497 Nourish Your Life Through Food & Living Beyond Cancer, Plant-Based Chef Mark Reinfeld & His Holistic Doctors Make Healing Delicious

Check out Chef Mark Reinfeld's upcoming courses and online culinary trainings: Learntruehealth.com/nourish

Phototherapy Patches:

To work with Ashley James and try the phototherapy, Go Here: https://www.learntruehealth.com In the Menu, click Work with Ashley James

The Best Coherent Structured Water Device:

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Online Health Coach Training Program:

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I love IIN; the Institute for Integrative Nutrition is where I took my Health Coach Training and where you can transform your life and become an Integrative Health Coach!

The whole program is online and designed for busy people, so anyone can do it!

 

Free 7-Day Holistic Doctor Course by Ashley James:

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Ozone Machine:

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Listen to episode 484 for more info on why and how to use ozonated water made in your home for energy and mitochondrial function:

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High-Quality NAD Brain Supplement:

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Listen to episode 460 about the benefits of high-quality NAD on cellular function, energy production, and mitochondrial health:

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Sunlighten Sauna - the sauna Ashley uses, loves, and recommends:

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Listen to episode 245 to learn from the founder of Sunlighten Sauna as to why this sauna is the best tool for your health journey:

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Listen to episode 294 to hear Kristen Bowen share her story of recovery and discovering the world's most absorbable form of magnesium:

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497: Healing Deliciously: How To Nourish Your Life Through Food

https://www.learntruehealth.com/healing-deliciously-how-to-nourish-your-life-through-food

In this episode, Chef Mark Reinfeld teaches us how to make plant-based healing food to prevent cancer and other diseases. He will also discuss the benefits of using food as medicine, which can benefit our overall well-being.

Ashley James & Mark Reinfeld

Highlights: 

• Holistic Doctors Make Healing Delicious
• Nourish Your Life Through Food & Living Beyond Cancer
• How to take healing foods and make them so that your kids want to eat
• Benefits of increasing nutrient-dense foods in your diet
• How to make plant-based foods taste good
• Marinating a Portabello mushroom with balsamic
• How the Doctor and the Chef works

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of Learn True Health Podcast. 

We have such a fun episode today with Chef Mark Reinfeld. He is a whole food plant-based chef, and he married an amazing woman who is a naturopathic physician. Together, they marry holistic medicine using food as medicine and all the science behind that, with delicious culinary recipes. How amazing is it that we can nourish our bodies and use food as medicine to heal every cell in our body and bathe every cell in nutrients? 

I have been doing this podcast for seven years. March 1st will be the 7th anniversary. But way back in the day, I interviewed an amazing doctor on his deathbed, and basically, the doctor said, your liver is in absolute failure. Go home to finish your will and say goodbye to your loved ones. Your life is over. And he sat there on his hospital bed, ready to pack up his stuff to go home and die, and he thought to himself, wait for a second, I understand how the liver works. I know how the body works. And he just got this vision. There are over 37 trillion individual cells in your body, and here he is about to die. He's thinking, every cell in my body is like a house. My body is like a county. Your body is like Manhattan with all these individual homes; each home is a cell. There are certain things every single cell needs. It needs to bring in the groceries and take out the garbage. And something's gone wrong on a cellular level for my body. My body is not bringing in the groceries and taking out the trash.

That very simple idea is what he went home with. And he goes, how can I help my body? And what did he have to lose? He was dying anyway. Then he said, okay, I'm going to do everything I can to support my liver to decrease inflammation because inflammation is like when there's a big hurricane, and now there's a flood around your house. The groceries can't get in, and the garbage can't get out. That's what inflammation is. It's a flood around your cells, not letting the good stuff in and the bad stuff out. And there's an order to things. So he got rid of the flood between every house in his body, and then he started to bring in the groceries and take out the garbage. He supported all three systems in his body, including the different detox pathways. And he lived for many years, went on to write many books to all the doctors' amazement, and to helping other people heal. And I love that image, which has always stuck with me. 

This is what our guest today does. He helps you make mind-blowing delicious food that helps the body bring the groceries in and take the garbage out. Anytime you can make it healthy, easy, delicious, and fun for you and the whole family. That's a big win. So you don't have to be vegan or want to be vegan to listen to this episode. Our chef today teaches using a whole food plant-based diet. Everyone can benefit from increasing nutrient-dense foods in their diet. Doctors show, and it has been proven in many studies, that increasing antioxidant and polyphenol-rich foods in your life can prevent cancer, decrease many diseases, and improve outcomes. Plus, it brings so much flavor with all the spices and herbs in healing the body.

Mark is here today, and he's going to share with us some amazing recipes and ways of thinking about eating and adjusting your life so you can get in even more nutrition, more nutrient-dense foods, get those groceries in the cells, and take the garbage bags out of the cells. Mark is about to launch two courses. He's also working with other holistic doctors; one is called Living Beyond Cancer. We talked a bit about that; the other one is called Nourish Your Life, and both sound delicious. 

You can go to learntruehealth.com/nourish to see more information about Mark's upcoming courses. They are starting very soon, so if you're interested, you'll want to jump right in and check them out. That's learntruehealth.com/nourish. And of course, the links to everything will be shown in today's podcast at learntruehealth.com as well as whatever podcast directory you're listening to us from. You'll be able to go into the show notes of the description in this episode, and you should be able to find those links. 

I have had such an amazing time since I published the last episode. On the previous episode if you hadn't listened to it, I said, hey listeners, if you want a call with me, you want to talk about the phototherapy patches, then sign up for a free conversation. I have been slammed from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. talking to people, and it's been amazing. So many of the listeners are trying the phototherapy patches, and now the listeners are reporting back to me who bought them because they got on them and we are getting some incredible results. There are some testimonials about getting thyroids to come back online. There's a very easy protocol for detoxing the thyroid and then turning the thyroid back on with the stem cell patch. In talking to some other practitioners and looking at the testimonials, I'm seeing that women in as little as three weeks are needing to go back to their doctors, get tested, and needing to be put on lower medication. And in some cases, completely taken off their thyroid meds in as little as three weeks. Now, any improvement from something that supports the body's ability to stimulate, the body's ability to heal, is amazing. The glutathione patch increases glutathione by 300% in 24 hours. The stem cell patch boosts stem cells in the body, turning on thousands of gene expressions. We are seeing some tremendous results. 

I've got these people reversing osteoporosis and osteopenia. People are gaining muscle. People are healing concussions, like chronic concussion post-concussion syndrome. They're seeing that their brain is coming back online. Brain fog is going away. The stuff is returning back to normal. I have seen great things around anxiety and sleep. For me, my energy is through the roof. And now I'm leaving just a bucket of sweat on the gym floor because I'm pushing myself so much harder because I have the energy for it. I have this abundant amount of energy that feels just like childhood. This is the kind of energy that I've been wanting. Have you ever just sat around the saddle and looked at kids or grandkids and go, where do they get the energy from? And then remembering when you had abundant energy like, oh I wish I felt that way. Well now, I feel that way, so I love it. And if you want to try it, I'd love to help you. I'm just in awe of the results we're getting, and I'm having so much fun helping the listeners. We've had some amazing conversations. I've connected with some beautiful people who are like friends for life now. 

So if you would like to chat, go to learntruehealth.com, and click “Work with Ashley James” on the top. The first option is the free photo therapy session where we'll have a conversation. It says it's 15 minutes, but most of these phone calls have been longer because of all the questions people have, and I am totally fine with that. I've been adding a little time in between the calls just in case they go over. So bring your questions to me. I'd love to chat with you. And if you're shy or you just don't have time to chat, because my schedule is being booked up pretty fast, and you want to talk sooner, you can always email me at ashley@learntruehealth.com. I'd love to chat and help you. You could also message me on Facebook. You can come to Learn True Health Facebook group at learntruehealth.com/group to find us. Come join us and talk to me. I'd love to hear from you. 

And get on those phototherapy patches. There's a money-back guarantee. For me, I love things that are no risk. And I figured out the way you can order these packages to get the best benefit. It saves you $70. I'd love to help you make sure that you order the right patches for the right protocols, and also save the most money because I'm all about saving money. I have purchased over a hundred different holistic things in the last ten years, and I love experimenting. And you know, it's the spaghetti test. Most things are pretty amazing, and in the things that aren't, I want to get my money back. So I love that this company stands behind its guarantee, which is awesome. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about. Together, we are helping people to end needless suffering; so that holistic medicine can bring them health and vitality. Sometimes it just takes a little shift in the right direction, and the body is going to take over and start running with it, and I want everyone to have true health. 

That's what we're doing here today. So take what Chef Mark says, as a sign to try out new vegetables, try out new flavors, and try out new things. Look up certain foods, spices, and herbs that nourish and heal the body, and see how you can play around with them. He's got some amazing books, and we talked about recipes. If you want to learn how to conquer your kitchen and own it, you'll definitely want to take some of Mark's classes. You can do that by going to learntruehealth.com/nourish. 

I promised in the last episode that this episode would be about structured water. I apologize, but stuff got turned around. People made requests, and I'm publishing this episode. So you're just going to have to wait one more week, and then I will publish the water episode. The structure of our episode will blow your mind. It's awesome. So watch out; you'll want to listen to the next episode. And without further ado, enjoy today's episode. 

[0:11:19.7] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I'm your host, Ashley James. This is episode 497. 

I am so excited about today's guest. We have with us an amazing vegan infusion chef, Mark Reinfeld. It's so good to have you on the show. Our good friend, who's been in the holistic health space for many years, introduced us. And what I love is Mark has such a talent for taking plants and making them amazing and so delicious. He teaches how to take healing foods and make them, so your kids want to eat them; they taste so good. What I also love is that Mark not only has a partner for life in your wife but because she's a naturopathic physician, you guys partnered together in business. And that gives us such an incredible compliment because there are so many doctors out there, and I've read lots of those healthy cookbooks for the doctors trying to come up with the recipes, and it's like something horrible. Their information is sound, but they tell you to eat plain oatmeal or whatever. It's just so gross. Whereas you take your amazing culinary skills and then couple them with your wife's wonderful information on using food as medicine. And together, you combine that so that people can heal their bodies while still enjoying the food on their plates. 

It was so funny because yesterday, my son was eating something; I can't remember what it was, but he goes, why is everything healthy for me taste bad? That's just such a funny thing. He was parroting what we often say, like, drink this medicine or aloe juice. And then he paused, and he goes, it doesn't taste bad. I like it. But he chooses to eat raw vegetables. I cannot cook him a vegetable. If I steam him some broccoli, he looks and goes, what did you do to my broccoli? He just wants to eat plain raw food. I can't even use these tools to make things taste good. 

But we have Mark here who has all these skills, and I want to hear your ideas so that all of us in the kitchen can spice something up and add something to our dishes tonight. So I'm not saying everyone has to be a vegan, but everyone can benefit from adding more nutritious foods. And you're here to teach us how to spice it up, so welcome to the show. 

[0:14:09.2] Mark Reinfeld: Thank you so much for having me, Ashley, I'm excited to be here. 

[0:14:13.2] Ashley James: And I hope that after today, I've learned some tricks that I can take to the kitchen, and my son will never say again, why is my healthy food always have to taste like this? He knows the buttons to push on our kids. It's so funny how family does that. And then he sits and eats it all anyway, so I know he likes it. But I want to make something taste amazing, and I know you can help us. 

And what I also love is what's coming up, and I want to make sure listeners know about it. You are launching two courses with your wife on February 15th and 16th. One is called Living Beyond Cancer. So we'll get you to talk more about that because nutritional oncology is coming into this and setting your life up in the kitchen to maximize the healing for someone facing cancer and recovery. And then you also have Nourish Your Life, which is soon being launched, and just taking these principles of using everything you put in your mouth as your healing, but also doing it in a way that's just so delicious. 

You've been a chef at restaurants, and you have won awards. My friend raves about you. So I'm very excited to have you on the show today. So before we jump in and learn some tricks in the kitchen from you and about your wonderful programs that are coming up, what should we know about the life of Mark, this vegan chef? What should we know about you to be oohed and aahed? 

[0:15:57.3] Mark Reinfeld: Well, that's a great question. Plant-based cuisine has been my passion for many years, to show people how to make plant-based foods taste delicious. So, a lot of times, we could learn about how important it is to include more plants in our diet and not know how to go about it, or sometimes the food just doesn't come out that good. For me, if the food doesn't taste good, no matter how much intellectually we might know how important it is, I don't think you can make those long-lasting changes. So for me, it's one of my missions to show people that everyone has the capability within themselves to create food that tastes good and they enjoy. And so I've been doing that for decades. As you said, I've worn many hats, from running a restaurant to writing several cookbooks that we can talk about to running the kitchen at major vegetarian festivals. So, I've been around the block for over 25 years in this field. I love sharing what I have picked up along the way with others. 

[0:17:15.7] Ashley James: I love it. Didn't you run a restaurant in Hawaii?

[0:17:22.7] Mark Reinfeld: We did. I went to Hawaii for a two-week vacation, and we wound up

staying there for eight years. So it's one of those longest recorded two-week vacations in history, and a group of people turned an internet cafe into a vegan cafe. And I have had several years of consulting and menu and recipe development experience. So when I landed, it was the perfect storm, and we opened the Blossoming Lotus Restaurant on Kauai shortly after I arrived through our mutual friend, who was also involved in the restaurant. 

[0:18:00.6] Ashley James: Since you're so good at menu creation, I was hoping you could create for us a Learn True Health podcast menu that we can make in our kitchen for people who might be afraid of cooking vegetables, afraid of bland food, and maybe even have some picky eaters. So what is super healthy but delicious that we could whip up for beginners?

[0:18:27.9] Mark Reinfeld: For our listeners right now?

[0:18:31.5] Ashley James: Yes, just something at the top of your head. Please think about the first thing that comes to mind that's easy to make but delicious. 

[0:18:38.8] Mark Reinfeld: Pestos are the first things that come to my mind and are one of my favorite things to make. They're really easy to make. There are a lot of fresh herbs, and you can use garlic and green onion. I like spicing it up with some chili peppers or crushed red pepper. And those could be over either a simple roasted vegetable dish or with noodles. So we'll talk more about my go-to meals, which I call a monk bowl. This is also through our friends who shared that with me many years ago, using a combination of a green and a protein. You could whip out these simple meals. And if you have this lovely pesto sauce, it's a winner.

[0:19:25.9] Ashley James: So, I am oil-free and gluten-free. And what I like to do when I make pesto; I learned this from one of my friends because she has a gardener husband, who often brings or harvests too much arugula, if you can imagine too much organic homegrown arugula. But there it was. They could get quite spicy. And so he's harvested these pounds and pounds of arugula. So she took arugula and some of the nuts you put on this thing. What are they called?

[0:20:08.6] Mark Reinfeld: Pine nuts.

[0:20:09.9] Ashley James: Pine nuts, thank you. She only did a few pine nuts. She did a lot of arugulas, some raw garlic, a few liquid aminos, nutritional yeast, and then some pine nuts. But not a lot of pine nuts. She blended it like crazy, put it in jars, and kept it for so long that it fermented. It was delicious, and it lasted for a while in the fridge. But we would take that, scoop it, and slap it on our bowls. So that's my favorite pesto. But see how it's so easy. You can do pasta with basil, but you can also do it with other herbs. You can play around with it. But, as you said, play up the spiciness, and that's fun. 

[0:20:56.2] Mark Reinfeld: You could also do an oil-free pasta. I like to put some avocado in there too. That gives it some of that oil. And it's one of the ways that I encourage people to get creative and break out of the recipe trap by viewing recipes as templates or the underlying formula. With the pesto like you mentioned, you could replace the basil with arugula, or you could also use parsley or cilantro. So there are tons of ways to make pesto.

[0:21:28.0] Ashley James: I sometimes hit that wall where I'm just burnt out. I have a great selection of things in the kitchen, but I get stuck in that trap where I repeatedly cook the same few meals. What is a great unique recipe, maybe from one of your books? We can talk about your books. What's a great recipe that shakes it up and gets people out of their food routine where they got burnt out?

[0:22:02.4] Mark Reinfeld: That is a great question, too. Depending on the type of dish, I like getting creative by using a seed and a nut crust on dishes. You could do an encrusted portobello mushroom. I like doing it with tofu cutlets, where you could use things like macadamia nuts or hemp seeds to make these flavorful mixtures that could then be added to give that texture of a crunch to different vegetables and tofu as well. So the super firm tofu is my go-to for that. 

[0:22:41.7] Ashley James: I love it, and I love that idea of a portobello because I like marinating portobellos with balsamic and then roasting them in the oven with other vegetables. They've got a flavor that a Portobello will absorb. This was way before I became plant-based. A vegetarian friend once told me she ate a portobello mushroom at some event. It was like a vegan wedding. She goes, that portobello was marinated like it was steak. She said it was so delicious. And she talked to the chef, and they did marinate it as if it were steak. So they chopped up some onion, garlic, and all these herbs in a balsamic and wine and had them all soaking in there. I don't know for how long, but as long as you would marinate a mushroom. Then they roasted them or grilled them, and it was just mouthwatering.

My husband, a meat eater, just woke up about 5 or 6 years ago and said I would never eat meat again. It's just that something switched his brain, and I would have lost that bet. If someone had told me when I met my husband that he'd one day not eat meat because that's all he ate and he hated vegetables, he just switched like 100% overnight, and his personality went from 100% meat. He will tell a joke about vegans all suddenly becoming one. And so I had to learn on the fly because I cook all the food in the house. I had to learn how to cook this way. On day three, I served him something, and he said this tasted so good. He goes, vegetables taste so good. If you had told me that this would taste as good, I would have quit meat years ago. It has worked for him. In the show, I don't like pushing any diet dogma. I believe in using food as medicine. If you can find healing by introducing more nutrients into your diet, that's great. And so we look to power couples, like you and your wife, where you're combining medicine and culinary skills to help enrich our health through making delicious food. So I've put you on the spot long enough.

[0:25:01.6] Mark Reinfeld: That's good, and I'm reflecting on it also. One of my really big tips is to create global spice blends or to utilize global spice blends, which is a big part of vegan fusion cuisine, which is my cooking style. And so, it could be as simple as purchasing the Caucasian mix, Ethiopian mix, or Moroccan mix. There are a lot of pre-made spice blends, and I love sharing how to make global spice blends that open the door to a whole world of cuisine for people. So if you're in a culinary rot, getting familiar with some of these spice blends, you could turn simple stews and soups into this whole array of world cuisine. So that's another one of the ways to break out of a routine.

[0:25:54.0] Ashley James: I have never actually gotten into Ethiopian food, and everyone kept telling me to try it. So I bought some Ethiopian spice blend and put it on plain potatoes from the instapot. I cut up some potatoes, steamed them, sprinkled them, and was blown away. I've never had these flavors this way, and it's interesting how the spices overlap with India. Because of the spice trade they were creating, there's that overlap. It wasn't curry. But there's a bit of overlap with some of the same spices they used in Indian food. But I loved it. I love that idea. In America, we are so used to doing more Italian or BBQ. But then, jumping over to two different cultures and trying their herbs, you could cook the same food, like potatoes, add those herbs, and bring it up to a whole new level. Or sometimes, eat steamed vegetables, then sprinkle some herbs on them. It doesn't have to be super complicated. Sometimes I'm just in a rush, and I throw a bunch of vegetables in and steam them, and then I can choose whatever spice blend to sprinkle on top, which changes the whole experience. 

[0:27:16.3] Mark Reinfeld: Yup, it's one of my big tips. 

[0:27:19.2] Ashley James: So, as you and your wife have worked together, can you tell us how that has worked in terms of helping people reclaim their health? How does the dynamic of a naturopathic physician and a chef bringing their skills together work?

[0:27:40.7] Mark Reinfeld: We formed our business called The Doctor and The Chef, which makes sense given she's a doctor, and I'm a chef. It's like pairing plant-based cuisine with natural remedies and plant-based nutrition, and it's like a return to the origins of medicine. As you said, food is medicine. You touched on it earlier by saying a doctor alone can tell you what to eat and maybe why to eat it. But combining that with the chef, who has decades of experience, can create the flavors people enjoy, making it sustainable. That's what we love doing, as we like taking people from wherever they're at from the beginning. So in our course, we start with me pointing to the kitchen. That's where the kitchen is. And then we get to the kitchen and the knife; this is the sharp end of the knife. So this is where you hold the knife. So we start with background zero and then guide people to make these changes stick. So that's what it's all about for us. Food is a core part of what can bring us health, mental clarity, and energy. And so, utilizing the principles of plant-based nutrition and making it taste good is the absolute winning combo.

[0:29:14.3] Ashley James: Has your wife ever been into plant-based nutrition? She's a doctor, so she's got to look at the science behind it, right? So tell us a bit about how she decided as a doctor that this is the best way to help people heal. 

[0:29:29.4] Mark Reinfeld: She has a unique journey. She went to a naturopathic medical school in Portland, and they are not so much into plant-based nutrition there. In her studies and reading, she realized the importance of plant-based foods and the phytonutrient and creating a healthy microbiome. And there are also other aspects of why people eat more plant-based. And so, it's the combination of her nutritional knowledge, understanding, and other beliefs surrounding preserving the environment. So when we met, she studied for years to get her doctorate and then realized I needed to learn how to cook. I need to know how to make the food, and that's what my calling has been. That's how she came to it. And then realize the importance of showing people the need to reclaim our health. And a big part of that comes from learning how to prepare our food. It's wonderful if you have access to prepared food in your community or good restaurants that you can order from. But nothing compares to the kind of love and attention you could put into creating your own meals, and you could decide how much salt to put in. So, things like that help control your health.

[0:31:10.5] Ashley James: You're making a good point that most people eat takeout or go to restaurants. I have a form that all my clients fill out when they start working with me. It asks what percentage of their meals are home-cooked. I very rarely ever see where it says 100%. Most people are between zero home-cooked meals, and there are a few people who say I eat 100% take out, then there are some people who go; even though I eat at home, I'm eating one hundred percent packaged pre-made foods. I have to open a can to eat or microwave something from the freezer. And then some people say, okay, about 75%. So it's rare that I even get someone saying 90%. Then usually, when I start talking to them, they usually realize that even though they wrote down 90%, it's more like 50% of their meals are eaten out, like every morning it's Starbucks and then breakfast sandwich, and every lunch is Subway sandwich. So, that kind of thing, like wait, I'm only eating seven meals at home a day which is my dinner, and then half of that I'm bringing home takeout. 

It really adds up, and I think we have a blind spot. Like when we stopped looking at our bank account. Have you ever done this in your life at any point? There are a lot of people who are responsible for their bank accounts. But have you at any point, maybe when you were a teenager or in your twenties, don't look? And if I don't look, there's money in there, and we don't get in touch with the numbers. So when we go unconscious of certain areas of our life, like going unconscious with our finances or going unconscious with our eating, that's when drama happens, right? Like you've got drama from bills or drama from health because we are eating more and more processed food even though we may not admit it to ourselves. 

And with the problem with processed food, especially eating at restaurants, you can attest to this as a chef and someone who's run restaurants. The restaurant owners are not bad, but they don't think about your health. Like, I've got to make sure I select the highest quality oil, and I have to make sure I pay the most for this organic produce that's locally grown and the most nutritious oil. They're thinking about the cheapest oil possible, especially because prices have doubled for restaurants and the cheapest GMO pesticide-filled foods, and then they put oil in everything. You get rice from a Mexican restaurant, and it is covered in that very cheap oil, and it's very unhealthy, and we know now it causes cancer, right? This is where I had to have a little come-to-Jesus talk with myself last year. You don't see the chain of custody even when you're ordering out and think you're making good choices. You don't know the quality of this food if it's GMO or not, or if it's organic, or talking to be organic if the restaurant doesn't say it's organic. And then, on top of that, it's covered in these low-grade, low-quality oils. So anything that isn't you cooking from scratch, you don't know the chain of custody, and the quality is just not there. That's filled with pesticides, and we don't know.

[0:34:50.7] Mark Reinfeld: Agreed. 

[0:34:51.8] Ashley James: It comes back to, we need to arm ourselves with really quick, simple, delicious healing recipes so that it is almost as easy as ordering takeout. It's like a door dash. It seems more complicated than just dashing into the kitchen and throwing something together this delicious. We need that. But when we start to feel better, we understand why it's so important. Then committing to 15 minutes in the kitchen every day, or 20 minutes in the kitchen every day, then that's like, okay, now I can be on board. We got to start shifting over to increasing more home-cooked meals. So I love that it's what you're doing because I've had doctors tell me this: I can't come home with you and get you to do these changes yourself. I could tell you what to do based on your lab results, based on the science of the studies, but I'll see you in six months, and good luck. But you're taking the patients, and you're like, alright, here's a chopping block, and here's an onion. Let's get going. 

[0:36:08.3] Mark Reinfeld: Definitely, yeah. We have two kids, so quick and easy is my mantra in the kitchen. I want to get the meal done in 20 minutes, and as you know, the books are called The 30-minute Vegan, and there are four books in the series. So for years, that's been a priority. And never more than now, with two kids and a pretty busy lifestyle, it's all about minimizing the dishes and maximizing the flavor.

[0:36:39.3] Ashley James: Many people think the word vegan means healthy, and it isn't. There are a lot of unhealthy vegan foods. I talked to many clients who said, ” Oh, I was vegan, or I was vegetarian in the past, ” and it made me worse. Way back when I was a teenager, I tried to be a vegetarian. The word vegan didn't even exist in the 90s. As far as I was concerned, it was vegetarian. I tried to be a vegetarian a few times, and each time within a month, I'd gain weight. I was feeling horrible. And I thought I was making the right choice because all I was doing was eating fast food without meat. So I was eating pizza. And I knew that dairy was not good for me, but I was like, pizza is vegetarian, and that's healthy. This is coming from a sixteen-year-old who wants to try vegetarianism. And I tried to get it at nineteen and twenty. But every time, I got more and more unhealthy. So then, that means eating meat is healthy. But I ate way more processed food because I lacked culinary skills, so I switched over.

Many people think vegan isn't healthy, and it doesn't mean you're healthy. So what you're doing is helping us learn how to include super nutrient-dense foods into our lives in a way that will be incredibly healing for us. I'm going to put you on the spot again. I'll prepare myself to take a deep breath. Since you have two kids, what recipes do you have that are kid full proof? What are some excellent, go-to recipes for anyone with a picky eater or kids?

[0:38:42.0] Mark Reinfeld: I'll share that. I want to comment on the going vegetarian thing. A lot of times, that is the case when people say they went vegan or plant-based, and it didn't work for them, and on further inquiry, they became pastatarian, and they were eating a ton of pasta, and Oreos or vegan, for instance. So that's an excellent point. And as far as kids, one of our sons will eat anything literally. Like he'll eat fistfuls of cooked spinach, our other son will contemplate a grain of rice from six different angles before he eats it. So I put him in the picky eater category. And for us, it's trying to discover what works for him. It's like a balance of the mental health side of it, to not wanting to put pressure on them or have the dinner be stressful. He happens to love the way I cook tofu. So I do a simple marinade with tamari and a little oil. You can leave the oil out and roast it at 375 for about 20 minutes; he loves eating that. The vegetable that he does like is steamed broccoli. It's just discovering that he does like his hummus sandwiches. Like your son, he likes raw vegetables. He's comfortable eating half a dozen cherry tomatoes. So as parents, we're just trying to nurture the foods that he does want to eat and do our best to get the good foods in. He likes avocados too. So we're fortunate in that there are some healthy foods that he does want to eat. But you probably know the hiding trick, also. So if your kid doesn't like avocado, and if he likes peanut butter and jelly, you could get a thin layer of avocado under the peanut butter. There are ways to sneak the food in, and that's our strategy. I wish I had more to share.

[0:40:58.7] Ashley James: No, that's great. I like it. I have snuck some things. My son is almost eight and is open compared to other children. But I've made some fun things. He's allergic to avocados now, which is sad because he loved them when he was younger. But who knew that somebody could develop an allergy to avocado? I used to make avocado chocolate pudding, and you can also do the same with yams. You know those yams that are nice and orange, right? And I would bake them till they're done being baked. And then, take the skin off and throw it into the food processor with some plant-based milk and some date syrup or stevia maple syrup. The maple syrup is my favorite because it gives a little smoky flavor or the date syrup. You don't have to put a lot because the potatoes are already sweet. You don't have to put in a lot at all. You could try it without, and then just put organic cacao powder and blend that. And you do not need to put in a lot of plant-based milk at all. I blended that like crazy, and then I would serve him bowls of this for dinner. And he's like, hahaha, I get chocolate for dinner, and I'm like, hahaha, he's eating an entire sweet potato, the entire yam. But he likes it as it is anyway. But it's so much fun. If you want to blend some gentle greens like spinach, it is really easy because it's such a gentle flavor to mask in there. 

I used to make “ice cream” in the summertime, where I'll take frozen fruits and a little bit of coconut milk from the can so it's nice and thick. I'll blend some greens with the banana and the blueberries well, making this wonderful, rich sorbet. That's, of course, with the vitamix except it's green. That's how I do it with spinach, kale, or whatever. But I can't do it on kale because it has a distinct flavor. But I get lots of greens in there. And then I'm like, look, it's mint ice cream. Yeah, it's fruity, and he eats it. It's a great way to sneak the vegetables in as well. He always likes it, but if sometimes I overdo the vegetables, he looks at me like, this is more green than usual, and he now knows. He knows I'm getting more vegetables in him. But he will readily eat a bowl of raw vegetables. He'll attack the kale on the way home or sometimes while we're still in the grocery cart. He'll sit in the grocery cart and start eating the kale before we have even paid for them. We're going to be paying for them. It's by the bush, not the pound, so it's okay. But he'll attack the raw leaves, so I feel blessed. But he is also a picky eater. Roasting vegetables is your friend because it can get super delicious, easy, and quick. So that's a lot of fun. 

Now, you talked about microbiomes. Your wife is interested in helping people build their health from the ground up, knowing that gut health is the most important thing. Do you have any recipes she encourages her patients to use to build a strong microbiome?

[0:44:39.4] Mark Reinfeld: Her main suggestion is variety. So we do an exercise to see how many different foods you can eat in a week. And that, from her perspective, is one of the best ways to create a healthy microbiome.

[0:45:03.3] Ashley James: Love it. Is that a variety of cooked and raw? How did she go about bringing that up? 

[0:45:09.6] Mark Reinfeld: It could be cooked and raw, and it ties into the question that you also mentioned about the kids doing superfood smoothies, and our kids love that too as a great way to get nutrients and a variety of ingredients in. So we put some of the superfoods like hemp seeds and chia seeds. So we do maca powder and other greens to get both varieties in starting our day. So that's the other one of my recommendations, along with the spice blends, for how people could get started using those superfood smoothies.

[0:46:00.7] Ashley James: Love it. Yeah, you can ramp up the smoothies. I've had Green Smoothie Girl, Robyn Openshaw, on the show before, and I've been on her show. She was sick. It was in her early twenties. Since she had a child that failed to thrive, she remembered what her grandmother had done. This is like, did they even invent blenders back then with her grandmother exactly doing concentrated drinks with vegetables? This was before the word smoothie was even created. And she remembered hearing the story about what her grandmother was doing, and it helped her. So intuitively, she went to the kitchen, threw vegetables and fruits into a blender, blended it, and just started drinking it. Her child, a young toddler, saw her drinking this and wanted it. And then she's like, oh, I don't know. So she tried not to give it to the kid to see what happened. And the kid's like, no, I want this. And she's like, okay, like reverse psychology on the toddler. And the toddler loved it. And so she gave it daily to her toddler, and the toddler went from failing to thriving fully. And she got her health back. 

All her children and the whole family grew up having these green smoothies. But the variety of what you put in it is essential, like just rotating everything. She raised a bunch of kids, and the first thing she did before she cooked dinner was chop up a ton of different vegetables, make a big vegetable platter, and just put it on the table. And I love this idea, especially for teenagers. It's like when you're hungry when you come home from school or work. Imagine if there was just this beautiful vegetable platter, with some other dips already made for you, and you could sit there and snack. Even though some of her kids ended up rejecting healthy stuff, wanting fries instead, and being picky eaters, they all would snack on and graze on all the vegetables. So by the time she was finished cooking, they had all gotten a bunch of vegetables in them. 

So, I tried this with our son, and it works. I tried this with my husband too. So I would chop up a bunch of carrots and all the kinds of raw stuff and put it in containers and a timer on the go, and I'm like, grab your carrots. 

[0:48:36.9] Mark Reinfeld: That's a wonderful idea. That's great. 

[0:48:38.9] Ashley James: Grab your carrots and celery sticks. It's just great because sometimes we'll be going out to run errands, which turns into an entire day out, especially when I go grocery shopping. I'm hungry and tired and don't want to sit and cook. I want food now. The worst habit to get into is running your errands and then using that as an excuse to eat takeout, especially if you've gone through all the trouble to buy all this healthy stuff for yourself. So always have freshly cut vegetables put away and prepared for you, and then grab them on the go, especially just apple slices sometimes. We will snack on them in the car and between our errands, and then we'll feel really good and be energized. And I'll likely want to cook a nice, big meal when we get home from all the errands or running around. So just these little tiny habits such as taking a few minutes can save you a ton of money because eating out is expensive.

[0:49:42.7] Mark Reinfeld: Grocery shopping when you're hungry is off. My wife can always tell when I will pick up all these random items that I normally wouldn't, because I was hungry when I was shopping. So that's a good tip.

[0:49:58.5] Ashley James: We're like hunter-gatherers, right? So we're just hunter-gathering in the grocery store. And of course, if you're hungry, that part of your body is like I'm just going to gather more. Whatever it is, I'm just going to gather more of it. My wallet has definitely felt bad, so you had to eat before you go grocery shopping. That's a good one. So you guys have been teaching people for years how to transform their habits in their kitchen to heal their bodies. Now you got these courses coming out, and I want to touch on both of them, but Living Beyond Cancer is near and dear to my heart. My mom died of cancer. One of my best friends died of cancer. I've seen so many people, and I also know people who have survived. Not to be so grand, but I've had several friends who beat cancer. But I've seen the amount of suffering that people go through and how important food can play a role in their healing. So tell us about your course that's coming up. What led you guys to want to pair with an oncologist to create this course? 

[0:51:09.2] Mark Reinfeld: It's a deep topic that is not to enter lightly. My wife lost her brother to cancer, and I've lost family members to cancer. Dr. Robert Ellis is a board-certified medical oncologist and integrative medicine specialist. He's a third-generation oncologist. His grandmother was an herbalist who specialized in it. And so he's been in practice for 30 years. The course is focused on remission and survivorship. So it's really geared towards maximizing and enhancing life when you're in remission and during survivorship. He actually took a course of mine several years ago in Portland, and he recently retired. We created a course together for continuing medical education. He's part of the Oregon Society of Physicians, Osteopaths, and Surgeons. We did a CME course together, where he would lecture on plant-based cuisine for half the day, and then we would take the doctors and nurses into the kitchen. I would show them these simple tools that I share on how to make the food taste good. So that's how he reached out after he retired, and wanted to work together again. 

Ashley and I developed this nourish program, and so we thought to combine forces to create this program, Living Beyond Cancer. Basically, it uses all the recommendations from the American Society of Clinical Oncology in the National Institute of Health, and also the recommended lifestyle modifications of MD Anderson on survivorship. A lot of it relies on proper nutrition. So the course focuses on the first pillar of plant-based nutrition which is what Ashley and I specialize in, and Dr. Ellis has had a lot of success bringing in the other pillars, which are mindfulness and exercise. He likes to say that the way to maximize survivorship is going from the couch to the kitchen to learn how to cook. The couch to the cushion to create some form of mindfulness and stress reduction practice, and then the couch to 5K where you build up, to where you could walk up to 5K. So we're really excited and honored to be working with Dr. Ellis, and it is a matter that's near and dear to our hearts.

[0:54:19.1] Ashley James: That's brilliant. So listeners, you definitely got to share Living Beyond Cancer with all your friends and family who are battling cancer or who are on the other side of it and now rebuilding their bodies after battling cancer. It's such a juggernaut. I have had many interviews with holistic health professionals, including oncologists who kind of gone rogue. I've had at least one oncologist who had his license taken away because he was too busy helping people cure themselves and not radiating them. So you always want to find the doctors who are being mavericks in their field while getting results because the status quo is not good. The survival rates are not acceptable. I want 100% success and the body has an amazing ability to heal itself, and we've seen that. There are outstanding results you can get, but you have to go outside the conventional system to get them. Even just outside of North America or I should say Canada and America because in Mexico, there are a lot more choices there, but out in Europe they use treatments in their hospitals that science has proven to work and oncologists are not legally allowed to use them here. So why would a country not let doctors use therapies that are not drug-based, are cheap to administer, and have incredible results that do not harm the patients? And yet only allow them to do surgery, radiation, and drug-based therapies that have horrible side effects. And speaking with an oncologist, she said that chemotherapy has a 2% chance of giving you a different kind of cancer, like leukemia, for example. If you want any kind of chemotherapy, and I'm sure it's different between each one, but just across the board, that's two out of a hundred people. At first, it doesn't sound like a lot, but it actually is a lot. Because if there is a 2% chance that there's a bullet in the gun that you're holding to your head, you're not pulling the trigger. I don't care if it sounds like a little, but two percent is a lot. And yet there are natural treatments that are incredibly effective, that have no negative side effects like causing other cancers, and they are illegal to use or administer for the oncologist to even give out here in the United States. So it is a for-profit industry. We're being censored to the point of not being given all the information in the mainstream. That's why I do what I do to spread this information. But hospitals in Europe are doing treatments that are not being allowed to be done here, and they're doing them successfully. It just breaks my heart to think of how many grandmas, moms, dads, and brothers are suffering, because they go to the oncologist and the well-meaning oncologist who wants to help are limited in what they can offer you because of the way the system is setup. They are limited in what they can offer you. 

So here we have, putting the power back in the hands of the people. You're doing Living Beyond Cancer. But, of course, that is giving them the tools to slowly build their life back and get walking and heal themselves, decreasing stress and increasing nutrients from their food. So this is good. 

I saw it over and over again when one of my friends battled cancer. It's a long story, but she battled it for a long time holistically, and she ran out of money, got too tired and tried chemo and radiation, and died almost immediately from that. But she lived for quite a while doing it. She lived with it for a long time. And then the radiation just puts holes through her body. I wouldn't do that to my worst enemy. But she noticed that on the months that she was stressed out, all her numbers would get worse and her tumor would hurt, and it would grow. Then in the months that she really focused on eating healthy and exercising, just like walking in the woods, and decreasing stress, all her numbers would get better because she got blood work every month. Her tumor would shrink. The inflammation around her tumor would go down. Her pain would go away. It was just remarkable. One stress that would happen, and it was, boom! Everything would be just like losing a fraction of all the good stuff. So, stress is such a huge role and so is your nutrition. It plays such a huge role. So I love that you addressed that in your course. 

[0:59:40.7] Mark Reinfeld: He is like, you have your personal mission, and I have mine. Dr. Ellis has devoted his life to helping people navigate this landscape. He is a really amazing individual. Every time I talk to him, I'm inspired, specifically by this survivorship. And looking at the recommendations from major health institutions like MD Anderson, this fits with the recommended lifestyle modifications. So it's not like a fringe type of thing. These are things that major organizations recommend. And we're just really honored to be able to work with him to bring some of this information out.

[1:00:33.1] Ashley James: The major holistic alternative therapy treatment centers are out there. I'd love to have him on the show. I'd love to pick his brain. Definitely set that up; for sure, it's so cool.

[1:00:50.2] Mark Reinfeld: Yes, definitely. He'll light you on fire. He's very inspiring.

[1:00:55.2] Ashley James: Nice! We'll do that. So those who are listening and want to take a course, Living Beyond Cancer, and work with an oncologist that will light them on fire and get them super excited and take all the steps to healing their body and learning those tools, you want to check that out. The links to everything we're talking about today will be on the show notes of today's podcast at learntruehealth.com and in the podcast's description, wherever you're listening from.

The next course is Nourish Your Life. This is similar to the first one and not for people overcoming or rebuilding their bodies after cancer. So who is Nourish Your Life for? 

[1:01:35.5] Mark Reinfeld: This is for anyone who wants to incorporate more plant-based foods into their lives but needs help figuring out how to do it. So we developed this course, as I mentioned, for wherever people are at. We meet them where they're at. We do a 90-minute Zoom interactive presentation once a week for six weeks. And Ashley, Dr. Budai presents the nutrition side and gives people a basic understanding of plant-based nutrition. Do you often need that fortification of whether I am getting enough protein or calcium? Or what are the healthy fats? So it's a good solid understanding of plant-based nutrition. Each week of the program, I go through a really ground zero. This is the sharp end of the knife. This is how you stock your pantry. This is like a basic equipment list you could use to start. You could go with just a knife and a cutting board. So I like to encourage people to make it easy to move into this. So we set up a membership community where people can ask questions. 

Our mission is to help people sustain a plant-based lifestyle or include more plants in their lifestyle, whatever that turns out to be. As you said, the vegan police are not present in any of our classes. Everyone is welcome. I love seeing people light up when they realize I can cook. I can make this food taste good. I can prepare healthy food for my family. Ashley and I have 45 years of combined experience living a plant-based lifestyle. We share much of what works for us, and it becomes second nature. So the course is for anyone wanting to include more plants. We work with doctors who are busy cardiologists.

As you know, there are more studies and research that are coming out to show that a lot of the major health challenges that we are facing as a society, particularly cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension, and certain forms of cancer, can be prevented and reversed by including more plant-based foods in our diet. So busy doctors don't have time to show people what to do. They could say you need to eat more plant-based or reduce your meat consumption, but people must learn how to do it. So it's for anyone advised by their doctor for these conditions to include more plants. So that's who we love working with and helping.

[1:04:52.3] Ashley James: I've had cardiologists on the show who have reversed heart disease, unclogged arteries, using a whole food plant-based oil-free diet. But even the word plant-based, I think, is like the word vegan. It does not mean healthy because I can get a Beyond Burger or whatever burger. It falls into the vegan junk food category if you want to eat that. If you want to try it, go ahead. Beyond Burgers is safer than the other ones because the other ones have GMO ingredients or weird lab-based ingredients. But all those “plant-based” foods got these fake alternative meats, which is the same as going out and eating at a restaurant. You don't really know the chain of custody. They're not choosing the highest quality ingredients for you. You are way better off learning how to make your own lentil burger at home. 

I have done some amazing experiments. Be willing to burn food, like me. I hate wasting food, but be willing to make something bad and throw it out because you've learned. It's like you are Edison, and your meal is the light bulb. And you will get it the more you try, I promise you. 

[1:06:26.2] Mark Reinfeld: I like to say there are no mistakes in the kitchen. 

[1:06:29.1] Ashley James: There definitely are when you have many hungry family members waiting for you. But this is why you practice on your own time or make a backup meal if you're experimenting. It's so funny because I always experiment. My husband looks at me sideways, like, am I the guinea pig today? I'll hand him something, and I keep smiling at him, but in the back of my mind, I want to say you might not like it because I burnt it or overseasoned dinner. He's taught me just to shut up and smile at him and wait till he says something.

[1:07:05.5] Mark Reinfeld: Like I used to say, there are no mistakes in the kitchen. If you go to a restaurant with a smokey navy bean soup, someone may have burnt the navy beans earlier in the day, or you could call it rustic if it doesn't come out quite the way you wanted it to. So I really like that. In all my classes, I encourage people to keep a positive attitude, be gentle with themselves, and keep trying. I like the Edison metaphor. That's great. 

[1:07:41.9] Ashley James: So I remember these burgers I made were so good and were just three ingredients. I know it's all ⅓ of something, like ⅓ brown rice, ⅓ black beans, and ⅓ quinoa. I just blended it together. You can probably do ½ cooked brown rice, ½ of some bean, and then blend it. And I added a bunch of chipotle-style Tex-Mex kind of spices and squished them into patties on a parchment paper baking sheet. I baked them until they were crunchy on the outside but not burnt. I sliced a bunch of avocados, and I also had in the fridge a mango salsa, which is from Costco. This is the one thing that I didn't do. It's a little bit spicy. Then I took a beautiful purple cabbage, and I took the brawl leaves off. So that became the burger. It was so easy to make. 

It was really beautiful because of the purple leaf. And then I put the patty in the leaf and the greens. So you got the purple, the green, and the brown, and then I covered it with this beautiful salsa. You pull over the purple cabbage and eat it. The burger is still hot, so you have the hot burger and a little bit of the crunch. And then you have that sweetness and smoothness of the avocado and the cold crunch of the cabbage. It was delicious. We had guests over, and I'm just throwing something together, and we'll see what happens. And we ate all of it. Everyone wanted seconds and thirds. It was so beautiful. I would take that over Beyond Burger or some Frankenstein, lab-created fake meat. Just try rice and beans.

[1:10:08.0] Mark Reinfeld: You'd be great as a cookbook author because that perfectly describes the food. You used a lot of good descriptive adjectives. 

[1:10:16.7] Ashley James: Nice. All right, maybe I have a future in that. Thank you. 

[1:10:21.6] Mark Reinfeld: The purple cabbage is funny because my sister got my son to eat purple cabbage just by calling them cabalicious chips. Somehow now, he likes purple cabbage just because they're called that.

[1:10:39.9] Ashley James: Yes, you do have to play around with words with kids for them to like it. And that is funny. Last night, he really wanted to eat bok choy. I didn't have any, but I had napa cabbage. I'm like, here, I bought you his cousin. And I handed him a bunch of washed leaves of napa cabbage. He looked at me, ate it, and said, yeah, this thing is related to bok choy.

[1:11:06.0] Mark Reinfeld: Very cool. 

[1:11:07.1] Ashley James: You got to play with it. And I like that idea of variety because I've heard from many doctors that different plants' fiber feeds the gut bacteria. And so it really is that variety of both cooked and raw from organic sources. That would be great if you could get more than thirty of that variety. Some indigenous cultures live off the land, and they're not vegan. If they get to kill a pig, which doesn't happen often, most of their diet comes from foraging, and they eat over a hundred different varieties. And these are the tribal people that we're discovering have the most diverse gut microbiome and are the healthiest. And those microbiomes are missing from the Western world because of antibiotics, like lactobacillus rotor, which has been completely wiped out from the Western population because even one dose of antibiotics will wipe it out. They have seen the correlation between eating more variety of plants with a more diverse microbiome, which leads to a stronger foundation of health. 

[1:12:22.2] Mark Reinfeld: It might have been thirty a day. 

[1:12:27.8] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. We must have Dr. Ashley on the show when she returns from her trip. I would love to have her on the show and have her share some of her science and what she loves about using plant-based to heal the body. You did talk a little bit about your books. Tell us more about your books. Which one is your absolute favorite? If we could only get one of your books, which would be the life-changing of all of them?

[1:12:53.3] Mark Reinfeld: That's a good one. That's a really tough question. It's like asking who your favorite kid is. The first book, which is out of print, which I co-authored with Bo Rinaldi, Vegan World Fusion Cuisine, is the summation. At the time, that was a life workbook, a culmination of years of traveling and culinary exploration. It was magical when Bo and I met; he'd been traveling and was accomplished on his own. That book is out of print. If I had to say a book that's most readily available, it would be Healing the Vegan Way, which has over 200 recipes and contributions from many leading plant-based doctors and nutritionists. So many of them you would be familiar with. There are oil-free variations and gluten-free variations for all the recipes. It also has a nutrient reference chart that talks about which nutrients are essential for which body systems, like the cardiovascular, skeletal, and nervous systems, what the plant source of those nutrients are, and which of the recipe in the book provide those nutrients. So it's a fantastic reference guide. 

I know you asked me for my favorite, but the last book was the one that I co-authored with Ashley called The Ultimate Age-Defying Plan. It has a foreword by Dr. Klaper. And with that book, some recipes are seven ingredients or less. So it's straightforward and easy to follow. It also breaks it down based on the crucial nutrients for each body system, where and how to get them, and what recipes provide them. So that's the one I'd like to give as a giveaway. It's The Ultimate Age-Defying Plan. 

[1:15:06.3] Ashley James: Oh, that is so nice of you. I'm so excited. Will you give us a link so we can download it? 

[1:15:12.4] Mark Reinfeld: I could send you a copy. But it's like a giveaway to someone.

[1:15:22.4] Ashley James: Okay, so here's the thing. You're going to give away that book, seven ingredients or less, which you've written with your wife, a naturopathic physician, where you're making nutrient and healing recipes. I want listeners to go to the Facebook group learntruehealth.com/group. From there, I'll make a post. It'll be pinned to the top, and I'll ask you guys to say something, and I will have my son pick a person. I want to avoid having my bias pick the person. It will be random. But I'll open it up and say, okay, scroll through here. He can read now. I used to do this when he couldn't read, and he would pick people based on their profile pictures. Now, if your profile picture has an axolotl, he'll probably pick you.

But right now, whoever wants to be part of the giveaway, I'll have him pick someone, and then we'll get your address and send you the books. That's really generous, thank you. So off the top of your head, or you can grab the book, can you share a recipe or two from that book? I love the idea of the seven ingredients or less recipes. 

[1:16:55.7] Mark Reinfeld: Can you pick a type of dish that you would like?

[1:17:03.9] Ashley James: Do you have sections like salad, appetizers, entrees, and then desserts? You can open up the book randomly in different places.

[1:17:17.8] Mark Reinfeld: So here's a berry chia bowl with pomegranate I just opened to. It uses fruit-sweetened chia pudding with pomegranate, cacao nibs, cardamom, strawberries, and sweet and spicy plantains, an amazing food. It has chipotle powder, allspice cinnamon, cilantro, and lime juice. We have a macro meal using vegetable stock with the sea vegetable arame, roasted veggies, and adzuki beans. I have a pecan sage holiday loaf recipe, so you say it's making a casserole. I do list optional ingredients. The core ingredients are seven, but there is more if you want to do more. I have a chili peach pepper jam or ruby sauerkraut.

[1:18:35.6] Ashley James: I'm still back on the first recipe. So, I have this gift. I thought everyone could do this, and my husband pointed out that only some people do this. If you list ingredients, I can taste them. It's like synesthesia. Not only can I taste ingredients, but I can taste them when you mix them, and I can taste the final product when it's cooked, and in my head, I can taste it. I thought everyone could do that. So you're listing off these ingredients, and suddenly you throw in that cardamom, and I am drooling.

[1:19:04.4] Mark Reinfeld: That's one of my desert island spices, the stuck on a desert island with one spice. Chipotle powder is probably my one spice, but cardamom is a close second.

[1:19:18.2] Ashley James: Cardamom is so underutilized in the American diet, and you don't need a lot. There's just something about it. So you've got some really amazing, powerful flavors in these recipes. I'm also hearing the healing modalities in each recipe. You're going through pomegranates being incredibly high in antioxidants. They found this micro-blue zone in the United States where pomegranate was growing along the southwestern United States where the railroad was. Those from Asia brought over pomegranates, and as they built the railroad, they would spit the seeds out. So along the railroad, it's just miraculous, like Johnny Appleseed but with pomegranates. They found that they were just in this area, and it usually was poor farm towns where they lived off the land. So they were foraging all these pomegranates and eating them. And those who were growing up eating pomegranates their whole life, that micro blue zone, had more people living disease-free beyond one hundred, than those only a mile or two away that didn't have access to the pomegranates. I'm not saying it's the silver bullet to everything. But they're so good for you. So you can add them to your breakfast a few times a week. I love the cardamom with all those other flavors. I want to get your book now. 

Do you have any stories you want to share with us? You've been in this so long, and sometimes when we get in it, we forget how cool it is for someone to say, hey, I'll try using food as medicine. I'll try going plant-based, but not the twinkie plant-based, and the pasta kind of plant-based. It's the plant-based that's like, I'm going to play this game called “how much nutrition can I pack onto my plate every day,” as Dr. Joel Fuhrman talks about the nutritarian diet. So he's not necessarily saying you have to go vegan. So he's saying you must crowd your plate with the most phytonutrients, vitamins, and minerals you can possibly crowd your plate with and see how you feel after doing that for a while. 

That's why I love it because it's not about dogma. It's not about telling people they can't eat meat. It tells you you can eat these foods that contain antioxidants and are amazing for your gut, energy levels, and skin. So the list goes on and on. And as you said, some people are healing heart disease, healing their bodies from very common illnesses like type 2 diabetes, using this food. 

Do you have any success stories of people who reluctantly started eating this way, knowing they needed to heal their bodies, and then shared their results with you? 

[1:22:50.2] Mark Reinfeld: I do, actually. If you have 4 hours, I could keep talking about them. There are so many, but I'll start with the latest one. In my classes, there are people from all walks of life. I had a cattle rancher take my class, and she did a video testimonial. I don't think she realized what she was saying. She was saying on camera, well, everyone knows we should be eating less meat. It was one of those funny moments. But starting recently, in the class I'm doing, we have a retired Navy officer who then went into Homeland Security and retired. He basically found out he had diabetes, and his doctor said you're going to be on medication for the rest of your life. He did some research and came upon The China Study. He's not vegan, but he mainly ate plant-based and reversed his diabetes. He is no longer considered a diabetic. That was over a couple of year period. And then he returned to his doctor and said that my only change was changing my diet. They nod their head and say, that's great. It's like what we talked about earlier about the institutions and the recommendations that doctors have to make based on certain protocols. It's really frustrating when you see how many people's lives could be enhanced by making these changes to diet and lifestyle. 

I have this retired firefighter whose doctor said he had diabetes and needed to go on medication for the rest of his life. He was in Taiwan, where he called his wife and said, we're going vegan, and we're going plant-based. So he changed his diet and went back six months later to his doctor. The doctor was like, I've never seen anything like this before. I don't know what you're doing but still keep at it. He reversed. 

Another student came; he was very overweight and had diabetes. He was really concerned about taking my class, and he came. After the first day, he texted me and said his blood results had never been this good. And that was just after one day of eating plant-based, and then he went on. His story and the firefighter's is in the Healing the Vegan Way book. But he went on primarily raw foods, and he reversed his diabetes.

Another woman, who was only thirty years old or in her late twenties, had really high cholesterol, and her doctor said she needed to go on statins. And this is what you will deal with for the rest of your life. So she went plant-based. 

I've literally lost track. That's just off the top of my head of people who have made positive changes to their health. Even if it's not 100% vegan, it's just becoming, like you said, crowning it out, eating more plant-based, more nutrient-dense, and healthy plant-based foods. Things are slowly gaining traction, specifically with heart disease and cardiovascular disease. This is a very positive way that you can make changes for the better in preventing and reversing many of these diseases.

[1:26:55.2] Ashley James: Dr. Esselstyn is one of the doctors that published the world's longest study on reversing heart disease using diet. His book is incredible. I recommend just getting it for any of your family members who have any inkling of heart disease. Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease is the name of his book. I had him on the show. He was doing autopsies on twenty-year-old soldiers during the Vietnam War when he saw that heart disease was already occurring in them. So you can imagine that heart disease starts in our teenagers from the food we eat. I'm not pointing the finger and saying meat is bad. But, again, I don't want to paint this as a black-and-white thing. I'm not a vegan police. I'm saying that the standard American diet, filled with fried food and really bad, low-quality oils, is just saturated in all the food. If you want to eat healthily, buy rice and beans at a Mexican restaurant. It is filled with cancer-causing, heart-clogging oils. And this isn't my opinion. This is the science.

So Dr. Esselstyn figured out a way to reverse even up to four clogs in the heart. He had people with clogged sewer on their deathbeds and eating this way. It was a very simple way at first because he didn't have recipes. He was like, you stop eating all these foods and only eat these plants. And, of course, it was just plain and gross, and no one knew how to eat delicious back then. But those who stuck with it all reversed the heart disease super fast. 

I had a client who was going to lose his job, and he loved his career. But his career required him to be within certain parameters with his blood pressure and cholesterol. Even though he was healthy, muscular, and super-fit, his cholesterol and blood pressure were through the roof, and he was very quickly going to be laid off from his career. So he was desperate, and I gave him all this information. Here's what Dr. Esselstyn says, and you can choose to follow that. But I've seen him get the fastest results in one month of eating this way. His blood pressure and cholesterol were within normal parameters, and he got to keep his job. And he loves his job, so for him, it was worth it. And just that kind of how quickly someone can reverse the health condition or can get back into normal parameters; I'm so excited to see that. 

You mentioned statin, and I have to say this because many people don't know this. I had a doctor on the show who's not plant-based. He's a cardiologist, a research scientist Ph.D., and his name is Dr. Fleming. He invented the Fleming test or the Fleming method. He's been saying for 30 years that the beginnings of heart disease and cancer are the same. The beginnings are the detection of inflammation. He's very upfront about being pro-drugs, but he can't deny the evidence that food affects our health because so many doctors say, ” Oh, you have to be on a drug. Diet's not going to affect that. Really? So food doesn't affect our health, but drugs will? But he believes that food plays a role in healing. But he looks at it from the medical standpoint. So he invented the test that hospitals use to detect heart disease, the quickest and the soonest way when it is in the earliest stages of heart disease and long before you've seen massive clogs in the arteries. And his whole thing is understanding that the beginnings of heart disease start years before as inflammation and that he sees that the foods we eat are causing the inflammation. So we need to create a diet that decreases inflammation and can reverse these illnesses. 

But here's the thing about statin drugs. Long ago, they were saying cholesterol is the cause of heart disease. Dr. Fleming and other mavericks in the research world were being canceled. So there's cancel culture back then because they said no, it's not. It is a symptom of it, as it happens later down the road. But we see inflammation early on, and then cluster occurs down the road. It is not the beginning cause. It is something that happens because of heart disease. Cholesterol deposits aren't the actual cause. It happens because of heart disease. They were saying giving people statins is not going to solve the problem. So we need to back up and go down earlier up the stream to the origins. 

Back when they first introduced statin drugs up until about 10 years ago, so for at least 20 years, they required that you had to get a blood test every six months to make sure that your liver wasn't being too damaged by the statins. This is how statins work. Your body makes cholesterol. So I get my fat from wholefood plants, so I'm eating an avocado, not the avocado oil. I'm eating flax seed and not the flax seed oil. I'm eating an olive instead of olive oil. But I choose not to eat super high fat foods all day long. So I'm eating naturally low fat. Cholesterol is so important to us. It's the building blocks of your sex hormones, your stress hormones. It is what protects our nervous system. It's the myelin sheath that goes around like an installation around our nervous system and it makes up every single cell wall in the body. We've got over 37.2 trillion cells that require cholesterol to make the cell wall healthy. So we need to have healthy cholesterol. If you don't eat it, your body is going to break down the food you eat and make cholesterol. The liver is responsible for doing that. 

So the doctors would take your blood and go, oh look, bad cholesterol. We have to lower your cholesterol. And instead of saying, by the way, maybe you should stop eating pro-inflammatory foods that are oxidizing your cholesterol causing LDL. Low density lipoprotein is a sign of oxidation in the body which is a free radical damage, like increasing antioxidant-rich foods and getting your fat from healthier sources, getting some good exercise in there, as well as all the lifestyle changes you can do. They just said okay, we're going to create a drug that damages your liver so much. It bruises your liver so much, it ceases to function correctly and it stops producing cholesterol. But they didn't tell you to stop eating it. This doesn't make any sense to me because if the problem was too much cholesterol, they never said stop eating the cholesterol, or stop eating the foods that cause the inflammation, and that cause the oxidative stress to the fat that's loaded with lipoprotein. They're saying, let's just damage your liver. If the pharmaceutical company was completely like this, it's so obvious that they showed their hand. How obvious do you have to be? These doctors have good intentions to help you. I've asked every cardiologist I had on the show if statins make a difference, and they say they do more harm than good. There's only one study that shows that if you took statins after your first heart attack, you'll be less likely to get your second heart attack. But I'm like, by the time you're having your first attack, there's some major damage and we need to reverse some stuff. But all these cardiologists said, statins do not prevent the first heart attack. It's damaging the liver. 

But you brought up statins, and I think it's a really good point to take a step back and say, wait a second. I need to question everything I've been taught about food, healing, and medicine. I have to start thinking for myself and start looking around with what's working. And what we see work is taking that nutritarian approach of using the most nutrient-dense rich foods or fiber rich foods and adding those to our plate. That's what we're seeing really works. 

[1:36:57.4] Mark Reinfeld: It's like the future of medicine is returning to the origins of medicine and Hippocrates saying, let food be your medicine. I think you come full circle to realize the important role that choosing the right foods plays in our overall health.

[1:37:14.7] Ashley James: Isn't that wild? Do you have any go-to recipes for your own healing? If you have a headache, do you like to reach for the coconut water? Or if you injured yourself, do you make sure to add turmeric to your food. Do you have any first aid foods that you incorporate in your life? 

[1:37:37.2] Mark Reinfeld: I would say making turmeric milk, or gold milk. My sister has done a lot of healing and has come across studies of the core foods to include and the turmeric milk is definitely one that I noticed helped me pass through if there's something going around here. I just dose up on the turmeric milk. You can make a really simple tumeric paste with powdered turmeric and a little ground black pepper. And I like cardamom. Whenever I could put cardamom in something, I do. So I put a little cardamom and cinnamon, and some cayenne in it as well and you could just mix that with water to form a paste. I feel having some warm plant-based milk helps me kick the latest thing that was going around. 

[1:38:44.4] Ashley James: I love that. I do something really similar and we call it moon tea, but I make a concentrate of it. I can send you my recipe. This is after me playing with it. But I'm going to try adding cardamom. I haven't done that. But I'll add some ashwagandha, some mushroom powder, and also ginger and clove. They are antiviral and antiparasitic. And ashwagandha is so great for sleep. So I do all that and I make a concentrate. I take a scoop of it, put it in hot water, and then a little bit of coconut milk. You can add a little bit of date syrup or stevia if you want. My favorite is a little bit of maple. I'm Canadian, okay. 

[1:39:35.4] Mark Reinfeld: Maple syrup is my go-to sweetener too. What form is the ashwagandha? Is it the powdered form? 

[1:39:43.8] Ashley James: It's powder. 

[1:39:45.3] Mark Reinfeld: Okay. 

[1:39:46.2] Ashley James: If there's a better way, tell me, because I just buy a big bag of organic ashwagandha powder. 

[1:39:51.8] Mark Reinfeld: Okay, that's cool. Yeah, we have the tincture. 

[1:39:54.1] Ashley James: Okay, yeah. You know you're definitely getting a more concentrated amount. I already sleep really well, but I go to bed on my side and I wake up on the same side when I drink the stuff. I don't know if it's just because of the turmeric that's anti-inflammatory or it's coupled with the ashwagandha. I have an amazing bed that absorbs all the pressure points, and doesn't cause any pressure points. I have a whole interview about this technology that they invented originally to cure bed sores. So I can actually fall asleep and stay asleep for 8 hours on my shoulder and on my hip and and have no pain the next day. But I'll fall asleep in one position, and I'll stay asleep the whole night. If I drink this stuff, it's like I did not move the entire night. 

[1:40:50.3] Mark Reinfeld: I love to check that out. That's amazing. The food is crucial and the sleep is very important. And that reminds me of something called The Nourish Plan, and we go through that in in the book, The Age-Defying Plan. But sleep is definitely a core principle for health. Pushed in a corner, I might even say sleep is the most important. They all fit together, but I'm glad you touched on the sleep topic. 

[1:41:31.2] Ashley James: Yes, the S is in the beginning. You have to come up with the word that meant nourish but started with an S.

[1:41:36.5] Mark Reinfeld: Well, that's what the S is for.

[1:41:40.5] Ashley James: Can you tell us what the other ones are for?

[1:41:44.6] Mark Reinfeld: Yeah, the N is for nutrition. So that's looking at the food and energy and phytonutrient that comes from plants. O is for oxytocin, which is just feeling the happiness hormone and feeling that sense of joy and connection. The U is for use it or lose it. So that's where the movement and the exercise or whatever can fit into your life. It doesn't have to be pumping iron all the time. The R is for relationships. So it's the importance of our fast-paced, digital culture, like the real importance of having that connection to others and the support of friends in your community. We all have our own stories to share the. The I is for intention, and that's where the mindfulness comes in and just bringing intention into how we live. I think that's an ongoing exercise for all of us. The S is for sleep. If there was a way to put S first, I might. Then the H is for hydration. It's the importance of water. Hydrotherapy is something that's really big in our house; the hot and cold with water, steaming, and just drinking good quality water. That's our Nourish Plan.

[1:43:30.1] Ashley James: I love it so much. The S and the H are competing for the number one place. So one of my mentors has been practicing for 35 years, naturopathic physician, Dr. Molly Niedermeyer. She used to be the dean of Bastyr Naturopathic Medical College and she's delivered over a thousand babies. She's an amazing woman to pick her brain and I was fortunate to have her as my doctor for several years and I've learned so much from her. This is a tongue twister. She said 5% reduction in hydration leads to a 25% reduction in energy production. By the way, it takes a week to become dehydrated. Like if you didn't drink enough water and drink too much coffee that one day, but if you repeat that for seven days, and you have chronic dehydration. And it takes seven days of drinking half your body weight in ounces, plus any extra to recoup from sweating from exercise and from stressors like caffeine. But it takes you seven days. It's not just one day of drinking enough water and it's good. You have to do it every day for seven days and now you've recovered from chronic dehydration.  

Imagine if you just drank 5%, that's like maybe 5 ounces. So 5% is not a lot. If you think, oh I drink 70 ounces, I'm good. I drink 60 ounces, I'm good. But if your body even needed 65 or 70 or 80 ounces, and you're missing just 5% of your hydration, it leads to a 25% reduction in your body's ability to produce ATP which is cellular energy. It also reduces your ability to clear toxins away from the cells and to bring in nutrients. 

I had a doctor on my show who was on his deathbed and he used this thought process to heal his body. All the doctor said, go home to die, and he used this one process. He was in sepsis and his liver was in liver failure. He was really bad and he said, okay, I understand how the body works. I need to think about how to make a cell healthy. It's like every cell is a house. Take out the garbage, bring in the groceries. The cells have inflammation around it. So the groceries can't get in and the garbage can't get out. It's like a blizzard has come in, and surrounded each house. And now the organelles inside the house are stuck in going. I can't get the groceries in, and the garbage out. That's what sickness is. 

So he had to break it down and he used hydration as one of his ways. And to everyone's amazement, he lived and thrived after that. I got to do everything possible to bring down the inflammation. So I hydrate so I can get the groceries in and the garbage out. 

[1:46:34.3] Mark Reinfeld: Wow, that's a great metaphor. That's a great story. 

[1:46:37.3] Ashley James: So your food and your nourish plan is getting the good groceries in, and getting the garbage out. And that's fantastic. I love that, and I love that you bring in intention as well. We don't realize that mindset is everything. If we're not moving towards the way we want to be, we're like an untethered boat just bobbing around in the ocean. We start to feel like we've lost a purpose. If we know where we're going, and we know that it's possible to have healing, which it is. 

And many listeners know, but some new ones might not, that I had chronic adrenal fatigue so bad, I couldn't process human language in the morning. I was a wreck and I had type 2 diabetes. I was hungry and had to eat every 45 minutes. I had out of control blood sugar. I cry every day because I was a prisoner trapped in a really sick body. And this was in my twenties. My twenties were supposed to be going out partying and having fun. I was just sick all the time. It was holistic medicine that I was able to also reverse polycystic ovarian syndrome. I was told after a battery of tests that I'd never get pregnant. And we have an amazing son. I was able to reverse polycystic ovarian syndrome. It's no longer in my blood work and I no longer have the symptoms of it. So I was able to reverse infertility, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and type 2 diabetes. I was able to reverse chronic adrenal fatigue. That was the easiest, fastest thing to leave my body; and its nutrition. So if I can heal my body using food, so can you. And also, filling in the gaps with those wonderful supplements. It's like the mortar, food is the brakes. You can't add supplements on a bad diet. But also sometimes we need that extra support from herbs and minerals. So I love that. 

I'm going to just jump into your books and I can't wait to add more cardamom to my diet. That sounds delicious. And we're doing a giveaway on the Learn True Health Facebook group. We've talked so much today, but is there anything we haven't talked about today that you really wanted to make sure we touch on?

[1:48:53.1] Mark Reinfeld: One thing I'd like to say is what I've come across in just tuning into this idea of purpose and what our role is here. For me, like I mentioned, I just love showing people how to create plant-based food that tastes amazing. And so, I came out with these seven culinary keys to create amazing plant-based foods. If we have the time, I could just do a quick overview of them. But this is consolidating 25 plus years of working with them. 

So the first is palate development. This is something that develops over time as you learn to develop the subtle flavors of food. So I like doing palate development exercises with people, of tasting garlic all the way from raw to burn or tasting water with different flavors, like salty, sweet, sour, or pungent, so you can develop your palate over time. 

The second key is this template recipe format where you learn to see the underlying formula of a recipe. Once you see that underlying formula, you could see that by changing the different components you could create a new recipe. And that NOURISH course we offer; there maybe twenty-five or thirty recipes we share, but you're actually learning hundreds, and even thousands of recipes when you implement that template recipe format.

The third key would be the global spice blends that that we talked about. It is just the simple act of stocking your pantry with these blends. Like you said, you could take a baked potato and create world cuisine just by adding those different spice blends. 

The fourth would be world sauces. So it's really diving in and getting creative with your sauces. They could just be things like barbecue, Thai peanut, pesto, sweet and sour teriyaki. So, once you start adding all these world sauces into your repertoire, your creations really take off. 

And then the other step I call is veganizing, where if you love your bacon cheeseburger, there are ways to create plant-based alternatives that could satisfy the craving. These might be in the transitional food categories that I don't recommend all the time. Like a vegan mayonnaise, is not the same nutrition as a shot of wheatgrass. But if it helps you overcome a craving and you're heading towards that, a whole food plant-based diet, I feel that they play a role.

The sixth key is superfood nutrition. This is what you talked about, adding nutrient-dense superfoods, as well as raw foods, just to maximize the vitality of your meals. Then the last would be experimentation. 

And the three most important thing is our practice, practice and practice, and you touched on that also. We're just experimenting in the kitchen, use different ingredients and techniques, and over time, you'll see your skills and your confidence and creativity will definitely start to expand in the kitchen.

[1:52:25.0] Ashley James: I love it. Many people have heard of this, but I feel like I'm kind of late to the party, but there's something called ChatGPT, and it said, open source AI software, meaning you don't have to pay for it. So my husband and I had a lot of fun playing with it, and I typed in give me ten recipes. So I asked for recipes, and what it did is just gave me a list of ingredients, and it said, you got to experiment yourself with the different ratios. But this is more like an idea instead of sticking exactly to recipes. It's more like, throw in the pan and see what happens. And I asked it to give me ten dinner ideas for whole food, plant-based diet. This is an AI, an artificial intelligence, but it's crazy. I had so much fun. So here, I just typed it in because I couldn't find my chat before, which had some really delicious, and I was reading it like, my mouth was watering. But here we have quinoa stir-fried with vegetable and tofu. You don't need a recipe for that, because you could choose Italian seasoning or you could choose maybe curry, and there are different kinds of curries in the world. But I could make Japanese curry kind of gravy, or I could do pesto. So here we have quinoa stir-fry with vegetables and tofu. The second one is lentil soup with bread, chickpea and vegetable curry, roasted eggplant with humus and whole grain pita, stuffed bell pepper with rice, beans, and veggies, spaghetti with marinara sauce, of course, and roasted vegetables, sweet potato and black bean tacos, avocado and tomato sandwich with whole grain bread. It just goes on and on. My last one is grilled portobello mushroom with baked sweet potato and steamed greens. I didn't mean to let an AI replace you. That wasn't the point. Although you should feel a little threatened. The AI is coming after the vegan chefs, I'm just saying. 

But if you need these ideas, there are so many out there. But for me, when I look at recipes, I'm looking at how much dense nutrition profile does this have? I'm not going to choose the one with pasta and the the pita bread and all that, because those foods don't contain a lot of dense nutrition. Those are fun to eat, sure. But I'm looking for the dense nutrition and anything that has lots of vegetables and lots of flavor. That's why I like your recipes because you've got your wife looking over shoulder going, okay, we should add the antioxidant-rich foods into this recipe. So I love that you got this doctor at your side going, all right, I really want you to create a recipe that has this many antioxidants in it. It's like, let's get at least 30 vegetables a week. I thought it was funny because you said per day, and I'm like, 30 plants a day kind of sounds like more than 15 minutes in the kitchen. That's like, you have 30 seconds per plant.

[1:55:45.0] Mark Reinfeld: Well, picture how many could be in a nice salad. You could hit 15.

[1:55:48.8] Ashley James: That's true, exactly. I love it. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I think the point is that for people who feel intimidated by the kitchen, there are so many resources for you. And in a very short period of time, you could go from not knowing how to cook, or not liking cooking, to really enjoying it. Because when you make delicious food and your family loves it, you start to feel healthy because of your food. It is a super big motivator. But we have to start with really simple, delicious, and nutritious recipes, and that's what you started with, to teach us the habit in the kitchen to build our confidence up.

[1:56:36.6] Mark Reinfeld: Totally. That's what it's all about for us. 

[1:56:39.6] Ashley James: Awesome. Well, good luck with the launch of your two courses that are coming up really soon. I'll make sure all the information is in the show notes of today's podcast, learntruehealth.com, and in all the podcast directories as well, so that they can check it out. It's been such a pleasure having you on the show and please, I look forward to having your wife on the show. And I definitely want to interview anyone that you recommend because you are so well-connected with all the amazing holistic doctors that are helping people heal their bodies, especially with food. 

[1:57:10.3] Mark Reinfeld: Thank you so much, Ashley. It's been a pleasure speaking with you and I've learned a lot from you too. So thank you for all these tidbits. 

[1:57:18.2] Ashley James: I hope you enjoyed today's episode with Chef Mark Reinfeld. And I am still drooling thinking about that cardamom in that dish, and I just love how he pairs some of those flavors. I love that he's thinking about people who are just starting out in the kitchen and especially those of us who are trying to get our health back. We're already tired. We already got a million things to do, but we know that eating out really deteriorates our body. It does not build us up. We're either building up or we're breaking down. That's how the body works. It's either going in one direction or going in the other. This myth of homeostasis, if we never achieve homeostasis, we're always trying to achieve it. We're always moving closer to the mark or away from the mark. So if you think about like, oh I'm too tired to cook, I get it. I have spent way too much money eating out. There's the cost on your wallet, but there's the cost on your long-term health. Your cells now have to figure out how to build new healthy cells with this limited amount of nutrients, because we are not getting the optimal quality nutrients when we eat out. We just aren't. 

And so the best thing to do is to learn how to make simple meals. Now, I do. It takes me about 15 minutes from start to finish, to make delicious multi-vegetable meals, and it just takes practice and takes getting in the kitchen. The biggest thing I could say is, if you are feeding yourself or even if you're feeding your family and you only have enough time to cook once a day, you should make more. Double the recipe, or triple the recipe. Cook like you're cooking Thanksgiving, and cook a much larger portion. You can always freeze it. You can always portion it out. Leftovers taste better so you can heat it up, and eat it for lunch the next day. Heck, I've eaten dinner for breakfast the next day. It just saves you so much energy and time. Because if you're prepping everything once and you already have it out of the fridge, you're already cooking it. All it takes is just two more minutes to prep a little bit more of the same vegetables and the same foods. My biggest thing is I always triple or quadruple recipes, have leftovers for three days, and then it's just easy breezy, lemon squeezy. 

So check out Mark's stuff. Go to learntruehealth.com/nourish, and see his beautiful recipes and know that everything that he does is approved by a naturopathic physician who is very hypocritical of the work because it's his wife's of course. She's looking over his shoulder and telling him what she believes are the healthiest foods to heal and nourish the body. And then he comes up with the amazing flavors. If we can enjoy health, then that's perfect. That's exactly what we need. So speaking of which, I'm going to go eat the leftovers. I cooked at lunch and I made enough so that I can have the same meal for dinner, because I wanted to save myself some time and energy and be able to do other things around the house, including publishing this episode. So, I'm going to publish this episode and go eat my delicious lunch part 2, for dinner. Have yourself a fantastic day and watch out for the next episode because it will blow your mind.

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