Harvesting the Truth

It's been a great season of harvesting the truth. My summation entails One sentence:

Eat real food, mostly organic, that we cook at home.

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Today I am honored to feature Marion Nestle on the show. Marion is one of the most highly regarded voices in food nutrition and marketing. She has a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and MPH in Public Health Nutrition. Her experience in this space is unmatched. She has taught at the university level since the 1960's, recently retiring from teaching in 2017. However, "retiring" means she now has more time to write--over 15 books and a daily blog called Food Politics.

Here's the highlights of our conversation:

Food companies market their products similar to how cigarette companies do.

Food companies are businesses for profit. Thus, they need to continually grow their profit margins. That's hard to do in a competitive food environment where there's too much food--way more than the population needs.

Thus, food companies focus on ultra processed foods. These are industrialized "foods" made from ingredients not real food. They are made cheap and sold for a high profit. They can stay on the shelf for a long time since they aren't real food.

In the 1980's the shareholder value movement started. Deregulation started too. So food companies started to produce more food and found ways to get people to eat more. Bigger portions and an increased calorie count helped. Their junk food is so cheap to make because of corn and soybean subsidies. Know what's not subsidized? Healthy food. Organic Food. Know why? Because our federal entities are captured by the companies they are supposed to regulate. BUT then again, deregulation started in the 80's.

So now 70% of Americans are overweight. 40% are obese.

There is a direct correlation between bad food and poor health.

What does this mean? Ultra-processed food is bad. Avoiding it is the one thing you can do that will have a big and positive impact on your health.

There are not enough studies to show pesticides won't harm us. Additives too. So eat organic when possible.

If you want to read Marion's blog: www.foodpolitics.com

@marionnestle

To send me a message: [email protected]

Follow along on social at @thefoodstoic

In today's episode I talk with Mary Ruddick. Dubbed the "Sherlock Holmes of Health" for her unique ability to expeditiously asses and remediate rare neuromuscular conditions that others have deemed impossible, Mary Ruddick is an ancestral nutritionist and experiential anthropologist who specializes in neuromuscular disorders, infertility, and disabling chronic disease.  She can regularly be found endangering herself in the untouched corners of the world to learn from and distill the wisdom from the last remaining traditional cultures.  She shares her findings and knowledge via her sought after keynote speeches, 100+ podcast appearances, her published articles, and her work both in front and behind the camera.

Mary and I talk about her findings from visiting ancestral communities. Why are the members so healthy and happy? (compared to Americans where chronic illness is more common than good health and unhappiness is on the rise). Why do they live so long? (100 plus years is common, where here in America our life expectancy is declining). Is it the food, or something else? What do they eat? How do they eat? We delve into all of this in this episode.

You can get in touch with Mary at www.maryruddick.com. If you have dysautonomia or another chronic illness and want to discuss your health with her, her website is enableyourhealing.com. Also follow her adventures on Instagram at @maryqueenofheart

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Every week I send out the Food Stoic newsletter. On Mondays I send out my Five For Food with five things about food to help you live a more intentional eating lifestyle.

Send me an email at [email protected] or follow me on social @thefoodstoic

In this episode learn all about the toxic weedkiller Glyphosate with the person who literally wrote the book on it. Dr. Stephanie Seneff is a senior research scientist with MIT and has been involved with studying Glyphosate for many years. In fact, a long line of people commended her work, including Robert F. Kennedy who relied on her research to prosecute Monsanto Company, the maker of Glyphosate. Dr. Seneff's book is "Toxic Legacy, How the Weedkiller Glyphosate is Destroying Our Health and the Environment."

In this episode Dr. Seneff provides the link between Glyphosate usage since 1974 and the rise in chronic illness. Glyphosate is linked to cancer, autoimmune diseases like Autism, and Alzheimer's, mental disease, reproductive disorders, gluten intolerance, IBS, fatty liver disease, and more. Yet, how? All of these diseases are so different? They all begin with gut dysbiosis, but today learn from Dr. Seneff how Glyphosate gets into our cell's mitochondria and the role deuterium plays.

So what can we do? Dr. Seneff has some ideas:

1. Buy from local organic farmers to support and advocate for organic farming subsidies.

2. Eat organic to limit your exposure to glyphosate.

3. Eat foods rich in sulphur and taurine. Eat cruciferous vegetables, grass-fed meat, fermented foods and organic eggs.

4. Get plenty of sunlight.

Glyphosate accumulates in our bodies, but there's hope in ridding it by taking action.

To stay in touch with Dr. Seneff you can find her at: https://stephanieseneff.net/. Also support her work by finding her book on Amazon.

To send me a message: [email protected]

FB: @foodstoic; IG: @thefoodstoic

www.foodstoic.com

School lunches are not immune from ultra-processed foods, chemical additives, pesticides and the general horrors of the Standard American Diet. But in this episode I share some refreshing news via Chef Rebecca Polson.

Rebecca Polson CC, SNS, is a chef consultant and culinary trainer for K-12 schools. With her farm to chef inspired meals, she is reshaping school nutrition, one recipe at a time.

Let's rid the schools of the unhealthy reheat and serve model so prevalent when big corporations are involved. Instead, take inspiration from this episode that a better and more successful model is not only possible, but in existence. Chef Rebecca has worked with these school districts that are putting the children front and center. In these districts, the community is coming together to not just source locally, but to specifically grow food and institute menus that encourage inclusivity for local cultures. This includes fresh seafood in Maine; pasture raised turkeys in Minnesota and fresh greens in Salad Bowl country.

If these schools can do it, so can yours. Listen to this episode and let it inspire you to fight for your children's health by encouraging your district to implement better nutrition for the kids. It's up to us.

To follow Chef Rebecca:

@chefrebeccak12

[email protected]

www.schoolnutritionchef.com

To send me a message:

[email protected]

@thefoodstoic on IG

@foodstoic on FB

www.foodstoic.com

Everywhere you look there's information. In fact, we are flooded with it. Opinions, facts, lies, untruths, truths, evidence, half-truths, misinformation, disinformation. . .what do we trust? Some people swear we need to go plant-based, others tell us to eat meat and honey. Another says no sugar, while yet another says sugar is fine. Alcohol or not? Red meat or no? Some days my head is going to explode from so many different opinions.

I have decided to trust myself. So today I am sharing how I took action to make changes in my family's food. Because despite all the information out there, very few are helping us with the "how". So today let me help you by sharing how I did it.

I developed a 5 step process. I am sharing it to help you, not tell you what to do. Actually, step 2 is for you to make your own decisions. So take this edict from me to help you take action and make those changes you want to make.

Send me a message at [email protected] and follow me on FB at @foodstoic and IG at @thefoodstoic.

Sometimes we need medications. Today I share a story about a family member who experienced sudden immobility and required medicine to regain it. However, the goal was to get off the medicine, especially one that carries so many risks and side effects. As a nation, however, we've become so comfortable with prescriptions and trust in the medications, that we often don't even bother to read the fine print of the side effects when we pick the medicines up from the pharmacy.

Shouldn't there be a goal to get off the medicine as soon as we can? That will likely require taking control and working on our health. Our bodies are resilient and can heal, but we need to work on ourselves to do that.

Rate and review this episode and send me a message what you'd like to see next.

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Would you drink a green goo-like substance consisting of 2 lbs of greens and fruits every day for six months---and only that!---if it healed you from an autoimmune disorder? Well friends, my guest today did exactly that.

Meet Lisa Roers. Lisa is the host of a podcast, Sunshine Cafe. While we met through podcasting I was struck by her story and knew I needed to introduce her to you. Lisa woke up one day with a kink in her neck, and that pretty quickly turned into not being able to walk. While she sought an opinion from over 18 doctors, none could give her any specific diagnosis on her condition, other than she had inflammation. So she decided to take matters into her own hands.

Lisa researched her condition and decided to go on a hypernourishing protocol of blending fruits and vegetables together and only consuming that and no other food until she was healed. The protocol worked and Lisa healed herself with food. She is now healthy with normal activity, including walking and running.

Lisa's story is one of resiliency, but also, inspiration for taking control of your own health and using food to heal. It's an eye opener when you realize that you slowly deteriorated your body and thought you were fine, until the day you wake up not fine. When you finally heal you realize what you put up with for so long.

Lisa Roers is a disciple of Jesus, a wife, a mom, a professional musician, certified coach and owner/CEO of the Sunshine Cafe Podcast.

[email protected]

LRoers (Instagram)

Website: www.LisaRoars.com OR www.LisaRoers.com

Resources mentioned/relied on in this episode:

chrisbeatcancer.com --Chris Wark

goodbyelupus.com --Dr. Brooke Goldner

foodrevolution.org --Ocean Robbins

terrywahls.com --- Dr. TerryWahls and the Wahls Protocol

To send me a message please email me at [email protected] and visit my website at www.foodstoic.com. Keep up with me on social media at @foodstoic (FB) and @thefoodstoic (IG).

It's in our food, our water, our air and our clothes. Glyphosate, the active chemical in the herbicide Round-Up, came on the market in the 1970's and has been increasingly changing our planet ever since. Is it as benign as Monsanto-Bayer claims? The EPA certainly appears to believe so.

In this episode Michelle Adams shares what she has learned about the pesticide since beginning her intentional eating journey. In the last twenty years chronic disease has skyrocketed, and so has our exposure to chemicals like Glyphosate. The weed killer has been linked to cancer, autoimmune disorders, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, neurologic disease, hormone disruption and gut dysbiosis. Even though Monsanto claimed that Glyphosate affects a metabolic pathway in plant cells that human cells do not possess, our gut microbes do possess the shikimate pathway. Most of our health stems from our gut and thus, the inflammatory response to constant pesticide exposure is now causing what some call a public health crisis.

We'll examine what Glyphosate is and the diseases linked to it, along with the verdicts obtained by plaintiffs who filed lawsuits against Monsanto-Bayer. Moreover, we'll talk about the food laced with Glyphosate, the food in our homes and on our plates every single day.

Resources from this episode include:

Toxic Legacy: How the Weedkiller Glyphosate is Destroying Our Health and the Environment by Stephanie Seneff, PhD

Find Michelle on social media at:

Instagram: @thefoodstoic

Facebook: @foodstoic

Sign up for the Five for Food Weekly Newsletter at: www.foodstoic.com.

Write to her at [email protected]

In today's episode I share a Glyphosate update via the recent legal cases with Plaintiff victories in November and December.

Also, I share what I have learned about Monsanto's role in Agent Orange, along with the emotional story of Paul Reutershan. Paul was just 17 years old when he enlisted in the Army and became stationed over in Vietnam. As part of a helicopter team, he would watch the mist of Agent Orange roll down from the airplanes spreading it above. Agent Orange was an herbicide manufactured by Monsanto and weaponized by the United States to clear the thick foliage and aid in making the enemies more seen. Paul recalled it would destroy an entire jungle within just a few days. After young Paul returned home, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer and died at the age of 28 years old. Before he died he filed a lawsuit against Monsanto and Dow, alleging that Agent Orange had caused his cancer. Although he died before seeing his lawsuit concluded, he enlisted friends to see his mission through and the lawsuit was concluded in 1984. Pursuant to the terms of the suit, the defendants were ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars, which go to help the victims of Agent Orange.

Paul Reutershan's parting words before he died to his fiancee were that we are "poisoning the earth".

Glyphosate surfaced in the early 1970's on the heels of Agent Orange. Also an herbicide intended to kill weeds, Monsanto assured it does not harm people, only plants. Yet since it's introduction, chronic illness has been on the rise. Like Agent Orange, much of Glyphosate is shrouded in mystery and falsehoods.

It's important to become aware of what we eat and where it comes from in order to protect ourselves and our loved ones.

To contact Michelle:

[email protected]

IG: @thefoodstoic

FB: @foodstoic

www.foodstoic.com