Episode #27: 5 Toxic Foods to Avoid this Summer

Hey guys and gals!

Fresh new podcast coming your way! This one is about 5 toxic foods that you could be eating. Since it is the summer, the season of cookouts and parties, I wanted to explain a couple of avoidable foods for you to have a great summer!

On today's podcast, Frank discusses:

• Sugars
• Fats
• BPA (Bisphenol-A)
• Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs)
• Trans Fats

Enjoy!

Here are the show notes for today's podcast:

Frank: (00:00)
Welcome to the dog days of summer. It is time for grilling and parties and cookouts and all that kind of good stuff, but I want you to also be safe this summer and there are five foods and we're going to talk about that you could come into contact with this summer that could be toxic to your body and I just wanted you to be aware of them. So stay tuned. We'll talk about these five toxic foods and just a little while. This is unconventional honors. I'm frank your host and we'll talk to you very, very sick. Hey everyone, and welcome to unconventional one that's radio powerful and inspiring podcast set to revolutionize and disrupt healthcare. It's trying to put you in the driver's seat and be the force of change necessary for the lifestyle you've always wanted. What is going on? It is frank and this is unconventional wellness radio. And I am really excited about bringing you can today's content where you're going to talk about toxins that are in our food, things that we actually do not really realize that are there and we might be consuming these things and they're completely unbeknownst to us. 

Frank: (01:04)
And so I wanted to highlight them. Some you may be familiar with, some you may never heard of before whatsoever, but without any type of delay, let's jump right in. So I wanted to let you know that this podcast, we are experienced in really good growth and I probably have every one of you guys to thank because you have left me ratings, reviews, people have been emailing me. Um, I, I just, I can't thank you enough for the support because I want to make sure that this information gets out there. Uh, no, where can I find it? That there is a holistic wellness program that we are doing that is so like really just, it's so holistic whole person in nature that we are focusing on what I call five pillars of health. These are lifestyle choices that we need to make on a daily basis in order to improve our health for the rest of our lives. 

Frank: (02:05)
Because the way that we see it is that most people will get into, you know, health and things like that because we have gone far too long as a practicing physician assistant, I can attest to this, is that we try to fix problems rather than preventing problems from even happening. Unfortunately, we are a very reactive and not proactive society when it comes to our health. And so we'll usually wait for a problem, say something like high blood pressure or whatever, and then we get the high blood pressure, we get that diagnosis and then we finally start eating right in order to get our blood pressure to go down. So I would offer to you that let's try to be more proactive and be empowered and informed in order to make better health decisions to improve our outcomes for the future. And if we're already sitting in a situation where we already have some conditions, things like that, I want to help you make those choices so you can turn things back around. 

Frank: (03:05)
Um, just for an example, somebody, it was just recently found out within the last five to 10 years that if someone actually stopped smoking within about 15 years, the American Lung Association actually states that you can regenerate a lot of your lung tissue that has been damaged due to the smoking that you did in the past. That takes about 15 to 20 years for you to regenerate. Now, yes, I know that seems like a humongous amount of time, but if you were to look at some different smoking cessation, uh, times, time schedules, um, even within just a couple of hours of having your last cigarette, your blood pressure diminishes, you feel better, you don't feel as light-headed and all those sorts of things. I only use that as one example to something where it is never too late to start making those good choices. And so I alluded to the five pillars of unconventional wellness and I really want to kind of go back and do that again. 

Frank: (04:06)
And so the very first thing that we need to be doing is looking at our nutrition. Okay. There are many, many diets out there that are very, very helpful, very useful and I don't promote just one particular type of diet. I think that there are diets that are specifically necessary for your individual lifestyle and your individual goals. And so I want to talk about all of those and we talk about that in our nutrition modules. We talk about how to move more. I don't really like the word exercise because exercise to me sounds like work. It sounds like a task. It sounds like a a box that we have to check mark throughout the day or for every day of our, our of our life. And so instead I like to look at it as movement. You know, we have a farm here in western North Carolina and I get a lot of really great movement and honestly what I would consider to be exercise and all I'm simply doing is working on the property. 

Frank: (05:01)
And you can do that as home, as at home as well. You don't have to go move to western North Carolina and get yourself a farm, but you absolutely can play with your kids, go on hikes or walks with your children, go on hikes or walks with your significant other. Get Out, enjoy life, enjoy this wonderful planet that we all live on and get your vitamin D, Get out in that sun because it is good for you and being able to actually enjoy moving that way you can have health for life. Okay, so that's module number two. Module number three, we discussed how to get better sleep. I'm a science geek, okay? I love science. I've been trained in those particular types of medicines in terms of, you know, what is the science behind sleep, why do we sleep, how do we sleep? And what is the purpose of sleep? 

Frank: (05:50)
So sleep is crucial to your lifestyle. There are so many things that happen while you sleep. You would think that like all I'm doing when I sleep is that I'm just resting, recovering from that day if you will, to have energy for the next day. And that is true, but there was a lot of other different physiologic processes that happened during sleep. So module three is all about how to get better restorative sleep. Module four, we move on to uh, how to reduce stress. I tell you why this is huge. This is a silent, well actually it's not as much of a silent killer as it has been because a lot of us are stressed out. A lot of us have anxiety and so, uh, and so I really want to discuss those particular things as well. So module four is how to reduce your stress and how to reduce your anxiety. 

Frank: (06:37)
Number five. Module five is all about toxins, which brings us to what we're going to talk about today on this podcast is we're going to talk about toxic foods, things that we might be consuming them where you're unaware of, that are actually doing some havoc in our bodies. And that we need to, uh, really focus upon, uh, you know, now to be able to remove them from our, uh, lifestyle so we can get healthier in the process. So let's talk about these toxic foods today. First and foremost, uh, this is in no particular order and a, and these are, if you were to do a Google search on toxic foods, you are going to get a lot of different answers and a lot of different lists. Okay. These are the ones that I, myself believe, uh, based off of some sound research using some different things like a NCBI and a national institutes of health. 

Frank: (07:30)
I really enjoy, uh, seeing those particular studies because we want to make sure that we are giving you science-based information. Okay. And then we'll, we'll talk about some other things that, you know, really just, uh, should be kind of no brainers but, um, really just are very toxic as well. Uh, if you consume them in large quantities. And so, uh, first and foremost, the very first one I want to talk about is sugar. There was a recent study just released that specified that sugar can be eight times more addictive than cocaine. I'll just let that settle in for a second. Eight times more addictive than cocaine. Sugar really has metamorphosized and is something that is just huge. Okay. It has changed into something that is just beyond me. It is one of the most processed actual compounds that we have that we put inside of food. 

Frank: (08:27)
Now, it started over with regular sugar. I remember back in the eighties and nineties when we went on to something called the low fat diet. We all thought that if we just don't consume fat, then we would lose weight. Right? And we, we realize that, um, that there's some pseudoscience to that. Definitely. Because once we remove the fat, a lot of the flavor disappeared from these foods. And so what food manufacturers started doing. So they started putting sugar in our products in order to give it some flavor again. And so low fat didn't necessarily mean low sugar. And so, um, with that being said, people were still experiencing weight gain and all that kind of stuff and then found out that we could start putting sugar into things and make them even really a lot more powerful if we start distilling them down, processing them. And then air ago high fructose corn syrup was created. 

Frank: (09:21)
Okay. High Fructose Corn Syrup is uh, something that can cause a lot of different conditions like of course can cause diabetes. It can cause something called Metabolic Syndrome. It can cause a different types of cancers. It's actually been related to cancers as well. Uh, there's a couple of studies that actually prove that, uh, there is a study of about 35,000 women who consume more sugar than, you know, really just a regular diet, if you will. And actually they had two times the risk of developing colon cancer. How about that? And so sugar is really addictive in its nature because sugar can actually help the brain release dopamine. Dopamine is something is called the, it's called the feel good neurotransmitter. Neurotransmitters exist inside of the brain in order to regulate mood. Okay? Dopamine being one of those ones that actually gives you a sense of being a lot more happy. 

Frank: (10:15)
And so when you consume sugar, your body will release dopamine inside of the brain and you love that feeling of dopamine inside of your brain. And so therefore that's the addictive nature of sugar. Okay. So long story short, lots of it, lots of added sugars found chalk throughout all of our foods. Watch them because they can be really, really dangerous. Blessed is mercury. So mercury is a known toxin. We've known about it for years. And one of the things that we need to watch out for is the mercury that we have in seafood. There are a couple of diets that I've talked about and then I talked about non conventional Wallace that are, uh, a lot of fish, like the Mediterranean Diet for instance, uh, likes to focus on seafood. And so it's not to say that you don't want to eat seafood, by all means. 

Frank: (11:02)
I'm not trying to say that. What I do want to say though is I do want to let you know that you want to watch out for accumulation when it comes to how you're getting your seafood. Because it is really the biggest reason why people actually come across mercury anyway is because of their seafood consumption. Because what it does, it works its way out into the oceans and things like that. The fish come into contact with them, we eat the fish, and then that's how it actually actually accumulates. Okay. Um, so there is like some like really good data out there that is talking about like the different types of ways that you should be able to like, uh, you know, get your fish. There are certain areas that are considered lower mercury, so you can do some, uh, you could, you could actually go and do your research and figure it out. 

Frank: (11:47)
Okay. Uh, the, the thing is, is that the lowest mercury fish areas, the ones that thankfully contain the fish that are best for you, those are the ones that are his highest and omega three fatty acids. So we're looking at, you know, salmon and anchovies and sardines and things like that. And so you want to just watch out that your fish has grown in such a way, or excuse me, that it's wild caught and that it's in an area of low mercury and that it is one of those ones that is very high in omega three fatty acids. Because there's a quick thing about that he asses is that we as a, as an American society, consume a lot of Omega sixes and not a lot of Omega threes. Omega threes are the ones that have a lot of the cardioprotective and health benefit. We have a lot of Omega sixes in our diet and not enough Omega threes. 

Frank: (12:34)
And so we need to make sure that we up the amount of Omega three. So I'm not saying don't eat fish, I'm just saying, let's make sure that we do our research to ensure that we're trying to eat those types of fish that are growing the lowest amount of mercury's. Um, or excuse me, I should say, grown that are harvested or, or whatever, uh, in the lowest amount of mercury that we possibly can. Okay. So that was number two. Number three is B p a or Biz Fall Biz. Fennel, a bisphenol a has made its way into mainstream media recently, especially in the last three to five years because it was found to be a very potent hormone disruptor that is found in plastic containers. And so a lot of different plastics have thankfully started to make the move, uh, toward using more of like a high density plastic, which does not leach this bisphenol a. 

Frank: (13:24)
But that's the reason why the reason why we watch, uh, plastic containers in our dishwashers is because the high temperatures there inside of the dishwasher can actually lead to this chemical leaking out of the plastic and therefore into our food when we actually use those things. And so we want to make sure that we watched out watch out for BP a in packaged foods, bottled water, canned items and things like that. The best way that I like to provoke, I like to avoid BPA is I eat fresh food. I don't need a lot of canned food whatsoever. And then I also do not drink water out of a, out of a water bottle unless it's unbelievably pure necessity. Um, and I make sure that it has high density plastics. Uh, you know, that will not have a lot of BPA in them if it were to leach out because there's the thing about how BPA makes its way in our food, or excuse me, I should say our drinking water out of a bottle, the BPA, um, it does not normally leak out unless it's high temperature. 

Frank: (14:25)
Right? So like, think about it, you get most of your bottled water right out of a store and especially right out of a refrigerator. But here's the problem. That water has to be shipped and there are more often than not, trucks that are going around the country that are in very hot temperatures that are shipping this water and you can't see it, but it's happening while it's being shipped. And then it makes its way to your grocery store. It goes onto your refrigerator or something like that in the BPA is currently in it because it was there during its transit. Okay, so BPA number three on our list. Number four we want to talk about is uh, different types of refined vegetable and seed oils. Okay. Refreshable and seed oils came into existence a couple of years back because, uh, you know, we wanted to have these vegetable oils because we were considering thing that they were lowering cholesterol or they would help us reduce our cholesterol and stuff like that and come to find out that it's actually creating a empty type of fat. 

Frank: (15:23)
And so we wanted to transition more so into heart healthy fats. Saturated fats are something that we really like to make sure it come from natural sources. It's the trans fats that we're going to talk about that are the things that absolutely wreak havoc, cause inflammation and all that disruption inside of your body. So, uh, make sure that you're consuming a good ratio of one-to-one, say Omega three to Omega sixes or even like a three to one omega threes would make it six is because we get far too many Omega sixes in our diets. So just don't eat, train or excuse me, don't eat vegetable and seed oils in high, high doses. Um, you know, heart-healthy olive oil, coconut oil is a really good opportunity to swap those out. Okay, so that was number four. Number five, we talked about trans fats. I just quickly alluded to that trans fats are probably the most unhealthiest of fats that you could possibly consume. 

Frank: (16:22)
The thing is, is that the way that a trans fat is made is that a processors take hydrogen and they pump it into, uh, like an unsaturated oil in order to make them a solid fats. So think like a, you know, like probably the basis of a lot of our shortenings like, uh, you know, some of the name brand shortenings that are out there have hydrogen pumped into it because it'll take it from that liquid solid liquid type of oil and it turn it into a solid. Okay. Um, you can't recognize your body just simply just doesn't know, like, what do I do with this trans fat? I have no idea what to actually do with this trans fat. And so trans fats equal higher amounts of inflammation in the body. When there was a study done, it was seminar and 30 women who consumed a, you know, trans fats and, and looked at different inflammatory markers, one of which is called c reactive protein. 

Frank: (17:11)
C reactive protein is showing that it has a pretty decent indicator of a heart disease. Okay. In terms of a risk factor if you own. So women, uh, who had high trans fats, about three quarters of those women studied out of the 730 actually had a, a as had a higher level of CRP when it was actually measured. Okay. And so, uh, they are extremely inflammatory, bad for chronic illness, bad for heart problems. Uh, so you just need to remove those trans fats out of your diet. I'm going to give you one more, uh, this is my bonus one by the way. And, uh, I'm, I'm saying this because it is the summer after all, it's the season of barbecuing and smoking and I love both, uh, but I always have to watch this because it's extremely easy to get myself into this sort of like beyond having too much of a good thing can also be bad. 

Frank: (18:05)
And so, uh, you know, with all of this grilling and cooking and things like that, outside, we're looking at Pali, cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons number, or this is the bonus on our lesser p a. H. Okay. Red Meat is good in moderation. It's not something that we should be consuming all of the time. And so we want to watch out when we grill meats, when we're cooking them at high temperatures, uh, it can actually have that fat becomes rendered out of the meats, drip down onto these surfaces, and then it can actually create these pa ages that can actually get into our meat, uh, in, in addition, um, taking charcoal and, and not consuming it all the way can actually cause ph as to form. So the long story short of Ph is, is that they are toxic. They can cause cancer. Researchers have seen that. And so we want to really watch out, uh, with smoking and grilling a lot of red meats. 

Frank: (19:07)
We want to kind of precook cause really what you want to do is you want to remove the drippings as quickly as you can. Don't let them just fall all over your grill. Okay. Because upwards of almost 90% of PAHs can actually be reduced with proper cooking methods. And so you can precook things, say on the stove, remove the drippings from those things and then go out and finish them on the grill at like a lower heat. Does that make sense? And so you can actually, um, watch the amount of hydrocarbons that you're actually consuming when you are, uh, when you're cooking with these. Okay. Uh, when you look at red versus white meats, if you will, there is more of a connection with colon cancer because of Ph in red meat. So you're looking at beef, pork, lamb and veal, right? Whereas poultry and fish, um, actually have a neutral effect. 

Frank: (20:01)
And so you would just want to make sure that you properly cook and then finish off on the grill by removing the drippings as much as possible. And so that is our, a quick list of toxic foods and we might be eating, uh, let's clean those up this summer and let's move toward not getting these here in the immediate future. Hope that that was some interest to you. Um, if you found interest in that, please subscribe to this podcast. Better yet, not only subscribe, give us a five star rating. The let us know that this is providing value for you. Okay? We love to see your ratings. We'd love to see reviews. And by getting us a five stars, I'm able to get this podcast out to even more people. And so please leave me a rating and review. I've been already some and I love them and I think you guys are fantastic. 

Frank: (20:50)
And so if you wouldn't mind, please take a couple of minutes and do just that. Also, if you would like to see different types of a topics, by all means, give me an email, [email protected] and please let me know what your, uh, podcasts desires are. And I will love to really work toward fulfilling those desires. Okay. And so without further ado, this is unconventional wellness radio. I am frank, I and your host, and I have the distinct privilege of coming to you on this podcast because I want you to have unconventional wellness and live in a toxic world that you can live very healthy and get that optimize health that you have always deserved. So until next time, have a wonderful week and we will talk to you again on our very next podcast. Take care everybody.