. So it’s the same material I cover with three credits and my graduate level course for students available to anyone. And when we finished the university will give you if you complete successfully, we’ll give you a micro credential or a level one certification and culinary medicine. And, and so that’s kind of how I got to where I am and kind of where we are now.
Mat Lock
Yeah, sure. Yeah, thank you. And obviously, you come and speak about this subject, from me to pretty much the highest level of expertise, let’s say and then credibility. And it’s obviously something you’re very passionate about a in the way you’re talking now. And when we spoke previously, but also that, you know, you’ve you’ve written many, many books, and continue to write books, and your intention is to educate as many people as possible to share the knowledge. And what I find fascinating, as you say, it’s over the last 5070 years, really, if you think about the technological advancements, we as a human race have made, we have so much information available as so much medical science data available to us yet, as you say, as a nation in different countries, as nations, we are getting sicker. We’re less healthy than we were. And certainly, yeah, I mean, food is at the heart of at the heart of our health at the end of the day is so why is it over? You know, it’s trending in the wrong direction, we should be improving as a as a society, as nations in terms of health and fitness and well being. But as you say, not only the physical issues that are trending in the wrong direction, but also, you know, mental as well as not necessarily, not that we’re here to talk about the mental health issues. However, they are also trending in the wrong direction. So I mean, big picture stuff. Why are Why is the modern diet in western countries? Why is it killing us? what’s what’s the issue? I mean, it’s a big question.
Chef Dr. Mike
Well, it is, but you bring up several great points, Matt, and they are related because one of the things that we’re learning and really, I’d say sort of the the very first on earnings of this data came about only a decade ago, and really sort of good insights only within the last five years. It’s it’s incredible connection between the gut and the mind. You know, it’s something that science is now saying actually starts before we’re born. So you can find evidence of the mother’s gut micro biome in the umbilical cord that obviously feeds and nurtures the babies. There’s issues and you know, a the American Heart Association recommends you know, that folks be breasts. fat. Why? Because when you’re 40 and 50, that correlates to significant reduction in cardiovascular events, as well as improved lipid profiles. And so how does that happen? Well, now we’re learning that that actually happens because of what you’re fed. And it sets the gut microbiome and that stamps, help stamp and set the, the foundation stones, the key stones for our immune system. And all the things that we’re talking about have at their root, a common finding of abnormalities of the inflammatory system, sort of a continuous chronic, low level inflammation going on, and we’re not built for that we’re built to be able to turn that on, you know, kind of, from an evolutionary perspective, we’re getting chased by a saber toothed Tiger Man, we want to kick on that response, we want to be able to sprint, climb a tree, you know, and stay there, and then switch it back off. And so instead of turning that light on, when we need it in the room, and then turning it on, what happens is we have a candle that just never goes out, and it’s burning from both ends. And so, you know, that is a, you know, kind of a root cause when we look at all these common conditions. And I wanted to comment on something that you brought up, which is, you know, we look at these last 50 years. And what’s fascinating is, no matter what the recommendations and what the changes have been over that now, more than half a century, there’s not one country, not one in the world that has reversed its obesity climb, once that population started to become obese. So that brings us back to your original question, which is why you know, what is going on. And I think the data is becoming more and more clear. And certainly, it’s what we emphasize in culinary medicine, and look at that database, that it’s a fundamental change to our food and food pathways. And these foods that we have approved. Now in the US, we have over 4000, different food additives, most of which have never been studied. In the US, we have something called grass, which means generally recognized as safe. And that’s a statute that dates back to the 1950s, where the company that makes the additive says, Hey, we think it’s pretty good. And they and our government says, okay, you’re pretty trustworthy, that’s fine. You know, and, and they add it in there. And then if there’s issues, the FDA will then go back and say, Well, you know, maybe saccharin, you know, isn’t the greatest thing to put into your artificial sweetener. And in many cases, even when they do study things, they found that these additives, while they don’t interact with, say, human cells in a laboratory test, they alter our gut microbiome in a very negative way. And these alterations in our gut microbiome, particularly people who are sensitive, create a situation where there’s this that leads to the development of some people call leaky gut, but it’s a chronic, continuous, low grade inflammation. And what we’re also learning is that these bacteria can flip human genes on and off. So they can be protective in certain people. And this is something, again, a new field called nutrigenomics, which looks at
things that are contained in the foods we eat. And based on our own individual genetics can either turn something on that’s very protective, or potentially turn something on, that’s not protective, or, in the in the other case, turn something that’s protective off. So that’s, that’s sort of nutrigenomics. And in a broader sense, epigenetics, how our environment, just how we exist within our environment, it’s not a static thing. It’s a dynamic, it’s a relationship. And so it’s constantly turning things on and off. And so when we look at the development, you know, the increase of these, what I call disabilities and diseases of the modern civilization, which are our chronic diseases, diabetes, heart disease, etc, things we mentioned, they always seem to correlate with a shift into, and I hate to say this, but this is it’s really sort of a US export, which is highly processed ultra processed foodstuffs. And to give you a great example, we can look at Brazil. Not too long ago, folks in Brazil ate a pretty much traditional diet to that area. And they had very low rates of obesity, diabetes, etc. Then, since it was an emerging country, they started to generate money with that brought in an export from the US, big food, big snack, big soda, and the diet of the average Brazilian start change. And all of a sudden they started say, what happens in the states obesity, diabetes, heart disease, but some very smart professors at the University of Brazil said, well wait a second. Let’s look at what’s going on. And let’s actually do something Hard studies looking at food not in terms of calories? Or is it animals at plan? Or, you know, is it percent saturated fat or international units of vitamin A, but let’s simply look at it in terms of is it you know, raw, minimally processed, or ultra processed and a couple of categories in between. And what they found is that the more ultra processed food you eat, you can superimpose that disease curve right on it. And that’s been replicated around the world and other places as well. And they actually developed a classification that’s now in use many places, not here in the States, unfortunately, for a number of reasons, called the Nova classification, which classifies level four as these ultra processed foods you want to really avoid. And so when we look at different food cultures, whether historic, the Mediterranean diet, you probably heard of that one diet, Japanese diet, the French paradox, the Inuit paradox where they don’t eat any plants, because, you know, they live where it’s really cold, like 11 months out of the year, and then one month, they get some berries and dried tundra. But But again, healthier than in the States, what we find is that it’s just a lack of these ultra processed foods, and the consumption of really natural foodstuffs. And if we take a step back, you know, over millions of years, that’s what our bodies have evolved to metabolize, and maybe more importantly, what this gut microbiome is, particularly a collection of bacteria has evolved to co metabolize with us. And so, you know, I think that, that that’s where we’re finding, and that’s what the perspective shift that we try to impart when we talk about culinary medicine.
Mat Lock
Yeah, sure. Thank you. It’s fascinating, and appreciate. I’m interested as well as when you were talking about Brazil. It made me think about The China Study. And I have no, there’s no agenda from my side to make this a discussion about plant based or not, not at all. What’s interesting, if you think about The China Study, which I guess predated the studies done in Brazil, it sounds like, but it’s still relatively modern, and recent studies. Even though they weren’t looking, they weren’t really focusing on the subject of processed or not, or the level of processed food. The Certainly, the realities in China has been the same in terms of, you know, this huge sort of relative explosions of, let’s say that the modern lifestyle based diseases popping up in you know, Beijing, Shanghai, and so on. So that’s fascinating. But I guess even though they the focus of The China Study was more plant based or not, and the impact of animal proteins on the human body, yet the outcome, in terms of the level of sickness and disability is somehow the same. But of course, by the same thing, as you say, I mean, you said it not me, but you know, the US export of it, you know, it makes me always used to make me sad. I traveled there extensively through work and it always made me sad to go to some of those countries in Asia particularly, that’s where I was based in proceed with McDonald’s diet, not to name a shame. It is true, it was Mac is predominantly a KFC and all of those great American exports. And they were just packed. Absolutely. They were business was booming. And it was made me a bit sad if I’m honest, because one of the joys for me when I was there was eating the local cuisine, which was spectacular.
Chef Dr. Mike
And it wasn’t. It was and and I’ll share with you a personal story. I was actually in Japan, I’ve done martial arts for many years, which is a Japanese based style. And I was in Japan, actually, when the first McDonald’s opened in Tokyo. And as you said, the line was like out the door. And as far as the eye could see, what I noticed at that time was the complexion of the skin of the people. There Wait, you know, the young people were very healthy. And over the years as I’ve gone back, and as you said, Now, KFC is there, the McDonald’s are packed, it’s, it’s all these kind of us types of exports, is you see the kids are overweight. They look like kids in the US in terms of their, you know, acne breakouts and things like that. And so, that’s not a scientific study, just a personal anecdote. But But, you know, I’m with you there. I think, you know, any observation is a valid observation. And to me, it perfectly correlates with, you know, the rise in the preponderance of, you know, that type of, you know, food culture.
Mat Lock
Yeah, absolutely. Coupled with a more sedentary lifestyle, typically with the advent of technology and online gaming and the internet and all of those things, for sure, but in particular, I’m interested. I think one of the if I think about our audience, and they’re no more unique in this sense than anyone else, in terms of, I think part of the issue is, we are constantly bombarded with the latest studies, the latest philosophies, the latest ideas, and certainly when it comes to diet, you know, there are so many fad diets that pop up. And people jump on the bandwagon and and then they kind of somehow they quietly disappear, and the next ad pops up. And there are some there’s some major marketing juggernauts out there. If you think about some of the big agriculture industries, globally, I mean, that’s big money, big money. And I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I understand business. And at the end of the day, those industries, that they’re simply protecting their investment, they’re protecting their own business, by creating, I guess, confusion in the marketplace. We saw it with cigarettes, didn’t we, you know, the tobacco companies were spent a lot of money running campaigns to create confusion. And the same is true around the subject of diet. I mean, that certainly, obviously, something you’re aware and familiar with, but it’s how we combat that, I guess it’s by trying to break it down and make it simple and digestible, if you’ve excuse the pun, for the for the layperson, so that they can make informed decisions, but I don’t know how we do that. I’m interested, how you try and go about that.
Chef Dr. Mike
Well, that and that’s a great point that you made. And so I look at it kind of in, you know, a couple of, as you said, you know, bite sized pieces. So the first is, you know, um, you know, and you I talked about this, the word diet, so people go on, you’re talking about, well, I need, I need a new diet. And, and most of the time, unfortunately, they’re just referring to weight loss as in to that diet, the verb, when the original meaning of the word, which comes from the Greek diet, means a way of life, you know, a lifestyle. So I first tried to address, you know, why are we doing this diet change, is it, you know, because you need to lose weight. And if somebody says, you know, I’ve got to, I want to feel better, I need to lose, you know, 10, or 15 pounds, whatever it is. And, you know, what the studies really suggest is, it doesn’t matter what approach you take, whatever kind of fit your lifestyle, a lot of those will involve some form of caloric restriction, you want to increase your activity, you know, all these sorts of things, you know, about 95% of that will help you lose that weight in the short term. The problem then becomes, what do I do when I, you know, I don’t want to keep ordering these meals that are delivered to my door, you know, for the rest of my life, they’re incredibly expensive. So once you get to that milestone, then you know what you need to do. And I think that’s where, you know, we tried to apply the principles of culinary medicine. And there’s one of two things that we can do now, if you’ve been on a weight loss approach, but you’re eating natural foods and, and making you know, things from scratch. So I’ve had a lot of patients come to me, and not really even looking for weight loss. They just practice what I do. And over the course of a year, they come back and Yo, Chef, Dr. Mike, I’ve lost 20 pounds in a year. I didn’t suffer, this is great. And I said, Okay, now let’s kind of keep doing what we’re doing. For somebody who’s maybe been on a program for whatever reason, or they’re coming into it. You know, being someone who indulges in that modern Western diet, we may need to do a couple of things to actually break the cycle of addiction, as you appropriately and very astutely recognized, the producers of the modern Western diet have a vested interest in you can continue to buy their product, right? It’s not the old days when you know, if you bought something that wasn’t good from a local farmer, and it’s your neighbor, and and they give you a bad product, well, you’re going to bad mouth them all about town, they’re not going to sell anymore. You guys aren’t going to be friends, it’s bad for their business. The modern Western diet and this is comes from a lot of this data actually comes from a former head of the FDA in the US called David Kessler. He’s a physician. And he wrote a book the end of overeating in America. And in that book, which is an incredible source of data, but like a lot of books written by physicians, hopefully not like mine. And you know, I love this stuff. Boy, was it dry to get through I mean, it was just sort of study after study after study. But you know, distilling that out, what people have to realize is this. These food altered and ultra processed foods are actually crafted to create addiction. So they look at things that are called bliss points. And again, because of the way we’ve evolved as human beings, we are hardwired to respond with a positive secretion of dopamine which gives our brain reward and we feel really good because activities that help our survival when we release dopamine, it makes us feel good, then those are our activities and actions that tend to be repeated. So those are positively reinforced with nature’s modern when we work, you know running from a saber toothed tiger and you know you pick up a you know, Apple on the ground and you just finished the apple saber toothed Tiger comes along. Matt has a bolt bunch of sugar in his body. He’s feeling good. He you know, leaves Mike 50 yards in the distance. Well, Mike didn’t have an apple. Now there’s no more Mike and and that sugar loving gene of Matt.
Well, you know, that was a survival advantage. And so over eons, sugar, salt and fat, because remember, our ancestors were not vegetarians. They were omnivores. And like all omnivores, they have, they must seek out salt. So and some scientists actually believe that that sick craving for salt is the sort of original sin, the original source of all addictive human behavior. And so sugar, salt, and fat are hardwired to give us a positive, dopamine feel good. I love this kind of response. And so when foods are crafted, there’s a combination of sugar, salt, and fat put in there that maximizes our pleasure. And that’s called a bliss point. And so these are engineered and non ways you would think so, for example, if somebody likes a crisp, right, so that’ll have a little bit more salt than sweet. I in breads, and in the US, until very recently, the hamburger bonds actually contained a tremendous amount of sugar, not because they were sweet, but because they were hitting that, that that sweet spot in our brain.
Mat Lock
And then lastly, what was that, and they last longer, as well. Yeah. For longer,
Chef Dr. Mike
yeah, but then the only thing on the planet that will pop up, possibly Outlast Keith Richards. So so so these constructed, so sometimes we have to get in there break that cycle of addiction. And to me, it’s a lot, as you mentioned, like trying to break somebody from a tobacco addiction. So we want to get them out of environments, where they were that smoking, or in this case that that sort of food consumption was reinforced. And then really, I tried to approach it by introducing spices and herbs into the diet, and building flavor profiles. So if you like something that maybe comes from the Mediterranean, you might like basil and time, and you know, those sorts of labor. If you really like Asian things, you might prefer a kind of a Chinese five spice or, or soy based, you know, kind of flavor. And so we tried it to break that cycle of addiction. And then once we can kind of get them off that then we again introduced for lifestyle, that culinary medicine approach and, and really culinary medicine in a nutshell is giving people the tools, which knowledge is included in the skills to empower them to re establish reconnect, to rebuild a healthy relationship with food. Because people when they’re suffering from addiction, that’s not a healthy relationship, no matter whether it’s food or you know, other substances, or even people.
Mat Lock
Yeah, absolutely. So the so that your coronary medicine program is for nutritionists and dietitians or it’s actually for the layperson as well. I mean, is it something that it?
Chef Dr. Mike
Yeah, so it’s, um, in terms of sort of usefulness to help others right away. You know, it’s built so physicians and nurse practitioners and anyone in the healthcare field can learn that and then communicate it to patients. It’s also built for anyone in the culinary industry, understand about how they’re sourcing their food, and make their food and their food products, now better for their, you know, customers or their clients. And it’s also built for the lay public because there’s you don’t have to have any kind of medical training to take this introduction course. You don’t have to have any kind of culinary background to take this course if you just kind of want to Learn it for yourself. So our students have been everywhere from physicians, to chefs, and to every Lake, every kind of life person in between. And, again, it just to kind of give those folks who aren’t going to go out and incorporate it into a medical practice or into their restaurant menu, the scale so that they can employ and practice that at home as a lifestyle.
