Ep 245 – Can Ultra-Processed Foods Actually Be Healthy? ft. Dr. Minil Patel

Dr. Minil Patel

Center for Science in the Public Interest

Plant Based Juniors

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TRANSCRIPT

[Ben]

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Vegan Proteins and Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Ben and today I am joined by a special guest on the podcast. Today with us we have Dr. Manil Patel. So Dr. Manil Patel is a UK-based general practitioner and lifestyle medicine physician. He graduated from King’s College London with a MBBS and Bachelors of Science in Neuroscience. He’s completed the plant-based nutrition course at the University of Winchester and holds a postgraduate certificate in medical education from King College London and a diploma from the International Board of Lifestyle Medicine.

He’s an active member of Plant-Based Health Professionals UK and serves as an ambassador for climate gains and running on plants and was featured in the documentary I Could Never Go Vegan, which I have seen. He has also been featured in Men’s Health Online and speaks at events like VegFest, Vegan Campout, and VegMed, discussing topics such as plant-based diets for athletes and muscle building. He also shares insights on veganism, nutrition, health, and fitness through his social media handle at DrIronJunkie.

So if you’re not currently following Manil, I definitely recommend you give him a follow. So Manil, thank you for giving your time today. Welcome to the show.

How’s it going?

[Minil]

Yeah, thanks for having me, Ben, and thank you for that intro. Yeah, it’s going great and I’m glad we could do this finally.

[Ben]

Yeah, I’ve been looking forward to it. I think we connected back on Instagram a couple years ago. I remember when I was kind of prepping for my first shows, you had a lot of really kind words of encouragement, especially when I was kind of getting into the depths of prep there and really feeling it.

And it’s always really, I think, meaningful in that those moments stick with you when you have people who are really just like rooting for you and want the best. So I always remember that from you as one of the people who reached out to me. So I wanted to first say thank you for that, and I’m glad that we’ve stayed in touch.

[Minil]

I’m glad I stuck with you. Yeah, as you said, going into the depths of prep, I’ve never stepped on a stage myself, but I’ve dieted down hard to the point where you can see striations on your glutes and stuff. And it’s a nasty place to be, and I can feel very alone.

So I think any words of encouragement from people and just positive words can really mean a lot. So I’m glad that I didn’t even realize it got to reach you that well. So I’m glad it did.

[Ben]

Absolutely. I feel like there is something to be said about when you have something nice to say to someone or kind to say. I think oftentimes we just leave it in our head and we don’t put it out there, but that’s something that I’ve been trying to work on more recently is when I think of someone and I have gratitude for them really expressing that.

And I think that does stick with people. So that definitely stuck with me when you did that. And I’d love to know, obviously we just talked about kind of the extreme and taking things to there with lifting and body composition, but I’d like to know, and of course for our listeners as well, what got you interested in fitness and lifting weights?

Was it always something that you’ve been into since you were a kid? Did you grow up playing sports? How did you really get into this whole world?

[Minil]

Yes. It’s an interesting question. I’ve never, I’m not really reflected on this that much, but it’s funny because growing up, like I was always the skinny kid.

Like I was really skinny. And even now I think my natural build is to be skinny. I’ve got very slim joints and ankles.

I’m a very skinny person in general. And that’s just how my makeup was. And growing up, I mean, I played like football.

You guys call it soccer over there for some reason, but I played a lot of that. And then I got to like high school, secondary school, and we played rugby here. You guys play American football.

We play rugby, you know, no protection, that kind of a hard hitting sport. Right. And I was just smaller than everyone.

Right. But I was fast. So, cause I was light and stuff.

So, and I really got into sports more. I’d say then I was always thinking about football, but then I got into rugby, but you know, everyone else around me was much bigger and stuff. And I was like, damn, I can’t stay small.

And my secondary school, my high school had a gym, right. And the older kids used to use it a lot, but I started going, you know what? I need to start getting into the gym.

I need to build some muscle. So yeah, I just used to use the weights room in the morning before school. And that kind of got me into that whole mindset of disciplines and stuff like that.

But I didn’t know what I was doing. Like there wasn’t much direction. Social media wasn’t even a thing.

Like you couldn’t really find really great information online. I didn’t really know where to look. So it’s more of like just mindless, sort of just pumping and hoping for the best sort of thing.

But that, that was probably what sparked my initial interest in like building muscle nutrition as well. Cause I started like, at that time I was an omnivore. So I was raised an omnivorous diet.

I was eating a lot of meat during that time. Like when I got into the gym and obviously when I started training more, like everyone kept talking about protein, protein, protein. So I was eating a lot of fish.

I was eating a lot of chicken. I didn’t eat beef because I come from a household where we are Hindu. I’m not religious myself, but I grew up in a Hindu household.

Beef was just off the menu because you know, the way we view cows in our culture. So I wasn’t eating much red meat. It was mostly chicken and fish.

And then when I got to, I think it was university, university, that’s, I saw one of my friends, like really transform his body in the year. And he was quite chubby and he became like really lean and really good. And I was like, what did you do?

And he told me, he was listening to one of my friends who was doing sports science and now he’s a personal trainer. I know this is a business now, but he kind of guided me and like, told me more about like, you know, progressive overload, how to train properly, nutrition, like what to eat and all of that. And then I was hooked.

Like from then on, when I started seeing, like when you start seeing like improvements, when you start seeing results, it’s really hard not to be hooked. And I just love the whole like discipline aspect of it. Like, you know, meal prepping and knowing what I’m going to eat every day and not have to worry about like, you know, how shall I have this?

Shall I have that? You know, and it really got me off what I would say, eating junk food properly as well. Cause I realized like what I put in my body is how I’m going to feel and how it’s going to affect my gains.

So literally in that first year of university studying medicine as well, I stopped eating crisps. I stopped eating chocolates. I stopped eating what I would consider processed foods.

Just a blanket said, I’m going to just be very strict kind of with this, which, you know, some people might view as an unhealthy way to eat, but I think it really formed that initial like part of how I viewed the whole discipline aspect of it. And it just became really easy for me then to then when I did start eating some types of foods again, like later on, I never binged. I never had to like, you know, I never gave in and ate loads and loads.

I had like a control on it and I could really dictate what I would eat. And I think that element of control is something I really loved. And that’s what like kind of bodybuilding also gives you as well.

Like you’re very much in control of what you put in you and things. And it was easy for me to say no to things. You know, I cut down how much I was drinking alcohol.

You know, I haven’t drank alcohol for like four years now, four years, four years now. So, you know, is that, so I guess what really got me into it was I didn’t want to be skinny anymore, but what kept me going was just enjoying the discipline, enjoying the control that I had with it. And obviously the pump feels great.

[Ben]

Yeah, man, who doesn’t love a, I love a good pump. What’s your favorite muscle group to get a pump in? Weird question, I think.

[Minil]

No, that’s not a weird question. Yeah, we think about that stuff. It’s not a weird question.

The back, you know, when you’ve got like a back pump and you like just retract your scapula and you feel it or you look in the mirror and you’re like, yeah, I think a nice back pump and then second off that bicep pump, right? Because, you know, of course, when the arms are pumped, they look great. But yeah, back pump is for me.

What about you actually? I’ve got to ask you this now.

[Ben]

Well, I like, I like back too, especially if I get in my lats and I almost like cramp down on it, like it feels good in some kind of sick way. But for me, it probably has to be, it probably has to be chest at least for myself. I do enjoy that almost like to the feeling where it starts like to cramp up.

I don’t know, something about me finds that quite satisfying. And then if you’re wearing, you know, if you’re wearing the stringer and everything and just it kind of stands out a little bit, I do enjoy that. Yeah, no, it’s, it’s funny how certain things are why the reason behind why we, we get involved or get invested.

And then over time, some of those reasons might stick around, but it kind of grows and changes and evolves. And we learn things about ourselves through that process. Like I know when I started lifting, I didn’t have a perception of myself as somebody who was overly disciplined or regimented or routined.

And I think that slowly evolved and I found myself actually enjoying things that I didn’t think that I would. And I think having that structure allows you to then incorporate, like you said, more flexibility later on, but not have it like derail everything. So I was very similar in that I took a very extreme approach at the start.

I was, I was all in, I was going to stick to, you know, my meal plan that I had a hundred percent. I have this story that I always comes to mind. But when I was in college or as you say, union, it was about halfway through my, my college there.

And I started getting into lifting weights and dieting. And I remember I was sitting out on the porch and a friend of mine had like a little candy that they were trying to get me to eat. And I was like, nah, like I don’t want it.

But they kept pushing it and pushing it and pushing it on me. And I remember getting like pissed off at this person and being like, why are they trying to like, like, like make me eat this thing? Like, I don’t want to eat this thing.

I’m not going to eat that thing. I’m not going to, you know, ruin all my progress. And like, realistically, I could have just eaten the thing to get them to shut up.

But it stood for more than that to me, at least in my mind about not giving into social pressures and doing what other people wanted me to do and stuff like that. So I think that as anything that you do for a long time, your reasons for it kind of evolve and change. But if you’re able to kind of build it into your routine, it makes you feel good on a daily basis.

And, you know, it adds to your life. Your relationship with that thing changes a little bit and evolves, but you find a way to, you know, keep it feeling productive and enjoyable. So, you know, you talked about getting into lifting weights, eating a lot of, you know, people were focused on protein all the time.

You know, you got to get your protein in. And, you know, myself, I was probably the biggest meat eater in my group of like 10 or 12 friends at the time. Yeah, yeah.

And so of course, that was easy for me. I would buy, you know, the bulk chicken breast at the store, cook it up in a pot, have it at this, you know, in a Tupperware, distribute it out through the week. You know, it was easy, you know, there we go.

Don’t have to think about it. And then eventually, obviously, within a couple months of me really getting into lifting, I kind of was introduced to a more plant-based way of eating, thought about it a little bit more, but didn’t actually decide to make the switch until I really understood the ethical implications and what that meant. And that’s really then overnight, I was basically like, okay, I got to, you know, I got to change this.

So that was kind of my progression. It was slow and steady in some ways, but then once I kind of made this mental connection, something switched for me. And then that’s, you know, I didn’t really know anything about eating vegan or where I was going to get my protein from, but I just decided I was going to figure it out along the way.

So I would love to know how that transition happened for you.

[Minil]

Yeah. So yeah, university, I was, my apartment, my flat, my apartment was known as the meat-eating apartment. Like the, I was friends with a few vegetarian girls, women, you know, they were young 20s.

I’m going to call them girls because they’re my friends. But I was friends with a few girls who, they would not come to my kitchen because they were scared of opening the freezer. Like you’d open the freezer and it was just tons of red meat, frozen, like wild meat as well.

Like I’m talking, I would import this stuff from abroad. So it would be like wild boar, elk, venison, camel, kangaroo, ostrich, horse meat. I’m not, I’m not making this up.

This is not like just me saying this to exaggerate. This is exactly what I used to eat. Because I believe that the more red meat you eat, the more muscle you’ll build because red meat looks like muscle.

That was my naive thinking at the time. Wild meat and red meat and the type, you know, it was bare quality and all, just all this BS that I believe, right? Ultimately you and I both know provided you train properly and you get enough adequate protein and the essential amino acids, you’re going to build the same.

It doesn’t matter if you’re eating beans and whole grains or, you know, a mousse. Like it’s crazy, right? I was eating like this and I firmly believe that plant protein was like, like inferior.

Like I would, I would eat it, but for me it was like a carb sauce. I didn’t go near tofu. Like it just wasn’t on my, like it wasn’t in my vocabulary.

I’d never even heard of tempeh. I hadn’t even heard of seitan. So, but the weird thing is like, if I was with my vegetarian friends, if they had like a meat alternative, like dish that they’d got from like a Chinese food place, because you know, they’ve been eating seitan for thousands of years in China, I would try it and I was like, oh yeah, that’s quite pretty nice.

Yeah, yeah. But I had always used to say like with, I loved animals, right? I’ve always loved animals since I was a kid.

Every Christmas when I sat on Santa’s lap in the, in the mall, like I wanted the animals for gifts. Like I always wanted to like, that’s what I cared about. I loved animals, right?

And you know, I would have been a vet if I hadn’t been a doctor, that’s, that’s for sure. But I still thought you had to eat them. Like that was in my mind.

It was a natural thing to do. We’re at the top of the food chain. You know, if we were in the wild, what would we hunt and eat?

Like for me, it was like the natural thing. We’re omnivores, all of that stuff. And then there was like a series of events I always point out that kind of pulled me towards veganism.

I used to always say that, you know, veganism in principle sounds like a nice idea. And I thought what we did to animals was pretty messed up. So when I first heard of veganism, I was like, yeah, they have a point.

Like it’s, you know, it’s pretty messed up what we do to animals, but like, I’m never going to, I’m not going to change. I said, the only way I’ll change is if they manage to make a meat alternative that tastes exactly like me, gives me everything I need from it, I’ll switch to it in an instant, in a heartbeat, I will switch. That’s, that was my reasoning.

Me thinking that’s going to be like 20 years in the future. Like when cultivated meat becomes a thing, right. I was ready to switch to that sort of thing.

But then I, I started like debating this vegan girl online, like in my 20s. And we started talking online and she always questioned, like challenged me on my beliefs and how I thought and stuff like that. And I found myself just agreeing with her most of the time.

It was really hard to really debate when it came to the ethical side of things, like the environmental side of things, all of that. It just came down to at the end, tastes really and convenience and like what I used to. So we ended up dating actually.

And this was like a significant kind of moment. There’s a significant moment before that as well, actually, where my friends were going to go greyhound racing to watch dogs at the races. And I said, no, I’m not going to come, you know, on ethical grounds, I’m not going to come.

And one of the girls that was there was like, don’t you eat meat? And that really like, it got me thinking actually about how much of a hypocrite I was. But then fast forward a couple of few months to when I was dating this vegan girl, she took me to an animal sanctuary.

And I saw all these like animals that had been rescued, like from people like farmers and stuff. And I was really having fun looking after them, feeding them stuff. And it kind of dawned on me that they’d been rescued from people like me, people that wanted to like, harm them and eat them.

Right. And I was like, damn, am I, you know, I’m the bad guy in this, like, went home and I was like, am I really gonna like, gonna have to think about going vegan? What the hell?

And then she sent me that famous Georgia Tech lecture by Gary Yourofsky. You know, I think that one has made a lot of vegans, right? That and Earthlings probably has created the most vegans.

Was Georgia Tech for you as well? Was that the video? Yep.

Yeah, that one. That was the one that I watched next day. Yeah.

Yeah. So literally I watched it and overnight, like I’ve still got the conversation. I was having a conversation, live conversation with one of my friends who’s an MMA fighter.

And I was telling him like, I think I’m gonna have to go vegan. He’s like, what really? And I’m literally having this conversation whilst I’m watching it.

And literally by the end of that video, I was like, yeah, that’s it. I’m done. I’m gonna transition to a vegan diet.

I don’t know how I’m gonna do it yet, but that’s it. I’m done. That was July 2017.

Still remember the date because I’ve got the conversations and stuff. And yeah, the next morning I kind of said to my dad, like, look, you can eat the rest of my chicken. I’m not eating anymore.

I’d meal prep. I had boxes ready in the fridge to go. And I was like, I’m not eating this.

I can’t do it. It’s done. And I thought I’d go to like eating fish.

Couldn’t even do that. Like I was fishing in front of me, couldn’t eat it. And I was like, all right, I’ll eat eggs.

Couldn’t eat eggs. So literally all I was having at that time was finishing my whey protein probably. So you can’t say I was strictly vegan straight away.

But you know, I made a decision that I had to finish that protein because no one’s going to have it. There’s only a few scoops left as well. And then, yeah, I think that was the start for me.

And once I worked out what I need to eat, once I learned more about plant-based nutrition, once I watched more documentaries and like, like undercover, like things that are happening at slaughterhouses and learn exactly what happens to animals in the food industry and just how humans exploit animals as a whole in other industries, like for, you know, for clothing, for wool, you know, like just what we do to animals on a whole is just, it is catastrophic.

And, you know, people compare it to like, they call it a holocaust, right? And that word is very charged and people will see associated with what happened to the Jewish people in the 1930s and 40s. But holocaust by itself just means like a huge, like intentional slaughter of a population.

It doesn’t necessarily mean what happened to the Jewish people. That was called the holocaust as we know it. But what we do to animals is a type of holocaust, you can call it, where we’re just murdering millions of them, billions of them actually, 80 billion land animals every year, trillions of fish, all in the name of kind of food, taste and, you know, capitalism, I guess as well, because it pays to do that.

And I just couldn’t see myself as being part of that industry anymore. So yeah, I had to make a change. And I’m glad I did.

It’s been eight years almost.

[Ben]

I think just hearing you talk about how you ended up getting there, there’s a big importance I feel in just planting seeds with people because you never know how those seeds are going to manifest down the line and turn into something. And hearing you also talk about just where you came from and where you are now, I think it would be probably quite a shocker to lots of people to hear, you know, you used to have all these different types of game and mead and, you know, that was something that you were so bought into. And I feel like I’ve heard you talk in other podcasts or other settings about being really into like keto or kind of almost carnivore type diets as well.

And, you know, it just, I think it’s just an example. And it makes me think of when I hear people say, oh, well, you know, I could never, you know, go vegan or I could never do this. And I feel like almost everyone who wasn’t like born and raised vegan has said that at some point about like, oh, that can never be me.

But I think, you know, when you do really make that connection to, you know, our planet, the other beings that we, you know, inhabit this world with and really don’t shut out, I think it’s very easy in the day and age that we live in right now, especially with social media, to become desensitized to certain things and to feel like nothing matters and that, you know, what we do doesn’t make an impact because the world is doomed at the end of the day.

But I think if we all kind of think that way, nothing will change. And I think I had this mindset for a long time that, you know, what am I going to do as a single person with my actions? I remember reading this book, I think it was called the Omnivore’s Dilemma when I was in middle school.

So like seventh grade, I was whatever, 11, 12 years old, you know, being presented with some of these arguments around, you know, the ethical side of animal agriculture and not really like really, I mean, comprehending it, but not really seeing how it applied to me or understanding that I had, you know, the power to change anything. So, you know, it’s just interesting to see how this evolution takes place and those of us who have decided to, you know, make that decision to, you know, eat a vegan diet, live a vegan lifestyle, you know, live a more compassionate lifestyle. And I think it’s something that all of us after a certain period of time can look back and say, you know, that was one of the best decisions that I’ve made.

[Minil]

Yeah. And just on that, like, you know, silence is complicity. Like if you’re just watching and letting stuff happen and not saying anything about it and contributing to it, you’re complicit in it.

And that attitude of like, oh, what can I do as one person? What change can I make? Well, you can not contribute to it.

Like it’s, and it’s not as if we’re asking people to do anything huge. It seems like huge at the start, I would say, because it is a massive lifestyle shift, but it’s just so much easier now than it’s ever been. Like in this day and age, there’s so much information out there.

There’s so many alternatives, you know, and there’s more and more being developed all the time. This whole community is out there for people. I think it’s much easier to go vegan now than it was 10, 20, 15, you know, 50 years ago.

Right. But people have always done it. They’ve always been people.

You can go back to like Pythagoras and followers of Pythagoras. They were vegetarian. Like they were considered one of the, some of the first vegetarians in the Western world.

If you go back to the times in ancient India, like Buddha, Emperor Ashoka, there are people throughout history that have promoted animal-free diets and compassion towards animals and empathy. You know, it’s been happening for hundreds and thousands of years that people have done this. So it’s nothing, it’s not something new, but I think it’s just now the awareness raising is there.

And you know, if one person goes vegan and influences just another person, that has a knock-on effect. Like I’m sure I’ve probably influenced a few people and they in turn have influenced other people and it’s like a ripple effect. And I think we can all see ourselves as being that first drop and creating that ripple in the sea of indifference towards animals.

And I think that’s what I think, you know, people should see it as, all right, I am one person, but at least I don’t, I’m not contributing to this thing. And maybe from me doing this and leading by example, I can influence just a few other people in my immediate circle. And not everyone has to be an activist and things like that.

But hey, if you want to do that, that helps a lot as well.

[Ben]

Soterios Johnson Absolutely. And I think, like you mentioned, anything at the start is going to feel cumbersome in some way, it’s going to feel like a change, it’s going to feel like you have to figure some things out. You’re right in that it has never been easier to find alternatives to foods that we all grew up eating.

Because, you know, whether we like it or not, we were born into this, you know, this society who has chosen animal agriculture as a primary way of providing nutrition for people. So I think that when you are unlearning or having to learn a new way of doing things, it can be difficult. But some of these products, like, you know, just taking meals that you already have and swapping them for the plant-based alternative, you know, of course, there are areas where it might be harder to find these things.

And so you might have to rely a little bit more on kind of your classic staples, you know, your beans, your rice, your potatoes. But there are a lot more of these alternatives becoming widely spread. And on that topic, I think something that has been a question that I’ve gotten from a lot of clients of mine, and I think we get a lot of questions in our community is these plant-based meat alternatives.

How healthy slash unhealthy can we think about these being? And there’s such a range and spectrum of these different products between ones that are, you know, lower in fat, higher in fat, you know, more whole food based, more kind of based with pea protein or soy protein. So when we’re considering these in the context of our overall diet, how can we think about these?

Are these something that we should moderate, that we should include, that we can include liberally? You know, how do you like to think about this from a health perspective when you’re talking to people about these products? And maybe as someone who’s coming from an omnivorous background as well, is it going to be better to swap that out?

Because, you know, I’ve heard the argument before where people would be like, well, you know, you know, meat is more natural. So we should eat that instead of, you know, eating the plant-based alternative because it’s processed and it has all these different ingredients in it. So how do you think about that and have that conversation?

[Minil]

Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack there. Yeah, first, I’d like to say that whenever in nutrition, whenever you’re looking at a food, right, you’re always comparing it to something else, right? You’re always comparing it to another food.

So if we are going to compare the average plant-based meat alternative to, let’s say, meat, current research shows like a lot of these plant-based meat alternatives are healthier than like their equivalent. So like a plant-based sausage on the whole, depending again on the ingredients and the makeup and everything, it’s going to be healthier than a sausage. And let’s not make a mistake of they are ultra-processed foods, plant-based meat alternatives on the whole are ultra-processed foods.

But we’ll talk about that in a second, that being ultra-processed doesn’t tell you how healthy or unhealthy something is. Any food, you have to compare it to what it’s replacing, right? So yeah, plant-based alternative compared to like a meat product, it’s likely going to be more healthy.

And we can talk about the research that’s been done to kind of show that. If you compare it to something like beans or like vegetables and stuff, okay, like beans and vegetables are going to be healthier than the plant-based meat alternative, right? But that’s not what we’re comparing it to here.

Like people aren’t taking beans and vegetables out of their diet and replacing them with like vegan sausages. They’re usually taking animal-based like pig flesh or cow flesh or turkey sausages and replacing that with the plant-based alternative, right? So that’s the first thing.

So whether they are healthy or unhealthy, any food, it depends on what you’re comparing it to. So the answer is always going to be in the middle. I’d say if you’re replacing meat with these things, then yes, you’re going to be moving towards a more healthy, quote-unquote healthy pattern of eating, right?

And they’re a very broad group. Like you just said, they can be made of like soy protein, wheat protein, pea protein. There’s also mycoprotein, which is like a type of fungus.

We’ve got corn products here in the UK. There’s mycelium-based products as well, again, like a fungus. There’s seitan, which is wheat gluten.

That’s actually been eaten for, again, for thousands of years in East Asia, same as tofu and tempeh, which I wouldn’t call tofu and tempeh plant-based meat alternatives, but they’re like a protein source, right? And then you get the kind of more modern ones that are like your Beyond Meat and Impossible Meats and stuff that contain either pea or soy protein and stuff. And they usually have a protein source and then a fat source as well.

So the fat source can be different, that differs as well. Sometimes it’s like vegetable oils, sunflower oil or safflower oil. Occasionally, sometimes they’re made of coconut oil.

I’ve seen Beyond Meat are reformulating one with avocado oils. There’ll be a protein type and a fat type that makes up this meat analogue, right? And they’re just designed to mimic the texture and taste of meat, which we, as omnivores would have enjoyed.

And some vegetarians and vegans who have never even eaten meat, they might even enjoy the taste of these plant-based meat alternatives. I think they’re a great sort of entry food, especially for omnivores that are looking to change over. And I certainly used them a lot when I went from quite a meat-heavy diet to vegan pretty much overnight.

I replaced a lot of the stuff I was eating with these plant-based meat alternatives because, one, they’re really high in protein. And I was training a lot, so I was like, look, this is an easy way of me getting enough protein in. Two, it was a sort of like familiar type of food, right?

I wasn’t sort of used to creating all these different recipes with plant-based ingredients. And I knew kind of what sausage and like a burger were like. Human beings, we have this sort of, it’s inbuilt us evolutionary to be afraid of new things.

It’s called neophobia, right? People are afraid of something that they’re not used to. And they always question the safety of it and stuff like that, which is why a lot of people question the safety and things of ultra-processed foods because they worry about the ingredients and things.

If they don’t know the name of what an ingredient is, they get really spooked and scared of it. They say it’s full of chemicals. You mentioned as well, people say meat is just natural and beef.

Again, this is the naturalistic fallacy where people think that just because something is natural means it’s good for you. That’s not necessarily true. Poison mushrooms are unnatural.

They’re not good for you. And there are things that are unnatural that are pretty good for you like antibiotics and stuff like that. So it can be good for you, right?

They can save your life. So don’t look at something, whether something is natural or unnatural to decide whether it’s good for you. Look at kind of what happens when people eat it and eat lots of it and what happens to their health.

That’s essentially how we should be thinking of things like food. And if you actually took a piece of beef, it’s not just beef, right? If you took it apart, there’s like loads of chemicals in there that make up the properties of the muscle cells of the beef.

That’s just a fact, right? People read the back of a food label and see like, I think RFK did this recently where he looked at the back of something and went riboflavin. That’s just a type of B vitamin.

He said riboflavin. Why is that there? He couldn’t even pronounce it, right?

And it’s just a fortified B vitamin that’s in the food. So yeah, for me, plant-based meal alternatives, they’re a pretty good replacement. And as I said, I think depending on the type you buy, you can get some that are less processed or have less ingredients than others, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re healthier either, right?

When we actually look at studies that have been done on plant-based meal alternatives, because this is obviously an area of research, right? People are switching over to them. They provide like an alternative for omnivores as well as vegans.

They’re actually better for the environment because they are made of plants and they require a lot less land and water and resources to produce. And so people want to know, are they actually better for your health? There’s been a few trials.

And so there was the famous kind of swap meat trial, which took beyond meat and like red meat and had like a group eat them. It measured like kind of cardiometabolic, like things like their blood pressure, their LDL cholesterol, APOB, things that would increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes. And they compared people that ate the vegan burgers, had a washout period, and then the beef burgers.

And actually the beyond meat ones had lower LDL cholesterol and things. So, you know, whether that’s beneficial, I think it depends. You’d have to do it for a long period of time and actually see, does it affect outcomes or not?

I don’t know if you, do you know Dr. Matthew Nagra? You must’ve heard of Dr. Matthew Nagra. He’s done like a really good review on this as well.

He actually wrote a review article, I think in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology called plant-based meat alternatives, a hearty debate. I think it’s something like that, where they looked at all of the available research that’s been done on plant-based meat alternatives. And they found consistently that, you know, plant-based alternatives compared to their counterpart, people that ate them had lower levels of LDL cholesterol.

I think blood pressure was also slightly better. They tended to be leaner as well. Like it favours you to eat plant-based meat alternatives compared to lots of red meat and things.

And I think it makes sense as well, when you think about what’s in red meat and what’s in a plant-based meat alternative. So, you know, red meat is a group two carcinogen as well. So it probably causes cancer of the bowel colon.

It’s been implicated in things like gastric cancer. You know, the largest cohort studies that have been done show that it can increase the risk of things like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease. And whereas plant-based meat alternatives, there’s not long-term data on them, but what do plant-based meat alternatives come with?

They come with fibre, they come with phytonutrients, usually fortified with other vitamins and minerals as well. Because they’re a new food, people are scared of it. But, you know, so far the research on them is pretty good.

I think we need sort of longer term studies to say for certain whether they’re going to be healthy in the long term. But I don’t think people should be eating tons of them either, right? So the majority of our diet should be made up of whole plant foods.

So fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and beans. You know, there’s good studies and good evidence that these foods are really good for your health, right? But if you want to have something that’s a processed burger once in a while, and you’ve got the choice between having a red meat burger or something like a plant-based meat alternative, the plant-based meat alternative is likely going to be better.

It’s got a better fatty acid profile, it’s got equivalent protein, it’s less likely to raise your cholesterol, it comes with fibre. It’s all the stuff that we know is good for you rather than having red meat. So for me, it’s a no-brainer, but I think people have a hard time accepting this.

And I think until we get more evidence, and we get people that can communicate the science of this stuff really well to the public, and we get health professionals to accept that, you know, ultra-processed foods aren’t all the same and that plant-based meat alternatives can be a good alternative to meat. Until we get that widespread acceptance of this, it’s always going to be the same. And I don’t know about you in the US, but here especially, I’m seeing a lot less meat alternatives around and companies are now coming out with more like veggie type products.

And I’m seeing a lot more like falafel burgers and stuff like that in places like Subway and fast food instead of what we had a few years ago, where there was like meatless meatballs and alternatives are a big thing. And now because there’s this whole fear of ultra-processed foods, we’re almost seeing people step back from trying to promote them, which I think is a huge step in the wrong direction personally. But it says a lot about the public perception and even the perception of companies on plant-based meat alternatives, which is generally I think kind of negative, which is crazy to me because when I first went vegan, I really thought that these are the future, plant-based meat alternatives are going to be the future.

And food scientists would generally, people that are trained in food science and actually can read nutritional science will tell you that plant-based meat alternatives are net good generally, they’re better for the animals, they’re better for the environment, and they’re probably better for your health as well. So that kind of answers your question, how healthy, unhealthy are they? It’s sort of, I would say edging on the healthy part, but I wouldn’t make them like the mainstay of all my meals, I would have them every now and then.

[Ben]

Thank you, that was extremely thorough. And I think that, like you said, they’re often best utilized as a kind of transitioning food away from conventional omnivorous diet towards a more plant-based pattern of eating. And I think that, like you said, there’s nothing wrong with incorporating some of these things into our diet, especially if they help us, I think, to stick to more of a plant-based style of eating.

Because I think I have encountered the archetype of person who feels that they need to go from an omnivorous diet to whole food, plant-based, nothing processed, and we’ll talk about exactly what it means to be processed in just a second, overnight. And then they struggle to actually adhere to that, and they find themselves kind of going back into old habits and old ways. I think, like most things vegan-related, the United States is probably five to 10 years behind the UK and other parts of the world, and so I think that we’re still, you know, the meat alternatives are still kind of coming out and being developed and becoming more mainstream.

They’re not available at a ton of different fast food restaurants, so we don’t have any McDonald’s vegan options, which is insane to me. Burger King has one option for the impossible offer, which actually is quite good, but there’s no Subway, there’s no, occasionally you’ll get little promotions for KFC or, you know, a Taco Bell, Panda Express, something like that. But it’s few and far between, and so I think it’s mostly in the grocery stores and convenience places that you might find these things.

But I think, like you said, there’s been also a lot of conversations in the general public and health professionals, which you can also touch on in a bit, that does put a little bit of a damper on that and just kind of broad stroke says if something’s more processed, it’s bad, and so people, I think, are getting a little bit scared away from those plant-based meat alternatives in a way that maybe they hadn’t been five, ten years ago, which, as you, you know, agreed, I think is not the direction that we want to be going in.

I figured now would be a good time to talk about, okay, you know, how do we think about the processing of food? People, because I think people will think more processed, you know, the worse it is for us. That’s just something that I’ve heard a lot, and I know that it’s not that simple.

So are you able to give a little bit more context as to, you know, why that may be the case?

[Minil]

Yeah, I mean, this could be a podcast in itself, like if you talk about processed food, right? So, I mean, if we define like what processing is, right, because it’s pretty broad, right? So processing of food is just intentionally sort of changing it before you’re going to consume it, right?

So if you cut a food item up, if you get like an apple, you mince it up or something, that’s processing it. If you blend it, that’s processing it. If you cook it in any way, so grilling, frying, baking, roasting, stewing, all of these are types of processing, right?

And like, you know, different ways of processing a food item can always increase or even decrease the nutrients that you get from it, right? So how processed a food is doesn’t necessarily tell you how nutritious it’s going to be, because different foods can be processed in different ways, and that will unlock or remove nutrients from it, right? But ultimately, like, what we get from food is what we can digest and absorb.

So what we can process from it ourselves, apart from fiber, so obviously fiber, we don’t digest, it just goes right through, gets to our colon, and that’s where it kind of does that really good stuff where it feeds your gut microbiome and stuff, right? When you’re cooking foods to eat them, like let’s say if you heat vegetables up to make them more palatable or part of a recipe or something like that, that can sometimes like lower the content of some vitamins, especially like water-soluble vitamins, like B vitamins, and vitamin C as well. But in some foods, like tomatoes, when you cook them with like olive oil, it can enhance like the absorption of things like lycopene, which is like a really good powerful antioxidant found in tomatoes, as well as like beta-carotene as well, like you get more of that from the food because you’ve sort of broken down cell walls and you’ve made it easier for you now to absorb it, so you get more nutrition from it, right? Freezing vegetables, there’s another way of processing it, freezing vegetables or fruits, it locks in the nutrients close to like how they would have been at harvest, and then when you kind of eat them later on, you get the same kind of things, same nutrients that you would have got if you hadn’t done that. You can also fortify foods, so like when we process certain foods, we can fortify them, we can add things, so that’s been done for like almost over 100 years we’ve been doing that, so adding things like folate, niacin, B12, vitamin D, iodine, calcium, like all these things are added to certain foods to fortify them and make them more nutritious, so these are processes that we do to foods, right?

And when we think about sort of how we think about how processed a food is or how we categorize it, right? I don’t know if you’ve heard of the NOVA classification? So NOVA classification is what typically people talk about, it was this thing that was developed in 2009 by like a group of researchers in Brazil, I think it was Montero and his group, right?

NOVA just means new in Portuguese, right? And it sort of goes in four levels, so like group one is your like whole foods, so like an apple, an orange, you know, a carrot, that’s your group one foods in its normal state. Group two is like your culinary ingredients, so like table salt, olive oil, they’ve been sort of derived from processing the things in group one or they’ve been sort of extracted from the earth, right?

Like minerals and stuff. So NOVA three is like usually is now you’re getting into the processed foods category, NOVA three. So you’re combining things in NOVA group one and NOVA group two to create something else that can be done at home, it can be done in some, sometimes it needs a factory, but it’s usually like, you know, baking a food or preserving a food, canning a food.

So you’re still processing in a way to preserve it or to consume it, but it’s not going to be categorized as ultra processed. That’s where NOVA four comes in. NOVA four is your ultra processed food.

So this is like, there’s a huge definition for this, I don’t even remember it, but it’s like when you’re usually taking things from like groups one and groups two, and maybe it’s a bit group three as well, and just like industrially processing it to create this new item, which is usually really palatable, easy to eat, has a long shelf life, all that sort of thing, right? The important thing is like, and nutritional scientists from around the world agree on this, that you cannot use the NOVA classification to tell you how healthy your food is, right? You can’t.

If anyone is telling you that you can, they haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about. Like, just stop listening to them. They don’t know what they’re saying, right?

And that’s really important. Like, if someone’s just telling you, oh yeah, you could only eat ingredients in one and two, stay away from three and four, nah. It’s a really simplistic way of thinking, and it’s not looking at what the evidence shows at all, right?

So it’s not intended for that either. It’s just, it’s a way of classifying the foods, but it doesn’t tell you how nutritious or how good for you they are at all. So you know, you can get like more processed foods actually being kind of more nutritious than others.

Like we talked about like kind of cooking the tomatoes and things like that, but even like, you know, calcium set tofu, right? Compare that to raw soybeans. You couldn’t even eat a raw soybean, right?

It would be bad for you because of the like the lectins and stuff that are in raw beans. You have to cook them. And actually, if you go away to calcium set tofu, you’ve just got, you’ve got more bioavailable form of protein there as well in the tofu itself.

It’s easier to eat, more palatable, so you’re more likely to eat it as well. You’re more likely to absorb the protein from it, and it’s got calcium in it as well, so it’s more nutritious. So you’ve just taken a group one, the raw soybeans, and created this, you call it group three or group four, so tofu, and it’s much better for you.

Same with like plant-based milks, right? Either you’re going to get like an almond or like a, I don’t know, even again, raw soybeans you could do for soy milk. Ultra-process it to make, you know, your group four plant-based soy milk way more nutritious.

It’s got iodine and calcium and it’s protein, you know, it’s easy to drink, all of this stuff, right? So how processed something is tells you nothing about how nutritious it is. You have to look at the food in itself.

And when they’ve actually done like studies on ultra-processed foods, it’s just been really hard to pass out like kind of what’s causing the problems. And I think there was this really, there was a good paper, I think it was Cordova and their colleagues, I can’t remember, I think it’s 2023, I think. When they looked at the ultra-processed foods that were causing like the harms to health, it would tend to be stuff like sugar-sweetened beverages and refined grains, right?

So when you refine a grain, you’re removing, you’re stripping the fiber away, you’re creating like white bread or white pasta, you know, whole grains are really healthy. Whole grains are really good for you, right? But it’s that refined grains that can have a signal there for causing kind of metabolic health problems and stuff.

Because they’re really palatable, they’re easy to eat, you over consume them and then you get excess of calories. And that’s where the health issues really start happening when you’re eating an excess of these foods, right? But in that same study, they found that ultra-processed foods that were not in this category, so not sugar-sweetened beverages and not the refined grains were actually fine.

And that included things like plant-based meat alternatives. So plant-based meat alternatives consumption did not increase the risk of chronic disease in this study. So I thought that was really interesting.

And that just shows that there’s a huge difference between different ultra-processed foods. And you’ve got to be really careful of what you mean by when you tell people not to eat ultra-processed foods. And the reason that there’s been such a fear over it is because ultra-processed foods often correlate with that poor health because it’s easy to overeat these things.

The texture is really like soft, they’re low in fiber, they’re often really high in energy. If you eat just some of them, you never really feel full. So you eat more of it, you end up eating an excess, you gain lots of body fat and having excess body fat is what increases a lot of these diseases like type 2 diabetes and stuff.

They often contain a lot of salt as well. So you’ve got to look at the sodium content of the food. And that’s where I think plant-based meat alternatives sometimes should, people that are making them should look to reformulate and make them lower sodium.

Or if you’re going to use them, don’t add salt to them as well because then your salt intake is just going to go up. So I think a better way of thinking about processed foods is, does it have a good amount of protein in it? Does it still have fiber in it?

Are there any extra nutrients to it as well that I’m going to get from it? Because often that’s what’s added to these things, that’s good. And is it going to displace another processed food like red meat, processed red meat in your diet?

Or is it going to be replacing healthy things like beans and stuff? And if it’s replacing healthy stuff, then I would say probably opt for the more whole foods. But you don’t have to fear ultra processed foods as a whole group.

I think you have to be really picky about which ones you choose to eat and not eat. And I’m not saying like people shouldn’t eat chocolates and people shouldn’t eat like potato chips and things like that. Like you can eat what you want, do what you want, eat what you want, but just be mindful of what you’re eating and do not paint all of these things with the same brush.

It’s just wrong to do that. And when you start doing that, you will start eliminating things that are potentially healthy like plant-based meat alternatives and plant-based milks as well.

[Ben]

Thank you again for that very thorough breakdown of what it really means for a food to be processed or unprocessed and some of the caveats and the nuances of that. One thing that stood out to me is when you were talking about, you know, even researchers have a hard time kind of parsing out exactly what is going on behind some of these more ultra processed foods. So I think that something that makes it complicated in the health messaging currently in the United States and the current administration is, you know, they’ll talk about things like, okay, refined grains and, you know, added sugars, you know, they want to be limited, but then they’ll also throw in things like, you know, these, the gums, the stabilizers, the red 40, you know, all these other kind of additives and ingredients that, you know, may possibly might be doing something, but it seems like they’re almost put on the same level as some of these other things.

And, you know, the messaging around nutrition seems to, you know, be shifting a little bit. And, you know, I think it’s hard for the average consumer of information to really parse out what is moving the needle and what is not. And, you know, every five years, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the USDA comes out with their new food recommendations.

I did a semester of graduate school for nutrition, and I remember kind of learning a little bit about, you know, how they come up with these recommendations and, you know, how they are updated every now and then. And so these were just released in the United States recently, and it’s a very hot topic right now, people discussing, you know, what did they get right? What did they get wrong?

And I would love to kind of know your perspective about maybe some of the changes that have occurred. You know, they’re talking about, you know, flipping the pyramid upside down and kind of, you know, reorganizing some things there. So I’d love to know.

I think it’s also, you know, it’s valuable to get opinions from outside of the United States and, you know, health professionals there, because there can be bias, you know, just being kind of internal here. So when you look at some of the changes or some of the things that are being talked about right now by the current, you know, United States administration, when it comes to nutrition, what are you seeing?

[Minil]

If I just summarize it in one sentence, right? They are putting ideology before evidence. That’s it.

Plain and simple, right? And you can see that, like, from this pyramid and the way they’ve constructed it. And it’s just, it’s just a bit of a mess, isn’t it, really, right?

So you said correctly, like, these guidelines come out every sort of five years. They sort of form between 2020 and 2025, those five years. And now these new ones are going to form the guidelines for 2025 to 2030.

And they’re, and they’re designed, they’re usually designed for policymakers, nutrition scientists, dietitians, and other health professionals, really, to then advise the public on what to eat. They’re not really designed for the public to read, it’s not in that sort of format, right? The public can read it if they want, but it’s very difficult.

And actually, to be honest, I think like 60% of the public don’t even follow the recommended guideline, right? So the whole premise behind this new dietary guidelines from RFK and Maha was that, you know, the thing they’ve been saying is that the US dietary guidelines have been keeping the population sick, you know, we’ve got chronic health disease crisis, and it’s because of the dietary guidelines, you know, two things can be true at once, which is we have a chronic disease epidemic and chronic disease problem.

But it’s not because of the dietary guidelines, no one is following the dietary guidelines. The real problem is that people are eating a lot of ultra processed foods, which are high in refined grains and added sugars, you know, they’re not eating plant-based meat alternatives and plant-based milks, I’m telling you that right now, right? They’re eating lots of refined grains, stripped of their fiber, stripped of their nutrients, they’re not hardly anyone is eating fruits and vegetables, right?

And definitely, people are not skipping the meat, right? There was never a war on protein. But anyway, like, so these guidelines were created, and they actually help to guide things for like national school lunch programs as well, and the military and all of this, that’s all gonna be affected by these new dietary guidelines.

And so it’s important that when these guidelines are developed, you take into account, like the evidence base, right? Not only that, but when you’re formulating these guidelines, you have to take into account like cultural differences, because, you know, America is not just one, but like one type of person, right? It’s not just, it’s not just a white American man living in America, right?

There’s loads of different people, populations, different cultures, different, you know, different languages, different dietary preferences and stuff, right? So you and you’ll start to look at not just telling people they need to eat like a load of red meat, but actually, how do we make a diet that is sustainable as well, like to, you know, you have to think about sustainability, because food and food process is a huge part of manmade climate change. And you can see this administration doesn’t really believe in climate change, they don’t really, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s, it’s, they say it themselves, right?

They think it’s a hoax. You know, when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, soil degradation, deforestation, water runoff, eutrophication, yeah, animal agriculture is the biggest offender in all of these. It’s not just about the methane, the methane coming out of cow, cow burps, right?

It’s everything that I just described. So anytime like these guidelines come out, there’s a there’s a scientific committee that helps to create these guidelines. And actually, the committee that was just that was there that was meant to create this year’s one, their recommendations are completely scrapped, like RFK and Maha just ignored them, they formed their own committee, right?

And the new committee that they they pick, like they handpicked these guys that are like, full of like dairy and meat industry funded experts that are like low carb, keto, carnivore, paleo, like, like, they’re just, that’s the people that they picked to formulate these new guidelines, right? And I’m not saying that industry funding and stuff like that means you’re definitely gonna be biased. But you have to take that into account, right?

You have to kind of, you have to declare your confidence of interest. And all of these guys have ties to meat and dairy. But that wouldn’t matter, right?

If the what they were saying was sticking to the evidence, right? But these guys dismiss their evidence based recommendations, and they create the new ones. And I think so what they said was the reason that they dismissed the evidence based ones is because the scientific committee that was using evidence, we’re using an equity lens.

So they were making sure that people were, you know, essentially getting food in a sustainable way and prioritizing things like plant protein as well. And they obviously thought now, we’re not doing that we’re going to create our own one. And this new pyramid that they’ve created, just goes against that evidence.

And it goes against international consensus as well. So I’m in the UK, we had we use like a plate. And that’s what the US was using since 2011.

You guys are using the my plate, which is way better as a visual, right? Because you look at like a plate, you don’t eat off a triangle, you don’t eat off a pyramid, you eat off a plate. So it’s nice when you have a look at a plate, a quarter of it was vegetables, a quarter of it was fruit, you had a quarter was protein, and then a quarter was like your whole grains and stuff, right?

And your carbohydrate sources, which I think is fine. I think if you look at the Canada food guide is the same as like, almost like half the plate is fruits and vegetables, a quarter of it is protein, a quarter of it is like your whole grains and stuff. And I think that’s the way to eat.

And if you look at the food guidelines throughout the world, that protein is usually heavily more plant based proteins. And that’s for good reason. There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that plant based proteins are actually healthier for humans because they’re better for your cardiovascular risk, they have lower cancer rates, populations that even tend to live longer, healthier lives essentially, right?

And they’re more sustainable. Plant proteins are way more sustainable than animal protein. Going back to like this whole obsession with a pyramid as well, like you guys have been using the my plate since 2011.

The actual pyramid that they’re talking about was abandoned then. And the one that they actually referenced saying that they flipped upside down was from like 1992 or something. So it’s not even been used for that long and they’re talking about that, right?

And that old pyramid like had whole grains at the bottom, which had a pretty chunky section of whole grains, which I would argue probably is too much for some people. I would have personally put like fruits and vegetables at that bottom bit and have the whole grains kind of above that, lower servings of that. And then your kind of meat proteins and right at the top is like fats and oils.

But they’ve really flipped it in like a really weird way. And you’ll notice that when anyone looks at the pyramid, because no one’s going to read the guidelines by the way, right? So the guidelines in the pyramid firstly, they don’t even match really.

Like if you look at, read the guidelines and see, look at what the pyramids say, there’s contradictions throughout. We’ll talk about that in a second as well. But people are going to look at this pyramid, the first thing you’re going to notice right in the top corner, because you’re taught to read from left to right, right?

You’re going to look right in the top left corner. What is there? Big steak, right?

And then there’s like a packet of like minced meat next to it. There’s I think a big like chicken or turkey that’s been cooked and salmon and then butter. That’s like that top corner right there, right?

There’s no plant protein at all, that top corner. There’s whole milk somewhere. And then you’ve got vegetables in the left.

So that suggests that the vegetables are probably the same importance, but maybe less meat because they’re on that side. And then in the middle somewhere, you’ve got like the fruit. And right at the bottom, you’ve got like this pathetic whole grain, like a bowl of oats, I think.

There’s a bowl of rice with like four or five kidney beans on it. And then there’s like, I think 12. I think it was Derek Simnett of Simnett Nutrition who counted them.

I think I watched one of his videos where I think it was like 12 oats there. So it’s just crazy, right? You look at that and it’s just a mess.

It’s so confusing. Now, there’s a few things I agree with. Like we should be eating more whole foods.

And we’ve had this whole talk about ultra processed foods. But I agree, we should be eating more whole foods. And we should be eating a lot less ultra processed foods, which would contain like your refined sugars, things that are high in saturated and trans fats, things that are devoid of things like fiber and micronutrients, and the things that have a lot of sugars, like we should be avoiding those.

Yeah, like sugar, sweetened beverages, all of that. I’m for that. That’s great.

I love the message. Eat more whole foods. They’re telling people to eat lots of red meat, whole milk, and cook with butter and beef tallow.

Yeah, that’s what they’re telling people, right? But then in the guidelines, they’re telling people to limit their intake of saturated fat to less than 10%, which is what we’ve been doing. Like if you look at all the other guidelines, they’ll tell you to reduce, limit saturated fat to less than 10%.

Because the more saturated fat you eat, the higher the risk we see of cardiovascular disease because saturated fat increases your LDL cholesterol, which then leads to atherosclerosis, which then can lead to heart attacks and stroke. So it’s a good idea to keep saturated fats low. Saturated fats are also implicated in colon cancer through some weird mechanism as well.

You know, I’ve read that in a paper somewhere and I can’t even remember off my head how it’s implicated that it is. So it’s a good idea to keep saturated fats low. But these guys, and there’s been a few like content creators that are in favor of the guidelines that have tried to sample meal plan according to the guidelines.

They always go over on saturated fats. They have to like fudge the numbers a bit to make it look like they don’t, but literally you will go over on saturated fat. So it doesn’t make any sense.

They’ve advised people to eat a bit more protein. I think 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram protein, which you and I, I think we would agree that’s probably a good number, but Americans are already eating like about that. They’re eating about 1.1 grams per kilogram. So protein was never the issue, right? No one’s eating a low protein diet. No one’s advocating for a low protein diet.

And this whole, we’re declaring the war on protein over is just, again, more propaganda and BS. There was never a war on protein. You’ve created a problem that didn’t exist.

You’re trying to fill it by saying we’re ending the war on protein. What they actually saying is we’ve ended the war on people saying you should eat less red meat, less animal protein, which is sensible health advice. That’s what we’ve been telling people to do.

You know, eat more plant protein, eat less of this stuff. But two thirds, again, in America, two thirds of the protein intake in America is coming from animal sources already. People aren’t eating plant protein in America.

Around the world, people are. So in China, it’s the other way. I think a lot more plant protein is eaten.

If you go to Africa countries, again, a lot more plant protein is eaten because of the legumes, because of the whole grains. Whereas in the US, it’s literally just meat, meat, meat, meat, you know, burgers, sausages, chicken, and cheese. These are all the sources of protein in America.

There’s never been a problem with protein. So yeah, there’s a few things I disagree with, a few things I agree with. Did you see the bit on the vegan diets?

[Ben]

I thought I saw some things about certain nutrients that need to be more carefully considered that there’s not really research to indicate that that would be the case. Is that correct?

[Minil]

Oh, this one killed me as well. A few of us have like looked at this and just like, I read it. And then I think I had a chat with Matthew Nagler and a few other people about it as well.

And it’s just great. He’s done a video on it as well. Essentially, like if you go, if you look down on their 10 page guide that’s made for like easy reading, they have this section on vegan and vegetarian diets.

And they make it out like, if you consume a vegan diet, you’re going to be at risk of so many deficiencies. They cited vitamins A, D, E, B6, B12, riboflavin, niacin, choline, calcium, I actually write these down, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, and protein. That’s what they said.

Like that is wild to me, right? Normally, when you tell someone you’re going vegan, they normally worry about protein and B12. But all this other stuff, right?

I like, do you even know how they came to this conclusion? Like, I found this even funnier, because this was pointed out to someone that was involved in making the guidelines on, I think, Twitter or LinkedIn. But they used a food modeling paper, right?

So you basically gave a hypothetical diet, and then you remove certain food groups to see that if you remove that food group, what nutrients will drop out of that diet. So they took a healthy vegetarian diet, healthy vegetarian diet, or an average vegetarian diet, and they got rid of the eggs and the whole dairy, and they got rid of like fortified soy products, and they didn’t replace it with anything else. So they took a diet, they removed three types of items, and they didn’t replace it with anything else.

And in that, they found that the calories obviously dropped, the protein obviously dropped, and all these different vitamins and minerals dropped as well. Like, this is their revolutionary thinking, right? If you remove foods from a diet, you will eat less nutrients.

Wow. This is, I’m not even making this up. It sounds crazy.

It sounds like too crazy to be true. I had to look at it myself. And I read through that there’s like a 500 page appendix.

I went through the bit on vegan diets and how they modeled it. And I read it myself. And I was like, this is crazy, right?

And, you know, normally, when you go vegan, you’re not going to just drop out the eggs and the dairy and the soy milk, you’re going to eat other foods, you’re going to replace it with other foods. And that’s going to make up nutrient shortfalls, it’s going to make up the calories, it’s going to make up the protein. If you eat nutritional yeast, you’re going to bang out most of these nutrients straight away, including all the B vitamins, zinc.

Nutritional yeast is so crazy high in this stuff, right? So you can’t really even take this seriously. But I can see why they did this because the guys that created the guidelines in the first place have a huge pro-meat bias.

They are all very anti-vegan. They’ve been on record saying things about vegans that is just frankly crazy. They’ve been on podcasts, they’ve got their own YouTube channels, they’ve got their own social media pages where they’re just bashing vegan diets and vegans all the time, right?

So you can’t even take that at face value. And actually, when you look at the research, vegans tend to consume favorable levels of things like vitamin B1, B6, vitamin C, vitamin E, folate, magnesium. We actually get enough of this stuff.

Yes, things like B12, iodine, calcium need to be looked at more carefully in studies. But meat eaters also fall short in things. They fall short in polyunsaturated fat, fiber, folate, calcium as well, magnesium, vitamin E and vitamin D, just like vegans as well.

Most people fall short of vitamin D because we don’t really get it from food. We get it from sunlight, right? So there’s nutrient shortfalls in any diet, no matter what type of diet you eat.

But the new USDA, because of their ideology, they focused on vegans and vegetarian diets there and made them out to be much worse than they are, which I think does a huge disservice to the American people, and especially to their vegans and vegetarian population, because you’re almost turning people away from going vegan vegetarian. I mean, why else would you do that, if it wasn’t because of ideology? And why would you use such crap evidence to create this guideline and go against the evidence that others have actually, you know, offered you if you weren’t going again for ideological reasons?

So it’s really sad, to be honest. It’s a real mess, right? And I think, you know, if you want to look at what the guidelines would look like, if people had followed the recommendation, there’s something called the Center for Science in the Public Interest, right?

They’re like a non-profit group. They’ve actually created their own dietary guidelines using the scientific recommendations from the committee that was disbanded by Maha. I would look at their website and look at their uncompromised dietary guidelines for more information, or just follow the Canadian guidelines, because they’re way better than the US guidelines, to be honest with you.

Thank you for that breakdown.

[Ben]

I’ll have to find the link for that and put it in the show notes, so people can go check that out. Yeah, it’s just, it’s wild. I remember just looking at papers comparing, you know, just like different nutrient status and health outcomes for omnivores versus vegans and vegetarians.

You know, of course, there’s going to be some nutrients that maybe vegans or vegetarians are slightly, you know, disadvantaged or might get a little bit lower. But like you said, there’s also ones that they tend to do better on than the typical omnivorous diet. So it really does kind of speak to, like you’re saying, just kind of choosing to go about creating those recommendations in a way that suits, you know, those individuals’ agendas.

I have kind of two questions as a sort of follow-up to this discussion of recommendations for the general public. The first is recommendations for children, raising children on a vegan diet. And I’d be curious to know if there’s any kind of thing in the USDA recommendations where they talk about, you know, diets for children, and if they mentioned vegan or vegetarian diets at all.

So that would be my first question. And then my second question, as we kind of bring this conversation to a close, is one about plant protein and just a kind of nuance in that I will hear recommendations, especially maybe from those who lean towards more whole food plant-based, who are maybe trying to appeal to a more broad general audience. Maybe not people who are already vegan or plant-based, but those who are eating an omnivorous diet.

And a lot of maybe people in this space, you know, some well-known doctors, I’m not going to name names, but I think people kind of know who I’m talking about, might say, you know, you got to limit your protein. You have to, you know, get your protein down. They’ll sometimes even talk about, you know, protein restriction or just not worrying about protein.

And with this recommendation to increase protein and generally, you know, us being in favor, because it can help with things like building more muscle mass, which is protective as we age and, you know, a variety of other functions as well. I’d like to know, should we be worried with limiting plant protein intake? Is there any evidence to suggest that, you know, obviously there would be indications for limiting animal protein intake as we’ve kind of discussed, but should we be concerned about lowering or keeping at a certain level our plant protein intake?

So those are the two questions. The first about diets for children, vegan, vegetarian diets. And the second about, do we need to limit plant protein?

[Minil]

They didn’t specifically mention it in the little 10-page summary for the public, but in the longer one, they do talk about like how they got their evidence for the vegan diets and they looked at each kind of age group and what would happen. But again, they’re using that research where they knocked out the eggs, the dairy and the non-fortified soy milk, the fortified soy milk, sorry, it’s pointless looking at that. So the bit they did include in the US dietary guidelines on children, interestingly, like they’re really hamming in the thing about like, what’s it called, whole milk.

They’re saying that children should have full fat dairy. It’s really important for children to have it, which as a health professional, I find crazy because a lot of children suffer with, not a lot of, a significant number of children will suffer from something called cow’s milk protein allergy where they can’t even digest cow’s milk protein. And then there’s 70% of adults who are lactose intolerant and that can also develop in childhood as well.

It doesn’t always, but it can develop in childhood for some people. So what about these people who are allergic? You can’t tell, you can’t put in a guideline that full fat dairy is really important for all children when there are some people that have to avoid it, right?

Again, this is when you don’t look at things through an equity lens and when you just look at it through an ideological lens that you want people to consume loads of dairy, you’ll put it in the guidelines and that’s what they kept putting, right? But in terms of like, are vegan diets suitable for children? So the official position again in the USA and the UK is yes.

So the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the American Academy of Pediatrics both agree that a vegan diet is suitable for any life stage. Similarly, we’ve got the British Dietetic Association, we’ve got the British Nutrition Foundation and the National Health Services as well in the UK say that well-planned vegan diet is suitable for any life stage. So from pregnancy, breastfeeding, birth, all the way until death, right?

The caveat that all these guidelines always write is well-planned, right? Well-planned to me has become like a buzzword, right? And a lot of us vegans repeat it as well.

Like you’ll see a lot of vegans say a well-planned vegan diet is suitable for every… Every diet has to be well-planned in order for it to be nutritionally adequate, right? You can look at like people living in the blue zones if you want and you look at how they’re eating and they’re living to 100.

Even their diets will sometimes be lacking in certain things. That is just how diets are, right? If you follow anyone that’s in like the longevity space like, you know, your Brian Johnson’s of the world and stuff like that, they take a bunch of supplements, right?

Reason being is because even if they formulate like this very carefully curated diet, they may fall short in certain nutrients, right? You know, people on the carnivore diet will fall short loads of nutrients actually. You can put it in the chronometer like you just put steak butter all day long, you’re going to fall short of loads of things like magnesium, vitamin C, vitamin E, loads of things that you’ll fall short in.

So well-planning has to be with any diet, right? For children, like you have to look at the life stage of a child as well. So like if you’re, you know, during pregnancy, women should be taking supplements as well like to ensure that they’re getting everything they need.

We tell people that anyway. Every woman pretty much that you know that gets pregnant is advised by a health professional to take a pregnancy suitable supplement and it’s no different for vegan mothers as well. The nutrients that they have to pay attention to as vegans is obviously B12, vitamin D and I would argue omega-3 is important as well.

So like I see there’s different types of omega-3. You get ALA from like chia seeds, nuts, hemp seeds, walnuts, sorry, hemp seeds, flax seeds and all these things. You can get ALA which is a type of omega-3.

It’s a shorter chain one and then your body converts that ALA into the longer chain ones which are DHA and EPA. These are found in marine life. So not just fish but also algae as well.

So if you’re vegan, you’re going to have usually lower levels of dietary intake of DHA and EPA if at all. You’re going to have lots of ALA which then gets converted to DHA and EPA in the body and another one called DPA. But vegan mothers or sorry pregnant women that are, you know, expecting they need to support likely supplement this just for a healthy pregnancy.

But there are people that don’t and they still have healthy pregnancies, right? So it’s not like, you know, if you just want to optimize and do and make sure you can do everything you can to make sure like the health of the developing fetus is going to go well and all of that, then yes, find a supplement. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Then once a child is born, the guidance is usually to, you know, if you can breastfeed because breast milk is nutritionally complete. It’s like the best thing that a baby can have. You know, there’s lots of good evidence to suggest that children that are breastfed have better health outcomes later on in the future.

But that’s if you can breastfeed. Some women can’t breastfeed and they should never be shamed into saying that, you know, having using the formula is bad. You know, you do what you can do as long as you get your child fit.

So for vegan mothers, if you are breastfeeding, then you may need a supplement just to, again, make sure that your diet as well, not crazy amounts. You just need to eat slightly more calories and also slightly more calcium is important as well to make you feel like you’re paying attention to that. But when they’ve compared breast milk of vegan mothers to the breast milk of omnivorous mothers, they’ve been nutritionally kind of equal.

There’s not been a huge difference either. So you can’t even say that vegan mom’s breast milk is not going to be good for the baby. It’s fine, right?

Then formula milks, this is where there’s a bit of a trip up in the sense that, you know, omnivorous children or people that consume dairy, formula milk is made from essentially cow’s milk powder that’s been processed again, processed C, but it has to be processed to be suitable for the consumption of a child less than six months. You shouldn’t be giving them whole cow’s milk. You shouldn’t be giving them the kind of foods that you would be eating on the six months, yeah?

They have to have this powdered formula. There are some vegan formulas that exist out there. Again, they’re quite difficult to find.

And sometimes they’re not fully vegan either. They’ll be fortified with things that may not be completely vegan derived. So vitamin D is typically derived from like sheep’s wool.

So you might not find a fully vegan formula. I don’t think one even exists in the UK. I think there are some in Europe and maybe in the US, but I’m not 100% sure.

So again, vegan moms, if you are going to be using formula, I would speak to a registered dietitian to make sure that you’re getting the right formula feed for your child because it’s hard to do it alone. And I think you should get the support of a health professional to make sure you’re doing the right thing for your developing baby, right? And then when it comes to children as well, once they get weaned onto solid foods, you can’t just put them onto the same diet that adults eat.

It’s going to be slightly different. The amounts are going to be slightly different. There’s going to be key nutrients you’ve got to focus on.

Kids need a lot of calories as well because they grow rapidly, especially from birth to when they become toddlers. So they’re growing at a rapid rate. Their brains are growing, their bones are developing, everything.

So they need to eat more calorific foods. And this is where vegan diets, which are favorable for adults because it allows us to stay a bit leaner, especially if you eat whole plant foods, for children, you need to make sure that you’re getting enough calories. So this is where you want to lean on more fattier foods like avocados, like maybe peanut butter and other nut butters, things that are going to provide growing children the calories they need.

Because when they have done studies and they looked at vegan children compared to omnivorous children, they did found that vegans were consuming lower calories, which gave them a leaner profile. So they usually were in the normal to low BMI range, but they usually were in the normal range than omnivorous children. Omnivorous children tended to be actually higher BMI, sometimes even in the obese range for children.

I think making sure they’re getting enough calories is really important. Again, if you’re confused about what can they eat? What advice is there available?

Again, speaking to a registered nutritionist or dietitian, there’s also in America, I think you guys have got Plant Based Juniors, which is by I think someone called Alex Caspero and Whitney, I think Whitney English is her son, English is her son’s name. So I think you’ve got those two new Plant Based Juniors. They’ve got a website, they’ve got recipes and loads of resources.

I think they’ve written a book as well. In the UK, we’ve got Plant Based Kids, I think, by someone called Paula Hallam, who’s a registered dietitian as well and a pediatric nutritionist. So they’ve got really good resources for mums out there.

And then yeah, like the nutrients that we talked about, like all diets can be lacking in certain nutrients and stuff. But the key ones for vegans to focus on are obviously vitamin B12. This is a non-negotiable, you have to supplement this or get it from fortified foods.

Your children have to get it because it’s so important for nervous nerve function, red blood cell function, all of that. Vitamin D as well often needs to be supplemented, especially if you’re living in colder climates where there’s not much sunlight. Iron can be found in beans, lentils, tofu, or even fortified cereals, they often come with iron in them.

Calcium from fortified plant milk or calcium set tofu, omega-3s we’re talking about. This is another one where I would say supplement in children with the DHA and EPA. Again, I know vegans that haven’t supplemented this stuff and they turned out fine.

Like I was a vegetarian baby growing up. I know I was omnivorous as well, but I was pretty much vegetarian. I wasn’t getting much DHA, EPA either.

I’m at a medical school. It’s one of those things where you can say all this in theory, but at the end of the day, I don’t know. If you go to India, no one is supplementing fish oil, hardly anyone.

People are going to become doctors and all sorts. It’s important for brain development and brain growth. It is something that I would on balance recommend people to supplement.

The other one is iodine. Again, it’s something that kids can get easily from fortified foods. It’s not that these foods are lacking in plant-based diets.

It’s just that you just need to pay a bit more attention. Just like if you’re an omnivore feeding your kids, you’re going to look at what things are they like to fall short on. Fiber might be one of them, or you need to make sure that they’re getting folate and things like that.

You would look at this stuff. I don’t know about you, but growing up in the UK, I did take a multivitamin as a kid. It was recommended by the doctor and I took it.

We didn’t even question it, but when it comes to vegan diets, it’s like, oh my God, they’re going to have to supplement. They’re going to have to do this. It’s just so easy to pick on vegans and veganism as being bad for you and deficient.

Anytime we look at any studies on vegan children and vegan adults, we tend to be leaner and have better cardiometabolic health than omnivores. Nobody wants to focus on that. They just want to focus on what vitamins and minerals we may or may not be missing out on.

It’s just BS. Vegan diets, they’re perfectly safe for children if you know what you’re doing. If you don’t know what you’re doing, please seek help and get some advice.

Don’t just wing it and make any mistakes that could be detrimental to your child. That’s with any dietary pattern.

[Ben]

Perfect. Thank you. We have a lot of folks in here who are parents or are thinking about becoming parents.

I figured that would be a pertinent question because I think people have fears around, I want to start a family. I also want to go vegan. Is that something that I can do?

I think it helps just knowing there are resources out there. If it is something you want to do, it is achievable.

[Minil]

I think your question was this whole thing about people recommending low protein intakes or protein restriction. I guess you were saying, is there a limit for plant-based proteins on health outcomes? Is there a point where it would be detrimental or something like that?

Protein is protein, whether it comes from an animal or whether it comes from plants. The actual protein is a protein. I think your listeners will know that proteins are made up of amino acids.

Provided you get those amino acids into your body, your body doesn’t know where they came from. Your body is not going to go, oh, this amino acid was from an animal or this one was from a plant. It’s not going to know that.

There’s nine essential amino acids you have to get from your diet because your body can’t make them. There’s another 11 that are not essential, but you still need them. They’re still a form part of the diet and they still need to be eaten, but your body can make them from the other amino acids.

No one in the Western world suffers from protein deficiency. We all get adequate amounts of protein. Then people look at an RDA of protein, which is 0.8 grams per kilogram of protein. That RDA, the way they got at that level was they looked at what protein level would people become deficient at. If we set two standard deviations above that, where would 97% of the population meet their protein requirements for the day, so not become protein deficient. That was based on a mixed meal, so omnivorous meal.

Not just eating meat and not just eating plant, but a mixture of proteins. That number kind of stuck. If people eat 0.8 grams per kilogram protein, generally, they should be fine. However, if you’re an older adult, or if you are active in any way as an adult, then you could run the risk of being in a negative protein balance or negative nitrogen balance, where you’re actually using the protein that you’ve got on you in the muscles and in the bones because you’re not meeting your requirements for the day. I and people who are in the vegan fitness space or even in the vegan health space, most of us would say to people, actually, you should aim a bit higher. I’m in the favor of going for between 1 to 1.6 grams per kilo, depending on how active you are, what your goals are, like body composition, muscle building, whether you’re an athlete, and how old you are as well. Elderly people tend to have what’s known as anabolic resistance, where they need a bit more protein to hold onto the muscle they have. It’s harder for them to actually hold onto muscle or build new muscle, so they tend to need more protein to get the same effects as well. This whole idea of, provide you enough calories, you’ll get all the protein you need, is something that’s been really regurgitated by a lot of the old school plant-based doctors.

There’s a new school plant-based doctors, like me, Matthew Nagra, a few other people, and there’s the old school guys. They really set the bar for a lot of the stuff we have today, and I really respect all of them. A lot of them are great, great people, and they really do care about people and making sure people are healthy and stuff like that.

I think the protein messages have been a bit messy from a lot of them, and a lot of them have leaned towards a lower protein intake, because the research tends to show the more protein people eat, the poorer some of their outcomes are on things like cardiovascular health, cancer, and things like that. It tends to be animal protein. When people are eating a lot of animal protein, they tend to have higher rates of type 2 diabetes, higher rates of cardiovascular disease, higher risk of certain types of cancers as well, right?

When we’ve looked at the newer research, which has passed apart what’s happening with plant protein, it’s actually when people eat more plant protein, they have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, lower risk of cancer, lower risk of type 2 diabetes, right? But these guys aren’t eating huge amounts of protein either. I’m not telling people to eat two to three to four grams per kilogram body weight, right?

It’s just a proportion of your protein in the day. When it’s coming more from plants, it tends to be associated with better health outcomes, and it makes sense. Why?

When you eat plant sources of protein, you’re eating your beans, legumes, things that have fiber in them, you’re getting more phytonutrients and antioxidants. These are really good for your health. You’re getting less saturated fat, you’re getting less heme iron, which is inflammatory, but you’re not getting the carcinogenic compounds that come with like grilling meats and things as well, right?

So it makes sense that this is going to give you favorable health. The whole protein restriction thing, there’s this sort of like a lot of these longevity experts like Dr. Walter Longo, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. He created like this fast diet where he tells people to fast.

A lot of his research comes from like rodent studies, where they protein restrict rodents to see what it does to their longevity. I don’t know about you, but I’m not a rat, I’m not a rodent, so I don’t really care too much about rodent studies. I don’t think it really extrapolates to humans necessarily.

You know, people point out like the longest-lived people like the Okinawans and stuff, they don’t eat a lot of protein, which is yeah, it’s probably true, but they’re very slim, they’re very skinny, right? They almost look sarcopenic when they’re in their old age, and a lot of us don’t want to be like that. A lot of us want to have muscle.

I think for muscle and bone health, the evidence is pretty clear that when you eat higher protein rather than lower protein, it tends to be better for you. It helps you retain the muscle better, it is better for bone health as well. And the lower your protein intake, the higher the risk of things like osteoporosis and the higher the risk of things like sarcopenia, losing muscle is.

Ultimately, being active is the biggest signal though for your muscle and your bone. If you’re not physically active, if you’re not resistance training, then there’s no real point being extra protein because your body doesn’t store it, right? We’ve got no protein stores.

Anything you eat during the day, we’ve got like a free pool of amino acids that are there during the day and they get recycled around and stuff. But really, you’re either in a net protein, you’re always turning over protein and you’re either in a net positive or a net negative at the end of the day, or you might just be lucky and you’re staying the same. But it’s very rare that’s the case.

You’re usually in a positive or a negative and either you’re weeing out the excess protein that you’re taking in from food, or if you’re building muscle, you’re assimilating it into your muscles and you’re kind of putting into your bones as well and other connective tissues as well and loads of other important things that protein does. So I think to me, protein restriction itself as a whole doesn’t make any sense unless you’ve got like end stage kidney failure, in which case your nephrologist may recommend you restricting to a certain degree. Even then, there’s some evidence to suggest that people that have got worsening kidney failure, being on the right lower end of protein probably isn’t favorable either because actually having a moderate amount of protein is probably going to be better for like muscle, again, sarcopenia and other health outcomes.

So for those individuals, I would recommend them speaking to their nephrologist. But you and I, people with healthy functioning kidneys, physically active, looking to build muscle, I think we should be eating between 1.2 to 1.6, even as high as sometimes 1.8 if you’re dieting and cutting down for a competition. You and I both know we went as high as 1.8 to 2 grams per kilogram body weight probably on some days because it kept us full, it allowed us to retain that muscle as well. And when you are in a calorie deficit, protein becomes a bit more important as well because your body is going to be crying out for calories from somewhere and it’s going to use your muscle if you’re not careful. So yeah, for these group of people, you have to eat a higher level of protein. So restriction doesn’t make any sense.

But it does make sense, sorry, to restrict your intake of animal protein because the more animal protein you eat, the higher the risk of these diseases. And that’s what I think people need to understand when people are talking about like lowering your protein intake, they actually mean lowering your animal protein intake, not lowering your plant protein intake. And I’m not asking people to eat crazy amounts either, I think.

So bottom line is, I don’t think there’s a negative to eating plant-based protein for health outcomes. I think provided you’re eating what I would recommend as a sensible amount, you’re fine. You run the risk of crowding out other foods if you just eat, if you just focus on protein, you’ll crowd out your sources of like fiber, complex carbohydrates, your healthy fats and stuff like that.

So I don’t want people to just be obsessed with protein because that’s, you know, then you start forgetting about all the other stuff that’s important. But I don’t think people should fear it or restrict it either, unless it’s animal protein that they’re restricting.

[Ben]

Dr. Manoj Patel, thank you so much for being on the podcast today and answering all the questions that I had. I have no more questions. I feel like everything was really taken through point by point and nothing was missed.

So before we sign off today, is there anything else that you want to leave our audience with, any kind of exciting things you’re working on or that you want people to know about?

[Minil]

So people can follow me on Dr. Iron Junkie to stay there with my journey and stuff. And I think if anyone takes anything away from this is that, you know, you don’t need to fear ultra-processed foods. They’re not just, you know, they’re not a, they’re a heterogeneous, they’re very mixed, they’re a diverse group of foods.

And actually ultra-processed foods can form a great part of your diet. But ultimately, I will say that eating a whole food plant-based diet is going to move the needle in a healthy way for most people. So I think if you make 90% of your diet or 80% of your diet, whole plant foods, and then the rest 10 to 20% of the healthy ultra-processed foods, I think that’s like a perfect recipe for a long, healthy and happy life.

[Ben]

Perfect. I think that’s a wonderful way to round this out. So we’ll make sure to link all of your social media and relevant links in the description below.

Thank you so much, everyone, for listening to another episode. If you’re interested in coaching or you want to find more of our content, that will be linked down in the description. Thank you again, Manil, for your time.

And hopefully we’ll have you on again someday. Yeah, no worries. Thanks for having me on then.

Okay. Thanks. Appreciate it.