Episode 4 - The World’s Perfect Diet

Jody:  Matt and Mike, I’m confused.  There are 4 trillion books and articles about what the best diet is.  The fasting trial went awesome, but what should my everyday diet be? What is the perfect diet?

Matt:  Well, a few years ago I decided that I would no longer discuss 3 things in public:  Religion, politics and diet. It’s a no win situation and the easiest way to get into a fight.  No one listens. Everyone has set opinions and just gets ticked off when you ticked off when you talk about it.  I’m out.

Mike:  But we definitely have very strong opinions based on our medical training and the hundreds of books and articles we’ve read. We talk about it non-stop with each other because we don’t care if we piss each other off.

Matt:  Oh, yeah, I love talking about.  Just not in public. Jody, if you turn off the recording, I’m happy to dive in.

Jody:  Ok, sure.  Click. It’s off.

Matt:  That sounded like you just made a clicking sound with your mouth.

Jody:  What?!?!.  Come on, you know me.  Trust me.

2:00 – 4:00

Matt:  Alright, since it’s just us, let’s go.  Tell me what you do now.

Jody tells us what he does now and we discuss.

4:20 – 5:30

Matt summarizes:  I just made this up.  Eat food, mostly plants, not too much.  And if you’re great, great grandmother wouldn’t recognize it, then don’t consider it food.

Mike:  That sounds familiar.

Jody:  Yeah, because he just ripped that directly off of Michael Pollan word for word.

Matt:  How dare you accuse me……  Ok, ok. You got me. Problem is that I’ve read hundreds of books and thousands of articles on nutrition and food and I’ve yet to be able to sum it up more succinctly than Michael Pollan did in The Omnivore’s Dilemma more than a decade ago with that statement. So, if you haven’t ready that book, read it.  It’s definitely more complicated than that in general, but every other recommendation I could give comes with some caveats and explanation. That’s a great summary. And it gets you at least one pareto law there. You get at least 80% of the benefit.

Michael:  Right, but we’ve got more than 2 sentences worth of time here.  Our goal is always 2 pareto laws, to get to 96%, so let’s dig in a little and go a bit deeper.  As much as you and I obsess over this stuff, I bet there’s a few things we could teach people.

5:30 – 7:00

Jody:  Can we start by explaining those two sentences.

Matt:  For sure.  The beauty of them is that it conveys so much information is so few words, but a bit of clarification is in order.  First off, eat food. The next sentence explains that a bit, but a bag of Cheetos and a frankendog you get at the gas station isn’t food.  Calories don’t equal food. Your great great grandmother didn’t have snickers bars, lean cuisine meals, and powerade. So, don’t eat it. Your grandmother did have pot roast, venison, carrots, and spinach and onions from her garden.  Those are foods.

Jody:  So, stay away from 99% of the things in the grocery store.

Matt:  Exactly.  I was so proud of my kids the other day when a neighbor told me they were at her house and when she offered them a snack my 6 year old said “actually, we only eat things that come out of the ground.”  I acted embarrassed and apologized if it seemed rude, but I was totally pumped. My kids absolutely do not eat what I’d like for them to. They beg for ice cream and other junk that other kids get, but I was so proud that maybe it’s getting through to them.

7:00 – 12:30

Mike:  And the mostly plants part and not too much is pretty simple. The more micronutrient dense whole vegetables you can consume the better. In general we all are overfed due to the convenience of food in modern society and the social aspect surrounding meals.  So, generally, eating low calorie micronutrient dense foods is a generally safe plan, and the food that checks that box are vegetables. We’ve already talked on the podcast about calorie restriction and it’s health and longevity benefits, so go back and listen to that if you haven’t already. 

Jody:  OK, that’s all good and well, but I’m trying to think what people can actually take away from this and how they can improve their diet. Obviously, following those two rules could have a massive benefit, but let’s get specific.  Why don’t you guys walk me through a typical day of food for you and let’s discuss why. I’ve seen you both without your shirts on more than I’d like to and you obviously eat a pretty good diet to have 6 packs at whatever age you are.

Mike: My diet has been pretty variable over the last couple years, something we can get into later, but my general day fits one of two molds: fed or fasting. For the most part I am alternating between eating a normal breakfast, lunch, dinner on fed days and fasting from 6pm to 8pm on fasting days (26 hours of fasting). This is just what I’ve found works for me, but generally I’m interesting in achieving some of the advantages of fasting, without sacrificing too much performance or activity. More on that later.

So on those fed days my breakfast is generally oatmeal, with blueberries, apples and peanut butter, made with almond milk. Plus coffee, lots of coffee. I’ll generally work out in the morning after breakfast, and lunch will be a green smoothie, made with almond milk, about 2 cups of spinach, ½ an apple, a handful of broccoli sprouts, macadamia nuts, and some sort of plant protein power. Sometimes I’ll throw some flax, hemp seeds, or chia seeds in there. As well as some turmeric. The cocktail changes daily and is a nice way to add variety. It’s also a great way to get some raw micronutrient dense foods without cooking or a lot of prep work. Dinner is all over the place, and variable based on the kids, if we’re going out, wtc. In general, I have a salad with whatever I’m eating. That salad usually has some nuts or seeds on it, often has some sliced avocado, and I make all my own dressings out of EVOO or Avocado oil- typically with apple cider vinegar.  The remainder of the meal is typically fish, veggie pasta, or grains and veggies. Some of the things I’m really jazzed on are fish tacos- been really dialing in this nectarine, avocado, cabbage and kale slaw that just makes those tacos so delicious. Also, been really into chickpea pasta which I often make with a ton of veggies and a sage and olive oil sauce. You might be able to tell, I’m mostly vegan, with the exception of fish. We can get into that later, as well.

12:30 – 13:30

Jody: What’s up with the broccoli sprouts, is that like alfalfa sprouts.

Mike: Kinda, except they are like the best possible thing you can put in your body.  

To list a few this molecule appears boost your immune system,  fight cancer, act as an antiinflammatory agent, and even induce apoptosis. (0) It can help prevent CVD, alzheimers, fight polution, and improve insulin resistance. Basically, name a disease and sulflorophane either helps prevent it or make it better. It’s present in broccolli, but about 50x higher concentration in broccolli sprouts. So I grow these things in a jar for 3 days, then freeze them and throw them in a smoothie. Don’t cook them as it can damage the molecule.

Matt: Yeah, broccoli sprouts are a super food for sure, but everything else you eat is total crap.

Mike: well why don’t you share your diet with us first, then we can make fun of each other in sync.

13:30 – 15:00

Matt:  Yeah, that’s a good idea.  Mike and I are different. We’ve had genetic testing and know that we need different diets based on our SNPs and experimentation.  

So, here’s what I ate yesterday:

At 0700 I’m getting kids ready for school and I had coffee.  Black coffee. Mold free. no calories from sweetener or cream.  The only thing put in it is chaga, which is a mushroom and cinnamon.  We could do a whole episode on the potential health benefits of chaga, but this drink has basically zero calories in it, so I get the benefit of a continued fast as I start my day, but I get all the incredible antioxidant and super food beneifts of coffee, caffeine, chaga, and cinnamon.

Jody:  Can you dig into that before you move along?  I thought we needed to cut back on coffee.

Matt:  Well, sure if you want to live a shorter, more crappy life. The benefits of coffee are clear.

15:00 – 16:00

Mike:

Truth, the data on coffee is in, and in my opinion, it’s clear there are numerious health benefits of coffee. To rattle some of those off:

1. Coffee makes you not die: Seriously in a 2008 study in Annals of Internal Med found was an inverse relationship with coffee consuption and CVD. Basically the more coffee people drink the less CVD related mortality. (1)
2. Coffee makes you smarter: it inhibits adenosine and basically functions as a stimulant making you happier and allowing you to think faster. (2)
3. It’s full of nutrients and antioxidants like manganesse, niacin, riboflavin, pantothenic acid.
4. It helps detox your liver: reducing mortality from liver cirrhosis and liver cancer (3)
5. Helps fight off alzheimer's disease (4)

Jody: Sweet , what about cinnamon and that chaga deal?

Mike:  Yeah Cinnamon is one of those things with virtually no downside. It has anti-inflammatory effects (5), reduces heart disease risk through lowering fasting glucose levels and LDL concentration (6),  and to top it all off, it’s loaded with antioxidants.

Jody: So cinnamon is basically like a superfood that everyone should be taking? Matt, what about that weird mushroom thing you were talking about?

16:00 – 17:00

Matt: Well, first off, it’s a super cool looking mushroom that looks like a big clump of dark dirt or bark growing on birch trees in the northern hemisphere.  I would love to say I harvest it like I do my other mushrooms, but I just buy it online. I live too far south.

It has tons of vitamins an minterals.  B comple, zinc, calcium, vitamin D, selenium, manganese, copper, potassium, rubidium (Jody, I know you’re always looking for good sources of rubidium), iron, and others.  It’s an antioxidant, can reduce LDL, there’s some research that it slows cancer growth, has triterpines, which are good for you (either google that or just trust me), supports the immune system by regulating production of cytokines, and several other benefits as well.  It’s a really cool food.

 So, that’s my breakfast

17:00 – 20:00

Jody:  Then lunch

Matt:  OK, so sometimes I eat lunch and sometimes I just continue fasting with more coffee.  If I continue fasting to really get my time restricted window down, I’ll usually have some coffee with MCT oil in it.  That MCT being converted to ketones and caffeine gives the metal boost that most people want in the afternoon without the crappy 5 hour energy or something that has aspartame or other harmful chemicals in it.  And if I have some important mental or deep work to do, then I’ll usually add a packet of lion’s mane mushroom coffee. It’s a nootropic that increases neurogenic growth factor, and really gives an amazing 1, 2, 3 punch with the caffeine, ketones, and lion’s mane without the sluggishness of food and a big lunch.  I get really productive work done.

Jody:  Ok so skipping one meal, breakfast, is probably a bit of a stretch for most people already, and we’ve talked on the podcast before about the benefits of time restricted eating, but skipping both breakfast and lunch is a bit much.  What if you do eat lunch.

20:00 – 21;20

Mike:  Well, really quickly.  Just in case someone missed it, there are big benefits to time restricted eating, or as some people call it, intermittent fasting.  They’ve done rat studies where they fed them the exact same amount of calories each day, but when they did it in a smaller feeding window they did so much better metabolically.   It seems to lead to more energy, better insulin sensitivity, more mental clarity, and a lot of other benefits. I’m with Matt in trying to get that feeding window down as small as possible.  8 hours if I can, or even 4 hours if possible. Only eating from 2-6pm is my ideal goal, but as active as we are, it’s hard to get enough calories in such a short window.

21:20 – 22:00

Matt:  Yeah, exactly.  So, I usually break my fast right after I workout.  So, occasionally I will eat in the AM, but only if I’ve earned those calories.  Otherwise, you asked about my lunch. My classic go to lunch is 16 ounces of bone broth, which I make big batches of at home every couple of weeks and some almonds or walnuts with it.  I feel like a million bucks when I get that really nice shot of healthy fats and protein, and all the nutrient dense goodness that is bone broth and true nuts. 

Jody:  What do you mean true nuts.  

Matt:  I mean not peanuts.  They’re a legume, and I don’t count the as a healthy food for me.  Too inflammatory.

22:00 – 23:00

Mike: Here’s one place where Matt and I differ. I eat peanuts daily, as peanut butter to the tune of 2-4 tablespoons. And my CRP and inflammatory markers are nonexistent. I eat tons of other legumes as well, basically have to if your vegan. Now that doesn’t mean everyone will tolerate it as well, you‘re going to have to experiment yourself, or get your gut microbiome tested to really know if your sensitive to that stuff. If there is anything to really worry about with peanuts, it’s probably their likelihood of containing aflatoxins. Peanuts grow underground, and have a tendency to be colonized with aspergillus which is a source of aflatoxins, which may be a carcinogenic compound to the liver and raise the risk of liver cancer.

23:00 – 24:50

Jody:  Ok ok, you guys play nice. Matt, What about the whole plants thing you mentioned earlier you haven’t mentioned a plant all day in your diet yet?

Matt:  Well, first off, where do you think coffee, chaga, cinnamon, and nuts come from.  Those animals? Nope. And if I don’t have my bone broth with me, then I focus on the same thing:  Nutrient density and healthy fats. So, a huge salad or giant bowl of vegetables with olive oil and salt and pepper is perfect for me.

 Jody:  What about protein?  I know you workout a lot.  Shouldn’t we be focused on protein? 

Matt:  Absolutely not.  Maybe if you’re a developing country.  But look, the vast majority of Americans get way too much protein. Protein is a dirty fuel.  You should get just enough for building muscle and repairing your body, but it shouldn’t be your source of fuel.  It has too many problems associated with it. You, I, and nearly everyone listening to this probably gets plenty of protein unless they’re a vegan, in which case they should think about protein. But for an omnivore, it’s just not near the top of what you should be concerned with.

24:50 – 27:30

Mike: I think a good rule of thumb is 1 gm of protein for every kg of body weight. That's the max you need, even if you’re an athlete. Protein got way over hyped in response to the low carb fad diets as an alternative macronutrient to carbs and fats (which most people still thought were bad for you). In general, I’d say worry way more about the quality of the food you are putting in you and forget about the macronutrient profile.

Jody: You keep saying macronutrients, what are you talking about.

Mike: Macronutrient just means the % of calories coming from proteins, carbs, and fats. I don’t think the numbers matter, unless you are going for nutritional ketosis. And the %’s will vary vastly from one healthy diet to the next, take mine and Matts for example. I eat about 50% carbs, 40% fat, and 10 % protein. I bet matt is closer to 10% carbs, 70% fat, and 20% protein. But generally, we are both eating healthy, and in ways optimized for our own performance and body type.

Jody:  Got it, ok Matt, what about dinner?  

27:30 – 28:50

Matt and Mike and Jody discuss why personalized diets are so important and their experience with ketogenic diet and why it worked great for Matt, but not for Mike when they tried it.

28:50 – 31:00

Matt:  Same goal.  Super nutrient dense food that comes from whole food sources, mainly plants.  My go to is an instapot concoction I make. I combine vegetables from my garden and farm.  What is ripe and in season. This is very important. I think there’s a very important nutrient density difference in local foods that you eat with the rhythms of the seasons compared to foods flown from around the world after being picked before their ripe and then gassed to make them ripen.  Big difference. So, I combine that with wild and cultivated mushrooms.

Jody:  Oh, yeah, shrooms.

Matt:  Not those shrooms.  These are magic, but not psychoactive.  Magic because of their nutrient density.  I inoculate logs and grow golden oyster, shiitake, lion’s mane, and a lot of other species at my farm, and we also forage and find tons of milky’s, chicken of the woods, maitake, chanterelles, morels, boletes, and so many amazingly nutritious and delicious wild foods.  Now, talk about nutrient density. Nothing is higher on my list than wild foraged mushrooms.

And then I add the most nutrient dense protein and fat source I know, which is bone broth and organ meats.  Yesterday for me that was lamb liver and heart that I got from my close friend who raises sheep in a truly beautiful and humane way on pasture their entire life.

Jody:  Hold up.  Did you just say lamb heart.

Matt:  Yes. Don’t be like my 6 year old daughter who just says “oooh”.  It’s one of my biggest pet peaves about our society that we’ve been trained culturally to only eat the least nutritious part of the animal, the muscle.  It’s crazy, and honestly kind of boring if you ask me. You get so much more rich nutrition from the organs, and I find it a little unethical really. At my restaurant we’ve been trying to teach guests that “we don’t raise filets”.  We raise cattle. No one grows a lamb chop. We birth, care for, and raise sheep. The entire animal. We should respect the animal by consuming as much as possible, and we should respect ourselves and our bodies by feeding them the most nutritious parts.

Jody:  OK, pretty sure you lost some people, but basically, bone broth, locally raised vegetables, wild foraged mushrooms, and organ meats. Anything else.

31:00 – 32:00

Matt:  Well, that’s pretty close to the perfect meal for me. If you want my true and total weirdness to come out, then I will confess that my end goal is to get to the point where all of those things I’ve planted, raised, and killed myself.  To me, that’s the ultimate meal and that’s why I have a farm and am trying to learn to hunt and learn traditional skills like butchery. Is that weird? Absolutely. And I’m not a kill joy that’s going to point out the inhumanity of feed lots when someone at my table orders a traditional filet.  But there’s something about being that connected to my food that gets me super jazzed. And obviously, I’m in KY and am never going to be able to provide my own salt, spices, or some things. But the closer to this ideal I can get the better.

Jody:  alright…….so, basically you want to go back in time thousands of years and throw away all the progress we’ve made with agriculture, technology, the division of labor, and our ability to spend our time doing other productive things than just growing, hunting, and preparing food.

32:00 – 33:10

Matt:  Well, no.  Ok, kind of. I mean, I’m all in favor of appropriate technology for making our lives better.  But the key word is appropriate, which we don’t have time to unpack. I just want to be more connected to my food. What I just described is obviously not for many people, but the nutrient dense part I totally stand by.  You can do all of that with food you buy from the store or your farmer’s market. No need to get all crazy intense like I do.

Jody:  So…...what’s that diet called?  Is that paleo, keto, what?

Matt:  Well, I don’t think it’s got a label.  It’s definitely pretty close to those things.  You could definitely call it paleo, but it’s a bit more than that.  And it’s definitely not keto with all the wild mushrooms and vegetables, which technically have too many carbs to truly be in ketosis.  Trust me, I’ve tested by BHB levels with pretty much every variation of this.

Jody:  BHB levels?

33:10 – 34:45Matt:  Ketones.

Jody:  Right. That’s why I thought you were keto.  

Matt:  Well, I am, sometimes.  I do occasionally try to go hard into ketosis, at which time I’ll cut out the carbs.  There are major benefits to ketones and the diet that leads to them. Autophage and similar benefits as fasting.  But I cycle this, as I think there are also tremendous benefits to all the plants that I have to cut out to start truly producing a lot of ketones.

 

Jody:  So, how often to cycle and how do you choose?  

 

Matt:  Well, I’m always a fan of trying to go all ancestral and wild as possible and let nature be the guide when I can.  So, what I mean by that is that I will eat tons of the wild mushrooms when they’re in season. I eat asparagus in the spring when they’re ready to harvest.  And I eat vegetables in the summer and fall when they’re ripe and we’re harvesting in my area. In the winter is usually when I try to eat keto more. Just like people 300 years ago living in Kentucky would have much less carbs and fresh veggies available in the winter, that’s when it makes sense for me to live on meat and fat and be more often in ketosis.  I think the seasons and what is available locally is the best guide for me personally as to when I’ll eat keto, fast, or focus on super nutrient dense plants. A plant that I would the crap out of when it’s in season I’ll avoid when it’s not.

Jody:  And I assume you’ll link to all the scientific articles in the show notes.

34:45 – 35:50

Matt:  Oh, for sure.  And just off the top of my head I can count…...upwards of…...zero articles to backup my thought that this is the perfect diet for me.  

Mike:  Ok, that’s helpful.

Matt:  I mean, seriously, we could do a whole episode on the benefits of a ketogenic diet.  I think that’s been talked about ad nauseum. The affects on insulin sensitivity, longevity, mental acuity, etc.  Very similar to the data on fasting. We could definitely link that that. And we could provide tons and tons of data on the benefits of a plant based diet in general when we’re talking about whole plants, especially leafy greens, broccoli, and vegetables with super high nutrient density and super food components.  Antioxidants, phytonutrients, blah, blah, blah. Eat your veggies. The problem is that I believe very strongly in all 3 of those things, so this method of cycling according to nature makes the most sense in my mind when it comes to practically applying this knowledge.

Jody:  Mike, you do the same? Do you cycle in and out of ketosis.

35:50 – 38:30

Mike:  Nope. I mean, we can all agree to cut out sugar, processed foods, and things like that, but it turns out that the perfect diet for you isn’t the perfect diet for me because I’m a different person with different genetics.  I’m stoked for you, Matt, that you’ve had such a great experience with keto. And from what I can tell, it seems like your experience is the majority. When you look at the data out there, people on nutritional ketosis diets seem to have overall improvements in cholesterol, which suggests improved CV risk, improved insulin sensitivity, which leads to less DM2, and a lot even feel more fresh, clear headed, and even perform better- especially as endurance activities. Unfortunately, there is a minority of people, like me, who have a different experience.

 

About 1.5 years ago I tried nutritional ketosis. Actually I did it as a fat kid when I was 18 or so, but didn’t know enough to get labs checked. That lasted about 4 months, and I lost a ton of weight and put it all back on when I went back to carbs.

But last year, early 2017, I gave nutritional ketosis another go, with the goal of improving my cholesterol and insulin sensitivity - for my overall CVD risk. I’ve always had bad cholesterol, despite generally eating a clean diet and exercising regularly. So I went into ketosis. I ate healthy, a lot like the stuff you are eating Matt, just les carbs. It took me about