[Kevin] (0:03 - 0:06)
Hey, Michelle, how are you doing? I'm pretty good, Kev.

[Michelle] (0:06 - 0:07)
How are you?

[Kevin] (0:07 - 0:43)
I am excellent. You're excellent. I'm excellent.

I'm starting to move from soup season into salad season, because I have like my weekday lunches are always soup and winter. And now I'm starting to, yeah, yeah, yeah, I always do just a, usually it's like an Asian inspired soup, just throw some bok choy and mushrooms and whatever into a general broth and throw some udon noodles in there. And it comes together in five or 10 minutes.

And it's nice and easy.

[Michelle] (0:43 - 0:53)
My simple go-to is always a miso and I do miso dumplings, like miso with tofu. But you know, bok choy in my miso would be really good.

[Kevin] (0:53 - 1:23)
Oh, yeah. No, some baby bok choy with, I use miso as well as a base sometimes. I found a really nice low salt, hearkening back to our salt episode, I don't know if it is iodine or not, but low salt, white miso, which is just a really, really nice flavor I find.

It's funny, there are different flavor profiles between the red miso, the white miso, and I guess regular miso. Yeah.

[Michelle] (1:23 - 1:47)
Yeah, I really noticed that and I buy the white miso most often, but I don't know why. I guess it just looks the most like the miso that I'd have when I go to a sushi restaurant. But yeah, we have miso on board all the time because it's just so fast.

It's like almost like your instant soup.

[Kevin] (1:47 - 2:08)
Yeah, exactly. It's fast and it stays in the fridge forever. I've never seen a tub of it go bad.

It's incredible because it's already fermented, I guess. So it's already kind of preserved in nature's preservation. I guess.

It lasts forever and it's amazing and brings a really nice umami to whatever you put it in as a base.

[Michelle] (2:09 - 2:16)
Well, I hope you don't put the soup away permanently. I never left salad season, by the way. Salad season is all year round for me.

[Kevin] (2:16 - 2:31)
Yeah, no, I tend to want warmth and so I want that soup. But I mean, my soups are kind of salads anyways, because often they're like 30, you know, like 70% greens, you know, and a couple of noodles and some soup base.

[Michelle] (2:32 - 2:33)
Nice comfort food.

[Kevin] (2:34 - 2:39)
Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing. So what do you have for us today?

[Michelle] (2:40 - 2:47)
Well, you know, you know how sometimes interesting articles come across my email and...

[Kevin] (2:47 - 2:53)
Yeah, you have some weird email subscriptions. I love it. I love it.

But they're weird.

[Michelle] (2:54 - 3:33)
Well, these are these are really interesting. And like the two that I want to highlight that I just thought, hmm, I thought our listeners may be really interested in this because I'm always talking about the microbiome. And we have, of course, our episode that was all about microbes and microbiome microbiomes, I should say.

And it's worth acknowledging, by the way, I don't know if I mentioned it before, that it actually includes viruses as well as bacteria. So it really, you know, some scientists say that virome is actually maybe maybe more accurate, but we tend to focus on that.

[Kevin] (3:34 - 3:35)
Sounds much nicer.

[Michelle] (3:36 - 5:47)
Yeah, well, microbiomes. So I just found these two really interesting articles and I wanted to share it with you. And the first one in particular has to do with emulsifiers in food.

And this was really interesting to me because emulsifiers in foods and this would this would apply to mainly packaged and processed foods and particularly the ultra processed foods. So the stuff that we hopefully aren't eating too many of anyway, if you're a listener of this podcast, but it was but it also can include, you know, more commonly like foods that we think of as healthier foods or as the public thinks of as healthier foods like yogurts and ice cream, which people eat a lot of and often and things like that. So I thought, you know, this was always a big topic in nutrition training and particular, you know, the emulsifiers that we get upset about easily are like carrageen and people worry about soy lecithin because they don't really know what it is and other ones.

And so we're going to talk about that and this article was in the Wall Street Journal. And it was about, you know, newest studies that are showing a link between these emulsifiers and the microbiome. So first of all, I want to talk about, you know, what is an emulsifier?

So they're stabilizers really that are used to improve the consistency and the textures of foods. So they keep salad dressing from separating, they keep ice cream from dripping, muffins from hardening. They're used to make sure like when it is something like a yogurt or whatever that and our salad dressing also that it's also, yeah, that it stays consistent.

Like nobody, nobody wants like chunky.

[Kevin] (5:49 - 5:59)
Where there's a layer of clear liquid at the top, it's like all the water and then you've got chunks of various solids sitting at the bottom. And yeah, it's not the most appetizing.

[Michelle] (5:59 - 6:06)
Yeah, absolutely. So but they're most predominant in ultra processed foods.

[Kevin] (6:06 - 6:06)
Right.

[Michelle] (6:07 - 6:19)
And and it includes everything from energy bars and chips, believe it or not, and deli meats and many soups, which we were talking about in the last episode.

[Kevin] (6:19 - 6:20)
But not homemade soups. Yeah.

[Michelle] (6:21 - 6:46)
Yeah, exactly. So the more natural something something is, but even even some of, you know, if it's a really big brand, even if it has really healthy ingredients, you might see some of these stabilizers down in the ingredient label. And it doesn't mean that it's, you know, you now can't buy it and you can't eat those anymore.

The question for me would be, how many of them are you eating?

[Kevin] (6:47 - 6:47)
Right.

[Michelle] (6:48 - 6:48)
Right.

[Kevin] (6:48 - 6:48)
Right.

[Michelle] (6:48 - 7:36)
And and and if I'm going to choose one, like, like, let's use this information to be a little bit more educated about which ones I should absolutely avoid and which ones are probably OK. So so let me let me talk about this a little bit. And what what the researchers are explaining in this article is that many common emulsifiers were previously considered safe because they aren't really absorbed by the body.

So they thought that they would just go right through you. So they would be, you know, they're useful as this additive, but it wouldn't really affect us. But now researchers understand that it's this very quality that enables emulsifiers to disrupt our microbiome.

[Kevin] (7:37 - 7:59)
Right. So kind of makes sense to me, because if the whole point of an emulsifier is to make two separate things stick together, it's kind of like glue, in which case in your body, I would assume it would continue acting like glue and potentially bringing things together that shouldn't be together or like just kind of gumming up the works.

[Michelle] (7:59 - 8:22)
Right. So if and if it doesn't get absorbed, then that means it's it's going, you know, through your system being absorbed into the stomach and it's traveling through, you know, the small intestine and going straight to the large intestine and where it's going to be very disruptive to our microbes down there.

[Kevin] (8:23 - 8:23)
Right.

[Michelle] (8:23 - 9:42)
So and, you know, because like you can't really detect it when you're tasting a food because they're difficult to taste and you can't see them. And also because they're so widespread and they're such a cheap ingredient and they increase not only, you know, the attractiveness of the product through its stability, it also increases the shelf life. So we've seen more and more and more and more of them added to the market.

So and, you know, this was explained, by the way, by a researcher, cardiologist and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. So now I want to talk about some research by Tuvier. So he's research director at the National Institutes of Health and Medical Research in France.

So in one study, Tuvier and his colleagues researched and analyzed the ingredients of one hundred and twenty six thousand packaged foods and drink products that were available in France, in the French market. And emulsifiers were in about fifty four percent of them.

[Kevin] (9:43 - 9:43)
Oh wow.

[Michelle] (9:44 - 13:17)
Yeah. So these thickening agents play an important role, as we said, in texture and consistency. And the FDA, you know, they're very heavily studied by the FDA, so everybody thought that they were OK.

But some of them are a hundred percent synthetic. And I think this is where the problem begins. So there's two in particular carboxymethyl cellulose is one and polysorbate 80.

And then there's the others that everybody normally gets upset about when they see soy lecithin and guar gum. And those are derived from natural sources. Now, I want to just talk about lecithin for a second, because if anybody did any nutritional study, they're going to say, well, lecithin is a good thing, right?

Because there are some people that actually supplement with lecithin or they, you know, specifically look for, you know, good quality, you know, lecithin products in order to help support their digestion. OK, and I think, you know, here's what I understand about lecithin, for example. So it's it's important in our fat metabolism.

So before being digested in our body, fat has to be kind of specially prepared. And this is achieved by bile, which is produced by our liver and it's stored in our gallbladder. And that bile contains lecithin naturally, which helps to emulsify large fat particles.

And it turns the big fat particles into tiny particles. And so that there is greater surface area for our fat splitting enzyme, glypase, to work on them. And this is important for like fat soluble vitamin absorption as well as properly emulsifying fats so that, you know, your fat can either be utilized or stored or whatever the body wants to do with it.

And supplementing with lecithin as granules or capsules is something that people frequently do to improve emulsification, which can help people who have, you know, difficulty digesting fats, for example, like somebody that's had their gallbladder removed, for example. Right. So so this like people who understand that or have heard that or read that often get very confused because they'll see soy lecithin and they'll think, oh, that's good.

But then if you've done any training on food additives and things like that, then you think, well, that's bad. And it can be very confusing. But I'm like, you know, that that that's sort of that's sort of understanding, though, how our body naturally uses lecithin to assist our our gallbladder like it's present in our bile to help us with that.

Right. So it like that stands to reason how researchers came to understand, well, if we kind of take what the body naturally does and we add it to food, right, then, you know, then we know that that can that that break that ability to break down huge fat particles and get into smaller, evenly distributed fat particles can be, you know, a good thing in food production.

[Kevin] (13:17 - 13:18)
Right.

[Michelle] (13:18 - 13:27)
But and I just want to park that for a second because we're going to come back to soy lecithin and I get to the end of this article.

[Kevin] (13:27 - 13:35)
Yeah, because I'm still confused as to whether it's good or bad. So right. Sure.

He's out on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need to answer that before we can end this episode.

[Michelle] (13:36 - 14:18)
OK, but but research has found more recently that people, according to this article in the Wall Street Journal, people who have higher intakes of common emulsifiers are more likely to develop type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancers, according to three recent studies by this researcher to VA and his colleagues. And these studies followed about ninety two thousand to one hundred and four thousand people over approximately seven years. And they controlled for a variety of factors, including age, body mass index and their family medical history.

[Kevin] (14:19 - 14:24)
So that's a huge study. So it's it's it is we can it's not five people.

[Michelle] (14:25 - 15:48)
Well, it's reliable, except that it is observational. So whenever whenever something is observational, then, you know, you can do correlation, but not causation. Right.

So it doesn't prove that emulsifiers directly are causing health problems. And some of the increased risks are small. But other emerging science at the same time is finding that some emulsifiers alter the gut microbiome in a way that can cause inflammation.

So inflammation, you know, we know is sort of the building blocks of almost every single right disease process, the big bad, right. And and so it's responsible for a whole bunch of diseases. So here I'm going to go on to talk about a couple more studies in a small study with 16 people.

Now, this is a very small sample size, but here's what they found in the microbiome of subjects who ate the emulsifier carboxymethyl cellulose for 11 days were altered. They had fewer types of bacteria in their gut and more of those types of bacteria in their gut were associated with poor health. So they had less of the good guys and more of the bad guys than those who didn't who didn't have the substances at all.

[Kevin] (15:48 - 15:49)
Right.

[Michelle] (15:49 - 16:08)
OK, so the people who didn't have carboxymethyl cellulose in the foods that they were eating over those 11 days didn't see these alterations in their gut microbiome and the ones that did, did. And the diets of those two groups were identical except for the emulsifier.

[Kevin] (16:08 - 16:09)
OK.

[Michelle] (16:10 - 16:12)
Right. So that one is a little bit more specific.

[Kevin] (16:12 - 16:16)
It's clear, yeah, that the emulsifier is the cause.

[Michelle] (16:16 - 16:16)
Right.

[Kevin] (16:16 - 16:17)
At least in this small study.

[Michelle] (16:18 - 16:54)
And also two participants in the emulsifier group had bacteria that had actually went on to invade their inner mucous layer of their gut. That sounds horrible. I know, right?

And this encroachment is thought to lead to inflammation not just in the digestive tract, but throughout the entire body. Oh, so this this this particular study was published in the Journal of Gastroenterology, and it was done by Georgia State University. So, like, that's a that's a really respected journal.

It's legit.

[Kevin] (16:54 - 16:54)
Right.

[Michelle] (16:55 - 17:21)
Right. And then some other recent research found that people vary in their body's response to emulsifiers. OK.

And scientists in the UK and France are working together to investigate whether low emulsifier diet can be a potential treatment for Crohn's disease. If you know anybody with Crohn's disease, it's absolutely, absolutely horrible.

[Kevin] (17:21 - 17:25)
I do actually very closely. A good friend of mine has Crohn's too.

[Michelle] (17:25 - 17:28)
Yeah, it's it's awful.

[Kevin] (17:28 - 17:28)
It is.

[Michelle] (17:28 - 18:12)
So the so anyway, they they cite a bunch of other things that, you know, this is this has been supported by a whole bunch of animal models and stuff like that. But let me get to the brass tacks. Like the most concerning emulsifiers that they found when they kind of look at all of this, you know, emerging research that's available are the synthetic ones.

So if you turn over a label and you see carboxy methylcellulose, which is widely used in baked goods and other packaged foods, and polysorbate 80, which is the one that's often used in ice cream and other dairy products, then avoid them.

[Kevin] (18:13 - 18:14)
OK. Right.

[Michelle] (18:15 - 18:25)
And then researchers also suggest that you avoid things like guar gum and xanthan gum. Xanthan gum, I see a lot, right?

[Kevin] (18:25 - 18:26)
Yeah, that's a very common one.

[Michelle] (18:26 - 18:33)
Right. I can even buy xanthan gum, you know, if it's called for in a recipe like you can you can buy it, the powder.

[Kevin] (18:34 - 18:34)
It's a separate ingredient.

[Michelle] (18:35 - 18:42)
Yeah, yeah. And I've done that. I'm going to admit.

Anyway, these right? No, not at all.

[Kevin] (18:42 - 18:42)
That's scary.

[Michelle] (18:43 - 19:27)
So the reason you should avoid those is because they know that they aren't digested. So they aren't digested at all. And and there's been enough concern here to say, you know what, it's going to disrupt your microbes for sure.

They pass through the large intestine and they disrupt the microbiome. So he says also watch out for carrageenans. These are particularly common in things like low fat yogurts and other low fat dairy products.

I know that, you know, carrageenan is sometimes in even the plant milks and that like it's just it's just not necessary. Like just avoid it.

[Kevin] (19:27 - 19:27)
Okay.

[Michelle] (19:28 - 19:41)
The problem with carrageenans, they say, Kevin, is that they reduce the amount of beneficial bacteria and they promote the growth of bacteria associated with poor health, like they saw with the other synthetics.

[Kevin] (19:42 - 19:42)
Okay.

[Michelle] (19:42 - 19:54)
So but they conclude that the common emulsifier soy lecithin is likely less harmful because it's a natural product and it's more readily absorbed.

[Kevin] (19:55 - 19:55)
Okay.

[Michelle] (19:56 - 19:56)
Right.

[Kevin] (19:56 - 19:58)
Interesting. So it's not the big daddy.

[Michelle] (19:59 - 20:12)
Right. And I just find that so interesting because in nutrition school, like everybody was like, oh, you got to avoid soy lecithin. And, you know, I was always trying to be that more reasonable voice going, but how much soy lecithin are you eating?

[Kevin] (20:13 - 20:17)
Right. Yeah, exactly. How many emulsifiers do you have?

[Michelle] (20:17 - 20:30)
We're talking about like, are you eating, are you sitting here in natural nutrition school eating like tons and tons of packaged and processed foods? Because like, to me, that's a bigger problem.

[Kevin] (20:31 - 20:31)
Exactly.

[Michelle] (20:31 - 20:32)
Exactly.

[Kevin] (20:32 - 20:33)
You're in the wrong place.

[Michelle] (20:34 - 20:38)
Right. And so it's kind of justifying for me to see this.

[Kevin] (20:39 - 20:40)
Exactly.

[Michelle] (20:40 - 20:49)
That I was that I was like, you know, like you're going to get soy lecithin when you eat soy. So what are you worried about?

[Kevin] (20:49 - 21:01)
So can I ask you a slightly related question? Because as you've been talking, I have been listening to you, but I've also been Googling my to my go to for oat milk.

[Michelle] (21:02 - 21:02)
OK.

[Kevin] (21:03 - 21:26)
What happens if there's like just a general gum? So one product I use has gum Arabic. And then another one has I just forgot what it was called.

It was called Gelen gum or Gelen gum. Like so is anything with gum bad or could some be somewhat natural or?

[Michelle] (21:26 - 21:36)
Well, they I think you'd have to look more into that ingredient and see where it comes from, because like guar gum is one of the ones they specifically mentioned avoiding.

[Kevin] (21:36 - 21:36)
Right.

[Michelle] (21:38 - 21:41)
So, I mean, is it oat milk, Kevin?

[Kevin] (21:41 - 22:00)
Yeah, the gum Arabic was oat milk. And then I the same company who I really like also has a sour cream, like a natural plant based sour cream. Right.

I think that's soy based. And it was the one with the Gelen gum. I'll have to Google those afterwards and figure it out.

[Michelle] (22:00 - 22:10)
I know that oat milk is one of the ones that you can find a brand that just has oats and water.

[Kevin] (22:11 - 22:45)
Right. Right. You know what?

That's I think that's the lesson to take away. Like that's like take a look at the ingredients, take an honest look at the ingredients. And if you don't know what they are, if it doesn't, you know, at least soy lettuce, it has soy in it.

So, you know, there's at least a little bit of natural, but research it and figure out what it is and do some Googling and find out if it's completely synthetic, in which case, probably stay away from it. If it's got some natural component to it, it might be OK-ish in smaller doses is what I'm hearing.

[Michelle] (22:45 - 24:36)
And I'd say if it's something like sour cream, I'm willing to bet that you don't eat tens and tens of sour cream every single day. So sour cream is one where I wouldn't worry about it. But if it's in your oat milk and if you're like me and you use a significant amount of plant milk in a smoothie every day and then you use it as other things and it's going to be a more of a staple in your diet, then really trying to find a cleaner one that doesn't have a stabilizer in it.

And now the consequences of that is, Kevin, that that means when you're using your soy milk, you're going to have or sorry, your oat milk, you're going to have to shake it really, really well. And and because it's not going to have a stabilizer. So you're going to have to shake it before you use it.

Now, what I want to jump to, Kevin, is I've got this other really short article from from the Wall Street Journal as well that it was super cool. So this is going to be like maybe if microbes can be fun, this is fun. Oh, cool.

OK, fun, fun with microbes. It's not fun for these astronauts, but it's a fun topic because I don't think we often think about this. So what they found.

Is that the astronauts on the International Space Station don't have enough microbial diversity in their environment, and it's making them prone to a whole bunch of infections. Oh, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah.

So astronauts aboard the International Space Station are plagued with persistent rashes, unusual allergies and a variety of infections, including fungi, cold sores and even shingles. Oh, shingles are awful.

[Kevin] (24:36 - 24:39)
I've never had them, but I've known people have had them.

[Michelle] (24:39 - 24:43)
And it's just it seems and it can drag out for like months.

[Kevin] (24:43 - 24:52)
And can you imagine if you're stuck up there in space and you have shingles and you're itchy and it's painful and it's it's painful more than anything.

[Michelle] (24:52 - 25:34)
Right. And so they've determined that this orbiting lab just doesn't have enough germs. Like they don't they don't have enough exposure.

So bacteria arrive at the otherwise clean station along with their human hosts. But the array of free living microbes that we're normally exposed to from soil and water, et cetera, doesn't exist up there. So this kind of microbial imbalance has been linked to chronic inflammatory diseases and cultivating a diverse set of microbes on the space station, they believe could improve the health of the astronauts.

[Kevin] (25:35 - 25:52)
Wow. Because I'm sure even the air by necessity is like filtered to within an inch of its life because they're breathing the same air. So I'm sure that would also probably filter out a lot of good microbes that would otherwise be in the air, as well as soil and water and everything.

[Michelle] (25:53 - 26:15)
You're right. This is along the lines of what the director of the Center of Microbiome Innovation at the University of California, San Diego, was saying, who's part of looking into this. He said there's a big difference between exposure to healthy soil from gardening versus stewing in your own filth.

[Kevin] (26:18 - 26:20)
That puts it very directly.

[Michelle] (26:21 - 27:17)
Yeah. And he's and he said essentially that that's what happens in this very strictly enclosed environment on the International Space Station. So they're trying to figure out, Kevin, if there is a way that they can bottle healthy microbes or supply them, you know, to some through some sort of an ecosystem that the astronauts can maintain.

So there's a whole bunch of research going on around this. So what they did to kind of map out what the microbial diversity is right now on the space station, they had the astronauts and other crew members swab more than 700 surfaces and 60 different controls. And what they found was almost none of the bacteria that they found were from the Earth's broader environment.

[Kevin] (27:19 - 27:20)
Oh, wow.

[Michelle] (27:20 - 27:44)
Right. So they determined that this the space station is is more sterile than living quarters on Earth, but that most of the bacterial found in their swabs was associated with immune related symptoms. So basically, almost all the microbes that they're exposed to on a day to day basis are disease promoting.

[Kevin] (27:45 - 27:59)
Wow. I it doesn't encourage me to be an astronaut. I can I can successfully cross that off my list of jobs that I wanted to do because I'm sure I was, you know, in the running for it.

[Michelle] (27:59 - 28:05)
These are the things we don't think about. Like all people ever ask is like, how do they go to the bathroom? And it's not like that.

[Kevin] (28:06 - 28:10)
How do they get healthy bacteria in their microbiome?

[Michelle] (28:11 - 29:09)
Yeah. So so they they on the International Space Station, there are no showers. So they can they don't they can only use a small amount of water to wash because they're up there for what period of time.

And there's only, you know, a limited amount of resources to do stuff. So they wear their clothes for two weeks straight because they don't have a way to do laundry in space. So all of this was found to be like so significant that it was published in the journal Cell, which is, again, a really, yeah, a really prominent publication.

So anyway, they they just, you know, it's now very central in their research. They need to find ways to bring a little bit more of the outdoors inside on the space station. But they also have to be really careful to do that in a safe way because they don't want to promote fungal overgrowth or anything that's pathogenic.

[Kevin] (29:09 - 29:19)
Right. It's it's about finding a balance between the good and the bad and everything else. Interesting.

Very interesting. OK, well, are you ready for dad joke?

[Michelle] (29:19 - 29:20)
I am.

[Kevin] (29:20 - 29:30)
OK. This is not topical today. This is something from my son.

Oh, lower your expectations or maybe raise your expectations.

[Michelle] (29:30 - 29:31)
Those are my favorite.

[Kevin] (29:32 - 29:36)
OK. What do you get if you lose a quarter of your roof?

[Michelle] (29:39 - 29:40)
Three quarters of a roof?

[Kevin] (29:42 - 29:43)
An oof.

[Michelle] (29:45 - 29:46)
Oh, my God.

[Kevin] (29:47 - 29:52)
You have to think about it a little bit. I didn't get it at first when he told me. It's like, what?

[Michelle] (29:54 - 29:58)
Oh, that's so cute. Oh, my gosh, I love it.