Why “Eat Better” & “Exercise More” Fall Short
Replay & Transcript of Episode 6

Health Seekers Radio January 09, 2016

This show is brought to you by the Genesis Communications Network, a world leader in talk radio since 1998. Visit GCNlive.com today. 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 long-time 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 Kaplan:
Hey, good morning everybody. This is Phil Kaplan. I’m here with Dr. Daniel Pompa. I’m going to talk to you about getting healthy; about getting lean; about getting fit; and about reversing the disease continuum, and when I use the word disease, I hyphenate it. Yes, I hyphenate – dis-ease, because there’s where our population is, moving away from ease. Things used to be easy and they’re not anymore.

We seek information and we’re not sure where to go. It’s confusing. It’s really confusing. Where do we go to find answers? I happened to be in a store and there was a seminar going on. This was purely coincidence. I walked into the store and a seminar was being presented by a personal trainer, so I said, “I have to listen.”   I stood in the back and I listened. It was a well-educated personal trainer. I would not criticize his knowledge, except it was a little outdated.

Most of what he was saying was accurate. I’m looking at the people in the room and I’m thinking, “Okay, they’re actually getting some good information,” but what bothered me was he had four bullet points on his whiteboard. I’m going to tell you what the bullet points said, and then I want to turn it over to Dr. Pompa in a moment, because I’d like him to kind of help make sense out of these things, because I’m going to tell you this, they’re not 100% accurate.

The first bullet point said, “Make natural food choices.” Okay, that’s not inaccurate, but the word natural is a tricky word; what does it really mean? Does that mean you’re going out in nature and finding your food? Does that mean you’re hunting and gathering? If it means that, it’s probably good advice, but if it means buy foods that say natural on the label, then it gets a little more difficult.

The second bullet point said, “Exercise more.” Right there, there’s something flawed about that, because we don’t know how much you’re exercising now. How could somebody say “exercise more” unless they fully understand how much you’re exercising?

The third one said, “Avoid fat.” Now, I know that’s a hot one for Dr. Pompa, so he’s going to go to town on that. We can talk maybe a little bit about the new nutritional guidelines put out by the FDA and USDA, but that’s not where I want to go right now. The first three bullet points were:

• Make natural food choices;
• Exercise more; and
• Avoid fat.

The last one says, “Eats more fruits and vegetables.” Now, this is all advice we heard before, so here’s a personal trainer standing in front of a group and some of them are taking notes. Everybody’s listening. They’re nodding their heads, and I’m thinking, “If everybody in this room followed what he shared, most of them would fail.” They would fail to get the result they want. If the result they want is a positive change in health; a positive change in the way they look and feel; make natural food choices; exercise more; avoid fat; and eat more fruits and vegetables, it just doesn’t work. Dr. Pompa, I want you to tell me, because I know you’re probably just wanting to jump in –

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I get very excited when I hear these types of comments.

Phil Kaplan:
Let’s start with this, because I know, once I let you go, you’re go, go, go, go, go, right? Let’s start with this: Make natural food choices. Now, he’s presenting this in a store where they sell lots of foods and lots of foods that say “natural” on each. He had some on a table. What does natural mean when it comes to food labeling? I’m going to start by saying this, “It means nothing.” Take it from there.

Dr. Pompa:
If we take it from, “Make natural food choices,” right, first of all, what is natural? If you go through a grocery store, Phil, there’s natural everything. It says natural on almost every product at any grocery store. This is good advertising. What’s natural? Conventional milk is natural. Is that good? I think we argued on a past show that it’s one of the most denatured foods, right? Again, it’s not the dairy itself; it’s what man has done to it – pasteurized it; homogenized it; fed cows grain when they should eat grass. The list goes on and on. It’s literally a pasteurized food that causes allergies. It’s natural. What about grain-fed meat? That’s natural too. Cows were meant to eat grass; it’s natural.

Phil Kaplan:
I have a definition, according to the FDA of what natural means, okay? Let’s see if this is consistent with what you are saying. Natural, according to the FDA, means there is nothing artificial or synthetic, including color additives. There is nothing artificial or synthetic; however, there are some loopholes here, because the word “natural,” according to labels, has really nothing to do with how the food was produced. In other words, by that definition, they’re only looking at ingredients, not the way the food was produced, so if the food was produced unnaturally, you could put a label on it that says “natural” if you didn’t put in any artificial colors.

Dr. Pompa:
Oh, and by the way, now there are natural artificial colors. This is how confusing this gets. Here’s a great one. What about this? If something just has pure cane sugar in it, table sugar, white sugar, that’s natural, but is that good? I would argue. Sugar is natural and, of course, products that are loaded with sugar are natural.

As a matter of fact, these little drinks that you buy in most of the health-food stores, if you look at them, there’s 50-60 grams of sugar in one drink; I think 65 or maybe even 68 are in some of these things. They are natural. As a matter of fact, they go beyond natural. They say that they’re loaded with natural fruits and vegetables. The only thing it doesn’t say is that when you drink this it makes you exercise more. They’re low in fat.

According to these three things, then, that drink actually fits perfectly with his advice, but you’re getting 60 grams of sugar or almost 70. Do you realize what this does to your blood sugar? According to all the studies, this drives inflammation. This ages you prematurely. Obviously, eating something that just says, “Natural” isn’t. This is not good advice. What does that actually mean? Walking away from that lecture –

Phil Kaplan:
Hey, Dr. Pompa, staying with this for a moment, sugar comes from sugar cane, so that’s why you’re saying it’s natural. It grows. You drive through sugar cane fields and you see the sugar cane as natural, but what likes sugar? I would guess there are many insects that like sugar, correct?

Dr. Pompa:
That is correct.

Phil Kaplan:
If you’re growing sugar cane and those insects are eating your sugar, it’s probably having a financial impact on you and not a good one. Probably, financially, a good idea is to kill those little guys.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that’s right.

Phil Kaplan:
If they choose to use pesticides that are chemical on the sugar, they can still put it in a box that says “Natural.”

Dr. Pompa:
That’s correct. Now, we’re talking just about every food that’s not organic at this point, most of which is just sprayed with glyphosate. Look, I had the privilege a few weeks ago to interview one of the senior scientists at MIT, Dr. Stephanie Seneff. She has published many studies now on the damaging effects of a chemical called glyphosate. Glyphosate just happens to be the active ingredient in the number one herbicide used ubiquitous in our food supply – I mean, on everything they spray it. The number one pesticide herbicide kills weeds and kills pests. This stuff is genius.

Phil Kaplan:
We’ll be back to share more right after this.

Phil Kaplan:
What have we learned l- a lot of nothing or maybe a little something? We learned that natural doesn’t mean natural, and this is not new. What really strikes me is people are still making their decisions based on what the label says – based on what it says on the box on the outside of the container. If it says “Natural” it may be natural and genetically modified. It may be natural loaded up with pesticides. There’s nothing natural about many of the things that come in a box that says the word “natural.”

In line with that, one of the greatest finds for me ever – because when I do seminars, I like to have props, and I’ll take food packages and it’ll say, “low fat,” and then I’ll show that it’s really not low fat, and then we’ll talk about whether or not that’s even important or bad, but I found organic Pop Tarts. I love it, because they have a box of organic Pop Tarts, which means somewhere, and I don’t know where, but somewhere there must be a Pop-Tart tree. If anybody has seen that Pop-Tart tree, because organic must mean that it grew out of the ground. It’s natural, so if anybody finds that Pop-Tart tree, please let me know. So far, I have had no luck in attempting to locate the Pop-Tart tree.

I’d like to, Dr. Pompa, if you don’t mind – I have spent the last 30 years – can it be, yeah – talking to people about making better choices related to nutrition, but my true background, of course, is exercise. I’ve been talking to people about exercise. I get really annoyed when I see “exercise more” given as advice to a general audience, because more than what? I mean, what if somebody in the room is exercising two and a half hours a day? How will they follow that advice, right? Exercise more, and then they have to call their boss and go, “I can’t come in to work today, because the guy at the store told me I have to exercise more. I have to take the day off to do eight hours of exercise.” Where does it end?

Dr. Pompa:
Phil, they say that you should exercise in moderation. It’s moderation. What’s moderation? In Park City where I live, you should see what moderation is. There’s one-sport-a-day people, there’s two-sports-a-day people, and there’s three, so many people are doing three sports a day here, so does that make moderation doing two sports a day meaning that I go out and run in the morning and then later I go for a two-hour mountain bike ride? Is that moderation? I don’t know. What’s moderation? What’s exercise more? According to these people, it’d be four sports a day.

Phil Kaplan:
You know what? There were a number of landmark studies, and what we like to do is when we speak at medical conferences or front of doctors is share actual research so it doesn’t come off like an opinion, because this is not an opinion. This is based on a preponderance of evidence.

When we look for evidence, we look to research studies, and what I love to be able to do is pull research studies from the medical journals, because many doctors – this is not an indictment of doctors – but many doctors are caught up in 20-year-old science and they don’t read the journals, so just because something is actually studied, and then peer reviewed, and then published doesn’t mean that the medical field has an awareness.

There was something in May 2014 in a journal called Heart, which is medical journal aimed at cardiology, and in the study – I can go into depth about the study, but I won’t – but the conclusion is this: Men in the study who exercised more than 5 hours a week when they were 30 years old – understand this, we’re not talking about excessive exercise for a senior; we’re talking about a 30-year-old, physical prime men who exercise for more than 5 hours a week had significantly higher risk of developing heart disease later in life. There’s got to be some kind of limit or border. You can’t just say, “Exercise more,” because I think when you cross that line, it becomes not only counterproductive but potentially dangerous.

If you exercise too much, of course you’re going to be sore, but you can’t immediately feel that you’re opening yourself up to a greater risk of heart disease, so one of the things that really shocks people when they go through one of my programs, Alive, we start people out at 9 minutes a day and they’re blown away because it’s so unconventional. The vital key here is finding that balance between stress load and recovery, and if you exercise too much, you just can’t recover.

Exercise more is very limited in its scope. If you have somebody who’s in that room who exercise three minutes a week, then, yeah, exercise more would be good advice, but as general advice, no.

What I would say is exercise better, but then it gets into, “What does better mean?” and that’s where I think it becomes vitally important to have a professional work with you. I don’t mean forever. You don’t have a personal trainer all the time and pay them four days a week, but have a true professional actually set up a program for you, work with you, or explain some things to you. Then, it really is not complicated. The complicated part is trying to sort through all of this crazy information and actually come to some conclusion.

Dr. Pompa:
You know, I think you have to even back up at a certain point and ask, “What’s your goal with exercise?” Is it weight loss, because really, most studies show that weight loss is really what I call the cherry on the top. It doesn’t have much to do with weight loss. I know that sounds shocking to most people, but again, when we look at these studies, we walk back and go, “Oh, wow.”

Yeah, it can help. It can stimulate your metabolism. It can do a lot of good things, and I’m a huge proponent of exercise. Don’t get me wrong; however, when we look at what really matters with exercise, it is about the diet. That’s why I call exercise the cherry on the top. Our government tells us basically to eat less and exercise more. I guess that was part of this message here from the trainer, so basically, he’s calling us gluttons and lazy – our government is anyway – so, we’re gluttonous and lazy. Just do more.

Really, when you look at it, that’s really not why America is getting fatter and not able to lose weight. We’ve discussed it on past shows and those shows are recorded. Go back and listen. It’s not so simple to eat less and exercise more.

Look, I think that we do have to look at what our goals are. Maybe it is just to be more cardiovascularly fit. In that case, running or cycling can be very good, but if it’s to lose weight, Phil, there are studies that show high-intensity exercise actually works better. You’re right when you say, “You exercise better,” because then we have even say, “What is our actual goal?” because different exercises do different things. Would you agree with that? You’re the expert here.

Phil Kaplan:
As are you, and, yes, of course I would agree. There was a study that was done back in the 1980s. It was a Harvard professor who initiated the study, Ellen Langer. We should try to get her on the show. If I can get this right, she took a group – I don’t know how many people, but there were men in their 70s, and she brought them to a facility where every single thing inside that facility was from 1960 or 1950, so there are books on the shelves and all of the magazines – everything in there – and they were told to speak about the present tense as if it is 19-whatever that year was. On the TV they had old baseball games, and Johnny Unitas, the great quarterback, and when we come back, I want to share the outcome, because it’s really mind blowing. We’ve got to take a break. This is Phil Kaplan being joined by my good friend, Dr. Daniel Pompa, right here, where you should be on Health Seekers Radio.

Phil Kaplan:
We’re rounding the turn heading into the second half of today’s episode; today’s edition of Health Seekers Radio. Dr. Daniel Pompa, I’m glad we’re doing what we’re doing, aren’t you

Dr. Pompa:
Very much so.

Phil Kaplan:
For people who may just be turning in, I started out by referencing a little bit of a seminar I happened to step in to. I stood in the back and there was a personal trainer, a well-credentialed personal trainer, sharing information, but the four bullet points that he had up on his board were: Make natural food choices, which we have already torn a major hole in, and rightfully so; exercise more, which we have helped people understand why that is probably not the best way to approach a general audience; avoid fat was the next one, and eat more fruits and vegetables.

Dr. Pompa, I’ve been doing this for the better part of 30 years, and that’s hard for me to believe, but now I think back and if anybody told me the day would come that Bruce Jenner would be a woman and Bill Cosby is a rapist, I would have said, “What? You’re making that up,” so obviously a lot of things have changed since 30 years ago, but what hasn’t changed is the human body is going to find health from the same stimuli and is going to find health from the same nutrients that it found 30 years ago. I think what has changed are the nutrients. What has changed is the food. When people take old advice, they’ve got to try to apply it today, and somebody’s got to direct them and say, “Does this make sense?”

I’m going to just kind of step off the direction we’re going in for a minute because we were in Pittsburgh together a few days ago, and we shot a video, and you were working on an entire program for health practitioners, which is fantastic, but the video we shot was specific to mindset and emotion and how much it ties in to health, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Phil Kaplan:
Just kind of summarize that. Kind of give listeners the understanding of what came out of that – what the message was.

Dr. Pompa:
I always tell my children, which was actually last night ironically enough, that mindset is everything. That really is how high your success can rise. Mindset is everything, even getting your health back, so if someone thinks they can’t get well, typically, I would say almost always they can’t get well. One of the things, Phil, you know that we train our doctors on is looking for the people and asking some pointed questions to see if they in fact believe they can get well, because if they believe they can’t, then they can’t.

We even took the conversation into – as far as people that are chemically sensitive – there are certain chemicals that cause our bodies to go into a reaction, and literally you can mind over matter so to speak. There’ s a book written entitled You are the Placebo, meaning that you can literally control these reactions and not have the same inflammatory reaction from your mind – from the thoughts that we have, we can literally drive cellular inflammation or we can diminish cellular inflammation. I know that sounds hard to believe, but listen, we can give somebody sugar pills and get an effect. As a matter of fact, Phil, we discussed this that in many of these studies, they’ll tell people the side effects that could happen, and then they take the sugar pill thinking they’re taking the actual medication in the study, and sure enough, vomiting and headaches start, because those were the side effects. That’s called a no-cebo effect.

Phil Kaplan:
What’s interesting is, you know, headaches can be subjective, right, like if you tell somebody they’re going to get a headache and they get a headache. People can get that, okay. They think they have a headache, so they have a headache, or they think they’re going to be tired so they’re tired, but the fact that they were throwing up – this is actually a physical change that is taking place.

When we look at mindset, it really is a factor more than ever today, because like I said, everybody’s confused, and when you attempt to change with a flawed approach and you fail, you blame yourself and it sends you into a negative mindset. You make those decisions and you believe them to be truth.

Before the break, I was talking about from my memory a study by Ellen Langer, so I just pulled it up, and this is relevant. It’s really relevant. What’s interesting is this is from more than 30 years ago, but before the study that I was referencing, which I’ll talk about in a minute, Ellen Langer, who is a Harvard psychologist, did a study with nursing home residents who were experiencing memory loss, and she gave them incentives to remember. Rather than just letting them sit in the nursing home, she gave them reasons that they had to remember.

In one of the groups she gave them a plant and said, “You have to remember to feed this plant and water this plant and nourish this plant every single day, and you also have to remember to make your schedule so that you don’t neglect the plant.” She told the other group that the staff would care for the plants, so they could have the plant but they didn’t have to care for it. Memory was far more improved in the group who had to take care of the plant. Now, that’s not that surprising, right, because they were kind of working their memory like a muscle.

Listen to this. Eighteen months after the study, twice as many subjects in the plant-caring, decision-making group were still alive than in the control group. There was the beginning of her identifying that there’s something here – there’s a real link – a very genuine, identifiable link between mindset and health.

Then, she took on this very ambitious study where she took this group of men in their 70s, brought them into a controlled environment where everything was set up to be 1959, and they were told that they’re supposed to exist in the present. They would watch sport shows and they’d see Wilt Chamberlin. They would watch current events and read newspapers that talked about the first U.S. satellite launch. They would watch movies with Jimmy Stewart, and they were told to talk about this as if it’s the present.

One thing that she did is there were no mirrors, so all of them had pictures of themselves from when they were younger, and when you look at the outcome, it is almost unbelievable, and because of that, she, according to an article, became very self-conscious because she thought, “This can’t be true,” but it was true.

The changes – they used things like grip strength and different ways of assessing; different biomarkers of assessing age, but the amazing thing is they looked younger, and their sight improved, so you look at that and you look at what happens when you take somebody out of that place where they’re told that they’re old and they’re breaking down, and that’s the way things are going to be.

I really think that anybody listening who has tried this, and says, “Nothing’s working for me,” listen, if you went to that seminar where they told you to make natural food choices, exercise more, avoid fat, and eat more fruits and vegetables, you would fail. That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. The approach was wrong. Nobody gave you the right understanding, so I think all of this has to begin with mindset. Right this minute, you’ve got to know you can get better. Right?

Dr. Pompa:
No doubt. You know, they actually did a study at MIT. Dan Aries did a study, and they actually took young people, the opposite of what you said, and they literally just put them in front of a computer and flashed things that deal with old people, or at least that our brains would connect with old people. I mean literally, just terms that we would connect with osteoarthritis – just different terms that we would say, “Oh, that’s old people.” Even some pictures of old people – one hundred percent of the time, after the young people watching that, they would walk down the hall literally slower than they walked in, more bent over, hunched over, almost emulating old. That’s how powerful the mindset is.

Phil Kaplan:
In the Langer study that I just spoke about, they became taller. That’s why I said so much of this looks unbelievable.

Dr. Pompa:
They’re taller because they’re not slumped over.

Phil Kaplan:
What greater evidence of mindset being a factor than comparing these two studies? The third bullet point – I went off course a little bit – says, “Avoid fat. You’ll have a field day with this, so I’ll give it to you.

Dr. Pompa:
Look, it was avoid fat and eat more fruits and vegetables, correct? Was that the whole statement – just getting it right?

Phil Kaplan:
Those were two separate bullet points.

Dr. Pompa:
Oh, the two are separate.

Phil Kaplan:
Natural food choices was the first. The second was exercise more. The third was avoid fat, and the fourth was eat more fruits and vegetables.

Dr. Pompa:
We’ll go to the fruits and vegetables next, but I had said at the beginning of the call, or actually this was when you and I were on the phone before the call. I said if I were to do a public lecture, I always start by saying, “Okay, this talk has nothing to do – and I’m not going to tell you to eat more fruits and vegetables,” and as I go, “Thank God, because we’ve heard that.” We do we even have to go there?

Avoiding fat? I mean, really? Today’s day and age – I would love to do a hands-up here of our listeners. How many people still believe that eating fat is bad? Here’s one: How many people believe that fat makes you fat? I would love to know folks. I think we’re going to have to tackle this. I know we’re at the end of this segment, but I don’t want to just drop that out there, because if we could take a little poll while we’re listening to the commercials, let’s come back and let’s deal with this. Do you believe that fat makes you fat? That’s the question.

Phil Kaplan:
We’ll explain when we come back.

Phil Kaplan:
Alright, we did it again. They, you know, they who say things they speed up time every time we begin the show. The show to me feels like it six minutes in length, because we start and then it’s over. The good news is, we’ll be back next week, but let’s finish talking about where people are confused and why sometimes when they go to a seminar or read an article or read a book, they’re even more confused, even though they don’t know they are because they’re getting flawed information.

During today’s show we were addressing four points that were made by a personal trainer in a seminar, and Dr. Pompa and I agree that if you just had these four points you’d fail. They sound like good advice based on what most people know, but together, they’re going to move you in the wrong direction. Make natural food choices, exercise more, avoid fat, and eat more fruits and vegetables.

Dr. Pompa, before the break you were starting to say, and we’ve shared this many times, but it’s really important. You started to share that the avoid fat thing is really bad advice, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, well we took a poll and 100% of the people that I polled on our break actually still believe that fat makes you fat Phil. Actually, that’s not true. I didn’t poll anybody, but I would love to really take 10 people and just do a show like that where we just kind of go out with the mic and interview people, because that would be a fun show, right? We’d get a lot of 180s, but in this topic of fat we do have a lot of 180-degree principles and for our new listeners, let me just say what that is.

Pretty much, especially when it comes to your health, you can look at whatever the media is saying – I don’t care if it’s magazines, newspapers, the news, whatever it is – go 180 degrees opposite, and somehow the truth always lies there. As a matter of fact, I love saying that at lectures. I say, “You don’t even need me right now. Just watch your television and do 180 degrees opposite of what it’s telling you to do, and somehow you’re going to hit it.” I’m telling you, Phil, there’s truth there.

Phil Kaplan:
I may throw a wrench in there, but go ahead.

Dr. Pompa:
When it comes to fat, I think there’s a lot of these 180s, and I’m going to throw some right at you. I said, “Do you believe that fat makes you fat?” The truth is this, fat doesn’t make you fat, it’s the inability to burn fat that makes you fat, and that’s a hormonal problem. We’ve done a past show on that, so please watch that show. There are many hormones that really allow us to be efficient fat burners or not. It’s not the fat; it’s the inability to burn fat that actually makes you fat.

As a matter of fact, here’s the 180. Fat actually helps you become an efficient fat burner, because there’s these things called hormone receptors that are on every one of our cells, and guess what? There’s fat that stabilizes those hormone receptors. As a matter of fact, that cell membrane that really stabilizes those cell receptors branch from and come out from are mostly fat. It’s a lipid bio area. It’s a fat layer.

Here’s the big 180. Are you ready? The two fats, if I asked you, listening audience, if I said, “Name the two most dangerous fats. These are really bad fats.” I’d be hard pressed to say that 100% of you would say saturated fat and cholesterol are your leading bad fats. The truth is, is those two fats actually are shown to stabilize the cell membrane in those hormone receptors, which have the most to do with how you lose weight. Believe it or not. What I’m saying is this, those fats are actually critical in the ability or not the ability to lose weight. Can you believe that? The very two fats that we’ve been told to stay away from are the very two fats that can actually have the greatest impact in your body’s ability or not of losing weight.

Phil Kaplan:
Hey, Dr. Pompa, when I studied exercise physiology in college, we really didn’t get a whole lot of nutrition. It wasn’t part of the curriculum, but we got a little, and what we got was percentages – how much of your intake should come from protein, carbohydrates, and fat. At the time, they said 20% should come from fat, and the average American was consuming more than 40% fat, and only 5% to 10% of your total intake was saturated fat. This is what I was taught by professors and there were textbooks to back it up.

What they were saying is you maybe can use a little saturated fat, but please don’t take in a lot because that’s really dangerous. That comes from USDA and FDA guidelines, and every five years they revise them. It has to make you scratch your head and go, “If they completely changed it, weren’t they wrong last time? If they were wrong last time, how can I trust that they’re right now?” When you say everything is 180 degrees opposite, well they have new guidelines that they released I think in April or May.

Dr. Pompa:
You just said “they.” Yeah, “They have new guidelines.”

Phil Kaplan:
Yeah, I think that they and the USDA and FDA are all good friends. I think they go to parties together, but here’s what they say now. Some fat is vital to your health. Good fat, like omega-3 fatty acids, are good. Fats from oils – those are good. Saturated fat – what used to be called the bad kind – might actually be good.

Dr. Pompa:
Time Magazine had on their front cover a scoop of butter, and it said, “Could we be wrong? Is butter bad? The article said, “No, butter is actually good.”

Phil Kaplan:
In that lies the challenge, because they’re doing their own 180. Now you have to go, “What are they messing up now?” because they’ve never hit it right if every five years they change it.

Dr. Pompa:
You never know. Here’s the thing. You get these bleeps always like the truth, but then if you look now, I’m sure Time Magazine is talking about eating low-calorie, low-fat diets and eating more fruits and vegetables. I promise you this, and exercising more because we’re all lazy gluttons, there’s the bleep of truth. Why – because it sells. “Oh, that’s different,” but ultimately what’s still coming out of our government and all these health protecting bodies is eat low fat; eat less calories; exercise more. It’s the same message. Why isn’t it working – because the truth is 180 degrees.

Phil Kaplan:
I’ll tell you what I think is going to happen. I think what happens is these organizations like the FDA are corrupt. They’re corrupt because they’re funded by food and drug companies, yet there’s the illusion that they support the nice consumers, so they have to make decisions based at some level on consumer want, but they’re always careful and they leave loopholes so that they don’t injure the food and drug companies in the process.

Sooner or later, I think an abundance of evidence has to make them go, “Wait a minute. There’s no way we can not talk about the perils of sugar, so we have to come out. We’ve got to revise it a little bit. We’ve got to now say, ‘Hey, sugar is bad’.” We have to change the amount of carbohydrates because they want people to believe, but then what happens is you have these other stoic organizations that look at the guidelines and criticize them, so even if the FDA and USDA come out now and say, “Some saturated fat is good,” they’ll be attacked and they’ll go, “Oh no, people are going to get cancer. Look what you’re doing.”

It is this perpetual head spin where you try to keep up and you can’t, here’s what I’m going to say. Listen to Dr. Pompa. He’s given you the straight scoop, so whether he’s 180 or 75 degrees or 192 degrees away from what they’re telling you, he’s giving you the true north, and that’s why you have to listen to this show.

The last one was “Eat more fruits and vegetables.” Good advice?

Dr. Pompa:
I love starting every talk saying “Hey, I’m not going to tell you to eat more fruits and vegetables.” Look, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with eating more fruits and vegetables, but again, when we look at really what brings health to people, I always love to say it this way, “It’s not so much what you’re eating, sometimes it so much of what you’re not eating.” The opposite – let’s go 180 on that. We say, “Eat more of this.” You know, honestly, it’s really, “Eat less of a lot of this,” that really is the key.

Does really eating more fruits and vegetables make us that much healthier? Again, studies show not really, so where does it all come from? If you stop eating, you’re raising up your glucose levels. Studies show, yeah, that really impacts your health. That’s not my opinion. Eating a lot of processed foods, that’s absolutely going to impact your health, so don’t do that.

Again, we say, “What’s processed?” I think, Phil, there’s a problem too, because people don’t really don’t even know what’s processed or what’s not. We could do shows on all these things that I’m saying.

Eating more fruits and vegetables, what does that even mean? More what? What’s more?

Phil Kaplan:
Years ago there was a whole kind of aerobic movement where women and some men were really finding these aerobic classes to be the thing, and they would typically, because they were told for breakfast if they do it in the morning, they’d have a glass of orange juice and a bran muffin because they’re getting their vitamin C and they’re getting their energy. What they didn’t understand is they’re literally switching off their body’s ability to burn fat, which is why they were taking the class in the first placed, so they learned. They learned that that glass of orange juice has more sugar than the same sized glass of sugared cola.

I think when we say, “Eat more fruits and vegetables,” you’ve got to hold on to that thought process and say, “Maybe the fruit salad, maybe, will give me some better nutrients or micronutrients than the processed food, but how much sugar am I putting in my body from consuming a fruit salad, especially by itself with nothing else.”

The other question is, “Where did those fruits come from?” This goes full circle back to the whole idea of natural or organic. If you’re consuming a meal of pesticides and genetically modified “frankenfoods” in the disguise of a healthy fruit salad, you’re being fooled.

Alright, I warned you that time would go too quickly. It’s happened. We’re out of time. Join us next week and every week thereafter forever and ever and ever – Health Seekers Radio. We’ll talk to you then.