Mini Episodes

Eating a diet tuned for a healthy gut microbiome is needed in order to preclude 11 diseases and three conditions. Let's talk about what we eat. John gives us two sample daily menus and 12 steps that won't overwhelm you as you create a healthy gut microbiome. John gives us two examples of his own menus.

There are dangers of eating meat. Based on a study of 6,000 people over 18 years who ate a lot of animal protein, four times higher risk of cancer, five times higher risk of diabetes, twice the risk of dying and the study of people who are vegetarians, vegetable protein does not increase the risk of any age relating diseases. Meat, in general, is going to shorten our life if you eat too much. How about the meat substitutes like the Beyond Burger or the Impossible Burger?  John tells this story. "My wife and I, about a year ago when it first came out, we said "Hey, yay, let's try this". So we bought a package of burger meat and a package of sausage. We took them home, cooked them up, actually tasted, frankly, it tasted great! However, my wife took a look at the ingredients on the package after we'd eaten them. I don't know why I didn't look?"
They're an ultra-processed food, meaning in the NOVA Food Classification system, it is the highest, worst processed food you can eat. It has 40 ingredients, including titanium dioxide, which is a whitening agent using paint potato starch, which is essentially candy, methylcellulose, a bulking agent used in laxatives, and 400% more sodium than lean burger meat. And the protein is provided by lagoons, peas, and beans. So it's full of lectin and it contains a ton of manufactured oils, canola, and sunflower, which means it's full of the omega-6 fatty acids.

About 2000 years ago in Northern Europe, there was a genetic mutation that changed the basic protein in cow milk from a casein a2 to casein a1. And the trouble with casein a1 is, it causes an attack on our immune system. And it explains why 65% of Americans are what is called lactose, the sugar in milk, intolerant. Actually, what we really are is intolerant of that protein casein a1. Most breeds of cows in the US are this type. So you can get great cheeses from Switzerland, France, and Italy, and it's fine to eat them, but not the cheeses that are manufactured in the US. You can also get goat milk butter, and clarified butter, ghee, with no dairy. Easy now to get goat milk and goat yogurt.

Our microbiome is so important. And the reason is, if we don't watch what we're eating and eat the wrong things and have a lot of bad bacteria in our gut, we can cause up to 11 diseases. I'm just going to name them off quickly. Celiac disease, Crohn's disease, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, that a third of the people in the country have got, hepatitis, colitis, multiple sclerosis, type 2 diabetes, 30% of the people in the US are prediabetic and 10% actually have it, lupus, irritable bowel disease, and rheumatoid arthritis. And many of them have three other conditions: small intestine bowel overgrowth, small intestine fungi overgrowth, and irritable bowel syndrome. So imagine if we don't have the right healthy gut microbiome, any of these can happen. When you look at the percentages of people who have them, almost everybody has one of them.