[Kevin] (0:03 - 0:04)
Hey, Michelle, how are you doing?

[Michelle] (0:05 - 0:07)
I'm great, Kevin. How are you today?

[Kevin] (0:08 - 0:28)
I'm good. You know, I'm struggling a little bit because it is allergy season. I have hay fever like really badly and around this time of year, springtime.

And I hope I don't sneeze too much on the podcast. I'm trying to like keep it under control, but the allergies are really hitting me.

[Michelle] (0:29 - 0:31)
Is it like runny nose, watery eyes?

[Kevin] (0:31 - 0:40)
Yeah, I mean, I've got them under control, but it's funny. I find I'm just I'm learning so much more about allergies. Maybe there's a future episode.

I don't know.

[Michelle] (0:40 - 0:43)
Yeah, somebody somebody sounds like somebody needs some more biodiversity in their microbiome.

[Kevin] (0:43 - 0:45)
No, I'm pretty biodiverse.

[Michelle] (0:46 - 0:47)
That's what this indicates.

[Kevin] (0:48 - 0:55)
I learned that alcohol has a lot of histamines in it. And of course, histamines are what cause allergies.

[Michelle] (0:56 - 0:58)
Leaky gut is what causes allergies.

[Kevin] (0:58 - 1:02)
Don't you talk about my leaky gut. I don't want to talk about leaky guts. No, no, no, no.

[Michelle] (1:02 - 1:04)
There is an episode in there. File this one.

[Kevin] (1:04 - 1:11)
I will have you know my gut is not leaking. Oh, my goodness. I'm not ready for depends quite yet.

And so I've been.

[Michelle] (1:12 - 1:13)
I said your gut, not your bowel.

[Kevin] (1:14 - 1:17)
And so you say that's what I think of when you say leaky gut.

[Michelle] (1:18 - 1:22)
Well, actually, you're true. It is. I guess your gut is your large intestine, but I didn't mean anyway.

[Kevin] (1:22 - 2:14)
You're distracting me. I'm trying to tell a story. Michelle, I'm trying to tell a story for crying out loud.

Take two. So I've been drinking less alcohol, which of course, you know, is challenging for me. No, I'm not a total lush, but just a little bit.

And then a few days ago, I just wanted to try just to see like, OK, is allergy season over? And so I had I just cracked open a cider because I love an apple cider, a hard cider. And within, I'd say, 10 minutes, my throat started itching.

My eyes started watering like I was amazed just how quickly just like how fast the reaction was. My body was just like, whoa, why are you giving me all these histamines now? And this was after I'd.

[Michelle] (2:14 - 2:20)
Wow. And you wouldn't have that same response if you were to drink that cider like in the winter?

[Kevin] (2:21 - 2:22)
No, not at all. No, if I don't.

[Michelle] (2:22 - 2:26)
So you're not allergic to something or having a sensitivity to something in the cider?

[Kevin] (2:26 - 2:53)
Not at all. Same as if I have a glass of wine. During allergy season, I just my allergies just explode.

But no, throughout the rest of the year, I'm 100 percent fine. There's nothing. I'm not allergic to beer or wine or anything.

But during allergy season, when hay fever is going strong, I can't drink because it just it hits me. And I suffer and I don't sleep and, you know, my nose is running and it's just so.

[Michelle] (2:54 - 2:55)
Let me dive into that.

[Kevin] (2:56 - 2:59)
Yeah, dive into that, would you? And solve my problem.

[Michelle] (2:59 - 3:02)
But let me remind you, Kevin, there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.

[Kevin] (3:02 - 3:04)
Oh, I know. I know. Exactly.

I know.

[Michelle] (3:06 - 3:07)
Episode whatever that was.

[Kevin] (3:07 - 3:10)
I'm allowed to have one serving a week, but not recently.

[Michelle] (3:11 - 3:13)
Two. You're actually allowed two. But yeah.

[Kevin] (3:13 - 3:15)
But not these days. No.

[Michelle] (3:15 - 3:20)
Did you see the picture I sent you of me sitting on the patio having a non-alcoholic beer?

[Kevin] (3:20 - 3:20)
Exactly.

[Michelle] (3:21 - 3:21)
Exactly.

[Kevin] (3:21 - 3:41)
And I actually it's funny, though, I actually tried. I went out to dinner a few nights ago and I tried a non-alcoholic spritzer that had non-alcoholic Aperol in it. And that actually triggered my allergies.

So I don't know. Now, I know that.

[Michelle] (3:41 - 3:44)
I think we need to rebuild your gut, my friend.

[Kevin] (3:44 - 4:03)
I think you just leave my gut alone. I think that there's something in the processing, like how they make the non-alcoholic beverage. They make it as they normally do and then they take out the alcohol.

So I think that somehow leaves the histamines in it. It's interesting to sort of see what's hit and miss for me.

[Michelle] (4:03 - 4:11)
Yeah. Yeah. I'd have to dive into that.

I don't know. But that's a very interesting, you know, very interesting symptomatology.

[Kevin] (4:12 - 4:26)
There's your challenge. Dive into my gut and see what's happening with my leaky gut. Anyways, enough about my leaky gut.

I'm never going to let you let that down. You know, we have a question.

[Michelle] (4:27 - 4:28)
Okay.

[Kevin] (4:28 - 4:33)
From our last episode, all about carbs. Glenn wrote in to us.

[Michelle] (4:34 - 4:34)
Okay.

[Kevin] (4:34 - 5:16)
Hey, Glenn. Glenn, thank you for responding. And Glenn was asking that he understands the difference between like, you know, you don't have to worry about simple and complex and you should focus on unrefined carbs.

But he asks, among unrefined carbs, are there better or worse carbs out there? And like, should we be looking at the nutritional comparisons of carbs? Is there like a pecking order of carbs?

White rice versus quinoa, white rice versus brown rice, or does it matter? So, Michelle, that goes over to you.

[Michelle] (5:17 - 6:17)
Yeah. So this kind of goes back to what we said on that episode. We don't want to make a decision based on a nutrition profile necessarily.

We want to look at the quality of the grain and whether it was a unrefined grain or a refined grain. So let me give you a couple of examples. He says white rice versus brown rice is one of the questions, or white rice versus quinoa versus brown rice or something.

So brown rice is a better choice than a white rice. It's less refined. White rice is a refined rice.

That would be one that you would want to avoid if you wanted to make better choices. So instead of a white rice, you might want to choose like an intact grain that is maybe a long grain rice or a whole grain rice or a brown rice, wild rice.

[Kevin] (6:18 - 6:19)
I love wild rice.

[Michelle] (6:19 - 8:04)
There's lots of other options. They tend to be a bit chewier. When we go and have rice in a restaurant or like little rice bowls that come with our Chinese food or our Japanese food, we tend to really only get the choices of white rice or sticky rice or whatever.

Those are very, very refined forms of rice typically. And they are very simple in their molecular structure. So they're very quick burning.

We're not saying don't go out and enjoy those meals because they don't have another option if you'd like to enjoy that sometimes. But when you're cooking at home or try to do more of your own cooking at home and choose those better grains. But in terms of whether it should be brown rice or millet or quinoa or barley, the best nutritional approach would be to choose all of them and rotate them and get the variety in your diet because then you're getting a variety of plant type.

You're getting a variety of types of fuel for those microbes in your gut because it's the fiber that is so important from those intact whole grains to feed our microbiome. And that undigestible fiber, not only for the fuel for our gut, but also to make the bulk in our stools so that we can have healthy elimination and all of those things. So try to, again, stop judging a type of food against another type of food and look at the quality of the form of the food that you're having.

So choose a rice, but choose an unrefined version of rice instead of a refined version of rice.

[Kevin] (8:04 - 8:05)
Does that make sense?

[Michelle] (8:06 - 8:06)
Absolutely.

[Kevin] (8:06 - 8:24)
And I guess it makes sense to have a variety because every whole grain like millet versus quinoa versus, you know, wild rice or something or any of those are going to have a slightly different nutritional profile.

[Michelle] (8:25 - 8:30)
Like manganese and magnesium and iron and all that stuff.

[Kevin] (8:30 - 8:43)
In which case, if you rotate them, you'll have a little bit of a little bit of everything rather than just focusing. If you only eat quinoa, for instance, you might be missing some trace minerals that millet has, for example.

[Michelle] (8:44 - 9:09)
Yeah, I think we tend to have more popular grains based on what we see more in menus or, you know, in certain magazine articles for recipes. And everybody at this point, I remember in the 80s, nobody knew what quinoa was. But now pretty much everybody knows what quinoa is.

There used to only be rice growing up.

[Kevin] (9:10 - 9:12)
Rice or potatoes, that's it.

[Michelle] (9:12 - 9:13)
That's really what grain was, right?

[Kevin] (9:13 - 9:14)
Yeah.

[Michelle] (9:14 - 10:15)
But now we have rice. People know quinoa. Still a little bit lesser known to cook with are things like barley and millet.

Bulgur. I can't even think of them all. But there's a wealth of different types of grains out there.

Maybe I should do an episode on that, on different types of grains. But like you said, we shouldn't consume ourselves as making that choice based on how much manganese is in my grain. You can get an app like Chronometer on your phone and you can look those things up if you want to.

It can be interesting. It can be a fun little rabbit hole to go down. But you should be looking at your plate and looking at the proportions and the variety and the nutrient density of foods on your plate.

And the nutrients are all going to take care of themselves. Right. And all of the micronutrients are going to take care of themselves as long as you're not eating monomials.

You're not eating the same thing every single day, every day, and you're not getting any variety. Right?

[Kevin] (10:16 - 10:19)
That's just boring. That's really the key. Right.

[Michelle] (10:19 - 10:34)
You know what? And I say that. But when people are learning to do better and often they struggle, the first thing they struggle with is, well, now I don't know what to make.

Because all of these refined foods are the things that I always used to eat.

[Kevin] (10:34 - 10:35)
Right. Right.

[Michelle] (10:35 - 11:03)
And I'll say, well, if you want to start for the first week, like you discover a one-pot meal that you can make with some quinoa and certain vegetables and spices and things, and that's the one thing that you learn how to do that you finally like, and you want to monomial that for a week or two until you figure something else out, there's nothing wrong with that. That's kind of like a starting gate strategy. But you don't want to stay there with monomialing.

[Kevin] (11:04 - 11:04)
Right.

[Michelle] (11:05 - 11:18)
You want to get adventurous and curious and try things and get adventurous. And the easiest thing people can do, the grain question aside, is instead of worrying about cooking, worry about chopping.

[Kevin] (11:19 - 11:21)
Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

[Michelle] (11:21 - 11:22)
You know what I mean?

[Kevin] (11:22 - 11:22)
Yeah.

[Michelle] (11:22 - 11:26)
It's easier to get a bunch of vegetables and chop and make a giant salad.

[Kevin] (11:27 - 11:27)
Right.

[Michelle] (11:27 - 11:31)
And then you can cook a thing of any kind of grain and have that at the bottom of your bowl or whatever.

[Kevin] (11:32 - 11:32)
Exactly.

[Michelle] (11:33 - 11:35)
But worry more about chopping than cooking.

[Kevin] (11:35 - 11:45)
The other thing that I found is sometimes you can get inspired by going out to restaurants.

[Michelle] (11:45 - 11:47)
Sure. Yeah, good restaurants. Yeah.

[Kevin] (11:47 - 12:03)
There's more and more restaurants out there that will do even just simple salads or bowls or whatever. And they might inspire you. You might have a bowl and say, oh, I could recreate that.

You have the list of ingredients.

[Michelle] (12:03 - 12:04)
Yeah, for sure.

[Kevin] (12:04 - 12:22)
And that can inspire you to find more variety and try different ingredients because you already know how it tastes. You already know whether you like it or not or what adjustments you might make. And then try recreating those to expand your horizons a little bit.

[Michelle] (12:23 - 14:26)
That's a really great point. I love that you said that. And so let's morph this listener question into a little bit of an episode about one of the strategies that you can do to make this dietary change easier.

And you can use this swapping out of varieties of whole grains as part of this strategy. One of the things that we often do, particularly when we go through this period of time where we know that we're all in my household going to be exceptionally busy and we're all going to be coming and going and we're not necessarily going to be able to sit together for family dinners and sit and prepare a meal, you know, a dinner every day. So one thing that I will do as a strategy during that really busy time is I will batch cook a giant thing in my rice cooker of some grain, either, you know, quinoa or millet or something or brown rice.

And then I will chop up ahead of time a whole bunch of vegetables, some onions, some peppers. I never chop tomatoes until they're in the moment. We don't put tomatoes in the fridge either because they lose their flavor.

But, you know, I'm just trying to think. And I might make another big batch of roasted potatoes or air fried. To be honest, I'm more likely to air fry it nowadays than roast it.

Sometimes I roast it. So I'll just make a whole bunch of these base ingredients with lots of greens and other stuff. And then at any given point in time during that week, anybody can walk up to the fridge and pull out all of these batch cook containers and they can make a Buddha bowl and put whatever they want in it.

And then the next day, the same batch of those base ingredients can make a wrap or a burrito. And the next day they can make a taco. And the next day they can be a side to making something, you know, maybe there's cubes of tofu one day that we didn't have because we get low on the air fried potatoes or something.

Do you know what I mean?

[Kevin] (14:26 - 14:27)
Yeah, yeah.

[Michelle] (14:27 - 14:37)
But that's a strategy where you can use the same base ingredients, but you can make four or five different types of meals out of it that's at your fingertips.

[Kevin] (14:37 - 14:37)
Of course.

[Michelle] (14:38 - 15:02)
But then you can rotate those grains too. Like one day you can do it with quinoa. One day you can do it with brown rice.

One day you can do it with barley, pearls and other stuff. And then you can get to know which grains, you know, get that variety in your diet, but get to know which grains you like. There might be slight temperamental differences in a rice cooker of how long you have to cook a different grain, but you don't know until you try it.

[Kevin] (15:02 - 16:23)
Exactly. Exactly. And there are so many different grains.

The other thing is, you know, it's always good to just, you know, Google recipes from, you know, from different parts of the world. Because for instance, you know, barley is used less, you know, here in North America, but in Eastern Europe, barley is a staple. And in Eastern Europe, if you look up Eastern European recipes, you'll find hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of recipes that use barley just as an example.

And quinoa is traditionally a little bit more South American because that's, you know, where it comes from originally. So you might find some South American recipes. I mean, quinoa is pretty universal now, but it might just give you some ideas.

I love Googling recipes and trying to find, you know, what I can do with, you know, some ingredient or other that I want to do differently. And you can get amazing inspiration with, you know, and also I Google substitutions because often they call for ingredients, you know, secondary ingredients that are a bit complicated to find here. But there's usually a substitution that you can find, you know, if you can't find like, for instance, a particular pepper or whatever locally, you can substitute something else.

[Michelle] (16:23 - 17:15)
You know, the more that you do it, you start to and you're dealing with the natural flavors of foods and you're no longer relying on oil and fat for flavor. You get to know which vegetable or which substitution or which spice or which, you know, maybe if you need more acid, which type of vinegar or something is going to help balance out your meal. Substitutions do get easier over time, but it's like anything else.

Like, you're not going to be a good runner if you don't run. So, you're not going to be good at learning how to work with these foods unless you just start doing it. Don't be afraid to make mistakes because it's one meal.

Like, so big deal. It didn't quite turn out, then you know what to do different the next time.

[Kevin] (17:15 - 17:38)
Exactly. And it's cooking. Like, we've all done this.

Whether you're cooking healthy plant-based whole foods or you're cooking the way I used to cook, and I still do sometimes, like, you experiment. And that's just part of cooking. Like, no matter how you – everyone learns to cook that way.

So, now you're just choosing a different set of ingredients to work with.

[Michelle] (17:39 - 17:39)
Right on.

[Kevin] (17:41 - 17:53)
But same general concept about balancing flavors and balancing spices and finding ingredients that work well together and contrasting tastes and everything else.

[Michelle] (17:54 - 17:57)
What a random conversation this question is.

[Kevin] (17:57 - 17:58)
You know what?

[Michelle] (17:58 - 18:01)
Can I suggest a new call to action for our listeners?

[Kevin] (18:02 - 18:03)
Sure, please do.

[Michelle] (18:03 - 18:25)
So, instead of writing in or only writing in with their listener questions, if there's been any listener that's been inspired by this or has something that they've learned about substitutions or that's something they've learned that's helped them learn how to adapt to that, I would love for them to send in their anecdote of what they've done.

[Kevin] (18:25 - 18:25)
Please do.

[Michelle] (18:26 - 18:29)
Yeah, I think that would be super fun.

[Kevin] (18:29 - 18:54)
And if you're brave enough, if you don't feel like writing it, you could even send us – you could even email us a voice memo. Just record a voice memo on your phone, and you can mail that to us at n4noobs at gmail.com. That's the number four.

And who knows? Who knows where that may take us? Who knows?

Send us your stories of your journey. Please do.

[Michelle] (18:54 - 18:55)
Yeah.

[Kevin] (18:55 - 18:58)
I think that'd be fun. I'm so keen. I hope people respond to this.

[Michelle] (18:59 - 19:02)
Well, thank you to – sorry, what was it?

[Kevin] (19:02 - 19:02)
Glenn.

[Michelle] (19:03 - 19:04)
Glenn. Thank you, Glenn.

[Kevin] (19:04 - 19:04)
Thank you, Glenn.

[Michelle] (19:04 - 19:05)
Do we know where Glenn's from?

[Kevin] (19:06 - 19:08)
I do not know where Glenn is from.

[Michelle] (19:08 - 19:08)
Okay.

[Kevin] (19:09 - 19:10)
From the universe.

[Michelle] (19:10 - 19:12)
Glenn anonymously from the ether.

[Kevin] (19:13 - 19:18)
From somewhere on the planet Earth, I assume. That's all I know.

[Michelle] (19:19 - 19:21)
Okay. All right. Do we have a joke today, Gav?

[Kevin] (19:21 - 19:26)
Do we have a joke? Of course we have a joke. And it's even topical.

[Michelle] (19:26 - 19:27)
Okay.

[Kevin] (19:27 - 19:30)
What did the rice farmer say when he was working hard in the fields?

[Michelle] (19:31 - 19:35)
I don't know. What did the rice farmer say when he was working hard in the fields?

[Kevin] (19:36 - 19:38)
No pain, no grain.

[Michelle] (19:39 - 19:39)
Oh, my God.

[Kevin] (19:46 - 19:47)
I'm sorry.

[Michelle] (19:47 - 19:49)
No, that was cute.

[Kevin] (19:50 - 19:51)
Okay. Here's another one.

[Michelle] (19:51 - 19:53)
I should have seen that coming, actually.

[Kevin] (19:53 - 20:04)
Okay. Here's another one. Since I did mention that I love wild rice, how do you tame wild rice?

I don't know. Use a very small saddle.

[Michelle] (20:08 - 20:10)
That just sounds cruel.

[Kevin] (20:16 - 20:36)
And you do it one at a time. We're all together. I don't quite understand how that works.

Anyways, thank you, Michelle. Thank you, Kevin. This has been a nice little coda to our last episode all about carbohydrates.

And I hope this clarifies things for you. But, Glenn, thank you for writing in. And until next time, eat your greens.

[Michelle] (20:37 - 20:39)
And be real, everyone.

[Kevin] (20:40 - 21:20)
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 favourite platform might be. Also, please consider leaving a review or telling your friends.

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