You are now listening to The Model Health Show with Shawn Stevenson.
For more, visit themodelhealthshow .com.
If you're looking for something to support your mind, body, and spirit today, I've got your back.
Today I've got a conversation with you that's absolutely brimming with insights, with wisdom, with experience, with tips tools and strategies to help every facet of your life and i'm so grateful to share this with you because this conversation was hosted by one of my two greatest mentors in my 22 plus year career in health and fitness there are two people that have stood out as my mentors and one is my mother -in -love my mother -in -law wambui cabrera all right she was my my first mentor when it comes to nutrition, but also when it comes to mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness.
She's the person who taught me how to meditate and directed me to my internal world because as many of us do, we live our lives so externally focused and she really helped to empower me.
And the other person, right around that time, I found out about the work of Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith and his communication, his message really resonated with me and it was years later that we actually met and we bumped into each other speaking at the same event and we've been close friends ever since and he invited me back onto his number one hit podcast called Take Back Your Mind and I'm so grateful because we got to talk about why personalized nutrition and why personalized medicine is the future of health.
We got to talk about the truth about what's causing our epidemics of chronic disease.
We covered how to utilize our family and community to transform our health.
And we even covered some simple practical ways to save money on healthy food.
And I know this intimately because when I transformed my health, when I started investing in healthy food, I was living in very challenging circumstances and just trying to get by.
So how did I procure healthy food and again, support my health and investing in myself?
We're going to talk about that as well.
And so again, I'm very, very grateful to share this conversation with you today.
And by the way, every time that Michael Beckwith and my other other friends come over to my place, they go shopping.
My pantry is filled to overflowing with all kinds of amazing foods and supplements.
And, you know, and so oftentimes I have more than enough.
And so I encourage my friends and family to go in there, take whatever they want, whatever is resonating.
And one of the things that I share with Michael Beckwith very often are elixirs, are time affirmed science -backed teas and there's a reason why this has been a big part of his health practice as well he's one of the healthiest fittest sharpest people that i've ever met let alone in his age bracket all right and just the other day we were at agape spiritual center here in LA and he was giving his talk and all of a sudden he just started doing push -ups all right that's not that's not normal right he did a bunch of lunches during his talk just like as he was speaking and it was so empowering but one
of the things that has been a big part of his life are specific teas and there's so much science to affirm this in fact a study published just this last year found that people who regularly drink tea age slower than those who don't and this is something that is so accessible many of us grow up with teas around us right but it might be this distorted version i know that i grew up with like sweet tea right lipton brisk tea my mom sometimes would make sun tea so she put a bunch of tea bags and put you know the water whatever and put it in in the window seal and let the sun brew the tea right which is really
nice but then she puts and i'm just going to say the scientific term a buttload of sugar into it lemon all that stuff make it taste exceptionally like beyond good and so there's different flavors and varieties of teas and tea exposures that many of us have but the true essence of teas are so many wonderful time crime -tested science -backed teas like rooibos tea, ginger tea, green tea, Earl Grey, the list goes on and on.
But speaking specifically of anti -aging, a study published in the journal Clinical Interventions in Aging took 59 overweight or mildly obese subjects to see if another powerful tea, this is actually the tea that I drink most often called Pu -erh, makes a notable difference on weight loss.
And the randomized double -blind placebo -controlled trial had participants to either receive a placebo or Pu -erh for this 20 -week study period.
There were no other interventions noted.
Nothing else was different for these test subjects, just some of them got Pu -erh tea.
And here's what the researcher said at the end of the study.
Quote, consumption of Pu -erh was associated with statistically significant weight loss compared to placebo.
Fat loss was seen for the arms legs and the hip and belly regions unquote the participants who received pu -erh lost more overall body fat and what was especially remarkable especially in terms of anti -aging was that they maintained their lean mass they maintained their muscle mass the weight they were losing was fat and not muscle again the tea that i'm drinking most often is pu -erh but there's only one pu 'er that i drink only one company that i trust enough and that company is peak life their pu 'er is triple toxin screen for purity made through their patented cold extraction technology that makes
it as effective or better than what's seen in the study that we just covered it's also wild harvested so it's truly the best pu 'er on earth head over to peaklife .com forward slash model right now and you'll receive up to 20 off plus some limited time free bonuses like an electric frother to mix your favorite beverages that's peaklife .com forward slash model it's spelled p -i -q -u -e -l -i -f -e .com forward slash model try their teas risk free with their 30 day money back guarantee.
You'll either love the tease or you'll get a full refund.
Again, go to peaklife .com forward slash model for up to 20 % off.
And now let's get to this special Spotify review of the week.
Another Spotify review of the week by Alexandra M.
My God, your podcast gives me so much hope, motivation, and literally made me a better person.
But this this episode, man, made me see all the painful loss of my husband being treated badly and taking advantage off of my situation even just makes me stronger and makes me able to overcome anything in my way as I already managed to survive impossible situations in health and soul pain.
That's so powerful.
Thank you so much for sharing that review, sharing that comment over on Spotify.
and this is something that is new and I highly encourage you to share your voice.
Now you can leave comments.
You can rate the show as well over on Spotify and of course Apple Podcasts as well.
If you're listening on Apple Podcasts please take a moment and leave a review for the show and again you can leave a comment on YouTube.
Share your voice over on Spotify in the comments with each episode.
An episode that was mentioned in that comment by the way was the The episode that we did recently with the phenomenal bestselling author, coach, speaker, former professional athlete, spent through so much, so many insights, and he's just created an incredible life.
He's a really good friend as well.
It's the one and only Bo Eason.
All right, so if you happen to miss that episode, definitely check it out.
It is so powerful. But again, I appreciate you so much. Share your voice.
Share your voice on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube.
Wherever you're tuning in, it really does mean a lot.
And without further ado, let's get to this very, very special episode where my good friend and mentor, Dr. Michael Beckwith, invited me on to his number one hit show, Take Back Your Mind.
Enjoy. joy. Peace and blessings, everyone, and welcome to Take Back Your Mind.
I'm the host, Michael B.
Beckwith, and as you've become accustomed to seeing, I have wonderful guests on the program that in their own way have developed a genius in their particular area of their life to help you take back your mind.
That is, the mind oftentimes is curated by worry, doubt, fear, fear, anxiousness, anxiety, polarization, the deep sense of separation, that leads to poor choices, bad decision making.
And so we want to take back our mind, come out of a victim consciousness and realize that when we expand our awareness about whatever it is we're talking about, we can make good choices for ourselves.
We're not going to choose from fear.
We're going to choose from real knowledge, real transformational knowledge, transformational information today i have back with me again he was my first guest by the way when i first began this number months ago he was sean sean stevenson this is this is more like family you know his wife and his sons were cool like that so welcome back oh man it's good to be back i can't believe that i get to sit here with you still to this day i don't know why you don't believe it i mean it's just it's such an honor it's such an honor i was listening to you when i was in ferguson missouri didn't have two nickels
to rub together. And, you know, you've been such a guiding light.
So this is really special.
Hey, man, I feel the same about you.
I mean, everywhere I go, I tell people about you, the Model Health Show.
Certain people that I see out in the world say, man, you need to hook up with my man, Sean.
He's got the information.
And what I appreciate about your work, and this is what I tell folks, you know, you actually do the deep research. It's not not antidotal yeah it's like you go in and have these peer -reviewed research harvard all these these major universities so you know i'll say something and i know i'm right then i check in with sean is this right yeah he said yeah man because that harvard review 19 something something something they they did a peer review that's absolutely true so when you hear sean speak Because a lot of times you see a lot of things on the internet, people just saying things that may or may not be
true. When you hear Sean speak, it's backed up by real science, not pseudoscience, but real science, real research. I always appreciate that about you, man.
Thank you. It's an honor.
I mean, this month is my 21st year working in health and fitness.
Wow. It's so amazing.
Amazing. Like time has kind of flown by in many ways.
But, you know, I started off into this field working at my university gym was my first step.
I was working on my degree.
Right. In studying biology and really being able to have this really, really cool place to experiment and to study.
Because being at a university, you've got people from all over the world.
Right. And you can see these consistencies that cultures share.
But then you can also see these differences and distinctions.
Right. Right. And trying to find those unifying pieces.
But also eventually I'm very grateful.
And this is part of this new mission as well as like helping people to cater to their own personality and personalization.
That's really the future of wellness and medicine because you're unique.
Right. And we all have literally a unique metabolic fingerprint, a unique microbial fingerprint.
Right. And so often we don't understand that we get to create our own microculture.
We might exist in a larger culture scape.
Yeah. Which right now our culture escape isn't doing very well.
And just actually this was just published last year by the CDC.
They've determined that right now 60 % of all American adults have at least one chronic disease.
Right. At least one.
Right. 40 % have two or more.
And it's still trending upwards.
60 % have at least one.
At least one. 40 % have more than one.
Exactly. Yeah. That's where we are right now.
We're saying that in this Western world that touts itself as the number one in so many things, It's basically one of the sickest nations in the world.
That's what you just told me.
We're experiencing a paradox right now where we have all of this apparent innovation.
And yet we're the sickest and most disconnected we've ever been.
And right now, and this is one of the interesting things about this, we know what the causes of these outcomes are.
But our attention keeps getting redirected to other things.
And also, there's so much infighting about minutia.
And what I mean by that is the Journal of the American Medical Association published this big analysis back in 2018.
And they determined that poor diet is the number one cause of our epidemics of chronic disease.
And by the way, when I said 60 % have at least one chronic disease, that means the majority of our citizens are unwell.
Now, if you're well, if you're healthy and disease -free, you're not normal.
That's the state that we're living in right now.
And so we want to strive to be weird, but also most importantly, we want to shift this.
We want to create that tipping point to normalize wellness again.
Because knowing that poor diet is the number one cause, why are we so focused on all these other things?
And also, it's not that these other things don't matter, exercise, sleep quality.
And also, we're going to talk about what's controlling our diet today as well.
But even within all of that, to understand that, yes, we're dealing with this very sketchy situation right now, but there's so much opportunity to change.
And what I want to share for everybody, first and foremost, is that the reason that diet is so powerful and kind of my bridge even into this field at this level is that it's what's making up what we see when we see each other.
It's making up all the tissues of our heart, of our brain, of our gastrointestinal tract, everything about - You are what you eat, essentially, for real.
literally yeah you know you are what you eat you are what you drink thank you are what you think of course this is why we're on this show right here right right right and you know you are what you breathe right as well you know I can go down the line we don't want to get caught in a silo all these things matter but there's something so remarkable about food is because we're taking something from the outside world and making it a part of our tissues right it's a very intimate powerful thing and so you know I'm really on a mission now to help shift help give people the the empowerment to shift the microculture.
Because the macroculture is not doing well, but, and you've heard this, we've said this a thousand times, we're products of our environment.
And we are, if we're unaware.
Because we're also creators of our environment.
And so, for years, I spent a lot of time and energy trying to target the macro environment, getting people to, don't do this, don't go to that place.
But in a graceful way, and encourage them to make behavior changes.
But then I send them out when they leave my office, to a culture that is fighting them in that change instead of helping to shift the culture the microculture that they're going back to so this is when i started to work with families yes that's when i started to work with entire organizations and that's when you see sustainable change because now the microculture makes the healthy behavior automatic right instead of making it hard you talk about changing people's habits you've said a lot first of all i want to go back to this point about our uniqueness and that one size doesn't fit all and so you
really assisting people to discover what works for them like a diet for somebody may not be good for someone else based on their culture based on where they live based on how they've grown up and so we don't want to just slap something on the wall and say this works for everybody so people have to begin to discover as you're assisting them to do that there's something that works for us uniquely and individually.
It's powerful. Now, one of the things that you really talk about too is how people eat, whether they're eating with their families, whether they're eating on the run.
There's a whole social dynamic as well as the food we're eating, but also how are we eating it?
What environment are we eating the food in?
This is also, you also bring this out in your book.
This is the ultimate controller.
And I searched around, I jumped around in the research and And in my own practice as well and teaching, again, I've been in this field for 21 years.
But the most important thing was staring me right in my face the entire time.
And one of the studies that I highlight in this new book, it's a huge meta -analysis.
This was published by the researchers at Brigham Young University.
And meta -analysis is multiple studies.
But this wasn't just a few.
This was 148 studies.
148 studies. And 300 ,000 study participants.
This is a huge data set.
Oh, this wasn't like 10 people.
This was a lot. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. And they uncovered that having healthy social bonds, having healthy relationships led to a 50 % reduction in all cause mortality.
So what that means is a 50 % reduction in early death from everything.
When people had healthy relationships, there was something remarkable.
And the researchers indicated this was more determinant on our health outcomes than being eating, obesity, then smoking, then anything else you can name, it was relationships.
And I was just like, this is nuts.
And within a short period of time of coming across that study, and when I was working on this book, now I get introduced to this professor of psychiatry at Harvard, who was the director of the longest running longitudinal study on human longevity.
And longitudinal means they're following people for years, they're following them.
And his research, he was the first, he was was the fourth director to get this baton passed he was like the anchor leg right right it's because it's been running for 80 years right their research indicates the number one determinant on how long you're going to live is the quality of your relationships you know I saw I I agree with that I mean obviously it's real I saw something about I don't know if it's the same study but they were they were studying people who live to be a hundred and more and they were asking them you know about their life and these people said something similar that every
day they woke up and they felt connected and needed by their family that they had a reason to wake up the next day they had grandkids they had great grandkids I had family they wanted to associate with them they wanted to assist in some way shape for they were needed as well and they just kept living there was no I want to get out of the body you know it was like I love being here and i got this broad beautiful family this is what you're saying in substance it's a sense of purpose yeah it's a sense of significance yeah right and these are deep human needs and now again all of those that's wonderful
we can just we can have a sense of purpose that's something else right but there's something about relationships that really help to activate that in people and so here's here's where it all comes together our relationships are according to the research and also if we pay attention to our lives the biggest determining factor on our diet On our exercise habits, on our spiritual practices and community, our relationships determine so much about our happiness, our success.
It's the tip of the spear.
That's why it's so powerful in the data is that our relationships are affecting how we live our lives deeply.
And if we're honest, good relationships make life a lot better.
And when they're messed up, everything can go bad really quickly.
The whole cascade of toxic chemicals start flowing through the temple.
Yeah. You know, you said something about, you know, when you went out into the macro, you know, don't do this, don't do that.
But you realize you were throwing people out into a weird environment.
You know, that's what happened for me to start Agape.
I was doing workshops, you know, way before they were really popular years ago, standing room only.
And I remember sitting in my living room one day and we were graduating another group of people.
and I felt a little bit of sadness.
I didn't understand what the sadness was.
And then it caught me.
These people are going to go back out into a society that doesn't understand these five to ten weeks of training I just gave them.
They're going to go right back out to the same families, the same churches, the same.
And that began this movement to actually start a community that would actually support what they were learning in the classes so they could actually be in a community of people who are on the edge of discovering who they are, developing their habits about growth, development, and unfoldment.
It was very similar to what you're saying.
The larger environment wasn't supporting these people.
This is 40 years ago.
This stuff was weird back then.
Now it's all over. But back then, it was weird. What do you mean your thoughts create your reality?
What does it mean, law of attraction, all that stuff?
you know but it was very similar dynamic you know now oh let me let me go ahead cut in here because that is speaking to again now it's not that we need to have that there are people who have that sheer will right there will persevere in the most tumultuous environments right there are people that can do that well we're sitting here because of certain exactly did that exactly exactly now with that being said it is incredibly difficult it is so difficult that many many people will forfeit.
They will give up. They will give in.
And the thing is we tend to bash those people for not being strong enough or not having the will.
When in reality, again, it's incredibly difficult.
We put ourselves through so much suffering oftentimes when we are, again, we get these insights and then we're living in an environment that is fighting against it.
So it's not that it's impossible.
It's just we can make it easier.
We can make it normal to do these things.
And let's tie this in with food.
Absolutely. one of the things that we've been doing together as a species thousands of years is eating together right but here's the thing it's even deeper than that when we were living in tribes all of the process it was a community process right hunting gathering food preparation eating together celebration we just got back from hawaii for the from the first time and every time i think of hawaii by the way i think of magnum pi my grandmother She did, that was her time That was her one time I have to find something else to do Because grandma's watching Magnum P .I.
But anyways, and we see this Dramatization of something called a Luau, right?
We sit back and watch It as a show But that's how things were As I'm watching I'm just like, this is incredible It was culture The hunting, they bring in the food out The food is prepared We all dine together, celebrate, dance, sing things, storytelling, all these things would happen under that umbrella.
And over time, especially the last few decades, really the last century, our tribes have been more and more fractured.
Because even when we start to have our neighborhoods, we'd still be near family oftentimes.
But now it's not just that we have our nuclear family, that's usually tends to be the small mother, father, parents, whatever those parents construct are, and children.
And even within that now, we're even more divided in the household because of our technology.
And so we're getting further and further away from each other.
And my question was, was there something about eating together that was protective of our health that we're missing out on?
And that's what led me to some of the craziest data.
And it just made sense.
Again, it's one of those things where you know.
But also here's another thing about me with research is I'm also looking for the thing that is counter to what I believe.
Right, right. You have to go for it.
to have a balanced perspective right right right because i have to i have to be open to us eating in front of a screen for the rest of our lives unlocking some kind of superpower right right who knows but what the data indicates is and this was a big analysis done by some researchers at harvard they found that families who eat together on a consistent basis those family members consume significantly higher amounts of real foods fruits and vegetables and by nature tremendously more more essential nutrients that prevent diseases.
Just eating together.
Just eating together and significantly less ultra -processed foods.
So dangerous chemicals as well.
And then we stretched that out.
Because after I found that, I was like, how is this not up on billboards?
Just eating together.
And we'll talk about why, by the way, which is really important.
And also the barrier potentially.
And so there's two studies.
One was published in the journal Pediatrics that's looking at children.
The other was published in the journal JAMA, Journal of the American Medical Association.
These researchers found that because I'm also always asking, what's the minimum effective dose?
How little can people do to get the benefit?
Because I know, you know this, people want change, but they don't want to change that much. Right.
Right. I like that.
They want change, but they don't want to change.
Yes, exactly. Exactly.
They want to bring their old self to the new party.
I want these results.
It's not going to happen.
But I don't want to change.
I want to get stronger, but I don't feel like working out.
just let me get the muscles up off of you.
Right, right. You know, and so I was looking at, again, what's that minimum effective dose?
And these researchers uncovered that it's three, three meals a week with people that you love, friends and family.
Just three meals? Three meals a week.
Is that seven -day week?
Yeah, three meals a week out of seven -day week.
Three meals a week led to significantly reduced incidence of those children developing obesity and disordered eating.
Plummeted when kids were eating with their family three times a week.
For parents, there was a great study looking at office workers from IBM and tracking their getting home and having family dinner and their work morale, productivity, stress.
They found that when they were able to make it home for family dinners, work morale stayed high, productivity stayed high, and their stress levels stayed negligible.
But as soon as things started cutting into their ability to have dinner with their families, stress went up, productivity plummeted, and also work morale went down.
And so why does this matter?
And I share everything that we're going over, by the way, is all in the East Mardi Family Cookbook.
Yes. And why does this matter?
Another study published in JAMA.
And JAMA is one of the most prestigious journals, especially coming from the U .S. Right.
Journal of the American Medical Association.
They're not bought and sold at this point by anybody.
They do a lot of good work.
It's more balanced.
Not that everything is good that's published there.
Right. But they do a much better job.
Them, the BMJ has really done a great job.
And so what they found was that 60 to 80 % of all Doctor visits today for stress related right.
Yes, right right, right, okay So it's we're not educated about this because stress is in many ways is invisible, right?
It doesn't have calories, right?
It doesn't have any, you know preserve pulls on your mind and your heart your soul Yeah, it's because our thoughts create chemistry right, you know alters our chemistry and so So getting home and having dinner with their family was creating this incredible buffer against stress.
And the question is why let's dig into why.
Please. So number one, when we're in the space with people that we care about, we're very good.
We start basically producing a chemical cocktail of good stuff.
And one of the main things being oxytocin, right?
So oxytocin starts getting produced and oxytocin is, it's got a couple of nicknames.
One of them is the love hormone.
Absolutely. And it's one of the few hormones that we've identified that literally counteracts the activity of cortisol, this glorified stress hormone, which cortisol isn't bad.
We need cortisol and get up and go.
But when it's running the show, that's when it can be problematic.
And for a lot of people, they can go zero to 100 real quick, but they're very challenged in going from 100 to zero.
Oxytocin helps to switch over from that fight or flight, sympathetic, go, go, go, to the the parasympathetic rest and digest nervous system.
And that's all again when we are able to have this dinner table as a unifier.
It doesn't have to be dinner by the way.
It could be any meals but it's a unifier.
So that's number one.
It's helping us to switch over to the parasympathetic nervous system.
It's like magical in doing that and it's because it's a epigenetic controller.
And so that's number one.
Break that down, though.
I know what epigenetics means but when you say it's a epigenetic controller what do you say?
Absolutely. So, of course, I know, you know, Bruce Lipton.
Yeah, it's my boy. And we both know him very well.
It's been a great, great mentor.
And, you know, I have these wonderful conversations with him and he's always directed me back to the mind, even because there's entire fields now of nutrigenomics, nutrigenetics.
Right. Looking at how food alters our our gene expression.
Right. Right. But he's always like minds first. Right, mine's first, everything else is second, absolutely.
So what we know today, which in my university education, we were taught, it's DNA to RNA to protein, where our genes are controlling what's getting printed, that's the end of the story.
Yeah, Dawkins, you're basically dancing to your genes.
That's it. Genes control your life.
Yeah, that's old time.
Today we know, and there's a wonderful study that was published recently, it's another big meta -analysis is looking at many of the major killers in the united states and they found that the basically the title title of the study and if we're watching on the video maybe we could put the study up for people to see yeah is that genes are not the major causative factor of our disease epidemics right all right it's something else and it's epigenetics which epigenetics are above genetic control so it's kind of like our epidermis right it's the above epidermis and so our our epigenome or epigenetics
are determining how our genes are getting expressed.
This is what makes us so different because we might have collectively 20 ,000 genes we're sharing as a species, bananas can have more.
So when they did the Human Genome Project, they're like, we're going to find, we've got a million genes, I'm sure.
No, no, no. What's different about us is all the variation in how things can get expressed.
That's what makes us so unique and so so special as a species.
Now, let me add this little tidbit in here that Bruce probably didn't add for you yet, which is now we understand that most of the genes that we're carrying, if we go gene for gene, most of our genes are bacterial.
Upwards of about 99 % of our genes that we're carrying are bacterial genes.
And now we're looking at the interface between our bacteria genes and our genes.
And now again, it's just like creating even more more variety and diversity in our outcomes.
Because one of the things Bruce shared with me was, you know, when we label to be diseases, we don't have genes that code for diseases.
There are very, well, let me put it like this.
There are very, very few true genetic defects.
Most of the time, these alterations, when we see an outcome, like for instance, manifestation of type two diabetes.
It's an alteration.
It's not the gene made this.
Right, right, right, right.
We're not wired for that.
Exactly. We're not wired for that.
It's an adaptation that the body is making under unideal circumstances to keep you alive.
That's like arthritis too, same thing.
It's a protection against something trying to get in your system.
So it would create a buffer that we call a disease.
And we get mad at the symptom.
But we don't understand that our body is making this adaptation to protect us in some way.
And there's going to be a hierarchy and also because of our unique Gene makeup and how things are getting read.
It's gonna be a different expression There are no two people that have the same arthritis.
There are no two people that have the same cancer beatys same cancer Right, right, right.
Everything is unique, but we have this blanket system, right?
We come in like was that Linus and the peanuts with the blanket you come in with this dirty blanket, right?
And we throw it over you and give you this label right now.
This is your identity Entity.
Right. You're a diabetic and there's nothing you can do about it.
Right. This is who you are.
Take medicine the rest of your life.
Yeah. But now we know, of course, there's so much. And most importantly, of course, like removing the cause.
Let's address the root cause of this dysfunction.
And that's really even going back to when I was advocating for behavior change with people.
When I was, you know, doing my clinical work.
That's kind of like treating the symptom in many ways.
I'm not addressing the root cause, which is the culture.
and so to tie all this together so that switch over we've got parasympathetic activation when we're around each other we've got oxytocin being this kind of dominant hormone and other chemistry as well deactivation of things like cortisol adrenaline but also one of the reasons that that this is so effective is that simply knowing today we got all this stuff going on that we're having family dinner on Monday and Wednesdays, it incites this awareness that that's coming.
Yeah. And also it incites planning.
So we're naturally going to start to...
Because when we're thinking family dinner, we're going to have a construction in our mind.
It's going to... Even unconsciously to make an actual meal.
Now, here's the thing too about this project and this work, we got to have grace with ourselves as well.
But I do want to advocate for people today, Pick those three days.
Mm -hmm and schedule it.
Mm -hmm because we schedule things that are far less important Right, this is so vital as a protection for your kids for yourself That's beautiful and she'll tell them that because I think that's that's powerful.
Yeah, that's it's yeah You know when I would use this how it used to be Back in the day.
I mean when I when I came home from school You know, I knew dinner mom was gonna have dinner and we were all gonna sit around the table I can see my father sitting there my mother's sitting there my brothers over there and I can see it right now Yeah, that was every night, you know, then on weekends, we may have done something a little different Yeah, but it was like what's for dinner mom, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, this is the other Beautiful part about this.
You just said exactly I can see mm -hmm This is what is so powerful about it is that you can see your loved ones you can see your children.
Right. And this is an opportunity to get some real FaceTime.
Yeah. The real FaceTime.
Real FaceTime, because a lot of our communication is physical.
A lot of our communication is nonverbal.
Yeah. And so we can pick up subtleties with our kids to find out their state, to find out what they might be struggling with.
We can't see it if we're not paying attention.
Right. And that dinner table being a unifier, we get to actually be present and catch catch things early.
Plus being able to offload ourselves to be able to let go of some of the stressors by just speaking about things tends to release.
And so also, I've integrated this into our family culture with myself, because in, you know, a lot of people grew up like this, but it wasn't there wasn't really a soft moment with the men in my life, right?
And so my my sons can can tend to pick up that nothing hurts me right that i'm superman right right like i'm good dad's good right and so having it where we can go through go around the table as you we've had many meals together right we'll go around and share you know what we're grateful for but also sometimes we go around the table and share what we failed at today right what did you struggle with today right everybody go ahead you know go around and we'll share and so they get to hear oh oh, you you struggle with something.
Right, right, right.
And so it's like opening up a new door of compassion.
That's so true of empathy.
Right. And these things get embedded and they carry on to their family because that's what culture really is.
By the way, to define that culture is the shared values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that are passed from one generation to the next.
Yeah. You bring up a lot of memory because I can remember obviously sitting at the dinner table with my dad and mom.
And my dad would teach us things like don't believe everything you read the newspaper we got that the dinner table because my brother would say something sometimes and my father would say well How do you know that's true?
And my brother would say well, I read about it.
He says how do you know that's an opinion or a fact?
So he would break that down to us you know the internet before the internet now We really have to do yeah, you know and and something else that he did Oh, I remember one other time I was a little kid and we asked my father something and he said, I don't know.
That was a shock to me as a little kid.
Dad doesn't know? What?
But it's like what you were saying, the vulnerability around the dinner table.
Humanized. Yeah, he says, I don't know the answer to that.
You know, if you find out, please let me know.
That kind of empowered me.
And that's okay. You know, like dad doesn't know this.
I'm going to find out the answer to this.
You know, yeah. Yeah.
So so you also deal with in this book, like smarter strategies for shopping.
You go into that as well.
You know, let's let's break that down a little bit, because, yeah, people think they need to be like have a whole lot of money to get what you need.
Yeah. And sometimes it's not even about that.
You know, as you know, I made this transformation.
I was living in poverty in Ferguson.
I grew up in poverty.
Right. And I always like the caveat.
yeah, poverty in the United States is different from other places in the world, right?
Because you still probably have TV, we had a video game system, we might get it a year later.
It wasn't this Christmas, but next Christmas.
Even the shoes might be a year later, too, you know?
That's right. I never, I didn't even know what Jordans were.
I didn't know. We was at Payless and I had, but I was pumped to get these particular, you know, but and we got food from charities, literally, you know, there's this place called the Hosea House that we get charity, you know, food from charities outgoing charity trips you know for Christmas they would give us gifts you know we oftentimes you know we didn't couldn't afford gifts right and but also of course government assistance WIC and and food stamps and all the like that's that's the reality that I was in and but again even with poverty we were on the bus a lot that kind of stuff but my mom
was getting cars from this place this true story called okay junk cars okay John cause yeah yeah and she kept up getting a forward escort like whenever they get one in this one break down she get her she re -up on the escort i guess it was escorting to the next one but you know so this is these are the conditions that i grew up in and with all of that said most of the food that we were getting was ultra processed food right all right and we know that that's the majority of money that's going out with government assistance today is for ultra processed foods and this is the culture we're existing
in right now which is 60 percent of the average adult diet in the united states according to the BMJ is ultra processed foods.
All right. So this is not - It's not food, real food.
Processing food is something humans have been doing forever.
Cooking it is a process.
Pressing the oil out of olives is a process.
All right. We're talking about ultra processed foods where we have a field of wheat that somehow becomes a bowl of fruity pebbles, right?
It's so disconnected from anything real, not to mention all of the synthetic ingredients, Ingredients, food dyes, all this synthetic chemistry, insecticides and pesticides, all this stuff.
And so that's ultra -processed foods.
That was the majority of my diet growing up because it's worse for kids.
This is the first book publishing this new study.
I'm honored to say it, but this is a call to action too.
And looking at the diet of children in the United States.
This was published in JAMA as well.
They looked at U .S. children's food intake for about 20 years.
Kids 2 to 19. they found that the average child in the United States back in 1999, their diet was 61 % ultra -processed foods.
By 2018, it was almost 70 % ultra -processed food.
We're making our tissues, our kids' tissues out of fake foods.
So I'm saying all this to say that growing up in that environment, I'm surrounded by ultra -processed foods.
That's all I'm aware of.
That's part of this is awareness because once I knew better, I could do better.
Absolutely. And accessibility, that's another one of the objections that people would have, who oftentimes don't come from where I come from saying, well, you have access or most people aren't privileged to be able to have dinner with their families or to be able to afford healthier food.
Let me tell you how I did it because I did it.
Yes. Without being rich. Oh man, far from it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Far from it. Some, some of the many times I'd be at the cash register.
Like, do I have enough?
I hope this goes through, you know, I'm about, I'm ready to like, you can put, put, put that back, you know, whatever.
And so a couple of things.
We are so, first of all, I'm talking with you.
So I got to talk the real, come on.
We're so powerful. Yeah.
We are, we are, we are far more powerful than we give ourselves credit for.
Absolutely. And even if we know we forget.
Right. Right. Right.
And so it's that practicing this and understanding there is no there isn't any barrier that can stop you.
That's true. That begins with the mind.
Yes. Yeah. And so making that decision to like for me, I made the mandate.
I eat the best food ever.
That's my goal. I eat the best food ever.
And even though I didn't have very much money, really incredible things start to happen by me making a decision to get well, living in Ferguson, surrounded by all of this, you know, volatility.
and you know when i walk out my apartment complex it's a liquor store right there you know foods you know shelves the line with ultra processed foods or every fast food that you can name around me suddenly when i make this decision i find out for years for years there's been a farmer's market five minutes away i had the same experience in the good the quote good part of ferguson yeah right right next to the police station which you know say i wasn't trying it's quite quite interesting.
You weren't gonna get too close to that.
But that was there.
And now I'm paying sometimes half of the amount that I'd be paying at a place like Whole Foods.
And by the way, I'm from St. Louis.
This year, again, it's the highest murder rate in the United States.
This is a big city.
I'm trying to reference, it's a big city and there's also a lot of volatility.
And I come from the center of that.
And understanding how big the city is and And this is a true story.
There was one Whole Foods in this entire big city.
And here in L .A., you can throw a rock any direction and hit a Whole Foods.
There's a few of them.
It's more excessive.
Air One, Whole Foods, you know, Trader Joe's.
You know, not to mention all the mom and pop ones, you know.
But this just wasn't something that was around.
So I had to go outside my environment to get to that place.
But I didn't know Whole Foods existed until I made the decision.
That opened you up.
That's what happened to me.
I was driving down the street, I decided I'm going to eat healthy food.
And all of a sudden I see this pink building on Crenshaw Boulevard. I said, what's that?
It was Lindbergh's.
Have you ever heard of Lindbergh's?
It was one of the first nutritional health food years ago.
We're talking back the early 70s.
So I walked in there and I saw all these vitamins and all these different kind of wonderful supplements.
supplements and I said how long you guys been?
And they said 20 years.
I said I've been driving down that street well you know when I was before I could drive I was taking the bus that had been there 20 years I'd never even seen it and it's pink big pink building I never even noticed it I noticed fat burger.
Yeah for sure You know what I mean?
The double chili cheese with bacon on top but I never noticed this place until like you said I made a choice and a decision that I was going to eat better and all of a sudden I noticed it our focus depends on our filter absolutely we see what we filter for right and so there was one wild oats as well which has since been bought up by whole foods but that was my first time seeing a health a store that was dedicated to health right and it was a friend of mine I'd known her for maybe three years I see her off and on for years right but now this was in like a week and a half of me making this decision to
get well she takes me to wild oats right like I didn't know where we was going but we ended up there and I walk into this place and I'm just like what is this they got grass you know what you know we grass and on the counter I'm like why is there grass in here you know and but I went right to the to the reference section you know they had these great books and I saw all of these like published studies on at the time because I had really low bone density I broke my hip as you know at track practice right right right and I had the you or your own guinea pig in terms of nutrition and supplementation yeah
yeah and i had this arthritic condition on my spine essentially uh degenerative disk disease which was so severe that the physician when i was 20 said i had the spine of an 80 year old right at the time which that's even a disrespect by the way for 80 years right exactly there's some 80 year olds who are killing it right you know and but basically my discs were so degenerated that you couldn't see the light shine through them on the mri and also two of them were herniated.
And so, but let me just jump to the end of that, which was after making this decision to get well, nine months later and getting a scan done, those two herniations had healed on their own and the disc had regenerated.
So now I can see the light shining through it.
And really at that point, I had already transformed my health so much, but I went back for that affirmation from the same system.
I remember the doctor, he was looking at it with me.
He was like, whatever you're doing keep doing it mm -hmm why are you asking me about like you could because I told him I was like you know I really focused on changing what I was eating and exercising he it just like flew over as that didn't yeah that was not the model he had come from and so you know but to hammer these points down with how do we save money number one grocery shopping yeah what's what's smart grocery shopping so let's first and foremost if we can get access to a farmer's market.
Just even going to Dr. Google, looking in your local area, farmer's markets.
This is an opportunity to find foods that are oftentimes less expensive, much higher quality.
And the nutrient density also helps to address, it's called the ARN in our brain, appetite regulating network.
And so we're more satisfied and we're not eating a lot of other stuff.
And so we're actually getting more from the food that we're eating.
So that's number one if we can access a farmers market they're wonderful CSAs right so CSA so this is like community gardens okay yeah they're going to give you but with the thing with CSAs are you don't get to necessarily pick what they give you basically get a box of variety of fruits and vegetables and things like that delivered to your house or you pick it up but you could save a ton of money and just googling CSAs you know food in your area but another thing was at the the grocery store itself so when I go to Whole Foods which unfortunately many of those foods are more expensive and we'll
talk about why in just a second what I would do is I would start to look for those yellow signs whatever's on sale is what I'm gonna eat all right so I would use that and then also stock up yeah you know so if you know avocados were on sale I'd stock up and the question is like what do you do because avocados are yeah they got an attitude problem problems sometimes they might go bad on you they can go from delicious or not ripe at all to like that you know brown yeah to zombie status really quickly and so here's a couple of real quick strategies with avocados which i feel like i've mastered so right
before it gets ripe or even when they get ripe and you're just like what am i going to do with these put in the fridge it will slow that process down by about three days and another option that we can do especially when you've got a bunch that are ripe at the same time you can cut them up and freeze them open up cut them up put them in the chunks put them in the freezer you can make smoothies and things like that with that's exactly what i do that's exactly my strategy especially if they're on sale yeah i'll buy a few keep some of them out as soon as they start to get a little soft they go in the refrigerator i
freeze the rest yeah that's my smoothie deal yeah i got my avocado i got my blueberries blueberries.
I got whatever of the fruit I want to put in there.
And then my superfood greens and my protein powder.
I'm good. Yeah. That's what I had before I came here to see you.
No doubt. You know, it's amazing.
You know, we pick these things up along the way, but so many times I had to suffer.
I'm taking my avocados from the counter to the trash.
Like I spent all this money.
Same thing with the people get the spring mix, you know, before you know it, you're this kind of, you know, aspirational purchases.
Right. And we end up of throwing food away so I shared a bunch of strategies like that in the book by the way this is eats more let me just say this I want you to I want you to get this book Shawn Stevenson has eat smarter family cookbook but you know I've gone through it it's more than just a cookbook it's a cookbook it's a beautiful cookbook but he's got all kinds of information stuff we're talking about it's all in his book he's got studies research he's got all kinds of ways by which you can become a better you by eating smarter so what you're hearing us talk about it's in the book to get
the book yeah and you have this but it's this also is a compendium to another book yes right so I'm so honored just to say this it again just even again coming from where I come from yeah when eat smarter came out as the number one new release in the United States of all books right and it ended up being a you know USA Today national bestseller all the good things, but the mission was not done, you know, job not finished.
And what I was most surprised about because there is a section that has, you know, different recipes, but it was more so it's a big idea book, an education book.
I was shocked at how many people were sharing the meals, like cooking the food and making it in pub posting their food pictures and videos and things like that.
I'm like, I put 5 % of my energy into that part, but because we live in this visual culture right that's what people and also there's something so intimate about eating about that's cool learning this stuff but when you eat something you have this experience and so the last part i want to make sure that we emphasize is why these foods are more expensive please yeah you were going to break that down okay so the number one reason why i can go to you know when i was living at ferguson go to jack -in -the -box get two for 99 cent tacos you can still do that now man you know I don't know what the game
is out there. They make it very inexpensive for all those places.
I used to call it, back in the day, I would call it death row.
That was a real death row.
All those fast food places.
Sugar night. Yeah. Sugar night.
I said, I remember one guy came running up to me and saying, don't say that.
You have a member of Agape that owns McDonald's.
I said, I can't help it.
It is what it is. It is what it is.
I can't help it. You know, it's that death row, you know, the pharmaceutical companies are like, well, you know, because you talked about how sick we are.
They already know the diseases that we're going to have 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now.
They've already got this pharmaceutical remedy.
They already know, you know, so we don't have to play into that.
They're counting on it.
Yeah, they're counting on it.
Keep eating your sugar pops and all that stuff.
We got you. We're waiting.
Go ahead. it. And, you know, that's another thing with that system.
It's designed to create repeat customers.
Yeah. Right. Not get well.
Yeah. Not remove the cause, but, you know, making basically factory farming humans.
Right. And so the number one reason why, you know, you get these two for two dollar cheeseburgers, two for 99 cent tacos.
Those products are very cost intensive to make.
Right. There's a lot of different ingredients.
There's a lot of processing, the packaging, managing the marketing and avocado literally i went for a walk i went for a walk california is different there's food falling off the trees all right there's just i'm just walking just like damn it's all these oranges like this is crazy we used to go pick them out in the valley back in the day listen that food but i'm saying it literally falls off the tree right there's none of that workers involved right why is that $3 for that avocado and I can get six tacos for that same amount right what is a family going to do my mother would go and buy those tacos
right to quote fill up her kids right she's doing that because it's cheap right it's quick obviously tasty you know designed that way by food scientists and the marketing put that right in our face mm -hmm why The question is why is it so inexpensive?
It's because of government subsidies.
Absolutely. Break it down, brother.
So what we're looking at is a situation where we have nearly $200 billion.
I shared one of these studies in my earlier book.
And nearly $200 billion, just in a recent 20 -year time span in the US, $200 billion was put into government subsidies for foods that largely end up coming through the drive -thru window.
Right. That end up in ultra -processed foods.
We're paying for that with our taxpayer money, stuff we're not even eating.
We're paying for that to be cheap, that wheat, or that soy, or whatever it is that they're growing.
We're paying for that and then the fast food companies are benefiting, financially, from my taxpayer dollars.
It's an interesting business model.
Yeah. You just said it because also, whenever we say government, that means us.
Right. It means our money.
My money, taken out of my check.
sent to do that. And I also shared this analysis where they were looking at people who are consuming the most government subsidized foods, and most of those being genetically modified dwarf wheat, corn, which is getting used in all manner.
Again, this can manifest into funyuns or Captain Crunch, whatever the case might be.
And obviously a big sweetener, huge sweetener industry.
Corn syrup, right. Soy, canola, the list goes on and on.
But basically foods that that are used to make ultra processed foods.
And they were looking at, and this was published in JAMA as well, shout out to Journal of the American Medical Association, they're looking at consumption of government subsidized foods and they found that people who had the highest intake of government subsidized foods had about a 30 % greater incidence of being obese, higher rates of inflammatory biomarkers, things like C -reactive protein that are leaning towards, you're gonna have a cardiovascular event, all of these very very troubling and disturbing terrible health outcomes were happening when people were eating government subsidized food
so literally we're paying for the problem right we're funding sickness right right that's the culture that we're existing in right right now and so just to put a cherry on top of some strategies with shopping so we mentioned farmers markets, CSAs, shopping, paying attention to what's on sale, and stocking up on certain things based on that.
And another thing, and this is kind of just a practical thing, is minimizing food waste, which we talked about a little bit.
You'd be shocked. About 40 % of all food is wasted.
Right. It's a huge global problem.
We could feed everybody in the world.
You can feed everybody with that you can also feed everybody with the amount of food that is being stored Not even being let out on the market because that would lower the price and then thrown away I mean there are people with they don't have any food that could eat that food But we keep it off the market so that we keep the price up.
Yeah, so this is we live in an interesting world Yeah, yeah So in the again these are just a few of the practical things that are shared in the book because we also talk about how to transform your kitchen culture to make all this more fun and inviting earlier when you shared that you had that moment of sadness um when you prior to agape right being founded because you knew i i immediately thought about this moment of sadness in writing this book when i was thinking thinking about my youngest son in particular when he used to come, you know, man, it's crazy.
It's tough. He used to come into the kitchen and, you know, I'm kind of full steam ahead a lot of times again, because we're busy.
He's got school in the morning.
I'm just, and he would come into the kitchen and ask if he could help.
If he could help. And how many times I told him not today, but not today.
Right. And it's kind of send him on his way.
And I was missing on those opportunities.
Right. And thankfully I caught myself, you know, this was a couple of years ago.
Now Brady, he can cook himself.
He's just turned 12.
And I also, you know, all of my kids and even my parents, wonderful cooks.
We're big time foodies.
Mm -hmm. I don't know.
I've been to the house.
You know, I don't know we I mean your wife makes a broccoli.
That's just ridiculous We don't even make him broccoli taste.
She makes it taste like it I don't even know how to describe it.
We'd be talking about and broccoli Yeah, and of course my mother -in -law, my mukami and yeah, yeah Oh, yeah, that's great all the when she coming back in town For the holidays are coming up.
She'll be here. We're gonna fly around for sure, you know, that's her love language, too Yeah, but you know, this is another thing.
How do we how do we equip our children with these valuable life skills that?
another sobering stat in the book is how The capacity to be able to cook food for oneself in the most recent generations It's on the endangered species list. A lot of kids can't cook for themselves Yeah, you bring up something two things before we go one a few months ago I mean going back to cooking together.
I I wanted to have, what did I want to have?
Some potato soup, a whole lot of vegetables in it.
So I started putting it together.
All of a sudden, my daughter comes in and she starts helping.
My son comes over. He starts throwing down the kitchen.
Then my grandson comes in and all four of us are in the kitchen basically cooking this meal.
And then we did it a few more times.
It was like, it was like their mother, my kid's mother had passed over.
So there was like, it was like a little sadness in the house, you know.
But we started cooking, and it created whole new memories of us cooking together.
And it became a part of this dynamic.
Now, my grandson's off at Howard University.
He's not there at the house right now.
But I just remember exactly what you're saying.
It just became a dynamic in the kitchen.
I didn't ask him to help.
I was going to do it all.
My daughter comes cutting up the potatoes.
She starts putting the spices in the thing.
My son's coming in.
It was just like a good moment for me.
And it was like, wow, this is a beautiful memory.
The other thing is I know you have something in your book about what they're cooking on, what kind of pots and pans are they cooking the food on.
Because you might be doing good nutritional food, but you might be putting some toxicity in the food.
Yeah, perfluoro -octanoic acid as one of the compounds that's banned recently is in Teflon.
Right. And I remember, you know, the nonstick cookware was a vibe, you know, it's what everybody had and it makes things easier in many aspects.
But little did we know that we were poisoning our population.
And again, this chemical is banned.
It's been banned for about 10 years.
But even when most people have their blood tested, they're still finding it in their blood.
It's not a decade later because it's in this category of forever chemicals.
Wow. And specifically why it was pulled is that it was found to be a notable renal carcinogen, meaning it causes kidney cancer.
We're literally cooking this and we're definitely absorbing it into our bodies.
And so, the thing is, this is still, these products, even though that chemical is taken out, there are many other unsavory compounds.
And these companies are going to just keep selling their stuff until they're forced to change.
And oftentimes, it's decades later.
And they don't even use it themselves many times, the people that are producing it.
Especially if they know.
Especially if they know.
But so, we talk about what are some higher quality options.
And also, by the way, with all of this, we're operating with some grace here because I didn't change all this stuff overnight.
Right, right. Just encouraging a couple of swaps here or there.
air you don't have to change on all your pots and pans maybe just get one you know if you don't have one a really good cast -iron skillet that's well seasoned and also of course like some people even that industry with Teflon framing that that's bad for you because you're gonna get some iron right from the cast -iron skillet it is negligible compared to what you're getting in the Teflon and all those cast -iron is way healthier it's not even close it's not even close and of course cooking traditionally my mother -in -law she cooks with a lot of of stainless steel cookware, which is kind of hard to
do. But she's figured out how, because it's all, it's like a dance being able to use these things.
With the oil and the - You know, yeah.
And also there's great ceramic options as well.
There's many different - Is that what you use, ceramic?
What do you use in your household?
It just depends. It depends on the dish.
Because of what you're cooking.
It depends on the dish.
And so, but just sharing - Is any of that in here?
It's all in there. It's all in here.
But most importantly, Rev, I got to share this, because to tie all this together, my biggest struggle, you know, I didn't know at the time, even when we didn't have much to eat, had my family known that eating together would provide some protection, which all of us had some kind of disease or dysfunction, all of us, even the children.
Me and my brother were in and out of the hospital with asthma.
My sister had terrible eczema, skins just broken out all over, constantly had to wear this cream like every day.
You know, know my mother obesity diabetes my my stepfather obesity addiction you know but we're all trying to get by living in this environment and sometimes when we didn't have food to eat there was this one moment it's one of my most core experiences like you just said like that was healing for you you know when your family came into the kitchen together but i remember this day he was home from work because he worked the late shift as executive chef at this fancy restaurant ironically.
This is your stepdad?
Yeah. But we didn't have much food at our house a lot of times, but he could cook.
It was amazing. And this time, we're opening.
This was not an uncommon day, but you open the cabinets, there's nothing there.
You're looking at a bunch of nothing.
There's tomato sauce.
And then in the refrigerator, there's some milk and government cheese, that block of cheese.
If you don't know about government cheese, you can't understand government cheese.
But it tasted good actually, but it just didn't melt very well.
And then we had some Texas toast, which was something maybe we got from the WIC program.
But in the freezer, there was some deer sausage that my grandfather had hunted and sent.
And I wasn't psychologically, I wasn't trying to eat Bambi in my mind.
I'm just like, but I didn't know what it was.
And so he took those ingredients that day when we're like, we're hungry, there's nothing to eat, you know.
And we're just like, we're hungry.
And my little sister, my little brother, and he went in there and he looked around.
and he turned those ingredients that I just mentioned into pizza.
He made pizza. The crust was that Texas toast. He had the tomato sauce in the cabinet that he seasoned up and we use the government cheese and the deer sausage.
And he made pizza out of it.
Wow. And it didn't taste like dominoes, by the way.
It didn't taste like that.
But the fact that kids, we, we love pizza yeah the fact that we were eating pizza you're eating love and the fact that I was eating love and I was eating with him yeah yeah yeah yeah I'll never forget that moment I'll never forget that moment and this speaks to the immense creativity that can manifest from an environment that might seem like one of deprivation right there's an extra there's an opportunity to evoke this creativity it's just where we pointing it and so that's carried over into this work as well.
And the last part is, for me, even the accessibility.
I'm like, as I'm looking at this data on eating together, maybe it's because you have more opportunity.
Maybe it's because you have more money and you can do something like that.
Listen to this. So I shared another study in the book that was done on minority children that are generally in the context of a low -income environment.
They found that these kids eating together with their family just four meals a week any of those any meals four meals a week those children ate five servings of fruits and vegetables at least five days a week and significantly less ultra -processed food namely chips and soda and then researchers noted when the tv was never or rarely on was the key thing and so even if we didn't have much money had my family known that eating together could help to protect our health in some way i know we would have done it we just didn't know They said no because I can count I'm not exaggerating ref.
I can count on my hands How many times we sat down to eat a meal together?
It just didn't happen it might be a random holiday when we do that Mm, but my family, you know our family unit mother stepfather brother and sister myself It just we ate at the same time a lot of times where we scattered together.
Yeah TV video game outside Right, right.
That wasn't a part of our culture right and we do what we're aware of right our culture is determining our choices our culture even our cravings are cultural mm -hmm we crave things that we've been exposed to right you know and so under some addicted to that because it's just the normal pattern of the chemicals that are being produced around that experience if you register that's good for you yeah yeah and so just even knowing this we can start to again understand it's not even taking our power back, right?
We already have it.
We just are unaware.
Right. And being able to write the story, create a powerful microculture in your own household.
It starts with you.
Yeah. And here's the cool thing.
I'm doing a lot of that, but now I'm ready to skyrocket to a whole other level.
Yeah. Last thing. Here's the thing.
Also on that Hawaii trip, I realized that where you go, you take your culture with you.
You can go into another culture, but you're an influential influential factor wherever you go.
Right. That's the most powerful thing that you can do to affect change in the world around you is change yourself.
Yes. And a family unit.
Yes. A healthy family unit.
Wow. Wow. The impact that it has just when people see us move, you know, you've seen this.
You're sure. It is infectious.
It's not just bad stuff that can be viral.
You know. It's good stuff.
Good health. Wellness can be.
Health can be contagious.
Contagious as well.
Optimism can be contagious.
love can be contagious hey this is Shawn Stevenson and you know what I'm gonna have him back again so get ready for him because there's so much information here as well as other books just his whole life he's a wellness encyclopedia and so I appreciate you being here with me you know remind I've seen some studies where because of the love and because of the the family, even people eating bad food.
Because of the love, the serum that was produced in the blood was of a very high standard because of what you were saying, because they were together, they were in love, they were celebrating.
So there's a whole lot here.
So this is called Eat Smarter.
This is Shawn Stevenson.
The Model Health Show.
Number one in the USA.
Check that out as well.
Any last words? You covered a lot of material, man.
I mean, pick up the book anywhere books are sold.
We have a national campaign at bookstores across the country.
And most importantly, go to eatsmartercookbook .com.
Eatsmartercookbook .com.
We've got some wonderful bonuses there, a bunch of stuff we're giving away.
And so pick up the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook anywhere that books are sold.
Eat Smarter Family Cookbook.
Peace and blessings, everyone.
Take back your mind.
We'll see you soon.
Thank you so much for tuning into this this episode today.
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