 Modern food innovations that could be destroying your health. Alright number one, plastic in our food. Microplastics are pieces of plastic smaller than five millimeters. Some of them are used in cosmetics or toothpaste, but most result from the floating waste that is constantly exposed to UV radiation and crumbles into smaller and smaller pieces in the ocean or in our lakes and rivers. Fifty trillion such particles float in the ocean where our marine life swallow them. And as you know, you are what the animal you're eating ate. And it turns out that fish, either fresh or salt water, have actual pieces of microplastics contained in their flesh. But that's not the only way plastics have made it into our food. Plastic water bottles and foods wrapped in plastic packaging are also wrecking our health. Here's how. Every time we put something in plastic wrap, it leeches endocrine disruptors into us. Now I've written and spoken a lot about endocrine disruptors, but let's give it another go-around. Endocrine disruptors are endocrine-like substances, estrogen or testosterone, to name two, that are not the actual hormones but act as if they were these hormones. Unlike a hormone like estrogen or testosterone, normally a hormone binds to a receptor in our cells, gives a message, and then leaves after it gives the message. Endocrine disruptors, rather they'll still attach to these receptors, but rather than leaving, they remain attached. Now why that's important is, you can have infinitesimally small amounts of endocrine disruptors that will build up because they never leave the receptor. And what we've learned was that the Environmental Protection Agency was never worried about these compounds because they were in such microscopic amounts until people looked at how these actually work as if they're much more potent. So phthalate exposure, as I've written before, phthalates are in plastic wraps. They're in plastic water bottles. They leach into the water we drink. They leach into the food we eat. There are very good studies showing that pregnant women who eat a lot of chicken give birth to boys with smaller penises. Just saying. We know that these affect the newborn-forming brain. There's a critical time when sexual identity happens, forms in the brain as a fetus. We now know that these endocrine disruptors are part of the changes that we're seeing in kids' brains. We don't want them in us, and we don't want plastic near us. So what's exciting news or even more disappointing news, as I'm talking about in the upcoming book, we now know that microplastics disrupt the gut microbiome and make the gut microbiome more dysbiotic. It allows more bad bacteria and less good bacteria. So bad news all around. It's the same way with sunscreen. It turns out that we absorb everything we put on our skin. Sunscreens, sadly, are loaded with endocrine disruptors. So what can you do to avoid microplastics and other endocrine disruptors? Well, they're nearly impossible to avoid entirely. But there are a few things you can do to greatly reduce your exposure. First things first, ditch plastic water bottles. Either use a glass or stainless steel water bottle. Even ones that say, BPA-free, don't believe it. The replacements for BPA, like BPS, are now known to have these chemical endocrine disruptors. Want something scary? Believe it or not, 93% of adults have detectable BPA in their urine. That's right, you and me, 93% of us, have BPA in our urine. Get yourself a good water filtration system. Even if you think your city water is the best in the world, do yourself a favor. There are affordable reverse osmosis countertop water filtration systems that can sit on your counter. They don't need plumbing hookups. They don't need to go under your sink. Use them very much like you would use a coffee maker and you will get rid of these harmful pollutants. It's not just the water bottles. Please, please, please don't buy foods that come in plastic packaging or any packaging for that matter. Instead look for compostable, reusable material like this straw in my vital reds. Never use plastic in the microwave. Plastic, when it's heated, will give off more of these compounds. Now I like to joke that I like to eat my sunscreen. I actually have more sunscreen, I think, in 20 years now. How do I protect myself? Well, I use vitamin C. I use polyphenols and melatonin containing foods to absorb the UV lights of sunlight. Now, also know which foods contain glyphosate and other pesticides and avoid them. Most of our modern grains have been spread with glyphosate. Whether it's wheat, rye, corn, oats, soybeans, they've all been spread with glyphosate. So just because it says non-GMO doesn't mean that it's been spread with glyphosate. And glyphosate is another disaster. Alright, number two. Food invention that's destroying your health. Convenience foods. Yes, these are typically wrapped in plastic and other harmful packaging. But there's another problem. Almost all pre-packed or convenience foods are devoid of any fiber. In fact, they're actually pre-digested. Now, fun fact, corn flakes came out over 100 years ago. And interestingly enough, the Kellogg's Corn Flake Corporation advertised that corn flakes were the first pre-digested food. Now, what's the big deal about that? It sounds like, well, if something's pre-digested for me, I don't have to do all that work of digesting my food. That's the problem. Normally, when we eat foods whole, whole foods, the sugars, the proteins and the fats in those foods are contained in a very slowly digestible form. And it takes a considerable period of time to break those starches, proteins and fats into correspondingly absorbable sugar molecules, amino acids and fatty acids. And that whole process takes time and energy. What's happened now is that our convenience foods and ultra-processed foods are all pre-digested. So that means if you're having a scoop of protein powder, that's totally different than having a piece of fish. Yes, you might have 20 grams of protein in that fish and you might have 20 grams of protein in that protein powder. But that protein powder will instantly be absorbed and whack into your mitochondria and cause rush hour. Whereas that 20 grams of protein in the fish may trickle into your system over the next two, three, four hours. Totally different. The same thing with simple carbohydrates. You could take a whole grain and it has a lot of carbohydrates but it will be digested slowly and don't think I'm telling you to eat whole grains. But what we've done is we've ground up those whole grains into a fine powder which are instantly absorbed into our body as sugar. And once again, it's rush hour in the mitochondria. Finally, and probably the worst thing, when we used to eat whole foods there was a ton of stuff that we couldn't digest, the fiber. And that fiber was there because it drifted down into our colon where it was available to our microbiome. Now with our ultra-processed foods we have absolutely no fiber for the end users our microbiome to eat and they literally are starving to death. Why is that important? Well, there's a fantastic theory that I like a lot called the gut-centric theory of heart disease. And that is it's actually our microbiome's hunger for the things they need to eat that drives our hunger and there's beautiful experiments that show if we give human volunteers prebiotic fiber and nothing else to eat, they can go on a 14-day water fast without any hunger as long as they get some prebiotic fiber. So think about that. Next up, fruit juice. Speaking of sugar, it doesn't get much worse than fruit juice. Take everyone's favorite orange juice for example. An 8-ounce serving of juice and a Coke both contain about 30 grams of sugar on average. That's almost 8 teaspoons. To put that into perspective, that's more than a Snickers candy bar. And I could probably guess which you'd rather have. Okay, but what about the no added sugar juices? They still contain loads of fructose. When you see no added sugar, what that means to you is there was so much sugar in here already we didn't have to add any more. That's what that sticker means. Well, what if I make my own juice at home? Well, juicing is really one of the worst trends out there. I'll take you on a trip to the LA Zoo, to the San Diego Zoo. We'll look in all the cages. Ever seen a juicer? Of course not. Why would any animal be stupid enough to throw away the most important part of fruit and that's the fiber? Why is the fiber there to feed the gut microbiome? So, if you're going to get a juicer, yeah. Take organic berries, juice it, throw the juice away, take the pulp, then mix it in with some coconut yogurt. Now you're juicing properly. I think you're going to love this one. One of the things that you may have noticed on social media is that vinegars help with weight loss. Well, there's nothing magical and mystical about how this happens.