Transcription
[Music] Eating healthy used to feel simple. It was about nutrients, macronutrients, protein, carbs, fat, and fiber, and micronutrients. All of these. So, a healthy diet was one where you consume enough but not too much of everything. Easy.
Except, nah. So, one day somebody was like, "Why don't we just make a pill for this?" You know, 'cause humans going to human. And people were like, "Cool. That sounds easier than cooking vegetables." And other people were like, "I might just add some nutrients to anything and it'll be healthy." That's definitely how it works. You will say, "This is a complete meal. This is a complete meal. Drink every meal. More time to be productive."
And then some other people were like, "Is this is this the same? I don't feel like it should be the same. Yeah." And then people did science to check if it's the same and realized it's not the same. Turns out the vehicle in which those nutrients arrive matters. It's an absorption thing. Okay. So, it's not just about consuming nutrients. The delivery method matters.
But let's say we stick to eating actual food. Now we're back to just thinking about the nutritional content, which should be easy, right? 'Cause we can find that on this handy label. Oh, what's this bit though? Seems to be all this weird stuff I haven't heard of. Is that Is that cool? Okay. Okay. This can still be simple. We just make sure to eat actual food that contains all the nutrients we need and we read the ingredients so that we're not consuming too much of this weird chemistry class sounding stuff. At least you can trust the label to tell us everything that's in the food. Sugar, coconut butter, whole milk powder, cocoa mass, lactose, skim powder, poly.
Now, there's some stuff in there that's not great, but you know, I do want to live life with some degree of enjoyment. Call me idealistic, so I'm willing to take the hit on some stuff once in a while because, you know, chocolate animals are an essential part of at least two holiday seasons. After all, at least there's no actual poison in there. That's right. Um, what what do you mean? Uh, can you be any more specific than uh that? You got me kind of worrying about it. You don't mind a bit of lead, do you? Lead.
Okay, so it turns out some people are currently suing Lindt. I bet it's Americans. They love suing each other. It's like the national sport because their dark chocolate was found to contain lead and cadmium above the maximum allowable dose limit. To be clear, the recommended amount is zero, and the FDA and WHO say that there is no safe level. About a third of one of these bars would put you over that limit. It's not just Lindt, by the way. Yeah, I guess it's just them getting sued because they say it's expertly crafted with the finest ingredients, which lawyers claim constitutes false advertising because people don't typically consider poison to be the finest ingredients, which seems fair.
Okay, so limit the dark chocolate. Oh, also go easy on the brown rice because of the arsenic and the tuna because of the mercury. And also certain vegetables that can absorb different heavy metals from the soil and water that they're grown in. Those won't kill you, but prolonged exposure could lead to an agonizing death or worse, an agonizing life. So, just get enough nutrients in ways they're likely to be absorbed. And read the label to keep those additives to a minimum and try to be cognizant of specific foods that tend to absorb heavy metals. It's not easy, but it's manageable, right? We can do this. Maybe I'll just start with water.
Okay, so this one is easy, right? You can just avoid plastic bottles and plastic containers, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Except not really. Because microplastics are already basically everywhere. Deep ocean trenches, sea ice, the Antarctic, the summit of Everest, the air, the rain, the soil. So, kind of like the heavy metals. They get absorbed by the crops as they grow. So stick to stuff that doesn't grow in the soil and isn't packaged in plastic. Milk in a glass bottle. Yeah. Again, there's these things called phthalates, chemicals that help make plastic more flexible. And they're hydrophilic, fat-soluble. So when the high-fat milk is pumped out of the cow through the plastic tubes, these chemicals dissolve into the milk and it's already contaminated even if it does end up in a glass bottle later. So milk probably is fine. You just have to milk the cow yourself.
Okay, so canned food. Cans are just metal, right? No. Most of them are lined with a resin containing bisphenols, which also generally cause nasty things. And some of those chemicals do get banned, but then people just use different but very similar ones which probably also cause nasty things. Right? So basically, just give up. Wait, I haven't finished with the bad news yet. This one really does have a simple solution: just buy everything organic. The only drawback is, uh, it's a million quid. Now I can give up. Yes, give up. At least give up trying to avoid everything bad all the time because honestly, we already it too bad. You can't avoid it all.
But that doesn't mean succumb to apathy. My tactics are the same as always. Employ lazy efficiency and ask, what are the easiest changes that will make the biggest difference? Just try to eat actual food, not stuff that says it's food, but actual food. If you can't do that, multivitamins are definitely better than no vitamins and will protect against deficiencies. They're not bad, just not as good. Powder form is better than pill form, and pills taken with food absorb better than pills taken on their own. The best way to avoid foods with weird things on the label is to eat foods that don't have a label. But some consumption is inevitable. So start with the fewer ingredients is generally better rule. And if you can be bothered, it's probably worth learning what's bad, what's not as bad, and what's probably fairly harmless because not everything you've never heard of is necessarily bad. Also, there's apps you can use to scan your barcodes that'll give you an idea of how deadly stuff is.
You can't avoid heavy metals altogether, but first, reduce your intake. Soaking rice instead of rinsing it and boiling in lots of water instead of steaming reduce the arsenic. Large predatory fish have higher levels of mercury than smaller fish. Some chocolate brands are worse than others, and dark tends to be worse than milk. Then eat stuff that minimizes the harmful effects. Some essential metals like zinc, selenium, and iron can protect against heavy metal toxicity by competing for binding sites and reducing absorption. Some vitamin deficiencies can enhance sensitivity to heavy metal toxicity, whilst their consumption can alleviate it. If you try to avoid all plastics, it's probably going to ruin your life faster than consuming microplastics would. So, just limit the inessential stuff and the worst offenders. Use glass instead of plastic. Use wood instead of plastic. Use stainless steel instead of plastic. Use paper instead of plastic. Generally, use less plastic. Definitely don't heat food in plastic containers. But if you do have to store some in plastic, look at this number. Numbers 1, 2, 4, and 5 are generally safer than 3, 6, or 7. Tap water still contains microplastics, but far less than bottled water. More processed food typically contains more microplastics, except for salt, which is the other way around because the refinement seems to remove more plastic than it adds.
If there's one thing you buy organic, make it strawberries. They are consistently the worst for pesticide levels. Apples, kale, spinach, grapes, citrus fruits are also pretty bad. Whereas avocado, pineapple, asparagus, onions, sweet corn, and kiwi have the lowest levels, so buying organic might not be worth the extra cost. Washing fruit and veg under running water and soaking berries in some water and baking soda can help reduce the pesticide levels. Grass-fed meat usually contains less pesticides than grain-fed, and the same goes for grass-fed animal products generally.
But they aren't really solutions, just mitigations, because much of this is unavoidable, and it gets more complicated still when you try to weigh up the cost-benefit of every decision. Peeling an apple may reduce the pesticides, but it will also mean less fiber and fewer nutrients. Milk chocolate contains less lead and cadmium than dark chocolate, but more additives and fewer antioxidants. Just about everything is good and bad on some level. So quite soon you end up trying to choose the greater good or the lesser evil. And the question morphs from "Is there poison?" to "How much poison?"
I think all we can really do is the obvious stuff and then just try not to go crazy obsessing over everything else because the stress of analyzing everything you eat and thinking in terms of how much poison it contains is probably also quite unhealthy. Yo, if you appreciate me being quite sound and putting my ad at the end of the video instead of interrupting your viewing halfway through, please check out my training app. Download the free trial, see if you like it. If you don't, you can just cancel and don't pay anything. You can get a training program, track your workouts, and let the app handle all of your weight progression. You can store multiple programs. You can add drop sets and supersets and always see how many sets you've done for each muscle over the last seven days. There's loads more, but it's free to try. So, why don't you just check it out if you want to? App Store ratings say it's quite good. All right, I'm actually done now. Bye. Jordan, Lenny is my hero.