What You Should (and Shouldn't) Be Buying at the Grocery Store with Dr. Mark Hyman

Podcast Transcript

Nada Youssef:   Hi, thank you for joining us. I'm your host Nada Youssef and today we're back with the one and only Dr. Mark Hyman. Dr. Mark Hyman

Mark Hyman:    Hi everybody.

Nada Youssef:   Hi, hello. Dr. Mark Hyman is the director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. He's also an 11th time New York Times bestselling author. Before we begin, please remember this is for information purposes only and not intended to replace your own physician's advice. Thank you so much for being here. So, excited you're back.

Mark Hyman:    I'm happy to be back.

Nada Youssef:   So, if you're confused about what to buy from the grocery store that's

Mark Hyman:    Nah, everybody knows exactly what to eat, don’t they?

Nada Youssef:   It's very, very confusing with everything that's on the shelf, but Dr. Hyman who's been studying nutrition now for 40 years, he's going to bring clarity to this topic.

Mark Hyman:    Yes.

Nada Youssef:   So, knowledge is power and one of

Mark Hyman:    I've been eating for 58 years.

Nada Youssef:   Yeah, we all … very important point. Now, before we begin I want to ask you this question first. Are all processed foods equally bad?

Mark Hyman:    No.

Nada Youssef:   No?

Mark Hyman:    No. I mean if you have a can of tomatoes with water and salt, that's okay or a can of sardines with basically some olive oil and salt, that's also okay. So, as long as its real food and you recognize it and you can cover over the front of the box or the package or the jar and you still know what it is when you read the ingredient list, it's fine, but if it has 37 ingredients none of which are food, it's probably not good to eat.

Nada Youssef:   Okay. So, when we talk about grocery shopping, I know you've mentioned this before, manmade versus nature made. Can you tell me what that means?

Mark Hyman:    Yeah. I mean, some man-made products are fine. Let's be realistic, but for the most part, you have to ask yourself, "Did man make or human make this product like a Twinkie or did God make it?" God certainly didn’t make a Twinkie or nature didn’t make a Twinkie. They made an avocado so it's pretty easy distinction. When you look at something and say, "Who made this was? Was it a factory or was it nature?"

Nada Youssef:   Yeah. When you buy something from the store, are you always trying to go for the original state of food? Because, that would be the produce section.

Mark Hyman:    Yeah, I mean you want as little steps from the field to your fork as possible, right? So, if you eat broccoli, somebody snaps of the broccoli and sticks it in the store and eat it, right? Pretty simple. If you have some concoction which is different shapes, sizes, colors of processed food, it's some weird invention of some food scientist, it probably took 47 steps to get all these different 37 ingredients in the food, right?

Nada Youssef:   It's an actual job of food scientists?

Mark Hyman:    Oh my God, yeah. I had a guy who was a patient once, he was a food scientist and he had this T-shirt that says I get to play with my food for a living. He was so sick from working with all these weird chemicals and ingredients that he had tremendous allergies, asthma, skin issues, fatigue, cognitive issues, sinus issues and I literally had him to kind of change his job in order to get healthy because he was playing with all these food chemicals, they were making him sick.

Nada Youssef:   So, he was processing the food?

Mark Hyman:    Yeah.

Nada Youssef:   Oh.

Mark Hyman:    He was like inventing like a mad scientist inventing new products and adding-

Nada Youssef:   That's terrifying.

Mark Hyman:    Yeah.

Nada Youssef:   Okay. So, how about frozen or like canned foods or canned vegetables, is that healthy?

Mark Hyman:    Canned food is probably not as healthy. Well, there's BPA in the cans and of course you've got a lot of sugar and salt they add to foods in cans like canned peaches for example. Probably not a great idea. It's full of sugar and syrup. Some are fine. If they're in jars or they're cans in their whole food, it's actually okay.

Nada Youssef:   Okay. And, frozen, same thing?

Mark Hyman:    Frozen is actually often better and it's cheaper. I'd rather get frozen berries than fresh berries because they're picked right at the pure ripeness at the peak of season and they're flash frozen and they're really amazing. They don’t have molds or degradation of their antioxidants and phytochemicals. Same thing with vegetables, they go, “Frozen vegetables aren’t so good” but often they're better. They haven’t been transported for long distances, have a chance to degrade in their quality. They're fresher often. They may not taste as great as a fresh picked tomato or a fresh picked broccoli off the garden, but it's actually quite good for you and the nutrient levels are much higher. You can get organic and it's cheaper.

Nada Youssef:   Well, that's news to me. So, you're saying that frozen sometimes can be better than fresh?

Mark Hyman:    Yes.

Nada Youssef:   Okay, so I wouldn’t be scared to go to the frozen section-

Mark Hyman:    And, cheaper.

Nada Youssef:    Yes, of course. Okay. How about like some heart check marks that I find in some of these products? Does that mean that they're healthy?

Mark Hyman:    Here's the bad news. The American Heart Association along with the American Diabetic Association and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics gets a large part of their annual revenue from the food industry, from the processed food industry. So, for example, American Heart Association has a heart healthy check mark that's on Trix cereal which has seven teaspoons of sugar. Red dye, blue dye, all kinds of weird chemicals and it's heart healthy because it's low in fat but its high in sugar and starch. So, there's four different kinds of sugar, seven teaspoons of sugar. It's a toxic food. It's labeled as heart healthy because American Heart Association gets a big check from the manufacturers for putting that on their labels sort of pay to play.

Nada Youssef:   So, the answer is no, not heart healthy?

Mark Hyman:    No.

Nada Youssef:   Okay. All right.

Mark Hyman:    Plus a lot of the heart healthy stuff has to do with being low fat which turns out was a completely wrong idea that wasn't well established in the evidence. Then now we really understood that the fat isn’t the issue. In fact, our own dietary guidelines in the US which are challenged in many ways, even that conservative group says, "Oh sorry guys we don't need to worry about dietary fat at all. You can eat as much as you want. It's not going to make you fat or cause heart disease. By the way, cholesterol which we told you to all avoid for the last 35 years and eat egg white omelets, well sorry we goofed on the too. We didn’t really look at the data and it's not an issue."

Nada Youssef:   So, do you think the guidelines are going to change knowing all these?

Mark Hyman:    Yeah, well there's an amazing process that just happened. It's a great part of democracy. I had a friend who is a passionate advocate for really evidence-based guidelines. She went to Congress and convinced the congressmen and senators to create a mandate for the National Academy of Sciences to do a review of the guidelines process. So, they reviewed the process and they found that in an independent study that many of the guidelines were not based on good evidence, that they ignore huge amounts of evidence. For example, showing the saturated fats are not the enemy we thought they were on very low carbohydrate diets for diabetes and weight loss, and they also showed that there was many people in the guidelines committee that were unduly influenced by the food industry and funded by them.

Nada Youssef:   Okay. Now-

Mark Hyman:    So, that's hopefully in the next 2020 guidelines we'll see a change.

Nada Youssef:   Well, that's good. That's very good news. I want to go back to process foods from farm-

Mark Hyman:    You do? I thought we were over that.

Nada Youssef:   Well, that's the whole show.

Mark Hyman:    I thought we're like you're not going to eat processed foods. I thought

Nada Youssef:   We want to educate ourselves.

Mark Hyman:    Yeah, I don’t want go back to process.

Nada Youssef:   Right, never. So, from farm to the fork, what is happening? How is this food turning into processed food? How is this turning into cans and packages and cute names and-

Mark Hyman:    Well, we have an industrial food system. So, how the food is grown has an impact on the climate, the environment. The kind of food that's grown is basically commodities. We have wheat, corn, and soy that get turned into flour, white flour, soybean oils that's processed and refined and often high fructose corn syrup, that gets turned literally hundreds of thousands of products. In addition, a lot of other corn extracts like maltodextrin and thickeners and things that are in our processed food. There's a huge industrial process in extracting all that and turning it into process food.

The people in America who eat the most of those foods and by the way, about 60% of our food intake is from these processed foods in America. The people who eat the most of those foods are the sickest, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cholesterol issues, high blood pressure, and more because they eat those foods. So, it's really important to try to understand your food supply and not just go to the grocery store and just eat whatever and go, "Is this good for me? Is it good for the planet? Is it good for the environment? Is it good for the economy because we're all eating these foods, we're going to bankrupt our nations through Medicare and Medicaid? So, it's trying to understand more the holistic nature of our food and our food system and how that's impacting everything that matters.

Nada Youssef:   Okay, very good information. Thank you. Now, I want to talk about what to avoid, what not to eat. This is straight from your website. I want to talk about some of the stuff and we'll go fast through that because I have something else here to get through, but ingredients-

Mark Hyman:    By the way, everybody can get to ask questions so stay tuned because we're going to get to the Q&A soon and we're live.

Nada Youssef:   Yes. The second half, everybody is going to get to ask question.

Mark Hyman:    And, don’t go away.

Nada Youssef:   Don’t go away. Thank you.

Mark Hyman:    Sorry, I had to help her with her job. She's new at this.

Nada Youssef:   Yeah. Ingredients are difficult to pronounce.

Mark Hyman:    Well, there's basic rules. If you want to have butylated hydroxytoluene with your food, it's probably not a good idea and yet it's in most processed food. If you don't have it in your cupboard and you wouldn't sprinkle it on your food like salt, you can put salt on your food, you wouldn't take a bottle of butylated hydroxytoluene or polysorbate 80 or maltodextrin and sprinkle it all over your food. This is not how we would do, but this is actually what is happening in our food supply. We're eating three to five pounds of these chemicals every year per person which are mostly unstudied and some of them that are in use that have been shown to be harmful and are actually banned in other countries. We had for example trans-fat in our food.

We knew for 50 years that we should be getting rid of this stuff because it was killing literally hundreds of thousands of people. Margarine is what I'm talking about and shortening. We thought that was healthy because it was a vegetable oil but actually it was deadly. The data was there and it took 50 years for the government to finally say, "Oh, this is not safe to eat." It's taken another four or five years for them to get the food companies and start to take it out of the food because it's still in the grocery store even though it's considered not safe to eat. The government has said, "This is not safe to eat." and you can still go buy it in a grocery

Nada Youssef:   But, some countries have banned.

Mark Hyman:    Oh yeah.

Nada Youssef:   trans-fat?

Mark Hyman:    Yeah. In New York for example, they banned trans fats in all the restaurants because all the food was fried in trans fats and the data was there. It was way before the federal government did anything.

Nada Youssef:   I see. How about anything that didn’t exist in grandma's cupboard?

Mark Hyman:    Well, listen, the truth is what your grandmother ate was all organic, was all grass fed, was all pretty much local. It was all without preservatives or additives. It was just food. That's really what we want to get back to. If your grandmother wouldn't recognize a Lunchable or a Go-Gurt, right?

Nada Youssef:   No, nothing wrong with that.

Mark Hyman:    No. What would be in your grandmother's cupboard? It would just be ingredients, real food ingredients.

Nada Youssef:   Sure. Okay, so speaking of ingredients, can you talk about soy bean oil?

Mark Hyman:    Well, 10% of our calories are from soybean oil. Soybeans are not bad. They're ideally non GMO. Glyphosate is really a big problem which is what they spray on there. It's Roundup to prevent weeds from growing, but it's turned out to be harmful for humans. So, there's an issue of glyphosate in our oil, in our food supply. The soybean oil is extracted from the soybeans who have heat process using solvents. It's deodorized and it's kind of a product that I think is not something we've been eating forever. It's a thousand fold increase in our soybean oil consumption in the last hundred years.

We have an imbalance between the omega 6 and omega 3s in our diet. The omega 6 is a soybean oil. There's some omega 3s but many of us are deficient and we don’t eat wild fish that much so many of us are very low in omega 3s. We eat a ton of refined oils. It's a huge part of our calories and turns out that that creates inflammation, oxidation and other issues. So, not a big fan. Eat avocado oil, have grass fed gee or butter, have extra virgin olive oil as your main oil. Those are fine.

Nada Youssef:   Okay, great. I'm going to actually read through this because we're getting a lot of questions as well. So, you mentioned anything advertised on TV and I'm guessing because that all processed.

Mark Hyman:    Well, there's research on this. Actually, the foods that are the worst for you have the most advertising. So, you don’t see ads for broccoli or almonds, right?

Nada Youssef:   Right, that's very true.

Mark Hyman:    You see it for the worst.

Nada Youssef:   Some pistachios, I mean you get to see some of that stuff, no?

Mark Hyman:    Pistachio, okay that's good. There's not like this giant lobby for the vegetable group.

Nada Youssef:   Right. On anything with more than five ingredients on the label unless its recognizable ingredients. Speaking of that, I'm going to go ahead and allot-

Mark Hyman:    Yeah, let's do it.

Nada Youssef:   So, I went to the grocery store. Just a local grocery store and I picked up some stuff that was healthy or marketed healthy. So, I want go over that and I'm going to explain what I have in my hand for people that are listening, not watching. So, I have this Thin Pop which is like real butter popcorn. It's non-GMO, gluten free. What do you think?

Mark Hyman:    Well here's the deal. See this is like made with real butter. Only 43 calories per cup, non GMO, gluten-free, no artificial ingredients. Is this a health food?

Nada Youssef:   Is it?

Mark Hyman:    I don’t think so. It's a lot of starch. Oh yeah, here's another list. Non GMO, gluten-free, peanut free, tree nut free, preservative free, no artificial flavors, zero trans fats, a good source of fiber and delicious. Now this isn’t the worst thing on the market because it's basically got mostly real ingredients but has popcorn, sunflower oil, whey which is dairy, butter, milk, salt, natural flavors. Natural flavors is interesting because you don’t know what that is.

Nada Youssef:   You don’t know what natural was.

Mark Hyman:    When they go natural vanilla flavor, you know where that comes from? Beaver's anal glands.

Nada Youssef:   No way.

Mark Hyman:    Yes. Google it.

Nada Youssef:   All of it?

Mark Hyman:    If you don’t believe me, Google natural vanilla flavor, that's where it comes from. So, even though natural, you might not want to be eating-

Nada Youssef:   Oh my goodness!

Mark Hyman:    So, this isn’t the worst thing in the world, but the whole point is that they're marketing with health claims. Whenever I see health claims on the front of a package, I think this is probably not healthy. If it has a health claim on the label, it's probably bad for you.

Nada Youssef:   Well, when I go to the grocery store with my kids, I'm just saying, "No, no, no, no." because everything unless it's in the produce section is processed or just full of sugar. How about like a diet soda? I mean it's a diet drink.

Mark Hyman:    Oh yeah, diet, there's no calories, right? Calories are everything.

Nada Youssef:   Sugar free.

Mark Hyman:    So, no calories but there is caffeine which is all right, not terrible, but you covered over the ingredient list.

Nada Youssef:   I did?

Mark Hyman:    Oh yes. Oh wait, no, here it is. Carbonated water, caramel color, aspartame, phosphoric acid, potassium benzoate which is a preservative and natural flavors. Again, natural flavors, who knows what that is, and citric acid. Some of these okay. Water is fine, but we know the-

Nada Youssef:   So, just stick to water, huh?

Mark Hyman:    We know that phosphoric acid actually causes bone leaching so it causes osteoporosis. Also, aspartame has been shown in studies and artificial sweeteners too increase obesity, type two diabetes, they make you hungrier, they slow your metabolism, they increase fat storage, they alter your gut microbiome in ways they create inflammation in your body. They are not inert. So, if you're having some man-made chemical like aspartame artificial sweetener, the likelihood is it's doing weird things in your body. Your body is meant to work with normal signals that we get from real food. That's how we evolve. When you start eating weird stuff, there's no free lunch and no free soda.

Nada Youssef:   All right, I'm taking this from you. Then, I went and I saw some white bread but then I thought, "No, let's just stick to 100% whole wheat whole grain fiber."

Mark Hyman:    Okay, let's do this. This is going to be fun.

Nada Youssef:   It's toast, right? Whole wheat toast.

Mark Hyman:    This is going to be fun. Okay, it says 100% whole wheat which sounds pretty good. It's got six grams of fiber and zero trans-fat which sounds pretty good, right?

Nada Youssef:   Yeah, ingredients.

Mark Hyman:    Okay, let's look. So, you got whole wheat flour, water, the third ingredient is sugar.

Nada Youssef:   Interesting.

Mark Hyman:    Then bulgur wheat, wheat gluten, honey another sugar, soy bean oil which isn’t awesome and things I don’t even recognize. What is datum? I don’t even know what that is.

Nada Youssef:   Yeah, I have no idea.

Mark Hyman:    So, it-

Nada Youssef:   So, that goes back to your looking for just more than five ingredients.

Mark Hyman:    By the way, the truth is there's like 22 grams of carbs in here and your body actually whether it's whole wheat or white flour, whole wheat might be a little better but actually acts in the body just like sugar. In fact, bread is the standard they use for glycemic index which is how much a food raises your blood sugar. The glycemic index of bread is 100. The glycemic index of table sugar is 80 which means that bread is worse than sugar in terms of your body. Below the neck, your body can't tell if it's sugar or bread. So, when you have a piece of bread, think you're having dessert. This is not a health food.

Nada Youssef:   Okay, very good to know. Thank you. This is very good.

Mark Hyman:    Even whole wheat bread. Now, if it's the German kind of bread made out of like the whole kernel like whole kernel rye bread, you can stand on it, it doesn't squish. That could be okay. I was in Germany visiting a friend. She had a meat slicer in her kitchen. I'm like, "What's that for?" She's like, "Well, that's for the bread. You can't cut it with a knife. It would break the knife." It's that dense.

Nada Youssef:   Do you eat that?

Mark Hyman:    It's so good.

Nada Youssef:   How are you chewing it?

Mark Hyman:    You toast it up. It's just made from the whole grain rye.

Nada Youssef:   Oh okay. I see.

Mark Hyman:    It's fermented. Also, we do very fast rising bread in this country which makes it more allergenic and inflammatory. In Europe, they do not 12 hour, 24 hour.  I went to a restaurant the other day. They had 60-hour leavening process. It's natural. It breaks down some of the bad stuff.

Nada Youssef:   Less processing, more cooking. Speaking of whole grain, I have gluten free oat cereal, 100% whole grain oats and it has the hearts on it and can help lower your cholesterol.

Mark Hyman:    Yes, okay. Look at all these health claims. 100% whole grains, heart healthy, lowers cholesterol, gluten-free, okay no artificial flavors, no artificial colors. So, when you see five health claims on a label, is it really healthy? Well, let's look. Oats are supposed to be good. So, whole-grain oats, okay. Cornstarch which is basically another form of sugar. Sugar is another form of sugar and you've got 20 grams of carbs in a serving which is a bit. Again, when you're eating flour and you're eating starchy foods, the body it acts just like sugar. So, even though it says lowers cholesterol, it's actually the old bran that lowers cholesterol and there's a very little bit of oat bran in this. You need more the … it's got one gram of soluble fiber which is not very much.

Nada Youssef:   Okay.

Mark Hyman:    Yeah. So, it's a little bit oversold.

Nada Youssef:   Okay, oversold. How about some organic whole milk?

Mark Hyman:    Organic whole milk, sounds good, right?

Nada Youssef:   I know you're not a big fan of milk.

Mark Hyman:    So, these are very simple ingredients, organic milk and vitamin D. By the way, milk is not a great source of vitamin D. It's actually added to the milk so it's added there. It's not naturally there.

Nada Youssef:   It's added to the milk?

Mark Hyman:    Yeah. Look, it's vitamin D. So, they add vitamin D because … right? It's not like-

Nada Youssef:   That's very interesting. So, they add vitamin D to the milk.

Mark Hyman:    Yeah, it's fortified.

Nada Youssef:   Very good.

Mark Hyman:    So, milk has issues. I think in general organic milk, whole milk of all the milk is okay. Grass fed is better. Because, organic, they can still feed them corn and soy, change the composition of the fat in the milk and the quality. They can also milk them when they're pregnant which is full of hormones. So, it turns that milk isn’t nature's perfect food. There's basically a lot of issues in terms of inflammation like gut issues, this cause autoimmunity, causes allergies, causes inflammation, eczema, asthma. So, it's not nature's perfect food. Most people can't tolerate milk and often will feel bad.

Even Acme is driven by a lot of milk even if it's organic. So, if you don't have a milk sensitivity and you're northern European or Scandinavian, this might be okay. I wouldn’t say it's a health food. I think the challenge of the dietary guidelines is that the Dairy Council was heavily influencing the guidelines which say we're supposed to have three glasses of milk a day for adults, two for kids. There's no evidence that that's true.

Nada Youssef:   My pediatrician told me to stop giving my kids milk because that was-

Mark Hyman:    Yea! Good guy.

Nada Youssef:   Okay, yeah. Good guy. So, I have a pink salmon pouch and then I have a tuna can.

Mark Hyman:    Now these are great, but if you open them up in your office at work, people are not going to like it because they smell bad.

Nada Youssef:   I know but I do it anyways.

Mark Hyman:    I do. It's fine. Sardines are the worst.

Nada Youssef:   So, is this healthy for you? Which one is healthier: the can or the pouch? Because the pouch now has flavoring.

Mark Hyman:    So, like yeah. So, you've got salmon. It sounds like great. Sustainably wild caught salmon, that's awesome. Okay but it has salmon, water, sunflower oil, sugar, food starch, lemon juice, vinegar, xanthan gum which cause leaky gut, and so it's okay. It's also a product of Thailand which makes me wonder about the fish and if they're lying that it's wild.

Nada Youssef:   Oh that's right.

Mark Hyman:    Anyway, is there a wild salmon in Thailand? I don't think so. So, I think when you're adding all these extra ingredients you just want to get the real food.

Nada Youssef:   Okay. So, this maybe has less the can itself.

Mark Hyman:    So, this is a can of tuna.

Nada Youssef:   There's no flavor on that one.

Mark Hyman:    There's mercury in here. This isn’t awesome. There is white tuna water, vegetable broth, salt and pyrophosphate which is okay. So, this isn’t the worst but there's some other brands which have less weird stuff in it.

Nada Youssef:   All right. So, if I want to eat a healthy salad, I grab my fat free zesty Italian dressing.

Mark Hyman:    Of course, you do-

Nada Youssef:   No, I don’t.

Mark Hyman:    Because it has no artificial flavors, no high fructose corn syrup, and no MSG and its fat-free which is of course what we should all be and hold the oil, right? This is nonsense. You don't need to be fat free. In fact, you can use the olive oil, skip the vinegar and be healthier for it.

Nada Youssef:   Yeah.

Mark Hyman:    Let's talk about what's actually in it. Okay, this is a con job. It says no high fructose corn syrup but you know what, basically after water and vinegar, what the next third ingredient is which is by the volume, sugar. So, they're like, “Oh, no high fructose corn syrup.” We use regular sugar and then it has soybean oil which is not awesome. It has food starch.

Nada Youssef:   It has a lot of ingredients for a dressing.

Mark Hyman:    Xanthan gum, yellow dye five, yellow dye six and if you eat the dye, you die. So, just stick with olive oil and vinegar instead of all this weird process junk that is gummy and terrible. It doesn't taste as good as just the extra virgin olive oil and some vinegar. You put on yourself. I don’t even mix them. I just throw them on the salad with salt and pepper, mix it up. It's so easy and it'll save you a lot of money because this stuff isn’t cheap.

Nada Youssef:   All right. So, if I want to get fancy with my water though, I have here zero calorie vitamin enhanced water pink flavored and then I have this sparkling water.

Mark Hyman:    So, vitamin water was actually sued by the government for saying that they made people think it's healthy. Now I'm pretty sophisticated. When it came out, I'm like, "Oh this is healthy and I would buy it." Then I'm like, "Wait a minute." Then I realize this is like just about as much sugar as a soda, right? Now, if its artificial sweeteners you won't get that but … What do they put in here?

Nada Youssef:   That's a lot of ingredients for water.

Mark Hyman:    Artificial sweetener.

Nada Youssef:   Is that it? Is that the ingredients?

Mark Hyman:    Oh, it's stevia. Yeah, but this is not better than sugar but they got sued because they said, "Well, you're promoting as a health food but there's no evidence that's true. There's very minimal levels of vitamins." They came back and said, "You know what, we didn’t think people would actually believe us. We were just using that." That was like the weirdest argument. So, I think this is one with the stevia, not the worst thing in the world if you're going to have something, but make sure you don’t have artificial sweeteners other than Stevia and make sure that you watch for all the weird colors and additives.

Nada Youssef:   So, stevia is okay in food labels?

Mark Hyman:    A little bit, yeah.

Nada Youssef:   Yeah?

Mark Hyman:    The coloring here comes from vegetable juice color which is probably okay. It has a erythritol which can make you have a lot of gas issues and cause weight gain. So, again, you know.

Nada Youssef:   Water causing weight gain.

Mark Hyman:    This one is one of my favorites.

Nada Youssef:   Okay, let's say what it is here.

Mark Hyman:    It says the sparking water-

Nada Youssef:   blackberry-

Mark Hyman:    with real squeezed fruit. Yup, that's it.

Nada Youssef:   That's good?

Mark Hyman:    Unsweetened. So, what they do is they take a little drop of fruit so it's basically carbonated water with little blackberry juice, lemon juice and blackberry puree and it's got only two, three grams of carbohydrates. So, it's basically 13 calories and it's no sugar. It tastes like a soda but without all the junk. So, this is fine.

Nada Youssef:   So, as long as it doesn’t have natural flavor in the ingredients for sparkling water, it should be okay?

Mark Hyman:    Yeah.

Nada Youssef:   I remember you talked about this the last time.

Mark Hyman:    Yeah.

Nada Youssef:   Okay, so a lot of people like whole wheat crackers. Again, whole wheat, not … it's reduced fat too. It's 37% less fat than your regular-

Mark Hyman:    So, the thing is if I had to choose between a bagel and butter, I would choose the butter. The whole idea of reduced fat is an outdated idea that gets people to think it's going to make them lose weight, not have heart disease but nothing is further from the truth. If I'd rather have a whole wheat cracker or a scoop of coconut butter, I would take the coconut butter. So, this is … What does it say here? Yeah, it's made with canola oil and soybean oil, fine. It's got some preservatives TBHQ which is not so healthy, but it's not the worst thing in the world.

Nada Youssef:   The thing is when most people look at this, we don’t know what this is, the stuff that you're reading off right now.

Mark Hyman:    Like I said, you got 24 grams of carbs which is like six teaspoons of sugar. So, you're eating this and it's healthy but it's actually like having in a serving six teaspoons of sugar which is probably not a good idea.

Nada Youssef:   In a serving of seven crackers on this one.

Mark Hyman:    Yeah.

Nada Youssef:   Okay. I'm going to do one more and then we're going to get to questions we have a lot. I have this nuts and spices bar gluten free. It looks like-

Mark Hyman:    It's good five grams of sugar, six grams of protein.

Nada Youssef:   whole. It looks like almonds and stuff on there.

Mark Hyman:    It has almonds. It’s more real food, right?

Nada Youssef:   Yeah.

Mark Hyman:    So, it's made with real ingredients. It's got almonds, chicory root fiber, honey which is okay, palm kernel oil not so big a fan, sugar, glucose syrup, rice flour, milk powder, sea salt, carob powder, soy lecithin, natural flavors and annatto. So, there's some things I'm not thrilled about on here, but overall it's not terrible. It's got seven grams of fiber. It's got protein in there, six grams of protein. So, as a snack, better than most.

Nada Youssef:   Okay, good. Good. All right. So, enough with that. Let's just get to the questions because we have a lot.

Mark Hyman:    We have a lot?

Nada Youssef:   Yeah. So, Ryan wants to know, where do calories come in? Is there a guideline for how many I should have?

Mark Hyman:    Great question Ryan. That's like the best set of question. Okay, did somebody plant that question?

Nada Youssef:   I did not. It wasn’t me.

Mark Hyman:    Ryan, if it's really you out there, here's the deal. For years we have thought that the secret of weight loss is calories in calories out. Eat less, exercise more. It seems to make sense because of the first law of thermodynamics which is that energy is conserved in its system. The key to that sense is energy is conserved in a system, a closed system like a vacuum. So, the way I explain it is, if you go to a bridge and you drop a pound of feathers and a pound of lead, the feathers float around and the lead goes boom. If you drop them in a vacuum, the lead and the feathers drop at exactly the same rate, right? Because they have the same mass, they're a pound.

When you eat food, when you burn calories at a laboratory, if you burn 1,000 calories of soda, 1,000 calories of broccoli, they would both release the same amount of energy. If you eat them, they're very different. So, if you have let's say a Big Gulp which is 750 calories. It's got 46 teaspoons of sugar. It causes diabetes, fatty liver, high triglycerides, low HDL, inflammation, lowers testosterone in men, causes women to grow facial hair. It's nasty. If you take the amount of calories from broccoli, that's 21 cups of broccoli. Good luck if you're going to eat that. It has 35 grams of fiber and a half teaspoon of sugar, up regulate all your detox, heals your liver and has all the opposite effects, same calories.

So, anybody whose even in kindergarten can understand that. So, the whole idea of calories and counting calories is just nonsense. If you're off by 100 calories a day for 30 years, you're going to gain 30 pounds. So, the idea … and even the most Olympic calorie counter who's like an expert still can't figure it out unless you weigh and measure every little bite of food. So, you have to focus on the quality of your food not the quantity. It's not how much you eat, it's what you eat. In other words, I can give you a bag of Chips Ahoy! cookies, send you home, likely those will disappear. If I gave you a bag of 12 avocados, you're probably only going to eat one of them because it's just the way your body works.

You're going to naturally regulate and so you shouldn’t worry about calorie, you should worry about quality and that'll take care of itself. We create enormous weight loss with people would never calorie restricting and the data show this clearly. If you take a low-fat low-calorie diet which is restricted in calories compared to a high-fat unrestricted diet where you have a low carbohydrate high-fat, you actually have more weight loss, better blood sugar and all those outcomes on the high-fat diet even though they can eat as much as they want.

Nada Youssef:   Well, that's good news. I'll keep going for the questions but I want to say first for our viewers. If you want Dr. Hyman approved list of functional medicine groceries-

Mark Hyman:    Oh yeah we have this.

Nada Youssef:   Yeah, we have a grocery list. Just download at ccf.org/fmfood. So, when you get on there, put in your information, you will get a list of Dr. Hyman approved list of groceries.

Mark Hyman:    Yes. This is all like basically from my book Food: What The Heck Should I Eat? which is awesome and tells you everything you want to know.

Nada Youssef:   Yes, read it. All right, let's go on to Randy. What's better: butter versus margarine? What about for heart patients?

Mark Hyman:    Well, I think I covered that a little bit but we were sold a story that saturated fat is bad and butter is bad. We've decreased our butter consumption. We increased our oils consumption and also we increased margarine and shortening. The shortening and the trans-fat in there is deadly. It's actually literally been ruled by the government it's not safe to eat meaning it's not edible. It shouldn’t be in our food at all. So, there's no role for margarine or shortening at all. If you're going to do like two things in your life to change your diet 100% of the time, it would be never eat anything with trans-fat and never eat anything with high fructose corn syrup not because it's so much worse than sugar although it's a little bit worse, it's because it marks a very poor quality of food.

As far as butter goes, there's been study after study now that shown there's no link between saturated fat and heart disease. None. There's been 17 large meta-analyses. You go to nutritioncoalition.com, you can find them that review all the literature and find no link in study after study of literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people between saturated fat and heart disease. In fact, one was done by the dean of Tufts Center for Nutrition Science and Policy. He did a study on butter and it was called as Butter Back and he looked at 600,000 people eating the equivalent of six and a half million years of butter over like nine years and in fact there was no link between heart disease and butter. There was an inverse relationship between butter and type two diabetes.

Nada Youssef:   Wow! I like good butter.

Mark Hyman:    Yeah.

Nada Youssef:   You can get like the-

Mark Hyman:    Grass fed is better.

Nada Youssef:   Grass fed is better, yeah from a grocery store. Cindy, if we're going to consume sugar, is the number of … what are the number of grams to keep under per day?

Mark Hyman:    Okay.

Nada Youssef:   Because we're all going to have some sugar unless we're you but most of us.

Mark Hyman:    I eat sugar.

Nada Youssef:   Okay. So, what is ideal?

Mark Hyman:    I think sugar is a recreational drug. So, like, should you have two drinks every night? Probably not, right? If you have alcohol, think of it as a recreational substance. Same thing for sugar. It's a party drug and the dose matters. So, if you have 5 to 10 grams a day which is basically a teaspoon or two, that's probably okay given if you're healthy overall. If you're type two diabetic, you may not tolerate any at all. It depends on you. If you're massively overweight, if you're type two diabetic, if you really want to cut weight, you might go through a period of complete abstinence until your metabolism gets smarter, but really we shouldn’t be eating that much at all. The American Heart Association says less than 10% of our calories I think and the World Health Organization says less than 5%. I think even those as our wide ranges, we should try to eat less. It's the thing that drives most aging. It drives heart disease, cancer, diabetes, even dementia.

Nada Youssef:   Okay, great. Now Griffin is asking, I've heard that stevia, sorbitol and xylitol are the only artificial sweeteners that should be used. Is that accurate?

Mark Hyman:    No.

Nada Youssef:   Okay. Why not?

Mark Hyman:    Sorbitol and xylitol are sugar alcohols. They get processed in the gut and they don’t get absorbed like regular sugar, but they cause alterations in your gut flora which cause bloating, distention, growing of bad bugs which creates inflammation and is not good for you. As we know, the microbiome is so important. Then, stevia seems to be a little bit better but most of the stevia that's out there is made by Cargill and Pepsi or Coca-Cola which is extracted from the stevia plant removing some of the alkaloids which are often the beneficial components of a plant. If you can get real stevia, whole stevia leaf extracts to do, that's much better. I think the data is still out on how those might affect appetite, metabolism, hunger and other things, but for now, it seems like it's the lesser of all evils.

Nada Youssef:   Lesser of all evils, so stevia is the only sweetener really we should be going for if we go for any sweetener at all.

Mark Hyman:    Yeah.

Nada Youssef:   Okay. Jennifer wants to know, what are Dr. Hyman's thoughts on the keto diet?

Mark Hyman:    What are my thoughts on the keto diet? I just came back from a conference from Switzerland which was about food and a lot of those folks on the ketogenic diet. On the research on that is quite amazing. They've used it for decades for epilepsy, when nothing else works in drugs, we use diet, but it's been shown to work in diabetes and autism, even Alzheimer's, chronic heart failure, all sorts of conditions which we really never used it for and the research is just mounting every day. One study came out recently on type two diabetics which is seen as a chronic progressive irreversible disease that we have to manage.

Well, it turns out in the study they looked at ketogenic diets and type two diabetics who have been diabetic for over a year who are on insulin or really unhealthy, very overweight, 60% within a year completely reversed off all medications in all fronts. 94% got off insulin or were dramatically reduced and 100% got off the main diabetes med. The weight loss was 12% or about 30 pounds. That's average for the entire group of over 250 patients. So, the data is really there showing that it can be immensely powerful for also to conditions that can transform the metabolism by moving us from eating a diet that's high in starch and sugar to one that's high in fat that we alternate our fuel system from sugar glucose to ketones which is why they call it ketogenic diet what happens when you eat a high-fat diet.

Nada Youssef:   Now, when your body go through that ketosis stage, do you get the same effect from intermittent fasting?

Mark Hyman:    You can. There's a lot of things that are happening out there. One is fasting mimicking diets which is a short fast. There's intermittent fasting which is like eating during an eight hour window so let's eat from like 11:00 in the morning until seven night let's say which is a 16 hour rest in between eating. That activates a lot of the same mechanisms as a ketogenic diet, but it lowers inflammation and increases your antioxidant systems. It increases your metabolism. It helps you put on lean body mass. It reduces body fat especially visceral body fat or belly fat, helps in cognitive function. It helps bone density. There's so many benefits.

Nada Youssef:   How long do you need for your body to go into ketosis?

Mark Hyman:    Usually quickly within a few days. Your body will switch if you switch your diet. It takes about three weeks to become keto adapted. You need to eat a lot of salt and magnesium during that time so you don’t get what we call the keto flu which is just from your body not quite able to hold on to the salt when you have high insulin level which is what you get when you eat a lot of carbs and starch and sugar. It holds on to salt and water so as soon as you stop eating that, the insulin goes down. Salt and water go out and you can feel dehydrated and weak, but as long as you eat a lot of salt, drink a lot of water you're fine.

Nada Youssef:   Keto diet, you don’t really have processed foods in there, right?

Mark Hyman:    No.

Nada Youssef:   For those that don’t know, it's a lot of good fats-

Mark Hyman:    It's good fats.

Nada Youssef:   Protein.

Mark Hyman:    Lots of fats. About 70% fat, 20% protein and like 5% carbs.

Nada Youssef:   Okay, great.

Mark Hyman:    It's actually the diet they used to treat diabetes before we had insulin.

Nada Youssef:   Oh wow!

Mark Hyman:    Like the Joslin Diabetes Center in Harvard, that's all they did was they give ketogenic diets.

Nada Youssef:   Now we know diabetes is just like you said completely reversible diet.

Mark Hyman:    Yeah. It's a carbohydrate intolerance. It's like, "Oh well if your sugars are high, you can eat carbs. They just take more insulin." When you take insulin, you gain weight. Everybody who takes insulin, gains weight. It's just a mechanism of action of insulin. It's a fat storage hormone.

Nada Youssef:   All right. Well, let's go on to Clara. Any advice for reducing environmental allergies?

Mark Hyman:    Yeah. A lot of the times our allergies and inflammation comes from our gut and from changes in our microbiome. So, when you fix your gut, we'll call leaky gut, you can often reduce your environmental allergies. The things that cause the most problem are processed food, foods with low fiber, high sugar, starch and also things like gluten and dairy can cause a leaky gut. So, switching your diet to a more of a whole foods diet, getting off the starch and sugar, eating more fiber, that often will help.

Nada Youssef:   Okay, great.

Mark Hyman:    That's what we call in functional medicine, an elimination diet.

Nada Youssef:   Elimination diet, yes. Then Patty, she says I'm here Dr. Hyman. Where do I begin? I need to lower my AC1.

Mark Hyman:    A1c.

Nada Youssef:   A1c? Okay. Tell me what that is first of all.

Mark Hyman:    Well, in diabetes we measure your average blood sugar over six weeks usually and it's called hemoglobin A1c. It's called glycated hemoglobin. So, it means your protein of the hemoglobin has been damaged by sugar sort of like a crust forms on a bread or maybe like when you say crème brûlée and that crispy stuff on top, that's actually what's happening to your blood and your hemoglobin. So, it's not good. We've seen in using a ketogenic diet or even things like my 10-Day Detox Diet which I talked about in the book Food: What the Heck Should I Eat? people who do that will often within weeks be able to get off their insulin and normalize their blood sugar. We had a woman in our functioning for life program which everybody should sign up for, it's a group shared medical appointment.

Also, there's different kinds of them that weight loss, diabetes, autoimmune disease, digestive issues. It's an amazing way to get people healthy together and it's such a great thing. We had a woman come in that group. In three weeks, she'd been on insulin for 20 years, she completely got off insulin, normalizer sugar in three weeks. Another woman after seven weeks, she lost 37 pounds. Gotten off her heart medications, her diabetes medications and her kidney function which was failing were completely recovered. So, there's no drug on the market that can act as fast or as powerfully as food. Your hemoglobin A1c can return to normal or even more better than normal, by simply changing your diet and doing a little bit of exercise.

Nada Youssef:   Okay. Then we have Debbie. I was told to see a functional medicine doctor due to my IBS. I love salads, veggies, fruits but so many foods cause me major problems. What is the best to eat for my gut that are easily tolerated?

Mark Hyman:    Well, again, that's a great question. So, you should see a functional medicine doctor I don’t know if you live in Cleveland but wherever you are, come to Cleveland, come and see us at the Center for Functional Medicine in our group. We have all digestive disease group, but we put people on basically an elimination diet to get rid of the worst foods including dairy, the big ones, grains and beans often are problem for people with IBS. We also given them things like probiotics and other things to help repair the gut. So, it's a whole process of repairing but it's very, very possible. Just eliminating the trigger foods and trying that for a little bit , it can be profound. You know what I write about in my books in Food: What the Heck Should I Eat? there's a 10 day detox starter and that is really what probably would be the most effective.

Nada Youssef:   Great. Then Michael, are you concerned about … is it lichens in legumes? Am I saying it right? Is it leeches? Lichens?

Mark Hyman:    I'm concerned about … Lychees? I like lychees.

Nada Youssef:   Lichens?

Mark Hyman:    Lectins.

Nada Youssef:   Lectins? I don’t know.

Mark Hyman:    I'm just playing with you know. I'm the doctor. She's the journalist. Give her a break.

Nada Youssef:   So, I've heard actually a lot about that. Our bodies are supposed to process these or were they not?

Mark Hyman:    Well, listen, plants don't want to be eaten, okay? Animals can run away. Plants can't run away. So, they have defenses and they have chemicals in them that often are trying to keep other things from eating them. One of those class of chemicals are called lectins. They're proteins that are in the food and for different people they may be problematic. I think we have a lot of fads in this country. So, the latest fad is stay away from lectins. Don’t eat nightshades or don’t eat this, don’t eat that. I think it's a hierarchy of priorities. If you fix people's gut, if you cook the food the right way which is basically pressure cooking grains and beans, the lectins are reduced. Nd if you are sensitive to them, they may be an issue, but I don't think universally we should all be avoiding lectins.

Nada Youssef:   Okay. So, now my mom when she cooks beans, it's overnight. A lot of times again we go to the store and we just get a can. Are the lectins-

Mark Hyman:    They may be an issue, so yeah.

Nada Youssef:   … process, yeah?

Mark Hyman:    Soaking overnight and then pressure cooking is the way to go.

Nada Youssef:   Is the best way to go. Okay, great. Then Lisa-

Mark Hyman:    It also helps prevent some of the other side effects of beans.

Nada Youssef:   Oh yeah we all know those. Can you please speak on soy a bit? Should it be avoided?

Mark Hyman:    Soy, oi soy.

Nada Youssef:   It's your favorite.

Mark Hyman:    So, most of our soybeans 98% are GMO soybeans which we still are not clear whether they're safe or not, just to be clear for everybody. GMO foods are the largest uncontrolled experiment on the population history. We just design them. We put them on the food supply. We haven't done large randomized trials and see what happens over 20 years, see what happens. So, it's a big human experiment. Now, there may be benefits of GMO but also what happened is that they didn't fulfill the promise of better yields with lower use of chemicals. Europe banned GMO. They have actually better yields and less chemical use than we do.

In fact, one of the problems with soy is that they spray with glyphosate which is also known as Roundup that leads to alterations in the gut flora, depletion of glutathione, it may be linked to cancer according to the World Health Organization. So, you're getting a lot of that. So, I feel like if you have organic soy, much better. If you have traditional soy, tempeh, tofu, miso, fermented forms that breakdown differently, they're easy to digest and I think most people do much better on those.

Nada Youssef:   Okay, good.

Mark Hyman:    Isolated soy protein which sounds healthy is in a lot of the processed health food like soy burgers and soy hot dogs and soy bars, those you should never eat. They actually extracted the soybean all process and they lead to cancer.

Nada Youssef:   Oh wow. Okay.

Mark Hyman:    Yeah, it's how you asked, right?

Nada Youssef:   Well, I'd rather know the painful truth. Robert, the gluten issue. How much is it about glysophate sprayed and used to grow grains?

Mark Hyman:    Well, the gluten issue. That's a big [inaudible 00:44:28]. So, first of all, there's a lot of issues around gluten. It's found in wheat and other grains. It's a protein. It can cause celiac disease in 1% of the population and gluten sensitivity in about 20% of the population. It can lead to all sorts of weird symptoms. There's 55 different diseases that can result from it. There can be low-grade things whether it's weight gain or digestive issues or joint pain or fatigue or brain fog or skin issues. All can be related to gluten. When I have a sick patient who's got autoimmune disease or inflammatory disease, the first I often do is get them off gluten for a trial to see what happens. There are really great test to see if you're sensitive to gluten but it doesn't pick all of them, so the best thing is to just eliminate and then add it back.

Now, the problem with gluten is that we've hybridized the wheat so that it has a much more gliadin proteins which are more gluten than we ever head. Two, we actually ferment the wheat differently when we have bread for example, In Europe, they do overnight rising. They do 48 hours, 60 hours. Here we do two hour and it changes the composition of the food. It changes the quality. We also know that gluten has all this gliadin in it so that can be inflammatory. Also the modern wheat has high super starch in it called amylopectin which raises your blood sugar more than table sugar so it's super starchy. We also know they spray it with glyphosate before harvesting, not because it's GMO but because it exfoliates and it makes it easier to extract the wheat kernels and that gets in the wheat which again has problems that I just said. Of course, they also preserve it all flour with something called calcium propionate which is a neurotoxin and in animal models cause autism. So, there's a lot of reasons to be cautious about wheat.

Nada Youssef:   Okay. When you talked spray there reminded me of what I have in my cupboard. I have-

Mark Hyman:    Ham.

Nada Youssef:   Yes. No. Okay, it's an extra virgin olive oil spray.

Mark Hyman:    Well it depend if it's a squirt or aerosol, right?

Nada Youssef:   Okay. It's an aerosol.

Mark Hyman:    So, aerosols has kind of gone out of fashion because the chemicals in aerosol tend to cause the destruction of the ozone layer so you don’t want that.

Nada Youssef:   Okay, thank you. All right, next question. Misty, thank you Dr. Hyman for your research and your team at Cleveland Clinic. I recently joined functioning for life group and I'm super excited to feel alive again.

Mark Hyman:    Yea!

Nada Youssef:   Any advice to help transition the rest of my family? I have three teenagers and a husband that love cereal.

Mark Hyman:    Yeah, well, I have a confession to make.

Nada Youssef:   Uh oh

Mark Hyman:    I'm a cereal killer.

Nada Youssef:   And chips and pop and all other stuff [inaudible 00:47:02].

Mark Hyman:    That's C-E-A-R-L just to be clear. I think cereal is the biggest scam that's ever been foisted on our population. It's essentially sugar for breakfast. It's basically dessert for breakfast. 75% of cereals has sugar. Even the healthy ones are not so healthy. So, I think that it's been marketed as a health food. Breakfast of champions and all that but it's anything but that. People want protein and fat for breakfast, not sugar. So, I would … Listen, if you the shopping, you're in power. In our home, nothing comes in there that isn't healthy to eat. If people want to go eat crap, they can go somewhere else and they do and that's fine. You can't control that but you can at least create your home as a safe zone and you don’t have to have a box of cereal. In fact, I had a friend who gained like 30 pounds because he would have a bowl of cereal every night before bed.

Nada Youssef:   Wow, every night.

Mark Hyman:    Yeah.

Nada Youssef:   Yeah and then morning breakfast. Okay. So, Erin wants to know your thoughts on rotisserie chicken at the grocery store and they're really good.

Mark Hyman:    Yeah. Well, it's true.

Nada Youssef:   It taste amazing.

Mark Hyman:    I think rotisserie chickens are fine, but I think you want them to try to eat organic or pasture raised. It's a little more expensive, but if you actually know what they do to chickens and they feed them with arsenic on them. They pump them full of antibiotics not hormones. They are fed a diet that's not their natural diet. They're treated in inhumane conditions. These factory farms of chickens are one of the greatest polluters in the country even almost as bad as the major steel company that put I think 104 tons of toxic waste out on the water supply just one company last year.

Nada Youssef:   Wow!

Mark Hyman:    Yeah.

Nada Youssef:   So, organic.

Mark Hyman:    Yeah.

Nada Youssef:   Stick to the organic. Miriam, is there any good kind of yogurt I can eat?

Mark Hyman:    Yeah. Well, there's a new coconut yogurt you can get. I would go for sheep or goat yogurt, not regular cow yogurt. I would go for organic or grass fed. I would go for full fat.

Nada Youssef:   Okay. Hold on, stop. You wouldn’t go for like a Greek yogurt?

Mark Hyman:    Greek is okay. It’s organic. That can be okay. It depends on what … The thing is most yogurts, your morning fruit sweetened yogurt has more sugar per ounce than a can of soda.

Nada Youssef:   Wow, really?

Mark Hyman:    Yes.

Nada Youssef:   Well, that's like the flavored yogurt, right?

Mark Hyman:    The flavored which is what most people eat.

Nada Youssef:   Okay. Well, speaking of, I do have something here. Well, this is vanilla.

Mark Hyman:    Okay.

Nada Youssef:   So, a non fat vanilla yogurt.

Mark Hyman:    Yeah. There you go.

Nada Youssef:   Yeah, tell us about that.

Mark Hyman:    So, nonfat vanilla yogurt.

Nada Youssef:   Then I have a healthy option, the [inaudible 00:49:42].

Mark Hyman:    Okay. So, it's got nonfat milk, food starch to make it not fall apart in water, sugar, sucralose even more sugar, more natural and artificial flavors, another artificial sweetener. So, there's like sugar, two artificial sweeteners and some weird chemicals that we don’t even know what they are. Definitely not a health food.

Nada Youssef:   Okay.

Mark Hyman:    Okay? Then, this one is a healthy one triple cream, whole milk, organic agave nectar. I'm not so big a fan of that because it raises the sugar a lot. It's got 10 grams of carbs which is basically like two teaspoons of sugar. It's not so bad, but again have the unflavored one.

Nada Youssef:   So, plain yogurt?

Mark Hyman:    Yeah, the unflavored sugar, yeah.

Nada Youssef:   Okay.

Mark Hyman:    Yeah.

Nada Youssef:   All right. Lee, I have been eating plant based diet for four or five months. I'm struggling with seizure like episodes. Can't figure out what might be triggering them.

Mark Hyman:    Okay, well, there are many reasons for seizures. So, I don't know if you actually are having real seizures, but if you are, you need to go see your doctor. The treatment for seizures is a ketogenic diet and it’s dramatic. The more carbs and starch you have which will be as a vegan, you're going to have more potential insulin and inflammation. I think we know very clearly from the research the ketogenic diets are very effective for seizures. So, I would think about switching your diet a little bit especially if you try something. Everybody is different. Some people thrive on a vegan diet but if you're feeling bad or you're unhealthy or you're having seizures, that's a sign that the diet is not working for you.

Nada Youssef:   Yeah. All right, cool. So, Barbara, what do we do about a sweet tooth?

Mark Hyman:    You go to the dentist and you have them pull it out.

Nada Youssef:   If it was really there. I know you say that there's nothing because I remember I asked this question before. If I like my coffee sweet, there's absolutely nothing you can do, right? Just don’t drink coffee.

Mark Hyman:    No, well, here's the thing. When you have a sweet tooth, what you're actually saying is I'm a sugar addict. So, the biology this is fascinating it literally hijacks your brain and changes your brain chemistry in a way that it's just like heroin or cocaine. So, if you are thinking constantly about sugar and craving sugar and wanting sugar, it's not because you don’t have willpower, we have some moral failing, it's because you're eating foods that have hooked your brain and your biochemistry and your hormones in way that make you want more and more. So, I would say try something like the 10-day detox which is in my book Food: What the Heck Should I Eat? and see what happens. Within two days, people's sweet tooth just falls out.

Nada Youssef:   Falls out. Okay and then Gina is asking, should you buy grass fed or organic meats?

Mark Hyman:    Well, it's a hierarchy, right? Feed lot is the worst. Both for you, the animals and the planet. Organic is better but it means they have organic feed. It doesn't mean they're not in the feedlot. It means they're probably not giving hormones and antibiotics so that's an improvement. Then, grass fed, fully grass finished is actually much healthier for you and the planet. Can actually regenerate the Earth's and the soil and lead to reversal of climate change plus it has more omega-3 fats and more benefit. So, I'm a big fan. It's a little more expensive, but again I don’t think we have to eat a ton of meat or protein. We can have moderate amounts and do really well and have good quality and have less.

Nada Youssef:   Okay. So, when it comes to eggs?

Mark Hyman:    You can buy a cow.

Nada Youssef:   You can buy a cow.

Mark Hyman:    No, I mean, there’s a whole thing about cow shares where you buy a cow with a bunch of people right from the farm or a rancher and then they chop it up and freeze it and sent it to you so you get like grass finished meat for a fracture of the price.

Nada Youssef:   Wow, that's awesome. With eggs? Speaking of-

Mark Hyman:    What about eggs?

Nada Youssef:   Natural, organic, cage free, what does that mean? Which one should I go for? I don’t know.

Mark Hyman:    Okay. So, in my book, I go through like the 25 different kinds of marketing they have for eggs or chicken. Most of it is confusing and nonsense. The best form is pasture raised, not pasteurized but pasture raised which means they're running around eating grubs and seeds and little things. Those have the best quality eggs. I've gone to countries where they have all that. The yoke is like dark … yeah it's like yellow of a sun. It's like a stark yellow sunset. Color of a yolk is opposed to these pale yellow yolks we have in this country. That's where all the nutrients are, the B vitamins, the choline, the good fats, all that stuff is in there. So, you want to have more of that. Organic is sort of the next best. There's omega 3 eggs which are okay. So, those are all fine.

Nada Youssef:   Okay. I'm going to try to go fast here. Two more questions for you. Misty, since you've suggested no bread, what do you suggest for kiddos that love to pack sandwiches in their lunch for school? What should I pack my kids for school?

Mark Hyman:    Well there's wraps. You can get that are made from different things. So you can get like-

Nada Youssef:   Okay. How about pita bread?

Mark Hyman:    Pita bread is still … Yeah I know you're from the Middle East. You know all about the pita bread.

Nada Youssef:   I know all about the pita bread and hummus.

Mark Hyman:    All about the pita bread but listen, if you're not gluten sensitive and you're active and you don’t have any health issues, a little bit is not going to hurt you, but I do think that there's been like coconut wraps, those other kinds of wraps, there's a gluten free breads which also are sugar, they have a lot of sugar but they can be good.

Nada Youssef:   Okay, good. Then Griffin, do you have recommendations for healthy fastfood for busy families and active teenagers?

Mark Hyman:    Well I'm very busy and very active and I don't have a lot of time, but I do know how to hunt and gather wherever I am whether I'm travel, airports, restaurants and also I use this company called Thrive Market where I buy at a discount 25% to 50% off at some of the best quality healthy food, snack food bars and different things, nuts and butters and I carry that with me. So, I'm really good with that. Then, there are an increasing number of restaurants out there and even fast food restaurants that are healthy, that are coming up on the market. So, pay attention to those.

Nada Youssef:   Okay, cool. Yeah. Okay, one more question.

Mark Hyman:    Okay.

Nada Youssef:   I lied. Just one more. Mckenna, can you touch on … Is it candida and the candida diet? Is that right? I've been instructed by my functional medicine doctor to go on it for a few months. What is that?

Mark Hyman:    Because we eat a lot of starch and sugar, get yeast infections or get overgrowth of yeast. Candida is one form of yeast, but it's sort of … I think candida is sort of means do I add cheese to my system. There's symptoms of that. You can get vaginal yeast infections. You can have anal itching. You can have a little flaky rashes on your skin. You can have a white coating on your tongue. You can have sugar cravings. You can have bloating. You can have rashes on your chest, on your breast if you're a woman.

So, these are symptoms that we can have yeast issues, but often it's not obvious and we can do only stool cultures. They do contribute. So, the reason is we eat a lot of starch and sugar. We don’t eat enough good quality whole foods, not enough fiber. We've taken antibiotics or we've taken steroids or we've taken hormones or birth control. All of those will lead to overgrowth of yeast in our guts. So, it's really like weeding them out by starving them and that's getting rid of the sugar and starch. I think that's a good thing to do which is good for everything anyway.

Nada Youssef:   Sure. Okay, so before I let you go again, we want to talk about your grocery list.

Mark Hyman:    Download the free list at ccf.org/fmfood.

Nada Youssef:   Slash fmfood.

Mark Hyman:    Slash fmfood.

Nada Youssef:   Don’t forget because some people are listening.

Mark Hyman:    Okay.

Nada Youssef:   Then, can I put you on the spot and maybe like the first person to dial this gets maybe your book signed?

Mark Hyman:    Yes. Whoever goes right now and gets this list will get a signed copy of my book Food: What the Heck Should I Eat? which is awesome.

Nada Youssef:   Yes, it is awesome. To make an appointment with the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, it's more of like a shared medical appointment, go to ccf.org/functioningforlife.

Mark Hyman:    Functioning for life. It is awesome. We had a reunion the other morning and people were crying. People lost 70 pounds, reversed their diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis went away, all their gut issues went away. I mean it was just amazing to hear these stories where people do it together. We're finding that we have like 3,000 people on the waiting list but you can get into one of these groups right away and actually people do better in the small groups then they even do on the one to one visits because they-

Nada Youssef:   Because it's a support group.

Mark Hyman:    It's a support group and you help each other. Instead of like one hour with the doctor, you get 20 hours of contact with the doctor, nutritionist, health coaches and much more.

Nada Youssef:   How long is this? 10 weeks?

Mark Hyman:    Ten weeks.

Nada Youssef:   Excellent, great.

Mark Hyman:    Twenty hours all in one day.

Nada Youssef:   Good. Oh one day. It's a vacation. It's a retreat.

Mark Hyman:    No, it's 10 weeks, two hours a week and then there's follow up support. It's pretty awesome.

Nada Youssef:   If you enjoy this Facebook live, would like to get more notifications, please make sure you're following us on Cleveland Clinic Facebook page. Also, for more health tips and information, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat at clevelandclinic, one word. All right, well thank you for being here.