S2E2 - The Appetizer (Diet Culture Primer)

1
00:00:00,520 --> 00:00:25,730
Kayla: In this episode of Cult or just weird as well as the episode. In two weeks, we're going to be talking a lot about food, dieting, eating disorders, and related content. If you have an eating disorder, are in recovery, or know that diet related talk may be triggering for you, please consider skipping this episode. And if you need help, please visit the National association of anorexia Nervosa and associated Disorders, or anad@anad.org. Dot. That's an a D.org dot.

2
00:01:08,330 --> 00:01:10,378
Chris: Okay, so when should I start recording?

3
00:01:10,514 --> 00:01:11,834
Kayla: You've been recording.

4
00:01:12,002 --> 00:01:12,546
Chris: No.

5
00:01:12,658 --> 00:01:13,250
Kayla: Yes.

6
00:01:13,370 --> 00:01:24,712
Chris: That's. No. Oh, you know, but I learned from watching you dad. Yeah, you're my dad. Except my dad doesn't wear a nahi gao sweatshirt.

7
00:01:24,906 --> 00:01:25,964
Kayla: You're just. You just.

8
00:01:26,012 --> 00:01:27,828
Chris: I have to make fun of it. I'm sorry.

9
00:01:27,924 --> 00:01:28,564
Kayla: You got it.

10
00:01:28,612 --> 00:01:32,572
Chris: Our listeners have to know that you, right now, you are wearing an aha gao sweatshirt.

11
00:01:32,596 --> 00:01:36,020
Kayla: Would you like to explain to our listeners what an ahegao sweatshirt is?

12
00:01:36,060 --> 00:01:48,020
Chris: No. I think that they have Google and they can look it up. And I got it for you because you asked me for it, like, 18 times. And finally I was like, okay, I'll do it. It is a great sweatshirt.

13
00:01:48,060 --> 00:01:50,122
Kayla: Yeah, I know it is. I know it is.

14
00:01:50,276 --> 00:01:59,150
Chris: But it's also, like, the least comfortable thing that I have ever felt in my hand is the material in that sweatshirt. This is not ASMR nose. Oh, my God.

15
00:01:59,190 --> 00:02:04,230
Kayla: It is not great material. Well, welcome to culture. Just weird.

16
00:02:04,310 --> 00:02:04,886
Chris: I'm Chris.

17
00:02:04,958 --> 00:02:05,846
Kayla: I'm Kayla.

18
00:02:05,958 --> 00:02:15,646
Chris: And hopefully you guys are all doing well during this difficult time. We won't spend too much time on talking about the Rona because we don't want to.

19
00:02:15,718 --> 00:02:16,862
Kayla: You can listen to episode one for that.

20
00:02:16,886 --> 00:02:29,006
Chris: Yeah, listen to episode one or, you know, go to the news or whatever, but just want to say hopefully you guys are all staying as safe as you can and as sane as you can, and hopefully things are okay with you right now. And, yeah, we'll get through it.

21
00:02:29,118 --> 00:02:31,390
Kayla: We'll get through it by talking about cults.

22
00:02:31,470 --> 00:02:33,454
Chris: That's right. Well, I mean.

23
00:02:33,502 --> 00:02:34,302
Kayla: Or just weirds.

24
00:02:34,406 --> 00:02:38,810
Chris: Is there such thing as cult? Because I don't know if you listen to episode one.

25
00:02:39,950 --> 00:03:01,812
Kayla: Actually, I do want to say to our listeners that after. After we did episode one, you and I have been doing a lot of thinking about, like, meta. Thinking about the podcast itself. Why do we use the word cult? Can we continue using the word cult? Are cults real? Is anything a cult?

26
00:03:01,956 --> 00:03:03,108
Chris: Is anything real?

27
00:03:03,164 --> 00:03:05,040
Kayla: Is anything real? Who knows?

28
00:03:05,500 --> 00:03:09,320
Chris: Do days of the week exist anymore? Oh, wait, we said, we wouldn't talk about that.

29
00:03:09,940 --> 00:03:32,510
Kayla: I just think that learning that cults and the quote unquote anti cult movement are both kind of groups that have cult like behaviors as we've defined them, it has been a little, you know, a little destabilizing for us, and it'll probably continue to be part of our journey as a podcast, grappling with those things that you brought up in episode one.

30
00:03:32,590 --> 00:04:04,620
Chris: Yeah. As we learn more, we will share more with you guys. But, you know, as I mentioned in episode one, the anti cult movement is pretty broad. So, you know, there's some. Some groups and persons are better than others. You know, better being a very poorly defined term in that sentence. But, you know, it's a. It's a broad, diverse group of folks and institutions and. And. Yeah, some. Some good, some bad, some gray. Unfortunately, we're just in a world of so much gray right now.

31
00:04:04,660 --> 00:04:05,116
Kayla: Nothing.

32
00:04:05,228 --> 00:04:06,324
Chris: Everything's fucking gray.

33
00:04:06,372 --> 00:04:07,560
Kayla: Nothing has any meaning.

34
00:04:08,890 --> 00:04:10,634
Chris: And that's our show, guys.

35
00:04:10,802 --> 00:04:23,590
Kayla: Bye. Yeah, I guess. Okay. Said my thing about season episode one. Let's get into the second episode of our second season, which I am now calling the quaranteesen.

36
00:04:25,130 --> 00:04:32,458
Chris: I mean, for us, it's not that much different. We're just. We're still just kind of, like, holed up in our little. Tucked into our little soundproof cubbyhole here.

37
00:04:32,514 --> 00:04:34,946
Kayla: Right. But it's the quarantine.

38
00:04:35,058 --> 00:04:35,570
Chris: That's right.

39
00:04:35,610 --> 00:04:36,706
Kayla: I'm gonna keep saying that.

40
00:04:36,778 --> 00:04:44,630
Chris: And I'm excited for this show because I don't have to do anything, which is my favorite show. That's my favorite part, is when you do the stuff and I don't do things.

41
00:04:45,050 --> 00:04:47,282
Kayla: That's actually my favorite part, too.

42
00:04:47,386 --> 00:04:51,050
Chris: Mm. Yeah. Not doing stuff so good.

43
00:04:51,130 --> 00:04:54,530
Kayla: Yeah. No, I mean, like, my favorite part is when I do the stuff and you don't.

44
00:04:54,610 --> 00:04:57,594
Chris: Oh. Oh. Cause you have control problems, right?

45
00:04:57,682 --> 00:05:03,296
Kayla: No, I just like you to be able to relax. Oh, that's so sweet.

46
00:05:03,488 --> 00:05:06,328
Chris: Oh, and then I just insulted you. Oh, my God. Now I feel bad.

47
00:05:06,384 --> 00:05:10,800
Kayla: You should. Don't worry. I'll say something later that'll make you not feel bad anymore.

48
00:05:10,840 --> 00:05:20,320
Chris: Right. And then we'll have, like, a little mini argument that we'll cut out and, like, put it in the outtakes, and it'll be, like, hilarious. Like, why did you say that? God, you know what? Fine. I'll just.

49
00:05:20,360 --> 00:05:23,304
Kayla: Well, that'll be your end. My end is usually like, okay, fine.

50
00:05:23,432 --> 00:05:30,798
Chris: All right. I'm marriage fight the podcast anyway.

51
00:05:30,934 --> 00:05:35,742
Kayla: Oh, didn't you. You said you wanted to talk about Patreon.

52
00:05:35,806 --> 00:05:49,454
Chris: Oh, right. Yes. Well, so for our listeners, for the duration of this quarantine a thon that we all find ourselves in right now, our Patreon tiers are all completely free to the public.

53
00:05:49,502 --> 00:05:54,854
Kayla: You don't even have to be a patron. Like, everything we're posting is public. Available. We would like to make sure.

54
00:05:54,862 --> 00:05:55,862
Chris: You don't have to, like, go sign up.

55
00:05:55,886 --> 00:06:07,548
Kayla: Yes, you don't have to sign up. We would love for you to sign up under one of our many tiers, but even if you do sign up, shit's free. And if you just want to, like, head on over, check it out, browse.

56
00:06:07,644 --> 00:06:27,118
Chris: Yeah, and we're trying to do a little more than we normally do. Normally our Patreon is like some little snippets of bonus stuff and outtakes, but we're trying to do a little bit of heavier stuff. So, like, for example, if you go check out the bonus content we did for our first episode, we talk about actually the waco siege.

57
00:06:27,214 --> 00:06:28,926
Kayla: We talked for like 25 minutes, guys.

58
00:06:29,078 --> 00:06:38,446
Chris: Yeah. Because it was actually relevant to our topic of our first episode. And that's all I'm gonna say. Cause now you're, like, wondering what it is and you're all enticed.

59
00:06:38,638 --> 00:06:39,774
Kayla: They're definitely enticed.

60
00:06:39,822 --> 00:06:42,246
Chris: Whoa. Mysterious.

61
00:06:42,438 --> 00:06:43,750
Kayla: Thank you for that.

62
00:06:43,830 --> 00:06:44,526
Chris: You're welcome.

63
00:06:44,598 --> 00:06:45,462
Kayla: Announcement.

64
00:06:45,646 --> 00:06:52,502
Chris: So, yeah, so definitely go check out our Patreon. It's patreon.com cult or just weird onto my episode. Yes.

65
00:06:52,566 --> 00:07:25,010
Kayla: I'm excited for this episode because I'm tackling a topic that I've kind of wanted to tackle for a while. I don't think I've been shy about it and, you know, this, that I've wanted to do something that relates to the concept of wellness for a while. I don't think I've been shy about talking about how I think various aspects of the health and wellness industries can be cult like and damaging. I mean, think about how we've already talked about herbalife and other mlms on the show. And herbalife isn't just bad because it's a pyramid scheme, it's bad because the products they're selling are bunk.

66
00:07:25,090 --> 00:07:28,842
Chris: Yeah. They're sort of double dipping in the expected harm cultiness.

67
00:07:28,946 --> 00:08:02,324
Kayla: Right? Yeah, a lot of mlms do that. Like all the essential oil stuff. Like it's all snake oil. And if I haven't said it already on the show, I will say it here. I strongly believe that the diet industry in particular is very cult like, if not a flat out cult. That's just a deep personal belief that I hold. Some of our listeners maybe checked out season two of the dream, which we loved and definitely influenced this episode. In the dream, season two, they tackled modern day wellness in just a really fascinating, enlightening, well rounded way.

68
00:08:02,492 --> 00:08:05,760
Chris: Yep. The dream is always really good and exposes.

69
00:08:06,700 --> 00:08:08,204
Kayla: Exposes shit.

70
00:08:08,292 --> 00:08:09,172
Chris: We want to be them.

71
00:08:09,236 --> 00:08:29,126
Kayla: Yes, we do. And this isn't to say that, like, anything that is related to the pursuit of health and wellness is bad. I'm just giving some background on my relationship to the topic, how I feel like it's the pursuit of health and wellness is not inherently a good or bad thing. It can be used for good or bad.

72
00:08:29,198 --> 00:08:52,336
Chris: Yeah, I think individual pursuit of health and wellness is just fine. It's just the problem is there are systems and bad designs in place that know, lead to things that, again, if you want to listen to the dream, the whole industry is questionable at best. And that can harm people. And that's where it ticks off that expected harm box that makes it feel culty.

73
00:08:52,408 --> 00:09:14,144
Kayla: And it's so difficult when, like, we're dealing with something that has such ill defined terms, because what is healthy? What is wellness? You know what I mean? Like those two words in particular. And healthy is such a. Like, it's such a word that gets thrown around that doesn't really have an agreed upon meaning.

74
00:09:14,272 --> 00:09:18,408
Chris: Right? And marketing is. It's such a powerful marketing word, too.

75
00:09:18,464 --> 00:09:28,088
Kayla: Right, right. And along with that, like, there's such a. There's such a morality that's been imbued into being healthy. Like, it's a moral obligation.

76
00:09:28,224 --> 00:09:33,654
Chris: Right? Like, if you aren't posting your Instagram green smoothie, then what are you doing with your life?

77
00:09:33,782 --> 00:09:40,318
Kayla: Well, it's like, how many times have you heard somebody say, I don't care if you do XYZ, just be healthy. Or like, when talking.

78
00:09:40,414 --> 00:09:44,726
Chris: We said that at the beginning of the episode for the Rona, stay healthy from Rona.

79
00:09:44,838 --> 00:10:27,954
Kayla: It's not that you can wish people to stay healthy, but when you're making these moral judgments on people's lives based on your perceived notion of their health, that it starts crossing lines. We see it a lot when talking about people of size or fat people, where it's couched in this. Like, I'm just concerned for your health, when really you're just concerned about the way that I look. You don't have any idea what my health status is by looking at me. You can't tell somebody's health status by looking at them, right? We talk about food and activity in terms of good and bad, I was so bad last night, I had fries instead of salad or, ugh, I haven't worked out in a week. I'm so bad. No dessert for me. I'm trying to be good.

80
00:10:28,082 --> 00:10:32,110
Chris: This is so sinful, right? Literally, sinful.

81
00:10:33,650 --> 00:11:21,890
Kayla: Food is not sinful, guys. It's not sinful. And not eating dessert doesn't make you good, and eating fries doesn't make you bad. And it extends further than this. Fat people, especially often receive shoddier and judgier medical care than nonfat people. Many times when people go to doctors for a symptom that's not weight related, doctors will kind of roll everything into that one thing of, like, well, if you just lose weight, your broken bone will be healed. And that has a real damaging effect on populations. And the reality is that today's best science says that a person's weight has very little to do with their overall health. It's only one factor amidst a slew of factors, and that fat shaming and body shaming is more harmful to our health than being a weight that doctors have deemed, quote unquote, too high.

82
00:11:22,310 --> 00:12:04,234
Kayla: But we're not talking about weight necessarily in this episode. Just wanted to kind of, like, talk about. Start talking about the notion of morality that gets imbued with health. And then where does this morality of health fit in with people who have chronic illnesses or disabilities? If your body naturally doesn't meet the quote unquote standards of health, then what kind of messaging do we send when we moralize health to people who don't have the luxury of health? Like, if you're saying, gotta be healthy, get your 10,000 steps a day. Like, what? What are we saying about bodies that can't do those very narrow prescribed things that we say are health? I think the messaging is really important, and it's something for us to think about.

83
00:12:04,322 --> 00:12:04,826
Chris: Yeah.

84
00:12:04,938 --> 00:12:20,902
Kayla: It's also important to note that along with language like good and bad, when talking about health, there's also a lot of purity based language. Think about movements like clean eating. What does clean eating mean? Clean of. What does that mean that you're not eating toxins?

85
00:12:21,006 --> 00:12:22,010
Chris: Don't eat dirt.

86
00:12:22,430 --> 00:12:24,246
Kayla: I don't think that's what clean eating.

87
00:12:24,358 --> 00:12:27,390
Chris: Oh, really? Oh. Cause I thought I was clean eating because I didn't eat dirt.

88
00:12:27,510 --> 00:12:41,358
Kayla: No, and you're definitely eating dirt anyway. But, like, you know, with clean eating, things like toxins get thrown around. There's not toxins in our food. That's a fake buzzword. If were eating toxins, we would die. Like, that's right.

89
00:12:41,454 --> 00:12:43,690
Chris: Toxins are toxic things which damage you.

90
00:12:43,870 --> 00:13:19,476
Kayla: And so then, okay, what? Clean of bad ingredients? Again, you're moralizing. What is a bad ingredient? Does clean eating meaning you're not eating processed food? We live in a time where many of us believe that the general phrase processed or processing when it comes to food, automatically means that it's bad or worse for you or unhealthy, worse than natural. If you listen to the dream, you'll know that these words don't really have any actual meaning based in science. Like, there's not necessarily requirements for somebody to be able to call their product natural or clean or whatever. And what does processed even mean?

91
00:13:19,548 --> 00:13:33,300
Chris: Well, what about something like trans fats, where it's like, we've discovered that actually does have some deleterious effect on our health and wellbeing? Or am I wrong in that assumption? Is that not correct?

92
00:13:33,420 --> 00:13:34,268
Kayla: What do you mean?

93
00:13:34,404 --> 00:13:43,448
Chris: Like, trans fats shouldn't consume too many trans fats because it's not good for your cholesterol and it's not good for your. Maybe I'm speaking out of turn because I'm not a doctor myself, but no.

94
00:13:43,464 --> 00:13:57,384
Kayla: There'S absolutely, like, there are guidelines and there are certain nutritional things that we can be working on hitting, but that doesn't come from cutting out entire groups of food. It comes from having a well rounded diet.

95
00:13:57,552 --> 00:13:59,352
Chris: Okay, so when you say.

96
00:13:59,416 --> 00:14:05,072
Kayla: And also, trans fats has nothing to do with clean eating. Clean eating movement doesn't have to do with, like, don't eat trans fats.

97
00:14:05,176 --> 00:14:05,984
Chris: I see.

98
00:14:06,152 --> 00:14:09,832
Kayla: It's very narrow and, like, orthorexic. I see, in my opinion.

99
00:14:09,856 --> 00:14:23,052
Chris: So it's about. So what you're saying is clean eating is less about don't eat proven harmful things or limit your consumption of proven harmful things. And it's more about, like, clean eating is. Are you having only kale?

100
00:14:23,156 --> 00:14:53,294
Kayla: It's the notion of, like, you can. The things that we are generally eating on a day to day basis are bad and wrong and that we must eat a certain way in order to be free of toxins, to not eat processed food, not to be eating non gmo food, to be eating like, it's a. And the phrase clean eating doesn't have a definition. And that's, again, part of the issue here is that there's not, like, there's no scientific basis to the phrase clean eating.

101
00:14:53,422 --> 00:14:53,894
Chris: Got it.

102
00:14:53,942 --> 00:15:34,360
Kayla: And as far as I'm aware, we're actually finding that a lot of emphasis on clean eating does lead to things like developing orthorexia and other, like, disordered eating patterns and going back. Okay, going back to what? Is something, like, processed actually mean? Like, okay, if we're talking processed lunch meat, I get that the food has gone through mechanical and chemical processing to become the food that it is. And we're like, oh, no, that's bad. But, like, where does. And I'm legit asking you, like, where does that stop? Like, is bread a processed food? Is quinoa. Are quinoa and rice processed foods? Is cooking processing, like, these things? Like, if you cook something in oil, is that processing the food?

103
00:15:34,980 --> 00:15:54,540
Chris: Yeah. I don't know. Like, I I mean, I feel like the sort of colloquial in my head definition of processed food would be that it's processed before I get to it, you know, versus, like, whole food. Just. Again, this is just in my head. If I'm the one doing the processing, then it's not processed. Right? That's. That's, I guess, is.

104
00:15:54,580 --> 00:15:56,162
Kayla: So bread is a processed food?

105
00:15:56,316 --> 00:15:57,574
Chris: I would say so, yeah.

106
00:15:57,622 --> 00:15:58,342
Kayla: So bread.

107
00:15:58,366 --> 00:15:59,342
Chris: Did I buy from the store?

108
00:15:59,406 --> 00:16:02,450
Kayla: Buy chicken breasts. You're getting a processed food.

109
00:16:03,230 --> 00:16:05,670
Chris: Chicken breasts are processed. Oh. Because they're. They're butchered.

110
00:16:05,750 --> 00:16:06,406
Kayla: Yeah.

111
00:16:06,558 --> 00:16:12,502
Chris: I guess. I don't know. Like, I I mean, I totally get your point that it's, like, ill defined.

112
00:16:12,646 --> 00:16:21,862
Kayla: I'm just saying that if you. If you try to follow the letter of this logic down to its conclusion, like, we're all just gonna be raw vegans. You know what I mean?

113
00:16:21,926 --> 00:16:22,518
Chris: Mm.

114
00:16:22,614 --> 00:16:35,166
Kayla: With such an ill defined term, like processed, it starts to cut out the foods that are available to you because. Yeah, it's like, oh, is quinoa processed? It does have to go through a process before it gets put on my shelf.

115
00:16:35,358 --> 00:16:53,720
Chris: Maybe it's chemicals, then. Maybe it's like, if, you know, like, hot dogs and where it's, like. Or maybe it's multiple different ingredients. I don't know. Like, I guess, like, salami would probably be considered processed because you have to grind it up, mix it with a bunch of, you know, salts and whatnot and let it age. But I don't know.

116
00:16:53,800 --> 00:17:01,320
Kayla: Are tomatoes a processed food if they've gone through, like, being GMo or having pesticides applied or things like that?

117
00:17:01,480 --> 00:17:39,344
Chris: I mean, I would say no, but I'm not really an expert. I feel like if I'm being asked to draw that line, then I would say that it involves some sort of mechanical plus some sort of chemical reconstitution of what the whole food is. So I would say like a can of tomatoes. It's like chopped up tomatoes. Seems like it's processed because it's been mechanically changed and maybe add some preservatives and things like that, but a whole food that has things applied to it prior to harvesting feels like it's not processed.

118
00:17:39,432 --> 00:17:41,300
Kayla: Is cooking a mechanical process?

119
00:17:42,330 --> 00:18:17,956
Chris: Yes. So I would say that if I'm going to a restaurant, I'm eating processed food. I mean, I would say I'm eating processed food no matter what. When I'm cooking it, the question is, like, is it pre processed before I get to it? I don't know. I think to me, it's, a lot of it has to do with just the uncertainty, right? Like, I think people, well, people do fear uncertainty, right? And if you're the one processing your food, there's less uncertainty about what you're getting, about what you're putting into it. I can put as much, if I'm curing my own meats, I can put as much salt of whatever kind I want into it. If I'm buying salami from the grocery store, I don't know what went into it.

120
00:18:17,988 --> 00:18:31,956
Chris: So I think a lot of it is just the obfuscation that happens with the supply chain of food. What exactly goes into that? I think it's less about that than more than it is about not knowing what happened to that food.

121
00:18:32,028 --> 00:18:32,524
Kayla: Right.

122
00:18:32,652 --> 00:19:22,696
Chris: And with the regulation, with the FDA, this is, again, something they talked about in the dream, but with the limited power that the FDA has, and they certainly have more power over food than they do over the health supplement industry. But we're putting a lot of trust and a lot of faith in the suppliers, the food chain suppliers that do the processing, that they're doing things right. And historically, that's sometimes been good, sometimes been not good. There's plenty of info out there about what, you know, when processed food first started becoming a thing, when processing food moved out of the household into the industrial sphere, and people started buying milk from the store and buying bread from the store, they put some nasty things to make milk and bread.

123
00:19:22,728 --> 00:19:28,896
Chris: And I bring those two up specifically if you want to go listeners, if you want to go look that up. They put some manufacturers.

124
00:19:28,968 --> 00:19:29,446
Kayla: Right.

125
00:19:29,568 --> 00:19:32,722
Chris: Put some really bad things into milk and bread specifically.

126
00:19:32,786 --> 00:19:35,578
Kayla: So. But you're saying, so this is pre FDA.

127
00:19:35,714 --> 00:19:37,306
Chris: Yes. This is like 18 hundreds.

128
00:19:37,378 --> 00:19:37,882
Kayla: Okay.

129
00:19:37,986 --> 00:20:20,792
Chris: Yeah. So, but I'm bringing it up as more of like a, an example of, I think there's fear and trepidation around not knowing if the people that are making our food that are processing our food for us have our best interests in mind all the time. The things that they were doing with milk and bread was to extend their supplies. It was all about the bottom line. It was all about making. It was all about getting money instead of making money. So, to me, that feels like it's more about that fear of the unknown and the trust of the folks making our food than it is about the specific thing that goes into it.

130
00:20:20,896 --> 00:20:28,792
Kayla: So then why aren't clean eating Instagram influencers telling us that we should all be having gardens and only growing our own food?

131
00:20:28,896 --> 00:20:33,560
Chris: I don't know, because I don't follow any of those on Instagram. And also, I don't go on Instagram except for our podcast.

132
00:20:33,640 --> 00:21:04,170
Kayla: Like, how. How we don't know how these individual people are defining clean eating. And that kind of allows us to try and figure that out on our own. And it's trying to figure out something that, like, doesn't really exist, in my opinion. I don't believe in something called clean eating. I think that you can eat a well rounded diet, but I think that trying to. Trying to eliminate any of your exposure to imaginary toxins and gmo stuff is not based in reality.

133
00:21:04,330 --> 00:21:16,442
Chris: Do you think there's a version of it that is? Do you think there's, like a. If we don't call it clean eating and if, let's say there was, like, an actual registered dietitian that is, you know, science based that recommends things.

134
00:21:16,546 --> 00:21:29,712
Kayla: I mean, most of what comes out of my mouth, and I'm talking about food, is directly translated from a registered dietitian that I've worked with that I think is very science based and keeps up on the developing science.

135
00:21:29,856 --> 00:21:37,700
Chris: So if she went on Instagram and started making recommendations, you feel like that would be kosher?

136
00:21:38,440 --> 00:21:39,224
Kayla: What do you mean?

137
00:21:39,312 --> 00:21:59,512
Chris: Well, I'm just saying, like, we have these. You're saying there's these Instagram influencers that are promoting clean eating, whatever that means. Antitoxin, whatever. So you're saying it's more about the content than about the fact that they're doing that. It's what they're pushing, not the fact that they're pushing it. Like, if you're a registered dietitian, went and created an Instagram account and started making recommendations, it's kind of like asking.

138
00:21:59,536 --> 00:22:07,880
Kayla: Me, do I think it's better? Like, do I think it's bad that non scientists are pushing scientific things? Well, yes, I do think that's bad.

139
00:22:07,920 --> 00:22:17,422
Chris: Right? No, I'm not asking if you think it's bad. What I'm asking is, do you think it's bad that there's a. That the influencers exist at all, or is it just the content of what they're saying? That's.

140
00:22:17,526 --> 00:22:19,174
Kayla: I think that those are two different things.

141
00:22:19,262 --> 00:22:19,614
Chris: Okay.

142
00:22:19,662 --> 00:22:34,142
Kayla: I think that non scientific, non scientists pushing facts that they believe are scientific fact and are not is a huge problem, even outside of food.

143
00:22:34,286 --> 00:22:39,398
Chris: So are you saying that it's bad that there are people that are non experts that are using their.

144
00:22:39,494 --> 00:22:40,088
Kayla: I.

145
00:22:40,254 --> 00:22:45,628
Chris: Their individual experiences and not using empirical evidence?

146
00:22:45,724 --> 00:22:46,876
Kayla: I mean, like, it even goes back.

147
00:22:46,908 --> 00:22:49,964
Chris: To, are we just going to call this episode the experts part two?

148
00:22:50,092 --> 00:23:08,772
Kayla: Like, thinking about, okay, I mentioned how it could be really easy to kind of fall down the rabbit hole of like, okay, I guess I can only eat raw. Well, like, science kind of has told us that cooking our food is, like, one of the most important things in human evolution. It's kind of what made us. What part of what made us what we are today.

149
00:23:08,916 --> 00:23:09,436
Chris: Right.

150
00:23:09,548 --> 00:23:20,012
Kayla: So I think it is very problematic when people who are not trained make claims about something as important as food and the way we eat it.

151
00:23:20,076 --> 00:23:29,716
Chris: Okay, so these Instagram influences you're talking about are people that are not trained. There are people that are popular, what I'm assuming because they are physically, conventionally attractive.

152
00:23:29,788 --> 00:23:44,146
Kayla: It's important to note, especially in California, and it varies state by state, but a lot of people can call them. Anybody can call themselves a nutritionist, anyone. You don't have to have any sort of licensing to be a nutritionist. Anyone can be a nutritionist. To talk.

153
00:23:44,218 --> 00:23:45,642
Chris: Anyone can be a deprogrammer.

154
00:23:45,706 --> 00:23:52,990
Kayla: Yeah. To talk to somebody that has actually gone through the training, you need to talk to a registered dietitian. Those are two different things.

155
00:23:53,570 --> 00:23:54,570
Chris: That's actually good to know.

156
00:23:54,610 --> 00:24:12,140
Kayla: Yes. I've done a lot of work with registered dietitians, and that's something that comes up over and over again, that because this is such a complicated topic that you can't just kind of, like, throw caution to the wind and be like, oh, I'll go with this nutritionist, because I like the cut of their jib.

157
00:24:13,360 --> 00:24:15,776
Chris: Yeah, nutritionists tend to have good jib cuts.

158
00:24:15,808 --> 00:24:17,112
Kayla: They do have good jib cuts, but.

159
00:24:17,136 --> 00:24:19,936
Chris: Actually, our cuts of jib are those clean eating or.

160
00:24:20,088 --> 00:24:21,220
Kayla: You tell me.

161
00:24:21,560 --> 00:24:25,568
Chris: I don't know. I don't think you should eat jib cuts. It's not the best part of the ship.

162
00:24:25,664 --> 00:24:42,708
Kayla: Okay, well, would it be shocking for you to learn that there are actually three different kinds of food processing? I know we just talked a whole bunch about, like, what does it mean to process your food is cooking process? Well, there's actually. I can. I can actually tell you what they are.

163
00:24:42,764 --> 00:24:47,260
Chris: Okay, so I feel a little misled. Now, you let me talk about that whole, like, what I think it is.

164
00:24:47,340 --> 00:25:13,878
Kayla: Well, I think it's important to have that discussion too, because this is not knowledge that we're all armed with. It's just kind of like, you turn on the tv and there's a commercial about, like, processed food is bad. And it's like, well, what is processed food? And then you can, like, google what is processed food? And then you get to some clean eating blog recipe and it's like, oh, no, what you're eating right now, your bread is processed food. And then you're like, oh, no, everything I'm eating is processed. I just can't eat. I'll go be a breatharian. That's how it works.

165
00:25:13,894 --> 00:25:14,726
Chris: Is that the topic?

166
00:25:14,838 --> 00:25:15,598
Kayla: No, it's not.

167
00:25:15,614 --> 00:25:16,134
Chris: Breatharians.

168
00:25:16,182 --> 00:25:46,484
Kayla: Oh, no. Sorry. One day let me just read you the definition of food processing just so we can have some actual science here. Food processing is the transformation of agricultural products into food or of one form of food into other forms. So this. It's as simple as that. So, like, food processing can literally mean grinding. Grinding up some grain to make flour. And then it also can be baking that flour into bread.

169
00:25:46,672 --> 00:26:00,820
Chris: And when I want whole wheat bread, what I want is like, the actual grain. Like the grain that I just chop it straight from the plant and put it in an oven and then slather some butter on that, of course.

170
00:26:00,900 --> 00:26:01,732
Kayla: Oh, yeah.

171
00:26:01,916 --> 00:26:02,356
Chris: Yeah.

172
00:26:02,428 --> 00:26:16,836
Kayla: Butter's processed, God. Cause it's been through a process to become a food. So, like, okay, there's actually three different, like, levels of food processing. Okay, there's primary, there's secondary, and there's tertiary.

173
00:26:16,868 --> 00:26:17,316
Chris: Tertiary?

174
00:26:17,388 --> 00:26:17,620
Kayla: Yes.

175
00:26:17,660 --> 00:26:18,684
Chris: Oh, called it.

176
00:26:18,732 --> 00:26:27,428
Kayla: I know. So, like, primary processing is generally necessary to make a food edible. So, like, grinding up the wheat into flour.

177
00:26:27,524 --> 00:26:29,516
Chris: Oh, I see. So, like, literally you can't even do.

178
00:26:29,548 --> 00:26:40,044
Kayla: Okay, and then secondary is like, taking the primarily processed food and making it into a familiar food. So it's like, is this like.

179
00:26:40,132 --> 00:26:41,604
Chris: Bread making from said flour?

180
00:26:41,692 --> 00:26:57,804
Kayla: Yeah, bread. Or like pasta. Or just taking a primarily processed foods that you can eat it and then turning it into a food. And then tertiary is kind of. Tertiary processing is the good stuff. Generally, what we're talking about, like, tertiary.

181
00:26:57,852 --> 00:27:00,612
Chris: Processing is pink slime doritos.

182
00:27:00,716 --> 00:27:36,410
Kayla: It's turning stuff into, like, tv dinners, in flight meals, convenience foods, and convenience foods. Are kind of like, you know, things that are ready to eat, things that are. You grab it off the shelf and it's good to go. It's a bag of cheetos. It's a Twinkie, it's a frozen pizza. Like, it's. It's. It's those kinds of things. And so tertiary food processing is kind of, what? Like doctors and food scientists and whoever the fuck else. That's what they're looking at when they're saying processed food is making us all fat. And it's. So they're specifically talking about tertiary generally.

183
00:27:36,490 --> 00:27:36,898
Chris: Okay.

184
00:27:36,954 --> 00:27:46,298
Kayla: But, I mean, there's also clean eating advocates that will say, like, don't eat bread because it's processed, or don't eat dairy, don't eat gluten, don't eat this, don't eat that. It can really go down.

185
00:27:46,314 --> 00:27:50,146
Chris: This wonder bread, like, white bread, is hella demonized these days.

186
00:27:50,258 --> 00:28:00,654
Kayla: I know, and it shouldn't be. I don't really eat white bread, but, like, when you and I make bread, we're making white bread. When you and I make bread at home, it's white bread.

187
00:28:00,702 --> 00:28:03,198
Chris: Excuse me, Kayla, but I'm making.

188
00:28:03,254 --> 00:28:13,126
Kayla: Sourdough, which is a white bread. It's not. We're not making it with a colored white. We're not making a whole grain bread. We don't have whole grain. We have all purpose flour.

189
00:28:13,278 --> 00:28:15,654
Chris: Okay. But it tastes way better than wonder bread.

190
00:28:15,702 --> 00:28:19,534
Kayla: I'm not saying it doesn't. But also, you can't roll it up in a ball and use it as an eraser.

191
00:28:19,662 --> 00:28:20,310
Chris: That's true.

192
00:28:20,390 --> 00:28:21,638
Kayla: So, actually, I haven't tried.

193
00:28:21,734 --> 00:28:22,526
Chris: I haven't tried that.

194
00:28:22,598 --> 00:28:25,252
Kayla: Let's try. Well, but I also don't want to waste your bread because it's a good.

195
00:28:25,356 --> 00:28:38,364
Chris: I know. Thanks to our Patreon subscriber, Paul, who is starting a bread baking empire. He taught me how to. He gave me the sourdough bread starter and taught me how to make bread. And this is a relevant part of our podcast.

196
00:28:38,412 --> 00:28:44,692
Kayla: It is. Because social distancing. Socializing, that's basically what you guys were doing. And it's really.

197
00:28:44,756 --> 00:28:51,120
Chris: That's true. We went. We did a Google chat, I believe, call, and did it that way.

198
00:28:51,620 --> 00:29:00,300
Kayla: So. So, yeah, I just wanted to clarify that there are, like, scientific terms for what food processing.

199
00:29:00,340 --> 00:29:15,748
Chris: Okay. Is okay. Because you were throwing a lot of, like, well, what is it? Is it this? Is it this? Who knows? I don't know. And then I had to, like, give my. I still think that my way of framing it feels. It's not a way of framing it.

200
00:29:15,764 --> 00:29:17,798
Kayla: It's like, your definition for yourself.

201
00:29:17,934 --> 00:29:36,014
Chris: It's less of a definition. And it's more just like, I think that the fear and trepidation about processed foods is less about how exactly we define it and more about the fact that we know so little and there's so much obfuscation about where our food comes from.

202
00:29:36,062 --> 00:29:36,414
Kayla: Right?

203
00:29:36,502 --> 00:29:48,064
Chris: Like, that's the issue. It's like, what's red dye number 40? What the hell is in my doritos? And why can't I stop eating them? Like, it's. It's that fear that leads us to say, like, processed foods are bad. To me. That's what it feels like.

204
00:29:48,232 --> 00:30:07,976
Kayla: I like, my favorite one is, like, when it says natural flavorings. And the reason why it says natural is because it means it's, like, it's from something organic. And I don't mean, like, organic as an untouched by chemicals. I mean, like, it was animal or a plant. And, like, the reason why it says natural is because they don't want to say, like, we crushed up a bunch of red bugs to make this red.

205
00:30:08,088 --> 00:30:09,690
Chris: Right, right.

206
00:30:10,150 --> 00:30:12,934
Kayla: But, guys, you're eating red bugs. Sorry.

207
00:30:13,022 --> 00:30:14,126
Chris: It's cool. We're all eating bugs.

208
00:30:14,158 --> 00:30:21,230
Kayla: We're all eating things that we wouldn't eat if they were put whole on it. We would not eat them if they were a whole food sitting in front of us.

209
00:30:21,310 --> 00:30:28,590
Chris: It was a really compelling YouTube video I watched by a really good content creator that had a really good case for eating more bugs.

210
00:30:28,630 --> 00:30:31,798
Kayla: Oh, sure. We should be eating more bugs. They're really packed full of protein.

211
00:30:31,934 --> 00:30:47,074
Chris: They're, like, very nutritionally dense. Yeah, nutritionally dense. They apparently convert calories and nutrients from the things that they eat into bioavailable things that we can eat from them.

212
00:30:47,162 --> 00:30:47,818
Kayla: Right.

213
00:30:47,994 --> 00:31:07,840
Chris: Like, massively more efficiently than, say, like, a cow or a chicken. Cows or chickens are, like, it's like, 20%. And you can probably cut all this because I don't remember the exact percentages, but then crickets are, like, 90% or something. Like, 90% of what they eat becomes bioavailable to us versus, like, chickens and cows are, like, 20% or 30%.

214
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:19,980
Kayla: Damn. Go eat some bugs. Let me just end with little defining of food processing and pointing out that we did talk about lunch meat and salami and sausage and stuff like that.

215
00:31:20,280 --> 00:31:21,784
Chris: I love me some sausage.

216
00:31:21,832 --> 00:31:26,264
Kayla: I think you said that sausage was you considered a processed food sausage.

217
00:31:26,312 --> 00:31:26,816
Chris: Hell, yeah.

218
00:31:26,888 --> 00:31:32,824
Kayla: It's a sec. And that's a secondary process. It's not a tertiary, that makes sense.

219
00:31:32,872 --> 00:31:36,704
Chris: Because it's just meat being ground up and putting into. Yeah, that makes sense.

220
00:31:36,792 --> 00:31:38,856
Kayla: So again, I just want to clarify.

221
00:31:38,888 --> 00:31:45,528
Chris: So it would be primary would be the butchery, and then the secondary would be the sausage processing, I guess. Interesting.

222
00:31:45,704 --> 00:32:05,472
Kayla: And secondary processes include our cooking methods generally. And then I also just want to point out that we've talked about how food processing can be quote unquote good and quote unquote bad. I just think it's important that we don't lump everything all into one thing. Because then you're talking about, like, pasteurization is bad, right?

223
00:32:05,616 --> 00:32:09,038
Chris: Well, it's a process. There's another cult, maybe doesn't.

224
00:32:09,134 --> 00:32:10,774
Kayla: Oh, the anti pasteurization people.

225
00:32:10,902 --> 00:32:15,430
Chris: Oh, the people that like to drink the raw milk or the raw water people. Yeah. There's too many cults.

226
00:32:15,470 --> 00:32:16,550
Kayla: There's too many cults.

227
00:32:16,710 --> 00:32:21,174
Chris: I'm interested to know what it's actually gonna be today, or. We'll get to that next episode.

228
00:32:21,222 --> 00:32:21,998
Kayla: We'll get to that.

229
00:32:22,054 --> 00:32:23,230
Chris: We'll get to that.

230
00:32:23,390 --> 00:32:31,110
Kayla: Actually, let me ask you this. Is honey processed? Honey is processed. You wanna talk about processed food? Honey goes through to get honey.

231
00:32:31,150 --> 00:32:31,598
Chris: Bee barf.

232
00:32:31,654 --> 00:32:35,130
Kayla: It is bee barf. It is processed by the bees. So is honey clean?

233
00:32:36,460 --> 00:32:43,532
Chris: I mean, it feels like it is to me, but it's processed here. I'm gonna go back to my same rubric as before. Is that.

234
00:32:43,716 --> 00:32:45,812
Kayla: Is it chemical and mechanical processes?

235
00:32:45,916 --> 00:33:08,506
Chris: No, but that wasn't my rubric. My rubric was, is there some black box that my food comes out of? And for honey, it feels like. No, especially if I'm harvesting it myself. But if I'm getting it off the shelf, then, yeah, I guess that, like, depending on the. The brand. Do I trust the brand? Maybe that's part of it.

236
00:33:08,578 --> 00:33:16,634
Kayla: Did you know that it can be very dangerous to just get honey from your neighbor? No, that hasn't gone through, like, FDA approved processes.

237
00:33:16,802 --> 00:33:19,270
Chris: So I had that backwards then.

238
00:33:19,690 --> 00:33:22,562
Kayla: And I've bought honey from my neighbor, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't.

239
00:33:22,586 --> 00:33:24,210
Chris: Wait, which neighbor has honey?

240
00:33:24,330 --> 00:33:30,190
Kayla: When we lived in Long beach, okay, we got honey one time, and we used to get bread from that guy.

241
00:33:30,580 --> 00:33:31,244
Chris: What guy?

242
00:33:31,292 --> 00:33:35,900
Kayla: Remember we used to get bread from that guy? What, Bruce, the bread guy. He was just a guy that made bread.

243
00:33:35,980 --> 00:33:39,156
Chris: The fuck you talk. Oh, yeah, yeah. The guy that lived down the street.

244
00:33:39,188 --> 00:33:40,360
Kayla: That good bread.

245
00:33:41,020 --> 00:33:47,348
Chris: Yeah, that's. That sounds safe. But see, we try. He's part of our food trust network.

246
00:33:47,444 --> 00:33:49,044
Kayla: But he shouldn't. He was a guy found on Facebook.

247
00:33:49,172 --> 00:33:52,004
Chris: Yeah. He should not have been part of.

248
00:33:52,012 --> 00:34:05,986
Kayla: Our food anyway, because honey that you can get from your neighbor or that you can get from your own, like, beehive that hasn't been, like, cleaned or clarified, it can have bee parts in it. It can have stuff that, like, can cause really serious allergies in people.

249
00:34:06,058 --> 00:34:09,858
Chris: Like, it's not trigger allergies or cause them.

250
00:34:09,994 --> 00:34:14,697
Kayla: Like, if you're allergic to. Like, if a bee stings you and you're allergic to a bee stinging you.

251
00:34:14,754 --> 00:34:15,074
Chris: Okay.

252
00:34:15,121 --> 00:34:20,034
Kayla: So you eat the honey that has, like, the bee parts in it or, like, hasn't been cleaned of the bee, whatever you can.

253
00:34:20,121 --> 00:34:21,545
Chris: It can trigger your allergic reaction.

254
00:34:21,578 --> 00:34:21,786
Kayla: Yes.

255
00:34:21,818 --> 00:34:22,114
Chris: Okay.

256
00:34:22,161 --> 00:34:22,530
Kayla: Yes.

257
00:34:22,610 --> 00:34:23,058
Chris: Got it.

258
00:34:23,114 --> 00:34:37,833
Kayla: And again, that's not to say that it's better or worse. I'm just saying that you. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that you cannot 100% divorce yourself of any sort of risk when you are eating food.

259
00:34:37,962 --> 00:34:38,562
Chris: Right.

260
00:34:38,706 --> 00:35:03,922
Kayla: I know. Okay. And given all of that, given that getting honey locally can have dire ramifications, can also be great and delicious and put it on your toast in the morning. I don't want to do the thing where I'm not giving equal weight to both sides. Like, I don't want to say that the FDA is never wrong and food is always. Food on the shelf is always 100% safe and 100% what it says it is. No, everything sucks. I guess that's what I'm saying. Everything sucks.

261
00:35:03,986 --> 00:35:07,546
Chris: It's hard to. My takeaway is that I'm too terrified to eat honey anymore. So thanks.

262
00:35:07,618 --> 00:35:23,174
Kayla: Well, I'm going to terrify you more. I'm sorry. There have been and for almost a decade, there have been reports and rumors that, like, the honey that you get on the shelves is fake, is not actually honey from bees.

263
00:35:23,302 --> 00:35:26,182
Chris: Yeah. There's a whole episode of rotten events.

264
00:35:26,206 --> 00:36:15,180
Kayla: There's documentaries. Like, it's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. The honey being. The honey being potentially fake is, like, destroying the honey industry because it's artificially driving prices down. And so it's making it impossible for beekeepers to, like, keep up with the honey price point because if some manufacturer is saying, here's honey, and it's really just like, sugar water or whatever the fuck, right? And it costs $0.05, but, like, keeping bees costs ten cents. The honey, the actual honey farmers can't keep, can't compete with that. So it's putting. And, like, this is also coinciding with, like, the colony collapses that are happening and all the bees disappearing like we're destroying the honey industry by, like, I read a bunch of different competing articles where it was like, every single honey on the shelf is fake.

265
00:36:15,220 --> 00:36:27,104
Kayla: And then there was other articles being like, no, come on, guys. We're npremenous. And it's definitely not fake. But then there's, like, a whole vice article from, I think, last year that I'll. I'm gonna definitely link to all of these. I don't want to get too much into the honey thing because we're already getting into all these little.

266
00:36:27,152 --> 00:36:29,296
Chris: Good episode. I don't know.

267
00:36:29,448 --> 00:36:45,874
Kayla: But I just. I just want to make it clear that, yes, there are. There are believable and verifiable and trustworthy news sources that say a lot of the honey that is on the shelf is not necessarily honey. It is something that's been processed weird.

268
00:36:45,962 --> 00:36:49,490
Chris: Or is honey from the store?

269
00:36:49,650 --> 00:36:50,402
Kayla: It might be.

270
00:36:50,466 --> 00:37:05,466
Chris: It's not really honey. And if I get honey from a local beekeeper, it will kill me. Yeah, that second part can't be true. The second part, there has to be some way for me to, like, buy local honey and have it be trusted somehow. Like, why is it dangerous?

271
00:37:05,658 --> 00:37:28,084
Kayla: Because it's. Because it has. It's kind of like buying. It's kind of like if you went and got milk straight out of a cow, probably not going to kill you, but it can. And that's why we have processes to, like, pasteurize it. It's like that. It's like how going to the farm and drinking milk out of a cow to eat probably fine, but it can have consequences.

272
00:37:28,172 --> 00:37:36,940
Chris: Okay, so if there's, like, a local beekeeper that is able to, whatever pasteurization is to process their honey, then that would be safe?

273
00:37:36,980 --> 00:37:37,840
Kayla: I think so.

274
00:37:38,390 --> 00:37:39,062
Chris: Okay.

275
00:37:39,166 --> 00:37:57,262
Kayla: I'm not an authority. I'm just here to say that there are upsides and downsides to all of it. And that's why having rules doesn't really fit here. Because if your rule is I never buy honey from the store, well, there's risks to that. And if your rule is I only buy, I never buy honey from beekeepers, well, there's risks to that.

276
00:37:57,286 --> 00:37:58,886
Chris: So this goes back to being able.

277
00:37:58,918 --> 00:38:05,318
Kayla: To eat both, is, you know, that's probably kind of where you have to settle in order to, like, live sanely in this world.

278
00:38:05,414 --> 00:38:12,406
Chris: Well, I think it's very similar to the information trust network that we talk about, and that's also difficult.

279
00:38:12,478 --> 00:38:12,782
Kayla: Right.

280
00:38:12,846 --> 00:38:52,536
Chris: But food is sort of part of that in this modern society we've built, where it's hard to just make your own food, from soup to nuts, so to speak. There's hundreds and hundreds of people involved, from the farmers to the harvesting to the logistics of the food and the refrigeration. I mean, there's just so many pieces to it that I think, again, that's where it comes down to, is, like, how do you know who to trust? And then sometimes it can become difficult to trust or know who. And sometimes that causes people to somewhat give up on it, I think. I mean, that's where a lot of, like, denialism comes in, which is maybe tangential to this.

281
00:38:52,568 --> 00:39:32,604
Chris: Not exactly this, but it comes from, like, when we talked about not to bring up the Rona again, but that guy that I, you know, who I read that said, like, you know, honestly, I'd have to get it to know, right? Or flat earthers that say, like, I don't trust anything that I don't see, and it looks like it's flat to me, and I'm gonna do my own totally bunk science by riding a plane with a, you know, with a level, which we'll talk about at some point. But anyway, it seems like that's maybe a similar situation. It's so hard to know because there's so much information, there's so much food, there's so many people involved in such a complex system that at some point, our brains. Some of our brains kind of just go like, you know what? I don't trust anything.

282
00:39:32,652 --> 00:39:44,800
Chris: So I have to just do clean. Whatever seems clean. I'm gonna try. I'm gonna just pick this instagram influencer because, I don't know, she looks good and she's eating lettuce. I've heard greens are good.

283
00:39:46,620 --> 00:39:56,082
Kayla: Taking on that, to me, it introduces a whole new set of, like, complications to your life.

284
00:39:56,236 --> 00:40:00,022
Chris: And, yeah, I don't think that's a good place to end up, because then.

285
00:40:00,046 --> 00:40:29,498
Kayla: You'Re like, oh, well, this is the way I must eat. And then every single time you sit down to eat a meal, you're thinking about these rules that you have placed on yourself. And so there's so much more stress generated by trying to eat in a certain way, rather than trying to eat in a well rounded way and trusting your body and trusting that if you eat a well rounded diethouse, you will support your health to a maximum level, because stress is also bad for your health.

286
00:40:29,594 --> 00:40:30,018
Chris: Right.

287
00:40:30,114 --> 00:40:42,434
Kayla: Cutting calories and cutting out entire food groups is bad for your health. Like, these. These are things that are bad for your health that don't necessarily have to do with the actual type or quality of food that you're bringing into your body.

288
00:40:42,522 --> 00:40:46,634
Chris: Well, and we've also internalized health equals weight.

289
00:40:46,722 --> 00:40:46,970
Kayla: Right?

290
00:40:47,010 --> 00:41:22,848
Chris: And granted, and I don't know how comfortable I am saying that they're not correlated at all, because, again, I'm not a doctor, but on the other hand, I feel like a lot of us think that they are. That that Venn diagram is basically entirely over. It's a circle, right? And it's not. I mean, is there some overlap? Probably, but it's not the exact same thing. Right? So if you're equating that, if you're equating health to weight, then the only thing that makes you healthier is to lose weight, which means that anything you do in service of that is good. When that may not be the case.

291
00:41:23,024 --> 00:42:11,132
Kayla: That line of thinking is very wrong. Even if health and weight are correlated, which from my understanding, and I follow, I mostly subscribe to the health at every size way of thinking about this, because from what I have read, they seem to be the most up on the actual science to the point where they like health at every size. Food scientists and scientists are. I was reading a book recently called Body Respect, and it's written by Linda Bacon, who I believe now goes by Lindo Bacon. I think that they no longer identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. So Doctor Bacon, PhD, and Lucy Aframore, who is a registered dietitian. And they're kind of like the cutting edge scientists on the health at every size movement.

292
00:42:11,196 --> 00:43:03,760
Kayla: And, like, in reading this book, it was just shocking the amount of good science that often goes unnoticed or gets thrown into the trash by mainstream science, quote, unquote, because it doesn't fit that framework of size, of, like, weight and health overlapping in that way. Like, even to the point where when studies come out that say, oh, this is not correlated in the way that we thought, government officials will go, like, surgeon general type, government officials will go, okay, but also, like, here's the science for publishing it. But also, you should kind of ignore it because health and weight are correlated. It's just kind of like we as a society are really dug into this idea that weight and health are direct correlation, even when our best science doesn't necessarily hold up that correlation is so strong.

293
00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:27,592
Kayla: Sure, there's overlap, but there's also overlap in, like, activity and health. Like, if somebody is of an acceptable, quote unquote BMI, we can get into how BMI is complete bunk and never exercises and only eats, you know, processed Cheetos. They're not necessarily healthier than a fat person who goes for a run twice a week. You know what I mean?

294
00:43:27,696 --> 00:43:39,070
Chris: Right. So are they saying. And I don't want to, like, I know this is potentially, like, a ten hour topic, but are they saying that there is no correlation or there is some. No, it's not as clear as it's been.

295
00:43:39,450 --> 00:43:41,670
Kayla: It's a factor. It's not.

296
00:43:42,050 --> 00:43:57,778
Chris: Yeah. So, yeah. And that, I mean, anecdotally for me, is, like, not a doctor, not a scientist. It feels like it makes sense that it would be a factor, but it also feels like that it's. So often it's the only thing.

297
00:43:57,834 --> 00:43:58,272
Kayla: Right.

298
00:43:58,386 --> 00:44:02,188
Chris: Or it's the only underlying thing, or it's the most important thing. Well.

299
00:44:02,204 --> 00:44:19,132
Kayla: And shitty weight loss products get pushed all the time under the guise of health, like Jenny Craig and Weight watchers. And all this shit is about being your healthiest. You. Even when I don't know what these programs are saying now, but in the past, these programs have been very wrong in their approach to weight loss and healthy eating.

300
00:44:19,236 --> 00:44:50,280
Chris: Right. And you're always congratulated by your friends, your coworkers, your family if you lose weight, and it doesn't matter why you lost it. Like, you could be, like, you know, people lose weight for a lot of different reasons. I mean, I could be going through chemo. You could have anorexia. There's plenty of reasons to not congratulate someone on losing weight. And also, conversely, you know, gaining weight can be very healthy. If you are maybe coming back from chemo or coming back from anorexia, like, it's. Then gaining weight is actually really good.

301
00:44:50,360 --> 00:44:50,600
Kayla: Right?

302
00:44:50,640 --> 00:44:57,572
Chris: So I definitely think that, yeah, there's some. There's a lot of, like, cultural attachment to that, too.

303
00:44:57,716 --> 00:45:37,710
Kayla: And it kind of makes us ignore the science, which, as we've talked many times, that's where, you know, you get into some danger. And then, for me, I think the, like, the purity aspect of all of this bothers me the most. And you see it in how food is advertised, like, down to choice of colors and fonts used on packages. The way that Instagram influencers talk about things. Green smoothies and acai bowls showcased on white linen tables with billowing clouds and words like light and natural and non gmo and good all kind of play into this, where it's like, these foods are good and will help you ascend. And it almost gets spiritual in that way, where it's like, if you eat.

304
00:45:37,750 --> 00:45:40,910
Chris: This, you'll be light enough that you can levitate into the clouds.

305
00:45:40,990 --> 00:45:42,894
Kayla: I mean, we'll get there.

306
00:45:42,942 --> 00:45:44,294
Chris: Is this. Oh, my God. Are we.

307
00:45:44,382 --> 00:45:46,990
Kayla: No, no, it's not what you're thinking. We'll get there.

308
00:45:47,410 --> 00:45:48,950
Chris: We're not doing breath arianism.

309
00:45:49,770 --> 00:45:51,770
Kayla: We'll get there. We'll get to it.

310
00:45:51,890 --> 00:45:52,746
Chris: We'll get to that.

311
00:45:52,778 --> 00:45:53,242
Kayla: We'll get to that.

312
00:45:53,266 --> 00:45:58,418
Chris: We'll get to that. We've trademarked it now. We've totally done that and everything.

313
00:45:58,514 --> 00:46:27,040
Kayla: We'll get to that. Full disclosure, I am someone who's been in eating disorder recovery for more than a decade. So in case you can't tell, I take this shit pretty personally. And when you develop and recover from an eating disorder, you are forced to come face to face with how deep and pervasive and damaging these cultural feelings around food and health can really get. Like, you start, you slowly start to see how slippery of a slope it is from eating healthy to going on a diet to an eating disorder.

314
00:46:27,340 --> 00:46:36,772
Chris: Is it slippery because there's extra virgin olive oil that's clean eating that you slip on? Is that. Is that why it's slippery?

315
00:46:36,796 --> 00:46:37,800
Kayla: I slip you?

316
00:46:38,500 --> 00:46:39,532
Chris: Does that mean anything?

317
00:46:39,596 --> 00:46:51,702
Kayla: No, it doesn't. I've read this statistic multiple times. I'll be sure to link to it. It shocks me every single time. But it's believed that around 25% of people who attempt diets will go on to develop an eating disorder or disordered eating.

318
00:46:51,766 --> 00:46:57,398
Chris: Shit. Okay, I was gonna ask if it's like, is that classical anorexia, bulimia?

319
00:46:57,494 --> 00:47:40,640
Kayla: Well, I mean, we can even get into how the term eating disorder is, what that means, and the terms anorexia and bulimia, what those mean. And when you start to zoom in on that coastline, the lines between things really start to, you know, I'm going to talk about it, so hold that thought. So when you have an eating disorder, you start to see how so many people, and it feels like the vast majority have disordered or unhealthy or unsatisfactory relationships with food. Even if you don't necessarily have an unhealthy relationship where you're like, you know, restricting your calories or doing unhealthy behaviors to not have food in your body, most people, it seems, have an unsatisfying relationship with food. It's adversarial.

320
00:47:41,420 --> 00:48:00,428
Kayla: It's that thing you said where it's like, with this guilt inducing guilt, it's not just like a part of life, it's this, like, stressor. And like, when you have eating disorder, food is the biggest stressor in your life. So it's like, you see how those scale. Like, it kind of. You slide down that virgin olive oil from one.

321
00:48:00,524 --> 00:48:05,894
Chris: You know, you didn't like it at first, but. But now you're using it. So you're welcome for that little medical.

322
00:48:05,942 --> 00:48:07,334
Kayla: Thank you. Thank you.

323
00:48:07,382 --> 00:48:07,822
Chris: Yeah.

324
00:48:07,926 --> 00:48:30,090
Kayla: You start to see how your insane food rules stemmed from already existing notions in society. Like, generally, we can all agree that eating 400 calories a day is unhealthy, but when most diets encourage calorie counting or even, like, intense caloric restriction, you start to see that connection. Okay, well, okay, 400 is bad. Well, what about 800? Okay, what about 1200?

325
00:48:30,210 --> 00:48:31,482
Chris: What about 799?

326
00:48:32,362 --> 00:48:37,538
Kayla: Like, and that purity mentality, why did you say that? What does that mean?

327
00:48:37,674 --> 00:48:42,110
Chris: Because you said 800. So I'm like, if that's not good, then what about 799?

328
00:48:43,050 --> 00:48:46,450
Kayla: 800 calories is considered a starvation diet. Just so we're clear.

329
00:48:46,490 --> 00:48:49,090
Chris: Oh, so we should go. Okay, well, what about 801, then maybe I should have gone the other way.

330
00:48:49,130 --> 00:48:51,266
Kayla: I don't know. Calories are also fake.

331
00:48:51,378 --> 00:48:57,830
Chris: Whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you mean fake? I thought calories were a measure of. That's like a physics measure or a chemistry measure.

332
00:48:57,910 --> 00:49:06,886
Kayla: Yeah, but it also, like, the interaction between individuals and calories is not a one to one.

333
00:49:06,998 --> 00:49:39,630
Chris: So you're saying that the food is telling me what would happen if I essentially. If I burned the food under a pot of water? And that's how much. Because the calorie is just the. And I actually had to look this up because I didn't remember this from physics, but. But it's the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water to one degree celsius. And actually, now it's defined in terms of joules, which. Joules is a measure of energy, not of temperature. But in any case, it's very well defined in physics. So are you saying that it's.

334
00:49:39,750 --> 00:50:14,786
Kayla: I'm saying in food it is not so well defined because in food, it's a little more complicated because the way we understand calories, the way we know, you know, this piece of cheese has this many calories is because a number is printed on a label. And those are not an exact science. And there are. I mean, there's even ways for food companies to kind of manipulate the amount of calories that they put on something. Like a lot of things that are advertised as zero calorie aren't actually zero calorie. They just have few enough calories in them to be called.

335
00:50:14,858 --> 00:50:15,946
Chris: To legally be called.

336
00:50:16,018 --> 00:50:22,196
Kayla: Yes. Like, okay, you know that, like, I can't believe it's. Not butter spray that I love and nobody should eat because it's terrible.

337
00:50:22,348 --> 00:50:23,252
Chris: It terrifies me.

338
00:50:23,276 --> 00:50:27,740
Kayla: Yes, it's, I mean, it's. The ingredients in it are not, it's not, you know, yellow chemicals.

339
00:50:27,780 --> 00:50:29,516
Chris: It is just, it's not cancer spray.

340
00:50:29,548 --> 00:50:35,000
Kayla: It's just like butter salt. It's like a small amount of butter and salt mixed with, like, water. That's basically what it is.

341
00:50:35,660 --> 00:50:36,668
Chris: Oh, you can wait.

342
00:50:36,724 --> 00:50:38,084
Kayla: So it's not a chemical, but it.

343
00:50:38,092 --> 00:50:39,516
Chris: Says, I can't believe it's not butter.

344
00:50:39,588 --> 00:50:42,124
Kayla: It's not butter. It's like milk solids. You know what I mean?

345
00:50:42,132 --> 00:50:43,946
Chris: It's butter extract or something. Okay.

346
00:50:44,028 --> 00:51:07,022
Kayla: But so they're like, this is no calorie for every spray. Well, actually, no, it's like ten. But it's just because it's low enough and different bodies interact differently with these things. Calories on nutrition labels sometimes are more estimates, and then even it goes the other way too. When you're, like, riding a bike at the gym, the amount of calories it's telling you that you're burning isn't necessarily accurate.

347
00:51:07,126 --> 00:51:17,476
Chris: Yeah, I'm sure it's based on some, like, average person that's probably completely different depending on, like, how big your muscles are and how your metabolism works. Incredibly different.

348
00:51:17,548 --> 00:51:19,160
Kayla: Yeah, they're different. So.

349
00:51:19,500 --> 00:51:39,542
Chris: And by the way, the stuff about the calories you're saying kind of makes me feel like, it kind of reminds me what I was saying, you know, ten minutes ago about, can we trust the people that are like, that's what feels like it's shitty in my head about processed food. It's not what happens to the food. It's, can I trust what you're telling me about it?

350
00:51:39,636 --> 00:52:11,280
Kayla: I think what I would argue, and we're not really going to get into this in this episode, and, you know, maybe we can do some bonus content on it, but I, what I would argue is that what you can't, you cannot control what other people are doing, including the people that are making your food, including. You can only control so much. You can control, like, where you buy it, you can control, like, how much food you eat out of your garden or from the farmers market, you can control those things. But what you really want to try and develop a relationship with is being able to trust your body's internal signals.

351
00:52:11,580 --> 00:52:31,100
Kayla: And when you can actually tune into those things and kind of push away everything that we've learned about, like, what is healthy eating, how much should I eat, how many calories should I have? And really just go back to the basics of, like, am I hungry? Am I full? Do I feel like I've had enough vegetables? Do I feel like I'm craving fat? Do I feel like I'm craving carrots?

352
00:52:31,140 --> 00:52:33,212
Chris: Do I feel like I'm craving colloidal silver?

353
00:52:33,276 --> 00:52:35,492
Kayla: Yeah, don't talk to me about it. Well.

354
00:52:35,516 --> 00:52:41,772
Chris: Cause, I mean, my skin is not blue yet, so I'm just. I'm reacting to my body's signal of not having blue skin.

355
00:52:41,876 --> 00:52:42,308
Kayla: No.

356
00:52:42,404 --> 00:52:44,940
Chris: And I would like to eat some colloidal silver to rectify that.

357
00:52:44,980 --> 00:52:58,276
Kayla: No, I would say that the best thing that we can do, our best defense, and our best way to utilize food in a healthy manner is to learn to trust our intuitive eating signals.

358
00:52:58,428 --> 00:53:10,316
Chris: Okay. Because is there any room in there for expertise, though? Also, like. Also, like, could we also say that it's. We should trust science based dietitians, which.

359
00:53:10,468 --> 00:53:20,028
Kayla: If, in my opinion, any dietitian worth their salt will be moving their clients towards an intuitive eating model?

360
00:53:20,124 --> 00:53:21,980
Chris: Iodized salt. Because you need your iodine.

361
00:53:22,020 --> 00:53:52,902
Kayla: Get away. And I do want to point out that this is coming from also a very privileged position. There are people with, you know, that do have to take into account allergies or do have to take into account gluten intolerance and do have to take certain things into account. And also, you can have those. Those real food restrictions and move towards a more intuitive eating model, because if you have those food restrictions, you can start figuring out how to meet your body's needs. You meet your body where it is.

362
00:53:53,006 --> 00:53:53,462
Chris: Right.

363
00:53:53,566 --> 00:54:08,760
Kayla: And, you know, the whole thing behind intuitive eating is that if you are, if you take away all of your restrictions and you actually allow yourself to eat what you want, what your body wants, you will naturally move into the space of a healthy, well rounded diet.

364
00:54:09,820 --> 00:54:28,338
Chris: It seems like a lot of it is just the whole. We're not saying don't listen to experts, but we are saying that bodies are very not one size fits all. Reminds me of that 99% invisible up. Because all we do on this show, by the way, is just talk about other podcasts, basically. Also, I love hardcore history. I'm just gonna throw that in there, because I do.

365
00:54:28,394 --> 00:54:28,794
Kayla: Why not?

366
00:54:28,842 --> 00:55:10,136
Chris: Anyway, there was a 99 PI episode about measuring folks as being average and building. 99 PI is about our built environment, essentially, and the design thereof. And there was a whole episode about the built environments taking into account, like, the average person, and this whole anecdote about how, like, your. Your car seat is built for the average person. And it actually took a long time before car seats were even adjustable the way they are now. And there was. And part of that anecdote was about how like, it was either Navy or air force cockpits, but they were built similarly where there was just one size fits all.

367
00:55:10,328 --> 00:55:28,120
Chris: And when they moved to a model that was more of like adjustable seat and adjustable, you know, throttle and whatever the hell else pilots need, there was like this person that became just like an ace pilot that was this super short lady that never would have been able to fit in an average person cockpit.

368
00:55:29,300 --> 00:55:32,240
Kayla: Because the average person is just an average of all of the persons.

369
00:55:32,660 --> 00:56:14,650
Chris: The average person doesn't exist. And so literally, if you make it for the average person, you are actually making it for nobody. Which was thesis of this episode, right. Is that no matter who sits in the average person's seat, they're going to be uncomfortable in some way, right? So the important thing is not to make an average seat. The important thing is to make a seat that is flexible. The important thing is to make the built environment as much as we can flex to the individuals that exist within it. And when you do that, you enable excellence in areas that may not have been able to access it before. Like if. If the average seat of the cockpit was still how the Navy or air force, sorry, I forget, did things, then this person would be bagging groceries.

370
00:56:14,690 --> 00:56:39,094
Chris: Who knows what she would be doing? But instead, now they got access to this person who apparently had this knack for being a pilot. Anyway, it just reminds me about that because it feels like what you're kind of saying is that particularly for bodies, that there's one. Size doesn't fit all. And, I mean, I was just talking about size. When we get into things like we're talking about today, there's also body chemistry and all kinds of other things.

371
00:56:39,142 --> 00:56:41,662
Kayla: People have different levels widely. Cholesterol. People have different levels of.

372
00:56:41,686 --> 00:56:52,454
Chris: People are born, like, without certain organs. I mean, like, it's just there's such a wide variety of people's bodies and how they process things chemically, physically, how they're set up, how big they are.

373
00:56:52,542 --> 00:57:31,296
Kayla: And I'm not trying to say here that, like, listen to yourself. Don't listen to experts. I'm saying, listen to experts that you know, that you can trust and don't operate on an outdated paradigm of weight and health or direct correlation. One size fits all treatments for everybody. Losing weight is the only thing that we can talk about when we're talking about health. Like find the experts that are actually experts that are up on the current science and that can update their beliefs and viewpoints and that if it smells fishy, it's probably fishy. Like.

374
00:57:31,458 --> 00:57:38,204
Chris: Mm. It's like the fish oil supplement I take, actually, that doesn't smell fishy until I burp. Like, it's fine when I'm taking fishy.

375
00:57:38,212 --> 00:57:39,300
Kayla: When it comes back up, but then.

376
00:57:39,340 --> 00:57:44,980
Chris: Like, a few minutes later, I'll burp and I'll be like, oh, God. Oh, that's some nasty ass fish.

377
00:57:45,100 --> 00:57:47,628
Kayla: And, like, when I talk about intuitive eating and, like, we just lost a.

378
00:57:47,644 --> 00:57:49,292
Chris: Bunch of listeners there, and I talk.

379
00:57:49,316 --> 00:57:59,520
Kayla: About intuitive eating and eating what you want, that doesn't mean, like, it's totally great for your health if you eat cheetos and ice cream every single day, which maybe it is. I don't know.

380
00:57:59,990 --> 00:58:02,214
Chris: Hold on. Cheetos on ice cream?

381
00:58:02,262 --> 00:58:02,814
Kayla: Yeah. Together.

382
00:58:02,902 --> 00:58:07,966
Chris: Together. Because I haven't tried that. And can we pause it so I can go do that?

383
00:58:08,118 --> 00:58:09,374
Kayla: Don't go to the store right now.

384
00:58:09,462 --> 00:58:10,126
Chris: Oh, my God.

385
00:58:10,198 --> 00:58:13,758
Kayla: Social distancing quarantine has another casualty.

386
00:58:13,814 --> 00:58:14,942
Chris: God damn it.

387
00:58:15,086 --> 00:58:33,630
Kayla: I'm saying that a well rounded diet can accommodate some fun foods or trans fats every once in a while. Don't eat trans fats. But you know what I mean? Like, if you eat one thing of trans fat once a year, I try to do that.

388
00:58:33,670 --> 00:58:38,174
Chris: I try to. I try to eat, like, a little cube of just plain old trans fat.

389
00:58:38,222 --> 00:58:42,046
Kayla: That's not going to really have an effect on your health.

390
00:58:42,238 --> 00:58:42,614
Chris: Right?

391
00:58:42,662 --> 00:58:50,094
Kayla: If you have a well rounded diet that supports your health, then you have room to be able to eat a cookie when you want a cookie or a whatever.

392
00:58:50,142 --> 00:58:56,970
Chris: When you're eating the cookie, focus on why you're eating the cookie. I'm eating a cookie because it's fun to eat a cookie, and I'm gonna enjoy this goddamn cookie.

393
00:58:57,010 --> 00:58:57,354
Kayla: Right?

394
00:58:57,442 --> 00:59:02,898
Chris: Don't think, like, oh, my God, I'm gonna eat this cookie and go to my hips.

395
00:59:02,954 --> 00:59:03,730
Kayla: That actually.

396
00:59:03,890 --> 00:59:05,418
Chris: Not to make fun of people.

397
00:59:05,514 --> 00:59:38,950
Kayla: No. We know why we live in a society where a lot of us feel guilty about eating certain things. But the dirty little secret is that having that guilt about food, the science says that guilt actually makes you end up eating more, because if you are, the whole time you're eating a cookie, you're thinking about how bad it is and how guilty you are and feeling so bad about yourself. A, you're missing out on the experience of physically eating the cookie to the point where it's like you didn't even fucking eat a cookie because you weren't present for it. And then also, you have all of these bad feelings that you're going to then need to soothe, which we often do with food.

398
00:59:39,070 --> 00:59:51,630
Kayla: And then also, you're doing the self defeating thing of, like, I'm just terrible, and I'm just gonna eat 100 cookies forever. And, well, then you're going to do what your brain is telling you to do, which is you're saying, I'm eating 100 cookies. So then you're going to eat 100 cookies.

399
00:59:51,750 --> 00:59:59,902
Chris: Right. And then depending on the cookie, it may be engineered. I mean, that's a whole other thing that we could talk about is food engineering.

400
01:00:00,006 --> 01:00:00,366
Kayla: Right.

401
01:00:00,438 --> 01:00:09,678
Chris: And that dovetails into the whole process thing. But I don't know if I want to do that. Cause I actually wanted to ask you a question. Are we talking about a cult today?

402
01:00:09,814 --> 01:00:10,126
Kayla: Yes.

403
01:00:10,158 --> 01:00:15,522
Chris: We'll get there, because I'm just. We'll get to it as the designated recorder today.

404
01:00:15,626 --> 01:00:20,434
Kayla: Oh, my God. We've been going for an hour. Maybe this will be two episodes.

405
01:00:20,482 --> 01:00:26,266
Chris: This will definitely be two episodes. So, yeah, like, what are we talking about?

406
01:00:26,298 --> 01:00:33,554
Kayla: Okay, we'll get to that. So when you're eating a cookie, try to enjoy the fact that you're eating the cookie and really connect to it, and then you'll probably not eat 100 cookies.

407
01:00:33,602 --> 01:00:41,512
Chris: Oh, sorry. One exception to that. Oatmeal raisin cookies. Don't enjoy oatmeal raisin cookies because they're evil. You know why they're evil?

408
01:00:41,576 --> 01:00:43,088
Kayla: Because they're masquerading as a chocolate chip cookie.

409
01:00:43,104 --> 01:01:10,032
Chris: They're masquerading as a chocolate chip cookie. So you like, oh, there's chocolate chip cookies. And then you go to eat one, and you're, like, you're expecting that delicious, like, chocolate chip cookie dough, that smooth dough with the little bits of chocolate, and then you wind up with this, like, rough oatmeal. Mealy, mealy raisin. And, you know, like, if they weren't masquerading as chocolate chip cookies, it would be fine, even if they're an okay cookie.

410
01:01:10,096 --> 01:01:14,730
Kayla: Oatmeal cookie or an oatmeal chocolate. I'm down. I'm deliciously down for this.

411
01:01:14,810 --> 01:01:23,058
Chris: Yeah. It's just that it's. It's. It's a stealth thing. It's. You know what it is? It's exactly like what I was talking about. You can't trust it.

412
01:01:23,114 --> 01:01:23,722
Kayla: You can't trust it.

413
01:01:23,746 --> 01:01:24,314
Chris: You can't trust.

414
01:01:24,402 --> 01:01:25,578
Kayla: Be who you are cookie.

415
01:01:25,674 --> 01:01:30,570
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. You should be, like, green or something so I can determine that you're not a chocolate chip cookie.

416
01:01:30,650 --> 01:01:33,066
Kayla: Well, going back to our topic, I guess.

417
01:01:33,098 --> 01:01:33,978
Chris: Oh, that wasn't the topic.

418
01:01:34,034 --> 01:01:34,418
Kayla: No.

419
01:01:34,514 --> 01:01:34,834
Chris: Oh.

420
01:01:34,882 --> 01:02:19,512
Kayla: So were talking about the purity mentality. That kind of goes along with a lot of how we talk about food and health. And that purity mentality, it pervades even in eating disorder and eating disorder treatment. In my experience and the experience of others that I know well, there are very few people with eating disorders who only engage in one type of behavior. So this is kind of going back to what you were talking about with, like, anorexia and bulimia. Anorexia is generally defined as, like, it's not defined as, but anorexia is generally associated with, like, you restrict your calories over exercise, and bulimia is often associated with, you purge the food that you eat in some way after a period of binging. And very few people diagnosed with one of those diagnoses only engage in one set of behaviors.

421
01:02:19,536 --> 01:03:06,686
Kayla: Like that is, people with anorexia often also include purging and binging along with their restriction and over exercising. And people with bulimia often include restriction and over exercising in their behaviors. Even with all of this, a strange type of hierarchy emerges among the diagnoses. It's kind of like this unspoken thing, but people who only restrict and never include binging or purging, but mostly the binging in their behaviors, are somehow more pure or better than patients who do binge and purge. It's like this weird hierarchy purity thing where it's like, oh, if you're able to just abstain from food entirely, you're like, magical. Whereas if you're someone, you're like a monk. Yeah, you're like a monk. You're, like, ascetic. It takes, again, that, like, weird purity spirituality thing.

422
01:03:06,718 --> 01:03:22,150
Kayla: Whereas if you're somebody who still does eat food and ends up getting rid of it's not as good, quote unquote. It's like you're doing something that's worse than only restricting, again, purity thing. I'll do a full episode on that culture, but for now, I just wanted touch on it, give some background.

423
01:03:22,190 --> 01:03:26,518
Chris: Yeah, we're toasting. We're touching on it, and it's minute 56 of the recording.

424
01:03:26,574 --> 01:03:56,248
Kayla: We're almost getting to what the topic is. So given all of this, I do want to say that pursuing a healthy lifestyle isn't a pointless or villainous goal. I know that I feel my best when I'm getting a balanced, well rounded diet that includes food eaten for nutrition as well as food eaten for fun and incorporating exercise and movement that I truly enjoy most days of the week and getting enough sleep and incorporating meditation, et cetera, et cetera. That makes my life better.

425
01:03:56,304 --> 01:04:15,856
Chris: Personally, I try to. When I think I don't like to use the word exercise with myself anymore, like, I like to use training when I'm doing something like lifting heavy weights because it feels more like exercise to me. Just has this like, weird sort of connotation now, you know, where it's like, you gotta exercise, exercise, right? Whereas training feels more purposeful, goal oriented.

426
01:04:15,968 --> 01:04:16,264
Kayla: Right.

427
01:04:16,312 --> 01:04:42,990
Chris: I like to do, like, for me, a big motivator for that is progression in, you know, when you lift weights, like a lot of it is about like, oh, I lifted more today than I did yesterday. And I'm getting to this goal and it just feels better, it feels more natural. And then when it's not something weightlifting oriented, I like to just use like, activity or something because I'm like, oh, go play basketball. Like, that's not because I want to exercise, it's because moving is good for my internal well being.

428
01:04:43,070 --> 01:05:17,510
Kayla: Oh, I know for me that once I stopped and, like, trying to exercise in a way that was like related to weight loss or changing the way my body looked, I exercise so much more now that I exercise to do things that I enjoy. Like, I mostly just take dance classes now, and not because I want to be a better dancer or want to lose weight or want to change my body, but because I like to move my body in that way and it feels good and I exercise. So, like, at this point in my life, I exercise. So I put I have activity in my life so much more than I think I ever have. That maybe when I was like a kid and actually, like, actually a dancer, right?

429
01:05:17,810 --> 01:05:23,954
Chris: Yeah, same, except for when I was in college and had time to go to the gym and play basketball for like 8 hours a day.

430
01:05:24,002 --> 01:06:07,342
Kayla: Right? Different, different lifestyles. College make different things happen. So I'm not saying that the pursuit of health or a healthy lifestyle is pointless or bad. I'm just saying that pursuit isn't as cut and dried as we want to believe, and there's no single path to it, which we know, because humans have been trying to achieve wellness for basically as long as we've existed as a thing. And given that there's no single path, that we have an obsession with this pursuit and that the pursuit gets tied up in morality. A lot of different methods have been developed to help people achieve wellness. Some of these methods, great, backed by science, work for people. Awesome. Some of them don't like think about, like, fucking, I guess. No, the leeches thing does work, but, like, bloodletting, for certain. No bloodletting.

431
01:06:07,366 --> 01:06:12,050
Chris: Is that okay? But again, there's certain. Some things it works for, some things it doesn't.

432
01:06:12,090 --> 01:06:21,714
Kayla: Right, right. Putting maggots on you, that works. Colloidal silver doesn't work bad for you. Whatever. There's different methods that have been.

433
01:06:21,762 --> 01:06:22,458
Chris: Turns you blue.

434
01:06:22,514 --> 01:06:49,348
Kayla: Turns you blue. If you want. If you like that, go ahead. So a lot of methods have been created to help people achieve wellness. Some methods have been around for a few hundred years. You know, dieting, western medicine. Some have been around for thousands. Traditional chinese medicine, meditation. Some methods seem to come and go as cyclical fads. Like, think about how Atkins was a huge thing, and then that kind of fell out, and now keto is a huge thing, and they're very similar.

435
01:06:49,444 --> 01:06:57,508
Chris: Yeah, like, come on, man. The keto thing, when that first started becoming a thing, I was like, wait, you guys are just talking about Atkins?

436
01:06:57,684 --> 01:07:00,508
Kayla: It is a completely different thing. It is a completely different thing.

437
01:07:00,564 --> 01:07:09,364
Chris: Isn't it? Just, like, no carbs. Like, don't eat carbs. I remember them talking about going into ketosis as part of the Atkins diet thing. That was.

438
01:07:09,452 --> 01:07:18,468
Kayla: It's different in the way that I. That they were developed. The keto diet was developed specifically to help children who had epilepsy.

439
01:07:18,604 --> 01:07:19,348
Chris: Oh.

440
01:07:19,524 --> 01:07:20,100
Kayla: I think.

441
01:07:20,180 --> 01:07:20,860
Chris: Does it help them?

442
01:07:20,900 --> 01:07:28,038
Kayla: Let me. I'm actually not sure how efficacious it is. I think that it can be. And then it also can't be. I'm not. I'm not a.

443
01:07:28,124 --> 01:07:28,882
Chris: For epilepsy.

444
01:07:28,946 --> 01:07:29,378
Kayla: Yeah.

445
01:07:29,474 --> 01:07:29,898
Chris: Okay.

446
01:07:29,954 --> 01:07:32,070
Kayla: Yeah, I'm not a doctor. Not a doctor.

447
01:07:32,490 --> 01:07:32,778
Chris: So.

448
01:07:32,794 --> 01:07:50,562
Kayla: Yeah, so, like, we can see how sometimes they're cyclical. Some things claim to be based on ancient science when they really aren't. Including, like, the Paleo diet. Not knocking the Paleo diet. I'm just saying that the way we do paleo is. Does not reflect the way our ancestors, our caveman ancestors ate.

449
01:07:50,666 --> 01:07:51,314
Chris: Right.

450
01:07:51,482 --> 01:08:11,000
Kayla: And some things seem to keep coming back over and over in different packages each time and float effortlessly between hard, real science and woo. And I want to focus one of those effortless floaters today, because today I want to talk about fasting.

451
01:08:12,900 --> 01:08:15,684
Chris: Wait, fasting itself as a cult?

452
01:08:15,772 --> 01:08:16,399
Kayla: Yes.

453
01:08:16,899 --> 01:08:19,298
Chris: Isn't that just, like, a thing to do?

454
01:08:19,484 --> 01:08:20,413
Kayla: We'll get to that.

455
01:08:20,502 --> 01:08:25,294
Chris: Wait, so was there, like, a charismatic leader to fasting? Like. Like a fasting.

456
01:08:25,381 --> 01:08:43,350
Kayla: I picked this topic before I did any research, so we'll find out together. But, yeah, today I want to talk about fasting. And given that our last episode was, like, all about experts and we talked about doing more interviews and stuff, I wanted to make sure to get someone on today that we can interview about this topic.

457
01:08:43,470 --> 01:08:43,990
Chris: Ooh.

458
01:08:44,069 --> 01:08:48,819
Kayla: And luckily, we don't have to look any further than our very own co host, Chris.

459
01:08:49,158 --> 01:08:49,831
Chris: Wait, what?

460
01:08:49,895 --> 01:08:51,099
Kayla: I'm gonna interview you.

461
01:08:51,519 --> 01:08:53,470
Chris: Me? Yeah, about fasting.

462
01:08:53,495 --> 01:08:54,975
Kayla: I'm gonna interview you for the podcast.

463
01:08:55,087 --> 01:08:56,983
Chris: Oh, is it? Cause I do intermittent fasting?

464
01:08:57,031 --> 01:09:01,622
Kayla: Yes. Is that okay? Are you okay to talk about it?

465
01:09:01,751 --> 01:09:02,135
Chris: Sure.

466
01:09:02,207 --> 01:09:03,863
Kayla: Are you okay to be interviewed about it?

467
01:09:03,991 --> 01:09:10,899
Chris: Yeah. Well, yeah, for our listeners, I frequently engage intermittent fasting.

468
01:09:11,519 --> 01:09:12,654
Kayla: You don't have to explain it now.

469
01:09:12,687 --> 01:09:14,479
Chris: I won't explain it. Cause you're gonna interview me.

470
01:09:14,519 --> 01:09:15,215
Kayla: We'll get to that.

471
01:09:15,287 --> 01:09:30,852
Chris: We will get to that. So I. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I am more than happy to answer questions. I have no idea what you're gonna ask me. I don't wanna, like, preempt it by talking about my experience with it just yet because I'm assuming you'll be asking me these questions.

472
01:09:30,876 --> 01:09:32,036
Kayla: Oh, I have questions.

473
01:09:32,188 --> 01:09:32,756
Chris: All right.

474
01:09:32,828 --> 01:09:35,600
Kayla: And we're actually gonna get to that.

475
01:09:35,939 --> 01:09:41,308
Chris: A next time on the next episode of Cult. Or just weird.

476
01:09:41,404 --> 01:09:51,550
Kayla: So this was kind of, like all preamble, all set up, all introducing the topic and our expert witness. You're not actually an expert. You're not actually an expert. Chris is not actually an expert.

477
01:09:51,590 --> 01:09:52,270
Chris: But I'm a witness.

478
01:09:52,350 --> 01:10:12,788
Kayla: You are a witness. And you are somebody who actively utilizes fasting in your day to day. And so I really wanna talk about it with you. So, for our listeners, that's where we're gonna. That's where we're gonna end this today. But you definitely wanna check out the next episode. We're gonna talk about the different kinds of fasting that there are. We're gonna get into our interview with Chris.

479
01:10:12,894 --> 01:10:18,096
Chris: Yeah, the interview is really the catch there. That's, like, what you're really here for. The rest of it is just whatever.

480
01:10:18,208 --> 01:10:20,304
Kayla: And then we'll talk about some history, and then we'll talk about some crazy stories.

481
01:10:20,352 --> 01:10:24,024
Chris: So, yeah, mainly it's all about me.

482
01:10:24,112 --> 01:10:24,800
Kayla: Yes.

483
01:10:24,960 --> 01:10:26,224
Chris: Oh, I like this episode.

484
01:10:26,272 --> 01:10:31,712
Kayla: Me too. So thanks for being a guinea pig for our first ever host interview.

485
01:10:31,896 --> 01:10:34,064
Chris: Shit. Now I feel like I need to interview you about something.

486
01:10:34,152 --> 01:10:36,072
Kayla: I'm in a lot of cults, so you probably have something.

487
01:10:36,136 --> 01:10:42,194
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. You occasionally step into that little pile of mess sometimes.

488
01:10:42,322 --> 01:10:42,826
Kayla: Often.

489
01:10:42,938 --> 01:10:45,730
Chris: I guess I'll just interview you about your Ahagao sweatshirt.

490
01:10:45,810 --> 01:10:46,306
Kayla: Perfect.

491
01:10:46,418 --> 01:10:46,754
Chris: Yeah.

492
01:10:46,802 --> 01:10:47,386
Kayla: Is that a call?

493
01:10:47,458 --> 01:10:49,898
Chris: I wanted to call back to the start of the episode.

494
01:10:49,954 --> 01:10:51,282
Kayla: He wants to just make fun of me as much as he can.

495
01:10:51,306 --> 01:10:52,546
Chris: I love callbacks.

496
01:10:52,618 --> 01:11:04,074
Kayla: You do? Well, anyways, listeners, we are excited to bring you the rest of this topic, but in the meantime, get in touch with us if you need anything in these crazy times. Cultured justwordmail.com dot.

497
01:11:04,162 --> 01:11:06,916
Chris: Wait. If you need anything. Yeah, like, anything at all.

498
01:11:06,988 --> 01:11:08,560
Kayla: Yeah, I mean, we'll see what we can do.

499
01:11:09,980 --> 01:11:13,420
Chris: Well, yeah, now I'm interested to see. Are they gonna ask us for a million dollars? I don't know.

500
01:11:13,460 --> 01:11:19,044
Kayla: Can't do that. But, like, I don't know if you need some groceries or if you need, like, ear. If you need somebody to, like, you.

501
01:11:19,052 --> 01:11:21,164
Chris: Know, we have listeners literally across the globe.

502
01:11:21,252 --> 01:11:23,700
Kayla: Well, if you need something, like, shoot us an email.

503
01:11:23,740 --> 01:11:27,840
Chris: And somebody in Tanzania is gonna be like, I need help with groceries. And we're gonna be like.

504
01:11:28,180 --> 01:11:34,076
Kayla: And then we go on the podcast, and we say, dear listeners, across the globe, we have somebody in Tanzania who needs help.

505
01:11:34,148 --> 01:11:34,722
Chris: All right.

506
01:11:34,836 --> 01:11:36,110
Kayla: Help us if you can.

507
01:11:36,230 --> 01:11:36,734
Chris: That's fair.

508
01:11:36,782 --> 01:11:39,950
Kayla: We have a little platform here we can use. Do some good with it.

509
01:11:39,990 --> 01:11:41,014
Chris: Tiny little platform.

510
01:11:41,062 --> 01:11:46,934
Kayla: Teensy tiny. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and whatever the fuck else. I don't know.

511
01:11:47,062 --> 01:11:54,662
Chris: Rate us. Subscribe to anything or something. We have subs. You can subscribe to podcasts, right? That's a thing?

512
01:11:54,766 --> 01:11:55,478
Kayla: Podcasts?

513
01:11:55,534 --> 01:11:58,310
Chris: Yeah, yeah. Like, share, subscribe. Something like that.

514
01:11:58,350 --> 01:12:00,592
Kayla: Something like that. Anyway, I'm. Hi, I'm Kayla.

515
01:12:00,656 --> 01:12:01,344
Chris: And I'm Chris.

516
01:12:01,432 --> 01:13:06,100
Kayla: And this has been cult or just weird. Hey, listeners, this is just a quick note to let you know that after we recorded this episode, Chris and I decided to do a little bit more research into the topic of clean eating to make sure were presenting the most accurate information. We ended up talking about it for a lot longer than we expected. So instead of turning this episode into a six hour marathon, we actually took our conversation about clean eating over to our Patreon as bonus content. And as you know, during the pandemic, our Patreon content is free. So head over to patreon.com culture. Just weird. If you want to learn more about clean eating, thanks.