Latest / Everyday Ancestral with James Barry / The More I Cleaned Out My Pantry, the Better I Got – From Sick to Sovereign with Mira Dessy

Transcript

The More I Cleaned Out My Pantry, the Better I Got – From Sick to Sovereign with Mira Dessy · Everyday Ancestral with James Barry

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I am overjoyed to be talking about our topic today, which is ingredients.
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There are so many ingredients that we either don't know what they are, or we don't even
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know if they're in the food because they're not listed.
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Today I will be talking with Miradeci the ingredient guru.
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She is a holistic nutrition professional author and popular public speaker.
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She knows that it's not just what you eat, but what's in what you eat.
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Over time, this philosophy has been expanded to include helping people understand the basics
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of building a preparedness pantry is one of the ingredients for a healthy life.
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Mira is a member of the National Association of Nutritional Professionals, the Society for
0:48
Nutrition, Education, and Behavior, the American Nutrition Association, and the American
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Association of Drugless Practitioners.
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Additionally, she is on the board of directors for the American Holistic Health Association
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and is a member of the Professional Advisory Board for the Turner Syndrome Society.
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Please enjoy Miradeci.
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I'm so excited to have you on the show because ingredients are a passion of mine and
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I know they are of yours.
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I mean, to the point where you are known as the ingredient guru, can you first talk about
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like when did your focus turn towards ingredients and what was the catalyst for you because
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what's fascinated to me is that yes, you have nutritional education, background, but
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you specifically focused on ingredients and I don't find most people do that.
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They talk about it, but they don't dial it into the point where it's their brand.
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You know, it's so interesting because it actually sort of happened together.
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I was not always a holistic nutrition professional.
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I previously was a database administrator for an international research firm.
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So completely different career.
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And I got very sick.
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I was having this whole issue where I was getting sicker and sicker, lots of things were
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going wrong.
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Nobody could identify what was going on and then I had an immune system collapse.
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The short story is I wound up being identified with multiple autoimmune disorders given lots
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of medication.
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My joke now is that if there was an iste, I had it, gastroenterologist, cardiologist, endocrinologist,
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like I just saw all of them and nobody really talked to me about my food.
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And then one day a friend of mine happened to give me a book that rocked my world because
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it talked about artificial colors and I was like, what?
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Wait a minute.
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And I should share that at the time my friends were like, Oh, you're one of the healthiest
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eaters.
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I know, you know, we belong to the CSA.
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We gleaned in the farmers field.
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I made all of our bread from scratch.
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I canned quarts and quarts of tomato sauce, apple sauce, pickles, jams, jellies, everything.
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And yet we still had junk in our house.
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I began to realize that food was more important than I had been led to believe by all the
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medical professionals that I was seeing.
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And I also don't blame them for that.
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I have since learned that most doctors get somewhere south of 72 hours of nutrition education
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in all the years that they're in medical school, like that's not a lot.
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And I began to research and learn everything I could at a certain point.
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I turned to my husband and said, I think I have to go back to school.
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Like I don't know where else to go with this.
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And I wound up going to school became a nutrition educator.
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And I began to, first of all, reclaim my own health as people began to notice that they
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were like, Hey, like, can you answer these questions for me?
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So I began a career and as I was working with people, I realized nobody was talking about
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the foundation of what was in what you were eating.
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And for me, that was such a clear path.
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The more I cleaned out my pantry, the better I got.
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And then eventually, I also got really frustrated because I kept saying the same thing over
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and over.
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I'm like, why is there no book?
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Like, why is this so difficult?
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Why can't people find this information?
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I admit I'm a little slow on the uptake.
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It took me about a year to go, oh, maybe I should write a book.
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I wrote the pantry principle and I discovered that it doesn't matter what your focus is
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as a nutrition professional and as a person who's learning to eat better, that's fabulous.
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But we all need to pay attention to what's in what we're eating in addition to what we're
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eating.
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And we really face some big hurdles with that.
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We'll start with the first one.
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The first one is, I don't understand what some of these things are, right?
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That's one of the things people will say when they read a label, like, what is that?
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You know, because there's all these formal names, sometimes they're not clear foods.
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So how would you kind of help break that down for people?
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Like, hey, what are some of these foods that are commonly in most of these products that
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is on the label?
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My biggest advice for people, first of all, is to just learn to read the label.
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You know, when we say the label, most people think about the nutrition panel.
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And if they're looking at that, they're only looking at a few things on there.
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There's actually a lot more information there if you pay attention.
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But the part that really gives you that deep dive is below that.
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And that's the ingredient panel.
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And my biggest suggestion to people is start reading that label.
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And if you don't know what something is, put it back until you can figure it out, because
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I don't think you should have to have a degree in biochemistry to know what you're eating,
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like food is food.
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What are some basic label reading tips?
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Like, for example, one, it would be, it's listed from highest quantity to lowest, right?
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That would be one.
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Are there some other kind of main, this is how to read that ingredient list?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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So one of my biggest is, if it has a number, don't eat it.
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The joke is, there's no such thing as an Apple 24.
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So if it has a number, that means it was created in a lab and they're identifying which formulation,
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polysorbate 80, polysorbate 60, you know, that kind of thing.
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And if it's all capital letters, don't eat that either, because that is an abbreviation
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for a really long term that they don't have enough characters for on the label.
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So, you know, BHA is butylated hydroxyanosol.
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That's a lot of letters.
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So they just say BHA or BHT or EDTA or TBHQ.
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And so they have all of these different ways to abbreviate it.
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And we don't pay attention like we skip over that.
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Now, why is it, for example, in seasonings, sometimes it will say salt, it will say garlic,
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might say pepper, and then it will just say spices.
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Why are they able to do that?
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You know, one of the challenges I will say first of all is spices can hide a whole lot
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of things, so that becomes a problem.
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The reason they're allowed to do that is because it can potentially be considered a proprietary
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formula of spices.
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And so they're afraid that the home cook is going to read this and go, oh, I could make
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this at home and figure it out from what's on the label.
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And I'm going to tell you it's really hard to do that.
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I think the other reason they do it a lot of times is because it does save on labeling
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space for certain things if it's less than 2%.
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They can group it together and they don't have to individually identify.
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Okay, these are such good granular tips.
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So reading the label, you've already listed like here, here's a couple of things we should
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think about.
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But that's the stuff that's actually listed in the ingredients.
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Well, there's one more big tip I want to add.
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Yeah, please.
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Really, really important.
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As consumers learned that what's on the label is in volume order, the more there is of
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something, the higher up it is on the label, food producers are very sneaky.
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And they don't want people to see something like sugar as the number one ingredient.
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And so they will put multiple forms of sugar in there in descending order.
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And I have, believe it or not, seen labels that have had as much as, you know, six different
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forms of sugar.
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And so you have to read the label and go, oh, gee, it's got honey and it's got rice brand
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syrup.
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Anything that's a syrup is a sweetener, you know, and it's got maltodextrin, which is
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a form of sugar.
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Like you have to educate yourself to learn what the different names for sugar are and
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see how many of those are there in order to really get a good idea of just how much
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there is because sometimes just looking at the grams of sugar on the label doesn't adequately
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identify that there's actually a lot more sugar in that than you think there is.
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9:57
Is there like a little bit of a cheat sheet with the sugar?
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If it ends in like ROSE, is that typically mean it's a sweetener?
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Generally, if it ends in an OSE, those are all sugars.
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The challenge is now we're getting into territory where not all oses are fine.
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For example, allulose is a natural sugar comes from a natural source.
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It tends to be found in things like raisins and dates and that sort of thing.
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It's in itty bitty amounts and food producers have figured out how to make a lot of it
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because it's a lot sweeter and it bypasses how the body processes sugar.
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It's essentially considered a lower calorie sweetener.
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The problem is anybody who has any kind of a digestive disorder typically has very, very
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challenging circumstances when it comes to trying to process that kind of sugar.
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Allulose can cause bloating, diarrhea, constipation, all kinds of issues.
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That's one of those where it's supposedly a safe sugar name, but it's not as safe as you would think.
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I think you bring up a really great point, though, is that it could be a trending ingredient.
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It could be a certain groups or influencers say, oh no, this is great because I know some
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people are really behind allulose, for example.
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But if your body responds specifically around it, then you have to honor that.
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We have to honor our bodies experiences with it.
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As you said, as you started, you were eating what many would deem a very clean diet and yet
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you were having health issues.
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Well, we were needing as clean as we thought we were.
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No, we still had artificial colors in the house.
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We still had all kinds of additives and other things in our food like we still had Captain
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Crunch and you know, macaroni and cheese.
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It's just that I made most of our food and we sourced a lot of good food and we also
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had things that were not great for us.
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We had a less typical American diet than the standard American diet.
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It is a test of my two of you only know what you know, right?
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We all think we're in one place and once you learn to do better, you do better.
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So good kudos to you for adjusting what is very hard to do, which is your diet.
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It took a long time.
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And I will share, for me personally, one of the biggest benefits my primary autoimmune
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disorder is ulcerative colitis and I will share that my last colonoscopy, because I've
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had a lot of them over the years, showed no signs of ulceration in my system.
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Now, Vine was perhaps more mild than somebody who's on the verge of having to have a pouch
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or you know, an operation to remove part of their intestines like that you can potentially
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do a lot of damage with that disorder.
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But I was in the fortunate position where changing my diet, changing my lifestyle and incorporating
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a lot more of the things that my body needed allowed my body to restore itself.
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You know, there is hope for that.
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So then there's another category of sugar called sugar alcohols.
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And sugar alcohols tend to have less caloric impact than sugar.
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The challenge is in excess, they can be highly laxative.
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So we don't want to do a lot of them.
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The vast majority of sugar alcohols end in an OL, a Rithritol, xylitol, those kinds
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of things, except for the weird one isomalt.
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You won't find in a home kitchen, so it usually appears on the label if it's being used
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in a, you know, commercial confectionery situation.
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There's two more categories.
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One is the artificial sweeteners and we could probably talk for a whole hour about that,
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but I don't recommend anybody eats them ever.
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They're not good for you.
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They have been repeatedly proven in laboratory settings to be very, very difficult.
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And in many cases can cause cancer, yet we insist on having them because we think we
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want to have the sweet without paying the price for eating sweet things.
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And the goal really is to learn to reset your palate.
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And do those end with an AME or what's, or that's not as consistent?
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That always no, because for example, we have things like sucralose and that kind of thing.
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So those are not great.
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And then we also have, yeah, as per tame, but in addition to that, we have what are analogs
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or variants of lower caloric sweeteners like stevia comes from a plant and has zero calories
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and is many times sweeter than sugar.
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It's stevia is from a plant.
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So you can't patent it.
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You can't trademark it.
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You can't own the name on it.
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And a couple of companies have gone on to create things like pure via and true via that
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are made with stevia, but they're not really stevia.
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And we just have to take the time to learn.
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And I want to share for anybody who's listening, it's not something that you learn all at once.
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And it's not like you can get all of the categories all at once.
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You have to figure out what's more important to you.
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His sweetener is important to you.
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Is preservatives more important to you, artificial colors, quality of your meats, antibiotics
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in your food, like those kinds of things, figure out where you want to start and just start
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there.
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Great tip.
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Before we move on to the next category, I want to just go back to stevia.
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I find it really fascinating that you can a grow stevia in your backyard, right?
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And it's like you said, it's a plant, it has a leaf.
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You can steep that leaf in hot water and create a sweet tea.
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And it's quite medicinal in that form, yet we see these white powders.
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You know, we see these liquid stevia things.
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There's no way that's 100% stevia, obviously, if it's a liquid or if it's a white powder,
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right?
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Because it's a green leaf.
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So what are they adding to it?
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Which kind of carries us into the next topic of ingredients, which is the things that
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are not listed on the label or that are categorized as something like natural flavors or artificial
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flavors that may have up to 30 or 40 ingredients within that.
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And some of it has to do with like to get it white, it could be a bleaching process.
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And you have to be careful about what's on the packet because it may say stevia on the
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front.
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So when you flip it over, it's got multi-dextrin or dextrose or something else and stevia.
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So it's not pure stevia, usually it's coming in a liquid, it's suspended in something.
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And in that situation where it has dextrose, those would be considered fillers, right?
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So they're creating a cost, you know, a lower cost product by lessening how much stevia
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is actually in there and putting in filler to make it cheaper.
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And they can do that in part because stevia by itself is multitudes sweeter than table
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sugar.
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And so they can cut it quite a bit, still have it be very sweet, but use something cheaper.
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And one of the big challenges that we run into is when we have most of those fillers by
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the way tend to be corn-based and because it's cheaper, it's genetically modified corn,
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which means you're getting a whopping dose of glyphosate along with your whatever you're
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putting it in, cup of tea, cup of coffee, baking with it, whatever.
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And glyphosate in and of itself is such a challenging ingredient.
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You know, it's a key later.
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It binds to minerals, which means that's not good for you.
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It also can alter the microbiome.
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It changes your gut bacteria, which is really challenging when it comes to your digestive
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system and your overall wellness.
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So we really want to make sure that we are being mindful about those things because food
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producers are not going to necessarily identify that.
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Now, I am starting to see because it's become mandated that more and more labels are
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saying made with a bioengineered ingredient.
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I haven't yet seen that on a packet of stevia that also has dextrin.
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And it may be that maybe it's on the, I usually only see those like at restaurants or
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somewhere else.
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It may be that it's on the box.
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Do you know it's like I wonder if there's only certain products they're requiring it
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on yet?
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Because I'm pretty sure not every state is requiring that you list genetically modified
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ingredients yet.
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There's a ramp up period and so it takes time.
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They're given a certain amount of time in order to be able to change their packaging,
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their labeling, all of that.
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And they recognize that the bigger companies tend to be able to pivot more quickly, not
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that they want to, but they can.
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The smaller companies, it's more challenging.
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So the government often gives a period of 18 to 24 months for the switchover.
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Which we're seeing right now in the red dye, right?
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Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
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Because what's interesting is that everyone's like freaking out going like, woo, we won,
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but it's not so simple, right?
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Yeah.
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Here's the thing.
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I am really happy that this has happened because I feel like it's a step in the right direction.
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It's not the end of the discussion, though, because just that one product, we have until
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January of 2027 to get it out of food products and January of 2028 to get it out of pharmaceuticals.
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And most people don't tend to read labels on or ask for labels on pharmaceuticals or
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personal care products or that kind of thing.
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They're very focused on food, which is great.
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And I love that.
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However, the red dye is really so embedded into everything that we're exposed to.
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It's going to take a while to get it out.
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And the other thing is it's not the only red dye.
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There are other red dyes that can be substituted.
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And I think one of the things that frustrates me to no end about this is that in other countries
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around the world, Australia, Japan, the European Union, they don't allow these.
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And the companies that are here in the US manufacturing that will manufacture for other
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countries without it.
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They will use food-based dyes, beet juice, cherry juice, I mean, if you've ever worn red
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pants on a summer barbecue and touched your pants with, you know, stained hands, you
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know that color doesn't come out.
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It's very bright, but it's cheaper and easier for them to use petrochemicals and create
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these lakes and dyes that are consistent every single time.
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And that's what they want.
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Yeah.
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And just to clarify, petrochemicals are chemicals that are made with petroleum products.
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It's really alarming and it all connects back to what you said earlier, is that these
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ingredients that don't seem like they're going to do much because you're buying, let's
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say, canned tomatoes.
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You're buying something from a grocery store, which we already assume is safe, right?
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Which is because it's in a grocery store on an aisle.
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So we don't connect that even in miniscule amounts when you're getting them and everything
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adds up.
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And that's part of the problem.
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So many of these ingredients fall under something called generally recognized as safe.
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This now has been removed from that category, which is good, but there are a number of issues
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with the grass program.
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One is that the FDA does not have the manpower to go track down and check every single claim
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that every single food producer makes.
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So typically, the food producer submits something for FDA approval and says, we hired scientists
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who have said that this is okay at this amount, like a little bit, so many parts per million.
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And the FDA goes, okay, sometimes the FDA will say yes, and it has to have this special
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kind of notification on the label, usually some kind of a color notification.
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Sometimes companies will remove it because they're like, oh, wait, we're not quite ready
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for prime time, you know, but the companies are doing all of it.
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And the FDA says yes, and then somewhere down the line changes their mind.
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This is not the first time they have removed something.
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If you'll remember, trans fats years ago were generally recognized as safe.
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And now we know that they are incredibly bad for you.
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They have an enormous impact on cardiac heart health in very small amounts.
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And so it's no longer recognized as safe.
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Now they did not ban it.
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So the difference here is this is being banned from the food supply, which is good.
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But yeah, if you look, you can still find trans fats in your food.
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And this now goes into that the hidden ingredients within the terms or the catch all ingredients.
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Or to what you said earlier, if it's less than 2% the ingredients that are not even listed.
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Because as far as I know, sometimes natural flavors, artificial flavors can even hide these
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fats.
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They're not allowed to label an artificial flavor as a natural flavor.
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If it's artificial, they do have, there are rules about what that category allows.
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However, if you look up and I'm happy to send it to you if you want to put it in the
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show notes, the actual legal definition of what passes as natural flavor is so convoluted
24:24
that basically it's anything except artificial.
24:27
Right.
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As long as it's come from a natural source, one of the most popular.
24:32
Traded ones is beaver, but for strawberry flavor, right?
24:37
Yeah.
24:38
Well, so believe it or not, it's considered natural strawberry, natural raspberry or natural
24:42
vanilla could potentially be made from castorium.
24:46
Now the interesting thing is that I believe they don't put castorium on the label because
24:52
they don't want people to look it up and see what it is because it's kind of nauseating
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to think about that.
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We think, I don't know that I want to eat that.
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I did actually once have someone at a speaking engagement race, their hand and go, is it bad
25:06
for you?
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It was like actually probably not.
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It's just most of us don't like it.
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Weirdly enough, there is a liquor in one of the Scandinavian countries that is made from
25:17
castorium that proudly says castorium liquor.
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So apparently it's good.
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I don't know.
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And that's the beaver.
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It's the anal gland secretion of beavers.
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Right.
25:28
Great question.
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If they're adding that natural flavor, how are they still able to say it's vegetarian?
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First of all, there is not as much castorium in our food supply as we think.
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There used to be a lot more, but it was a byproduct of the beaver trade of the fur trade.
25:47
And so there's really not as much anymore.
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They actually used to put it in cigarettes as well, believe it or not.
25:52
Yeah, there's so much stuff in cigarettes.
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It's ridiculous.
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Formaldehyde, all kinds of things.
25:58
We don't have as much of it in our food as we think we do.
26:02
It makes a good talking point that we need to remember that not everything is what we
26:08
think it is.
26:09
You know, the term natural by itself means very little to nothing.
26:15
When it comes to animal products, to meat products, it can mean that it's raised without
26:21
added hormones, without antibiotics, that kind of thing.
26:24
But when it comes to everything else, it means absolutely nothing.
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And so if they're saying it's natural strawberry, natural raspberry, natural vanilla on a vegetarian
26:37
or vegan product, then it is not being sourced from castorium because there are other sources
26:42
from that.
26:44
So let's dive into even more of this kind of the hidden or the unlabeled ingredients.
26:50
Can you kind of share some more tidbits of like, how will people even prepare themselves
26:56
for these things?
26:57
Or are there catch all terms like natural flavors, artificial flavors that you can pretty
27:02
much guarantee have, you know, however many more ingredients in it?
27:07
One of the things that I like to encourage people to do, like I said, read the label that
27:13
definitely is a big part of it.
27:16
And we're reading the label, we also need to start to look at that whole panel because
27:22
food producers are starting to, you know, they pay attention.
27:25
They spend millions of dollars every year to figure out what consumers are doing, what are
27:30
the buzzwords that they like, what are the things that are important to them so that they
27:34
can figure out how to get you to buy their product.
27:37
So as more people are paying attention to the fact that things like BHA and BHT, which
27:44
are preservatives that are not good for you, a lot of people can have an allergic response
27:50
to them.
27:51
We also know that they have, you know, a number of different health issues that can come
27:56
from eating those.
27:57
So food producers are taking them out of the ingredient panel and putting it below the
28:01
panel.
28:02
There's a very tiny little sentence that says, BHT added to packaging to preserve freshness.
28:08
So they don't need to put it in the ingredient.
28:09
They don't have to put it because what happens is they're saying, oh, it's just in the packaging,
28:13
it's not in the food.
28:14
And it's a food contact material.
28:16
It is touching the food.
28:18
Oh, goodness.
28:19
And so you're still getting exposed to this is where we have to really learn to read.
28:24
We also just have to learn how to break down what things are.
28:27
Like I said, you know, so trans fats actually is one of those things they use something
28:31
called funny math.
28:32
I call it funny math.
28:34
I'm sure you would too.
28:36
Funny math is where you may look at the label and we now have on the new label a breakdown
28:41
of fat.
28:42
And then it tells us saturated unsaturated trans fat.
28:46
And it may say zero grams of trans fat.
28:48
If you read the label and you see that it says hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated
28:54
anything, those are trans fats.
28:58
And so you may be thinking, well, why does it say zero on the label?
29:01
To be precise.
29:02
To be precise.
29:03
It's a serving size.
29:04
Yeah.
29:05
Anything that's less than 0.5 grams per serving is considered zero.
29:12
And that becomes a problem because you don't realize how much you're getting when that
29:17
happens because you're thinking, you know, the numbers are good.
29:21
You bring up such a good point.
29:24
So one of the ways that we sometimes promote pluck is we focus on what's in the whole package.
29:31
And some people are like, well, I want to know what's in the serving size.
29:34
And it's like, well, I think it's more important to know what's in the whole package because
29:39
the serving size, and you're kind of giving the opposite example, but it's the same outcome,
29:45
which is most companies are using the fact that they are focusing on serving size by hiding
29:51
how much, you know, damage or how much, you know, is really in the package.
29:56
But to the flip side of that coin is like, to me, it's more important about the cumulative
30:01
effect of this product than it is about a single serving of it.
30:06
Like, yeah, we can have one bite of that ice cream container and feel good and get the
30:13
endorphins and yada yada.
30:14
But it's the issue is that we're not eating just one bite, we're eating the entire carton.
30:19
So we need to know how that affects us.
30:23
And it actually comes down to definition between serving size and portion.
30:29
So a serving size is what the manufacturer has determined is the size of their product
30:36
that you may want to eat.
30:38
And the portion is what you actually serve yourself.
30:42
The example that I tend to use when I'm talking about this with people is there are a number
30:47
of cereals out there where the serving size is a quarter of a cup, which is about a ham
30:52
bowl.
30:53
No one eats that much.
30:54
Right.
30:55
Most people grab a bowl, grab a box, go, I'm about that hungry.
30:59
They add milk and a spoon.
31:00
They're good to go.
31:01
Or they go off of the bowl size, right?
31:03
If you have in large bowls, you fill the entire bowl.
31:06
Right.
31:07
Exactly.
31:08
Because the bigger the bowl is, the more you think you want.
31:11
And the other thing that I think happens is many manufacturers will manipulate the
31:16
serving size to get to the number that they want.
31:20
I have also seen things where a serving size on, you know, an itty bitty cookie is two cookies.
31:27
And you know, not that I'm expecting anybody to eat the whole sleeve of thin mints, but we
31:32
often tend to eat more than that, which means if you're going by those numbers, you have
31:38
to sit there and calculate all of those numbers to make sure that you understand what's
31:42
going on.
31:43
And if that labels wrong because it said zero grams of trans fat, you're getting more
31:47
than you think you are.
31:48
Yeah.
31:49
Absolutely.
31:50
So very, very important.
31:51
And I, you know, even with our product, we'll say like, oh, it's half a teaspoon or
31:55
a teaspoon serving size, but what's fascinating is that anyone that's ever been in the kitchen
32:00
who's used different types of measuring spoons knows that they don't always measure the
32:06
same way.
32:07
And so even when we were formulating our supplement facts, because I wanted, for example, the sample
32:14
sachet to be a certain amount of servings, I said, well, it's a half a teaspoon, but
32:20
I made it a larger gram teaspoon than a smaller gram because I wanted to be able to say two
32:27
servings instead of like 2.3.
32:29
Right.
32:30
And that's the other thing that gets very confusing.
32:32
You know, as a consumer, how are we supposed to do fractions on our food?
32:37
We don't really stop to do those measurements and to figure out if that's what we really
32:42
need.
32:43
What do you recommend when someone is gets something and it says, well, this is how many
32:48
servings do you recommend that they go off of the nutritional facts box or do you recommend,
32:54
well, actually, I think you need to go off of the size of your palm or how do you recommend
32:59
people portion based on their specific size?
33:05
That's a really great question.
33:07
I am not a huge fan of calorie counting.
33:09
I feel we need to look more at the nutritional density of what we're eating.
33:16
I do have a handout that I share with people that talks about this is approximately three
33:21
to four ounces for animal protein, depending on how big your palm is.
33:26
And this is about one ounce of a block of cheese, that kind of thing.
33:31
Instead of really obsessing over the nutrition facts on the panel, I prefer that people
33:40
look at the ingredients and add in more nutrient dense foods, add in those real foods.
33:48
Those are going to be far more satisfying and you're going to find that you're eating
33:53
less chips, less cookies, less pretzels, less of those kinds of things because those are
33:58
simply empty calorie filler foods when you replace them with sugar snap peas and carrots
34:06
and cherry tomatoes or apples or pears or other things like that.
34:12
Your body is much more satisfied part of the reason that sometimes we wind up feeling
34:17
so hungry is because we may be full, but we are nutritionally depleted.
34:22
We are not nourishing our body.
34:25
The more we learn to nourish our body, by learning to add delicious things before we
34:30
start worrying about taking out too much, it becomes easier to make that switch.
34:35
If we were to break down that concept and you like some steps, I'm thinking about the
34:39
person who let's say is addicted to eating chips or crackers or something crunchy.
34:44
It's probably more ultra-process than we would want.
34:47
For that person, it sounds like you're suggesting maybe if they are just eating those alone and
34:53
they're finishing the bag in one sitting that maybe they start adding a dip that is not
34:59
overly processed but that's actually real food-based so maybe a hummus or some kind of ranch
35:04
but that's made with real ingredients.
35:07
Yes, absolutely.
35:09
I also encourage people, you know, one of the jokes, I have a class that I teach where
35:14
we talk about reducing sugar in your diet.
35:18
When I talk about, you know, you're sitting there at the end of the day on the sofa with
35:22
your two best friends, Ben and Jerry and the next thing, you know, this boon hits the
35:26
bottom of the container.
35:28
We don't ever want to eat out of the container.
35:30
We want to serve ourselves from the package to a container and then stop and think about
35:35
if we're still hungry.
35:37
So if you're someone who's used to just sitting there and eating because you're reading a book
35:42
or you're on the sofa or you're just mindlessly munching, you're going to eat more than you
35:47
really think you want and that gives you the opportunity, like you said, to add a beautiful
35:52
dip.
35:53
I mean, if you're having crackers, why not have a good quality cheese with that?
35:57
Why not have some slices of a really nice uncured sausage to go with it?
36:03
You know, there are a lot of ways that we can still get that crunch, but add something
36:07
that's got a little more nutrition.
36:09
If we're someone who is used to more sweet things, I encourage them to look for ways to
36:19
have a little bit less of that and can we add to it?
36:21
Like if you're having ice cream instead of just a bowl of ice cream, can we take some
36:27
frozen berries, soften them a little bit so that they're kind of like a little goopy
36:33
and throw those on top?
36:34
You know, that's going to be very sweet and you're not having three scoops of ice cream.
36:39
Maybe you're only having two scoops of ice cream and eventually you get it down to one
36:42
or if we're looking to make changes where we're adding things, can we add nutritional
36:49
density?
36:50
For example, pluck.
36:51
I love pluck.
36:52
I recommend it all the time for people.
36:54
It's great to add to so many things and you're getting like a little bit and it's so flavorful
37:00
and what we don't realize is all those other things, we're probably attracted to the salt
37:06
and the crunch.
37:07
I just had an awareness the other day because we had someone reach out to us who was like,
37:13
I don't find any of your seasonings to be flavorful and I'm like, what?
37:20
I'm like, to me, they're all flavor because most seasonings, the first ingredient is salt
37:24
and so really most seasons are salt with some flavor.
37:29
We are, I mean, salts like our third or fourth ingredient depending on the product.
37:33
So we are flavor with some salt, right?
37:36
Or seasonings with some salt, I should say.
37:39
And it occurred to me, I'm like, oh, I think they're confusing flavor with salt.
37:45
I think they're so used to having things that are so extremely salty that they think
37:51
because pluck is not extremely salty.
37:54
They're like, it has no flavor and so I offered to the person, I was like, why don't you
37:59
actually just try adding a little salt to the pluck and see if that brings out the flavor
38:03
for you because if it does, then that could be a sign that you have some adrenal dysfunction
38:09
or something like that.
38:11
It's also because we're typically not used to the subtlety of true flavor in this country.
38:20
There's a really great book by Seam Michael Moss, Salt Sugar Fat.
38:27
And he talks about how that is the perfect trifecta food companies seek to find the exact
38:35
balance of sugar, salt and fat to get what they call the bliss point and that's like
38:39
the, I can't stop eating this, it's so good because it's hyper palatable.
38:44
And that leaves aside all the seasonings and flavorful herbs and spices and things that
38:53
really do so much, not only for our food, for our enjoyment of our food, but that also
39:00
add micronutrients, like those are micronutrient powerhouses and we typically don't get
39:06
enough of them in our diet, which is really don't.
39:09
It's incredible.
39:10
I love pluck because you've got like the zesty garlic is my current favorite.
39:14
It's going on a lot of things.
39:16
It doesn't have to be just salt.
39:19
We need to learn and luckily our palate shifts.
39:23
We need to learn to a customer palate to the nuances of true flavor rather than that punch
39:31
in the mouth for those top level flavorants.
39:36
And will and sometimes to achieve that, we have to recalibrate our palate and so sometimes
39:41
that means elimination diets, removing these kind of extremely sweet or extremely salty
39:47
foods from our diets.
39:49
Just to slightly go back a little bit, I have been uber disciplined with measuring my
39:56
food since January, actually since late December.
40:00
It's really providing a lot of education for me.
40:05
And I have to say like, because I know you mentioned like you're not a huge calorie counter,
40:08
but I have to say for those that have never done it, I kind of recommend it like if you
40:14
are eating something from a package, say cereal to your point earlier and it says the
40:21
serving size is a fourth of a cup and it gives you grams, put your bowl on a scale, a
40:27
kitchen scale, zeroed out and then pour in exactly what they say is a serving and see
40:34
visually what it looks like, eat it just for that serving, see is that satiating, is
40:40
it not?
40:41
It's like these education points we never have gotten.
40:44
We didn't get these in school.
40:45
Totally.
40:46
We did not learn that in school.
40:47
We didn't learn how to support our body, how to really tap into the bio individuality
40:52
of who each and every one of us are because for food producers, for pharmacy, for medications,
40:59
for so many things, it's easier if they just address us all as we are all human rather
41:05
than the fact that there are so many differences that really can impact how we respond to something
41:11
or how we will be able to utilize something even.
41:16
I love that you're doing that and I will share that does not go against my point in any
41:22
way because my point is I don't really like counting calories.
41:27
I think there is nothing wrong with looking at portions of different things to figure out.
41:35
What is the correct portion for you?
41:37
Are you someone who needs more protein?
41:40
Are you someone who needs a higher portion of certain things?
41:46
Certain people do better with more fat in their diet just because of how they metabolize.
41:51
Certain other people need a different balance because, let's say, maybe they have an
41:56
oxalate issue.
41:58
They can't do a lot of leafies and almonds and figs and other things like that.
42:04
To that point about the oxalates, we know someone we're close to who just got a kidney
42:09
stone.
42:10
Now we don't fully know why they did but we both kind of looked at each other and it
42:13
was like, I think it's because they eat so many foods that have oxalates in them.
42:17
Well, and kidney stones are a little tricky because there's like seven different kinds
42:20
of kidney stones, but oxalates do tend to be the most common and a lot of it is because
42:27
we do where, you know, I think that's one of the other things.
42:30
I actually just wrote about this for my newsletter.
42:33
We talk about eating the rainbow, but really, for most people, the rainbow stops at green.
42:39
They're like, oh, I got all these green things on my plate.
42:43
I'm good.
42:44
And I'm sitting there thinking, what about orange and yellow and purple and white?
42:51
What about white foods, cauliflower is a beautiful white food.
42:55
Are most people go, oh, I eat a lot of broccoli, like going great, what about cauliflower?
43:00
You know, and we really have to learn to look at how to balance all of those different
43:07
aspects.
43:08
And again, it starts to sound very confusing.
43:12
If you're someone who's eating a standard American diet and all of a sudden you're hearing
43:16
all these things about read the label and eat these foods and eat this way and do this
43:20
or that, you're like, hmm, maybe not.
43:23
And really, I just want to encourage people to start somewhere.
43:27
And maybe I still want everybody to read the label, but maybe you start by saying, you
43:33
know, I think maybe I could use more veggies in my diet.
43:37
Because if you have more veggies, there's so much fiber and so much deliciousness and
43:42
so much nutrition that there's not as much room for chips and crackers and pretzels and
43:48
those kinds of things.
43:50
Yeah, I like what you're saying.
43:51
I mean, you need to kind of meet yourself where you are and then start with the next
43:56
best step.
43:57
And sometimes if you are someone that is eating a lot of ultra processed foods, like chips,
44:03
cookies, I don't know, pastas, you know, all these, all these things that maybe the next
44:09
best step is to pull back on some of those and then start eating some more fresh vegetables.
44:14
Like that might be your next first step.
44:16
I do want to emphasize to people like do not underestimate taking a moment like sometimes
44:24
where rushing so much when we eat and being a little bit more mindful.
44:30
Because for example, we tend to in this modern day and age, we tend to frown on boundaries
44:37
around things.
44:38
You know, that's what causes eating disorders.
44:41
If you limit calories, you do this and it's like, well, maybe, but I think it's more
44:46
than that just limiting the calories.
44:48
I think it's the shaming of the food that the old generations used to do.
44:51
You know, you can't leave this table until your whole plate is clean.
44:55
Like there was a lot of shaming, a lot of energy and emotion that was put into our family
45:01
dinner tables.
45:02
So it's not necessarily the boundary in the rules of the household that are the issue.
45:07
It's sometimes it's the emotions underneath them.
45:10
But I want to say to people like so as I mentioned, I'm measuring things more.
45:13
I'm also only allowing a certain amount of calories a day.
45:18
And it's so fascinating to have these boundaries because now I'm seeing like, oh, I used to
45:24
overeat my protein.
45:26
Like, I'm eating way beyond what I need and also beyond what I actually want because
45:34
I'm not giving it a moment.
45:37
I'm sometimes either skipping a meal and then I'm eating tons at one meal or I'm not eating
45:44
enough fiber from my vegetables.
45:47
And so I'm filling up on meat.
45:50
There's so many different potential reasons why.
45:53
But my point is that I'm actually giving myself some space to see like to test my comfort
46:02
zones, you know, to stretch my comfort zones and to test what is right and what is wrong,
46:08
to rediscover what actually works for my body at this stage in my life.
46:15
And I love that you say that at this stage in my life, I've mentioned a couple of times.
46:20
We are all bio individual, different people need different things.
46:24
And we go through different stages and phases of our life.
46:29
So for example, when I was first diagnosed with all these different autoimmune disorders
46:34
and I was really ill just about the only nutritional advice I got was to shift to a vegetarian
46:41
diet because it would be easier to digest for my system for what was going on.
46:47
And so I was a vegetarian for about seven years and I did really well on that until I
46:53
didn't.
46:54
The last year was really hard and I eventually realized that I needed to add meat back
46:59
into my life.
47:01
We don't eat the same all the way through our entire spectrum of life because if we did,
47:07
we'd all still be drinking breast milk.
47:11
Our nutritional needs change, our body needs change and we need to really learn how to
47:17
tap into how does your body work?
47:20
How does your body feel?
47:22
What nourishes your body?
47:24
News are the things that are going to help you really make the most solid changes as
47:31
you're learning to adapt your diet because you're tapping in, we're not really taught.
47:38
At any point in our lives, unless we have to learn it for one reason or another, usually
47:44
as an adult, how our body feels?
47:47
How do we feel when we're hungry?
47:49
How do we feel when we're sad?
47:51
What do we eat when we're angry?
47:53
What are the things that nourish us?
47:55
We don't touch any of that unless we stop to really think about it.
48:01
It is such a good point.
48:04
I'm so grateful for this conversation.
48:06
I know you do so many other things.
48:09
We were going to talk about Meera's, she's now focusing partially on real food emergency
48:16
kits being prepared for emergencies.
48:19
There's so many amazing qualities to Meera.
48:23
Beyond even the things I've already mentioned, I mean, in terms of her kindness and connection
48:29
her craftiness, I mean, there's just so much, you're such a deep and lovely person.
48:36
We can't cover it all here today, so I'm going to just highly recommend that everyone
48:41
go find you online and how can they do that?
48:46
I'm everywhere as the ingredient guru, so my website is the ingredient guru, social
48:51
media, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, the ingredient guru.
48:55
The only thing that's different, I do have a newsletter called Food News You Can Use,
48:59
where I talk about so many of the things that happen in the food industry, and that can
49:05
be found at meeradesi.substac.com, and it's free, but you can find that there if you
49:11
want it to be part of the newsletter and find out what they continue to do to our food.
49:17
Yeah, which is so important, because as you mentioned, you can read the label, but if
49:23
you don't understand it, there's not much you can do with it, and sometimes just the
49:27
process, you don't even need to change the fact that you're buying the food.
49:31
That's not necessarily the first step.
49:33
The first step is just start reading the label and start researching what are these things
49:37
that I'm eating, because we only know what we know.
49:41
So start learning more about those foods, and then maybe that will inspire change.
49:48
I have thoroughly enjoyed talking to you as usual.
49:52
Thank you so much for imparting all this.
49:54
I think we've really provided some great nuggets for everyone to actively incorporate into
50:00
their lives immediately.
50:02
We will absolutely share any of those PDFs that you mentioned, so you can feel free to send
50:07
those to us.
50:08
From the show notes, any last kind of value you want to give?
50:14
So first of all, thank you so much for having me on.
50:17
I just adore you and your family, and I am grateful always for the opportunity to talk
50:22
with you, so thank you very much for that.
50:24
I want to say the most important thing of the business of food seems really big and
50:32
overwhelming, but really what's more important is taking the time to have fun with your
50:38
food, to enjoy time with family, to nourish your body, to take that quiet time to sit with
50:45
your food, and to play in the kitchen like just have fun with your food, and then build
50:52
from there.
50:53
I love it.
50:54
Well, thank you so much, Mira, and thank you everyone for joining us today.
51:00
Have fun with your food, stay curious with what ingredients are in your food, and please
51:06
join us for future episodes.
51:08
We're having so much fun.
51:09
Thank you again, Mira, and thank you.
51:13
Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral.
51:18
If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one.
51:22
You can find the show notes, links, and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com, that's e-a-t-p-l-u-c-k-dot-com.
51:33
And hey, if you know someone who gets something out of this, share it with them too.
51:38
Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.