Philip Pape: 0:01

If you're like most of us, you've probably tried everything to feel better when you're stressed or overwhelmed Meditation, supplements, you name it but what if the answer was sitting right there in your kitchen? Today, I'm sitting down with Dr Sarah Ballantyne to uncover the fascinating link between specific nutrients and happiness. You'll learn why certain foods can boost your mood more effectively than any supplement, and how simple additions to your diet could improve your life satisfaction as much as landing your dream job. Whether you're dealing with daily stress or you just want to feel more resilient without another restrictive diet, what we're about to share will give you those practical, science-backed strategies that actually work actually work. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.

Philip Pape: 0:53

I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are exploring a surprising connection between nutrient-dense foods and happiness with Dr Sarah Ballantyne. Now, sarah is a New York Times bestselling author with a PhD in medical biophysics, and her research background spans a ton of areas inflammation, immunity, cell biology. And, after her personal experience with the limitations of restrictive dieting raise your hand she developed the NutriVore framework, an evidence-based approach focused on nutrient density rather than restriction. So today, you're going to learn which nutrients are essential for mood and mental health, how to easily add more nutrient-dense foods to your diet, not take things away, and why focusing on abundance could be the key to both physical and psychological well-being. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 1:42

Oh, thank you so much for having me, and I'm just like so excited about this conversation today.

Philip Pape: 1:47

Yeah, as I was saying before we started recording, you know I personally had not followed you until someone who follows this show recommended you and then I was kind of I'll say in love with your content right away because of how aligned we are in you know, the freedom, the freedom that comes from knowing there are a variety of ways that you can eat. There's no right or wrong. There's diversity of wonderful foods out there. And you take the lens and the frame of nutrients specifically, which is also a little bit unique because sometimes it gets it's like the fourth thing right. It's like calories, macros, meal timing, oh, and, by the way, get your nutrients.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 2:22

It ends up being the fourth thing on a to-do list where you only ever get three things done.

Philip Pape: 2:27

Yes, right.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 2:28

It's always the so I'm a big to-do list person. Every morning I'll like write out like the things that I want to accomplish for the day, and there's always those couple of things at the bottom of the list that get pushed to tomorrow and then pushed to tomorrow and they don't actually make it far enough to get done until the day before their due right.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 2:45

I think that getting all of the essential nutrients that we need I mean no dietary framework teaches that the USDA dietary guidelines doesn't teach us what nutrients are important.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 2:58

There's 49 essential nutrients, right, they've just decided it's too complex. Right, we'll focus on eating patterns. But when you don't really understand the whys behind those eating patterns, it makes it really really hard to implement. And so if you don't have an appreciation for I'm getting these types of nutrients from these types of foods, we don't need to have it like, all 49 nutrients memorized, right. Like we don't need that kind of encyclopedic knowledge to be able to figure out, like, within the foods we like and fit within our budget and fit within the time we have to prepare food, we don't need to know every single thing about those foods to be able to make those choices so that we're actually getting the full range of nutrients our bodies need. But, like of some basics which, like, we're not taught in school, we're not taught by the medical establishment, we're not taught by the different dietary frameworks that are out there, that base knowledge changes the game, right. It turns any diet into a diet that actually meets our nutritional needs, and that is the thing that actually improves long-term health.

Philip Pape: 3:57

Yeah, and I think it. Also it makes it exciting, interesting and desirous to go after certain foods Like, for example I think about mushrooms you talk about ergothionine, I think it's called, which we can get into as like, great for longevity, I think. And I would have had no idea. And also I'm not a huge fan of mushrooms, Neither is one of my daughters, but my wife makes them and throws them in our food. We're like we eat them anyway and this is kind of incentive. You know, it's just. It's just another incentive to add in nutritious foods and not think like it's about weight loss or it's about a macro like protein or even fiber. Right, like it's much more nuanced but it doesn't have to be complicated, is what I'm hearing.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 4:35

Yes, so I would say it's complex but not complicated, if that makes any sense, right? So you know that's a knowledge base that I need to be able to communicate, but I don't think it's a knowledge base that, like the average person needs. I think we can talk about, like some simple ways to formulate a plate, some, you know, a short list of foods of, like mushrooms that are important foods to add, right Like, where we can get those like really cool unique nutrients and then fill those nutritional gaps. But it doesn't need to be like. I actually think, very, very importantly, I want to take the stress out of food choice. I think, with restrictive diets, there's a lot of like reading labels to look for those food toxins and those inflammatory ingredients, right Like I think a lot of diet culture nowadays is really focused on identifying things to avoid, the vast majority of which is not considering the very important aspect of dose, like how much of that?

Philip Pape: 5:33

compound is a problem. And context, am I getting enough?

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 5:35

of that from this food. Generally, the answer is no right, like, yeah, sure, those are foods to moderate, but that doesn't mean avoid completely, right, and I think, that yeah, go ahead.

Philip Pape: 5:46

No, no, no, no, go ahead. Keep going, please.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 5:48

So I think the challenge right now, in a time where, like there's so much food fear, right, so much conspiracy theory around food, food choices become a stressful event, and so I'm not looking to make it complicated in a way that's stressful.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 6:03

I'm looking to redirect our attention to the things that really matter, which is does my diet actually meet my nutritional needs? And actually create some simple structure to take the stress out of it. And then, by adopting a permissive structure where we make room for those delicious foods that someone else is telling me to be terrified of, but I love and makes my life better when I eat them because they give me joy right, if I can intentionally use those as tools for sustainability, those foods as something really positive to include in my diet. So I'm getting enough joy from my diet that I can stick to it. Right, like we're just completely changing the way we think about food choice with the goal of let's make it fun, let's make it easy, let's take the stress out of it. What foods I eat in the day should not be a point of stress and anxiety.

Philip Pape: 6:58

I totally agree. I had a delicious apple not long ago after lunch. It was like a new variety we had tried and just the enjoyment of the taste and the sweetness and knowing that there's nothing wrong with fruits. Like, believe it or not, some people think there's something wrong, you know, granted, if you had 50 apples a day it might be a problem. But again, food matrix. So it's interesting.

Philip Pape: 7:15

You mentioned joy and positivity because kind of the angle I was hoping to take for today's podcast and I know we'll go on a lot of tangents is what the research shows about adding fruits and vegetables into your diet to improve well-being, mood, happiness and I think beyond that, because people are like, oh okay, that's a very kind of narrow thing. Look at this as levels, levels of education and levels of application, in that there are probably a lot of people eating a ton of processed foods without many nutritious foods in their diet. They're like what do I even do to start? And I don't want to go to a NutriVore index and try to make a whole puzzle out of a million foods, right? So when we talk about joy and well-being and happiness, I don't think we're talking about necessarily comfort foods or the hedonic pleasure. We're talking about genuine, lasting improvements in our well-being. What's the difference between those? That'll be the first question. And then what is the baseline step up people can take in their diets to get toward that point?

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 8:12

Yeah, so when we talk about quality of life foods which is how I like to think of them I'm referring very specifically to those like high dopamine response foods, right? So, like the foods that have that like salt, sugar, fat combination that just triggers like all of the reward centers in our brain that give me, like a short-term like dopamine high, but that aren't necessarily the foods that are supplying a lot of the nutrients that I need for long-term mental health, physical health, right, stress management, things that are actually going to make a profound impact in just like how I feel walking through the world. I think it's really important to like have room for both, right? So those like dopamine hits.

Philip Pape: 8:58

Oh, for sure.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 9:00

I don't see those as bad foods but, like often, we're talking about foods that don't have a lot of nutritional value and when they're overabundant in our diet, it makes it really hard to select foods in the rest of our diet so that we're still getting all of the essential vitamins and minerals and amino acids and fatty acids and phytonutrients that are really important, if not technically essential, that actually support our long-term health. So when we're talking about those foods like, what are the nutrients that we can focus on to support mental health? Or, as you just mentioned, right, what is my entry point? What is my one little thing now that I can do?

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 9:36

When I talk about habit formation I love, like, what is the easiest thing? What is going to be something that's so easy for you to do that it's a no-brainer, it fits within your budget, it fits within your time. It's going to be foods that I mean maybe they're not dopamine foods, but they're still foods that you like and you can build on that success. And it is always, always, always. Let's start with adding a serving of vegetables. That is, like, always step one, and a part of that is we get the same benefit to all-cause mortality as a general indicator of health and longevity, going from zero to one servings of fruits and vegetables per day, as we do from going from one to four. So like that first little baby step.

Philip Pape: 10:18

It's like an exponential curve. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 10:20

Yeah, we get sort of diminishing returns. We still get benefit going higher, but we get sort of diminishing returns the higher we go. And it kind of plateaus. Different studies show different plateau levels. Some are as low as three servings of vegetables per day. Some are as high as eight right, but five is kind of where most studies show above that we're not necessarily getting additional benefit from more servings of vegetables. And then with fruit it's like two to three servings is kind of the sweet spot where we get the most health benefit, kind of where most of the science is at.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 10:51

But there was this amazing 2016 study, I think out of Australia, where they looked at just measurements of like life satisfaction, right, so just like how happy are you, and they looked at fruit and vegetable intake and they basically showed that for every servings of fruit or vegetable added per day, that a person ate up to eight servings per day. Total. That aligns very well with like five servings of vegetables and three servings with a fruit. They had like this increase in happiness, well-being, life satisfaction and the difference they calculated, right. So it's sort of a theoretical study. They calculated the difference between going from zero fruits and vegetables per day to going to eight was an equivalent increase in life satisfaction as going from unemployed to employed. I mean, I would love to see like an intervention version of the study where they take people who are not eating any fruits and vegetables and, like here, eat eight fruits and vegetables per day and we're going to measure, like how long it takes to like have this improvement in life satisfaction. But, based on the data they had, they predicted that improvement occurs in under two years. Whereas when you think about, like, the benefits of eating lots of fruits and vegetables I mean you might have some like digestive improvements that are pretty fast, right, but a lot of the rationale is so that you won't have cardiovascular disease in three years right To diabetes in 20 years right, it feels very far off and I think sometimes it's really hard to feel motivated to make food changes now, especially when that's really like outside of our routine and our comfort area.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 12:26

It's maybe flavors we're not familiar with, Maybe we find vegetables to be bitter it's really hard to make those choices. When we're thinking about some kind of far off like consequence right, that's not going to be a problem for decades. But when you think about, yeah, you could feel that much happier in some months, maybe up to two years. Now we're talking right Like now. This feels like yeah, this is worth it and I'm just going to be a happier person and all I have to do is eat more fruits and vegetables. That's amazing, and the best place to start is the beginning. Just add more compared to what you're eating now.

Philip Pape: 12:59

Yeah, I feel like we see that similar pattern with anything that promotes healthy living, like strength training. You're not necessarily going to get a ton of benefit in the first few weeks. In fact, you might feel like what am I doing? And then it takes a little bit, even like walking more. We know that's huge for all-cause mortality, but it's not like you're just going to get an immediate benefit the first week necessarily. So, speaking of the fruits and vegetables, then the study you're talking about is exactly the one that made me think about this topic to begin with, and it's in your book. What's happening at a biochemical level? Is it changing our mental state, or is it that that lifestyle is then correlated with overall healthier eating and behavior?

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 13:39

Yeah, so studies that look at this are really trying to control for as many other factors as possible. So we're trying to make sure that this isn't. People who eat more fruits and vegetables are also more active and they're also younger, right, and they also have, you know, a higher socioeconomic status, like those things are true, right? So people who eat more fruits and vegetables do tend to have other health related behaviors, but they try to account for that in their mathematical analysis as much as possible to try to tease out what part of this effect is just the fruits and vegetables versus, like, something about this group of people. But, like, absolutely, there is a piece of this that you know, health behavior stack, right. So someone who is very active, probably also trying to get more sleep, right. So probably also trying to eat a diet to fuel athletic performance, right, like, we do tend to see those patterns. But we know also that there's nutrients in fruits and vegetables that are directly linked to physical and mental health. So big one here is vitamin C, right, fruits and vegetables are our best food sources of vitamin C, and vitamin C is a really key modulator of the stress response. So vitamin C is required for the production of catecholamines like adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol, but it also modulates the sensitivity of catecholamine receptors. So it's also modulating how, like, the body responds to the production of those stress hormones. So what happens is when we are not getting enough vitamin C, that magnifies the stress response. When we are stressed we kind of burn through vitamin C so we kind of get it from like both sides. We can kind of get this like runaway snowball of badness or we've got a really clear intervention point.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 15:25

So they've done studies where they give people vitamin C. There's one study done, I think 2004, if I remember correctly, where they gave people vitamin C. So they did a thousand milligrams three times a day for two weeks. So technically that is above the tolerable upper limit of vitamin C. So just throwing that little caveat out there, the tolerable upper limit of vitamin C. So just throwing that little caveat out there, the tolerable upper limit for vitamin C is 2000 milligrams. That's based on GI side effects. We don't see other negative health effects of too much vitamin C until about 10 grams per day and that seems to increase risk of kidney stones, at least in men. But if anytime you're going above the tolerable upper limit, that's a talk with your doctor moment. So just throwing out the caveat.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 16:10

But then they measured the stress response to mental arithmetic. So like quick, what's 27 times three divided by two plus 17,. Right, like that type of though. And you got to figure that out. Can you really anxious about it? You got to do it real fast. Or they had people do public speaking and measured their stress response and showed that just two weeks of upping vitamin C intake really dramatically decreased the stress response.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 16:36

There's been other studies showing that people who consume more vitamin C have lower risk of depression and anxiety. There was a study out of the Nurses' Health Study that showed that two servings of citrus fruit per day one of our best food sources of vitamin C, including what's cool about citrus is the polyphenols in citrus increase the bioavailability of vitamin C. So we actually use that vitamin C a little bit more readily. And they had 18%, 20% somewhere in that vicinity reduced risk of developing depression compared to two servings or less per week. So that is like just an example of one nutrient.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 17:12

We've got lots of fiber that improves the composition of the gut microbiome, our gut bacteria, and they're linked to just about everything that can go wrong with us health-wise. But a major path here is like they're actually making neurotransmitters. They're impacting our neurological health prettywise. But a major path here is they're actually making neurotransmitters. They're impacting our neurological health pretty dramatically. We do know there's a very strong link between gut microbiome activity and mental health challenges. There's other things, right, vitamin B6, other nutrients in fruits and vegetables that are directly impacting our neurophysiology, which we experience as mood and cognition and resilience, and that's all in those fruits and vegetables. So that is like our mechanistic explanation. And then we've got the like added benefit of. You know, probably if we're adding more fruits and vegetables, we're going to start making other changes that will also like getting more activity also boosts mood, right.

Philip Pape: 18:07

Absolutely. Getting more sleep also boosts mood right.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 18:09

So like we're also building more health habits, that are all going to stack.

Philip Pape: 18:14

Yeah, and there's the benefits like being more full and having more hydration and all of that. I like that you mentioned. I mean, we talked about the levels and what we're saying here is, just by adding some level of servings of fruits and vegetables and we didn't even say it has to be these or has to be that you're probably going to have major benefits. You mentioned vitamin C. There's a ton of other vitamins and minerals and you mentioned polyphenols and I wanted to hit on that one because I feel like there's a whole hidden world of compounds in vegetables and fruits that we are oblivious to because they're not on a nutrition label and they're not in an ingredient list. Can you just talk a little bit about that and how important that is?

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 18:51

Yeah, so polyphenols are the best studied, best understood class of phytonutrients, phyto meaning plant, nutrient meaning thing that we use as a raw material. Right, and what's interesting about phytonutrients, like broadly as a class, is we consider them non-essential, but we know that the more are, on average. A lot of that comes out of research into polyphenols. So it was actually before vitamin C was identified as the nutrient that, like if we didn't get enough, we developed scurvy. They knew that lemon juice or lemons or citrus fruit we developed scurvy. They knew that lemon juice or lemons or citrus fruit could treat scurvy.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 19:27

They also knew, like turnips and turnip greens, like they had some other like foods that they knew could prevent scurvy. And so a lot of that early research was done on lemons and there were actually some polyphenols in a lemon peel I think it was that they identified as being protective against the scurvy rash, even though it was like a whole separate pathway compared to vitamin C and scurvy. And so when they first sort of identified these polyphenols they didn't realize it was such a huge class of molecules at the time and they actually initially labeled them vitamin P, like they got to be a vitamin for a little while and then it was like, oh, okay, like Pluto was a planet, yeah, they're not Right.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 20:06

Yes, very much Like we're changing our description. Once we realize it's not technically essential, then we take it out of the vitamin classification that you only get the vitamin name if you're absolutely essential. I mean, there's about 10,000 of them and they are broadly antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, and then different ones have different additional effects, right? So some can localize in different tissues, they can bind with different receptors. So we'll see the polyphenols in coffee are different than the polyphenols in tea, which are different than the polyphenols in chocolate, which are different than the polyphenols in citrus fruit, which is different than the polyphenols in apples.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 20:44

Right, we're getting different ones from different foods, and it's actually one of the things that makes different families of fruits and vegetables so beneficial and is a really strong argument for diversifying our diet as much as possible, so eating as wide a variety of foods as possible, because then we're getting maybe these, you know, 40 polyphenols from this food and like a different 50 polyphenols from this other food. But fruits and vegetables are generally our best sources, right? There's some other, right? I mentioned chocolate and coffee and tea. Legumes, as a general rule, are really packed with polyphenols as well, so like lentils are just like, really really high in polyphenols, so those are sort of our best sources. And what's really just fascinating is there's like increased polyphenol intake reduces risk of again just about everything that can go wrong with us health-wise. Right, it's just one of those nutrients that, because it's antioxidant, because it's anti-inflammatory, it then intersects with just about every pathology, just because inflammation is part of the pathogenesis of just about every chronic illness.

Philip Pape: 21:49

Okay, so that makes sense and I'm glad you threw in. We don't want to limit the discussion to fruits and vegetables. Right, there's all the other food. I mean, there's a whole bunch of food that has all these compounds.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 21:59

Anytime I can bring in chocolate, I'm going to for sure.

Philip Pape: 22:02

I'm with you, I love chocolate, I love chocolate Then I guess the next level down would be if someone's saying wanting to go from zero to two or three servings a day of something, whether it is fruits and vegetables or some other compounds, just to make it easy for them and again we're talking about mood well-being, kind of this general improvement in health. You did mention diversity, so part of the answer might be well, it's going to change like day to day, week to week. But are there some basics that you would say start here? You know, go to the grocery store, everyone can get these things. Start there and then you can start to get more complex from there.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 22:35

Yeah. So this argument kind of goes beyond polyphenols, because we've got some other classes of phytonutrients that are really important, so, for example, the glucosinolates in the cruciferous vegetable family, so that's broccoli, cabbage, kale, those types of vegetables.

Philip Pape: 22:50

And don't leave out Brussels sprouts please, my favorite.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 22:52

And Brussels sprouts is also in this family, yeah.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 22:55

They reduce risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer very, very strongly. And then some of those because again it's another big class of phytonutrients are really important for reducing risk of neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer's disease. The onion family has a similar class of phytonutrients called thiosulfonates Again reduced risk of cancer, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease. The beet like beets are kind of a small family, like it's beets and chard and amaranth and like prickly pear and dragon fruit, but they have a class of phytonutrients called betalains, named after being discovered in beets, that really strongly reduce risk of cardiovascular disease but also improve muscle like exercise performance and muscle recovery. It's why beetroot supplements are like all over social media.

Philip Pape: 23:41

right now they're in pre-workouts, betaine yeah, yeah yeah, that's true.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 23:44

And then we've got you know like we can keep going right with the ergothionine, which is a really cool antioxidant amino acid. That's non-proteinogenic, so we don't incorporate it into our proteins but it still has biological roles in our bodies From mushrooms. It's also been nicknamed the longevity vitamin by scientists because it's so strongly antioxidant, reduces risk of basically everything associated with aging, which includes Alzheimer's disease, parkinson's disease, dementia in general. So if we start to think about, like the patterns, like what types of fruit and vegetable families we're going to get these from, like I've already named some, right? So cruciferous vegetables like ticking that box, super beneficial. The onion families that include onions, garlic chives right, ticking that box, super beneficial, the onion family. So that would include onions, garlic, chives. Right, ticking that box, super beneficial. Mushrooms ticking that box. Citrus fruits those polyphenols are so beneficial. Ticking that box.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 24:37

Berries are best food source of anthocyanins, which also improve exercise performance and muscle recovery, but also can reduce pain sensation. Exercise performance and muscle recovery but also can reduce pain sensation, so it can be very, very helpful for chronic pain. Our best food source of those is berries. So, like there's another box to check, we can look at the sugars that are really good for the gut bacteria in leafy vegetables like lettuce or spinach. We can look at the slow burning carbohydrates, also really good for the gut microbiome in root vegetables.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 25:07

So like those are like the ones that come to mind as like if we're going to start adding, like trying to get as much like spread across those fruit and vegetable families as possible, get those beats maybe like once a week, right? So some people think of this as trying to hit the different colors of fruits and vegetables. So there's five color families red, orange and yellow, green, blue and purple, white and brown. But I think eat the rainbow and like the different fruits and vegetable families are like overlapping concepts but they're still slightly different. Right, like you can get to one place from the other. Right, you can focus on the fruit and vegetable families and end up at eat the rainbow.

Philip Pape: 25:45

But I kind of think like- yeah, and you can have like three things with one color, but still diverse, right, yes, exactly.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 25:51

My wife in case she does that.

Philip Pape: 25:52

I'm like we're eating a white dinner tonight, aren't we? But it's like cauliflower and three other things that are just light colored.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 25:58

Cauliflower and turnips, and yeah, you can absolutely get diversity and it's not Eat the Rainbow and you get diversity and it's not eat the rainbow and you can get eat the rainbow and still be hitting all the same fruit and vegetable family. So I kind of like you know both of those concepts ideally, would kind of be somewhere in our brain. Right Like, okay, this has been a lot of cruciferous vegetables this week. Now maybe let me add some like carrots, or you know, some asparagus, right, something from a completely different vegetable family, even though I'm still hitting green. Right Like now I'm mixing up which vegetable family I'm actually selecting from. So kind of having those ideas. But it doesn't mean like, okay, I just listed 7,000 foods. It doesn't mean we need to go. You know, I would.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 26:41

Generally nutrition changes. We never want to go from zero to 100 in 0.6 seconds. Right Like, that can actually cause increased GI symptoms. Right Like, it's not generally fun. And why, like there's no like time limit here? Right, there's no deadline where someone's gonna be like, oh, you're not eating your five servings of vegetables yet or your three servings of fruit yet You're gonna like fail your assignment. Like there's not a teacher waiting for you to turn it in. There's no timeframe that we have to accomplish all of these diet changes in, which is great, because that gives us permission to tackle that step by step, to set ourselves up, to figure out each piece, turn that into a healthy habit, build that success and then figure out what the next piece is going to be so we can each take our own path there.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 27:28

And maybe it's adding a serving of vegetables to lunch, right? Maybe that's the first step. And with lunch, okay, what's going to be easiest for me? Maybe some carrot and celery sticks with a dip I really like. Maybe it's adding some lettuce to my sandwich, right. Or picking a soup that has some vegetables in it, right, some chicken vegetable soup for lunch. Maybe it's some guacamole, right. Like what is the thing that's going to make sense in my life? And like I'm going to work on that habit.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 27:56

And then I'm going to go okay, well, I've got veggies and dip, like as a lunch food, as part of my routine, so now I'm going to try to mix up those veggies. So now I'm going to try to add, you know, some kohlrabi, delicious cruciferous vegetable that is a great dipping vegetable, I know, not familiar for a lot of people, but because of that it tends to be very affordable, or some, you know, broccoli or cauliflower. Maybe I'll add some tomatoes, right, like maybe I'm going to branch out my veggies that I'm going to dip in for lunch, right, like maybe I'm going to branch out my veggies that I'm going to dip in for lunch, right, so now I can start adding that more rainbow of colors, more different fruits and vegetable families. So I think it's important to sort of give ourselves permission to iterate in a way that we're still making those steps towards diet improvement and towards that diet that is going to increase our life satisfaction dramatically from unemployment to employment levels, their life satisfaction dramatically from unemployment to employment levels.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 28:49

But do it in such a way that we're not tackling it with a diet mentality right. We're not like jumping in and like muscling our way through until we can't anymore and then falling off that bandwagon. Instead we're adopting it as a lifelong healthy habit. So that means making it so much part of our routine. That's the norm, right, that's the automatic, that's the default mode and that's where we see, like, the really dramatic improvements to long-term health outcomes is when we can make those healthy not just diet changes, lifestyle changes to health-related behaviors. When we can make all of that our default mode, that's when we really win.

Carol: 29:24

Before I started working with Philip, I had been trying to lose weight and was really struggling with consistency, but from the very beginning, philip took the time to listen to me and understand my goals. He taught me the importance of fueling my body with the right foods to optimize my training in the gym, and I lost 20 pounds. More importantly, I gained self-confidence. What sets Philip apart is the personal connection. He supported and encouraged me every step of the way. So if you're looking for a coach who cares about your journey as much as you do, I highly recommend Philip Pape.

Philip Pape: 30:04

Yeah, I agree. I like the accessible approach you talked about and adding things in. That's a revelation I had a few years ago as well and it's a big switch for people, right. I know you came from a paleo background and I did as well, and it was like what do you not eat? As opposed to let's add stuff in.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 30:19

And also perfect or bust right yeah.

Philip Pape: 30:21

Like that is oh yeah, all or nothing. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 30:23

Yeah, it was like oh, you ate rice, you're not paleo, right? Like I mean paleo communities.

Philip Pape: 30:27

Oh, but I'm doing modified paleo anyway.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 30:28

Right, I mean, the paleo community is not the only one like this, where it's like you have to do all of this perfectly every single day.

Philip Pape: 31:00

Or it doesn get back to not worried about what happens two years from now, or you're going to not get cardiovascular disease, which is great, but also how's it improving my life in the moment? So two follow-ups then, from everything you said. First, I can just picture a wonderful week of menu options for my meal prep based on all these, because my wife does most of the cooking these days, but she definitely loves a lot of what you said, especially beets, and so my first question is that's on my very short list of like. It's very difficult for me to eat let's just put it that way like beets, tomatoes and mushrooms, and so I'll have like tomato soup or like mashed diced tomatoes in there. You know, I'll say I'll have her or me sneak it in Same thing with mushrooms. You know, chop them up. Beets, however. I've had difficulty. So for everybody listening who's picky about any number of these things which you know is a fact, people are picky what are your go-to one or two strategies to start actually incorporating these?

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 31:56

So, first of all, I think hiding foods you don't like from yourself is an absolutely valid strategy. So chopping up those mushrooms and adding them to like a mince right, like that's actually how I got my kids to like mushrooms. I started with chopping them up very, very small and putting them in like shepherd's pie type dishes where you can't really, and you got rid of the texture. Then it's just like a little bit of umami flavor. That's how I got them to like mushrooms. Then it was very, very small pieces in soup, right, like we built it slowly over time. So, like, hiding it from yourself is great, but there's like there's some specific tricks for specific food. You mentioned beets. So the thing that most people don't like in beets is called jasmine. I think that's how it's pronounced. I don't know. I'm just trying to say it confidently so we don't second guess my pronunciation.

Philip Pape: 32:46

We'll remember Princess Jasmine. That's how my kids remember it. Okay.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 32:49

So that's got a really like earthy flavor.

Philip Pape: 32:52

Yes, it tastes like dirt. That's my opinion. It just tastes like dirt, okay, some people are more sensitive to it than others.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 32:59

So you're like a super taster for Jasmine or geosmin again, and that is usually the flavor that people really strongly dislike in beets. So one thing to know is that some varieties of beets don't have as much, so like golden beet tend to have less than like the beet colored beets. You know, like those really deep red, like our standard typical beets. The flavor is a little bit milder raw and you can eat beets raw. So you might like it grated and added to a salad or sliced really thin and added to a salad, especially golden beets, if you don't like the flavor of them roasted. But also we can deactivate that flavor with an acid. So that's why dishes that use like balsamic vinegar and beets like roasted together delicious, right. So like you're actually deactivating a lot, and the smaller you cut your beets, the more you can get that acid in there. So you might like pickled beets more than fresh beets, right? So like understanding those tips people who don't like cruciferous vegetables. It's actually the glucosinolates, those like really beneficial phytonutrients in there. Some people are bitter super tasters so they can taste that flavor just so much more strongly than most people can, and some people can't taste it at all. For some people Brussels sprouts are sweet, which is wild to me. I'm a bitter taster but not a super taster, so for me they're bitter, but they're pleasantly bitter. But there's some people for whom that is just so much.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 34:26

So, things that you can do, you can blanch the vegetable before you cook it, however you were going to. That'll leach some of those bitter compounds out. So like blanch your broccoli or your Brussels sprouts and then roast it. Then you can also like okay, it's got a flavor, let's balance it. So we can balance with some acidity, some astringency. So use some lemon juice or some vinegar. We can balance with some sweetness. So I make a Brussels sprout dish where I roast them first and then I toss them with a tablespoon for a whole big dish of maple syrup and balsamic vinegar. You can see, balsamic is definitely my go-to. And then I love adding, like some toasted pecans, maybe a little bit of bacon, right, like just like that.

Philip Pape: 35:09

Oh my God, I gotta go to dinner at your house. This is great.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 35:13

Right. So it's understanding, like what is in this thing that I don't like and how can I balance that with culinary techniques so that the full experience is something that I will like? There was a study done just a few years ago where they served vegetable dishes in college cafeterias. They did this study in five different college cafeterias and I think they had like 70 different vegetable dishes and they tested giving the vegetables either like a neutral name, like green beans, or a health-focused name, like nutritious green beans, or a taste-focused name like sizzling Sichuan green beans with toasted garlic.

Philip Pape: 35:53

You got me on that. I know which one wins.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 35:56

Right, well, yeah, the exact same dish. The only thing different was the name on the label in front of it. And they actually they did as much control as they could, so they actually made sure that the entire menu was the same, so that the dish was presented beside the exact same things. And then, like five weeks apart, now it's the exact same green bean dish, but now with a different name. And they showed that, compared to the neutral name, giving those green beans a health focus name decreased vegetable selection by 15%. Very, very sad. And giving it a taste focus name increased vegetable selection by 14%. So the difference was 29% between nutritious green beans and sizzling Sichuan green beans with toasted garlic, even though it was the exact same dish, like prepared the exact same way. And then they showed that, when they had the taste focus names, people on average ate 1.78 kilograms more of the vegetable dishes per day, which is, by the way, like the equivalent of about five servings. Right, like it's just a huge, huge difference. It was like 38%, 39%.

Philip Pape: 37:05

They're going to be so happy.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 37:06

They're going to be so happy, yes, and you know what, when you're in college you need it. So, all good. They showed some other cool things, like the college cafeterias that just sort of had a reputation for making better vegetable dishes. People just selected more vegetables period from those college cafeterias, right? So there, there's other things that went into this. And then they did all this like psychology, like side experiments, to make sure it was the anticipation of delicious flavor that was really the key driver of that effect, which it was.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 37:35

But, like, that's like another thing that we can do in our own homes, right, so like, maybe it is perusing the cookbooks we already have or some recipes on the internet for the things that just they look delicious. Right, it doesn't necessarily have to be the name, it just has to be the anticipation. Right, oh my gosh, look at this amazing, you know, beet salad with walnuts and arugula and goat cheese. This looks delicious. Let's make this, right. And then we're like, we're expecting it to be good because we've looked for the things that look like a really delicious way to prepare that meal, and then, if it's not like, you keep going, right, you keep exploring until you find the one that you like. Or why can't we give dishes snazzy names at home, right, like why can't we call that steamed broccoli, right? Yeah, it's basic, it's just steamed broccoli, but we could call it beyond basic broccoli bomb. I really should have had something prepared.

Philip Pape: 38:32

Yeah, I love it. No, I give you credit for trying to come up with something on the spot.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 38:36

I just went straight to alliteration. I'm like what are all of the beautiful broccoli something?

Philip Pape: 38:41

There's something alliterative, bombastic broccoli. Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 38:47

Best beautiful broccoli something. But yeah, like we can still do that at home. So, like, also like taking advantage of that. Psychology and studies do show that like our flavor preference is very affected by familiarity. So even just like you might not like it now, but like having it more often, you may develop a liking for it, right, so there could be a genetic thing that's kind of hard to like if cilantro tastes like soap you might not ever get there, that's fine, but like we can leverage these other tools to still work on that, habit formation.

Philip Pape: 39:18

Cool. I love it all. I mean, there's not really, I'll say, an excuse holding us back if we want to incorporate these. It's the naming or the skill of the cooking or how you cook it. Or you mentioned recipes. I mean, recipes have been hot for a decade plus. Now you know one thing I give credit to some of the dieting camps. They come up with some amazing recipe books, right Like the paleo and all of them. Sometimes, you know, they really go out of their way to try to do that.

Philip Pape: 39:43

I think a good segue because I want to make sure to cover this while I have your time is your history and evolving your views. And you mentioned something earlier. Actually, quote you said what did you say today? I wrote it down oh, really important, but not technically essential. I want to tease on that. I know where you're going with that and I want to do it in the context of, for example, at the macro level carbs okay, and I want to do it in the context of, for example, at the macro level carbs okay.

Philip Pape: 40:06

Hot button topic, and we know that it is also again in paleo, no grains, carbs tend to be lower. In keto, it's like super low carb. It's a whole thing. It's been a huge thing. So I have your book right and highlighted a section that says contrary to purported claims, rigorous and well-controlled metabolic ward studies have confirmed that low-carbon keto diets don't turn us into fat-burning machines with increased energy expenditure and preferential fat loss. If anything, they do the opposite and they may be associated with unwanted side effects. And the side effects might be a reflection of how many amazing things insulin does to the body beyond simply shuttling glucose cells.

Philip Pape: 40:44

And I'm not trying to get into a carb debate or anything, even though you and I are probably on the same page there. It's more of the skepticism of the industry and also how we evaluate all of this stuff. But how do we frame it? Just like you framed vegetables into a positive right, Whether it is carbs or some other vilified thing. This is a big topic, right? It's kind of what you're all about. So I want to hear how that's happened. And now you've got a history behind you that people will still bring up, because you've kind of betrayed a whole bunch of people that you may have supported, and now you've got folks criticizing you with the new stuff. So what are your thoughts on all that?

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 41:23

Yeah, it feels like a lot of threads to pull together. So first, I sort of address you know you mentioned earlier that I came from paleo, right, I sort of come from that food fear don't eat these foods because of the lectins right type place and my transition to evidence-based was iterative. It took place over several years. Evidence-based was iterative. It took place over several years. I started talking about it in 2019 and you know, I don't know when I finished like I don't know at what point. I was like aha, now I have finally addressed all of my food fears and I've moved on and I, you know, have this like different perspective. Maybe I'm not, maybe I haven't finished my transition, maybe I'm still in the middle of it. I will only know that in the future when I look back on this moment. Right, but that was very much driven by for me, like researching the gut microbiome and being confronted again it's this sort of iterative process by studies that were showing me the incredible benefit of foods that I was afraid to eat, right, of foods that I had learned to be fearful of in this community. I'm like, yeah, but like, look at how amazing these specific types of fiber are and these polyphenols, right, and this collection of nutrients that lentils have for the gut microbiome and the improvements in gut microbial activity that are then reducing risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer's disease. And oh, by the way, look at these studies showing the more legumes like lentils somebody eats, the lower the risk of those health conditions.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 42:56

And that was sort of like the beginning of me opening my eyes to the logical fallacies that I had bought into, right? So this idea that just because something is harmful in large doses right, or that I can identify a chemical in a food that is harmful, that doesn't mean the whole food is bad for my whole body. And we really want to look at, okay, so sure, this food has carbohydrates, carbohydrates in their simplest form, in overabundance. If I'm eating, like, just plain sugar, like yeah, that is going to, you know, eventually lead to insulin resistance because I'm sort of inundating the system with glucose. And so the logical fallacy, the way that I used to think of, is like okay, so this food compound, look at how harmful it is. Therefore, the whole foods that contain sugar or lectins or whatever, I shouldn't eat those.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 43:51

But we also have to look at what are the nutrients in this system, right? So am I being compensated, let's say, in this potato, by minerals and vitamins that are required for the insulin response, right, that are required to produce insulin that actually improve how the gluteal force quarter is like receptor right Into my blood so that I'm not actually overwhelming that system, because there's also like fiber and resistant starch right In these potatoes. So like let's look at how the whole food because foods are also biologically complex as we are let's also not look at just the one system, right, let's not just look at insulin. Let's look at how that potassium is improving my kidney health and helping to reduce my blood pressure, right, like let's look at how this is a really satiating food so that it's actually going to help regulate my hunger hormones. Right, like there's other things that we want to look at. And so for me, the transition is really marked by like taking a much more like 30,000 foot view to how I look at foods and looking at the biggest and most rigorous studies, looking at systematic reviews and meta-analyses and not looking as much the interaction between one food compound and one biological system right, so, getting away from mechanisms which hurts my heart a little bit because that's the medical research I used to do.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 45:13

But getting away from mechanisms to look at the big picture and I think that is like thematic in the wellness community now is sort of like missing the forest for the trees because we get so focused on oxalates, right, like 17 different conditions. Then oxalates cause, in a very, very small set of circumstances, right, kidney stones and missing the part of. Yeah, but these vegetables are some of the most important vegetables for kidney health and when we eat more of these vegetables we reduce risk of kidney stones. Right, because there's other nutritive compounds that are affecting that system. So we need to look at their net effect, not one specific one. So that's sort of like the way that I've changed thinking about it.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 45:50

And with carbohydrates, specifically, right, are we looking at insulin as just doing this one thing binding with its receptor, making the glute for transporter. We move from inside of the cell into the cell membrane so glucose can get inside the cell. But insulin does so much more than that. I mean hormones in general. There's no hormone that only has one job. Hormones are really really fascinating. They're signaling molecules, so they cause other things to happen.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 46:17

But insulin is important for thyroid hormone conversion, so it's directly controlling our metabolism. It's important for getting amino acids into our muscle tissues and for myosynthesis, so really important for muscle repair and recovery and for gaining strength. That's why you don't find a ton of low carb athletes, at least not ones that stay that way for a long period of time. It's really important for it affects bone derived neurotropic factor, which is a really important cognition neurotransmitter in our brains, so very important for cognition. So people who either are insulin resistant like we don't want that either right, or who are on extremely low carbohydrate diets, tend to not be able to solve puzzles as quickly, right, when they're put into these different experiments testing cognition. Also affects sex hormone binding globulin in our bloodstream, so can therefore then affect androgens, so estrogen, progesterone, testosterone and all of the downstream effects there, right.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 47:19

So like insulin does so much, and that's why we kind of see the similar types of health problems in, for example, people with type two diabetes, as we do in long-term ketogenic diets, which certainly have therapeutic potential right, like can be life-changing for people with refractory epilepsy. So I'm like not saying that there's not a time and a place for making that trade, but when we're so focused on weight loss as the only target of a diet and we are only thinking about the weight that we're going to lose, doing whatever the template is, and we're not thinking about the health ramifications. We're in a situation where we're trading health for weight loss and that is because of the lack of nutrients. When you start cutting out foods, developing food fear, you're cutting out the important nutrients that are important for all these other systems and adopting a really simplistic view of things like what insulin does.

Philip Pape: 48:19

Yeah, exactly, there's a lot to unpack. I'm not going to address it all, but kind of the big takeaways for me is one how you shifted from looking at mechanisms, mechanistic outcomes and so many studies, even that not only they're mechanistic, they don't even you know they might be on rats only and there's other confounders there. Like, if you believed some of those studies, you would say protein is terrible for you. You know, and I'm like, okay, so not mechanistic, but more in context. And then I kind of visualized how we have you said, the biggest picture of all and kind of, if you drill from the bottom up, you have the food you mentioned, the potato, all of the compounds, all the nutrients in that and how they work together and sometimes they offset others, and there's the dose level as well. Then you have the food matrix of your diet, right, like, combining all these things together also has context. And then your lifestyle or humanity or whatever level you want to go to.

Philip Pape: 49:10

I'm thinking of, like, the human individual and their day to day and week to week. It's so powerful because it's liberating. I mean it's liberating when people hear that and they're like, look, I really can't eat anything. I just have to, like, understand why I'm doing it and the benefits it gives me and add in, from a nutrient perspective, that's your kind of primary lens is super powerful, so I think this is good. I guess I would ask you if there's anything I hadn't asked I know there's a million questions I could have asked and what your answer would be if there's something you don't want the listener to take away from this.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 49:41

Well, I guess the big thing that I just want to say is that the learning about nutrients I mean, I've tried to make it as easy as possible with my book, with my website, with my social media, but it's still like it's a really big topic, right, there's people who dedicate their entire scientific careers to iteratively expanding human knowledge on like one tiny little piece of it. Right? So, like professor kevin hall, who has done all these like amazing metabolic board studies to bust the insulin model of obesity right, he's dedicated his entire career to just this tiny little piece and his studies are so important, but it's really just like one little piece of an entire field of science, right so? Just like you wouldn't learn all of physics in a day, you wouldn't learn all of chemistry in a day. Or math in a day, you're not going to learn all all of physics in a day. You wouldn't learn all of chemistry in a day. Or math in a day. You're not going to learn all of nutritional sciences in a day.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 50:31

But I also think that increasing our scientific literacy on nutrition topics is not only our path to understanding how to make those easy additions and simple swaps within our food preferences to increase our nutrient intake. But it's also our path to being able to identify misinformation and like fear-based marketing online, and I know that like not everyone agrees with like my point of view. Now, I've done a lot, a lot, a lot of work, both in like understanding where my food fears came from and where my own susceptibility to diet and nutrition misinformation came from. And then extra, extra, extra research to help like fix those things that I got wrong in my own brain and then be able to like communicate that online. And it's okay if you're like not bought into every piece of that, but the understanding, the science right, like understanding how we like go about designing a study so that we can answer these unanswered questions, understanding where the limits of human knowledge are so that we can understand the importance of new research as it's published, and then understanding that basic these nutrients do this, these foods have this nutrients.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 51:55

That is the pathway not just to food choice without stress, but also the worst parts of diet culture that actually preys on how little the average person actually knows about nutrients and that will make for a much more informed user base, right, who are much less susceptible to predatory marketing. So I invite you to come join me on that. Learning Doesn't all happen all at once, but I've created a lot of resources, like my free weekly newsletter, like all of my social media that tries to put that into bite-sized, like fun little pieces so that it doesn't feel like you're back at school but more like you're just like scrolling the most educational yet entertaining social media feed ever.

Philip Pape: 52:42

Such a positive message and I do love your Instagram feed and your reels like walking through the woods we were talking about. They're great. Such a positive message and I do love your Instagram feed and your reels like walking through the woods we were talking about. They're great. Probably a good way to open up your mind. I do want to defend you in a couple of ways for folks, just so you know kind of my context here. Shout out to Aurora, who's a follower of Sarah's, and she turned me on to Sarah. So shout out to you. I know you listen to the show. But two things I noticed. Sometimes the criticism is about evidence, which is kind of insane, because your book has like 40 something pages of citations and you could just yeah 460 studies mostly systematic reviews.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 53:16

Yeah.

Philip Pape: 53:16

Yeah, and you can individually dive into any one of those, just like I looked at the 2016 study you mentioned today, just to make sure you know is she full of it or is she like yeah, solid, and then the score. You know is she full of it or is she like, yeah, solid and then the score. I know you talk about Nutra score. Yeah, nutravor score. Nutravor score not being like a ranking or a judgment, it's just a formula based on nutrient densities. So folks are aware of that. It's a good way to understand if you're trying to put together multiple nutrients. It's just another reference of you know, density, not like this is better than this. So just to kind of me defending you from your stuff. So my listeners understand the context. All right, you mentioned some of those resources. Where do you want to send folks to to learn more about you?

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 53:54

Homebase is Nutrivorcom. That's definitely the place with the most detailed maybe academic articles. That's where you can learn about nutrients, foods and how they impact our health. But from there, make sure to click on the join button in the top right menu, because that will link you both to my free weekly newsletter. Bite-sized information, so very like for the person who doesn't think that reading a 12,000 word article busting every myth about vegetable oil sounds like a fun Saturday afternoon. My feelings are not hurt if that's the case. So Bite Size is information is there. But that's also where you can link to my social media. I'm on Instagram, facebook Threads, pinterest, tiktok and YouTube, and I post different content on each platform. There's some overlap, obviously, but a lot of very specific to this platform stuff as well. So wherever you like to hang out online, come join me, and that's where you can also learn about the benefits of joining my Patreon.

Philip Pape: 54:51

And what's your saltiest platform, like where are you most?

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 54:53

controversial, so to speak. Saltiest, I would say, I'm sassiest on TikTok.

Philip Pape: 55:02

Okay, I don't even use that one. But Okay, I don't even use that one.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 55:05

And I would say I'm most responsive on threads, so I'm most like in the comments answering questions on threads. So I would say those are the two places where, like, I really like to hang out online. That's where I spend time engaging with other people's content. So I would say those are probably. If I had to pick two, I'd pick those two.

Philip Pape: 55:25

Okay, and I had reposted something of yours too on mine, so if people go there, they can get to you too. So, all right, thank you so much for coming on. I do wish we had more time. There's a joke about a flat tire I got to deal with today. But thank you so much for your time.

Dr. Sarah Ballantyne: 55:36

Sarah, oh, thank you.

Philip Pape: 55:37

Let's stay in touch you.