From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in 2015, when the New York Times conducted a taste test of a then new product called Soylent.

Yes, the name of the product is a nod to the 1973 film Soylent Green.

But unlike the movie, this Soylent product is real, and it is not people.

Here's the idea.

Food is both expensive and time consuming to prepare.

Tech workers didn't like the hassle of preparing meals.

Why not just purchase all the best food components distilled into a powder, and then you can replace breakfast, lunch, and dinner forever?

So the New York Times panel gave the product a shot.

A gastroenterologist said that Soylent tasted predominantly like grit.

A Somali at a popular Manhattan restaurant said diplomatically that it tasted healthy, not necessarily good.

A fitness trainer said it tasted like a protein shake, but without the flavor.

The times dining reporter visually recoiled and said that yes, gritty.

She said it also tasted like she always imagined in Sherwood taste, but somehow worse.

And the Somali chimed back in this time, more blunt, he said, there's no way any normal person would really want to drink that.

And the gastroenterologist added this don't take something like this with the intention of solving all your health problems.

Please talk to a specialist first.

I remember watching this video and I laughed.

I thought it was cute.

It was playfully produced.

And now, ten years later, I feel naive about it.

The idea that people would want to replace actual food with ostensible miracle powders and other inventions, it seemed silly.

Turns out it's $1 billion industry.

Soylent is now sold in nearly 30,000 retail stores.

It became profitable in 2021, and it has plenty of competitors.

Mushroom coffees are all the rage, rise, cuppa and more.

In fact, this industry is going hard at your coffee with all kinds of claims about how to get you to be more alert, more energized, more effective at work while losing weight and improving your health.

Athletic greens can replace meals the creators say.

Try those, and there's so much focus on our bowels.

We're going to be talking about that, too.

At the center of this explosion in sales is the podcast industry, in particular podcast populated by men?

Men's health magazine calls it the bro diet.

And these products are advertised to millions of young men who watch or listen to Joe Rogan, Theo Von Russell Brand, Jordan Peterson, the list goes on.

Peterson, in fact, loves to tout the all meat diet.

All meat, only meat all day long.

This hour, we want to explore what the actual experts think of all of this.

Going back to Soylent, it was an American software engineer who decided he would just purchase 35 chemical ingredients that he figured were necessary for survival.

He's not an expert in this field, but he included potassium gluconate, calcium carbonate, monosodium phosphate, maltodextrin, all based on his reading.

Can it work?

Can you just order that stuff in powder form, mix it up, and avoid ever having to prepare a meal?

In the Men's Health piece titled man Versus Food The Rise of the Bro Diet, they conclude, quote, diet culture has always been curiously gendered.

Many popular regimens were once thought to be the preserve to beat the preserve of women.

But something has shifted from keto to paleo, experimental fasting to tech pro biohackers.

Today's food ascetics are looking distinctly male and there are many influencers touting them.

End quote.

My guests today include Jill Kotak, who is a clinical dietitian at the center for Community Health and Prevention at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Welcome back to the program.

Thank you.

Holly Gonzalez Gilligan is also with us, a registered dietitian that you are medicine, fitness science.

Welcome to you.

Thank you for being here.

Thanks for having me.

Can I speak a little out of school?

You know someone who's done the Soylent thing?

Is that fair?

I do know someone who has found the silent thing for years.

Yeah.

Like, exclusively Soylent.

Pretty much.

It was two out of three meals a day.

And the purpose of it was simply convenience.

yeah.

Yeah.

Worked in the engineering field and really just didn't want to bother with thinking about meal planning.

And it was quick grab and go.

Could buy them cases at a time and just keep it in the trunk and no thought.

Chug it as you keep on working productivity was the name of the game.

They're still doing it.

No, unfortunately or fortunately not happening anymore.

Well, yeah, depending as the case may be.

I told our guests no one's getting sued this hour.

No one is.

We're not going to be so blunt about individual products.

that we're going to need the lawyers involved, however.

We're going to try to be as direct as we can about what we know is in these products and what the claims are.

And there are big claims about just about everything that they're trying to sell you listeners, if if you're like, I've never seen claims that mushroom coffee or athletic greens, that's because you've never clicked on anything related to this field.

If you do it one time, your social feeds will be overwhelmed with all kinds of stuff like this.

In getting ready for this program, that's it.

Forever.

My social feeds are how to help your poop.

I mean, like that's literally I've seen.

I cannot believe how much is out there about that.

Lots of stuff.

Lots of stuff.

Stuff.

Yeah.

And gut health matters, right?

Gut health matters.

Bowel movements matter.

Bowel movements matter.

I'm pro bowel movement.

So we'll have a lot to talk about here.

Listeners, if you want to ask your questions, you can do that by phone.

It's 844295 talk.

It's toll free.

(844) 295-8255. and it's 26399994263.

If you're calling from Rochester, you want to email the program connections@wxxi.org.

It's connections at WXXI Earth.

And if you're watching us on YouTube on the Sky news YouTube channel, you can join the chat there.

So we'll do our best to be as direct as we can.

And I'm just going to start general here.

Before the program began, we were kind of laughing about the fact that everybody who was on this taste panel ten years ago for The New York Times, they basically concluded, you know, that there are possible there's possible utility here.

They thought at the time for populations that are in distress, war ravaged areas getting nutrition in powder form, that kind of a thing.

But everybody was kind of like, why are we replacing food?

Like what?

Why?

And I kind of felt the same way.

What do you think, Jill?

Yeah.

I think it's important to note, seeing patients every day that I'm going to speak to things in a non-judgmental, all, like, safe space just to offer context to people.

So, like, for Holly's friend or people who have tried Soylent or I know I come from a line of engineers, so I know a lot of engineers have a lot in my life.

I get the idea of wanting to be productive over, you know, maybe fixating on food or whatever.

So I totally get that.

as a dietitian, as a clinician, as a mom, as a human, I wish that that could be helpful.

Right?

Like, we're not robots.

So where we kind of start to walk the line a little bit is, when we assume something like that can, stand in for food, sometimes it can, and it's often better than than nothing.

but there's as we're learning, through research and just kind of human experimentation, food is so much more than just nutrition.

It's connection to others.

It's family meals.

there's stuff we haven't discovered inside food yet.

so to assume that we can just simply put it in a drink and drink it and have it bring to us all the things that food empirically does, is a little hasty, in my opinion.

And so, you know, do what you got to do.

And I hope you would consider food.

Also, if you have the opportunity to do so, do you endorse what the gastroenterologist in the times panel said, which was before you go down some of these roads, it is good to talk to specialists for sure.

I mean, I can speak for myself and Holly can speak for herself as I chose this career for a reason.

So each time I meet with a patient, I'm going to assess them metabolically what clinical conditions they have, what family they have or don't have, what, aspirations they have for their job, their life, their exercise and we're going to run through it and say, oh, this is where you might be deficient.

This is where you might need a little extra, a supplement, a thing here.

But we're going to base it on science and labs and also going to assess if it can harm you, because that's a real thing right now.

That's a good point.

And then assess if it can help you.

And I don't know Holly if you kind of do that too.

Absolutely.

So right along the same lines, I think speaking for the majority of dietitians, that's how we approach everybody.

Let's look at the whole picture.

let's get an idea of what you're doing.

What are the barriers?

Why are you going to something like a supplement to, a Soylent?

What's what's getting in the way there and then really promoting.

So I approach everybody with a kind of food first mentality.

Can we make this work with food first and foremost, and then how is that going to look.

And then if there is an additional need.

So I work in the sports field.

and sometimes depending on the type of athlete, we might need some additional supplementation on top of that.

But if we can make sure that we are looking for those things, in food, first and foremost, just because everything interacts, there's phytonutrients in food, there's fiber in food.

When we are extracting one thing and putting it into a supplement, sometimes we're missing those other important pieces.

so yes, right along the same lines, as Jill with approach to clients.

Yeah.

And I can understand there are times where having to prepare a meal is the last thing I feel like I have time for or want to do.

Yep.

I was nearly late to work today.

Making lunch for, you know, my son and just trying to get out the door.

I get it, so I understand the appeal of powder in a packet that says, you don't got to do any of that stuff.

I also feel like I don't relate to the idea of never wanting to cook, never wanting to be with people in a kitchen, never wanting that experience of sitting down and eating together, wanting to replace that entirely.

I can't relate to that.

And it sounds like for the program you were feeling the same way.

Holly.

Yeah.

So not one.

I actually do run into a lot of, one on one individual clients I have, who don't want anything to do with that.

I work with a lot of younger athletes who are.

Yeah, they're they've got a kitchen for the first time, they've left Mom and dad's house.

what are we doing here?

I don't want to waste my time with that.

Yeah, exactly.

so I absolutely understand that they're coming back from a late practice.

They just want to hit.

They don't want to go to bed.

They don't want anything to do with that.

So there is always times and places where, yeah, I don't want to I don't want to prepare food.

But I always tell my athletes there is a middle ground.

We do not have to spend three hours in the kitchen.

We do not have to just take a powder from a packet.

There is a middle ground.

I'm a huge fan of fast, easy, balanced, fully microwavable meals, particularly, yeah.

For my college athletes who only have a microwave, we can have packet of rice in the microwave, packet of frozen vegetables in the microwave, couple chicken sausages in the microwave.

That's a balanced meal it takes.

Yeah.

Ten minutes total.

Zero pots and pans.

Much better than just chugging a protein drink and calling it a day.

obviously there's opportunity for that, but making sure that we are starting with that balance, because there are times when you really just I'm not turning on the oven, I'm not turning on that stove.

Well, and I also want to ask both of our guests before we get into some specifics about claims that are out there, how often they're seeing clients or patients come in with these kind of questions, or I saw this on a podcast.

I have an ad for this.

I heard about this.

I have a friend who's taking that, you know, I promise them no one's getting sued this hour, and we're not talking and we're not talking politics.

This is a mostly political free hour.

but all of this is adjacent to where the culture has gone.

And if you look at media consumption, there's all this talk about the, you know, the death of journalism or the dying of journalism and, and, where people are consuming their information.

Well, young people, especially young men, are very, very big in podcasts.

And just because a listener might say, well, I don't listen to Joe Rogan, I listen to Jordan Peterson.

Someone in your life definitely does.

Lots of people do.

Lots of young men do.

And this stuff is big there.

We're going to talk about carnivore diets.

We're talking about all meat coming up like that's that's a claim.

But Holly, in general, are you seeing it more often that people come to you and say, hey, I want to try this or I heard about this.

Is that is that happening?

Yes.

It's actually my favorite thing.

When a client walks in and they pull a list out and they said, hey, these are the things that I've heard about, or I have a direct messaging system and they'll just send me a link.

Hey, here's an Instagram post I saw.

What do you think about this?

It's my favorite thing because influencers are big on this stuff.

Yes, and they are so good at what they do.

The influencers are they're really good at convincing people who are always the people just trying to do the best for themselves.

So that's why they're seeking out.

I'm trying to improve my performance.

I'm trying to get healthier.

Let me seek that out.

And they're the ones who get got by these influencers.

so I love when a client walks in and says, here's the supplement I'm taking.

I haven't started it yet.

Maybe they'll bring the packaging in and we look over it together and I'll explain.

This is why this can help, or this is why this is dangerous.

Or here's where we can instead get this from food, where there are additional, positive benefits to that deal.

How often are you hearing clients, patients say to you, yeah, I heard I heard this tell because every day, every day, every hour, all the time I am, I feel the exact same.

So I welcome it.

Part of what I do in my visits with my patients is kind of create a rapport there.

They're human to me.

Everybody generally, like Holly said, is probably choosing something because they have a pain or, an issue or a trauma or, something that's causing them to make that choice.

And so I like to create a welcome space, judgment free, where they can talk to me, the expert on nutrition, not on their body, but on nutrition, about what kind of context they might want to, have as they make these choices was ultimately, it's their choice.

They're coming to me, but it's going to be their choice.

So, you know, the first thing that I always say when I have patients reach out and talk to me about this is can it cause you harm?

Like if you're straight up taking something to try and help you, you should probably know if it's going to hurt you.

And that's where I come in.

It's like if I can create a safe space for a person to vocalize, hey, I want to take this for X.

If they come to me and they say, hey, is this okay?

Then I can unpack it with them and say, oh, maybe you might not because XYZ thing or hey, it might not cause you harm.

It could be worth experimenting because experimentation is fun.

Sometimes if it's safe, the key is safe safety and having an expert on your side who you trust, who's not going to judge you to talk through these things because many, many of them, and I see that also almost every day, can hurt you and cost you money too.

So as we go through these, let's talk about, I'm almost dividing it into three parts.

The first is products that, you know, are largely correct in their claims.

The next is.

Yeah, you know, maybe a grain of truth, but overselling.

And then there's the ones that are actually they're not telling you x, y, z.

And this is where it's dangerous or this is where it could hurt you.

So, with Soylent, the idea of 35 nutrients or 35 whatever is in this nutrient, even the right word, you can see who the experts are here laughing because you you are on Soylent.

Okay.

Let's go.

No, I just because we started with that and we're going to get past that, never come back to us, probably ever again.

but just the concept can what can I buy 35 different, things, nutrients.

It's nutrients as there were monosodium phosphate, maltodextrin, calcium carbonate, potassium gluconate.

Can I just buy those in powder form, mix them together, and then my body gets what it needs.

Boom.

Done.

Don't need to eat.

Is it that simple?

No.

so given all the clinical background that I have, all the schooling that I have, you know, I know quite a bit.

And I don't even know all of that.

And I have a chemistry background too.

And so what I'll say is, I have a deep respect for the body and the cascades that exist within it, many of which we don't even know how to understand yet.

And so you can try and I tell this to my patients, too, as we're considering a multivitamin or individual supplements or whatever, it's always based on science and always based on labs and need and all those other things.

And so if you start to tinker with those micronutrients, with those little mini guys, and you think you can handle it, your body's going to tell you otherwise.

There's things that go on in the body that we don't know even happen.

And if you start to play with them, you might cause harm that you don't even know about.

so I always say proceed with caution.

And no, I don't think that anyone could ever get away with something like that, because there's always something missing, always something that we didn't know about from the food or a chemical interaction or an interaction with the stomach acid, for example.

You maybe ingest that as a powder and you didn't know you couldn't.

It changes form in the stomach, right?

So I would not suggest people do that.

Okay.

Holly.

Yeah, I fully agree with that.

There's when it comes to nutrition, this is how I like to explain it to my, my patients is you can't eat in a vacuum.

We can't just pick one nutrient, have somebody eat it alone for a week, and then see what happens to the body.

Because everything interacts.

There are so many things we're taking in and then something as simple as our stress level can also impact the way that we are metabolizing and using our foods and the way that we digest it.

And then that impacts everything else.

So it really becomes harmful if we get a little bit too specific about each individual little nutrient and we miss kind of the greater picture.

And again, I love the word cascades because our body reacts in so many ways that we are just kind of scratching the surface of.

And we do know a lot in the research field.

but there's just so many things that interact within the body.

And when it comes from food or a food combination or a nutrient combination, that's just beyond what we can pinpoint down and just check a list off and, and think that we've gotten all the nutrients we need.

John emails a program and says, Evan, you should mention just saying a lot of influencers are probably paid or getting free products.

That's true.

John, that's a really good note.

you should ask yourself, before you get sold on what an influencer is telling you.

Did they come to this?

And sometimes they're now labeled and honest reviews.

And I love on YouTube, you see like honest review of Cuppa or Rise Coffee, which we'll talk about.

It's it's kind of a person's way of saying I'm not actually paid or getting this for free because that's so common now.

So John's right.

I just want to say that's a really good email and it's a really good point.

So just always try to check the source.

If you're seeing somebody make a claim a huge health claim.

Right.

And whenever I talk with, talk with my patients about supplements and we talk about their lab work and I make suggestions, I often say to them, hey, I am actually not selling any supplements.

I don't make any money from this.

This is all your personal choice.

We're also going to run it by your physician or your OPG win or whomever.

This is like, you know, aboveboard because, I mean, it's okay to make money from stuff, but in the health realm, it because it becomes a little sticky because, then I might want to promote this particular supplement rather than do it clinically.

because of need.

John.

Thank you.

See why I'm going to get your email on a second.

It relates to some of what we're going to talk about now, which is the world of coffee has been targeted.

And first of all, one of the things that you often hear now is coffee on its own.

Black coffee is good for you, generally speaking.

Correct.

So I yes, and yes, there's always a yes answer.

Yeah.

I like to avoid using good or bad foods.

Right.

Healthier unhealthy.

So I did a whole video on oh how about this?

I heard somebody in influencers say black coffee on its own is amazing for you.

Not good for it.

It's amazing.

I would say it depends.

Right.

So it always, you know, what I think is amazing?

I think it's amazing that we're trying to figure out a way to not going to asteroid off course for ten days.

And the coffee is amazing.

I think coffee is a product anyway.

Go ahead.

So yeah, yeah.

So I try to avoid polarizing it just a little bit.

And it's a little funny, but it's important to me.

and so I'll say, generally speaking scientifically, we have found that there are benefits for some people with coffee based on the antioxidants.

There is caffeine in it which can cause harm to some people.

But generally speaking, for heart healthy antioxidants in the coffee and the coffee beans itself can be proven to be beneficial for some, which is why I say it's not good or bad.

It just depends.

Okay, fair.

Yeah, I think I think that's well describe.

Holly.

Anything to add there?

I fully agree with that.

and it's coming back to kind of the basis of how we, we approach our patients is we got to look at the whole picture.

What's going on here?

If somebody has extreme, cardiovascular disease, for example, arrhythmias and caffeine triggers that, then caffeine's no longer good for that person.

somebody without any of those issues can drink plenty of caffeine.

A lot of my athletes use it for, a performance aid, and that can be super helpful.

So it really is very much dependent on what we're doing with it.

Okay.

Well, on the subject of clearance on well, speaking of mud, there's mud.

Water is one of the coffee that names.

So there's mud water, there's rise, there's copper.

And let me tell you, if you are preparing for a talk show with registered dietitians and you send them stuff in advance, they send you just thousands of pages of material and like, oh, we did that.

Like, here it is.

That's okay.

So let's start with the rice.

And by the way, a lot of this is not all of them, but mushroom coffee is a very, very popular thing right now.

And the idea being instead of traditional coffee you get a product that looks like coffee.

but it's it is ostensibly healthier, it gives you a lot more benefits.

And it's made generally from, different mushrooms.

So rise is one of them rising.

They claim to provide antioxidants to remove toxins.

Which are.

You hear this everywhere.

You have toxins in your body.

The toxins are doing toxic things to your body to take the toxins out.

So, rise antioxidants, remove toxins, remove stool residue, boost the liver, and create a healthy blood sugar balance.

So that's rise coffee.

Jill, you looked a little bit in the rise.

I don't know if you've had it.

I've not had it.

I've had friends who have tried it and love it, and friends who have tried it and have not loved it.

Again, I don't get like kickers from rise, so we just picked it because it was populating in social media.

So when you talk about Cup, I we'll talk about this.

Yeah.

But so do you want me to kind of go so let's start with rise.

So so this is a mushroom based product.

What are the mushrooms do for you.

Do they do all these things okay.

So the mushrooms I actually looked into this a little bit more too because you know again it's good for refresh.

So mushrooms are cool because they're like they're fungi right.

And so they are medicinal in some ways I'm like functional and tasty and the other ways.

And so part of what has happened is in the, the mushroom coffee kind of realm is they're taking them medicinal, medicinal mushrooms.

Not like the drug mushrooms, but the medicinal mushrooms that are food.

Right.

And they're like dehydrating them and pulverizing them and making a powder to try and enhance the antioxidants and kind of the, just the overall benefits of this product.

And then what they're doing is they're adding caffeine into it or coffee.

So it's arabica beans.

They're adding that back into it too, along with some fat soluble like MCT oil or whatever.

And that's what makes rise.

And so when I looked into it, I was like, actually, this doesn't necessarily look so bad.

a cup of coffee is generally 60 to 90mg of caffeine.

The rise that I looked at was 30 or 45mg.

So definitely a lower edge caffeine.

And then the claim is, is that these mushrooms are going to give you all these antioxidants.

The question becomes though, did you want to just eat mushrooms right.

And then get that.

All right.

So like that's all.

It's all like what I consider is like cool.

And maybe, there might not be harm.

I didn't see much harm.

It's under research, so there might be I didn't see any overt harm.

No.

Like weird, like ingredients in there off the bat.

but when you kind of pulverize these mushrooms and stuff, you're minimizing the antioxidant property as well as, like, you're not getting the fiber from it that you would from eating mushrooms.

So what consideration.

And I also in doing my best to be a good student here, some of what I'm seeing is you'll see the, the ingredient list.

A lot of these companies are putting ingredient list out there, and I think they do that to impress you, the public, like, oh, I don't know what that is, but that sounds like really beneficial.

And then you see that the dosing is either huge or often really small, smaller than you would get if you just ate, you know, mushrooms.

Yeah.

you know, and so again, in the lay public, I go and the dosing is a lot smaller and it's in powder form.

Am I really getting the benefit?

Is that a fair question to ask?

Yeah of course.

And then it's also not regulated by the FDA.

So are you getting actually what exactly.

That's another thing when it comes to dosing we don't even honestly know.

So you're seeing that dosing.

And unless it's been third party tested and an outside source has come in and tested and said yes, what you're claiming on this package is what's in it, we simply don't know.

Okay.

so that's rising in the family of mushroom coffee.

As I mentioned, there's mud water.

There's something called cuppa, which, again, again, I've read so many reviews online, like, swimming and all these nutritional, fad reviews.

But cup I won a big taste test recently among these products, so apparently, I've never had any of them that people like the taste, generally speaking.

and I don't know exactly how this is what this is claiming.

Vis-A-Vis the other mushroom coffees, but this includes something that I had never heard of until the last week, which is called L-Theanine and MCT oil.

so let me.

Jill, you sent me some notes on this.

So L-Theanine and MCT oil, when I see those on the ingredient list, what are those things?

Okay.

L-Theanine is a non essential amino acid.

It's found in tea leaves.

the claim for l-theanine because they sell this.

And how you might speak to this I don't know if it's an athletic thing, so maybe not, but, it is designed to improve sleep quality, decrease anxiety, increase mental clarity.

So a lot of the claims that these mushroom coffees are making, are okay.

Get rid of the jitters that traditional coffee can, cause increased mental clarity without as much caffeine.

So that's like the ploy.

So that's why you would add something like an L-Theanine is for that.

so again, if you're taking it as a supplement, it's not FDA regulated.

And part of what I like to mention about supplementation is, your body going back to the Cascades with amino acids.

Your body has a way to excrete and get rid of excess from food.

It is literally built to do that.

So if you were to have extra theanine, like floating around in your in your blood, your body and your liver would know how to deal with it.

If you're taking an exorbitant amount from like a supplement or a product.

Now we run into trouble because it's a dose, a load that your body can't handle.

So now we start to have the side effects and the problems.

that would come with that.

So liver has to process everything.

There's always like a liver or kidney type of intervention there.

So, claiming that you have l-theanine in your coffee, depending on again, the person may or may not be great.

Okay.

Holly, anything to add there?

that's l-theanine is another one that I do see.

in the athletic world recently, people starting to add in and it's just one of those things where, why are we doing this?

Do we need it?

What's the actual dosage in here?

And absolutely.

So that's in terms of we've brought up harm.

A lot of times we do need to be looking at if this is a mega dose, what is that going to do if that starts building up in your body?

so just making sure that we are paying attention to things like that.

And if it is a mega dose, why, what's what's going on with that?

Is this something that we can excrete or is this something, like a fat soluble vitamin that's actually going to build up if we have, mega doses of it, and then that can start to cause some serious harm.

Okay.

MCT oil, I took a breath because I have trouble speaking.

So MCT oil is is a thing, and it's great.

And it's actually a tool that we use in the hospital.

I actually love it for what it is intended to do, which is high calorie, doesn't spike your triglycerides.

It's mostly fats, which make it high calorie.

It's mostly derived from coconut oil.

And so I'm not going to take everybody down a rabbit hole.

But it it's digested differently, which is why the triglycerides don't spike in such a high, calorie fat intake.

and it still is high in saturated fat.

So I looked actually at the cuppa and the rise to see how much saturated fat there was from the, MCT oil.

And it and it listed it for the rise.

It didn't for the cuppa.

It was only one gram of saturated fat from the MCT oil, which is fine.

A standard tablespoon of coconut oil, which is used for meat, is 13g of saturated fat, which is like three hamburgers.

so it's a consideration as we're thinking about this, this fat and this fuel inside coffee or inside things is like I'd personally again and it's to each her own is I'd personally rather have a hamburger with all those nutrients than the MCT oil in that case.

But for a person who's sick, who needs that nourishment, that's a great tool to use.

So you just kind of have to think of through it.

And and then for athletes, I have no idea.

So I don't know if there's some difference to what you got to say that.

No, I have nothing else to add.

We don't MCT oil doesn't necessarily come up, at least not with anybody.

back when I was in the clinical realm and working in the hospital, it was it did come up a lot for, malnourished patients and depending on what was going on.

So here's another product that has both MCT oil L-Theanine, but also collagen, which you hear a lot about, and something called silicon dioxide, cinnamon and salt.

And this is aimed at athletes.

This is aimed at athletes.

It's aimed at I think a 50 plus crowd because so the story on this next, next product, it's related to a pro golfer named Phil Mickelson, who's now 55 years old.

And, just for a little context on Mickelson, he's he's claiming that it's called the good stuff, and he's claiming that you can replace your coffee creamer by putting a scoop of the good stuff in.

And now you get all these great things for your body.

You're alert the caffeine doesn't hit you as hard.

It smooths out the caffeine, and you get all these great benefits, and you can be this high level athlete, or you can be a high level worker, high level focus.

Phil Mickelson is a, you know, for a 55 year old.

He's pretty fit now in his career.

20 years ago, he was pretty overweight.

And Jim Rome is a national sports talk guy in Jim Rome.

So Mickelson is a lefty.

His nickname is lefty.

And Jim Rome started calling him hefty.

And at a news conference, Phil Mickelson started saying, well, that's because I have subcutaneous fat and there's nothing you can do about subcutaneous fat.

And I'm like, what?

That doesn't sound scientific.

Well, now Mickelson is on this kick of you can do anything for your body if you just put the good stuff in it.

And so he's done a 180 I think.

So I, I don't want to ask you guys about the claim about what subcutaneous fat.

I, I saw him at a news conference earlier.

I was like, what?

Subcutaneous fat means it like that's I mean, forever, like, wouldn't it be magical if we had one tool where we could just put something in our coffee and help everybody with their health, like if it if it worked, like, wouldn't we all just eat it?

So.

Yeah.

So and and this guy found it.

I like that it's.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The guy who told me that this is subcutaneous just mean under the skin.

It does.

Yes.

Whereas most fat seems like it's done well.

So yeah.

We don't need to go down that rabbit hole, but.

Okay.

Okay.

Unless you want to know something about it.

Okay.

I'm going to talk about the good stuff.

Yeah.

Okay.

This product I you want to go first about the good stuff.

You want me to go for that?

Okay.

Yeah.

All right.

So, it has coffee with cinnamon, collagen, MCT oil, like you said, of l-theanine salt, silicon dioxide.

Part of what got me about this was, well, a it's called the good stuff, but B, it's a support joint health and energy without the jitters.

And it had a lot of I looked on the website, it was really difficult to get the nutrition label and the ingredients, which always is, a little red flag for me.

If it's as good as you say it is, let's put it right out there, baby.

right.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

And then so, so I'm looking and I'm like, okay.

And it talks about anti-inflammatory, but then it uses silica silicon dioxide an anti clumping agent.

And I'm like ooh.

But that is actually known.

Like if you look it up in and everybody go to your Google com, if you look at it by the NIH, it's considered a harmful and toxic compound that's uses an anti clumping.

And so if you think about it and you're ingesting that every day as he suggests, that could be pro inflammatory.

That could definitely inflame some joints and stuff if you're having it in mass quantities.

so so I'm not necessarily sold on that.

And and part of what I'm wondering is, okay, if you unpacked it just had a coffee with cinnamon to collagen, if it were right for you.

Did the mix oil separately in the l-theanine and you would get salt from your from your regular eating pattern, then you would have all that stuff without the silicon dioxide, and then you'd be better off.

So I honestly, I was, I was a little, put off by the claims there.

Okay.

Yeah.

I can agree with that.

I'm not super familiar with that product.

but just based on, you can kind of spread this around to any of the products out there.

It's whenever there's a claim that this is the ticket that's an immediate red flag, because, again, as we've alluded to, it's never just one thing when it comes to our overall health or our athletic performance.

One specific thing is never going to be the ticket to anything.

We have to be looking at the overall.

So if somebody starts using up a big chunk of their budget to consistently be purchasing this product, and it's not doing a whole lot because they're not making any additional changes, is this actually something that's going to be super beneficial and everything in there, as Jill said, we can get from other products without that additional, add in.

Okay.

After we take this only break, we're going to talk about athletic greens.

We're going to talk about the all meat diet that Jordan Peterson and others say.

All you gotta eat is meat all the time.

Just meat.

That seems like it's a lot of meat.

But, we'll talk about what our guests think of that.

and we've got a pile of your emails that we're going to get through, see why Dennis Lee, Angela, Mark will take your emails.

if you want to send in questions, comments as we talk about.

Yeah, I guess we could call them fad diets or food or supplemental products that are now $1 billion industry vying for your dollars on social media, trying to get your attention on podcasts.

And what we want to do is just understand some of the claims around them and what we can do to be smart consumers.

Jill Schroeder and Holly Gonzalez Gilligan are with us.

They are, Jill's clinical dietitian at center for Community Health and Prevention at University of Rochester Medical Center.

Holly is a registered dietitian at U r medicine Fitness Science, and we're right back with your questions.

Next.

Coming up in our second hour as national conversations continue about possible cuts to Medicaid, what does that mean for children's access to health care?

Next hour, we talked to people associated with Ronald McDonald House Charities of Rochester.

They work with medically fragile children, and we're going to talk about the resources available for families and how what's going on nationally might have an effect here.

Yeah.

Oh, oh, it's a short break.

Look at us.

We're all right back here.

I'm just Rob Braden, the engineers, pointing at me like you're on the short.

I used to say, shortest break radio.

And then they were like, you can't say that to commercial, but it's the shortest break in radio.

And we are back on connections.

And let me work through some of your questions.

I'm going to start with c y with a little bit of a different take.

it almost sounds c y and tell me if I'm reading this wrong like c, I would like to be able to be prescribed something that would help with his issues.

He says the only thing my doctors, can tell me is that health and better bowel movements, colorectal surgery included, is eat more fiber, drink more water, don't strain.

Yes, yes and but no.

But c y says it's frustrating when that's all the help they can provide for certain conditions short of unpleasant surgeries.

But it is always good advice for anyone.

Yeah.

I mean, so it's complicated, right.

And I know you have comments on those too.

Like, it's always more than that, but that's the best.

So what?

We've been kind of Holly and I have been talking about like all these micro things, but as she said, kind of at the beginning, let's also focus on like the big picture stuff first.

And if we and I do this with my patients, it's like, let's get the big picture out the way, okay, can you consume fiber?

If not, we got a journey to go to, if you can consume fiber, how do we get that into your house?

What do you like?

What about your family?

Right.

How about water?

What's preventing you from drinking water?

Okay.

Don't strain.

Well, I'm.

I'm not going to touch that.

Right.

But okay.

Speaks for itself.

But so we work on that and then work our way down and say, all right what are your barriers to getting those.

And then what else do we have to deal with.

So there are other factors that can affect how you move your bowels.

And so that's what a dietitian can kind of explore.

because because sometimes there's more.

But those are the base ones to approach and then add on from there.

Yeah, absolutely.

And then I just want to add movement is super helpful for that as well.

One of my favorites too.

favorites.

Not the word I want to use, but I throw the stat around a lot.

Only 90 or only 7% of American adults are eating adequate fiber that is recommended.

So 93% of us are walking around.

They're just falling dramatically short of fiber intake.

And then of course we have some, some bowel issues.

so yes, that is a wonderful place to start with fiber, with movement.

best place to get fiber.

like an apple.

Fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts, whole grains.

Absolutely.

So many options.

I didn't hear any powders in there.

Powders can be helpful as needed when it comes to fiber, there are some certain if people have a GI disease or have had previous surgery, we do have to be careful.

So you're speaking generally to the general public here, to the general public.

Real food?

Yes.

Fruits, vegetables, whole grains.

Good place for fiber.

It's the original powder because it also has phytonutrients and all of the antioxidant you're looking for.

well, listening over at Lento, Art Rogers, shout out to Art and the team at Lento.

A lot of great real food over there.

And I am not a paid endorser and just telling you that I like.

So Art's listening in the kitchen, and he says, what happened to just eating a variety of unprocessed food?

Yeah, I'll say though, I also like processed food.

So, just to be straight, so does your body handle them differently?

I mean, yes, sorta.

It's complicated.

And so I would say here's, here's where I'll go because we don't have enough time and because I don't wanna go down a rabbit hole, okay.

It's like, let's get the basics right, the fiber.

And then research shows that if you get enough fiber daily, get enough water, that you can get away with more stuff.

Right?

So it's about, in my opinion, balancing what your body needs first.

What does it need to like run and then what does it want?

I love chicken wings.

I want them I will have that.

You are from Buffalo.

I guess.

I had a salami sandwich for lunch before I came.

Right.

It's processed in Italy.

They can get away with that, right?

They're doing that.

And they're happy, healthy living forever.

And that would be considered a processed meat.

But part of why people can get away with that, or have that as a part of their eating pattern, is because of balance.

And like making sure that I get what my body needs first or in addition to.

And then you don't have to worry about how you digest it, you just have it all.

Okay?

Would you agree, Holly, that we don't have to stigmatize processed food as some sort of dark food arts category?

As long as it's not the only kind of food you're eating?

Yes, absolutely.

Plus, just if you get down to the nitty gritty, the definition of processed food is also a little bit murky because technically baby carrots are processed, if you think about it.

so the range is huge.

So yes, absolutely.

As Jill was saying, start with the most whole food that you can as much as possible, and then you like a processed food here and there.

if our balance is correct, it's perfectly fine.

Holly, I heard of someone smarter than me years ago.

Say that, a good way to think about it is eat food that looks more like it originally did without.

If you're looking at a product of cooked food and you can't figure out what it looked like originally, those ingredients were, you know, spend more time eating food.

That is what it initially looked like.

Yeah, that's a really good way to think about it.

Absolutely.

And I like to always say not exclusively, but yeah, 80, 80, 20, 80% of the time we're focused on that.

And then 20% of the time I love a chocolate chip cookie, and I eat one almost every night.

But I've balanced out the rest of my day.

By the way, art follows up to say, I'm not talking about chicken wings and salami, though.

I'm I'm talking about things with 20 unpronounceable ingredients on the list.

The un.

I do want to jump in on this, this one, the unpronounceable ingredients.

I, I totally understand those words can look very scary.

And the longer it gets, the more it's like, wow, this is totally processed.

However, there are a lot of words for like vitamin C and vitamin E that we've maybe never seen before.

I that viral video of RFK pronouncing riboflavin in a crazy way.

It's vitamin B we don't babe.

Okay.

To, So that one, take that one with a little bit of a grain, I would agree.

I would actually agree.

And like, I'll.

I'm a little bit rebellious and how I talk about nutrition because I think it needs to be more fun and accessible.

What I will also say is, I see a lot of people in my clinic from all walks of life, in all income brackets.

And so when we start to villainize and I'm not saying that you're doing this at all, so straight up, but when we start to villainize anything, any food, any ingredient, anything, sometimes that's all that people can afford right now, especially with grocery prices being what they are.

And so I like to just instead focus on, hey, okay, what foods do we have access to, how much fiber can we get?

And then we'll do our best because honestly, like cereals which would be considered processed and also fortified, are on wick and are a valuable resource for a lot of my families who, can't afford other things.

And they it can ensure that their children get, the nutrition that they need while they're trying to figure things out.

So I just, I have a more, broad strokes approach on it.

And, I'm just putting that out there.

Okay.

let's get through as much as we can through the rest of the hour, because we have a bunch this, Dennis says to your panel, when calories are listed on a food label, is the number the actual number of calories that your body extracts from the food, or the combustion heat of the contents in a bomb and calorimeter, for example, a lot of fiber would mostly not be metabolized by the body, but it would still have calorie content in a calorimeter.

That email's beyond me, but thank you.

Dennis.

Holly.

Jill, do you want to go?

Go for it.

okay.

Okay.

So what I'll say, again, being the rebellious person that I am is I don't necessarily focus on calories and calories out because, as we've said, like it can work for a period of time.

But as we've seen over time, it hasn't really helped the general population overall, because there's hormones, there's other things.

So if you're asking me that question, I would say that's an awesome question and very intuitive.

And to me, I would not even focus on answering that question because I don't think it would matter.

I would say, eat more fiber and enjoy the foods that you love.

And if you find yourself going down a path where you're thinking that much about calories, I would maybe get a dietitian and say, hey, okay, this is why I'm thinking about that.

Is there a clinical condition there that you're worried about it?

But otherwise, the general public, in my opinion, shouldn't have to think that hard about the calories that they're taking in.

Yeah, I would agree with that.

I have some instances with one on one clients where we're getting very specific about body composition, and in that instance, we will get a little bit more detailed about it.

but for the general public, yes.

If we're focused on adequate calorie intake or, excuse me, adequate fiber intake, adequate protein intake, getting our fruits, veggies, beans, you're going to naturally just have a lower calorie intake overall.

You're going to feel full and satisfied more of the day.

there is a lot of chemical nuance to what we actually take in a digest.

And there's thermic effect of food, which means our our bodies burn more calories to digest certain types of foods.

But again, that comes down to the more complex, the higher protein foods are going to take more work, to break down and burn more calories.

All right.

Let me grab a phone call.

This is Michelle in Newark.

Hi, Michelle.

Go ahead.

Hi.

Yeah, I kind of joined the conversation late, but I caught up to the coffee conversation, and, the thing is, I don't know if you guys have ever heard of super coffees.

And it's a brand name, so I'm not trying to advertise for them, so I'm going to put that out there first.

But the thing with super coffees is they have ten milligrams of protein in them and 150mg of caffeine.

So that's a lot, right?

Yeah, that's a lot of caffeine.

Yep.

Right.

So the thing is with these is that, I usually just drink these when I want to.

I, I'm an athlete.

So if I'm running a race I drink one of these, or if I'm going to go out late at night and I, I'm going to be out past my bedtime.

Then I drink one of these.

Okay.

So I don't I don't generally like abuse them.

It's not something I do every day.

It's a lot.

But I've had two.

I've probably drank more.

I should be invested in them by now, because I've had to drink them every day for the last, week or so, because I just discovered I have an autoimmune disease.

So and it's one of the ones that I'm sure you guys have heard of it that's most misdiagnosed and undiagnosed.

And I've discovered it.

And I was like, yeah, no, you don't.

I thought I was 99.99% sure I had lupus.

No, you don't have lupus.

You have shogren syndrome.

Okay, okay.

So anyways, might go ahead.

I you can ask a question.

I'm like, I'm not sure where to go here for me.

Show you.

You've given us a lot to work with.

I appreciate that and I understand you're searching for answers for yourself as an athlete.

Let me kick it over to Hollywood.

What do you think?

for Michelle here.

Yeah.

So a lot of athletes do use caffeine, and it can be used perfectly safely.

I do always want to make one note when it comes to caffeine, remembering that it is a stimulant, not energy.

So food has to be in place first.

And then most people can tolerate, up to 300, sometimes 400 or more grams or milligrams of caffeine.

It's totally individualize what we can tolerate.

If you know your tolerance level, and you're handling that 150 or 200 and it's helping you before whatever, sport you're doing, that's perfectly reasonable.

I want to say stimulant, not energy, is a really good distinction that I've never thought about.

But if you stimulate and you don't have the energy to go with it, yes, you're you're not going to benefit.

Exactly.

I always say if you've experienced bonking, it's yeah, that's when you like hit the wall.

You can't move effort.

Yes.

If you didn't eat anything, if your body is going to bonk and you took caffeine ahead of time, you are still going to bonk.

You're just going to be really jittery when you do it.

So food first, then caffeine.

And it can help.

And it is super individualized.

The recommendation for adults is not going more than about 400mg a day in general.

but then individualized within that.

Okay.

Anything to end?

do it briefly.

Here we go.

Yeah.

With auto immune.

Just be careful.

I always say, and I have Raynaud's myself, so like, I can relate.

It's an auto immune is.

I always say, let's use gentle hands, because when a body has autoimmune and it is very reactive body.

And so you have to really be careful in considering all the things that you're putting into it.

And if you don't have a dietitian, you should get one, because we definitely help with autoimmune illness.

All right.

As fast as we can here, right down the list here, the Jordan Peterson and the the all meat carnivore diet.

Holly, what do you think?

What would you tell an athlete who says, I'm just going to eat meat three meals a day?

Absolutely not.

Do not do that.

No fiber.

There's no fiber in that.

Your bowels are not going to like that.

Your overall disease risk is not going to like that.

We need fiber.

We've been kind of extolling the virtues of fiber.

How did all meat get popular then?

Influencers who are not of yes, which also the, I'm blanking on the name of the carnivore guy.

Oh, I don't remember it either.

It pulses Latino.

He no longer follows that just because his body was it was no longer liking it, which we could have predicted.

so.

Okay, anybody still following and and, a lot of people will talk about mental clarity that comes with, the Army diet.

But the problem is, is that most of my carnivores who come in to my clinic don't we're never told that without carbs, that protein is going to be converted into carbs in your body.

So you can you are susceptible to getting like prediabetes or A1 c abnormalities, blood sugar abnormalities.

Just as people who eat carbs.

Because our body relies on carbs and will convert protein to carbs readily amazing with the chemistry of the body will do so.

All right, so that's on the carnivore diet.

I wanted to ask Holly briefly about I see these these, these athletic greens and there's a number of flavors of them out there.

briefly.

They are just green powders.

They taste what I'm reading, like fresh cut grass.

And they claim they claim to be for athletes to do all these wonderful things and to remove toxins from what the heck is a toxin?

They keep talking.

Oh, talk.

That's not a real thing.

Anytime you hear that, move along.

our liver is there specifically to take care of toxins.

If it did not if we built up toxins and didn't.

But here's the claim on these.

The claim is we have toxins.

Because I keep seeing this.

We have a lot of, quote, stuck poop in our body pounds of it.

And these are the products that will move them out.

And now we won't have toxins filtering into our body.

So I mean, there are extremely rare cases where that does happen and that requires hospitalization for sure, but that's not the regular person walking around.

If you're moving your bowels regularly.

We are we are clearing out our poop.

this again, fiber is what's going to help with that.

These ag ones have sometimes mega doses where we're just creating expensive urine.

At this point, if we don't need it, we're just peeing it out or creating more problems in the liver because of the toxins building up from the excessive use of vitamin A or various things.

So your athletes who want athlete greens, you say there's a better way.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay.

Start with a food and then maybe a multivitamin if we need it.

All right.

Real briefly, Joel says, isn't, the keto diet the new Atkins diet?

yeah.

I mean, it is totally same same stuff.

I mean, there might be new ones.

It's typically a high fat, low carb, meaning low carb, like 20g of carbs or less type of diet.

it's out there.

Okay, Joel.

Thank you.

And oh, my gosh, a couple questions on vitamin A and RFK.

We're literally gonna hear the music in 20s.

So for people who've been hearing a lot of talk in this eight guys about vitamin A protecting you from measles, vitamin E being the super thing, briefly, what would you tell people?

Be careful with it.

It can build up if you don't.

If you're not, deficient, it can build up in your liver or it's it's fat soluble and it can build up and that can get dangerous.

Okay.

Yeah.

And from the get go, go ahead.

I told you it was coming from the research.

I read it absolutely does not prevent measles.

And so part of what you would want to do to prevent any infection would be to make sure that you don't have any deficiencies.

Right.

And then excess of supplementing a deficiency or when you don't have a deficiency absolutely can cause harm specifically with vitamin K. So you have to be careful.

Do you know of any vitamins that should preclude vaccination?

No, no.

Okay.

we covered a lot of ground, a lot of great questions.

and Ellie on YouTube says our society is so stressed and eager for quick fixes to anything and everything.

And the products you've mentioned are just taking advantage that desperation generally.

Here's the fix for that.

See people like our guests instead and maybe eat more real food.

She'll show our colleague Gonzalez Gilligan, thank you as dietitians for lending your expertise.

Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

More connections coming up in a moment.

This program is a production of WXXI Public Radio.

The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of this station.

Its staff, management, or underwriters.

The broadcast is meant for the private use of our audience, any rebroadcast or use in another medium without express written consent of WXXI is strictly prohibited.

Connections with Evan Dawson is available as a podcast.

Just click on the connections link at WXXI news.

Org.