Part Two: Dr. William Li on The Foods You Must Add to Your Diet to Heal Your Body, Stop Inflammation and Prevent Cancer

We’re expanding to Substack! Visit bialikbreakdown.substack.com for all exciting details! World-renowned physician, scientist, and bestselling author of “Eat to Beat Your Diet,” Dr. William Li—global pioneer of the food as medicine movement—reveals jaw-dropping truths about how to heal your gut microbiome, prevent chronic disease, and reverse metabolic damage with science-backed nutrition. In this powerful deep-dive, Dr. Li unpacks how to activate your body’s five natural defense systems to fight disease using immune-boosting foods, anti-angiogenic ingredients, and metabolism-boosting meals that help your body naturally produce GLP-1 for sustainable weight loss without drugs. Discover why so many young people are suddenly getting cancer, the overlooked dangers in ultra-processed foods, the truth about sugar substitutes, and how everyday foods may secretly be harming your health. Dr. Li also breaks down what to eat for brain health, the gut-brain connection, improving ADHD symptoms with diet, and using functional foods to enhance longevity and cellular repair. From the rising risks of microplastics and E. coli to burning fat naturally with fat-fighting foods, Dr. Li explains why you—not the healthcare system—hold the true power to heal and thrive. For the latest cutting edge food as medicine, metabolism, and longevity visit Dr. Li's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/drwilliamli Dr. William Li's book, Eat to Beat Your Diet: Burn Fat, Heal Your Metabolism, and Live Longer: https://drwilliamli.com/etb-diet-book/ Dr. William Li's book, Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself: https://drwilliamli.com/book-li/ BialikBreakdown.com https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/ YouTube.com/mayimbialik https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTOocPnDh2YQZZwh86K2OxA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 1:04Mayim Bialik?

  Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.

• 1:08Jonathan Cohen?

  I'm Jonathan Cohen.

• 1:09Mayim Bialik?

  Welcome to part two of our interview with Dr. William W. Lee. He's an internationally renowned physician, he's a scientist, he's the author of Eat to Beat Disease and Eat to Beat Your Diet. He's done a ton of groundbreaking research that's led to the development of more than 40 new medical treatments, including over a dozen specifically for cancer. His TED Talk, Can We Eat to Starve Cancer, has more than 11 million views. He's an incredible authority on all things diet and he's all about empowering us to understand what we should be eating, what we shouldn't be eating, what are the simple ways that we can take control of our health, and what are the ways that we can actually

• 1:53Mayim Bialik?

  tip the scales in terms of how sick we get, how diet can support an immune system, a gut-brain connection that facilitates the best way to fight disease. He says we're encountering cancer all the time, but our bodies are designed to fight it off What goes wrong and what can we do to keep the system working well? We're going to tackle that in part two of this episode.

• 2:16Jonathan Cohen?

  Also, in part two, we get very specific, the types of foods to eat, what not to eat. He talks to us about the blue zones and what expands our health span and our longevity.

• 2:28Jonathan Cohen?

  This is a fantastic second part that gets extremely practical in the ways in which we can increase our natural defense systems to help us stay healthy.

• 2:39Mayim Bialik?

  Without further ado, here is the second part of our interview with Dr. Lee.

• 2:43Speaker 05

  Break it down.

• 2:45Jonathan Cohen?

  What are some of the foods that help metabolism?

• 2:50Speaker 06

  Ah, okay. So first, let me just tell you that one of your, our body's own secret weapons for better metabolism is some, is body fat. And you're like, wait a minute, no, body fat is not for metabolism. It harms metabolism. Yes, certain kinds of fat are, but there's a specific kind of fat called brown fat. Brown fat is actually not wiggly, jiggly. It's not close to the skin. It's not under the chin, not under the arm. It's not the muffin top. It's not in the thighs, not in the butt. Nope. Brown fat is not wiggly, jiggly. It's wafer thin. And it's not around our waistline. It's actually plastered around our neck.

• 3:32Speaker 06

  It's under our breast bone, a little bit between our shoulder blades and a little bit tucked inside our belly. All right. Brown fat. Now, brown fat is not white fat, which is the wiggly, jiggly stuff, or visceral fat, which is packed inside the tube of our body. But brown fat is amazing because brown fat is like a space heater that when you turn on brown fat, just like a space heater, it's going to draw energy from someplace to generate the heat. Okay, that heat is called thermogenesis, thermo meaning heat, genesis, making heat. So you could, brown fat generates heat. And so basically it fires, when you fire it up, it generates heat by drawing down the energy from your harmful, white, wiggly, jiggly fat.

• 4:13Speaker 06

  You can burn down bad fat with good fat. You can burn down white fat with brown fat. Now, why is brown fat? Brown. Well, because the energy generating, heat generating engine of brown fat is our mitochondria. Now mitochondria, I think most people who are like biohackers and following longevity probably heard about mitochondria. These are the tiny little batteries that are powering our cells and they generate energy. Okay, it turns out brown fat is packed with mitochondria because it's actually like a space eater. It's got a lot of heat generating, energy generating thing. Now, why is now, and so how do we know that there's a lot of mitochondria brown fat? Well, it turns out mitochondria are loaded with iron.

• 4:58Speaker 06

  Okay, the element iron, kind of like nails are made of iron. And what happens when you take a pile of shiny silver nails and you stick them outside for a couple of days? They turn brown. It turns out that the iron-rich mitochondria packed in our brown fat oxidizes just like a pile of nails on the porch. And that's why our brown fat is brown because it's got these battery packs that are in there. So what are the foods that actually turn on our brown fat? Turns out beans, white beans, brown beans, black beans, fire pinto beans, kidney beans. There you go. My, you are, you're golden. And actually, studies have done, have been done showing that simple grocery store canned beans,

• 5:42Speaker 06

  like if you have them five days a week, can actually help you burn down, activate your brown fat, to burn down that harmful white fat. In fact, one study showed that you can lose an inch of waist circumference. Think about one extra notch on your belt, you can tighten just over a month of eating beans like five times a week. All right, another, another food, onion. It turns out that quercetin is a natural bioactive, a polyphenol that's found in onions. By the way, most, a lot of the quercetin is found in the outer layer of the onion. So when you get your onion, if you want to get most, if you want to get the highest levels of quercetin, don't go, don't be too aggressive and peel off all of that outside stuff.

• 6:27Speaker 06

  Get the papery skin away, but keep as much of the Outer layers possible because that's where the most potent quercetin actually is. That will turn on your brown fat as well. Green tea, matcha, well, and and some black teas will actually turn on your brown fat as well. A fermented tea, there's a probiotic tea called Pu'er tea. P U apostrophe E R H Pu'er tea comes from the village of Pu'er in China. Back in the days of the Silk Road, when trading was occurring between the east and the west on camelback. They wanted to bring tea over there. They figured, you know what, it'll actually preserve a lot better if we actually ferment it. So it's a really, really smoky tea. It's known as a digestive.

• 7:10Speaker 06

  When I was a kid, I remember going to like my grandfather, great uncle's

• 7:17Speaker 06

  kitchen and and they would be sipping after dinner, a little thing of Pu'er tea. I'm like, no, it's really smoky. Oh, it's a digestive, helps your gut. Yeah, it helps your gut. It is a probiotic tea. It's got its own bacteria that actually evolved over thousands of years to be in Pu'er tea. That actually helps you burn, turn on your brown fat as well. So you can kind of see, and this is in my book, Eat to Beat Your Diet. Eat to Beat Your Diet is not a diet book. It's an anti diet book because it tells you how you can actually leverage and harness your bone, your own body's hardwiring in terms of metabolism to be able to activate, turn, fire up your brown fat to burn down your white fat.

• 8:00Speaker 06

  So those are just some examples. There's more than 200 foods in my book that actually could do that.

• 8:05Jonathan Cohen?

  Love that. What are the top foods that you would tell people to avoid?

• 8:09Speaker 06

  Avoid. Okay. I spend most of my time telling people what foods I can add, but for for sure there are foods that people should avoid and just, you know, for the record. I'm somebody who chooses not to demonize brands and I don't like character assassinate entire categories of food because you know, hey, look, we all love to eat something. There are all things that we like to eat that we don't, that aren't so good for us and it's, it's okay. That's, you know, that's human nature. You gotta accommodate for that. But on principle, what are some of the areas and things that you should definitely avoid? Well, I would say number one is regular soda. Regular soda packed with added sugar is,

• 8:51Speaker 06

  is a metabolic overload. There's no reason to actually have, to regularly drink soda because there are so many other ways to actually get what you really need are, are water, the liquid for hydration. And you can actually have other choices that have good things in it as opposed to those empty calories, so to speak, of sugar in sodas. Second is a kissing cousin of soda, regular soda, which is diet soda. Artificially sweetened sodas, to me, I've, I've, I've never liked them. I've, I've, I've had them before. They make me feel not so good inside. And it turns out there's a reason. The spartan, the sucralose, all these kinds of artificial sweeteners and non-nutritious sweeteners. Yeah, they're non-nutritive. They don't actually

• 9:36Speaker 06

  get absorbed into our bloodstream and raise our blood sugar. But you know what they do? They tumble all the way down our gut to feed our gut microbiome. And guess what? They're toxic to some of the good bacteria. So by having non-nutritive sweeteners, we're actually poisoning some of our good bacteria. Uh-oh, that good bacteria lowers inflammation, tries to, you know, text message our brain like, no wonder I didn't feel so good. Second, all right. Third thing I would say is ultra or processed meats. Now, look, we all, I, I know you're, you're, you're a vegan now, but think about it. We all grew up, you know, at the carnival, at the, on the Fourth of July, on some holiday.

• 10:16Mayim Bialik?

  A hot dog. We love a hot dog.

• 10:18Speaker 06

  The hot dog, the, right? I mean, think about it. Like it's, it's, it brings us back to childhood or the grill, you know? Well, it turns out that Oh, what about the deli? You know, the lunch lady at school or the lunch or the bag of lunch that we got our moms packed for us, you know, that deli? Here's something, you know, like you know, the salami or the sliced ham. Do you think that ham pigs actually come in the shape of that circle disc? You know, baloney, it doesn't come in the shape of a tube, you know? So that's processed meats. And although we don't know exactly why it does this, these processed meats as a category

• 11:01Speaker 06

  actually are harmful to the DNA in our gut and are associated with a higher risk of developing colorectal cancer, gut cancer, and other types of cancer as well. So in fact, the World Health Organization looks at processed meats, deli meats, sliced meats, sandwich meats, you name it, as a class one carcinogen. So there's enough evidence to actually throw them under the bus of cancer causing. So if you have it every now and then, that's fine, but that is not my choice. That you go out to, you know, a sandwich shop to go get a sandwich whenever I want to eat something for lunch because it's just not good. So I'd like, that'd be another thing to cut down or cut out. Every now and then, if you really want one, like knock yourself out, but don't do, do not do that regularly. Okay.

• 11:44Speaker 06

  Other thing I would actually say to be really careful about and a cut out is alcohol. Now I have a very specific position on alcohol. First, no matter what it is, red wine, beer, liquor, whiskey, vodka, in no case is the alcohol, which is a chemical known as ethanol, okay? In no case is ethanol ever good for you. Ethanol is a potent cell toxin. It kills what it touches. Okay? It kills everything in its way in this line of sight when it comes to your body. So even when they say red wine is okay, or drinking a beer might be okay.

• 12:27Speaker 06

  Okay, listen, it's not the alcohol, it's the other stuff extracted from the skin of the red grape or the hops of the beer that's actually beneficial. All right, that might be beneficial for you, but the alcohol in every single case is toxic. If you drink too much of it over time on a regular basis, you are going to be poisoning your liver, your brain, your heart, your muscles. I mean, it all kinds of your nerves, all kinds of things are going to start to go. All right. So what's my other position on alcohol besides stating those scientific facts? Is that ever since humans started to grow and cultivate grains and we've been fermenting them, we've actually been using some type of alcohol to celebrate events in our lives.

• 13:09Mayim Bialik?

  To numb the pain of being human.

• 13:12Speaker 06

  Well, to numb the pain. True. That's well, well said. But also to celebrate the joy of being human too. Right? Your graduation, your wedding, your holiday, your, you know, your job promotion, whatever it is, you're something or some accomplishment, we do it. So I, I think that it's also important in this conversation about food and health to celebrate our humanness, to allow us to celebrate our humanness as well. And so I think for alcohol, that's another one that I would say cut down or cut out. But that's actually not, not something that I, that I would say, you know, you should really kind of avoid. And then the last thing is really ultra-processed snacks. And I grew up with them, you know? I mean, I, I surrounded by boxes of candies and things that squirt,

• 13:57Speaker 06

  you know, little jellies and jelly liquid and, you know, the, and, and the chips with the barbecue and all these interesting flavors that are might, that are really kind of addictive to have.

• 14:10Mayim Bialik?

  Cool Ranch.

• 14:11Speaker 06

  And listen, if, again, if you pick one of those things up now, even once in a while.

• 14:17Mayim Bialik?

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• 15:47Speaker 06

  It's not going to kill you, but please, if you're in the grocery store and you feel tempted, you know, to pop something into your cart, pick one up and really look at that ingredient label and say, is this something I want to be feeding my health defenses? Do I want to be feeding my children, my family? These elements and the answer is probably no, put it back. There are other healthier choices in almost every category of food that doesn't have all those additives, artificial preservatives, artificial coloring, artificial flavoring. And you know what I'm hopeful on is some of the moves that are being made, even at the health policy level, is to try to reduce our exposure after decades of just, you know,

• 16:30Speaker 06

  nonstop use of these dyes, food colorings, you know, that have been banned elsewhere in the world. Like, why on earth are we okay with that? So I think that, you know, those are some of the foods that I would say are the, on the, on the no go list.

• 16:48Jonathan Cohen?

  Very, very helpful. A few clarifying questions, because as we learn about the dangers of, for example, artificial sweeteners, new quote unquote, natural alternatives come up to help people get around the fact that they don't want to have the diet sodas. So for example, what are your thoughts on stevia? I know there's a couple of different forms. Is that safe? Because that can be added to a lot of natural products or products that are marketed as natural.

• 17:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, listen, I think you said the magic word that really.

• 17:21Speaker 06

  Pins a tail on a donkey, which is marketed. You know, marketing is what a company should be doing to help its shareholders make more money. And anything they do to sell more product is what companies are set up to do. Makes sense to me. As a consumer, though, we're on the other side of the fence there. We are the people that should be smarter than marketing. We should follow our gut, literally. We should actually follow our brain. Oh, gut and brain are connected. All right. And we should really make good judgment. We should have make good decisions. Here's and that means that whenever we're we're picking up something, we should be thinking, is this something that we should be doing? And where you're talking about like these alternatives to synthetic sweeteners.

• 18:06Jonathan Cohen?

  It's also monk fruit extract gets marketed as a sugar alternative.

• 18:10Speaker 06

  Yep, aullosis is another one that's been out there now. Okay, that's the newest one. So here's what I would tell you. Stevia, monk fruit, those are actually plant based sweeteners. They're super, super sweet. And they seem to be okay. They don't seem to damage the gut microbiome. Well, we're still studying that, but so far so good. So if you're one of those conservative people that say, you know, I'd rather not until we have more information, then don't do it. And if you're, if you're like, okay, until they find some a problem, I think I'll I'll try that as an alternative. That's probably okay to try right now in in moderate levels. Got to be moderate. However, I will tell you, here's where the trick is.

• 18:52Speaker 06

  Some packages, some manufacturers that have stevia labeled on the front or monk fruit label on the front. Actually, it's not 100% stevia or 100% monk fruit. Look at the ingredient label, you'll see stevia is pretty expensive, pure stevia. So they actually add a spartan or sucralose instead. And then they add a little bit of stevia. And because it's an ingredient, they make it really big letters. And you, the sucker, actually just pick it up and take it hook, line and sinker. Right? I mean, that's like, you know, like, don't be the fish swimming by the dock with a fisherman on there with a worm that's just dangling right in front of you to take it. Right, you're gonna get caught. And so to me, what you want to do is you want to pick up that package and look at the ingredient label.

• 19:35Speaker 06

  And if it's stevia, make sure it's all stevia and don't use too much of it. So, you know, by the way, there's some other natural sweeteners like, hey, listen, who doesn't have a sweet tooth? I think that if you use some honey. That might be another way of sweetening without like going too far over the edge. Maple syrup is another natural sweetener.

• 19:57Mayim Bialik?

  Agave, lower glycogen index.

• 19:58Speaker 06

  Agave is another one, but again, you know, like agave is a good choice as well. But again, everything in moderation, you don't need to make it cloyingly sweet. That's the key thing. I think some of the things that we're used to that we grew up with that are, you know, really, you know, like they really tickle our, our, our brains, sweet tooth. They, they are just cloyingly sweet and that's not good.

• 20:21Jonathan Cohen?

  What are your thoughts about grass fed beef? I was curious to see that it is not on there. A lot of, you know, alternative health experts are saying that it has a very high nutritional value and, you know, if we also want a caveat, obviously factory farm beef has its, has its issues, but what if it's grass fed? And what if it's organic grass fed? What are your thoughts?

• 20:44Mayim Bialik?

  And what if you're eating it every single meal of the day, which seems to be what a lot of people are doing these days?

• 20:49Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well, okay. First of all, as I said, I'm an, I'm an omnivore, so I'll eat different types of meat and, but although I eat mostly a plant-based food. And as it relates to beef, I would say beef is actually a good source of iron. It's a good source of amino acids. And so those are, those are good things and there's some minerals that it can be good for as well. Obviously, grass fed is going to actually have more of the natural sources of omega threes that are found in, in the, in the tissue of the meat. So that's a good thing as well.

• 21:30Speaker 06

  More humanely treated and it's all the healthier cow, you know, going to be making a healthier meat. But I do think that. In the era, the decades of abundance that emerged in America after the 1950s, you know, the whole idea that we can go out and all you can eat steak or the three inch, you know, Texas steak that are out there, you know, more is not more. And if you look at, by the way, they eat beef and pork in the blue zones, you know, the healthy places around the world that live long, they, they, they eat pretty diversely there actually. But if you take a look, for example, in healthy cultures, when they eat meat, it's not the entree with the vegetables on the side.

• 22:15Speaker 06

  Usually there's a whole variety of dishes you can sample from diversity. Anyone with a lot of really cool, tasty cooked plant-based foods, not the salad bar, by the way. And you get all these interesting flavors mixed together and so delicious and cooked in so many sophisticated season with seasoning. And if there's meat, it's sliced up for everyone to share. And so meat becomes kind of a side or kind of a condiment. And that's probably the better way to think about it. If you're gonna, if you are a meat eater and you want to actually get the protein and the iron from beef, get the best quality beef you can. By the way, I do have something to say while you, while you bring this up. Because the alternative, and it has to do with moderation. This idea like, if you're gonna eat meat, if you're gonna be a meat eater, I would say,

• 23:00Speaker 06

  don't eat too much, a hundred percent. Make it your condiment, make it your side, not your main. Or, or, or, or do it Asian style. So it's sliced into a, into other veggies that you actually cook together. And now you've got the whole mix, you're gonna enjoy the whole thing. It's gonna be better, healthier for you and don't eat too much of it. But there are some people that believe, oh, well, I want my burger. So I'm gonna have an artificial, a synthetic burger, a plant-based burger. Okay, there is no ultra-processed food that is more ultra-processed than an artificial burger. Or whatever else they're making these days out of artificial meat. Take a look at the ingredient label. Okay, it's all ultra-processed soy and all that kind of stuff.

• 23:43Speaker 06

  And it's even genetically modified GMO'd in order to bleed when you actually cook it. You know, with artificial, well, that artificial with hemoglobin that they, they, they put into the soy. So it bleeds under heat. It sort of oozes this red stuff like, like a, like a hamburger patty would like, that is. You know, it's it's it's not the right idea. And so I always tell people that if you really want to enjoy meat, get the highest quality meat you can you can afford. Um, and you can get access to and don't eat too much of it and don't do it all the time. And make it part of a diverse meal. That's the best way to actually handle uh people who are and that's by the way, why I I I also um know that

• 24:28Speaker 06

  if you overeat in one area, it's going to be at the expense of other areas, which is why, you know, the carnivore diet. Okay, you can do it for a little while, but it's not going to be good for you if you do it for a long time. You really need that diversity and it re diet should be really mostly plant based.

• 24:42Jonathan Cohen?

  Is soy and tofu considered highly processed in this equation?

• 24:47Speaker 06

  Interesting a question. So um soy is a legume. Um, and there's there are like thousands of soy products. So you go to an American grocery store, you know, you get your uh soy milk and you have maybe some uh soft or or uh hard tofu and that's it. Okay. You go to an Asian store and look at soy, you are over it's overwhelming how many different choices there are. So, yes, there is processing involved with soy. It tends not to be ultra processed, meaning that they'll do one or two moves to it to create tofu. Or they'll sell it as edamame and it might be fresh or it might be frozen. Um, or they might ferment it and turn it into a soy sauce.

• 25:32Speaker 06

  You see? And so I think that, again, try not to make things black or white, good versus evil. I think for the most part, um, Asian uh uh uh types of soy products tend to be pretty good. Now, by the way, those are those plant based meats, a lot of soy, but it's ultra processed soy. They manufacture it, they machine it, they extrude it, they mix all kinds of other things where they genetically modify it. That that doesn't actually count. So that's why when you say soy foods, I I think we need to be really specific. Now, if you go to the Asian market, by the way, here's a little pro tip. A lot of Asian foods have additives in there. Okay, so again, you want to avoid those things that we know. You don't want to be putting into your body.

• 26:17Speaker 06

  So even in an Asian store, even if you've got soy products out there, please pick up the label. Even if it's tea, pick up the box, pick up the bag, pick up the jar can and read the ingredient. Make sure you're comfortable with everything you're you're you're you're putting in your body. It's being just being an informed consumer.

• 26:35Jonathan Cohen?

  Really very helpful. Um, I heard you talking about the grill and I'm fascinated about this because.

• 26:43Jonathan Cohen?

  I think a lot of people are trying to be really healthy and are doing things inadvertently without knowing it. You don't have to do the whole spiel. The short version was if you're not cleaning your grill, you're leaving residue on it that is carcinogenic.

• 26:59Speaker 06

  Sure, listen, um, nothing is more elementally human than actually having something char grilled, right? I mean, that like harks back to our caveman days, probably.

• 27:11Speaker 06

  And you can grow vegetables as well. The key thing is that the fat on meat, when it actually gets to a certain temperature and it drops into the fire and it smokes. That's by the way, what gives you that incredible barbecue flavor. Actually turns into a chemical in the smoke. That's a carcinogen. So if you're if you're the if you're the, you know, if you're the griller, you know, the the the dude who actually has to be standing by the grill every day. I mean, like when you're when people are coming over, I would strongly recommend you back away from that smoke because.

• 27:45Speaker 06

  It's all carcinogen, but that stuff also accumulates not on your food, but it can actually accumulate on the grill itself. And and so I always tell people, if you go to a restaurant, you'll notice that this if you if you're closing the restaurant at the very end, you watch how they clean it. They really scrub down their grill, their griddle, they take away all that stuff to make sure there's a clean surface. That's actually what should everyone should do with their grill. Don't just like close, turn off the turn off the gas or or put out the fires and walk away. You really want to clean it well beforehand. Now, there are. The way to neutralize some of this carcinogen, by the way.

• 28:20Jonathan Cohen?

  This was fascinating.

• 28:21Speaker 06

  Is to marinate whatever it is you are actually grilling in a fruit based marinade. Could be mango, could be pineapple, could be oranges, could be lemon, could be whatever it is. I mean, think of, by the way, think about all the barbecue recipes, marinades, traditional Greek, Italian, Spanish, you know, what they, how they treat their meats, right? They've been doing it for thousands of years. It's like a traditional recipes, but the, the antioxidants that are found in fruit based liquids can help counter some of those carcinogens. So that's a little pro tip that anyone can follow and it's true for vegetables as well as me.

• 28:59Mayim Bialik?

  Before we let you go, i- if you kind of had, you know, one piece of advice for people to take from the research you do, the work that you do, how can we empower people to believe that they have more control over their health than they may think they have?

• 29:14Speaker 06

  Wow. Okay. So I will tell you that here's something really, really easy that anybody can do that clearly is like the low hanging fruit for anybody. So we all need to be hydrated. We all know that you need to drink enough water so that you have enough blood in your system. And when you don't are hydrated, you feel lightheaded because you don't have enough blood pressure, frankly. And so you can drink, we already talked about this, don't drink soda, regular or artificial. I think, you know, if you enjoy fruit juice, you can do it once in a while. But be careful of what's in the fruit juice and fruit juice can be from real fruits can be really, really sweet. So,

• 29:58Speaker 06

  you know, probably not the best regular thing to do, but.

• 30:01Speaker 00

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• 30:06Speaker 01

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• 30:22Speaker 00

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• 30:32Speaker 06

  There is a holy trinity of liquids, of beverages, that everyone should understand is these are the legs of the stool for your health that anyone can do. So this is, I'm synthesizing a lot of research to boiling it down to three things that anyone can do. And this is telling you about the holy trinity of beverages for health. Good for metabolism, activate your health defenses. Good for longevity, too, by the way. That's like my latest research in this area. And so what are they? I'm going to give you the most boring one first, which is drinking water. But please, if you're going to drinking water, try to get drinking water that is filtered. So you're not avoiding heavy metals and microplastics as much as you can. We want to just get hydrated with with regular H2O water. Okay, so that's one.

• 31:17Speaker 06

  That's the boring one, but it's important and it's and it's available to everyone. Second, is tea. Green tea, black tea, oolong tea. Okay, but made with real tea leaves. That's actually, but the polyphenols from tea has been have been found in every single study to be good for cardiovascular health, to lower the risk of cancer, lower the risk of dementia, lower inflammation, improve your blood sugar, your insulin sensitivity in every single instance. This is tea straight. Obviously, you don't dunk sugar in it and you pour all kinds of other crazy stuff in it. You'll be changing this nature. Elementally, it's healthy. My great uncle lived to 104, independent, sharp in mind.

• 32:02Speaker 06

  And he attributed one of the things to his longevity and vibrancy to the fact that he drank tea out of a thermos every single day, all day long. Green tea picked from the mountain, the tea mountain that he lived at the base of. You know, I mean, he also exercised. He also had a good mental attitude towards things. But tea is is a second one. Okay.

• 32:25Speaker 06

  The third one is coffee. Coffee is good.

• 32:30Speaker 06

  You know, and coffee has polyphenols called chlorogenic acid and caffeic acid and other types of natural chemicals found in the coffee bean. And those coffee beans, the chlorogenic acid slows down cellular aging. So it lowers inflammation, turns on your brown fat to burn down harmful white fat. Okay. Improves your vascular health, cuts off the blood supply to cancer. All right. And so there's not a lot bad about coffee, except of your sense of the caffeine.

• 32:59Mayim Bialik?

  Yes. Or if you fill it full of sugar and fat.

• 33:04Speaker 06

  Well, and here's the thing. I'm telling you these, the Holy Trinity in its purest form is really what is good. There's no pumpkin flavor.

• 33:15Speaker 06

  All right. In the drive through for the healthy coffee. All right. You know, it's a, it's a whole other conversation if you wanted to. There is healthy stuff in pumpkin, but you want to actually, you know, brew some pumpkin in your tea. That's a different, and your, and your coffee is a different thing. But again, you know, by the way, these polyphenols, here's a little, I like to give little pro tips because people always ask for practical things. For tea and coffee, don't put dairy products in it. Milk, cream, half and half, don't do that. If you want to get the most of the polyphenols. All right. And the reason is the fat, cow fat in dairy. All right. Actually binds to the polyphenols.

• 33:58Speaker 06

  So when you drink it, you won't, you, you, most of them will wash right through your system. You won't absorb most of those polyphenols into your bloodstream. You might get 20%, but you'll have washed out about 80%. But let's say that you like to actually have your coffee cut down. You don't want that super strong, double espresso kind of flavor. Okay, use a nut milk. Okay, use soy milk, almond milk, any of those kind of milks, macadamia, whatever, cashew milk, whatever kind of milk you have, almond, it's fine. That actually doesn't have the cow fat that will bind to those polyphenols. And you'll actually get that cut, cut as well.

• 34:39Speaker 06

  Now, if you're gonna buy those, those plant-based milk, please look at the ingredient labels to make sure that even though it says soy milk, or it says almond milk, they haven't had other additives in there that you don't want in your system. You see, this theme comes up over and over again. It's super easy to avoid the bad stuff. You gotta look at the ingredient label. And it's really easy to find the good stuff because you're probably having a cup of joe every day, you know? And if you're not, you should be thinking about it, or a cup of tea, or drinking water. So if I had to boil down everything, I mean, there's, listen, I write about more than 200 foods that, you know, if you were a chef, and I have a lot of chef friends,

• 35:22Speaker 06

  or if you were just like a home, good home cook, and you just like to eat, or if you're somebody who just goes to restaurants, if you pay attention to all those food lists, you know, Miami, we're talking about, you're gonna be in good shape. Just don't eat too much of it, and make sure that, you know, whatever else is cooked with is, is, is healthy, as healthy as possible. But I will tell you that beverages, we all need hydration. So remember, water, tea, coffee, they will take you the whole journey. And because they can actually help counter the ravages of aging, they also are part of the secret of using food as medicine for longevity.

• 35:59Mayim Bialik?

  Wonderful. It's been such a pleasure to talk to you. We're so appreciative of all of the work that you do and, and the way you present the information. It's really, it's approachable, and we, we just really appreciate it. So I recommend Eat to Beat Disease, but Eat to Beat Your Diet is also great. And just thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it.

• 36:17Speaker 06

  Well, thank you. It's a real pleasure. And, you know, we'll keep the conversation going.

• 36:25Mayim Bialik?

  I've never met someone more hopeful and also presenting me with more devastating information about diet in my life.

• 36:32Jonathan Cohen?

  What were some of the things that felt devastating?

• 36:35Mayim Bialik?

  Well, as I said, I kind of feel like he should be like ringing a cowbell. Like, guess what, people? Like, there's a real problem. And, you know, I mean, I have friends, I have, I have more than five friends that I know who've had cancer as young women. And it's like, you know, I think about how terrifying it is, how excruciating, you know, if you have kids and you get cancer, like, it's unbelievable. And I don't think anyone would, I don't think anyone would want to have that conversation with a doctor where they would say, guess what? It sucks, but our environment and the way we've been taught to eat and live likely gave

• 37:20Mayim Bialik?

  you cancer. And even, this came up with Gabor Maté. It blew my mind in his book, when it was like, guess what? Most cancers are not like luck of the draw genetics. It's what we're eating. It's how we're being treated by a work environment that we're expected to keep up with. It's about a culture that doesn't value, honestly, the health of a mother and her child, the health of relationships. It doesn't value free time, vacation, like, all that shit matters. Like, when people are like, oh, people in Europe, yeah, they walk most places, they have access to fresh food. It's part of the culture to get fresh food. It's available to people, even if you don't have lots of resources, right?

• 38:05Mayim Bialik?

  The thing about the American diet is that wherever we export it, people start getting sick and dying. That's the big secret. And I want Dr. Lee to be like, people, it's like, guess what? It's us.

• 38:19Jonathan Cohen?

  Even if you don't cook extravagant meals, cooking as part of a health routine.

• 38:25Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, it slows down everything about the process of consumption.

• 38:29Jonathan Cohen?

  But even the pro tips he's offering, like, I peeled an onion the other day, and I took off two layers because the top layer underneath the skin didn't look great. If I had known that all the nutrients I need are in that top layer.

• 38:42Mayim Bialik?

  He didn't say all. No, that's not what he said. This is also the problem with America. He didn't say, all you heard was, "I only eat the outer rind of the onion."

• 38:52Jonathan Cohen?

  No, he just said that there was the extra.

• 38:54Mayim Bialik?

  The most quercetin is, tends to be in the outer layers. Doesn't mean you don't get any.

• 38:59Jonathan Cohen?

  I want all the quercetin. Why do I want to give that up?

• 39:02Mayim Bialik?

  You want all the quercetin you can get. One of the things that I really like that he said,

• 39:09Mayim Bialik?

  you know, I like how he approaches not demonizing entire categories of food. Like, he understands people are human. A cool ranch Dorito, there's nothing like it. Like, you know, we all know that experience.

• 39:22Jonathan Cohen?

  He's not going to demonize all categories of food except for imitation meat burgers.

• 39:27Mayim Bialik?

  He did, it's a very specific brand he was talking about that has a heme protein. I didn't appreciate his analysis, but I get it.

• 39:34Jonathan Cohen?

  You felt called out.

• 39:35Mayim Bialik?

  I did feel called out, but I don't, I do not, I do, I no longer purchase that, those products, and I just don't. But what I was going to say is, one of the things that, that I got most from, from what he talked about, if you can condition yourself out of one dietary desire, it would be to condition yourself out of the need for sugar beverages.

• 40:02Jonathan Cohen?

  Soda is one of the most toxic beverages that are out there.

• 40:06Mayim Bialik?

  It seems like, yes, you can do it once in a while. Everybody likes a little treat, but what I found is that, once I conditioned myself out of it, it's like, it doesn't taste good anymore. And that's a big bummer, because I used to love, once in a while, an ice cold Coke. When I get migraines, before I finished menopause, when I would get migraines, for some reason, the sugar, the fizz, the flavor of a fresh, had to be fountain, fountain Coke, would like cure the migraine. And now, when I try and drink soda, even like a sip, once in a while, it's like, my body won't take it anymore. And honestly,

• 40:50Mayim Bialik?

  I think it's a great gift that my body has given me because it's really something that I wish people could not feel a compulsion to drink.

• 41:00Jonathan Cohen?

  It used to be that we would see smokers everywhere. Right? You would see them outside of restaurants.

• 41:08Mayim Bialik?

  You'd be wafting through smoke as you walked down the street.

• 41:12Jonathan Cohen?

  You used to see them in bars and restaurants. There used to be smoking sections.

• 41:15Mayim Bialik?

  They roamed around.

• 41:17Jonathan Cohen?

  Do you want to be in the smoking section or the non-smoking section? And they were right beside each other and you would be like, no, I want to be in non-smoking.

• 41:23Mayim Bialik?

  On airplanes. There was a smoking section.

• 41:25Jonathan Cohen?

  As the next table would blow it into your face. And we began to realize the dangers and the health risks associated with that. Now.

• 41:33Mayim Bialik?

  Very bad to smoke, apparently.

• 41:36Jonathan Cohen?

  It may be a stretch to say that soda is in that category. But when you stop drinking soda, and I don't say this like I'm bragging or anything, but at a young age, I kind of lost the taste for soda. I never really was a Coke person. I just, I used to like a root beer quite a bit, but it was never Coke or Pepsi. And when I, when I sort of got away from that and I began to realize the amount of sugar and, and I lost the taste for it, when you look around at people who are drinking 32 ounces, 64 ounces of soda, and it's just a regular practice. You kind of have to look at them and like, it's like you're chain smoking.

• 42:19Jonathan Cohen?

  The physiological impact of having that amount of sugar is really, really intense.

• 42:25Mayim Bialik?

  But also that there is a need that certain bodies have acquired and have gotten accustomed to.

• 42:33Jonathan Cohen?

  Oh, you build up tolerance for the sugar?

• 42:35Mayim Bialik?

  And it's the, it's, it's a caffeine drip and it's a sugar drip. And I get it. I mean, you know, we can abuse sugar like we can abuse any other drug. But it is one of those things that, yeah, if, if there's any way, and, and it takes, it takes time to shift your palate. You know, I say the same thing about switching from a dairy milk to a non-dairy milk. If you hold them side by side on day one of trying, you're, you're going to be disgusted. What happens is your palate shifts. As he said, the microbiome of your tongue can shift. You, over time, can, can learn to, to kind of lose that association. The one thing it doesn't work for, for me is ice cream. Ice cream will never taste good unless it's like Haagen-Dazs, unless it's Baskin Robbins peanut butter chocolate.

• 43:20Jonathan Cohen?

  Neither are associated with advertising the show.

• 43:25Jonathan Cohen?

  The thing about the sugar and having that much sugar is we are learning, as he said, more and more that it does impact your microbiome. And you can have bacteria living in your gut that is the result of an overgrowth of sugar that is actually telling your brain to go get that sugar because it needs to eat and it only eats that sugar.

• 43:46Mayim Bialik?

  You're feeding that bacteria.

• 43:48Jonathan Cohen?

  And you're killing out all the other positive bacteria, which then has the downstream consequence of lowering your other defense mechanisms. And then your defense mechanisms get lowered and then you get something and you don't realize what the cause was in the first place.

• 44:02Mayim Bialik?

  The thing about this episode, every time we try and think of something positive and hopeful, it devolves into that.

• 44:08Jonathan Cohen?

  Well, here's where I think the hopeful part is, that, for example, having pomegranate, and I was actually just taking a shot of pomegranate juice. I wasn't even doing it consistently because I was actually realizing how much sugar is in it. And I thought, well, what's the balance there? But knowing that eight ounces can help us grow that healthy gut bacteria, that's, that's great. Learning, I actually always had a propensity towards dark meat chicken, just it was more tender, juicier.

• 44:40Mayim Bialik?

  I don't want to think about it.

• 44:41Jonathan Cohen?

  Here are things that I know people are, still have questions about. They have questions about the best protein, how much protein. We didn't get into that yet. The difference between animal protein and plant protein, which is a conversation, I think, you know, from his perspective, move as much towards a selection of food as possible. I appreciated that.

• 45:06Mayim Bialik?

  He said mostly plant-based, like, let's not mince words here.

• 45:09Jonathan Cohen?

  He said mostly plant-based, but this mirrors what Dr. Hyman said, what Dr. Andrew Weil said, meaning that, you know, Dr. Hyman was, he has protein, but it's a, you know, section on his plate. It's not the whole plate, as he said. Make sure he has a diverse range of supporting vegetables.

• 45:29Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, for me, and Dr. Hyman is literally on the cover of Dr. Lee's book, you know, for me, Dr. Hyman leans... Much more into sort of like the biohacking and sort of the like optimizing protein and muscle mass and all those things, which I think are very important things. But I think Dr. Lee is more about so much of your health is actually in your control. No matter where you live, no matter what you have access to, there are ways to, you know, like you said, eat to beat your diet, not about dieting, but about what are actually the best foods for all these different components of your health. So, um, yeah.

• 46:03Jonathan Cohen?

  What I was struck by, and I still am hopeful for, is that each of us have the ability to make positive choices, to help build our microbiome, to help our five defense systems, and that we can maintain health over a long period of time.

• 46:17Mayim Bialik?

  Also, I can't help but mention that people like Bono and Cindy Crawford and The Edge are clients of Dr. Lee. And I did not know that. I'm not really, I don't know these things, but I was like, two members of U2? Like Dr. Lee? That's awesome.

• 46:33Jonathan Cohen?

  That's why they have been as successful as musicians. They've had the longevity of their career because they're eating properly.

• 46:40Mayim Bialik?

  Um, yeah, really, really great to have him on. So from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time.