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Podcast 062: Health Myths – Part 2

Should you eat Soybeans? The answer may surprise you. Learn the truth about the Food Pyramid.

Life Enthusiast podcast 062 – Myths part 2

Scott: Welcome back everybody you’re listening to the life enthusiast co-op pod cast restoring vitality to you and to the planet. I’m your co-host Scott Paton along with Martin Pytela. Hey Martin How you doing today?

Martin: Doing good Scott, thanks for asking and you?

Scott: So what’s the next myth you want to shine a light on.

Martin: Well how about soy.

Scott: Alright, I’ve been hearing stuff that I shouldn’t be taking soy.

Martin: That’s correct that you shouldn’t.

Scott: Guess that’s not a myth.

Martin: Well you know there’s a myth and there’s a myth and there’s a myth. For instance we use lecithin soy in the Exsula Superfoods and we promote the lecithin as one of the most beneficial supplements that you can ingest and it does phenomenal wonderful things in the human body. I mean the lecithin is the universal solvent that helps you emulsify fat soluble things into your water transport mechanism and your lymphatic system and your blood are water based colloids so in order to move stuff water based you have to emulsify it. And Lecithin is the emulsifier so anything fat soluble has to have the lecithin engaged in the transport. So anyway we use fairly sizable quantities of lecithin in the products. Just yesterday I was talking to a fellow who’s very excited about super foods, wanting to have the best, so I am saying well we are using lecithin as a functional ingredient, not as a filler and he says well as long as it’s sun flower lecithin it would be okay and I said no we are using soy. He said well aren’t you worried about soy, it’s so bad. Anything that has any soy in it you shouldn’t touch it. A whole bunch of these quote unquote gurus out there, including the big players in the natural health and wellness are telling people don’t do soy, so they are all excited and perhaps confused about what that means.

Scott: Okay well now I’m confused because I’m not sure why they are saying not to use soy.

Martin: Okay lets go back to what that means. All whole grains, all of them, whole wheat, whole soy, whole flax, whole anything, it’s a seed and every seed is defending itself against the rodents that normally, naturally eat it with estrogen. Phytoestrogen which is plant based estrogen. What that does is that if a male mouse eats a lot of whole grain he becomes sterile and doesn’t reproduce as much.

Scott: Wow nasty.

Martin: Well no it’s beautiful; it’s the balance of nature.

Scott: It’s nasty if you’re the male rodent.

Martin: Yeah well we need to have balance right? If the male rodent cannot keep on eating and reproducing to infinity because we would have a population crash. So there is a natural balance in nature where if you as the rodent eat too much whole grain you end up becoming more female and your reproductive life is going to be less interesting. Well the same thing happens to a male as in male human. If you eat a lot of whole wheat bread you can become less male, if you eat a lot of whole flax or a lot of whole soy and so on. So the trouble with soy is that these drinks you know the soy milks are essentially a concentration of a lot of grains. So it’s a lot of that stuff heading your way all at once. I mean if you eat one slice of bread of whole wheat that’s one thing but if you drink a couple cups of that soy milk that’s many times more of the concentrated soy goodness. So therein lies the danger. Women should not want to become estrogen dominant and men definitely shouldn’t want to become estrogen dominant. So that’s the don’t eat whole grain so much that you end up with phyto-estrogen problems.

Scott: So I don’t drink a lot of milk but what I use for my cereal it’s called almond dream, one of those almond drinks made from almonds. Now that’s a nut does that qualify as a grain?

Martin: Yes, almonds are not near as rich in the phyto estrogen as the soy is but it will definitely qualify. But you know, don’t sweat it. One cup a day you can survive but there are some people who are just chugging it.

Scott: Right. I actually just put enough to make it wet.

Martin: Yeah which is a very different perspective than if you’re a body builder who is using soy milk because it’s better for you and you’re doing a gallon a day pretty soon you’re a girl.

Scott: And you’re going to have a tough time putting on muscle mass.

Martin: Yes that would be a cross purpose wouldn’t it. So anyway going back to the issue of the soy we need to make sure we don’t overdo it. In moderation anything goes.

Scott: Yeah because we have amazing bodies.

Martin: Now here is the other issue with soy and that is the genetically modified production. Soy is pretty much guaranteed to be GMO if it’s a north American source, as is corn and we have problems with that because what we don’t know is what is it really doing to the body.

Scott: And can the body actually absorb it and make use of it.

Martin: Oh it can absorb it alright, that’s not problem but its creating these new proteins, these new cross links, these new combinations that we are not really sure how the immune system is going to deal with it. So anyway going back to Exsula Superfoods where the lecithin which is made from soy shows up. The lecithin itself is completely free of all the proteins; it has none of the proteins that would cause these reactions. So people when they associate the word soy all of the negative issues are associated to the soy proteins. So if none of the soy proteins are left in the soy product that I am offering should you worry about the word soy on it? Logic would dictate no because none of the culprits that you have to worry about are left. So folks not all soy is made equal we for instance use non GMO source and to boot we make sure that none of the soy proteins are in the product that we use only the goodness of the lecithin. Anyway if I were to advise anybody about it don’t take too much of it. Too much whole grain is not good for you. Now that’s a really strange thing because of course whole grain is the healthy thing right.

Scott: There’s the other myth.

Martin: That’s not bad but it’s just we are not supposed to eat a lot of grain and that is the myth. The myth of the four square meals, the myth of the healthy meal pyramid or something like that and what they did is of course they did most active lobbies, the wheat board and the egg board, the dairy board and the meat board and they all got together. The vegetable and fruit guys did not have enough lobbyists so they lost out. Your daily food intake is supposed to be fruit and vegetables and a little bit of carbs and a little bit of proteins but no we have turned it upside down. We now have these meals that are constructed in a way to please your palate but it sure doesn’t do well for your body. So the myth that I would be putting forward is that the carbohydrates are good for you. Not really, they are not. We in North America get too many calories and not enough nutrients.

Scott: Right and that’s a big problem isn’t it?

Martin: In fact this is the big issue that calorie rich nutrient poor foods as opposed to nutrient rich or high density of nutrient foods that you’re supposed to be eating. And your body does that, I’ve said this before where you come to a restaurant and you know you’re hungry so you order something and you order this meal and it has French fries with it and it has a white flour bun and it has plenty of fat on it and all that and you eat it and top it off with a milk shake.

Scott: Don’t forget an apple pie.

Martin: Okay and an apple pie and a milk shake. So what you have just done is you have just ingested a pile of calories, like loads of calories and very little nutrients. I mean the mineral content of that thing is minimal. The enzyme content of that whole thing is next to nil. So anyway there it is and you ate it so three or four hours later this thing is digested and your body says I need stuff. I’m hungry so you do this again. So at the end of the year you have put on about fifty pounds and you have not nourished your body at all. This is how that guy who ate exclusively at McDonalds for a month.

Scott: Super size me.

Martin: Right, super size me. That was a perfect example.

Scott: He couldn’t get through a month.

Martin: His doctor was telling him to please abort this experiment because he was killing himself. So the point is that if you are eating a food that is mostly concentrated foods you are giving yourself a terrible disadvantage. The concentrated foods on my list would be the grains, seeds and meats, proteins. You need to eat less of that and more of the fresh water-rich raw uncooked, untouched, unprocessed produce. I think I should sign on for the produce lobby of America.

Scott: They need a spokesman like you for sure Martin.

Martin: Yeah they do. They need more voices like us out there I can tell you that. I don’t understand how it happened but the farmers that make or grow produce and deliver the vegetables and fruits did not garner a better position in that whole situation. Why is that the grocery stores mostly that are acres and acres of boxed high-value-added products? Oh there it is, that’s the answer high value added. If you started with the potato, the whole potato you could sell for 19 cents a pound.

Scott: French fries are five dollars a pound.

Martin: And potato chips are probably double that still.

Scott: It’s interesting as you were talking I was thinking about my uncles are all farmers and one of my uncles in particular, he’s out in the middle of the prairies and grows wheat and he has this massive garden. And he grows all of his own carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries, pumpkins and he cans them and eats them throughout the year. Certainly for a lot of the years it’s just peas, beans, carrots, pick them and eat them, enough for him and his family to eat as much as they want. They never buy that stuff at a store and he had a medical problem. You know he’s in his seventies or eighties and still out on the farm and he was not very energetic. He was just tired and slow so finally they got him to go see a doctor and the doctor said I have no idea why you are not dead. I guess his blood pressure or something was so low and that’s why he was tired. So they gave him some medication that got his blood pressure up to where it should be, balanced whatever the problem was and got it back up to normal and he’s back to normal as chipper as can be. I thought you know, that is the result of seventy years of eating carrots and peas out of the garden. He had so much energy and life force in him that even though it dropped below what most people would think would be there is the life line and there is the death line, so way below it and still going.

Martin: Well good point made. Of course not all of us can afford to be gardeners and farmers. We are destined to be buying our produce from the grocery store but at least we could be eating mostly salads with a little bit of concentrated food instead of mostly concentrated food with a little side dish of maybe half a tomato and three slices of cucumber. I went traveling, I was in Europe and I went to this restaurant and they had this display of dishes and they had this side dish of salad and then they had these massive plates of cooked food. So I said can I order a la carte? So I ordered four salads and a side dish of potatoes. They thought that it was the most comical thing at the table because these locals were just shocked. What kind of lifestyle is this? It’s cultural you know.

Scott: So we have talked about the myth of salt, the myth of vaccination, the myth of prostate and testosterone and the soya myth which I thought was fascinating and finally a bonus myth we talked about calorie rich and nutrient poor foods.

Martin: The myth of the square meal, the myth of the healthy, the myth of the nutritionist who knows what to do, the institutional food.

Scott: Well Martin thank you very much. I think we’ve come to the end. This will be a two part podcast and I think one of our best so thank-you very much for sharing all this interesting information.

Martin: Yes well it’s been an interesting life I tell you, living it day to day and learning it the hard way. I wish I knew when I was 25 what I know now. I guess even if I was told when I was 25 what I know now, I wouldn’t have believed it.

Scott: I was going to say I wish I had known when I was 25 and had the wisdom to act on it.

Martin: Back then I was bullet proof and immortal. So if you are 25 and listening to this take it from Uncle Martin eat your super foods, start now.

Scott: That’s right because when you are 55 you want to be feeling the way you are right now and not the way most 55-year-olds feel.

Martin: Okay folks, thank-you very much for listening it’s a pleasure as always to share the time with you.

Scott: And Martin if somebody wanted to ask you some more about some of these myths, maybe some more specific questions about their own personal situations, what are some ways they can get a hold of you?

Martin: Well they could start reading on the life enthusiast web site, www.Life-Enthusiast.com. They can listen to our previous sessions at lifeEnthusiast.podamatic.com or they can give us a call at 1-866-543-3388 or if they want to dial the phone that rings on my personal desk they can call 1-775-299-4661.

Scott: Great, well thank-you everybody for listening and you’ve been listening to the Life Enthusiast co-op pod cast restoring vitality to you and to the planet. Bye-bye.

Martin: Bye-bye folks.