Good Food vs. “Bad Food”
Replay & Transcript of Episode 5

Health Seekers Radio January 02, 2016

Announcer:
Welcome to Health Seekers, a show where two mortal men with extraordinary curiosity and decades of experience work on your behalf to seek truth in the overlapping realms of body, mind, and spirit. The goal? Empowering you to achieve the highest levels of excellence. Dr. Dan Pompa, renowned expert in cellular health, and longtime health and fitness expert Phil Kaplan, come together for a show that demands your full attention. Join Dan, Phil, and guests from around the planet sharing enlightenment and insight all aimed at the best you’ve ever seen. This is an interactive broadcast. Call in with thoughts, questions, or comments. Now, Dr. Dan Pompa and Phil Kaplan turning on the heat, kicking up the dust, and finding the truth you deserve.

Phil:
Dr. Pompa, good morning and Happy New Year.

Dr. Pompa:
Happy New Year. Good morning.

David:
You know, I’ll tell you this. I’m not a New Year’s guy. Years and years ago I used to play in a band, right? New Year’s Eve was our big night. We’d get paid four times as much, which meant we’d get like $400 for the eight of us. We got paid four times as much on New Year’s Eve, and we’d book it months in advance. I would watch people drink. I would watch people come in sober and normal, and they’d start drinking and I’d watch them get sloppy by the end of the night, and I always felt like I never wanted to be a part of that, so I was never really big on New Year’s Eve. Also, I always felt like I can make a resolution May 15^th; I can make a resolution July 18^th; why do I have to wait until New Year’s? I was never really a resolutions guy, but I want to tell you, this year I’m feeling it. I’m really feeling like this is sort of a new beginning. Do you feel it?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I feel it, absolutely. I said it to my family.

Phil:
I think a lot of things are about to change, and I really think that one of the things that’s about to change is we’re going to catch they.

Dr. Pompa:
They’re elusive, and the first problem is nobody really knows who they are, Phil.

Phil:
This is the year. They are going down. For anybody who might not’ve been with us before, they—you know they. They say stuff. They say stuff that has our population confused. Dan, what’s one of the latest things you’ve heard they say?

Dr. Pompa:
We’ve said this before. They say that cholesterol is dangerous and it will kill you. They say that.

Phil:
True?

Dr. Pompa:
Look, if they say it, it must be true.

Phil:
No, but in your mind, is it true?

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely not true.

Phil:
They are not committed to truth, right?

Dr. Pompa:
No, not at all; matter of fact if we can figure out who they is, I think a lot of this nonsense will stop. I mean, we talk about these 180s, right? This 180 degrees is always where the truth lies, so again, I mean if we could figure this out, we could stop the nonsense, Phil.

Phil:
Speaking of 180 degrees. That would be like a polar opposite, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Phil:
People are sort of into extremes. They want to be on one end or the other and if you’re watching the political landscape right now you see that. They’re on one end or the other. There are two words that people use when it comes to lifestyle and food. I don’t know if they’re the best words to use. I’m going to tell you where this comes from today. The other day I went and worked out, and with a friend of mine went for breakfast in a restaurant that I go to all the time. We’re sitting eating our breakfast and the hostess comes over. Now I ordered—they have this hash sort of breakfast, which is potatoes, and vegetables, and cheese, and eggs, and I asked them to do quinoa instead of the potatoes, right? I made my modifications.

The hostess comes over and she goes, “Why did you order quinoa?” I felt like I was in trouble. “What do you mean? I just thought maybe you guys could do that.” She goes, “No, no, why didn’t you eat the potatoes? How come you chose quinoa?” I explained to her very, very basic—I try to make better food choices when I’m in restaurants and I don’t always have control. She goes, “So you’re saying that potatoes are carbs?” I said, “Well yeah, potatoes are carbohydrates.” She walks away and she comes back with a pad. Actually, the girl I was with said, “Sit down,” so she did.

She sat down, she has her pad, and she asks me. She makes a line down the middle. She goes, “Can you tell me what’s good and what’s bad? Because this year I want to get fit.” She has these two columns, and it struck me. That’s the way people think. Is it good, or is it bad? I think we can talk about so many things and really determine that they don’t always fall right smack into one of those categories. You agree?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely. We’re always asked the question: what diet should I go on? What diets are good? Which ones are bad, right? What about the Paleo diet? What about a vegetarian diet? What about low fat diet, this diet, that diet? Which one works?

Phil:
If you’re looking for good versus bad, it gets really confusing. Because you can walk into any bookstore and you’re going to find a book that says carbohydrates are evil. Stay away from carbohydrates; they will kill you, right? Then you find another book. Same bookstore, same shelf; that says carbs are the key to energy. Carbs are the fuel of life. Same bookstore. When you’re looking for good or bad, it’s very confusing. Wait a minute, are carbs good, or are carbs bad? I think one of the latest villains is gluten, right? Is gluten good? Is gluten bad? With that comes a whole other set of questions. What about the gluten-free stuff? I’d like to clear some of that up on the show today. You up for it?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I’m up for it. I was just going to say ,I have my own little gluten experience. There was a gentleman that ordered no gluten. He didn’t want gluten. When asked, I wasn’t the one that asked him, “What is it about gluten? Are you allergic?” He said, “No.” He said, “Well, what is it about it?” He really—he didn’t even know what gluten was. He definitely didn’t know why he didn’t want it, but he did know that it was bad, and it would be a better choice if he chose without it. He had no clue what gluten was, what was wrong, nor why he even wanted. He just knew that people say it’s not good. They say gluten is bad, and he believes they.

Phil:
I want to talk about gluten and gluten-free, but let’s start with something real simple, okay? Just to kind of illustrate what I’m talking about. Alcohol, good or bad?

Dr. Pompa:
I would say They say that too much is bad.

Phil:
Hmm. Don’t they also say that red wine is good for your heart?

Dr. Pompa:
They say that a little red wine a day actually can prevent heart attacks.

Phil:
That would be good.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, so they said both.

Phil:
I’ll tell you this. What I just said earlier about New Year’s Eve? I’ve watched people consume ridiculous amounts of alcohol on New Year’s Eve throughout my life and I’ve seen many people—I guarantee they woke up the next day with extreme regret, right? “Why did I do that?”

Dr. Pompa:
Maybe they is right.

Phil:
For those people in those cases, alcohol was bad, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Right.

Phil:
You and I have gone to dinner with friends. We’ve ordered some wine, we’ve had some laughs, and I would say in those cases alcohol was good. So nothing really falls cleanly into that good or bad. Let me ask you another one. Caffeine. Good or bad?

Dr. Pompa:
Well, they say, actually, a little caffeine can actually be really good for you. They say that caffeine is a stimulant and can wipe your adrenals out. That means you don’t adapt to stress as well.

Phil:
So how about you? Have you used caffeine and found it valuable?

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.

Phil:
You’re a coffee drinker.

Dr. Pompa:
Organic coffee in the morning, one cup.

Phil:
You need that coffee, don’t you?

Dr. Pompa:
I don’t need it. I love the warm. I could do tea as well.

Phil:
You need coffee or tea?

Dr. Pompa:
Do I need it? That’s a big word, Phil.

Phil:
Let me ask you this.

Dr. Pompa:
That’s a big word, Phil.

Phil:
If you didn’t have coffee or tea in your house or in wherever you went, if the world just for five days ran out of coffee and tea, would you feel the same or would you miss it?

Dr. Pompa:
I would miss it.

Phil:
When you get that coffee again after that five-day stretch, is it good?

Dr. Pompa:
It’d be great.

Phil:
Yeah, it’d be great, so you can’t say it’s good and you can’t say it’s bad. You really have to understand the circumstances and the person. I’ll even say this. I’ve had pizzas in my life that were really, really, really good. Have you?

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.

Phil:
New York City, Ray’s Pizza. Doesn’t get better than that.

Dr. Pompa:
You sent me there.

Phil:
Did you go?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, we went.

Phil:
Was it worth it?

Dr. Pompa:
It was worth it.

Phil:
Yeah, so I want people to just—every week what we try to do is get them to grab hold of that old thing that they once had called common sense. I want them to grab hold of common sense when they’re looking to make that list, even in their own mind, as to what’s good and what’s bad. The fact is most things have their place. Now I’ll tell you one of the worst things they say. “Everything in moderation.”

Dr. Pompa:
I hate when they say that.

Phil:
Oh, God.

Dr. Pompa:
Let’s talk about that.

Phil:
They say that a lot, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Phil:
Let’s give some people some clarity when we come back.

Phil:
Welcome back. Is it good or bad? That’s the question we’re answering today, is it good or bad? Now, during this time of year, people are immersed in their New Year’s resolutions. I found it interesting. I went to the gym yesterday. I expected it to be mobbed, and it wasn’t. In looking around, it was the regulars. I guess this year people are either hung over on New Year’s Day or maybe—I don’t know why they didn’t show up at the gym yesterday. I’m sure they’re going to be there today, or the Monday after New Year’s is the big day.

Today is the day we need to give them some clarity so that they don’t make bad decisions, so they don’t think that bad things are good or good things are bad, or they don’t think that everything has to have this polar extreme. Before we went to break, Dr. Pompa, I said that they say, “Everything in moderation,” and you said, “I hate when they say that.” Talk about that. Why do you hate that?

Dr. Pompa:
It’s everyone’s excuse: “Well, a little bit, it’s moderation. I eat in moderation.” I always ask the question, “What’s your definition of moderation because obviously mine’s different than yours?” Isn’t that the problem: everybody’s definition of what is moderation is completely different? Matter of fact, your definition is really what you feel at the moment is moderation, whether it’s too much or too little. It’s a justification. That’s why I hate it.

Phil:
When it comes to fitness, weight loss, diet, I think people get caught up in rationalizing. I like to explain that as, “They tell themselves rational lies.” These are mistruths that sound sensible. That’s one of them. It’s like if you’re planning on eating clean, and you go to a restaurant with some friends, and everybody orders a lasagna. You look around, and that lasagna looks so good, and you go, “Everything in moderation. I’ll have the lasagna, too.”

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly.

Phil:
“Happy New Year. Do a shot.” “Okay, I’ll do a shot. Everything in moderation, right? One more.” Where’s the limit of moderation? Would you eat poison in moderation? Would you do heroin in moderation? It’s a horrible thought: everything in moderation. I think it gives people that ability to live by those rational lies rather than sensibility.

Let’s give them a foundation of sensibility. What are some of the things that you would say absolutely people must understand are good for you in the great majority of cases? I want to start with fat because I’ve heard you talk about this, and I’ve seen people’s jaws drop when you say some of things you say about fat. Is fat good, or is fat bad? I’m going to start by—again, we can’t answer that question with one or the other. We need some explanation. Dr. Pompa.

Dr. Pompa:
Of course, I’m sitting here going, “Yeah, low fat diet, high fat diet.” You’ll hear people say, “Well gosh, it was this diet that saved and changed my life.” Of course, we have to ask ourselves, “What fat?” I’m a big lover of fat. Matter of fact¸ I would argue fat is one of the most important missing nutrients in the American diet. Fat is why so many people don’t feel well.

I’m a very huge critic of vegetable oils which is a fat that is in practically every food, even when you walk into a “health food store”, we find vegetable oils, like one like canola oil, in everything. That’s a rancid fat that is really bad for you. It’s a rancid fat that goes in your body, and drives inflammation, causes trouble, makes you not feel well, sludges up your cells. We have all types of research showing how bad this is, yet there’s a fat called saturated fat that I think most of our listeners, Phil—they say that saturated fat is the devil, this is the worst of all.

Yet, someone like me looks at the research and goes, “My gosh, how did this fat get such a bad reputation?” There’s studies showing that it reverses diabetes, for goodness sakes, and atherosclerosis. Wait a minute. Haven’t we heard that saturated fat actually causes these things? Well, “they” said. If we could figure out who “they” is in 2016, I think that we could stop a lot of this nonsense. Phil, that’s the point. What fats? There’s some good ones. There’s some bad ones. There’s some ones that we think are bad that are good, and some ones that are good that may in fact be bad. This is really confusing, Phil.

Phil:
It is. I’ll tell you where it gets even more confusing: people think, in some cases, that the good fats are supplements. They have to go into a store to buy their bottle of capsules of the good fats. When you’re talking about fat being good, you’re talking about a nutrient found in food, not only what comes in a dark bottle in a refrigerator in a health food store. You’re talking about food.

Dr. Pompa:
Fat’s in most food. Matter of fact, I think everybody—listen, that’s a broad statement, “everybody”. We’ll get always one, but most people listening would agree that one of the most perfect foods, if not the most perfect food in the world, is mother’s breast milk. It’s the perfect food to build a child. Imagine, 55% of breast milk is fat. As a matter of fact, Phil, the number one fat in breast milk, guess what is? Saturated fat. Go figure.

Phil:
I’ll tell you something else. Having been a body builder for many years, and you’re an athlete as well, is you try to make healthy choices, but when you’re really obsessed with competing, you don’t care how food tastes, you’re going to eat whatever you believe is going to contribute to making you better at your sport, right? The one food that was just not even a question was the egg. In bodybuilding, we’ve thrown away a lot of yolks. We used to have omelets with 12 egg whites, and we’d throw away the yolks. Maybe we’ve been missing out, correct?

Dr. Pompa:
I have to say, I remember I said, “Hey, I’m going to Venice Beach.” “Oh gosh, yeah, you should go to the Gold’s Gym there that you were telling me all about.” I said, “Oh gosh, I have to go just to see the freak show.” Well, you also said about this restaurant called The Firehouse. We were riding our bikes by and I just saw The Firehouse, and I said, “Oh my gosh, Phil told me I should stop here because it would be quite a show.” Let’s just think of it as a freak show.

We went in and we actually had lunch. There was a lot of different healthy things on the menu. Most were low-fat, egg whites in just about everything. It was a throwback to the 80s, just looking at the bodybuilders, the bodybuilding menu, and the people that moved in and out. I think if I ate an egg yolk in The Firehouse, I might be thrown out. I don’t know.

Phil:
Yeah, they come with big fire hoses and blow you out the door.

Dr. Pompa:
I was thinking, “Could I have the thing with the egg yolks? As a matter of fact, could I have everybody else’s yolks that they’re throwing out?”

Phil:
I really wish it were really simple because now we may say egg whites are good and egg yolks are good, but we’re dealing with different egg yolks if we’re dealing with an egg that came from standard commercial farming and an egg that really came from nature, right? Two very, very different substances.

Dr. Pompa:
Oh yeah, considering that eggs eat a lot of corn, and corn is GMO that holds a chemical called glyphosate, which is then—

Phil:
Chickens eat corn, don’t they?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, chickens. What did I say?

Phil:
The eggs don’t eat.

Dr. Pompa:
Oh, the eggs don’t eat? I didn’t know what came first, Phil, the chicken or the egg.

Phil:
Yeah, the chicken came first.

Dr. Pompa:
I thought it was the egg, so that’s why I was saying eggs eat.

Phil:
No, no.

Dr. Pompa:
Okay, so it was the chicken. That’s a whole other conversation we can have. See, we don’t know what the heck is right or wrong, do we? Here I thought it was the egg that came first, so I thought it was the eggs eating the corn.

Okay, the chickens eat the corner, which is sprayed with glyphosate, which is a chemical that has been proven, according to the leading expert in this area, Stephanie Seneff – she’s a senior scientist at MIT. My gosh, this stuff puts holes in our gut, which I believe it does, so we’re eating those eggs? No, I think those eggs could be really dangerous.

Phil:
I think, if nothing else, you’re starting to go, “Hmm, I see why they say you can’t just categorize something into good or bad. There’s a lot they have to learn.” That’s why we do a show, and we do a show every week because we’re going to feed you a lot of this stuff over your head so you can be the best you’ve ever been in 2016. We’ll be back with more right after this.

They, look out, we’re coming for you. They are those people who say things that leave our population very confused, and have they ever been more confused than they are in the entry to 2016, Dr. Pompa? Have they ever?

Dr. Pompa:
Never, never, never. I just heard the commercial about a product called Amasi, which is a dairy product that I drink all the time. Phil, I saw them in your refrigerator when I was visiting you a few weeks ago. That’s dairy, though, but, Phil, isn’t dairy bad? What? What do we think?

Phil:
Share some reality about why Amasi is such a good product. It absolutely is. In fact, my daughter, when she was in elementary school, would take it with her for lunch every single day.

Dr. Pompa:
As we’re talking about these things, right, of good, bad, and how hard it is, dairy is one of those things that most people would say, “Oh gosh, yeah, dairy is bad.” I’ll tell you, I think that conventional dairy is one of the most poisonous things on this planet. We take something that comes from a cow that was supposed to eat grass, and it’s eating grain, grain laced with one of the most dangerous chemicals called glyphosate that I talked about in the last segment. Then they give it all kinds of hormones, antibiotics. Then we get this milk and then we pasteurize it, homogenize it, kill it, torture it. Then we call it a food. It’s not a food at all.

It is one of the most poisonous things, but yet that Amasi product that was advertised comes from a cow, too. Yet it is one of the most amazing healthy foods on the planet. As a matter of fact, it really came from a cow. It came from a cow, it did. It came from a recipe from one of the strongest, healthiest people, the Maasai tribe in Africa. These people live on this stuff. Phil, this is dairy; they’re living on the most poisonous food. No. It’s a different cow that eats a different food that produces a different type of milk. This is the problem. Cows are meant to eat grass. We have to start there. If we eat products from cows that eat grass, that’s a different product. Oh, and it’s the way we process it with lack of heat instead of the really intense pasteurization, which kills a lot of things. What if we don’t do that? What if we genetically modify cows today that changes this protein called casein, and we’ve heard of casein-free diets, what if we changed the genetics of a cow that alters that protein? That’s 99% of the dairy that we’re buying in this country, but this Amasi product doesn’t have that protein. It’s an ancient cow that hasn’t been changed. It comes from cows that eat grass; it has this protein that hasn’t been changed. It’s a different product, healthy. That’s how confusing it is.

Phil:
What do people do with this good or bad thinking? I’m going to say abandon it. You really need to understand because you can’t say dairy is good or bad. You can’t. You need this explanation. Dr. Pompa, as you provide this explanation, it raises more questions. Is there ever a time that something that comes to us – what is now, unfortunately, conventionally commercially, is there ever a time that it’s better than what nature provided?

Here’s the argument I’ve heard for genetic modification is, what about all of these countries where they just can’t grow food because of the soil? What about all of these starving parts of the world? Now we can genetically modify corn so they can grow it, so there’s the argument for the virtue of it. What is the flip side when you’re talking about an individual’s health?

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely, there is the flip side. Look, I think we started the top of the show talking about gluten. I think that if we asked today – first of all, I would say that just a few years ago, most people listening wouldn’t even know the word. I think 100% of our audience knows what gluten is, and they would all say that it’s bad.

Look, you talked about what happened with GMO, and there’s an argument for it. What about the gluten? There’s a guy named Normal Borlaug in the ‘60s and ‘70s, that his goal, and he won a Nobel Prize for this, I think deserved, to basically feed more of the planet by making wheat stronger, making it more environmentally stronger that it could withstand drought. He took regular wheat, which stood about four to six feet tall, and he created something called dwarf wheat, which is modern wheat as we’re eating it today.

Look, folks, he mistakenly created these different strains of gluten that are denatured, kind of like the casein today in the milk. This altered protein now is this gluten that we know today. Before the ‘70s, even in the ‘80s, even in the ‘90s, there was still a lot of gluten that hadn’t been denatured. Look, Norman was doing a good thing, Phil. Norman really did feed. He really did develop a product that withstood drought and winds. It was easier even to harvest. He deserved his Nobel Prize, but Norman really created a lot of world obesity because gluten today is a different protein.

Here is even the more confusing part. Look, not everybody reacts to gluten. Why? Because there’s another problem. It’s the leaky gut. If your gut doesn’t leak, the protein goes through. You don’t absorb it; you don’t make antibodies; you don’t feel bad. Gluten, bad, good? For some, it’s bad, Phil. For others, it’s not so bad. Norman Borlaug, it was really good. He won a Nobel Prize. He fed more of the population. Even gluten, is it good, is it bad, Phil?

Phil:
When you search for the answer to that question, you have to change it. The question has to be revised, so it becomes, is this good for me? This is you asking the question. Is this good for me based on what I want to achieve? That’s a really good question, right? Is this good for me based on what I want to achieve?

Dr. Pompa, if somebody went to dinner with you, they would be surprised, if they’re listening to what they say by what you are. I’ve seen you enjoy a nice steak. I’ve seen you go to town not only on the steak, but on the bone, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Oh yeah.

Phil:
You love that steak. We’ve all heard this is a heart attack waiting to happen. I can’t believe the guy eats steak. That doesn’t mean everybody should eat steak, nor does it mean that people should eat any steak. There are some things that Dr. Pompa has to know to know what is good for him.

I would say that’s the challenge. There’s so much conflicting, confusing information, and there’s a lot going on in the food industry that you’re not aware of. We hope we can bring some of that to you, so at least it’s a wake-up call. Everything in moderation is not going to work for anybody if the goal is health. If the goal is to maintain health or improve health, everything in moderation is a sure way to move in the other direction, away from your goal.

Let me recap. We said some fats are good, and some fats that are found in foods are good, and those foods can be eggs with the yolk, red meat, and dairy. Can you just zero in for the person listening right now who’s really confused because this runs counter to everything they’ve heard, right? They’ve been staying away from those foods, and now we’re saying, “Wait a minute. Not only is it not as bad as you heard, but it may actually be very good for you to include red meat, egg yolks, and dairy.” Give them a little more clarity so anybody listening can go, “I see.”

Dr. Pompa:
Look, I think that if we back up and try to say, “Let’s make it very simple,” if God created it, it’s most likely good. However, we get into trouble, right, because we say what has man done to it. Is meat good? Look, every healthy culture eats meat on the planet, right, and has. Yet what has man done to meat? We started giving cows grain instead of grass. Does that alter the meat? It sure does. Does that alter the fat? Absolutely. We started taking cows, and we went through that, what we do with milk and how we treat it, so it’s what man has done to it. The less something is altered by man, the better.

Phil, most of us would see wheat, and we would say, “There, that’s not altered by man.” We didn’t realize that good old Normal Borlaug tried to feed more of the world population in altered wheat today, and now we have this weird gluten that people with leaky gut react to. We don’t know that most of the corn and the soybean, if it’s not 100% organic, has been genetically altered and sprayed with this chemical that puts holes in our gut.

Look, what can we say? 100% organic is not going to have as many chemicals. Grass-fed meat, this is what I eat, right? Cage-free eggs, these are the eggs that I eat. Why? Because these things have been left alone the way God intended them to be. If we can bring some simplicity to it, maybe it’s that. I hope it is. It’s hard, Phil.

Phil:
Let’s tie it in as we wrap things up in the segment to is it good or bad. We’ll be back after this.

[commercial break]

Phil:
This is Phil Kaplan, and you’re listening to Health Seekers Radio. I’m here with my very good friend and host, partner, buddy, pal Dr. Daniel Pompa. Dr. Pompa’s speaking to you from his home in Utah.

Dr. Pompa:
Park City. We’re covered up with snow here. Remember I took a picture of my streets; it was snow-covered with like two to three feet of snow on the side of the road, and you sent me a picture saying, “My streets look very different.” What were they, some type of stork walking across, some cranes or something?

Phil:
Yeah, it was some huge birds walking on a beautiful sunny day. I’ll tell you this. Speaking of geography and where we are, when I go to Park City and I visit with you, it’s really easy to eat clean and organic. Part of it is because I’m with you, and you know the places to go, but another part of it is they’re just much more aware. Whenever I go into a natural market, like a Whole Foods, if I’m going to go get a juice, I’ll ask. I’ll go the juice bar and I’ll say, “The apple’s organic today?” and they’ll go sometimes yes, sometimes no, right? “Is the celery organic today?” You have to ask because it’s not always.

I was in Forest Knolls, California, which is a beautiful place. You have redwood trees; you have ocean. It’s just beautiful. I went there to visit some friends. I’m driving up this beautiful mountain road, and I come to this store, like a natural market. I go in there and I start to ask the question “Is this organic?” and they’re looking at me like I’m crazy. I said, “Why are you looking at me like that?” They go, “Everything’s organic.” Then I went into a restaurant that was actually Indian food, and I started to ask where they get the meat from.

Everything’s organic, and I thought, look how easy it is if you live here, but in New York, in South Florida, in L.A. even, it’s not that easy to get things that are organic. Doing it right isn’t as simple as knowing what’s good or bad. It still requires a fair amount of work, and in some cases, a whole lot of work.

For many people, it’s a radical change. They get caught in this place where they say, “Just give me the good diet. Just tell me which diet is good.” Dr. Pompa, that frustrates you, but it also opens a door for you to explain something about diets.

Dr. Pompa:
I think that we hear these stories, right? “I’m a vegetarian, and when I switched over to be a vegetarian, oh my gosh, these list of symptoms disappeared.” They felt much better, right, but here they are now, the same person years later, going, “I don’t feel so good,” same person being a vegetarian.

As a matter of fact, one of the first things we do is add some grass-fed meat, and oh my gosh, they feel so much better. Which diet worked? A matter of fact, a higher-fat diet at that point actually makes them feel better. A very low-fat diet seemed to work for them, and now here they are years later adding fat, eating a high-fat diet with meat, and going, “My gosh. This was my cure. My headaches are gone. I feel so much better.”

We hear people all the time, Phil, right? It’s “Well, I’m on a Paleo diet.” That’s in vogue, I think. Everyone’s eating Paleo diets. “That worked for me. Gosh, my joint pain is gone. I feel better. I’m sleeping through the night.” Yet we can find Paleo people years later who go, “Gosh, now I have all these new symptoms” because right now they’re gravitating to conventional meat that has all these chemicals that we just talked about, and problems.

You see what diet works. Look, if we look at the vegetarian, what actually made them feel better? Oftentimes, Phil, it’s just the change in diet, something that I call diet variation. If we look at our ancestors before refrigeration, every one of these cultures were forced to always change their diet.

For example, Phil, we know all this stuff about the Hunza people, right? I think our listeners would say, “Yeah, these people live a hundred years old.” They are known for their old age. I think there’s some fabrication there a little bit with these people; however, they are a very, very healthy people. They were actually thought to be vegetarians at one point because the British would go there in the summer and they were eating mostly vegetables, and light fruits, and things of that sort, but they would leave because the winters were very harsh.

What they didn’t realize is the Hunzu people in the winter actually ate a diet that we would call a ketosis diet, where it’s super-high fat consisting of mostly animal fat, and dairy, and dairy fats. That was their winter meal. Spring would come, and there’s a name for it to this day in the culture called starvation spring because they were forced to go times without food. Even that’s there in the culture today where they actually go a week or so without food. It’s a fast, basically, and then back into their summer diet.

If we look at every culture, even the foods that grow certain times of year are forced to vary their diets. Now we have refrigeration, so we can get certain fruits every month of the year; it doesn’t matter. I interviewed a gentleman named Professor Thomas Seyfried. He wrote a book called Cancer as a Metabolic Disease, a brilliant, brilliant book and a brilliant man. His argument was by altering people’s diets, changing them, putting them in times of ketosis, high fat, moving them into a different type of diet for a period of time, adaptation occurs during this time of diet change, an adaptation that actually helps us maximize our hormones, be more sensitive to good hormones. This adaptation actually drives our body into this amazing state of health.

I didn’t know why changing people’s diet worked. I’ve actually stumbled upon this, Phil, because we were putting people into ketosis. Folks listening, I’ve written many articles about this. It’s just simply eating a high-fat diet, forcing ourselves to use only fat for energy. It’s a very ancient type of diet. However, some people would have trouble in the diet not losing weight, not even being able to get into this state of being an efficient fat-burner.

I would say, “Okay, let’s go back to this diet,” and they would go back to the diet that they were on before that, which was still a very, very healthy diet; I call it my cellular healing diet. All of a sudden, they start losing weight. I said that’s really odd because they weren’t before, so I said, “Okay, let’s do this diet for three months, and let’s shift again.” We went back into this ketosis diet, and all of a sudden, boom, they go right in and they start losing weight again. I learned it was this shift in the diet, which I call diet variation, seasonal shifts.

Phil, I go into ketosis, which is a very low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet, in the summer. Then in the wintertime, I purposely go into a higher, healthy-carbohydrate diet. The difference is in the switch; the magic is in forcing the body to be stressed and then adapt. We know, according to Seyfried – we had this conversation not knowing that we both believe in the same thing – this shift causes hormones to do amazing things, your body to do amazing things. I believe that the diet variation is part of why, Phil, people are so confused on what diet because I believe that every diet can be good, and it’s the change.

Phil:
Yeah, I know. I’m looking at the clock, and I’m realizing we’re just about out of time. As I was listening to that, there were so many times I wanted to jump in and add to it. I think this is why people need not just is it good or bad; they need information. They need to understand. They need to join us from week to week because there is no way if you’re listening to a show that is telling you, “This is the solution,” and they’re holding something up that is a single element, whether it is an exercise device, a supplement, a medication, there is nothing that works in and of itself. If somebody’s telling you the acai berry is the secret to health, you’ve got to put your hands over your ears and scream.

If somebody’s telling you, “All you have to do is” and then fill in the blank, cut out carbohydrates, you’re not understanding. Your body is a very complex human organism that you need to really nurture and take care of. I think we’ve moved so far away from nature that we forgot that a lot of what –I remember you and I were driving across the state on a business trip, and we stopped in some very rural area. We went into a grocery store, public, so a large grocery store, and it was like a treasure hunt because we were looking for something that we could eat. You’ve got to guess there are probably 5,000, if not more, different foods in there, and we came out with some organic nuts, and some grass-fed cheese, and I think some organic avocados.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I remember that.

Phil:
That was all we could find, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Mmm hmm. Yeah.

Phil:
It’s really difficult until you understand, and understanding doesn’t come in a moment, and understanding doesn’t come from what they say, and understanding doesn’t come from putting a line down a sheet of paper and asking if things are good or bad. You’ve got to take responsibility for the way you eat, the way you move, and the way you think. A big part of that, if you want to get it right, is you’ve got to hang with us every week because you have to continue to learn, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, Phil, I know we only have a few minutes left here, but, look, I want to make it a little bit simple. There are things that cross all cultures, meaning that are bad for you, right? Would you agree that cyanide is bad for everybody? Would you agree with that?

Phil:
Sure.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, okay, cyanide is bad for everyone. Some people would say a little bit in moderation maybe; I don’t know. I think we all would. There’s certain things we can say are bad for everybody. Hydrogenated oils, trans fats, I believe vegetable oil, it’s bad for everybody; it doesn’t matter your genetics.

Here’s the truth; your genetics do determine what diet, how much diet can withstand, how much protein. We’re all different and genetically different, which confuses things. As we explore some of these topics, we always keep that in mind. I don’t think there’s a perfect diet for everybody.

Phil:
The solution is this: You’ve got to continue to listen to us every week. This is Phil Kaplan with Dr. Daniel Pompa.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely. We’ll talk.

Phil:
Health Seekers Radio. We’ll talk to you next week.