[Kevin]
Hey Michelle, how are you doing?

[Michelle]
It's a good day today, Kev.

[Kevin]
Excellent. Every day is a good day with you. Come on.

[Michelle]
I don't know. I can get pretty... I was pretty grouchy yesterday.

It was so cold and it was wet and I just...

[Kevin]
Well, I'm glad I didn't talk to you yesterday then because I'm glad you're in a better mood today. It was kind of...

[Michelle]
Today is a good day. I got a beautiful cup of tea here. I'm hanging out chatting with you.

My dog is sleeping beside me. It's a good day.

[Kevin]
Excellent. Excellent. So, Michelle, I have a question today.

And it's not really my question, but it is now. So let me tell you a quick story. So, regrettably, a friend of mine very recently has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

And thankfully, it's just stage 1A. That's very light as far as these things go. She did have a small tumor, but thankfully it had not gone into her lymph nodes.

So as these things go, it's all good. But I had a question because her doctor had suggested that she increase and really focus on phytochemicals.

[Michelle]
Yes.

[Kevin]
So she was asking me, because she knew that I did this podcast, like, what are phytochemicals? Because this was something her doctor had suggested. And actually, the cancer organizations explicitly suggest increasing phytochemicals that they have beneficial impact.

They're not a silver bullet or anything, but, you know, there is no silver bullet against cancer. But they do have a beneficial impact against cancer or preventing it if you don't have it yet. And so that got me thinking because I've never heard of these things.

[Michelle]
Really? You've never heard of a phytochemical?

[Kevin]
I've never heard of a phytochemical. I've lived under a rock all my life, I guess. A nutritional rock.

[Michelle]
Oh, my gosh. That's like being a kid that's never been on a roller coaster.

[Kevin]
Well, I am a noob after all. So that's why I'm here, for you to make fun of me. And I don't really like roller coasters, by the way.

So I don't feel like I'm missing anything from that.

[Michelle]
Oh, I love roller coasters, but you know what? It's weird. As I get older, I can't ride them the same as I did when I was a kid.

I can't handle being tossed around anymore. Maybe I'm not quite as risky as I used to be.

[Kevin]
Well, it's the same thing as going on a swing. Have you been on a swing in a playground recently? As an adult, it does not feel fun.

[Michelle]
Yeah, no. Centrifugal force does not agree with my stomach.

[Kevin]
Yeah, not at all.

[Michelle]
Well, I'm talking about the swings, like those fair ones that go around in a circle. So you're not only swinging, but you're spinning at the same time.

[Kevin]
Oh, I just mean even just a swing at a park playground. Even those I can't handle anymore. My stomach's like, whoa.

[Michelle]
Anyway, I love your question. And I'm so sorry, first of all, for your friend. That's a scary diagnosis, even if it's an early stage.

The first thing I want to say about this is we head into phytochemicals, because phytochemicals are such incredibly powerful compounds. And that's why we hear this, or why her doctor presumably is sharing that information. And what people underestimate when it comes to their bodies and when it comes to foods that fuel the body, we come from a society that has trained us up until this point to focus on genetics.

Everything was focused on genetic research. But the truth is the Human Genome Project was a huge disappointment. They didn't get from that what they thought they were going to get.

They thought they were going to be able to isolate all these genes. And they thought that when they did that, they were then going to be able to come up with a drug that targets everything for every gene. And they were going to be able to cure everything.

[Kevin]
Right. Pinpoint these specific gene markers very accurately. And yeah, I don't think the human body is like that.

But anyways.

[Michelle]
Right. And what we actually learned from that science is that epigenetics is far more powerful than genetics. So epi meaning what is above genetics.

So epigenetics includes your diet and your lifestyle. Everything that you do, everything that you think, everything that you consume, everything that you come in contact with is above the genetics and impacts gene expression.

[Kevin]
So epigenetics is more like nurture, whereas genetics is like the nature side of things. In a simplistic way.

[Michelle]
Yeah, I guess. I guess you can put it that way. I hadn't thought of it that way.

So basically your diet and your lifestyle matter so much more than we ever thought. And this study of science for a period of time throwing all their eggs in the genetics basket realized that you can have a genetic inheritance of a certain gene that is known to put you at higher risk for X, Y or Z. But those genes need never express.

If the conditions don't exist for that gene to express itself, it never will. And we know this from things like experiments done on identical twins, where twins literally have identical genes, but they have two very different lifestyles and diets. And one twin will develop a disease or a condition and the other twin won't.

So that's just a very broad example. But basically what the data says now in the literature is that the last time I seriously studied that metric, which was three or four years ago, says that something like only 10 to 15 percent of our health outcomes are related to genetics. Wow.

And the rest is epigenetic.

[Kevin]
I would never have expected that it was so low.

[Michelle]
Yeah.

[Kevin]
Like the genetics was so low.

[Michelle]
It is so low. Wow. 10 to 15 percent.

And that includes many, many cancers. I think there is the odd type of cancer that genetic plays a larger role, but it's still never more than 50 percent, which means there is far more that we can do than we can't.

[Kevin]
Right, which is actually a very hopeful message. Yes. Because you think that because my parent died of a particular cause, then I think, oh, that's running in my family.

And so, oh, well, there's nothing I can do. It's in my genes, you know, just throw up my hands and do nothing. But that feels nice that that's not the case at all if it's only 15 percent chance.

[Michelle]
It's not. And I hear this all the time. Oh, this runs in my family.

You know what runs in your family? Eating behaviors.

[Kevin]
Right. That's true.

[Michelle]
Lifestyle behaviors, attitudes towards foods, favorite family recipes. Those are the things that run in families. So far, far more than genetics.

So, you know, I told a little bit of my origin story coming into this space in the last episode, and this is what I learned. I learned that, wow. I can literally change my life and it will change my health outcomes.

And so it doesn't matter what runs in my family. I have far more control than I don't. Eighty-five to 90 percent of my health outcomes depend upon what I eat, what I breathe in, what I put on my skin, what I spray or what I come in contact with.

[Kevin]
The choices that you make ultimately. I mean, they're the choices in which case you have the ability to make wise choices or less wise choices.

[Michelle]
Right. And some of it's environmental, right? Some of it we can't do anything about.

Some of it's car exhaust, it's agrochemicals, it's stuff that's in our food that we don't have any control over or in our water supply or, you know, what have you. We can't do anything about those things. But understanding this still gives us the power of still being mindful of those exposures and doing our best to avoid them or minimize them.

So this brings me back to your question about what the heck is a phytochemical. And the reason why her doctor would have been saying that is because phytochemicals or phytonutrients, the words are interchangeable, are basically these incredible, incredible powerhouse compounds that are present in foods. So phyto meaning plant, biologically active compounds found in plants.

They are protective or disease preventive once we consume them. And the composition of phytochemicals will vary depending upon every type of plant, every fruit, every vegetable, every herb. Kevin, there are literally, we don't even really know yet.

There are thousands or maybe millions of phytochemicals in plants. Science hasn't even begun to discover them all. But as of the last count, even this fact, you can Google it and you'll find this study says it's this many thousand and this one says this many thousand.

We don't really know.

[Kevin]
There are lots. We can all agree that there are lots.

[Michelle]
I was researching this for tea, right, because tea is a big part of what I do. And one of the reasons why tea is such a fantastic beverage is that it's loaded with phytochemicals, more than many of the foods that we eat. But one study said 10,000 phytonutrients have been identified in dietary plants.

And then another study quoted that there are more than 25,000 phytonutrients currently identified and found in plant foods. But maybe, so who knows? I don't think whether it's 10,000, 25,000 or a million, it really matters.

There's a lot. That's really the lesson that we need to focus on here. So they're plant in origin.

The prefix phyto is from the Greek meaning plant. So these are not present in meat, dairy and eggs. We can only get them from plant foods, from fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, herbs and spices, things like that that we consume.

And so they're really, really, really powerful because by giving this name of being a phytochemical, it means that it is bioactive in some way. So her doctor would have mentioned this to her. And this is why any doctor, you know, even with their very, very limited focus on nutrition in medical education, very, very limited number of hours make it's maybe 10 or 15 hours in total compared to my field of study, which is more like 5,000 hours of nutrition education.

But even with what little they have, they know that's why eat the rainbow. You always hear that. Eat the rainbow, lots of colors on your plate.

Everybody's heard that term. And that's because of these phytochemicals. They tend to be brightly.

We talked about this actually in several episodes. That's what makes the most brightly colored things. We know that they're the most nutrient dense and historically the most calorie dense, but not anymore because of packaging.

But they aid in the function of our immune system. They protect cell DNA. And in some cases, they help to repair DNA that's damaged and including damage that lead to things like cancer.

They reduce inflammation. They can slow the growth rate if cancer cells, active cancer cells are present. They, you know, help to protect and reverse diabetes, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune diseases.

They help to regulate hormones. So these are the bioactive compounds that support our health and help restore health in an organism that has some form of disease. And the reason I love tea so much is because at this point, it looks like there's over 4,000 different phytochemicals in the tea plant compared to say like 800 in coffee as of current research.

Talk to me next year. The numbers might be different. Because they're constantly studying this now.

It's now an area of study. But these phytonutrients are basically…

[Kevin]
Nature's superheroes.

[Michelle]
Yeah. And nature's superheroes, superfood. That's what makes food superfood.

And it's, you know, superfood isn't really a thing, by the way. Like when we call something a superfood, it just implies that it's really, really important.

[Kevin]
All food is important generally, yeah.

[Michelle]
Generally speaking. So it's just a marketing term, really, superfood. But it's any chemical of plant origin.

So that can include the chemicals that we've maybe heard of and that we know of like antioxidants. Right. And methylxanthins.

So methylxanthins include things like your caffeine is a methylxanthin. We've maybe heard of phenolic compounds, which are types of antioxidants. We've maybe heard the term flavonoid, lingon, flavanol, taticans, carotenoids.

What's another one? Anthocyanin. Those are…

These are a lot of the ones that I'm naming are types of antioxidants. So there are many… Antioxidant compounds are considered phytonutrients.

But then there's many other types of compounds that are not phenolic compounds. But they are also… They have some function, bioactive function in our body that helps to support our bodies.

And why are they there? Why are they in plant foods? Well, they're not there for our benefit.

What? We are sort of benefactors of the fact that plants have produced these. But these are the active compounds that are protecting the plant in its natural environment.

And that's why there's so many different ones. And every food is going to have a different composition of phytonutrients. Because it's going to depend on where the plant is grown, what kind of conditions it exists in, and what types of predators it needs to protect itself from.

So it's protecting itself from simple things like heat and cold and sun exposure. All these other… All these sources of potential oxidative stress, as well as things like insects.

There are certain phytochemicals that serve as an insect repellent. That's one of the reasons why certain tea plants are higher in caffeine. Because they're maybe grown in an area where there's more insects.

[Kevin]
Because the insects really like their caffeine kick? Is that what it is? The ants are jittery all over.

[Michelle]
Caffeine is really bitter. So it kind of protects the… It doesn't taste so good.

I guess even bugs don't like bitter, I guess. I'm not…

[Kevin]
Yeah, exactly. Okay.

[Michelle]
I'm not implying we have the same taste buds as a bug, but…

[Kevin]
Why not?

[Michelle]
Go for it. Anyway, it's just really fascinating to me. So plants, if you think about it, this is part of the plant's defense system.

And then we have this incredible symbiotic relationship with our environment. We are part of this ecosystem. We live in harmony with it.

And, you know, our microbiome is built based on the diversity within which we place ourselves. And the water that we swim in, the foods that we eat, the water we bathe in, the soil that we grow our food in, that we touch and feel. All of these things are exposures that can benefit us.

And all of those metabolites come from plants. And we now know that they play a very crucial interaction with our microbiome, which we've talked about so much already. It's so, so very important.

And it's impossible now to isolate a phytochemical conversation from a microbiome conversation, if that makes sense, because they're so dependent upon one another. And it's impossible to separate us from plants because we depend on them. Literally, it's literally life or death.

[Kevin]
Then why is this important? Like, why are the phytochemicals so important for us?

[Michelle]
Basically, all of our body's ability to support a healthy immune system and to stave off various diseases depends upon what we eat, depends upon this intake of phytochemicals and phytonutrients, which includes antioxidant compounds. And we live here in North America, I don't know if people realize this or if I've said it before, we have the highest rates of disease in the world. We live in a world where heart disease is the leading cause of death globally.

It's the second leading cause of death in Canada. In Canada, we have the dubious honor of cancer being our number one cause of death. But understanding that four out of five Canadians, we already know have modifiable risk factors for chronic diseases, then that means if we could correct those four out of five risk factors, which is our epigenetics, we could really move the needle on this.

What that means is that a majority of what makes us sick and which has caused your friend to have this terrifying information shared with her, she can change it, especially in an early stage. That's so empowering. That's so freaking incredible.

And things like cancer hate fruits and vegetables. We know that as phytochemical intake, as intake of healthy foods increase and the consumption of unhealthy foods and unhealthy exposures decrease, then cancer rates go down. If you were to put this on a graph, it literally is a diagonal, an eye diagonal where it goes way, way, way, way, way down.

And there's tons of studies demonstrating this. Epic Oxford, I think, is the largest that we know of. There's lots of places people can look for this.

And this is why I love the tea plant again. And I think we're going to have to segue into the tea conversation in our next episode really to go in depth.

[Kevin]
Sounds good.

[Michelle]
But tea is the plant. Camellia sinensis is basically phytochemical powerhouse. It is full of them.

But what the mechanism is that allows the phytonutrients to do this in the case of your friend's early stage cancer diagnosis is a process or a mechanism in the body called antiangiogenesis.

[Kevin]
That just rolls off the tongue.

[Michelle]
Yeah. I learned about this at a nutrition symposium. But what was so interesting to me and what drew my attention immediately, I was interested already as a nutritionist, but tea was a big part of this scientist's presentation because of its highly antiangiogenic effect that caused me to sort of move from sitting up on my seat to sitting forward on my seat.

But basically, in a plant-based diet, this is what the Angiogenesis Foundation researches, is that phytochemicals are these compounds that actually will halt cancer development. They're all found in plants. Right?

So that's what these phytochemicals do. They do many things, but this ability to stop the growth of or halt the progression of cancer cells or even, in an extreme case, destroy cancer cells in a petri dish is all due to these phytochemicals. Some of that is antioxidants, but we now know that as we're starting to discover more of these phytochemicals that there are many other mechanisms going on aside from the ones that are against oxidative stress.

There are many other mechanisms. So by their nature of them being bioactive, it means that when we eat them, they are absorbed through our gut and distributed to our organ system. So it doesn't matter where your issue is.

As long as it's being absorbed into your gut and it becomes bioactive to your organs, its benefits has the potential to help every single organ system in the body.

[Kevin]
That's pretty impressive.

[Michelle]
That's really freaking cool. So there's absolutely hundreds and hundreds of studies that have examined the relationship between fruit and vegetable intake and cancer risk and incidence. And a majority of those studies have concluded such that it's now just accepted.

It's just accepted as a truth that the consumption of a diet that's rich in fruits and vegetables offers the most significant protective effect against cancer more than anything else that you can do. So regular consumption of these diets has been shown to be protective against lung cancer, tumors of esophagus, oral cavity, pancreas, stomach cancers, colorectal, bladder, prostate cancer, malignancies of the cervix, ovary, endometrium, and breast cancer. And those are just the ones that have been studied.

But we also know this same mechanism is angiogenesis is also the mechanism of heart disease. Maybe I need to just explain angiogenesis for a second. Maybe that would help things a little bit.

[Kevin]
Sure, why not?

[Michelle]
What is angiogenesis when I'm talking about this? So it is the body's process by which it develops blood vessels, basically. And this is a normal thing.

We need this ability. We need to be able to grow blood vessels. Blood vessels are the delivery mechanism throughout our body where we deliver oxygen to cells and organs.

It delivers nutrients to cells and organs. It collects the things that it doesn't want and it carries it out through the bloodstreams so it can be filtered by liver and kidneys and excreted from our body in various ways, etc. So those vessels will adapt to the environment where they form in order to support the structures of that organ that they are supporting.

So mainly, as little humans, developing humans, angiogenesis is essential in the womb and in the development of a human body. And outside of that process, adults really only create angiogenesis at specific times like when you have to heal a wound of some sort or if you're a female, that you become pregnant and you have to start developing a fetus, right?

[Kevin]
Right, right, right, right.

[Michelle]
Other than that, we really only rely upon it outside of our mother's womb to heal. So it's just like you get cut and that area gets slightly inflamed on purpose because that's the body rushing a blood supply to heal that wound and that's angiogenesis that's doing that. What ends up happening is angiogenesis gets out of balance in our bodies because we eat the wrong foods, we don't take care of ourselves, we don't sleep enough, we don't exercise enough, we get exposed to toxic levels that reach a toxic load in our body and our body gets out of balance in a number of ways but one of the ways is that angiogenesis has the potential to become uncontrolled.

So angiogenesis out of balance is one of the mechanisms that leads to disease and it's linked to over 70 different diseases. Basically, we are no longer producing blood vessels for normal blood flow. We are now producing blood vessels that contribute to things like heart disease, stroke, cancer, etc.

And when angiogenesis is not controlled, then we can't stop the growth of blood vessels to things that we don't want to feed blood to. And what happens in the case of cancer is that this uncontrolled angiogenesis leads to that tumor that cancer is creating its own blood supply to feed itself. And when it does that, it basically diverts all of the nutrients of growth towards supporting cancer cells instead of our healthy cells and tissues.

So in a healthy body, we have the ability to turn angiogenesis on and off as it's needed to support our normal healing of wounds and supporting our body's natural functions. When angiogenesis is not working correctly, it's working against us.

[Kevin]
So a proper balance of phytochemicals sort of keeps that angiogenesis in balance.

[Michelle]
Right.

[Kevin]
It keeps it to a healthy degree so that we can heal and do all the things that are positive about it, but it stops it from getting out of control and just going crazy and making blood vessels, you name it.

[Michelle]
Right. And if we find ourselves in a condition where we're not feeling well, or we get a diagnosis of something or an early warning sign about something, then we can arm ourselves with this information that we know that how do we feed our body in order to support the proper functions of the body, feeding the phytochemicals to help repair damaged DNA, support immune system to make the healthy cells stronger than the uncontrolled growth cells. And it's basically, like we said, cancer hates fruits and vegetables. Cancer hates phytochemicals.

Cancer does not like antioxidant species and it does not like phytochemicals. And this is what Dr. William Lee, who's the lead researcher involved at the Angiogenesis Foundation, he calls it beating cancer at its own game.

[Kevin]
Okay. Okay.

[Michelle]
So eating in order to starve cancer. So normally in nutrition, we focus on what to remove from somebody's diet, right? But this kind of shines a light on what we need to include more of in our diet.

So it's not just about removing processed food and sugar and fat. That's incredibly important part of the picture. But just simply shedding processed foods, as we often see, often modern ketogenic diets tout this.

They tout removing processed foods, but they don't focus on the inclusion of healthier foods. And then they end up sick in different ways, right?

[Kevin]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Michelle]
So it's not about what you stop eating. It's also about what are you replacing that with.

[Kevin]
What you replace it with, right.

[Michelle]
And if you want to starve cancer, you want to include tens and tens of phytonutrient-rich fruits and vegetables, whole grains and legumes, and you want to add those anti-angiogenic substances into your bloodstream that are going to start starving that cancer and cutting off that blood supply or stopping it from starting in the first place.

[Kevin]
Okay, so that's been a whole lot of theory, which is good to have that background, but I'm wondering if we can switch to a bit of the practical side now in terms of, are all foods created equally? In terms of, you know, you said that, you know, I know we'll talk about tea in another episode, but you said tea has, I think you said 4,000 and coffee has 800. And you know, you mentioned earlier, eat the rainbow.

So is it simply a matter of the more brightly colored food, the better? Because coffee isn't very bright. In fact, tea isn't very bright either.

[Michelle]
But tea is a bright leafy green vegetable.

[Kevin]
Okay. So so basically the brighter the color is, is it is that a simple rule of thumb? The brighter the color, the better.

[Michelle]
Yeah, that's that's definitely a huge part of it. So like the the most anti-angiogenic rich foods that we know of today include like tea, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, cinnamon, cranberries, apples, pineapple, cherries. You want me to read the whole list?

[Kevin]
No, no. People can Google it. People can Google it.

[Michelle]
But this is why like a red onion is going to be potentially more cancer protective than a white onion, because it's got that purple pigment.

[Kevin]
Oh, good. I prefer red onions. Okay.

[Michelle]
Right. So that's a very, very powerful antioxidant known as anthocyanin that causes that reddish purple pigment. It's the same anthocyanin, it's also it's also bluish like in blueberries.

[Kevin]
Okay.

[Michelle]
But then there's tomatoes have lycopene. The most brightly colored are usually the most nutrient dense and they usually have the most powerful phytochemical compounds.

[Kevin]
Okay.

[Michelle]
Our research has always focused up until this point on those powerful antioxidant compounds, the catechins, the lycopene. We hear a lot of even if you're just picking up like a fashion magazine, there'll be some article about lycopene or about catechin or about anthocyanins, etc. But it doesn't mean that the other foods that aren't as brightly colored, if they're natural plant foods, that they don't also have these compounds.

Like a coffee bean obviously has some too, but it doesn't have as many as a brightly colored one.

[Kevin]
Okay, because I do have two follow up questions for you about the brightly colored. The first is, does it have to be the flesh that's brightly colored? Because I'm thinking of, for instance, an eggplant.

An eggplant is bright, bright purple skin, but inside it's kind of whitish beige.

[Michelle]
There's purple veins in it though. Yeah.

[Kevin]
But it's still, by and large, if I were to say what the inside of an eggplant looks like, it's beige. I mean, there are some veins, but first impression it's beige. But does that count the fact that it's purple on the outside?

Like is that considered a brightly colored?

[Michelle]
I would say so.

[Kevin]
Or like an apple. An apple's another thing where it's bright on the outside, but inside it's like pure white.

[Michelle]
Yeah, I think so, Kevin. And I think that the other thing, you may have even noticed this in your lifetime, our parents used to peel potatoes, right? And now don't peel the potato, keep the skin on.

And that's, I think, like what you've mentioned, something might be a certain color on the outside and lesser on the inside. And I don't know what phytochemicals that would be impacting in various different foods, but basically the Coles notes is there's good stuff in the skins of things too. And it's a shame for us to discard that and throw it away because we're throwing away certain beneficial nutrients that it would be better if we just ate them.

[Kevin]
Right. It's funny because I always thought it was for the fiber, but I mean, which the fiber is part of it.

[Michelle]
I think in the case of a potato, it probably is more about fiber. But when it's like peeling an apple for an apple pie versus eating the apple and eating the skin, you're going to get more nutrients when you eat the skin.

[Kevin]
So my second follow-up question then becomes, are phytochemicals still present in significant quantities in a fruit that is normally brightly colored that isn't? And my specific example in mind is, again, we're in Canada. In the middle of winter, you know, you can find strawberries year round, but in the middle of winter, they've been shipped from who knows where, and they were probably unripe when they were picked, but you cut it through and it's completely white in the center with just a thin, thin, thin layer of red, almost like they've been painted.

Does that have the same phytochemical quantity or power or whatever as a nice, ripe strawberry when it's in season, or is it the fact that it's white? Does that demonstrate that it's maybe a little lacking in that?

[Michelle]
I don't know for sure how much the whiteness of the flesh is an indicator, but I do know this about the example that you've posed a question on. Generally speaking, my understanding and everything that I learned in nutrition training, a lot of these grocery store foods, even though they're still going to be beneficial to us in some way, like if you're just using simply grocery store products to support your diet, that's amazing. Glad that you're doing that, but it's never going to be as nutrient dense as something that you grow locally or grow yourself for two reasons.

One is commercially grown produce tends to be mass produced in such a way that the plant is never maturing according to its growth cycle in nature. It's accelerated in some way, either through fertilizers or there might have been some process of hybridization or whatever. The long and the short of it is our foods today are not as nutrient dense as they were 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago.

Part of it is, and if you just think about it, if it normally takes a normal growth cycle of a plant is four months, and we are now engineered a process where we can grow that plant in two months, that loss of two months of growth cycle is going to inhibit its ability to produce the nutrient density that it would have if it had all four months. Does that make sense?

[Kevin]
No, that makes perfect sense. And I know that there's also been comment, I know I have read that also some other things, there's a lot of things that impacted the lack of nutrient density. Things like, what's it called?

Monoculture.

[Michelle]
Yes.

[Kevin]
You grow the same crop in the same terrain of land season after season after season, and that eliminates certain nutrients in the soil because the same crop uses those same nutrients. Whereas in the older days, and certainly in certain parts of the world today, they rotate their crops, which allows the soil to regain some of those nutrients or whatever. I don't know the science of it, but so that then the soil generally is healthier, which means the crops are healthier, which means more nutrients, blah, blah, blah, etc.

So there's a lot.

[Michelle]
You're exactly right about that, Kevin. The monocultures lack biodiversity. It then comes back to this diversity of microbial species that are in concert with the nutrients in that plant and in the soil.

More crop rotation is an aspect of regenerative agriculture, regenerating the soil, regenerating that biodiversity that supports soil health and those bacteria and fungi and things that contribute to the resulting nutrition in the plants that grow there. So that's a really great point. The other thing, though, just about your strawberry example, the grocery store strawberry in winter, another aspect of modern commercial agriculture and massive distribution where it has to travel thousands and thousands of kilometers to get to your grocery store.

It's just simply going to lose nutrients in transit. It's traveled so far that just regular oxidative exposure will reduce its density. And then I would also say also live enzymes.

You're going to get a lot more live enzymes if you pick the greens from your garden and immediately put them on your plate and eat them than if it's spent two weeks traveling in a truck in various packaging, landed in the grocery store, and it might sit in your fridge for another week before you actually open that package and make it into a salad.

[Kevin]
Right. No, that makes sense. That makes perfect sense.

Which actually brings me then to my next question. It's like you're feeding me the questions. I love it.

We didn't even plan this. It's perfect.

[Michelle]
Your questions are great. They're tough ones. Those are good.

[Kevin]
Well, because I'm the noob. So I'm sincerely curious about all this. And I don't know any of this.

My next question is, so we live in Canada, northern. You know, we have snow on the ground six months a year. So, you know, going out to pick a fresh bundle of lettuce in the middle of February ain't happening.

And, you know, especially in my postage stamp size backyard, that's on the north of the house. So it gets no sun. I can't grow anything, let alone people who like live in apartment buildings or whatever.

So my question is for freezing and or cooking. Does that, how does that, like you've mentioned that, you know, the time to transport can degrade the quality of the phytochemicals. But how about cooking and or freezing or canning or, you know, any other way of preserving something that was fresh at one point and is now, you know, we're trying to reserve that.

How does that impact the phytochemicals? And is there a method that might be like fresh, flash frozen is the best or like sort of where's the hierarchy of good versus bad?

[Michelle]
Oh, yeah. OK, you got a whole bunch of questions in there, actually.

[Kevin]
Oh, I think so. Probably.

[Michelle]
Let's deal with the last thing that you mentioned first, and then I'm going to try. Hopefully I can remember and backtrack.

[Kevin]
I'll remind you.

[Michelle]
So your hierarchy would be fresh.

[Kevin]
Right.

[Michelle]
And then frozen and then canned.

[Kevin]
OK.

[Michelle]
Fresh is always best.

[Kevin]
Of course. Of course.

[Michelle]
And like farm to table. And then if you and then I guess within that category, it would be local, like within 100 kilometers versus commercial. So frozen, it's interesting when it comes to grocery store produce.

Ironically, I read one study. I can't even tell you where I read it or when I read it. But the gist of it was arguably some frozen vegetables that you can get in a in the frozen section of the grocery store might even be more nutrient dense than some of the fresh stuff.

[Kevin]
I've heard that, too. I read the same article. It must have.

[Michelle]
I'm sure it became newsworthy, like whoever studied that. And then it was it was a headline picked up by a number of outlets. But basically that process is designed to be flash frozen immediately.

So the foods don't travel a long distance and they don't spend a long a lot of time depleting nutrients or enzymes in transport or anything like that.

[Kevin]
And presumably they've also been picked when they're supposed to be picked. Like they're they're picked when they're ripe compared to, you know, I know like bananas are picked when they're bright green and they're kind of forced to ripen over two weeks on a boat or whatever.

[Michelle]
And sprayed with nitrogen to encourage their color.

[Kevin]
Right. But if you're going to freeze but if you know that I'm not bananas, you don't freeze bananas. But if you know that you're going to freeze, say, the strawberries, then presumably they would be left to ripen naturally in the field and then they're flash frozen, in which case then they're frozen with more phytochemicals and phytonutrients in them than, you know, something that's been that's already weebly because it's the middle of winter and then it's been picked early and that's been sitting on a truck and then it's been sitting in the grocery store and that's been sitting in my fridge and then and then and then. And, you know, to the point where, you know, my little pale strawberry has no flavor and almost no nutritional value to it.

[Michelle]
Yeah. Yeah. So canned would be after that because it's now being in order to have that shelf life, there's preservative or there's lining in the can or something.

But if your choice is having canned lentils and having no lentils at all, go with the convenience. And it seems to me that this is acknowledged by people in the manufacturers of those products don't want that label of their food being less healthy. So I think they are coming up with better ways to can certain foods that they don't have like blisphenol A lining their cans anymore.

There's they've come up with something who knows. But so it would be but fresh and then frozen and then canned and canned is better than none. Right.

So, I mean, I always tell people, I think I've said this before, eat the healthiest diet that you can within your means. Right.

[Kevin]
Can I just add dried to that? Like where would dried like dried fruits are often quite plentiful? Like would they be above or below canned, do you think?

Obviously not fresh and frozen, presumably, but.

[Michelle]
I don't know. I've never seen that. I've never seen that food quality hierarchy mentioned things like flash dried foods, but I would know that it's going to be much better to have dried lentils and beans and soak them and rehydrate them and cook them from that rather than than opening the can of chickpeas.

So the dried chickpeas are going to be a better source. There won't be salt for one thing is I think the biggest objection to that. But I don't know about things like freeze dried foods.

Fruits that are dried can be very, very high in sugar, concentrated sugar, and they're almost candy like, which so don't have too many of them, but some certainly in your trail mix and sprinkled on your cereal or granola or whatever is reasonable. But you wouldn't want to have loads of that.

[Kevin]
And just going back to the canned legumes. I have also noticed, you know, you'd mentioned that canning processes are getting better and all that. It's also I've noticed more and more you can actually get no salt added canned beans and legumes and such now, which, you know, when I go for canned, that's what I go for because I just don't like the salt.

But there's zero salt in them, which is a little bit nicer.

[Michelle]
Yeah, and I do that too, Kevin, because like I always say, I'm the nutritionist that lives in the real world. There was another part to your question, but I can't remember what it was anymore.

[Kevin]
I've already forgotten it. It was about we were talking about the hierarchy. Oh, does cooking.

[Michelle]
Oh, yes.

[Kevin]
Well, you've sort of answered freezing obviously doesn't remove the phytochemicals since you said freezing is like best after fresh.

[Michelle]
Yeah.

[Kevin]
But just cooking, are there are there certain fruits or vegetables that shouldn't be cooked that should be eaten raw versus can cooking actually help some phytochemicals as well? Because I asked that because I have heard one or two and I don't know if this is real or not, but there are some like I've heard broccoli apparently is better for you cooked than raw. But I don't know from a phytochemical standpoint if that's the case or it's just digestibility or what?

[Michelle]
Yeah, I don't like to judge any method as making it better than the other. But what happens with certain foods like broccoli and tomatoes are another one that heating it somewhat, you know how it turns like very brightly colored and vibrant green when it's and the tomatoes to become a little bit brighter that heating breaking actually makes some of the compounds more biologically active.

[Kevin]
Okay.

[Michelle]
Right. So that can be beneficial. But when it comes to just to circle this back to your opening question about your friend with a cancer diagnosis, raw food is always going to trump cooked food when it comes to its ability to build protective mechanisms in our body and staving off disease and fighting disease.

Any diet that is designed for, you know, whether it's Ornish and Esselstyn's heart disease prevention and reversal diets, or whether it's an anti-angiogenesis diet or a rapid recovery by Dr. Goldner for other autoimmune diseases, they all emphasize raw food. So and Gerson, some people may have heard of the Gerson protocol for reversing cancer growth is a raw, primarily raw food emphasis or certain things that are cooked, though, that you can have cooked foods, they emphasize cooking at low temperatures. So this is kind of part of the whole slow food movement was was not just my understanding.

When it came to a restaurant environment, slow food was about taking your time to eat, not rushing and digesting your foods more slowly and also enjoying time with your friend and enjoying taste and smells and enjoying time together. Also enabled slower cooking processes, which are going to heighten nutrient density in foods. So heat destroys enzymes, heat destroys polyphenolic compounds and breaks down lessens our nutrient density.

So cooking things that are very at a lower temperature for a longer period of time is going to allow you to maximize your nutrient density of cooked foods. So slow cookers are a great thing.

[Kevin]
So I should break out my cooker. Yeah.

[Michelle]
Yeah. And and, you know, baking a potato, for example, we would normally wrap our potatoes and bake them for what is it like an hour. But if you were actually doing a baked potato on a for a Gerson method, you would use a lower temperature and bake that potato over three hours.

[Kevin]
OK, well, I can't plan that far ahead. I can barely plan an hour ahead, let alone three hours. Just to go back to living in the real world, it's still better.

The long the short of it is even if you cook at high temperature quickly, it's still better to have fresh fruits and vegetables and lots of them and legumes and everything else like fresh plants rather than overly processed and canned and some of the other things that and, you know, animal products, et cetera. That's like fresh. And then there's, you know, raw versus cooked versus frozen versus all that.

But basically, the more plants, the better is what I'm hearing. And the more brightly colored plants, the better.

[Michelle]
And not relying solely on cooked foods would be the other part of that. Like enjoy your cooked foods and cooking them at a higher temperature if you know, in order to meet your time constraints. But don't make your entire meal cooked.

[Kevin]
Well, I ain't cooking my salad. I got news for you.

[Michelle]
Make sure you're incorporating raw.

[Kevin]
Right.

[Michelle]
For sure.

[Kevin]
Well, Michelle, this has been super, super interesting. And so I think next time we'll probably now that we've got a basis for phytochemicals and we know what they are and generally some of the foods that are powerful in these. I think we're going to move on to tea, which sounds like it's the absolute powerhouse, the mother of all phytochemical delivery systems.

So I'm really looking forward to hearing that.

[Michelle]
The healthiest natural beverage on the planet.

[Kevin]
Excellent. So that's going to be next time. So we can all look forward to that.

More about phytochemicals and the little superheroes inside your body. I love it. I love it.

So it's that time when I have a joke for you.

[Michelle]
I've been waiting for it because I actually have one for you today, too. I hope they're not the same one.

[Kevin]
Oh, amazing. Oh, I don't think so. So mine is kind of thematic because you were talking about eating the rainbow.

So how heavy is a rainbow?

[Michelle]
I don't know. How heavy is a rainbow?

[Kevin]
It's actually pretty light.

[Michelle]
Is this your son's joke again?

[Kevin]
No, no, no. This is just some rubbish I found on the internet.

[Michelle]
That's hilarious. Okay. So I have one for you today.

Are you ready?

[Kevin]
Okay. Yes, I am ready.

[Michelle]
Because we've been talking about phytonutrients and chemistry, right? So two chemists walk into a bar. There was no reaction.

[Kevin]
I'm surprised I even get that. Yeah, no, that's good. That's good.

I like that one. I have to remember that one.

[Michelle]
There was no chemistry. Get it?

[Kevin]
Exactly. That works so well. Love it.

You got me on that one. Good job. Good job.

I'm impressed.

[Michelle]
Thank you. I was pretty proud of myself for finding that one today.

[Kevin]
You're learning well, Grasshopper. You too can one day master the dad jokes.

[Michelle]
Embrace the dad jokes audience.

[Kevin]
If this is something that you actually strive to, which I hope that you don't. Okay. Well, this has been another amazing episode of Nutrition for Noobs.

I know I learned a ton today. Honestly, I went from zero to 100 in, you know, 40 minutes or so.

[Michelle]
Awesome.

[Kevin]
So thank you so much. And I will say with gusto this time, eat your greens and all the other colors too.

[Michelle]
And be real, everyone.

[Kevin]
This has been Nutrition for Noobs. We hope you're a bit more enlightened about how your fantastic and complicated body works with the food you put into it. If you have a question or a topic you'd like Michelle to discuss, drop us a line at n4noobs@gmail.com.

That's the letter N, the number 4, N-O-O-B-S at gmail.com. If you haven't already, you can subscribe to the podcast on whatever your favorite platform might be. Also, please consider leaving a review or telling your friends.

That's the best way to spread the word. We'll see you next time with another interesting topic. The views and opinions expressed on Nutrition for Noobs are those of the hosts.

It is not intended to be a substitute for medical, nutritional, or health advice. Listeners should seek a personal consultation with a qualified practitioner if they have any concerns or before commencing any actions mentioned in the podcast.