Why Everyone is Told to Supplement and Why That’s a Problem

Why Everyone is Told to Supplement and Why That’s a Problem

Producer Potts  0:13  

supplementation should be a part of everyone’s nutrition plan, as getting enough nutrients from food is unattainable for most people, this is the narrative that is such a part of our society that the idea of getting the nutrients we need from the foods we eat feels out of reach and impossible. Can you give us a simple breakdown to help us move past this narrative and think about our food choices differently?

Dr. Sarah  0:38  

You know, what’s sad is that that’s the message that we’re getting both from conventional medicine, like the health field, as well as the wellness community. We’re kind of getting it from both we’re

Producer Potts  0:53  

getting it from both sides. Yeah, exactly that. 

Dr. Sarah  0:57  

You know, it’s impossible to eat healthy foods because Ultra processed foods are so easy and cheap and tasty, and yes, they are all of those things. But then you also get the other side of that argument of but also, you know, our food supply is depleted of nutrients, and all of these things are toxic, so buy my $300 a month supplement to make up for it. So the reality is, it’s actually very simple to get all of the nutrients our bodies need from the foods we eat. There are a couple of eating patterns that facilitate achieving that goal. So one is to get 80 ish percent of our calories from Whole Foods, which leaves 20% of our calories that can come from ultra processed foods, and using the very, the very loosest definition of Whole Foods, right? So, you know, cheese counts as a whole food. Whole grain bread counts as a whole food. In this like loose definition of Whole Foods, obviously, fruits and vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds, you know, meats, seafood, eggs, all of those things count as whole foods and processed culinary ingredients, right? Like you can still cook those foods with vegetable oil or olive oil, like those things all count in the 80% and then that saves 20% of our calories for those foods that either help stretch our budget, our foods that we rely on for convenience, or for those nights where we’re just like exhausted and we would just really need something easy. They’re our safe foods, or they’re just the foods that give us pure joy, because if we’re not getting joy from our diet, we can’t stick to that diet. Doesn’t matter how healthy the diet is. If it doesn’t taste good, it doesn’t matter. We’re not going to stick to it. And it doesn’t matter how I eat today for my long term health. It matters how I eat on average over the long term for my long term health. So making sure that we are being strategic, to utilize that 20% of our calories that can come from ultra processed foods without causing any health harm, making sure that we’re we’re utilizing that as a strategy to make sure that our diets are tasty enough that we are enjoying a higher quality diet that is supplying our nutritional needs. I think that is a really important part of this equation. So mostly Whole Foods, fruit and vegetable like plant forward, so hitting our serving targets of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, legumes. So I would say the default mode on nutrivore, which is the dietary philosophy, where the goal is to get all the nutrients our bodies need from the foods we eat. The default mode is plant forward, omnivore. So that is the easiest way to get all of the nutrients our bodies need from the foods we eat. Not the only way you can definitely do this with a plant based diet. You can definitely do this with macro manipulation diets. But the this most straightforward way to reach that goal is to be eating a lot of plant foods, but be incorporating some animal foods, especially seafood, and then the like third principle is a diverse diet, so eating a wide variety of foods, getting the rainbow of fruits and vegetables, but just like trying to mix it up as much as possible, that decreases the likelihood of falling short of any particular nutrient. Just doing that will hit for most people, and will hit their nutritional needs. Of most nutrients, you can get more sophisticated than that. That’s what I created, the nutrients for the weekly serving matrix. To do is to help make getting all of the nutrients our bodies need from the foods we eat as efficient as possible. So it helps to focus on food choice so that we’re hitting all of our target, all of our recommended dietary allowances, of all of the essential nutrients, and also getting a lot of all of the non essential nutrients that are still really important for health. So that is a tool for getting there even faster. But you don’t need to do that like it’s. Actually, it’s really straightforward. If you’re eating a wide variety of different foods with a plant forward approach, but still an omnivore diet, and you’re eating mostly Whole Foods, it’s not hard to hit the recommended dietary allowance of all of their essential nutrients, and that means, like, we don’t need fortified foods in that context, like fortified foods have, have actually made some really important contributions to reducing diseases of deficiency. So fortified foods have greatly reduced the risk of neural tube defects. They’ve greatly reduced the risk of iron deficiency anemia and risk of goiter. So fortified foods have been successful in reducing the risk of some health conditions associated with nutrient deficiency. But multivitamins don’t have that same track record. There’s no health signal. There’s no health benefit from taking a daily multivitamin, and there’s lots of speculation as to why that might be. I don’t think we have a really concrete answer on why a multivitamin doesn’t like produce the same health benefit as getting those nutrients from foods, but it does show us that at least for like the big health outcomes like cardiovascular disease, cancer, all cause mortality, which is a general indicator of health and longevity. At least looking at those, like big picture health challenges that are like really high prevalence and in our society today, at least for those things, we don’t see a signal of benefit from multivitamins. That doesn’t mean there’s no benefit to other things. For example, older adults, there’s like a cognitive benefit of taking a B vitamin complex. So there’s definitely another time and a place for supplements. I don’t want to bash all supplements here, but to say that we can’t get all of the nutrients that we need from food is misinformation. It’s defeatist in a lot of ways. So I think when it comes from the like medical health, like conventional medicine community, it’s basically assuming that we can’t, we’re, not gonna, we’re not gonna eat fruits and vegetables anyways, so might as well just take supplements, right? Like it’s, it’s basically assuming that we don’t want to, or that we’re incapable of adopting healthier eating patterns as a long term healthy habit. Like, it’s basically belittling us. And then from the wellness community, it’s based on, like, fear based marketing, right? Like, you can’t get your nutrients because all of those foods have toxins in them, and they’re trying to make us afraid of the foods that supply the nutrients so that they can sell us the supplement with the same nutrients, even though the supplement is not proven, but the food is. And so I think that you know, depending on what side of that coin that we’re being told that message from it’s either, you know, not not believing in us that we can make those diet changes, to eat more whole foods, to eat more plant foods, to eat a diverse diet, or it’s scaring us away from doing those things in order to take advantage of us in order to to prey on our fears and insecurities, to sell us something. And those are both terrible. Both of those situations are like, I don’t want to be treated like a child, but also I’m not. I’m not prey. Like, don’t, right? No, both of those are like, go away. That is not cool on either side. So the fact is, when you crunch the numbers, there’s a million different ways that you can meet your nutritional needs from the foods you eat. Like I’ve, I’ve done so much math in developing nutribull resources to understand what types of foods are contributing what types of nutrients, in order to create things like the nutriform meal map, which you can get just by signing up for my newsletter. It’s one of the free guys that I send you. When you sign up, you can sign up at nutribure.com/join it’s also in my book, so if you want it, it’s right there. Nutrivore weekly serving matrix, which is also in my book, or sold as a digital product at Nutrivore or but also all of all of the serving targets are on YouTube or.com under foundational foods. So you can, you can just go find out all that information for free there, like I did so much math in developing those resources to basically create formulas for exactly this, for getting the full range of nutrients that our bodies need from the foods we eat with as few rules as possible. 

Producer Potts  9:56  

Ideally, no rules, right? But like, it’s as few. Like, the problem with it, there’s not very many guidelines. Like, very. Years like you can, you can really have, like you say, with Nutrivore, there really is no food off the table. In fact, the more variety of foods, the better. So it’s good to always be changing it up. And then there’s this whole, like you said at the top, there’s this whole piece of 20% so we can just keep going and not feel deprived. Essentially. I mean, the basic thing that I look at is, like with nutrivore, you basically ask us to skip right to the past like eliminating food or food groups, and we focus on adding nutrient density through a wide variety of foods. And the beauty of that is, there’s no food to reintroduce, and there’s no wagon to fall off of, and we’re meeting our nutritional needs without spending all this money on supplements. And I think, like, to me, or you have saved me so much money, or spending the money on fancy foods, right?

Dr. Sarah  11:00  

It doesn’t need to be wild caught or grass fed like yes, there’s a nutritional difference in wild caught seafood versus conventional. Yes, there’s a nutritional difference in grass fed meat versus conventional. If you have access to those things, if those things fit within your budget, you are getting more nutrients per bite with wild caught salmon or grass fed beef than conventional. I cannot say that for organic fruits and vegetables versus conventional, at least based on the data that I have now, although you probably are getting a little bit more nutrients per bite when you like shop your local farmers market or farm stand when you’re buying local and in season, there probably is a little bit more nutrition in those but the data doesn’t really exist for me to be able to say that definitively. And you know, there’s not really a huge difference nutritionally between extra virgin olive oil versus regular olive oil versus canola oil, right? Extra Virgin Olive Oil has a little bit more polyphenols and a little bit more vitamin E, but you’re getting those things from fruits and vegetables. You don’t have to get it from olive oil, right? So we don’t, we don’t need to be spending the extra money for the foods that the wellness community would tell us, you know, Oh well, never buy that, right? That food is killing you, that food is toxic, right? There’s so much fear of nutritious foods that are budget friendly, easy to find right, easy to prepare. And I think that the thing about this question that I think just sort of activated my hire and made me go like, Oh, this better. Better be you parenting somebody else because you’re saying these things, we have to have a talk. No, I think the thing that makes me so angry about it is all of this messaging is making us feel like, why bother? Why can’t I afford all of that expensive food? So why even bother? I don’t have the time to prepare all of that expensive food, so why even bother? Oh, even the expensive food is toxic. So now I need to, like, go, you know, I can’t, I can’t, I have to. I can’t even do it because I have to spend all this money on supplements. And there’s the reason why that is such a problem is there’s a huge swath of not just America, but like all Western countries, that feel like healthy eating is not something they have access to, right? It’s too hard. I don’t know what to eat. Everything’s gonna be bad for me, right? If someone’s telling you that grapes are as bad as chocolate like that is just dumb. That is, first of all, chocolate is actually good for you. There’s lots of studies showing that eating chocolate reduces risk of type two diabetes, the darker the chocolate, the better. But grapes are also associated with tons of health benefits, like the conflicting messaging out there, like telling people to be afraid of everything. What happens is people just tune it out and like, why try? I’m just gonna eat what I want. I’m just gonna eat what’s tasty. And what I want is to help you eat what you want and eat what’s tasty and make these little, small adjustments that are within the foods you like, have access to and can afford, so that you’re actually getting more nutrients from those tasty, delicious foods that you already like. And that is the thing. Those tasty, delicious foods that you already like, maybe we need to swap out a couple things or add something right. Add a side salad to that hamburger. Right? Those little tweaks and differences can make the difference between that diet not supplying the nutrients that we need to that diet fulfilling our nutritional needs. Needs. It’s not hard, but what does it take? Knowledge and knowledge that most people don’t have you don’t get at school, right? It’s not part of a high school health course. It’s really hard to find that good information online. It’s really hard to find science communicators, or like wellness influencers, fitness influencers, who are actually giving good information on these things, but what to do? Right? What to add that is really nutritious and beneficial? How to make those things taste good, and how to make them with very little effort, right? Like, there’s far more of the noise and the fear and the things that are contributing to feeling defeated and feeling like it’s pointless. There’s far more of that online than there is really good information and so that is like, that is my goal. That is the goal with my book. That is the goal with my website, nutrivore.com that is the goal with all of the content that I create on social media, is to help you understand, first of all, what out of all of that noise that you’re hearing is absolute BS, because a lot of it is not, but not all of it, right? So that there’s, there’s some nuggets of gold in that morass of travel, but, but to like, help you sort that through. But then also, you know, okay, Yoda quote time, because we’re all nerds over here, you must unlearn what you have learned. And I think that is like creating that blank slate in our brains for just understanding what nutrients do in the body, what foods contain, what nutrients, how to choose different foods to get that full range of nutrients our bodies need. That is the education that I’m trying to create with nutrivore. That is what can help us to meet our nutritional needs from our diet within all of the other things that influence our food choices, right, within our budget, what where we shop like, how much time I have to prepare food? Who else is eating, and what do they like, right? What, what time do they need to eat, and is that compatible with my schedule? Do I have a food allergy? Are there foods that I need to avoid for medical reasons? Right? Being able to then adapt that knowledge to be able to choose foods within, within my traditional foods and my cultural foods, right, all of those things that are influencing food choice, being able to understand the small changes we can make so that we’re still getting joy from our diet, and that we’re actually meeting our nutritional needs, and that we can do and that we can do that within the current food supply. We can do that within the bargain basement store brand foods, the cheapest stuff at the grocery store. That doesn’t mean it’s cheaper than Ultra processed foods. Ultra processed foods are still more affordable, and that is a like systemic issue that needs to be well,

Producer Potts  18:03  

in some cases. I mean, also, the prices at the fast food restaurants have been going up quite a lot. So, you know, that’s, you know, I think that is a common thing. But I also think there’s a lot of times where it’s actually much cheaper just to cook at

Dr. Sarah  18:19  

home. Yeah, sure. It sort of depends on, like, what you’re the convenience like, you’re comparing, right? Yeah, like, driving through food versus things that you can cook at home, things you can cook at home are going to be cheaper. But if you’re comparing, like, the stuff that comes in a box or a bag that has been heavily processed with a lot of added, right, you would still cook at home versus the whole thing, like a hamburger helper or something, right? So then, but, like, look, there’s

Producer Potts  18:47  

you could take a hamburger and add some, add some things to it and make it nutrient dense. Like, that’s the whole point, right? That’s

Dr. Sarah  18:53  

exactly was about to say. Like, yeah. Like, we can take that hamburger helper and still turn that into a nutrient dense meal, right? We can still round it out. The big thing it’s missing is vegetables, right? Like, I think that the biggest harm that this isn’t just like this, is recent diet culture, right? Diet culture for a long time, the old timey message that is the most toxic of diet culture is equating health and fitness, right? That is the worst bad thing that we’ve been taught from diets since the 70s, that thin equals healthy. That’s not true. Those words mean different things. Sometimes they can coexist, but often they don’t, and so understanding the difference between thin and healthy, and then deciding what your priorities are. I prefer to be healthy. That’s my personal choice. But again, we’re all individuals, and this is something you have the freedom to choose for yourself, but then understanding the choices that lead to one or the other, and sometimes that. Choices that can lead to both and then understanding like that is like our that is where we started. That was the slate that we were that the more food for your messaging has been labeled, labeled on top of so the more recent toxic message from diet culture is that cheap, affordable food is bad for you, that cheap affordable food is toxic. It’s gonna kill you. It’s contributing to all these things. And I think that the fear of food, the feeling like it’s too much work. It’s too expensive. I don’t like the food, right? Like it’s really hard for an apple to compete, flavor wise, with Doritos, right? Like that. I mean, that is a legit challenge. But I think that when you are faced with that challenge of the flavor difference, of the price difference. And then somebody is also telling you, oh yeah, but even that Apple’s bad, oh yeah. But like, you have to get the organic apple and oh yeah, now you have to get the apple that you have to drive to the orchard to pick yourself. Because something, something, something, every time health feels like, okay, I can do this. The Wellness community, the toxic diet culture side of the wellness community raises that bar and increases the barrier to entry, and that is the number one thing that I want to do with nutrivore is to show people that it is simple, maybe not easy, but it’s simple to eat a nutrient dense diet, to eat a diet that meets our nutritional needs and supports long term health that is maybe not accessible for everyone or affordable for everyone, but that it’s a lot more accessible and affordable than most people think. And then we can start to look at the systemic barriers to implementing that right on the big level, right? Because there are people for whom a whole foods based diet is not accessible or affordable. So like, let’s, let’s then tackle that as a society. But this huge group of people for whom they feel like it’s not but it is, like, that’s who that’s that’s who needs to hear this. That’s who needs to hear it’s not that hard. It still tastes good. It still doesn’t need to take, might take a little bit more time, certainly more time than going through the drive through, but it doesn’t need to take a ton of time in the kitchen, right? For it to still be simple, right? For it to still be easy to prepare, it’s okay for it to still be the frozen vegetables that are in the the discount section at Kroger, and to be able to to show people healthy, healthy eating doesn’t need to be painful. It doesn’t need to be, it should not be synonymous with deprivation, right? We don’t. You don’t want to feel deprived. One still feels like we’re eating our favorite foods. Again, it’s like these small little changes, swap this for this, or add this to this and and show people exactly how these myths are treating them as a child or as prey, right, and empower people with the knowledge they need to no longer be those things, to be able to be immune to predatory marketing, and also be able to show the conventional medical system that no like we can as a society, adopt healthier eating patterns. Have faith in us. We can. We can do this. Hey, how about addressing the systemic issues of affordability and accessibility? And you know how much? How many people have to work two or three jobs in order to be able to make ends meet and then don’t have time to cook, right? Like, let’s address the systemic issues broadly so this can be more accessible and affordable to people.