[Kevin]
Hey, Michelle, how are you doing?

[Michelle]
I'm great, Kev. How are you today?

[Kevin]
I'm good. I'm good. You know, summer's finally here, at least at the time that we're recording this.

So, you know, it's the one time a year that Canada's really, really, really beautiful. So I'm looking forward to the summer.

[Michelle]
It's been really, really humid where we are. It's raining today, actually.

[Kevin]
We just had a huge thunderstorm. Huge. And now, of course, all that moisture is in the air, so now it's humid.

But of course, you know, people listening to us in the States are going like, you don't know humid.

[Michelle]
Well, we've had all those forest fires, so I guess it's a good thing.

[Kevin]
Exactly. No, we need the water without a doubt. Without a doubt.

Because you need water to grow plants.

[Michelle]
How was that for segue? That was beautifully done.

[Kevin]
Was it? Okay. I try my best.

Okay. Well, welcome back to Nutrition for Noobs. I'm Kevin.

I'm Michelle. And today we're doing a bit of an unofficial part two. So back a few episodes ago, episode four, we talked about protein and how much you need and what types there are and all the details about that.

Then our last episode, episode five, was all about your gut biome and how we quite literally are what we eat. So first off, I'd recommend if you haven't heard those two episodes, you should probably go back and listen to each of those first. Because that will put this episode in much better context.

But today is really when the rubber hits the road. See, because rubber is a plant. Plant, tree, rubber hit the road.

[Michelle]
I see what you did there.

[Kevin]
That was super, super bad. Anyways, the rubber is hitting the road. And we're going to really talk about the practicalities of how you can go about changing and adjusting your sources of protein and your gut biome.

And what to expect, really, because given that there needs to be a shift, as we've learned, from poorer sources of protein to better sources, your body also needs to adjust to accommodate that so it can continue to do its thing. So short of buying a whole lot of odor-eating underpants that Michelle mentioned, how can we manage this transition as we throw our biome into this crazy turmoil? Because I don't really want to change my underwear brand.

But maybe if I have to, I'll consider it.

[Michelle]
I wanted to do this episode, Kevin, because I was a little bit concerned after the last two that people would be getting a little bit scared about adding more sources of plant food and therefore plant fiber and plant protein into their diet. And, you know, the beauty of this is it's so not hard.

[Kevin]
I like that.

[Michelle]
It really, really isn't. I mean, are you going to have to go through some body transition? Yes.

You weren't aware of it at the time, but your body would have had to have adapted to your previous diet. Right. And we've just we've just forgotten that.

So as long as your diet is varied and you're going by the guidelines of lots of different varieties of plants, lots of different colors on your plate, following that 50% fruits and vegetables, one quarter of your plate should look like some form of good quality protein. One quarter of your plate should be quality grains. You don't have to count.

You don't have to weigh. You know, you can all you have to do is eat.

[Kevin]
I like that because I don't want to count and weigh. I just want to mow down.

[Michelle]
Yeah, I know. Right. Because those behaviors just make you feel bad about yourself or you start judging.

And then all of a sudden, all the enjoyment goes out of eating. I remember my one mother-in-law, though, I remember she was a lifetime member of Weight Watchers and it's burned in my memory going over to their house for dinner. And the scale was on the counter and everything was being measured.

And, you know, because she wanted to have this for dinner, then she had to substitute something earlier. And there was all of this math involved in just sitting down and having a family meal. And it all seems so very, very complicated.

And then in the workplace, when when we used to work together at the bank, there were there were people that I worked with that were, you know, saying, oh, I'm going to go have a couple glasses of wine tonight. So that means I have to do this, you know, just substitute so that I can have those additional carbs. Who wants to do that?

Seriously, where did it ever become a norm? I'm pretty sure we didn't originally like walk around with scales as we were like foraging in the forest.

[Kevin]
Well, I can have three blueberries now, but tomorrow I want to have a little bit of saber tooth tiger thighs. So I'm going to have to cut back on the raspberries and maybe. Yeah, I've seen the same thing.

People through work, you know, you say, hey, let's go out for lunch or something. And you can literally see the mental calculus that they're trying to do, saying, depending on the program, like how many points or is this an inverted triangle versus a square food versus a round food versus a red food or green? Like all the all the programs have different codes and all that, but they all seem super complicated.

And personally, I don't want food to be any more of a chore than it absolutely needs to be, which should be next to nothing. So, yeah, let's make it simple, Michelle. Make it simple for me, please.

[Michelle]
You know, I bring that up because I think it's created a consciousness that separates us from really being connected to our food in a healthy mindset, in a healthy way. We start to view foods as either ones that are going to promote the weight that we want. We tend to focus on weight or or foods that are going to make us feel bad about ourselves.

So and and that's I don't think that's good for our mental health. And it's certainly certainly when my mother in law was doing all of these things and feeling rewarded by making all of the appropriate sacrifices, you know, like it didn't necessarily mean that she was doing anything to prevent chronic disease later on or to actually make her nourished and healthy. All it was was staying within a boundary line focused on weight.

Okay, I'm going to talk now a little bit more about our protein conversation because we really covered quite well why some of our beliefs about protein really are not founded on what we would consider good science today. But it is what it is. So let's just focus now.

Now that we know better, we know that proteins from plant sources are not, you know, technically incomplete, that we have all of the essential amino acids, which means the ones that our body can't produce on its own. So we need to get them from external sources. We have them all.

They're in different ratios.

[Kevin]
Because we have established that human beings are not rats.

[Michelle]
We are not rats.

[Kevin]
So that's a big takeaway I took from that episode. But anyways, continue.

[Michelle]
I know, it still makes me laugh to think about it.

[Kevin]
Oh, it's ridiculous.

[Michelle]
So let's talk then about good sources of protein, good clean burning protein that we know that when you incorporate more of these foods into your diet, they're going to help not just add more protein, but more fiber, more nutrition, more of them are going to mean more longevity, help us to ward off potential risks of chronic disease. We know that these are the foods of the blue zones, and that all plant foods have some content of protein, they just do. And it's kind of ridiculous that we think that we don't because all foods are formed with amino acids and they and those amino acids break down go into the amino acid pool.

So it's just that some will have more than others. Okay, so I'm going to grind some foods off to you. Okay.

[Kevin]
Okay, so.

[Michelle]
So let's talk about the ones that people talk about the most. So if we just talk about soy, like just pure soy, we're not talking about soy derived foods. A half a cup of soy would be like almost 20 grams of protein.

Then if we go to tofu, a half a cup of tofu. So tofu is a processed form of soy, but it's a very wonderful food to work with as a, you know, once you're getting the animal proteins out of your diet. I call tofu the Play-Doh of food because it will become whatever you want it to be.

And because you can have, you know, extra firm and firm and medium and everything. I really don't like the runny stuff. I think it's quite gross, actually.

[Kevin]
But it's for desserts. I think the silken is mostly for desserts like cream cheese cake and things like that. Substitute.

[Michelle]
Yes, you can use it. There is a place for it. It works very well in some of those situations.

I think the mistake that a lot of people make with tofu, here I'm digressing into a tofu episode, is that they don't know anything about it. So they don't know what they're buying. They don't know what kind they needed.

And they'll grab one. And so unfortunate souls will grab the silken and try to use it in an application that you actually really should have had the firm or the extra firm. And then they're completely grossed out because they end up with this runny thing.

[Kevin]
I think I've done that before.

[Michelle]
We've all done it. We all have a very unfortunate tofu experience, either by our own ignorance on how to use tofu well or some well-intended friend or restaurant that tried to make more plant-friendly sources and they didn't know what they were doing. But it doesn't take long to figure out how to use tofu well, especially if there's never been an easier time in history in terms of searching recipes online or lots of excellent plant-based chefs or restaurants that do plant-based options really, really well.

So a half a cup of tofu is 12.6 grams of protein. And now here's some other popular ones. Broccoli.

You know, broccoli is always touted as a protein food for some reason. One cup is 4.6 grams. A cup of chickpea.

Now, whenever I mention legumes, just keep in mind I'm talking cooked. So cooked chickpeas, 14.5 grams.

[Kevin]
So, Michelle, I just want to interrupt for one second and just remind listeners from our protein episode that a 130-pound person needs somewhere between 40 and 60 grams of protein in a day, just to put these numbers that Michelle's saying into context. So go ahead. Thanks.

[Michelle]
Yeah. And thanks for doing that, Kevin. I looked up another resource this morning that I love, and there's a website for the Physicians Committee of Responsible Medicine.

And they have some amazing resources on there that listeners can go to. We'll put this in the show notes. But they even go so far as to point out, and I've seen this in Harvard Health as well, the average female needs only 46 grams of protein and the average male slightly more, 56.

Okay, so where was I? So a cup of chickpeas, 14.5. A cup of lentils, 17.9. A cup of quinoa, which is a great whole grain, 11 grams. A cup of black beans, 15.2. Now let's talk about some greens. Spinach, a cup of spinach, 5.4 grams in just one cup of cooked spinach. Two grams in a cup of cooked kale. And when we say cooked kale, we don't really – so spinach, we might actually cook it.

Kale, we just kind of steam it. Or have you ever gone to like a lovely, you know, high-end restaurant, and they have those, you know, cooked salads or whatever? They're just breaking up the tougher greens that are, you know, super high in iron, high in protein, high in calcium, high in all these elements.

But therefore, they're brassica-like. They're a bit crunchier.

[Kevin]
Right.

[Michelle]
What does Rip Esselstyn say? He says that kale is just angry lettuce, and you have to tame it.

[Kevin]
So for – I just have a bit of a technical question because I'm curious. So you talked about like a cup of spinach. Now, it's a cup of cooked spinach.

So does the cooking adjust the protein amount? Or is it simply just because a cup of cooked spinach is probably like five cups of raw? Is it just a measurement?

[Michelle]
Oh, that's a good question. I think when you break down some of those tougher greens a little bit, it just makes them easier to digest. Actually, pretty much any plant food.

You just sort of break down the starches a little bit, and then it makes it easier for your tummy. So it makes it more bioavailable too.

[Kevin]
Okay. But if you had a raw spinach salad, you'd still be getting some protein.

[Michelle]
Yeah, you would. This kind of leads into a little bit of our part two of this on the GI tract, microbiome side of things. You might not – if you've been absent of having these foods in your diet, you haven't been getting a lot of plant foods.

You haven't been getting a lot of fiber. It's initially going to be tougher for your body to break those foods down and utilize them. So there needs to be a little – I think some of these cooked measurements, I think, first of all, it makes it easier for them to measure what a cup of cooked spinach looks like as opposed to a cup of raw spinach.

But it just makes it easier to digest and a little bit more comfortable to eat because some people really don't like that intense crunchiness of kale.

[Kevin]
Okay.

[Michelle]
That's my opinion anyway. So whole wheat bread, even one slice of whole wheat bread has 4.5 grams of protein. Okay.

And then for our gluten-free friends, talk about Ezekiel bread or sprouted grain bread, 4 grams. Oats, a cup of oats. And these were steel-cut, 7 grams.

I love steel-cut oats. Do you love steel-cut oats?

[Kevin]
That's my breakfast every day, overnight oats and steel-cut. Yeah, it's delicious.

[Michelle]
I love it. A lot of recipes call more for rolled oats. I think they're just a little bit softer.

[Kevin]
They're a bit – they get a little mushy. They're great for oatmeal, but they get a bit mushy for overnight oats.

[Michelle]
But they're great if you're cooking with them, like if you want to make some sort of oatmeal cookie or something like that.

[Kevin]
Exactly. Exactly. So that's interesting.

I didn't know that I was getting protein even just from my morning cereal. I love it.

[Michelle]
Kevin, even a side salad of mixed greens, even if you just do that, you're getting 2 grams of protein. Wow. A tablespoon of chia seeds, if you were to sprinkle that on something, is 2 grams.

A tablespoon of hemp seeds, 5 grams. Even the beloved large baked potato has 8 grams of protein. Wow.

Yeah. And if you want to have, instead of adding all of that, it's usually not the potato's fault. It's the sour cream and all of the bacon bits and other stuff that we – Which makes it so delicious.

That we load on the potato, that really gives the potato a bad rap. Everybody says, oh, potatoes are fattening. It's not the potato's fault.

It's all the other crap you're putting on it. So let's say you want to put a couple of tablespoons of yummy hummus on your potato instead of all that other stuff. And that is still very delicious.

Then you'd be adding another 3 grams of protein.

[Kevin]
Right.

[Michelle]
And mushrooms. Put some mushrooms on your potato. 5 medium mushrooms, 3 grams of protein.

So there's lots. Those are just some examples. But right there, you know, you could conceivably make 3 meals a day out of the things that I just suggested.

With small amounts of each and make some very delicious, interesting meals. And you would have far, far exceeded this 46 or 56 grams of protein a day.

[Kevin]
Exactly. Because it seems like even with the trace amounts, what I'll call trace amount. Because obviously there's the heavy hitters like the legumes and quinoa and such that have like double digits.

But even some of these smaller amounts, they add up. Because if you have like even, you know, an apple here and a side salad there and some oats here and a baked potato there. Like, you know, 2 and 3 and 5 grams will add up easily to 46 or 56 grams in no time.

It's very easy.

[Michelle]
This is why I tell anyone that works with me or takes my flourish program. Don't even worry about it. Don't even think about it.

Because I am not a fan of separating the nutrients from the food. Because when we separate the nutrients from the food, we become focused on the wrong conversation. The question is not how much protein you're getting.

We've never had a case of protein deficiency as we covered in the last episode. Except for people that are very sick for a specific reason. So the question should be what are you eating?

What are you eating? What variety are you eating? And how much are you eating enough?

You know, surprisingly, I'm glad that I mentioned that. Way to go, Michelle.

[Kevin]
Pat yourself on the back.

[Michelle]
Believe it or not, Kevin, quite often, more often than you would think, people that come to me and they want help with their diet, I go over their food diaries and discover they're not eating enough. They're not eating enough food. They're afraid to eat.

[Kevin]
Right. Because a certain segment of society focuses on calorie count. And certainly, as we mentioned earlier, the diet programs and all that with points and all that focuses you on the raw calories.

But not all calories are created evenly. And I think it's honestly like what I'm taking away from this is definitely that don't worry, eat happy idea that I don't have to worry about protein. Because I've always been concerned about protein and am I getting enough and blah, blah.

And it's clear that if I just eat as I do now, I will more than hit that 56.

[Michelle]
Absolutely. And people will ask me, how much protein do you eat in a day? I'll be like, I have no idea.

I just eat, man. I just eat and I enjoy what I'm eating.

[Kevin]
And that's a wonderful thing.

[Michelle]
I run triathlons. I have no issues. I haven't had a broken bone since I was probably a nutritionally deficient young person.

I'm a middle-aged woman. Am I telling my listeners? I'm 55 years old.

[Kevin]
I'll bleep that out.

[Michelle]
I have no concerns about bone density, about calcium, about any of those things. I just eat.

[Kevin]
So I'd like to come back to something you said at the very beginning. That was kind of a bit of a throwaway comment, but I just want to focus on it just a tiny bit.

[Michelle]
Okay. What did I say?

[Kevin]
Yeah. What am I going to throw back in your face? You made a comment to the effect of it's going to take your body some time to adjust to this because your body had to adjust to eating as it previously did.

So my question is, you know, if I'm, you know, in my 20s, let's just say.

[Michelle]
Of course you are.

[Kevin]
Of course I am, and I have been eating animal proteins and baked potatoes with all the good stuff all of my life. So 20, 30, whatever years. How long would it take to counteract literally like a lifetime of eating a certain way?

How long does your body take to adjust to be able to be more efficient in absorbing the nutrients with a more plant-based diet?

[Michelle]
It doesn't take that long, really. And I don't know what that long is for you or for the next person. For some people, that might be a couple of weeks.

For somebody else, it might be a couple of months. For somebody else, it might be six. But when you think about trying to change your microbial makeup of this organism when you are a majority of your cells are microbial, they are not human cells, you know, and you're trying to do it from a lifetime of behavior, even if it's as long as six months or more, that's really quite remarkable about how adaptive we are as an organism.

[Kevin]
Yeah. If you're trying to counteract 20 or 30 years, six months seems pretty good, actually.

[Michelle]
You didn't get this way overnight, right? You didn't get this way. And you were very dedicated to your previous diet.

So you're going to need some sort of dedication to the new one. So and this really has to do with this absence of fiber, your body is not used to having that level of fiber. So there's going to initially be some adjustment to being able to break that cellulose roughage and those soluble and insoluble fibers broken down.

So there's two types of fiber, Kevin, this might help people understand too. So and what we need a balance of both, we need a balance of soluble and insoluble. So the soluble stuff is the stuff that dissolves in water, and it becomes kind of like a gel like substance.

And then we have the insoluble fiber, which is the roughage, the stuff that adds bulk, and that it becomes like a brush that helps to clean out our tract on the way out. We tend to be insufficient in both. But that's why sometimes when people recommend these, you know, fiber supplements, they tend to really just be the jelly type ones, like the soluble ones that you mix in water and you drink it.

That's, that's going to help somewhat, but it's not the whole story. So that's why those and then there's the opposite side, you can have people, you know, recommending, like really harsh, insoluble fibers without there being a balance of soluble, and then that just becomes too scratchy, and actually can be harmful to the gut lining.

[Kevin]
And so just to come back to your comment on protein, I'm going to ask you the same question. So since we don't want to be counting numbers and looking at what we eat, if someone just eats what I'll say normally, like just a nice balance, they would naturally get a good balance of soluble and insoluble from just natural foods?

[Michelle]
If it's whole, if you're eating whole food, that nature already has this imbalance.

[Kevin]
Okay, so we don't, that's something else we don't have to count.

[Michelle]
Don't have to worry about it. It's when you're pulling your food apart, and you're buying some food like product in a restaurant or you're consuming meat, which is completely devoid of fiber, then you have to worry about where you're getting your fiber from and what amount like if you if you've got a plate that has like the only plant food on it consists of a potato that's loaded with sour cream and chives and bacon and whatever gravy, whatever, like that, you're in a the skin and and the flesh together are going to be the only source of fiber on the plate like that's good.

[Kevin]
Right.

[Michelle]
And if you're in if that if that plate had french fries, then you're not really getting a lot of fiber.

[Kevin]
Right. Okay, so but basically, this is something that people don't have to worry about and don't really have to count if they're just eating a good variety.

[Michelle]
It's the hardest thing to get people to understand because they're so used to measuring and judging everything when it comes to plants and not not measuring and judging anything when it comes to meat, dairy and eggs.

[Kevin]
Right. And that's why I wanted to ask the question because that's the first thing that jumped to mind.

[Michelle]
Because you're a noob. I get it.

[Kevin]
Exactly. Well, because you said I didn't have to worry about counting protein. So then if you turn around and say, Oh, but you have to monitor your your fiber.

No, you know, I'm not going to be happy.

[Michelle]
No, no, no, I'm not going to make you unhappy. So initially, as those microbes start to repopulate, you're going to get more gas and bloating. But you're also at the same time, going to be improving your digestion, you're going to relieve constipation, this fiber for the first time as it's moving through is actually starting to clean out the colon and stuff that's been stuck in those little nooks and crannies and crevices and, you know, fermenting and sending toxins back through your digestive tract, that's all going to come out.

That's usually one thing that really surprises and delights people. People get upset about their farts, but they get very delighted about their poops. Right?

There's nothing like a good poop. Do you know what I mean? So let's talk about how we can make this more a more comfortable experience.

Because, you know, the one thing my recent client didn't do was he didn't ask these questions about, you know, how can I prepare my food differently to make this transition easier? He and his wife just decided, you know what, we both work from home. So like, we're just gonna frickin do it and we're gonna make and eat and cook whatever we want.

And their biggest challenge was really, what do I have instead of dairy? What do I do instead of cooking with oil? Those were their questions.

It wasn't really about what do I do with my beans and my vegetables and things like that. So there are a few things that you can do. Now, actually, let's start with mechanical digestion, which is the digestion that starts in our mouth.

A lot of people actually have a miss on this part, which has a huge impact on our ability to digest those foods easily. And that's chewing your food, like chewing your food really, really well. Don't be rushed.

And there are certain, there's an enzymatic reaction that happens as soon as we chew the food in our mouth. And there's actually a signal that happens between in our brain when we do that chewing and our gut to, you know, secrete enzymes in our gut, etc. So often, if we aren't chewing our food well enough, and then we send it down, and then the stomach acid has to work harder, and then the pancreas has to work harder to create more enzymes to break it down.

Because it's almost like I imagine these little guys down there in our digestive tract, the mouth didn't do their job again. So that means that we have to work overtime, you know.

[Kevin]
So you're telling me, what you're telling me is, for all those years that my mother harassed me saying, chew your food, chew every bite 20 times that she was right.

[Michelle]
She was right.

[Kevin]
Oh, don't tell her that. Oh my God, she'll never let me forget it. She'll never let me live it down.

[Michelle]
You know, sadly, we're going to learn more and more that our mother and our grandmother and our great grandmother, they were so right. And it's really modern behavior that has started to forget and lose some of those simple things that are just wisdom.

[Kevin]
Now, that doesn't surprise me.

[Michelle]
Chewing our food has so many benefits. We find that the act of chewing because we are taking a moment, right? We're taking a moment.

If we're mindfully chewing, that actually reduces our stress. And that also improves our digestion. And like I said, these other things are happening in our body that is sending a signal, like, get ready, something's coming down there that you're going to have to break down.

Next thing is drinking water. And I know I harp on the water a lot, but it's so important. We have to drink enough water, especially when you're going to increase fiber in your diet.

We need the water. It's essential to health and it's important to our digestion. Incorporating the fiber foods slowly at the beginning and wrapping them up.

So if you've been completely void of fiber, you know, you can do what this gentleman did. And you can just go all in and like, you know, high fiber breakfast, high fiber lunch, high fiber dinner, and just let the good times roll. But you can make it a strategy to, you know, incorporate some of those harder to digest fibers that can be the most gas promoting, such as the cruciferous vegetables and the beans and light beans.

So, you know, kind of pace yourself rather than, you know, going all in with a giant, you know, five bean chili.

[Kevin]
With a side of kale salad.

[Michelle]
Yeah, or cauliflower, raw cauliflower. So just kind of ease that in like a little bit at a time. And then lightly steaming or cooking your vegetables at first is another way that you can actually break down some of that starch a little bit and make it a little bit easier to digest.

So, oh, the other thing is people who take on a smoothie aspect too, which is a great strategy. I'm a big promoter of smoothies. I think it's a great way, a great delivery mechanism to just pack extra plants in that you wouldn't be able to add that volume to your day.

But once it's in a nice, yummy smoothie, it's very easy to do. You don't want to, you know, slurp it down and give yourself a brain freeze like we used to as kids with our slushie.

[Kevin]
Oh, that's the fun part.

[Michelle]
And drink your smoothie more slowly. So maybe drink half of your smoothie. If it's a great big like 20 ounce kind of smoothie cup, then just drink half of it and then give it a rest and drink the other half of it later.

So that's because those are raw, right? When you're making a smoothie.

[Kevin]
Right, you don't want to overload your system.

[Michelle]
Yeah, yeah. So those are some strategies. And then you'll find that it's, you know, especially if you've added the fiber, but along with the fiber, you sort of paste some of the more difficult ones.

You've had lots of water. You've chewed your food. You're not rushing when you eat.

Rushing when you eat is doesn't matter what you're eating, whether it was the good stuff or the bad stuff. You're not going to digest it well, because your body's going to, when you're rushing and you're stressed, you're going to go into fight or flight mode. Your body's going to reprioritize its process towards managing the stress response and away from healthy digestion.

So you're not even going to secrete enough hydrochloric acid, perhaps to even break your food down.

[Kevin]
Interesting.

[Michelle]
Yeah.

[Kevin]
Because I'm sure my mother said something about don't eat and run. So she's right again. Mum to Kevin Zero.

So I guess I had one last question. But are there any particular potholes that should be avoided? And I'm going to bring up one in particular, and I don't know the answer, but I have heard that if you don't have any animal-based proteins, vitamin B12 could be an issue.

[Michelle]
B12 doesn't come from animal-based foods. B12 is actually, it's a bacteria and it's found in soil. And the reason that we get a sufficient amount of B12 in our diet from animal foods is because animal foods are fortified with B12.

So in nature, originally, we were getting it if we ate animal foods, and we were also getting it when we ate from our garden because we were working with the soil and we weren't in a sanitized, obsessed environment, or our food wasn't traveling 4,000 kilometers on a truck being sprayed with nitrogen and then washed heavily to scrub the pesticides off of it.

[Kevin]
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Michelle]
Those microbes used to travel from the soil on our food, and we would eat them, or the animals would be pasture grazing, and they would be getting small amounts of soil. But now they're bad on giant feedlots, and they're not getting it either. So they're fortifying animal feed with B12, and that's how the cow is getting it.

So we just need, it's a very tiny little supplement. It doesn't cost very much, sublingual or a drop, and you don't even need to have it every day. Kevin, I was supplementing with my B12 every day, and my B12 was just tested, and it was well over 100.

Like, it was far more. She actually told me to stop supplementing with B12.

[Kevin]
Okay, so that's one thing, and it's not necessarily from meat products, but just in today's hygienic environment. Most people aren't picking their own tomatoes and carrots, so they're not going to come in contact with the soil, like our grandparents did. There's a third point for our grandparents, I think.

[Michelle]
So, Kevin, we talked about a whole bunch of stuff here, and we were trying to just sort of tie some loose ends from the last two episodes. Let me just sum up a couple of points. We don't have to count anything, whether it's proteins, whether it's carbs, whether it's, you know, whatever it is.

If we are eating live, natural, whole food that's intact, then don't count anything. My point is, protein is not a concern. The only thing you should be counting is the number of different types of plants that you're including in your daily diet or your weekly diet, and maybe another fun way is to count colors.

If you are counting diversity in colors and diversity in plants, then you're surely going to be getting all the nutrition that you need as long as you're eating enough.

[Kevin]
That I can count.

[Michelle]
A four-year-old can count that, right?

[Kevin]
Exactly, and it makes it fun for them, too. It teaches good nutrition.

[Michelle]
And then to sum up some of the other points, how can we make this transitioning to including more of that good stuff in our diet? Not saying anybody has to be plant-exclusive. If you choose that, good for you.

Chances are you'll actually have the very, very best health outcomes. But if you just want to include more, how can you make that more comfortable for your gut and more comfortable, you know, for your social experiences?

[Kevin]
Insert fart joke here.

[Michelle]
You can chew your food, cook your food and avoid raw for a little period of time until your body adjusts to the higher intake of fiber. Or you can avoid some of the more difficult fiber foods such as beans and legumes and cruciferous or introduce them slowly into smaller amounts. Make sure that you are drinking sufficient water, good quality water, being well hydrated, as we covered, I think, in our first episode.

And you can also, if you are doing any form of smoothie that you're drinking it more slowly, I would say eating more slowly in general is a really good strategy. And do you know what? Do you know what I forgot to mention?

I can't believe I forgot to mention this because I'm like basically like the tea lady. You can actually incorporate tea. So there's a lot of really, really great teas that are so supportive of digestion and can help you assist with some of that fiber breakdown.

So the one that comes to mind most commonly is ginger. Ginger is great for that. If anybody wants to go to my website of www.betas.com, under the category for herbal teas into sands, I do actually currently have them broken down that you can look at a category for ones that help to aid with digestion. So things like mint, catnip, fennel seed, we've got ginger pieces on there. There's some great mushroom foods like lion's mane mushroom, moringa, honeybush, rooibos from South Africa, hibiscus, flowers, raspberry leaf to sand, reishi mushrooms, another great mushroom powder. So many foods that are very, turmeric.

Turmeric is a great one as well. So, so many foods that are so great that, you know, we can, you can eat some of them, maybe used as spices that to enhance the dishes that you're eating, but also having a lovely herbal tea.

[Kevin]
That's good to know because I love my ginger tea, which is actually your ginger tea.

[Michelle]
You love your turmeric ginger tea.

[Kevin]
Yes, turmeric with ginger tea. Okay. Well, Michelle, this has been incredibly, incredibly helpful to, to actually have this very concrete suggestions on how to make the shift without losing all of your friends.

[Michelle]
You know what? And I'm also very proud of us, Kevin. We've really minimized the silliness on this episode.

[Kevin]
Well, I was about to come to my joke.

[Michelle]
Oh, no. We just talked. We get stuck to the brass tacks.

[Kevin]
You spoke too soon.

[Michelle]
We gave the audience what they want.

[Kevin]
But maybe they want the joke. All right. So, you know, we, we have to serve a little bit of, you know, a whole lot of seriousness, but also, you know, that's your, you're the serious one.

Well, sort of. And I'm the fool.

[Michelle]
I'm very funny.

[Kevin]
You are. No, you are. Absolutely.

Without a doubt.

[Michelle]
All right. Lay it on me.

[Kevin]
Okay. You're going to like this one. Even though it has to do with a ham sandwich.

A ham sandwich walks into a bar and orders a beer.

[Michelle]
Why?

[Kevin]
The bartender says, sorry, we don't serve food here.

[Michelle]
So why a ham sandwich? Why couldn't that be a lovely smashed chickpea sandwich?

[Kevin]
Okay. A smashed chickpea sandwich. It just doesn't sound the same.

People will get too hung up on like, well, does it have fresh sprouts or not? Everyone knows a ham sandwich.

[Michelle]
Smashed chickpea, delightful with, you know, some curry spice.

[Kevin]
But Michelle, then we'd feel sorry for the sandwich for not getting its beer. And, and, you know, so, so this way the ham sandwich is the villain of the joke and the bartender is the savior. It would be a tragedy if the bartender didn't serve a nice chickpea sandwich.

Its beer. It just wants its beer. That's all it wants.

Give a chickpea sandwich its beer. Let it drink.

[Michelle]
Well, the chickpea sandwich might've preferred a nice Cabernet Sauvignon.

[Kevin]
Maybe. Exactly. Exactly.

The bartender probably would have turned him down too on that. Anyways, there. And, and you just said that we didn't have our silliness in there.

We have just more than made up for about five episodes worth, just from this conversation on this silly joke.

[Michelle]
Listeners, I deeply apologize.

[Kevin]
And we will try to do better next episode. Not really.

[Michelle]
Don't we? Sorry, not sorry.

[Kevin]
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's what they're here for.

I hope. So on that note, Michelle, thank you as always for amazing information. I, I feel that I'm, you know, going to look at dinner very differently tonight.

[Michelle]
You feel full.

[Kevin]
I will. I feel full mentally and spiritually. And tonight at dinner, I will feel full stomachily.

[Michelle]
Namaste.

[Kevin]
Namaste. Well, thank you for listening. And until next time, I'm Kevin saying thank you.

[Michelle]
I'm Michelle. Thank you so much listeners 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.

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