 regardless of your calorie intake, the fats that you consume are still gonna become a part of you. And they influence characteristics of your brain like membrane fluidity, which is a really important characteristic of your brain cell membranes. It allows them to be sensitive to the messages contained by neurotransmitters, for example. Now, it is true that the consumption of these fats hasn't shown in the clinical literature an acute inflammatory effect. So it's not like you consume these fats and then you're gonna see inflammation, right? And as I mentioned, the amount of trans fats contained by these oils, it's a small absolute percentage. It's about 5% trans fats. But at the quantity that your average American is now consuming these oils, it actually, it all adds up at the end of the day. So while you might not see in a clinical trial and in the literature an acute inflammatory effect, you're still fueling your body's inflammatory pathways. Hey, real quick, I'm gonna give away the MAPS Power Bundle to one of you viewers right now. So the Power Bundle includes MAPS Strong. This is a strongly inspired workout. And MAPS Power Lift, that's a power lifting workout program. Both programs about three months long. So if you're doing back to back, it's like half a year of exercise programming. So I'm gonna give that away for free to one of you viewers, here's what you gotta do. Leave a comment the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Subscribe to this channel and turn on your notifications. If we like your comment, we'll notify you and you'll get free access. Now everybody else, that Power Bundle is actually on sale. Okay, so retail's at 300 bucks. Right now you can buy both programs with the Power Bundle for $79.99. So if you don't win it for free, you can still sign up. Head over to mapsmarch.com to learn more or just to sign up. Here comes the rest of the show. All right Max, so canola oil, is it really that bad for your heart, your brain and your body? Well, canola oil is a grain and seed oil. It originates from the rape seed. It was actually initially called the rape seed oil until they found a way to minimize with genetic modification the constituent of canola oil, urusic acid, which is actually toxic. And so now it's actually been called, it's been renamed canola oil, which stands for Canadian low acid, sort of a hybrid of the two. Oh, interesting, I had no idea. Yeah, yeah. And so now it's- I thought there was a canola plant. There's no canola plant. No, it's primarily sourced in Canada. And of the grain and seed oils, it's actually not as terrible I would say as corn and soybean oil because it has a higher proportion of oleic acid or monounsaturated fat, but it still has a relatively high proportion when compared to fruit oils like olive oil and avocado oil of linoleic acid, which is an omega-6 fatty acid. It's a polyunsaturated fat, therefore it's very prone to oxidation. And all grain and seed oils undergo intensive processing. And one of the steps that is part of that processing chain is called deodorization. It's basically the food industries equivalent of the witness protection program where they take these fats from foods that at first glance wouldn't appear to be fatty foods, right? Like an ear of corn is not something that anybody would describe as a fatty food. Soy beans are not fatty, right? But they use very intensive processing, sometimes using a neurotoxin called hexane, other times not, to extract this oil which typically comes with very bitter flavors and noxious volatile organic compounds. And they put these oils through the ringer and one of the steps is called deodorization, which makes these oils bland, gives them a very endows them with a very high smoke point and allows manufacturers to use them in innumerable ultra-processed foods, right? It's the same reason it's why manufacturers use them to roast nuts in, they squeeze them into commercial cereals. They, you can use them in restaurants and salad dressings in spreads, right? The issue is that that step creates a small but significant amount of trans fats. And we know that there's no safe level of trans fat consumption. About 10 years ago, the FDA banned trans fats in their most common appearance, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, but we can still find them in the food supply in the form of these grain and seed oils. And canola oil is an example of one of these types of fats that because of the preponderance of polyunsaturated fat contains man-made trans fats, which we know are poisonous to our cardiovascular system, as well as our brain. Wow, that's okay. So, okay, so this is, I have so many questions now. Why are we using such a heavy process to get these foods to be able to be consumed and used in products? The deodorization process sounds like we're trying to make it so it doesn't taste like anything, so we could throw it in foods and increase palatability or whatever. Why do we use them so much? Are they just super inexpensive because they're subsidized? Yeah, very, very high margin products. These are typically, most of the grain and seed oils that are on the market, it's because of the profit margins, right? And many were actually waste, they were the byproducts of other food-making processes. For example, grape seed oil is a byproduct of winemaking. They used to throw grape seeds away until one industrious wine manufacturer realized that you could squeeze these seeds, extract this oil, which again, very bitter, run the oil through a number of different industrial processes and wind up with this extremely cheap product, which is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually, the sale of grape seed oil. And the same thing with canola oil. Now, these oils are, they're also heavily marketed and the woke nutritional orthodoxy loves them because they do lower LDL cholesterol, right? So that's actually why they continue to be promoted as quote unquote, heart healthy fats. Wait, so if you consume, if you replace other fats with these fats that we're talking about, we will see a lowering of LDL. Isn't that supposed to be a good thing? Technically, yeah, it is supposed to be a good thing. So when looking at cardiovascular risk factors, LDL and now in particular, APOB, which is a protein that wraps itself around the LDL lipoprotein and other lipoproteins in circulation is thought to be an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. But despite the fact that it lowers LDL when compared to saturated fats and certain saturated fats to be specific because a fat isn't a fat. Not all saturated fats are created equal. Some saturated fats like steric acid are actually neutral from the standpoint of your LDL particles. Others can actually cause an elevation like meristic acid, polymitic acid. So in comparison to those fats, yes, polyunsaturated fat dominant oils like canola oil, grapeseed oil will lower your LDL cholesterol, but at a cost. These polyunsaturated fats, as I mentioned, the oils that are rich in them have trans fats, which we know are not friendly to your cardiovascular system. They're not friendly to your brain. Higher consumption of trans fats is associated with higher risk for developing Alzheimer's disease and worse memory function, even in the young and healthy. They're also prone to oxidation, which is sort of like a chemical disfigurement. Studies have shown that commercially available grain and seed oils already have a significant degree. They've already undergone a significant degree of oxidation and a damaged fat damages you. These fats also integrate themselves into your body. You are what you eat, right? And this is especially true for the kinds of fats that we consume. We know that adipose tissue concentration, so our fat cells, the concentration of linoleic acid, which is the type of omega-6 fatty acid found primarily in these grain and seed oils in our fat tissue, has increased over two-fold over the past 50 years alone. So we're carrying these highly damage-prone fats around with us in our adipose tissue. They get charted around our body by these LDL lipoproteins. They're prone to oxidation. They help convert our LDL lipoproteins to a more inflammatory phenotype. They're more likely to get taken up by immune cells which can initiate atherosclerosis. So when you have an LDL particle that's tugging along these potentially pro-inflammatory fats, the immune system sees them as being toxic, right? So there was a study, I believe it was published in 1999 that found that compared to oleic acid, which is the primary fat contained in extra virgin olive oil and avocado oil, it basically makes your LDL lipoproteins toxic. So you're gonna have lower LDL. But worse LDL. Yeah, yeah. Well, so you said earlier there's a two-fold increase in these inflammatory fats in our own body fat. So not only are we fatter, but the type of body fat that we're storing now is changing. Changing. Oh, interesting. I had no idea, making it much more inflammatory. And something just popped up for me as you're talking about this, something that might make this even more dangerous is that you may be blissfully, I don't know, either unaware or even kind of coddled a little bit by your lipid number. So your doctor does a blood test. It was, oh, your LDL went down. Like, oh, my health is much better. Not knowing that although the number went down, the type of LDL you have now because of these fats is more inflammatory and worse for you. So kind of gives you this like, this double, this issue where you feel like you're doing better, you don't change anything and you're going down the wrong path. Now, how much of this conversation changes in the context of a calorie surplus versus a calorie deficit? Because I know right away that's the thing that there's, there's the other side of the fitness space that we'll hear this, oh, Max is an alarmist and oils aren't that bad for you. And if you're in a calorie deficit, you're fine. So in the context of a calorie deficit and a surplus, how much does this conversation change? Well, I mean, it doesn't change the fact that you are the fats that you eat. I mean, fats are not like glucose, dietary sugars, for example. Dietary sugars actually, you burn them off, you store them in your muscle tissue, in your livers. If you don't burn the glucose that you're consuming or whatever the source of dietary sugars that you're consuming right away, they get siloed for later, right? But the fats you consume actually integrate themselves into, as I mentioned, your lipoproteins, your adipose tissue, and also your brain. Your brain requires polyunsaturated fats. The omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids are essential. And so regardless of your calorie intake, the fats that you consume are still gonna become a part of you and they influence characteristics of your brain like membrane fluidity, which is a really important characteristic of your brain cell, membranes that allows them to be sensitive to the messages contained by neurotransmitters, for example. Now, it is true that the consumption of these fats hasn't shown in the clinical literature an acute inflammatory effect. So it's not like you consume these fats and then you're gonna see inflammation, right? And as I mentioned, the amount of trans fats contained by these oils, it's a small absolute percentage. It's about 5% trans fats. But at the quantity that your average American is now consuming these oils, it actually, it all adds up at the end of the day. So while you might not see like in a clinical trial in the literature, an acute inflammatory effect, you're still fueling your body's inflammatory pathways. And the other thing is that the enzymes that we have in our bodies that convert, we know that people in the, that consume the standard American diet under-consume omega-3 fats, right? Like icosapentaenoic acid or EPA or dacosahexanoic acid or DHA. We know that people under-consume those fats. Omega-3 fats and omega-6 fats compete for the same enzymes in the body, right? They're called fatty acid desaturates enzymes. So when you consume plant-based forms of omega-3s like alpha-linoleic acid and linoleic acid, they compete for the same enzymes which form, which convert them to the biologically active forms in the body. By over-consuming linoleic acid, you're basically disallowing your body to generate any usable EPA and DHA fat from the plant-based omega-3s that you're consuming. You're the first person to actually confirm that I brought it up on our show a long time ago and you're probably way more red than I am on this. And I thought I read that somewhere that if we, even if we take an omega-3 pill, if you are over-consuming the sixes and nines, they out-compete the three. So you don't even really get the benefits of the threes because the American diet is so high in the six and nines. And this has to do with the plant-based omega-3s or does this also have to do with the, like let's say if I take omega-3s from fish because those don't need to be converted like the plant ones. Correct, those don't need to be converted. Right, with the plant-based form of omega-3s, alpha-linoleic acid, you require those enzymes. I mean, this is another argument for omnivory, right? Because when you consume preformed omega-3s from fish or grass-fed beef, for example, they're already in their plug-and-play format. Got it. But still, alpha-linoleic acid is still considered an essential fat. And we vary in our, people vary individually in their ability to convert them to the usable form. But that ability gets even more constrained when we over-consume these omega-6 fats. So that's just like adding fuel to the fire. It's like one more issue. Now, to kind of talk a little bit about the over-consumption versus the calories aspect. Now, it is true that if you look at chronic disease like Alzheimer's Dementia, heart disease, diabetes, that obesity plays a large role. I think the data will show that a majority of people with any of those chronic issues also is obese. However, here's something that a lot of people don't talk about or realize. There's a significant minority percentage of people who are not obese who have those issues. So you'll see like 15, 20% of people who die of heart attack are not obese. Or 15 to 20% of people with dementia or Alzheimer's are not obese. So although the over-consumption of calories, I think makes everything worse. And even less calories makes everything better. I don't think it solves everything. And I know with sugar, it makes a much bigger difference. With fats, it seems to make less of a difference. For example, if you eat low calories, but you have a lot of trans fats in your diets, probably better than if you ate a lot of calories with trans fats, but still not great. You're still gonna see lots of these issues. Yeah, I mean, being in a calorie deficit protects you in many ways. It's a sort of hormetic stress to your body that does make your body more resilient. But you're absolutely right. Today, about two thirds of adults in the United States are either overweight or obese. But nine in 10 adults have some component of the metabolic syndrome. So they're not obese people. They're not obese people. Yeah, about 20% of normal weight people are quote unquote, metabolically obese. Wow, wow. So, and I wanna bring that up because, and we talk about this on the show that calories are very important. And we do talk about this, so that people understand kind of the, you know. Hierarchy. Yeah, the hierarchy of importance, I guess. Only because as trainers and coaches, we found that when you present average people with like tons of information, they're like, oh, I don't know what to do. And so it's like, okay, do this first. See if this, you know, start with this and then we'll move to the next step and so on. But it is important to identify how some foods, regardless of color it can take are damaging. So you could, and this is important because like, I have a friend who lost his dad who at like 50 something of heart attack, blood lipids look okay. He was, you know, normal body weight. And so he was kind of like blissfully unaware that he had any potential issues, died of a heart attack, right? His dad, his grandfather died the same thing. So it's kind of like silent in that case because you don't appear to be unhealthy. Well, couldn't this be happening too? Like let's say, I mean, I'm an example of this, right? So I manage my body weight, even if my body fat percentage goes up a little bit, it always stays in a healthy range. But I definitely have times where maybe a few weeks in a row where I'm eating probably in a surplus, is it, you know, more detrimental even for someone like me who considers himself quote unquote healthy that during those times of a surplus I'm eating oils like that versus if, you know, cause so, and I think that's where some of this research comes from where you see these people that are like, oh yeah, they're not obese or way over weight. But I'm assuming, right, I'm assuming that all it takes is to be in a surplus for that week and then also be consuming these oils that are not ideal for that. Could that be why that is? Why that percentage is still affecting those people? Yeah, I mean, I think it's like, I think it's the dose makes the poison. It's another case, and there are many cases where the dose makes the poison and that's certainly true for these, but it's also monounsaturated fat lowers LDL just as much as polyunsaturated fat, but there's no risk of the consumption of oxidized fats because monounsaturated fats are just a little bit more saturated than polyunsaturated fats. And the other thing that's perplexing and honestly a bit hypocritical is that the Western medicine literature seems to love the Mediterranean dietary pattern. We're obsessed with the Mediterranean diet and within the medical and nutritional orthodoxy. And yet when you actually go to the Mediterranean region of the world, nobody's using canola oil. Nobody's using grapeseed oil, corn oil or soybean oil. They've oversimplified, haven't they? They say, oh, it's these types of fats and it's like, they don't, I know, my family's Mediterranean, we're from Sicily. And there you go. They don't use those fats. You know what else is really perplexing is that when you think about processed meats, right? Mortadella, prosciutto, these originate in the Mediterranean region of the world. And we love to say how great the Mediterranean diet is with regard to cardiovascular risk, with regard to neurodegenerative risk, right? How bad processed meats are, but these processed meats originate in the Mediterranean region of the world. And so how do we reconcile all that? Yeah, you know why? Because I'll tell you what, you go to a butcher in Sicily who makes these processed meats traditionally. It is not made like the ones you find here at the grocery store. And what this tends to point to, and I'm gonna, this is gonna be a bit oversimplification. I think it's more complicated than this, but the further away we get from nature, okay? And I know some people are cringing right now, but you know, hear me out. The more that is required to make something edible through modern science and processing, generally speaking tends to make it not so healthy. Like you said, you get a stalk of corn, where's the fat? Where's the fat? I can't squeeze a stalk of corn and have oil come out of it. It doesn't work, I'll get water, it'll come out. Now I can go grab an olive and I can squeeze it and oil comes out. I can grab an avocado and that thing is oily as hell. There's the fat right there. So it's, you know, all these fats that you're talking about, Max, it's like if modern science didn't exist, we wouldn't be consuming them and they're so far away from the foods that we've evolved eating. It just like, where would you find rapeseed oil? You know, a thousand years ago, you wouldn't. You wouldn't be able to consume enough rapeseeds to get the amount of oil that we get. And then the other thing is that if you look, and again, this points to our consumption of processed foods, heavily processed foods, the ones that you find in boxes and wrappers and the foods that have long shelf lives, look at the fats that are used in those. They're almost all using these types of fats. And I think it has to do with the margins that you talked about. It would be expensive, because one of the poles of processed food is how inexpensive they are. If you made processed foods with olive oil and avocado oil and natural oils, they would be much more expensive. And I don't think you would have nearly as big of a market. And I think that's probably, is that where we get most of this consumption from processed foods? Yeah, yeah. And so it's true that when you become more cognizant of where these oils are and where they exist in your diet, and then you cut those foods out, there is sort of a healthy user bias. You will start consuming less ultra processed foods because that is where they tend to hide, right? And so people will see their health improve because they're just cutting out or they're at least minimizing their consumption of these ultra processed foods, which we know are at the foundation of the obesity epidemic. But there's no good reason to consume grain and seed oils like canola oil, corn oil, and soybean oil, especially when compared to extra virgin olive oil, which is the staple oil in the Mediterranean dietary pattern. Adherence to which is associated with robust risk reduction for cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease. And we see, I mean, in the hierarchy of evidence, there are so many different, there's so many studies and there are so many different types of studies showing us that extra virgin olive oil is the most valuable fat that we can consume. It's almost like medicine for the body and brain. It's loaded with healthy fats. It's predominantly mono and saturated fat, which is very chemically stable. And then about 15% of extra virgin olive oil is saturated fat, which is the most chemically stable form of dietary fat. It's got polyphenols in it like oleocanthal, which has been shown to be as anti-inflammatory as low dose ibuprofen, which is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, but it doesn't possess any of the risk for side effects. We see there was a seminal study in the field of nutrition. Nutrition doesn't have a lot of large population, long-term randomized control trials, right? But the PREDIMED study was an example of one of these studies was a multicenter trial where they gave families a leader of extra virgin olive oil to consume a week, right? So a leader of extra virgin olive oil to consume every week, they found robust improvements in their cardiometabolic risk factors, their cognitive function, their waist size, a high fat Mediterranean diet with supplemental extra virgin olive oil. Yeah, can I just say something about this? So again, my family's from the Mediterranean and I remember when I went there as a kid, the percentage of people that smoked was insane. People smoke like crazy in these European countries and yet they live longer than us. Just goes to show you how much of an impact eating this way has on your health because it counters. If you look at the percentage of people that smoke in Sicily versus or Greece, versus in the US, you'll see it's a higher percentage and yet they live longer than we do. And I'm not saying smoking's a good thing. I'm saying just how powerful these dietary interventions are that they can counter something as toxic for you as smoking to the extent where they live longer than we do. And they do use a ton of olive oil. You said a leader and I know you kind of laughed a little bit, I tell you what, man, you go to my mom's house or my grandma's house and it's like a jug of water. Like the amount of olive oil that they, olive oil is used for everything, everything. And if they use anything else, it's lard or butter but it's almost always olive oil for everything. You can't, there isn't a single dish that we make or if we add any type of fat, it's always olive oil. And they use almost none of those other processed oil. Now, besides the price, what else is it that drives the consumer in that direction? Isn't it also like the temperature that you can cook like canola oil and the types of foods that they're making? Cause obviously that you wouldn't fry in olive oil. You would fry in canola oil. I think olive oil might even be more stable than some of those other oils, if I'm not mistaken. It is, yeah. I mean, oils vary in terms of their smoke point but smoke point and the temperature at which point an oil becomes potentially rancid and carcinogenic are unrelated. So a smoke point of an oil is essentially determined by the solids that remain in the oil. For example, butter is very chemically stable because it's predominantly saturated fat. So it would have a high smoke point and it's got a very high temperature. It can withstand very high heat. However, it's got a low smoke point because butter has trace casein and lactose in it. Ghee on the other hand is clarified butter. So it's had those milk solids skimmed off and therefore the smoke point of ghee is actually quite high. But that temperature is more of a, like smoke point is more of a culinary concern. It can affect the taste, but it has nothing, it has little to no bearing on the health quality, the healthiness of that oil. Neither did I. Yeah, I thought it did. Interesting. So what are the best or I guess worst oils to cook at high temperatures with than besides the smoke point, right? Yeah, well, you definitely don't want to use the green and seed oils. They do boast very high smoke points because they've been so highly processed. So you can fry in them, they're not gonna smoke, they're not gonna change the flavor, but you're creating some pretty unhealthy fats. In fact, I think that the primary place to really try to, when you eat out in a restaurant, there's gonna be some degree of green and seed oil consumption that's just inevitable. And I wouldn't worry about that, right? I partake in the modern world. I eat in restaurants. There's no doubt that I'm consuming some quantity of these green and seed oils, but I try my best to avoid fried foods because these oils are used in restaurant fryers and they're not changed between dishes, the oils, right? They're changed sometimes like a handful of times on a weekly basis. It's gonna get worse and worse and worse. Worse and worse and worse and worse. So aside from the oxidation, oxidative byproducts are created like certain aldehydes, which are poisonous to your mitochondria, which are the energy generating organelles of your cells. They are potentially mutagenic. They become carcinogenic to some degree. So I would absolutely avoid fried foods, but that's just a testament to, yeah, they're not smoking, but these oils are still generating invisible compounds that are not good for your health. Holy cow. I had no idea. I thought the smoke point was the same thing. Yeah, so extra virgin olive oil, for example, it might have a lower smoke point, but it's very chemically stable. It's chemically stable because of the preponderance of monoinsaturated fat, which is, again, very chemically stable, and then about 15% of it is saturated fat. And on top of that, it's so rich in antioxidants, plant-based compounds that literally protect the oil, that you could heat it to a very high temperature. It's just that it'll change the flavor profile of it, and it's got a lower smoke point than, say, avocado oil, which is just a bit more pure. And I do want to comment on the, back to the margins of some of these oils. We decided a long time ago as a country that corn was a staple crop, and we subsidized the hell out of it. And just an example, we destroyed the sugar market in Hawaii. So Hawaii grew sugarcane and provided much of the U.S. with sugar, and because we subsidized corn, so that means that our tax dollars go to making corn cheaper to keep the price down, because we, again, we somehow established this as a staple crop, that high-fructose corn syrup became much cheaper than sugar and destroyed the sugar market in Hawaii. And if you get, now, if you get sodas or candies or whatever, if you read the back, the sugar they use, high-fructose corn syrup, because corn is so cheap. Corn oil is cheap because of this subsidization, which makes the profit margins much higher, right? We make fuel out of corn, which is weird. We take a food and turn it into gasoline. How could this possibly be profitable? Why would this even make sense? We're growing, we're using up space to grow food and then going through a process turning, it's all because it's subsidized. So a lot of our policies have actually made our diets worse because we've made these foods artificially less expensive. And so food manufacturing, and us as consumers can't taste the difference, although I'll say I could taste the difference between sugar and high-fructose corn syrup and soda, but a lot of people can't and don't really care. And so we get it, we consume them and that's part of the problem. So I think a lot of it has to do with that, because if we didn't subsidize corn, I wonder if we would go back to some of these other types of foods because then the margins wouldn't be so incredible. Yeah, I mean the margins are massive and high-fructose corn syrup is just like in everything. High-fructose corn syrup, it's not too dissimilar from just regular old table sugar. It's about 55% fructose, 45% glucose. I think there's a lot of fear surrounding high-fructose corn syrup, like it's the devil. It really is, I mean biochemically, it's not all that different from just sucrose, regular old table sugar. The problem with I think sugar in the standard American diet, added sugar in particular, is that it's just everywhere. It has this insidious effect, right? It's in our sauces, it's in commercial bread products. To make bread, all you need are four ingredients, water, flour, yeast, maybe some salt, right? But today you can look at any commercial bread product in the bread aisle of your local supermarket. They'll have added grain and seed oils, they'll have added high-fructose corn syrup, various preservatives. So the food supply is just mutated. And I really think that we've lost a sense of awareness about what it is that we're doing. We have, and that's gonna take me to this book that you wrote, Genius Kitchen. And I wanna, first off, I appreciate everything you write. The stuff that you write is always phenomenal. I recommend it heavily to our audience. I think you're one of the best people in the space that talks in a way that is easy to understand and apply for the average person with big dividends. Like in other words, if you follow Max's advice, you're gonna see big dividends in improvements in your health. But here's why I'm excited about this particular book. Our markets are driven by consumers, okay? And the reason why we have added sugars and a lot of these fats and salts. And by the way, sugar's fats and salts aren't necessarily bad, but you combine them in particular ways. And what they do is they make foods very palatable. And palatability, right? The enjoyment, how enjoyable food is to eat is what drives the market. If you look at any food category, especially processed food category, you'll find the number, the top 10 sellers, are the ones that taste the best. And it's this combination of fats, sugar, salts, chemicals, colors, and there's a lot of stuff that goes into palatability. But these engineered combinations make food hyper palatable. And so it's really hard to compete with when you're talking about eating natural whole foods, for example. So here's why I'm excited about this book. Because what you did is you put, and I look through this and the recipes look phenomenal. And I've visited you many times down in your home in LA and we've eaten together and Max is an incredible cook. What you're doing is you're fighting fire with fire. What you're doing with this book is you're taking healthy ingredients and saying, look, here's some easy recipes and here's some food that is healthy but also is gonna taste good. So we can out-compete those crappy foods because here's the losing strategy that we keep doing in the health of fitness space. As we say, eat healthy, eat healthy, eat healthy but people, and this is just human behavior, have to trade enjoyment for health. And I can make the case all day long and I have on my podcast over and over again. But at the end of the day, if I wanna win the battle, I gotta figure out a way to make food enjoyable. That's healthy too. And that's kind of what you did in this book. Was that one of the main motivations? Yeah, I wanted to make food delicious, hyper-palatable because, yeah, you do, you are competing, you've gotta play on the same playing field as these hyper-palatable ultra-processed foods that are just so eye-catching and difficult to avoid in the modern food environment, right? So you wanna be able to play on the same playing field but unlike hyper-palatable ultra-processed foods, you want the food that you're eating to be satiating. And when you're nourishing your body with quality ingredients, we know that it satiates your body in a way that ultra-processed packaged foods simply can't. In other words, you get full faster so you don't overeat as much. Yeah, the problem with ultra-processed foods is that by the time you fill yourself up with them, you've already over consumed them. That's not the case with minimally-processed foods. Now, you're processing food when you cook food, right? When you cook a steak, you're processing that meat to some degree. So it's not like we wanna eat unprocessed food all the time. Yeah, I'm not buying a cow at the grocery store. But we're talking about minimally-processed foods. Foods that you take single-ingredient items from the perimeter of your supermarket. All supermarkets are designed in the same way. It's the perimeter of the supermarket where you find all of the perishable, fresh foods. And you take these single-ingredient foods and then you cook them yourself. And whether it's the protein contained by the food, which we know is the most satiating macronutrient, much more so than carbs and fat, the fiber content of the foods, which mechanically stretches out the stomach, absorbs water, turns off the hunger hormone ghrelin, really important. Or the water content. We know that food is a significant source of water. Shelf-stable packaged processed foods are not, they're dehydrated because water degrades the shelf stability of a food, right? It attracts mold and the like. We know that minimally-processed foods fill you up to the point, to the degree that when you've eaten them to the point of fullness, right? Add limited feeding experiments, which you talk about all the time, Sal. Oh yeah. And it also allows us that you actually eat to, you can eat to the same degree of fullness, but you come in at a calorie deficit naturally, right? It's an 800 calorie swing. That's huge. Determined purely by the quality of the food that you're eating. That's like two and a half hours of exercise. People that need 800 calories. You'd have to get on your treadmill and kick your ass for two and a half hours to come out with an 800 calorie burn. Just give you an example. 100%. If you're trying to moderate the amount of food that you're eating, right? Like if you are completely ignorant in nutrition science and you go to, let's just say a really orthodox dietitian or even a medical doctor and you say, doc, how do I lose weight? And they say the oft-repeated advice, eat less, move more. And- Gee, doc, thanks. Yeah, you interpret that as, okay, I'm gonna take what it is that I'm currently eating, right? The obesogenic food that I'm currently eating, which got me into this obese state to begin with. And I'm just gonna try to eat less of it. You're setting yourself up for failure, right? You're putting your cart before the horse. You're trying to moderate how much you're eating. But the advice that I think needs to be given and is totally not given, especially in the context of the woke fitness community, right? The advice needs to be, look at the quality of the food that you're eating, right? Quality dictates quantity, especially today. In the standard American- Powerful statement. Food environment, right? Yeah, so it's like, imagine trying to eat less, but being hungry, and then eating to your satisfied, but you end up eating lower calorie. Like, which one is a long-term, which strategy is gonna give you better success long-term? I wanna talk a little bit about a palette, because I think this is where people struggle as the transition into eating these whole natural foods. Like, if you take somebody who eats a standard American diet consistently, everything, right? Fast food, junk. Eat, like, whole natural foods. And you, you know, take a dish. For example, last night, Katrina and I made this gluten-free pasta, like a lasagna that we've put together that we make, that's got grass-fed beef and heritage pork in it. And then we use a little bit of mozzarella cheese on there, and then this gluten-free pasta. And I think it's amazing. But if you took that, and you had somebody who eats lasagna every week that their mom makes or whatever like that, and you have them eat that, they're gonna go, doesn't taste anywhere near that. But something that I have found that I was so fascinated in this when I went through the process of competing where I was eating so consistent and eating so clean for so long, is that I actually prefer that food now. Like, I all taste- Your cravings change. Yeah, they- So I think that's the thing that I want to communicate to the audience, because if you tell somebody, like, oh, these recipes are better than this, and they're used to eating such bad foods for such a consistent period of time in their life, and they switch over, they're like, oh, no, that tastes nothing like my mom's barbecue chicken or whatever that's full of all this other bullshit. So have you ever read, like, how long it takes somebody to change their palate like that or, like, how long that process is or how clean does someone need to eat for a while before their cravings start to change? Have you ever dug into that at all? Well, I think that there's a misconception that healthy food doesn't taste good, and I think that that is a misconception. I think you can make totally healthy foods taste incredibly palatable and indulgent. And I tried to actually, in the new book, Genius Kitchen, I tried to create a number of comfort foods that on first glance, people wouldn't assume to be really, really healthy and nourishing to your body, but in fact are. For example, I've got a recipe for gluten free super crispy buffalo chicken wings. I was gonna ask you about that. Yeah. They look ridiculous. Dude, first of all, chicken wings are a wonderful source of collagen. So any load bearing part of an animal, especially joints like chicken drumsticks, chicken wings, four times the collagen as compared to breast meat. So collagen is actually a great source of the amino acids that your body will then use to create collagen. So collagen proteins get broken down, right? Glycine, proline, hydroxyproline. The collagen that you eat doesn't necessarily become the collagen in your body, but still glycine is an important conditionally essential amino acid that researchers don't believe that we actually consume enough of as part of the standard American diet. So dark meat chicken is actually a great source of collagen. Also you get essential amino acids in chicken wings. And they're super tasty and indulgent. Like mine tastes just as good as the crappy fried ones, but typically when you get fried or any type of standard buffalo wings in a restaurant, they're gonna be fried in those oils, which we know are so unhealthy, especially in the context of the restaurant fryer, right? They're gonna have this sauce, which God knows what kind of fats they're using in those sauces. Oftentimes there's breading and all kinds of other junk on it. So there's a number of recipes like that in the book that I wanted to prove to people that eating quote-unquote healthily doesn't have to be the end of... That's what I really like about the book. So what you were saying, Adam, about the palate changing, I have experienced that, and here's something weird, Max, and I'd love your comment or opinion on this. I had clients that actually preferred the flavor of diet coke to regular coke or diet sodas or candies to regular sugar-flavored candies. And I feel like the chemicals that they add to some of these products and to replace more natural ingredients like sugar, they hit our brains and our receptors in ways that almost like have an addictive property where then sugar tastes bland in comparison to let's say like aspartame or something like that. Are you, do you know anything about this or have you ever experienced this yourself? Yeah, I mean, I typically avoid artificial sweeteners. I feel like whenever you mention artificial sweeteners, like Lane Norton is gonna rise out of the shadows somewhere. So you gotta watch what you say. No, I personally choose to avoid artificial sweeteners and I know that the research on them is in with regard to their health effects is equivocal. But I personally opt, I like to err on the side of caution. I take the precautionary principle and I use non-nutritive sweeteners like Stevia, monk fruit, erythritol, allulose, things like that personally. Yeah, I don't like artificial sweeteners for two different reasons. One, because I feel like they have interesting addictive property. This is my own experience with clients that people tend to consume them and then consume more and more and more and more of them. And I think that A has to do with the way that they hit are I guess are the receptors that perceive the sweetness. And then the psychological part. There's a psychological part too. There's no barrier or no perceived barrier with artificial sweeteners because there's no calories. So whereas somebody who's kind of health conscious might be like, eh, I'll have one soda. So I'll have 30 grams of sugar. But I'm gonna stop right there. Like, oh, there's no calories in this whatsoever. I'm just gonna consume a ton of this. And then that has been connected to at least in some of the studies I've seen to overconsumption of other calories. So like artificial sweeteners don't, unless everything's controlled. So they do studies where they control every calorie and then they replace sugar with artificial sweeteners. We usually see weight loss. But otherwise you don't see weight loss. Why is it that when people themselves cut out sugar and replace it with artificial sweeteners, which theoretically should lower the calories? Why don't they lose weight? Because they eat more calories in other places either because they perceive the, they don't perceive the same dangers and not the same barrier in terms of weight gain or it's doing something funky to us that makes us wanna eat more. So that's just my own personal observation. And I've never, I have yet to, the only people I've ever successfully worked with with artificial sweeteners are competitors. And that's because they're so neurotic with their tracking that we can control everything. But I've never had an average person. Oh yeah, let's just have you replace your sugar with artificial sweeteners. It doesn't work. It's never really resulted in any progress or success. That's interesting. Yeah, I mean, I feel like for people who, who consider the occasional diet coke as their, as their vice, it can be, they can be used as a tool for adherence. I think as a best case scenario use for them. I don't drink artificially sweetened diet sodas. There is a brand of soda on the market. Oh, you're drinking one. That's sweetened with stevia. And sometimes I drink those as a treat. My primary concern actually are the can linings. Exposure to compounds like BPA. Because you don't know how those, how the cans are stored prior to them making their way to your refrigerator. And so I'm actually more concerned with the presence, the contamination of known endocrine disruptors in those. That was in your previous book. Yeah, I talked a lot about those. Now I feel like you also wrote this book because I saw some of the recipes actually had Doug write some down. So I did write down your buffalo wings one because that one looked incredible. The olive oil lamb chops with olives and artichoke hearts looked amazing. So that's one I wanna try. The no cheese, cheesy egg dish. Okay, explain that to me. Yeah, it looks incredibly good. It's so bomb and it's so easy to make. So the entire book, it's about 99% dairy free. So it's a quote unquote cheesy broccoli dish. The broccoli we make with a little bit of nutritional yeast, some coconut cream, sauteed broccoli in avocado oil and you saute that up. You throw it in one of these little oven safe dishes, preheat the oven to about 375 degrees and then you crack a raw egg on top and then you bake it for 10 minutes and you get this amazingly savory, super satiating, delicious egg dish which takes about 20 minutes I would say all in to make. It's one of my favorite recipes in the book. It's super easy to make, quick. Did you make all these recipes or did you work with somebody? And I know you cook a lot. I watch your stories on Instagram and you're always making something. So is this all you or did you work with someone too? Yeah, I made the vast majority of them and then just to fill up the rest of the number, I worked very closely with a recipe developer and I gave them my sort of dietary philosophy and using the ingredients that I like to prioritize in my food, the foods that I consider to be quote unquote genius foods, they sort of filled in the gaps and picked up the rest. But they're all super palatable, super tasty recipes that if you have kids, the kids love them. It's a mix of starter dishes, of main courses. We even have some sweets, some desserts. We use extra virgin olive oil in really unique ways which I'm very excited about. We have an extra virgin olive oil, sugar-free ice cream. What? Yeah, which is awesome. You've never had extra virgin olive oil ice cream? I mean, just picture. No. Sort of like a vanilla-esque ice cream but with a hint of extra virgin olive oil, it's super tasty and it provides a new way to get in here. And there's no milk in that? There's no dairy, no. Oh, what? Okay. You got my attention. Exactly have dairy, so. The whole book is, it's 99% dairy-free and the dairy that we do use is ghee, which is very well tolerated even for people who have dairy sensitivity. Yeah, now did you write this book for guys because I'm gonna say, because here's the deal, like I know dudes were terrible about cooking for ourselves. We tend to want everything to be as simple as hell. Anybody who's ever been to a bachelor's place and eaten with them knows that it's like, I mean, like for me, I got married real young but I remember there's a period where I was alone and it was like, what are you having for dinner? I was like, two cans of tuna fish and a bowl of strawberries. And I was like super basic or whatever. But then the recipes in here seem to be very simple. It's not like 50 million ingredients. It's not two hours to make a dish. Was that one of the considerations? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the dishes range in terms of their complexity but I would say that most of them are very easy to create. And I definitely wanted to ensure that the recipes require ingredients that are not difficult to find. They're low cost, highly accessible. Cause the point is, I want my, I mean, all of the nutritional recommendations that I've made over the years, the whole point was for one of the major, for me, my mission is to make the recommendations achievable. So there's no dogma in the book. That's why I have this sort of paradigm in the book where I talk about foods to avoid, but the list of foods to avoid is actually really small. And then I break down what to include in your diet into good, better, and best. Cause I find that in the wellness world, we often let perfect be the enemy of the good. Oh, good point. So when I talk about high quality foods, I'm not talking about like making sure that your beef is pristine and grass finished all the time, right? That's not to me like the soul type of food because that would be super inaccessible for a significant portion of the, of the population who reads my work, right? Like if you live in the middle of the country, for example, sometimes, or even in a food desert, you might not be able to access the most pristine beef, but still I want people to know that even grain finished beef, like factory farm beef, and I hate promoting food from the factory farm system is still a highly nutrient dense food and a much better option to eat for dinner than for example, boxed mac and cheese. So all the recipes feature very accessible ingredients, minimal steps, I really tried to minimize the amount of steps. And so yeah, whether you're a novice in the kitchen or a seasoned pro, you're gonna learn how to cook in the book. It's gonna be really great. Now, I wanna talk to you about the organ meat dishes that you have in there. So organ meats, I talk about their value on the show, probably the most nutrient dense foods you'll find on the planet are organ meats. Like liver, for example, like you can't find a single food that's more concentrated in essential nutrients than liver, for example. But I always hear this from people, it's gross. I know you said organ meats are great, but I don't wanna eat liver, I don't wanna eat heart, I don't wanna eat kidneys, it tastes like crap. So what about the recipes on that? And are they, like be honest with me, are they good? Okay, or are you just... They're pretty good. I will say that there's only, there's a small handful of recipes in the book. So don't worry if you're organ meat averse. I think I only have two or three recipes in the book that include organ meats, but one of the recipes I got from my friend, Mary Shenuda, it's a recipe called Bangin' Liver. And it is the recipe that single-handedly converted me to a liver lover. It involves chicken liver, which is actually, I find to be much more delicious than beef liver. Yeah, it's more palatable for sure. It's way more palatable. And the spices and the fats that are used in the recipe, it's actually one of the few recipes in the book that includes ghee. I think ghee is a great fat, very complimentary in terms of the flavor profile to cook liver in, whether it's beef or chicken liver. But this recipe in particular is a 10 out of 10 recipe. So even if you're the most liver averse person, I highly recommend people check out this recipe. It's so freaking good. And it's one of the most nutrient dense recipes in the book. Yeah, here's how I sell liver. So I read this a long time ago as a kid. There was a bodybuilder, Vince Garanda, who he was back in the day, he was considered like the scientist of bodybuilding. I mean, he was back in the 50s and 60s. And he would always recommend that his clients or trainees eat a lot of eggs and a lot of organ meats. And they would get these phenomenal results. And he would attribute it to the cholesterol that was in these foods, dietary cholesterol. I started then reading studies as a kid about dietary cholesterol. And I found a couple that said that, yes, increasing dietary cholesterol makes you stronger. As an adult, I found more studies that show that dietary cholesterol makes you build muscle and makes you stronger. So I experimented with this one myself. I've talked about this many times on the show where I'll go through a like six to eight week period where I'm eating a tremendous amount of dietary cholesterol. And by the way, for most people, dietary cholesterol doesn't impact your lipids in a negative way. There are definitely a subset of people where this may happen. But for the vast majority of us, there's really no negative effects or whatever. But you get this huge strength boost. It's very, very interesting. It's very strange. But I build more muscle. And one of the best sources of dietary cholesterol that I found besides egg yolks is chicken liver. So you eat like two or three chicken livers and you get this boost of cholesterol, dietary cholesterol. And dietary cholesterol, it's like, I feel like my CNS fire is stronger. I recover much faster in my workouts. So that's how I like to sell it. And I do this. And the guys know, I'll go through, like I said, like a six to eight week period where I'm eating 12 egg yolks a day and throwing in two or three chicken livers. And my lifts will go up 10, 15%, which for me is huge. I've been working out for a long time. So really interesting. I don't know, have you ever tried that before? Yeah, dietary cholesterol is interesting in the sense that over the long term, it's been shown to have no bearing on serum levels of cholesterol. How it relates to my own gym performance, I haven't really looked at that, but I generally eat a high dietary cholesterol. My diet is pretty high in cholesterol, in exogenous cholesterol. But there was a great video put out by my friend Gabrielle Lyne, who's a DO. And it was an Instagram live video that she did with Donald Layman, who's a nutrition PhD expert nutrition researcher, really prominent in the field. And they were talking about how in the short term, the abstention or an increase in dietary cholesterol consumption will affect blood levels of it. But in the long term, it evens out because- Your liver regulates it. Your liver regulates it, right? But there's a lag time. Like it doesn't regulate it instantaneously. I think that's where I see the strain gain is in that lag time. Yeah, interesting. Cause cholesterol is a building block of all steroid hormone, all steroids. It is a steroid molecule, right? So testosterone. It's also, what you'll notice after working out is a drop in blood cholesterol because your body uses it for repair and recovery and it's good for cellular integrity and viscosity. And so that's exactly, that's why I go six to eight weeks. Six to eight weeks, I see this huge boost in strength and muscle gain. So it's a nice little hack. So if anybody's ever, you're gonna compete in something, you're gonna go to the beach, or some event in eight weeks, like give it a shot, if you're healthy, like radically increase your cholesterol intake, force manage your calories and everything else and then watch what happens. So I've had people write me in, who've tried this and like, bro, this is the craziest thing ever. I didn't think this was the worst. Well, for someone listening, what does that look like as far as numbers for you? First of all, I think you should probably track first to kind of see what normal is for you. And then do you double? Do you triple? Like what does that look like? Oh, I'll go as high as 10 to 12 egg yolks, for example. So you're looking at 2,000 milligrams or something like that, a cholesterol. Is you bumping? So you're normally at like 1,000 milligrams? No, not even. I'll be lower than that, right? I'll be much lower, a couple hundred. And so it's like 10 times as much. And I'll just see this huge, it's really strength. The first time I did it, I think I came in here. And it was raving about it to the guys. And then I found more studies showing that it improved strength in older adults and all this other stuff. So little cool hack, try it yourself. It's a lot of fun. I would love for you to try it. I know you work out pretty regularly, so I'd love to hear your results. Yeah, and I love my egg yolks. I mean, I actually, I call egg yolks a cognitive multivitamin. So it's not just that they're rich in cholesterol. They're rich in a number of other micronutrients that may support an anabolic, a synergistic anabolism effect, right? But also really good for the brain. Well, the choline, right? There's a debate as to whether or not choline should be considered essential. Is that true? Choline is considered, currently, it's considered a conditionally essential nutrient. It used to be considered essential. It's actually a type of B vitamin. But we know that about 90% of adults in the US don't consume the adequate intake for choline and it provides a really important precursor, backbone molecule for our brain cell membranes. And it also, choline provides the precursor to acetylcholine, which is a really important neurotransmitter involved in learning and memory. So choline is crucially important. And the top source in the diet are egg yolks. Egg yolks are an amazing source of choline. It's actually, I mean, the fact that we've demonized for so many years. One of the healthiest foods of all time. One of the healthiest foods of all time. I love to remind people that when an embryo is developing, the first structure to assemble is the nervous system, which includes the brain. So an egg yolk literally contains everything that nature has determined to be important to grow and sustain a healthy brain. It's no wonder that egg yolks are high in cholesterol because the brain is really high in cholesterol. That's true. You need to consume any cholesterol for good brain health because the brain produces all the cholesterol that it needs. It's called de novo cholesterol synthesis. However, an egg yolk contains a little bit of everything required basically to grow a healthy brain. It's a wonderful source of DHA fat, especially eggs that come from chickens that have had their diets supplemented with flax seeds. So it's like omega three rich egg yolks. Carotenoids, vitamin E, choline as you mentioned, vitamin B12. Yeah, in lots of cultures, old cultures. And I like to look at what people have done for hundreds of years because although scientific study, we consider the double blind placebo control study to be the gold standard of what are the effects of particular nutrients and foods on the body. And I agree that those are very valuable, but I don't think that we should discredit hundreds or thousands of years of culture because over long, long periods of time, humans do a pretty damn good job of identifying what works and what doesn't work. So if you look like Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, you look at herbs that have been used. For example, Ashwagandha today has got lots of studies that support it, right? But Ashwagandha has been used for hundreds of years for all the stuff that we now have studies to support. And so through time, you see lots of benefit and egg yolks are a staple food for children, staple and staple food for pregnant women. And now we have the studies that show this. I mean, when my wife was pregnant with my son, we were, I was making sure she was having egg yolks and eggs all the time. And I feed my son egg yolks all the time because I know, I know what the studies show, but I also know that this is a food that has been valued by cultures, by almost every culture for a long, long time for children. Yeah, I mean, the problem with nutrition science, studying nutrition is much harder to do than studying drugs, and yet it's much less well funded. So that's why there are still so many question marks with regard to nutrition. And that's both a good thing and a bad thing. But I think at the end of the day, that's precisely why we have to, we have to make choices through the lens. It's important to have our choices be informed by an evolutionary perspective, a common sense perspective. The longer a food or ingredient has been in the human food supply, I think the more weight we should give it in terms of its inclusion in the diet. So people that are like, oh, you should cut out animal products or oh, we should start consuming this new sweetener that's on the market, artificial sweeteners, for example. I think we have to just consider the fact that we've co-evolved with our food, right? Like, we've co-evolved with food. And so I think that we have to look at dietary recommendations, especially when those recommendations are mired in corporate interest and corporate profit with much greater scrutiny. Yeah, 100%. I know, and what's funny is that we learn all the time new stuff about human metabolism, about food and new compounds in foods that have new benefits or potential detriments. So when people pretend to know and they'll say like in our space, this is quite common, this new meal replacement powder, you never have to eat food again so you can stay at your desk and work all day long and drink this powder and it's perfect. We put everything in there that's perfect that your body needs. It's like we don't 100% know yet everything that we need and how everything works. So it's super arrogant of us to even assume those types of things. So I think nature gives us a lot of those answers. Yeah, I think it's important to be evidence-based but not evidence-bound. And I think you see too many people in the nutrition space especially the quote-unquote evidence-based nutrition space being not just evidence-based but evidence-bound. And I think it's hubris really. It's, I think that that's where a lot of mistakes get made. Yeah, totally. Now Max, you eat a consistent, really good diet. Are there anything that you are supplementing? Like do you find that when you look at your diet that you have to take any other supplements or do you try and target all of your main nutrients from whole foods? Or how often do you have to go outside of that? That's a good question. I definitely supplement with magnesium, glycinate. I actually found out recently that I get migraines occasionally and I know that my diet, there are studies that actually show that eating a diet that is lower in omega-6 fatty acids, higher in omega-3 fatty acids that actually help lower migraine frequency and symptomology in general. But magnesium along with riboflavin are both very helpful in terms of- So you've been supplementing? I've been supplementing with those, yeah. Is it help? I occasionally get these weird headaches. I've gotten them about once to twice a month probably for, I mean, for as long as I can remember but I thought that that was just like a normal thing. Did it make a difference? I think it helps. I mean, there is robust evidence with regard to magnesium and riboflavin. Yeah, so we work with a company that, Ned, you know Ned, they make mellow and it's got some forms of magnesium. There's one form of magnesium and that was actually developed and it's shown across the blood brain barrier and I have never taken a form of magnesium that I feel like that. It's been life-changing for me. I had no idea. I had no idea. I take it every single night now. I just started taking it and I fall asleep so easy and sleep so hard now. So obviously I was deficient, right? I mean, if it affected me that much because I doubt everybody gets that same effect as I have or it's like, oh man, I won't even travel without it. So how impactful it was and I didn't believe it when I first took it. I was like, oh, maybe just something lined up that day that I slept so well and I've tested it multiple times or let me not take it for a while. Let me see what I feel like. Yes, it's magnesium three and eight. There you go. Which has been shown to easily cross the blood brain barrier. 50% of people don't consume adequate magnesium and there is no reliable blood test to see whether or not you are replete in terms of your magnesium status because magnesium doesn't really circulate in the blood. It's stored intracellularly and in your bones. So I think it's very smart to supplement with magnesium. Now, is that because we've depleted the soil through our modern agriculture? Is that one of the reasons why? Well, that is indeed part of it but it's also magnesium is found predominantly, you don't get a lot of magnesium in ultra-processed foods and today 60% of the calories that Americans are eating come from ultra-processed foods. Magnesium is found in dark leafy greens, right? Magnesium is the molecule at the center of the chlorophyll molecule. It's actually quite interesting. Chlorophyll and hemoglobin are almost identical. Oh, I know. That's weird. I've read that. You can go to Google images and look for the two molecules but the primary difference is that in plants at the center you see magnesium and in us you see iron. So anything green, right? Because chlorophyll is green in the produce section of your supermarket is gonna be a decent magnesium source. Omens are also a wonderful source in just a handful of omens. You get about 25% of your daily requirements for your daily requirement for magnesium. Dark chocolate is another great source but again, half the population doesn't consume adequate magnesium and magnesium is involved in hundreds of different processes in the body that range in terms of their importance from the creation of ATP, which is energy, to DNA repair. So it's actually a really powerful anti-aging molecule right in front of our eyes, pretty much, like in the produce section of the supermarket and most of us under consume that and we spend lots and lots of money on other anti-aging quack products. Yeah, Botox. Yeah, Botox. For example. Magnesium is super important and... Do you supplement with creatine? Now I know you are a bit of a supplement nerd like I am and I know this, I've been to your house and you have stuff all over the place. Now I know you don't take everything consistently but you like to experiment like I do. I have a lot of fun with certain things. Do you take creatine on a regular basis? Is that a supplement you like to take or no? I like to cycle it, right now I'm not taking it but I do like creatine. I'm very impressed by its efficacy record, its safety record. The health effects of it are pretty remarkable. Have you been seeing some of the stuff that's coming out with like... With regard to the brain? The brain, arthritis, the heart, it's pretty crazy. Yeah, and I do like that it increases like work output in the gym. I've been, you know what it is? I've been so busy lately that I haven't really been on my, like an optimized workout regimen. So I feel like now is not the right time for me to be on it because I know you have to take it every day, right? So I haven't been taking it lately but I do, it is one of those that like I kind of cycle in and out of. In general, I'm a big fan of creatine monohydrate. Like I do take it. That's awesome. I take fish oil pretty regularly. I take Astaxanthin which is a carotenoid that I'm a big fan of. I've been a big fan of for about 15 years. What's why? It's really good for your skin, for your eyes and for your brain. It's a carotenoid that's found exclusively in marine products. It's generated by algae. So algae that sit at the surface of the water, algae are exposed to the rays of the sun relentlessly, right? So it's a huge source of oxidative stress. So to combat that, algae generate this incredibly potent antioxidant called Astaxanthin. And then salmon among other animals end up eating the algae and they accumulate this red pigment. So it's literally what makes salmon flesh. It's what gives salmon flesh that characteristic deep red color. Yeah, with farmed salmon, it's actually put in the feed. So they supplement it. They give it supplementally to farmed salmon. But wild salmon naturally accumulate this red pigment. It's one of the reasons why we know fish consumption is really beneficial to brain health. But studies have shown that Astaxanthin isn't just good for our brains. It's great for our eyes. And it actually provides a photo protective effect to our skin. So it's actually really good for skin quality appearance and everything like that. It's just, it's an incredibly potent antioxidant. Oh, interesting. Bruce Ames who's a noted longevity researcher. He's about nine years old. He's been in the field for a very, very long time. He published a paper a couple of years ago where he actually singled out Astaxanthin as a putative longevity agent. So I'm a big fan of that. Interesting. I'll throw that on the mix. Yeah, throw it into the mix. I walk around with a supplement bag. So let me say it in front of me. Oh yeah, dude. Have a good time. That's awesome. So did you, was it you and your brothers that did a lot of the taste testing of this? Cause I know you guys hang out a lot and you guys like to cook and. And we do. Who are the people that were, who did you test, test all these recipes on? Yeah, I don't have a girlfriend. So I mean, I'm my, my, my brother's, it's my brother's who get to be the guinea pigs. But, but yeah, I love cooking with, with the family. You know, above and beyond this conversation about nutritionism, you know, and the, and the nutrients that, that foods contain. Food, it's such a, it's such an important, we've, we've talked about this many times, Sal. Like it's such an important way to celebrate life, right? Like the joy of eating. It's, it's, it's the way that sharing a meal is how we bond, how we communicate. Totally. How we express love. Totally. I love cooking for my brothers. And also eating at home is such a powerful leverage point for better health. Again, like beyond this conversation about, about macronutrients and the like, right? You can eat the same meal at home that you get in a restaurant. It's in all likelihood going to have fewer calories, fewer fat calories, less sodium. Studies show that people who eat home more as opposed to out have, have a healthier BMI. So lower risk of obesity, healthier body fat percentage, have better cardiometabolic risk factors, right? So eating at home, it's just, it's, it's so crucially important. And psychologically too, it's, it there's tremendous benefits because the time that you spend making it, even if it's 15 minutes, you value the food differently. I waste less. I value the food more. Cooking with my kids is such a incredible bonding experience, cooking with my wife. It's one of my favorite dates. Like if we're going to hang out together, just her and I, if we cook together, it's one of my favorite ways to hang out with her or over friends. It also promotes just movement in general. One of the things that I know the, I'm guilty of using door dash all the time, especially during the pandemic, you know, just have something brought to my house. And one of the habits that I catch myself doing is I come home from a long day of work, I get home, I door dash something. And it real easy for me for to be sedentary the whole rest of the day, doing something like cooking or cleaning in the house, like just that light movement like that promotes me moving throughout the rest of the night. And that stuff all adds up. And if you get in the habit of always having your food delivered to you all the time, which more and more Americans are doing now, I think that that stuff starts to add up and you just don't, you don't realize it. Yeah. And one more thing too, if you look up, if you read studies on what is one of the most attractive things that someone can do for you, male or female, prepare a meal. So if you're a guy watching this and you have a date and you want to impress your date and ask women this, they'll tell you this, cook her a good meal and you've already scored like 10 points. And of course we all know that a what, you know, what's that saying the way to a man's heart is through his stomach that we've known that for a long time, right? When a woman cooks for you and you know, and she takes the time and effort to do that. It's like so, so incredible. So I mean, I love that you brought up all the other values of food and cooking and doing that together. We totally have missed that aside from the mechanistic actions of the calories and the fats and all that stuff. We can't dismiss the psychological, spiritual, you know, other stuff that we connect to food. You can't dismiss that because in my personal opinion, it's as important as what's in the food is how you prepare it and what we do with it and how we celebrate it with it and the culture around it. I mean, obviously look around, you know, every culture has their own food and we have our foods that we eat in the breakfast, you know, for breakfast, lunch and dinner and foods we eat in movies and... It's not just that either. We also, and we didn't touch on this really, but I think it's so important when you are trying to make better choices and you start eating healthier foods is not just measuring that based off of, you know, how palatable it is, but also how you feel from it. Like that's part of what makes me choose the, you know, healthy version of lasagna that Katrina makes for me versus what my mom used to make as a kid is because I've now connected how each of them make me feel afterwards. And you desire it more. That's what I'm saying. Like it's not that my mom's lasagna is still not amazing. It still is like going down, but I'll also be in the bathroom like an hour later or I won't sleep as well or I'll feel bloated afterwards. And so, and I think we've learned to ignore a lot of those signals. And so when you, if you're somebody listening and you're trying to make that transition away from the standard American diet and you want to start trying to eat more whole foods, you want to start trying to cook in the kitchen, like don't just measure, like, you know, compare, like was that as good as my chicken that I only make? Also try and connect the dots to how those foods each make you feel. It makes it much easier. You're so right. And this is a very important point to make because what gets us to crave foods isn't just the flavor of the food. It's also, and food companies know this, watch a food commercial. It's, it'll connect it to something. Watch a beer commercial. There's chicks in the background and you're having a good time. And I think like a Corona, what do you think of the beach? Oh yeah, I have a bee and there's, you know, girls in bikinis a party time, right? Or Bud Light or whatever. This is very important to psychologically the kinds of foods that you crave and you want. And I've seen this with clients where I'll take a client and I'll have them introduce, you know, let's say I have someone eat more vegetables. They eat no vegetables. I'll have them introduce vegetables. I'll have them pay attention to how they feel before, during and after they eat the vegetables. And as they become aware, like you said, Adam, with their connecting the dots to not just the taste but also how it's making them feel, they start to slowly want to eat the vegetables without realizing, ooh, I crave a bowl of bright. I have had clients tell me this, man. I was on a business trip for a week. First thing I ate when I got home was a big bowl of vegetables because it makes me feel so good. I actually wanted it. So it's not just, yeah, that's right. So it's not just, you know, all of this is part of it. So I'm glad you brought that up because if you're trying to get yourself to, because here's the struggle. The struggle is people know what they need to do but it's so hard and they don't want to. No, there's an answer. If you do this the right way, you will find yourself move more and more towards wanting to do the stuff that you know is good for you. And how easy is it to stay in shape and be lean and be fit and be healthy when you want to do those things? Versus pushing yourself and, you know, white knuckling at the whole time, right? That's the long-term successful approach. Yeah, yeah, in the book I provide ways to, I mean, that's why the first half of the book is actually a kitchen and wellness guide and one section I dedicate to optimizing digestion because I think digesting your food well is an important part of the conversation that we, if we're not digesting our food well, it's gonna obviously make the eating process unpleasant, right? Like if we walk away from a meal feeling bloated and gassy, that's not how our food should make us feel, right? But you're also, you're not getting the most bang for your buck with regard to your food so you can be spending all the money in the world on high-quality foods, but if you're not extracting the nutrition from that food, then you're basically just throwing money away, right? But also food and even hyper-palatable foods like the kinds of recipes that I provide in Genius Kitchen can have a functional effect. I mean, I actually talk about the fact because you're right, like food at date night is such a powerful, I mean, it can be an aphrodisiac, right? And certain foods like foods that are high and dietary nitrates can actually support sexual function, right? Well, nitrates, you get better vasodilation. There you go. Yeah, and what does that make, give you better boners? Better boners. Yeah, but also important for women, right? Blood flow, increasing blood flow, like we have analogous. Women get boners too, it's just different. Did you write that title down, Doug, for this episode? Yes. No, it's important. It's actually really cool how it works. So foods that are high in nitrates like beets and arugula, humans don't have the enzymes to reduce nitrates to nitrites, which is nitrites are actually what enter the nitric oxide pathway, but it's the bacteria in our mouths that are involved in that process. Break, what's called reducing dietary nitrate to nitrites, and so you really wanna make sure that you're chewing your food slowly to give your oral bacteria time to do that. Digestion begins in the mouth, and that's absolutely true with regard to nitric oxide boosting foods like arugula and beets. So those are the two primary, those are the most concentrated sources, but this is also really important. You wanna avoid, to the best of your ability, frequent use of antiseptic mouthwash, because with mouthwash, you're nuking the bacteria that are responsible for that conversion. Interesting. If you're a frequent user of mouthwash, you're basically short changing the ability of your food to have a nitric oxide boosting effect. I did not know that. Yeah, and studies disrupts your new strategy. Yeah, I know, interesting. Yeah, I mean, you'll have minty fresh breath, right? But you're not gonna be getting the sexual performance boosting effect of your nitrate rich dishes. And actually studies show that frequent users of antiseptic mouthwash have a 50% increased risk of developing type two diabetes. Interesting. Yeah, because nitric oxide is also really important for insulin signaling. It's super important. And they also found that frequent users two or more times a day, right? So this is like, two or more times a day is that sort of like threshold effect where this impairment seems to emerge twice the risk for developing hypertension. And also antiseptic mouthwash post-workout negates the anti-hypertensive effects of exercise. So if you want a healthier blood pressure and to be able to extract a more cardio-protective effect from your fruits and vegetables, ditch the antiseptic mouthwash. I was using antiseptic mouthwash because I read studies on how it can help prevent respiratory diseases like COVID. So I'm like, oh, cool. I'm gonna gargle with Listerine to prevent the buildup of virus. But now I just learned this. You guys walk around gargling all day. Thanks. You just screwed me up. No, you wanna get rid of it. My water pick is okay though, right? That's good. My water pick? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And mouthwashers that are not antiseptic, that really is the key. And also, I mean, if you use it, certainly if you use it medically, that's fine. If you use it on occasion, that's totally fine. I mean, your oral microbiome will repopulate itself. It's really the frequent use. I mean, still 40 million people, I believe, in the United States do use it every day. Wow, I had no idea. Sal was like gargling it three times a day. He was walking around with it. Flushing his mouth all the time. It was once a day. You know what though, with the beets and increasing nitric oxide, there's a lot of supplements in the fitness space to boost nitric oxide for the pump, right? If you look at the studies on consuming beets versus like citrulline or arginine or these other compounds of people who use a boost nitric oxide, beets kick the crap out of those other ones. And the performance benefits. You know why? My hypothesis would be that when you consume beet root powder, you're consuming it too quickly because you're drinking it, right? And your oral bacteria play a crucial role in, again, the conversion of those nitrates, which are present in beet root powder, to nitrites. So what I would do, and I don't use this supplement, I would, instead of just gulping it down. Rinse it in your mouth. I would swish with it to give your oral bacteria a chance to do this job. And I would bet that you would see a difference. Bro, I'm doing that in my workout tomorrow. Try it, let me know. That's my garbled red juice? Yeah. That's my on-the-spot hypothesis. Well, it makes sense based on what you said. Yeah, but I would bet that that's why you see that difference. Bro, I always learn something from you, always. All right, so obviously they can buy your book anywhere books are sold? Yeah, if you go to geniuskitchenbook.com, we also have some bonuses. If you pre-order it, I've got a free e-book that I wrote called 15 Daily Steps to Lose Weight and Prevent Disease. So if you pre-order the book, you can fill out the form, get that e-book free. But if the book is already out, you can order it anywhere books are sold. Amazon, your local bookstore, love to support local bookstores. Yeah, so check it out. Good deal. Genius Kitchen. Thank you. Thanks always, man. Thanks for coming on the show and thanks for writing great stuff. Love you guys. Appreciate it.