[Kevin]
Welcome back to Nutrition for Noobs. I'm Kevin.

[Michelle]
I'm Michelle.

[Kevin]
And this is the podcast where you learn all about nutrition. And this week we're gonna be doing something a little bit different. I think I say that almost every week, so you know.

We're always a little bit different. We're always a little bit different, exactly. No, this week we are answering a few listener questions.

So first off, thank you so, so, so much for sending in your questions. This is where I think it gets really interesting.

[Michelle]
I love listener questions. I'm like, that's awesome. Thank you, built listeners, for writing in.

[Kevin]
Exactly. This is amazing. And please, if this spurs any inspiration, you can email us at n, the number four, n-o-o-b-s at gmail.com.

That's n4noobs at gmail.com.

[Michelle]
You know, it makes it more fun for me, too. Like, I just get turned on by looking things up and answering them.

[Kevin]
And you're not just talking about my questions, because my questions can get really boring.

[Michelle]
I know, I know. No, no, I love them. There's no such, there's no such thing as a boring or a dumb question.

[Kevin]
Except for mine. No, I, I, I personally like handing over the reins to our listeners. So this is amazing.

[Michelle]
I like to know what they're thinking, how they're taking this in and what they're wondering about, right? Because, Kevin, I'm well aware that I'm not normal.

[Kevin]
And I am most definitely not normal. So it's good to get some outside opinion. We're not just in a little vacuum chamber here.

[Michelle]
Exactly.

[Kevin]
So our first question will come with a little bit of an apology from me.

[Michelle]
Okay.

[Kevin]
So I am an apology to the listener, not to you, Michelle. I need to apologize to so many things for you. But to our listener, to Eva, I am a very bad podcast producer, administrator, whatever.

So Eva actually left this message on the Google podcast feedback section about three months ago. I'm so sorry. From our FAT episode.

[Michelle]
And cool.

[Kevin]
I just completely forgot. I neglected to check that section. And then I came across Eva's question a few days ago, and I wanted to get it done.

So first off, Eva, thank you for listening. And I do truly, truly apologize for the long delay on this.

[Michelle]
Oh, Eva, forgive us. We are newbies at it's all my fault.

[Kevin]
It has Michelle is blameless in this. It's entirely my fault. So, Michelle, Eva would like to know, from our discussion on FAT, she was curious about what your thoughts are on consuming ghee.

And just a note for our listeners, in case you're not aware. And I might get this wrong. So Michelle, correct me.

But ghee is an mainly used in Indian cuisine. It's a form of clarified butter. And it's simply delicious.

You take butter, and you essentially cook it down to separate out the milk solids. And then you're left with this beautiful, golden, clear cooking fat. And it's it's simply delicious.

It adds a really delicious flavor to a lot of, you know, Indian curries or traditional Indian meals, I'm sure else elsewhere in the Indian subcontinent.

[Michelle]
Oh, yeah, I know. Yeah, I actually happen to be biologically 50% South Indian. So long story unrelated to the podcast, but I was given up for adoption as a baby.

So I wasn't raised in Indian culture. But as an adult, I got to meet all of my family and, like since I was about 26. So actually, at this point, more years than I've known them, than I didn't know them.

My father actually had Indo-Pakistani restaurants in Toronto. So a lot of Indian cuisine became part of my diet. And I was made well aware of how sacred ghee is.

Even in like Ayurvedic nutrition circles, they still really hail the inclusion of ghee and all of these qualities, supposedly, that it can bring to help support good health. So I understand the ancient wisdom sort of feelings behind that. But there are a couple of inescapable facts that we now know, from more modern science, nutrition science, physiology, how different things interact with our bodies.

We also kind of have to pay attention to what happens to our health on a global population basis. So, I mean, fat would be the first obvious answer as to why clarified butter, which is really concentrated, saturated fat, it's almost 50% saturated fat, which is the most unhealthy fat. And it's the reason why we consistently encourage on this podcast, depending upon where your preferences are willing to go, either eliminating animal based protein and dairy from your diet, or at least significantly reducing it to less than 10% of your total diet.

Because we know that a diet, like with such high amounts of saturated fat, will raise your LDL cholesterol, which will in turn, increase your risk of stroke, heart attack, Alzheimer's disease, etc. And other things. The thing that I became aware of is that, you know, fat isn't even the biggest problem with ghee.

Unfortunately, it's because of this process of clarifying the butter that the dietary cholesterol that you're exposed to from the ghee is in the form of oxidized cholesterol. So oxidized cholesterol is much worse. Like you will get oxidized cholesterol from microwaving chicken or beef like that produces like twice the amount of oxidized cholesterol as frying.

[Kevin]
Really?

[Michelle]
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Kevin]
Just from the just from the method of cooking, however, the microwave actually physically cooks it. I had no idea. Not that I cooked a lot of chicken in my microwave, but good to know.

[Michelle]
And, you know, I think early on in nutrition school, you know, we really sort of sort of concentrate on a lot of the problems with microwaving your food. Like it wasn't I mean, I think everybody was always a little skeptical of the microwaves themselves. But it also is kind of an unnatural way of rapidly cooking food.

And it really increases the oxidation level of these fats and cholesterols, which makes them far, far worse.

[Kevin]
Now, can I ask, if you know the answer, is that primarily on the initial cooking? And so if you reheat, it's it's not as bad?

[Michelle]
I would I would think that reheating would be less of a risk because you already would have denatured the food through the first cook.

[Kevin]
You've already cooked it. And generally, when reheating, you wouldn't be cooking it to an extreme heat again. You'd be heating it.

[Michelle]
You know, I don't know. I guess I guess I don't know the answer to that. I don't know the answer to that.

But that's how dare you. That would be what my instinct would tell me, though. Like it's like you're you're you're going to have a lot.

It just makes sense to me that if you start with a raw piece of meat and or an undercooked, a significantly undercooked piece of meat and you're going to those fats and cholesterols are going to go through a greater amount of oxidated cooking than if the meat's already been cooked. So, OK, yeah, yeah. So anyway, I don't know.

[Kevin]
Sorry, total sideline. Didn't want to distract you. I just never, ever heard that before about microwaving meats.

[Michelle]
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so so the fat from ghee, like like any animal food, because it is derived, it's animal fat, it has cholesterol, but it's not oxidized until it's cooked.

[Kevin]
Right.

[Michelle]
So so that's when we clarify butter, that's kind of what happens. So they even say, you know, just because I can I can see that you're concerned now about microwaving your meat.

[Kevin]
That's all I can think about now. Ghee, whatever. Who cares about ghee?

I'm concerned about microwaving.

[Michelle]
Forget about the listener question. It's all about Kevin.

[Kevin]
Exactly. Exactly. Sorry, Eva.

It's all about me after all, you know. No, back to ghee.

[Michelle]
Yeah. So back to ghee. Just if you know, Kevin, if you must, you know, just just slow cook your meat.

But anyway.

[Kevin]
Yes, I do. Generally, I for the record, I don't microwave my meat. I don't think ever.

Yeah, I don't think I've ever microwaved a piece of meat before because that's just a crime against humanity.

[Michelle]
That's just disgusting. Wouldn't it be rubbery?

[Kevin]
It wouldn't. Yeah, it it just wouldn't be good. I just can't imagine because you want the grill or the frying melts the flavors.

Anyways, it yeah, that's just hideous.

[Michelle]
Anyway, bottom line, ghee is high in saturated fat, you know, and any any gram of fat like that's like nine calories per gram. So we've got a significant increase in the in the fat that will, you know, impact our weight in terms of having that level of dietary intake. And the this oxidized cholesterol is a problem.

The most recent problem being that there's a significant this is by NutritionFacts.org, my beloved Dr. Michael Greger, a significant body of evidence indicates that oxidized cholesterol in the form of oxysterols is one of the main triggers of Alzheimer's disease. So if we go back to our our top causes of death globally and and in Canada and in the, you know, the richest nations of the world, Canada and the U.S. as being some of the biggest offenders of dietary related chronic disease. Globally, Alzheimer's and other dementias is number two.

Number two.

[Kevin]
Right. I remember that.

[Michelle]
Globally. It's further down the list for for Canada, but it's still in our top five.

[Kevin]
Right.

[Michelle]
Are we we have the dubious honor of being number one in cancer.

[Kevin]
Cancer. I remember that too.

[Michelle]
Number two in heart disease and then Alzheimer's is is up there.

[Kevin]
Right.

[Michelle]
So, you know, we have an aging population. We have a lot of comorbidities in our population. And, you know, you can easily substitute other things into your Indian foods.

And I promise you that they are incredibly, incredibly delicious. In fact, I make a lentil doll that has no oil, no fat, no ghee, no butter. And it's incredibly delicious.

There's like if anything, without that layer of fat, the flavor of the spice is so much richer and the texture isn't isn't there's no oiliness to it. Do you know what I mean?

[Kevin]
I do. I do. Absolutely.

[Michelle]
It's it's a it's a clean, really rich tasting, delicious dish. Your palate is going to take a little while to get used to making some of those favorite Indian dishes without the ghee. But we know that that's also going to trigger a lot of great things in our microbiome.

And when we trigger those changes in our microbiome and, you know, other species start to get replaced by healthier, more productive species, then their taste buds are going to change. And that you might find that, you know, give it, you know, a month or so that you might find you actually prefer it.

[Kevin]
Right.

[Michelle]
So I just challenge Eva to consider that, you know, that it might be worth just trying some things and just experimenting and seeing if she can find some ways to enjoy making those delicious Indian foods and skipping the ghee, skipping the fat and improve her potential outcomes of not developing Alzheimer's disease or cardiovascular diseases or other cancers that are linked to this high saturated fat and oxidized cholesterol intake.

[Kevin]
Exactly.

[Michelle]
Well, Eva, I hope we answered your question. Hopefully you found that helpful. And and my prayer for you is that you will, you know, take at least some nugget of wisdom here and and the evidence and do something to love your body a little bit more and eat and prepare food that will love you back.

[Kevin]
And find some delicious, amazing alternative to using ghee.

[Michelle]
Yeah, which there are millions of, you know, I think there is, by the way, I think there are vegan ghee products out there. I don't know very much about them, but I've seen them on the shelf.

[Kevin]
I'm sure you know what? I'll bet you if you Googled, you know, what can I use to replace ghee? You'll get a million different ideas.

[Michelle]
Yeah. And it doesn't mean it's going to be healthier. It just means it's going to be a little bit less harmful.

[Kevin]
Right. But I mean, again, you have to pick and choose what you have to. You have to filter through the Google responses.

I'm not saying Google's going to give you nutritional advice, but it will give you it might spark an idea.

[Michelle]
I can't emphasize enough, though, how delicious I make. Dull. I make chana masala.

I make so many things and I use zero fat, zero.

[Kevin]
So if I can ask, like, what replaces that fat? Is it vegetable stock? Is it?

[Michelle]
Yeah, I use the spices and a little bit of water or a little bit of vegetable broth in in the pan. And and, you know, onions sweat when you when you cook the onion, you don't actually need any liquid. Chef Chad Sarno taught us that in a cooking class at Nutrition Conference.

All you really need to do is you really need to use really good spice. Right. Really, really good combos of spices and fresher spices are better and fresh herbs.

And yeah. And then, you know, your your legumes, you know, make it make it a hearty meal. And yeah, I just don't use any fat.

And it's just really excellent, clean tasting, beautiful, spicy food.

[Kevin]
Totally. And I can absolutely relate to that, because since our fat episode, I have found that I have reduced the amount of fat that I cook with by honestly about 95 percent. Wow.

There are a ton of recipes that I use now that I don't use any fat whatsoever. And when I use it, I use it very, very sparingly.

[Michelle]
Wow. And so what fat are you using?

[Kevin]
Generally, I'm using only plant based. I do like avocado oil.

[Michelle]
Same.

[Kevin]
And a little bit of olive oil when I want that olive flavor. But I found I actually have found little spray bottles of avocado that. Yeah, that's just pure avocado.

There's no preservatives or nothing to make it spray.

[Michelle]
Yeah, we use that, too.

[Kevin]
And it just puts it really makes me aware of how much I'm spraying because it's a little teeny tiny bit each spray. And so you can really micro dose almost on oil when I want to use it. And that's all I need.

And I've noticed like no difference in the taste or flavor of the food. Admittedly, I have never been a big fan of fat. My mother always yelled at me because whenever she cooked steak when I was a kid, I'd leave half the steak on the plate and I'd say, oh, it's all fat.

And she'd say, no, no, no. And then she'd go cutting it up and eating it herself. So I always hated fat.

[Michelle]
Oh, you mean like the gristle?

[Kevin]
Yes. Oh, she loved that.

[Michelle]
Ew.

[Kevin]
Oh, it was it was so gross. I always, always hated that. So I'd always eat like a third of my steak and leave most of it on the plate because it was all just gristle.

And I didn't even like the meat close to the gristle.

Because it was just gross. I didn't want to touch any gristle. So I've never used a lot of fat, but ever since that episode, it's gone down even more to almost nothing now.

[Michelle]
Wow, that's amazing. 95%? That's your estimate of what you've cut back?

[Kevin]
I would say, yeah, 95%. There's literally a handful of places where I still use oil. Honestly, mostly it's on when I make my plant-based vegan chili that I make now.

I do like to make just a little bit of garlic bread on the side, and just for toasting the garlic bread, just to put it under the grill, I just do just one or two spritzes of the olive oil in a spritz can, just to give that little brownness and that olive-y flavor. And that's just about the only place I use oil now, honestly.

[Michelle]
That's amazing. So you don't realize necessarily from the outside how much you have improved your health on the inside, where you can't see it?

[Kevin]
Not at all, no.

[Michelle]
So let me tell you, can I tell you a little story? Can I share a little story with the listeners?

[Kevin]
Please do.

[Michelle]
So some years ago, I had already been 100% whole food plant-based vegan for a number of years, but I wasn't a no-oil vegan yet. So I guess I wasn't 100%. I was almost 100% whole food plant-based, because as I've said before, oil's not a food, so it's not whole food.

[Kevin]
Exactly.

[Michelle]
I went to China that year on a tea tour, and myself and my friend Deborah, who's a scientist, we were working on a tea study together, and we hiked up a mountain in the Fuding area. I think it's called Taimou Mountain in the White Tea region. So physically, I could do a lot of things, but I looked back at those photos, and I was still quite pudgy.

I was in good shape, and I wasn't obese or anything, but I was very pudgy.

[Kevin]
You have never been pudgy, but we'll move on from that.

[Michelle]
I had puffy arms. You can see it in the photos, right? And then some months later, I started developing these really intense, sharp, shooting pains through my groin and down my leg.

And I went to the doctor, and I'm a massage therapist, and a massage therapist suggested that I get checked out for deep vein thrombosis, DVT. And I went to the doctor, got tested for that, couldn't figure anything wrong. And when they look at me, I'm otherwise healthy.

I'm active. I exercise. I meditate.

I have a good diet. Nobody asked me about my fat intake. So I'm racking my brain, and at this point, the shooting pains in my legs are getting so disruptive that I'm not able to sleep at night.

So it's awful being a nutritionist, an evidence-based nutritionist, when something happens to you because you constantly are trying to figure out what's wrong with yourself. And you're like, my goodness, there can't be anything wrong with my diet. My diet is exemplary.

And then, so I went back to the research, and I started to look at, I thought, okay, this is obviously a vascular type of pain. So what am I vascularly missing? And I went back to the research of Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, and he's got his book, How to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. And he's one of the preemptive people who have published in this space and demonstrated disease reversal in so many patients. And the only thing I wasn't doing was I wasn't doing the no oil, because we were taught that healthy fats are important in the diet. They're important for the brain, blah, blah, blah.

Nutrition school and other training and follow-up training since then had supported that. But I'd seen Dr. Esselstyn lecture a couple of times, and I had read several books and studies, and I was aware of this heart disease research, but I didn't consider myself a high-risk for heart disease patient. So I ignored the fat piece because I like putting coconut oil on my popcorn and olive oil and in dippers and on salads and whatnot.

And that's really all I was doing, Kevin. I was cooking with grapeseed oil, avocado oil, things that have a high smoke point and did what I thought was prudent. But when I think about it, I was having popcorn.

Popcorn is kind of an Achilles heel of mine. And I was making popcorn like two or three times a week and just slathering it with coconut oil and nutritional yeast and sea salt. And it was very delicious and yummy.

And in my nutrition training back in the day before we knew what we knew about coconut oil and saturated fat and that studies supporting coconut oil as being healthy was actually bogus paid-for research, we didn't know that, right? In that context at the time, I thought coconut oil cures just about everything. So anyway, I thought to myself, I really can't...

When it's robbing you of your sleep, you tend to be a little bit more willing to try things, right? Because otherwise I had all this sleep hygiene and nothing was making a difference because I would have this debilitating, shooting pain going down my leg. So I thought, okay, well, I'll try it.

So I went 100%, no fat, no oil. And after two weeks, the pain was cut in half. After four weeks, it was almost completely gone.

And after six weeks, it was gone completely. And so after the two-week mark, I was like, what is happening right now? And I was working at the hospital still at the time.

So I had the opportunity being around all of these healthcare professionals who are doctors and who are nurses and saying, I had this problem. And the research of Dr. Esselstyn says that vascular damage can occur with any amount of oil or fat intake, because it damages endothelium. And I was like, do you really think with my pain in my leg, do you really think it could have been the oil?

These are the oils that I'm cooking with. And they were like, yeah, nah, it can't be the oil. Those are healthy oils.

You need healthy fats in your diet. Then I went to my holistic nutrition colleagues, because I was still teaching for the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition at the time. And I spoke to a couple of my colleagues.

Do you really think it could be the, you really think it could be the oil? That goes against everything that we were taught about good fats versus bad fats.

[Kevin]
Healthy fats, yeah.

[Michelle]
And they were like, no, it couldn't be the oil. But yet, I was having this result in my body that was speaking very loudly. So what I did was, you know, I'm very extreme, Kevin.

No. I actually, there was a nutrition conference happening, like coming up in Anaheim, California. Dr. Kawa Esselstyn was going to be a speaker there. I booked a flight, I booked a ticket to the conference so that I could go and stand in line and ask him.

[Kevin]
Okay, wow. That is extreme. Go right to the source.

Go for it.

[Michelle]
This is a medical nutrition conference. So I'm standing in line behind like surgeons and doctors and researchers.

[Kevin]
You're feeling good. You're in great company.

[Michelle]
Well, it was open to people in, you know, that basically in health industry, like it's not like the public was there, but nutritionists were there. And I was a nutritionist. And there were food writers and chefs like other people.

So it wasn't all healthcare professionals, but the majority of the people were healthcare professionals. So I stand in line. And of course, you only have like a minute.

And it's not like a book signing where everybody's standing there having their books, although I desperately wanted to just say my book. But I thought this is a nutrition conference. So I've got to be, you know, I felt like this was kind of a different decorum.

[Kevin]
You can't go all fangirl on him.

[Michelle]
I was starstruck. I swear to God, these nutrition conferences are like my Hollywood, seriously. So I'm standing there starstruck.

And he's super tall, right? Like Kabul Esselstyn is very tall. He's an older man now, like in his 80s.

And I said to, you know, I really quick talking really fast, you know, I had this pain, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I tried everything and I'm a nutritionist. And, you know, we learned about fat in school, I said, but, you know, the no oil and no fat was the only thing I hadn't tried.

So I did it. And at that point, it was like the six week mark. I said, now it's completely gone.

I said, but, you know, that's not what I learned in school. But, you know, I read your research and I said, is it really in my case, which is something like that, I don't have heart disease, you know, anything that I know of, could it really have been the oil, Dr. Esselstyn. And he's so tall, he put his hands on my shoulders.

And he said, my dear, a single drop of oil damages endothelial cells, which will prevent the flow of nitric oxide, which is needed for healthy blood flow and the transport of nutrients. And without that flow, plaques will accumulate until we actually have restriction of the arteries and it will lead to pain and atherosclerosis and eventually heart attack or stroke. He said, yes, it was the oil.

He said, just read my research. I said, I did, I read your book, that's why I'm here. But he was like, it absolutely was like, he didn't skip a beat.

[Kevin]
Right, right. He knows, he knows, he's seen that probably.

[Michelle]
So I came back from that evangelizing anybody that will listen, stop using the fat. Seriously, your food will taste amazing. It will taste amazing.

You just need to let your palate adjust to experiencing what the food flavor is like without it, what the spice flavor is like without it.

[Kevin]
Yeah, it's funny. I found just you talking about the coconut oil. That was probably the hardest for me to cut out because I didn't cook with it, but I baked with it a lot.

That was my go-to. I would replace if some place, if some recipe like for cake or muffins or whatever called for lard or butter or anything like that, I would replace with coconut oil.

[Michelle]
Right.

[Kevin]
Because A, I thought the coconut oil was so-called healthy and B, I just love the flavor that it imbued into baked goods. It's absolutely delicious.

[Michelle]
It's really yummy.

[Kevin]
But now I've discovered the joy of applesauce.

[Michelle]
Yes, yes.

[Kevin]
I use applesauce in just about every place that I formerly would have used oil or shortening or lard or butter or anything like that. And I don't think I've ever been disappointed. I've also used occasionally black beans, mainly for a chocolate-based dessert.

[Michelle]
Oh, black bean brownies are so good.

[Kevin]
But honestly, applesauce in almost any baked good doesn't add too much flavor, but it gives it that moisture that oil would normally give.

[Michelle]
And a little hint of sweetness too, right?

[Kevin]
Just a little bit. And I've also used applesauce to replace eggs as well, which I didn't know you could do.

[Michelle]
See, we're a perfect couple because I don't really bake. That's not really my thing. I mean, I can, but I love making meals.

I love experimenting with different things like vegetable-based dishes and things like that. I'm always doing something weird.

[Kevin]
I do love experimenting. I do like this challenge to change my diet because I do like experimenting with different recipes and they don't always work, but that's also, it's fun to, I think we've talked about this before, but it's fun to pick apart the recipe and even if it doesn't work, say, okay, what didn't work and what would I do differently next time? And I actually keep notes.

I'm not much of a nerd.

[Michelle]
Yeah. You have to be willing to make some bad, mad, bad meals until you figure some things out, but that's part of the fun of it, right? Like, yeah.

[Kevin]
It is. It is. And you can always order pizza on those nights if something's particularly bad.

Okay. Well, Eva, I hope this answered your question in a very, very long, long, long, long, long, long roundabout way. Basically ditch the ghee.

[Michelle]
I think we've given homage to Eva like three times and then we keep carrying on.

[Kevin]
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's like, she's like, okay, whatever.

It was a very simple question. Move on people. Okay.

So let's move on.

[Michelle]
Okay.

[Kevin]
So Michelle, are you ready for the joke of the podcast?

[Michelle]
Okay. I'm ready. Bring it.

[Kevin]
Did you hear they arrested the devil?

[Michelle]
No.

[Kevin]
Yeah. They got him on possession. Oh my God.

[Michelle]
I actually like that one.

[Kevin]
That's a good one. I like that.

[Michelle]
That's a tummy tickle.

[Kevin]
It is. Well, again, thank you, Michelle, for answering this question. And thank you, Eva, for your question.

[Michelle]
Thank you. I look forward to more listener questions.

[Kevin]
Absolutely. So keep them coming in. That's the email.

Once again, is n, the number four, n-o-o-b-s at gmail.com. That's n4noobs at gmail.com. And until then, eat your greens without fat.

[Michelle]
And be real folks.

[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 four, 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.