Unveiling the Truth Behind Food Fads: Essential Nutrition Advice for Women’s Health and Mindful Eating Choices

Are you tired of navigating the murky waters of health advice that seems more like a marketing ploy than genuine guidance? Join host Heather Carey in this eye-opening episode of Real Food Stories, where she delves into the world of alternative medicine, food fads and the questionable practices of some practitioners, including naturopaths and chiropractors. With the supplement industry largely unregulated, the term “natural” has become a buzzword that often misleads consumers. Heather shines a light on how popular figures like Dr. Steve Gundry and Dr. Josh Axe promote unproven health theories, food fads and pricey supplements that exploit our fears about health. This episode encourages you to question the narratives surrounding alternative health claims and to seek out credible, science-based information for your nutrition and health needs.

As a culinary nutritionist, Heather shares her personal food journeys and offers invaluable nutrition advice that prioritizes whole foods over costly products. She emphasizes the importance of healthy eating tips that are both accessible and sustainable, particularly for women navigating midlife and menopause. With a focus on mindful eating practices, Heather invites listeners to reflect on their food beliefs and the cultural influences that shape our eating habits.

Throughout the episode, listeners will gain insights into cooking for health and the culinary techniques that can enhance their meals without breaking the bank. Heather also tackles common weight loss myths and encourages a balanced approach to nutrition that embraces the seven pillars of abundance. By sharing stories and recipes, she highlights the joy of cooking and the importance of family food traditions in fostering a healthy lifestyle.

As Heather navigates the landscape of women’s health and nutrition, she advocates for a shift away from food fads and trends that promise quick fixes. Instead, she champions a return to the roots of real food stories, where nourishing our bodies with whole, unprocessed foods is the ultimate goal. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to overcome food confusion and embrace a healthier, more fulfilling relationship with food.

So, if you’re ready to break free from the constraints of misleading health advice and embark on a journey towards true wellness, tune in to this enlightening episode of Real Food Stories with Heather Carey. Your midlife body deserves it!

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Transcript:

Speaker #0
Well, hi everybody and welcome back. And if you’re just tuning in with me for the very first time, it’s so nice to meet you and I’m very glad you are here with me. I am your host, Heather Carey, nutritionist, chef, mom, and a woman who has been around the block with food. I want to open up about real food in relationship to health, weight, and our bodies so you can make peace with what you sweet. So last podcast, I told you that since it is the month of October, I’m going to highlight a couple of the spooky and scary things going on in the world of food and nutrition. Last time, I called out a couple of the quacks, the medical professionals who pose as food gurus in order to sell books, supplements, and other products for their gain and your loss. Now, these doctors play on your fears and vulnerability, especially because doctors earn a lot of respect in our culture, and rightfully so. But with all that power comes a lot of responsibility. And it is my belief that doctors should never practice outside their scope of expertise, nor should they capitalize and make a buck at your expense. Now, I highlighted a few of the wacky doctors, and I will point out more in future podcasts. Because they are the authors of books you may have read and been curious about, such as The Plant Paradox by Dr. Steve Gundry. Have you heard about this one? This is a doozy. He calls out even vegetables and beans as being bad for you. And somehow, with people full of fear, he has thousands of reviews on Amazon. He has also, of course, followed up with the Plant Paradox cookbook as if doctors are now suddenly chefs. And no doctor turned health guru can be complete without a keto version of his original book called Unlocking the Keto Code. I’m going to save the rest of my rant about Dr. Gundry for another podcast because this one is too good. But here’s the short of it. His poisonous lectin theory, it’s not true. And that’s all I’ll leave you with for right now. This week, I wanted to go even further and call out the other quacky people out in the world, the ones who are allowed to call themselves doctors. Naturopaths and chiropractors are legally allowed to be called doctor of naturopathy or doctor of chiropractic, but take note that naturopaths and chiropractors are not medical doctors. A naturopath is a person who practices quote, natural medicine. They both carry a lot of prestige in the alternative medical community. I’ve seen a lot of people in my practice tell me about their experience with their doctor, and after some questions, I realized that they are actually talking about somebody alternative, like their naturopath or chiropractor. Now, naturopaths and chiropractors claim that they practice natural medicine. whatever that means. What I do know is that in the world of food and food packaging, the word natural is entirely meaningless. There is no clear definition for what the word means. So if you see a food label that says all natural ingredients or made with natural flavors, just be aware. Let’s be clear. The word natural sells food products. When the food package it. says all natural, and it’s wrapped up in nice earth-toned containers, you feel a little safer. The next time you walk into a grocery store, start scanning labels, especially in the middle aisles where most of the packaged and processed food is. Look to see how many foods have the words all natural or made from all natural ingredients. Anything from soda to snack foods to packaged chicken. has the word natural on the label, and it is completely without definition. Now that you know about the abuse of the word natural, is it any wonder why the combination of natural plus doctor is so powerful? When you’re suspicious of medicine because doctors may have let you down, your medical doctor I’m talking about, combined with a health professional who is not only you knowledgeable about medicine, but also using natural ways to heal you. This can be very powerful conditioning. So what does a chiropractor do exactly? I think that most people seek out chiropractors if they’re in pain, and that is what they were originally trained to do. Chiropractors promise a lot of action rather than simply prescribing pain medication, which they are not licensed to do. Chiropractors believe that the spine, which is out of alignment, can cause a cascade of dysfunction, especially in the nervous system. And this is understandable. With all the fear around addiction, especially to opioids or the fear and risk of surgery, if we can find an alternative way to relieve our pain, let’s do it. So let’s focus on naturopaths. Naturopaths apparently get similar training that a medical student might get in the first four years of med school. But then… that is where the road splits. And this is where it unravels for a naturopath. Naturopaths then go on to get additional specialized training in unproven modalities such as homeopathy, herbalism, or acupuncture. And they, quote, use the wisdom of nature to heal their patients, whatever that means. Both naturopaths and chiropractors practice a variety of modalities to help their patients. So besides some of the obvious for chiropractors, like making adjustments on your spine, some of the more notable include food sensitivity testing, live blood analysis, iridology, which is looking at your eyes to look for any dysfunction, functional pathology testing. And applied kinesiology, which is using your muscles and holding a poisonous substance in your hand to test for weakness. Totally unfounded and totally unproven. So let’s talk about the common denominators of who these people are. These alternative doctors want to influence you with unconventional cures because they all seem to emphasize the same rhetoric. The belief is that real medical doctors are not natural, nor do they get to the root cause of illness, and they are only interested in treating symptoms and not the underlying reasons for not being well or being overweight or having other health issues. These alternative doctors sell high-priced supplements, promote high-priced food products, order high-priced testing that is not credible, and you Lifestyles that are seemingly impossible to maintain. In my experience, almost every client I have seen has been to a naturopath or chiropractor at least once that has ordered food sensitivity testing that ultimately tells my clients that they are allergic to 50 foods they need to stay away from. People come to see me after they see these doctors confused and totally overwhelmed. So let’s call out a couple of these perpetrators, shall we? So first in the lineup, Dr. Joshua Axe. Dr. Axe is a doctor of chiropractic, certified doctor of natural medicine, which apparently I’ve learned is different than naturopathy, but I’m not sure how these two differ, and is, quote, teaching healthy lifestyle choices. non-invasive assessment techniques, and guidance in self-care and disease prevention in accordance with traditional natural healing philosophies. Dr. Axe is also a clinical nutritionist with a passion to help people eat healthy and live a healthy lifestyle. He doesn’t mention where he got all of these degrees from or certifications. which is puzzling to me personally, because you would think that people who went to credible schools like to talk about their credible schools on their site, just like I do. That is a lot of doctoring and schooling for selling pseudoscience and supplements on a website. Dr. Axe has also made many public appearances, most notably at least six times on the Dr. Oz show. Now, if you listened to my last podcast, I talk about the king of all quacks, Dr. Oz. So take a listen if you haven’t yet. Dr. Axe is an expert on everything. Women’s hormone balance, intermittent fasting, keto, paleo. If it’s trending, then he is promoting. Dr. Axe sells loads of supplements and essential oils. It’s a free-for-all of take-this-just-in-case philosophy. For example, for women in midlife, he recommends that you take his fermented multivitamins, which is about $45 for a 30-day supply, a probiotic collagen powder, $50 for a 30-day supply, and his functional mushrooms and adaptogens. Those are $30. Now, heart. supplements and diet-y kind of add-ins right now are collagen powder and bone broth, which are suddenly the cure-all for just about everything. And he sells those as well on his website. When something is the answer to everything that ails you, buyer, beware. A few years ago, it seemed to be coconut oil, then it was going gluten-free, and now high-priced processed chicken stock, which… That really is what it is. But when all of these doctors are promoting food as medicine and eating for a healthy lifestyle, why not just show people how to really use food? You do not need to buy high-priced supplements to make a difference in your health. Health does not have to cost you. Actually, and this might sound crazy, but I’m making my own bone broth right now. It’s simmering in my slow cooker. This is how I made it. I roasted a chicken and used those bones. I added in some carrots, some onion, celery, ginger, and garlic. And I can guarantee you this will cost me pennies compared to the collagen-rich chicken stock that is going to cost me $50 for a month supply from Dr. Axe. The recipe is on my website, by the way, and I will put a link in the show notes. Dr. Axe sells probiotics too. But why not get your probiotics from foods like yogurt or sauerkraut or kimchi versus taking them in an unregulated supplement? I mentioned this in last week’s podcast. Remember, all things that Dr. Axe is selling you are supplements which are unregulated by the FDA. You have no idea what is in there, how much, and if the amount is safe. Supplements are allowed to make claims based on teeny tiny studies and very limited research. And there is no one monitoring the validity of these supplements. Dr. X is literally not promoting anything more scientific than what you would see on an Instagram health coach’s page. In one post, he waxes poetic about the use of ginger shots, an elixir made from juicing ginger, cayenne, turmeric, and other add-ins. He claims that his list of impressive ingredients will help in 12 areas. The most notable, you will lose weight, you’ll boost your immune system, it will help with your heart, lower cholesterol, support hydration, and the list just goes on and on. I at first had read about Dr. Axe a few years back when he started to heavily promote the use of essential oils to cure, well, just about everything. Essential oils are one of those alluring products that are straight out of the snake oil handbook. I like essential oils, don’t get me wrong. They smell good. They make my house and office smell good. I like using them in massage oils or in a bath. But to cure me of cancer or balance my hormones, that’s a no. There is no solid scientific research pointing to the proven health benefits of essential oils. Try telling someone with full-blown panic attacks to simply sprinkle lavender oil on their pillow every night, and they actually might harm you. Now, nonetheless, the essential oil business, like the supplement business, is a multi-billion dollar industry and not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Not only that, some essential oils can be flat-out dangerous. Some oils, like that innocent lavender oil or tea tree oil, can actually disrupt normal functioning of hormones. The point for today’s podcast, because I’m going to deep dive on some of these questionable alternative modalities in a later podcast, is that practitioners like Dr. Axe call themselves doctors promoting a food as medicine philosophy, but beneath it all, they’re simply making loads of money selling high-priced supplements and oils that are not proven to work. It’s always food first, for me at least. Supplements are just that. They are a supplement. And more important, just because all of these alternative doctors are going crazy for the keto diet and intermittent fasting. Just stick with the basics. Now, speaking of supplements and senseless doctor-type people, let’s talk about Kellyanne Petrucci. Dr. Petrucci, or Dr. Kellyanne, as she calls herself on her website, is a naturopath who, according to her website and other internet sources, trained at an institute in Switzerland of unknown years ago. and now calls herself a doctor who seemingly makes a ton of money on her bone broth diets and other cleanses and detox. She is loaded with celebrity endorsements, which is one of the oldest tricks in the book. If you see celebrities waxing poetic about something or somebody, you suddenly feel validated. The thing I like about Dr. Kellyanne is that she’s not trying to hide anything. She has some Random training here and there. She also went to chiropractic school. She calls herself a doctor. She is, quote, a board-certified naturopathic physician and a certified nutrition consultant. And like Dr. Axe, she is all the things. Lots of certifications. Yet too many things seem to render your education just useless. It’s confusing. I don’t exactly know what she is and what she specializes in. But no matter, because Kellyanne is transparent. She is the natural doctor to the stars, has loads of celeb endorsements, is a bone broth expert, and an anti-aging expert. Kellyanne gets right to the point on her homepage of her website. She is selling you, period. She is selling her books on the bone broth diet. her bone broth and collagen powders, her fiber bars, and all of her supplements. She has photos of herself in a lab coat with a stethoscope around her neck for effect, and she blogs her conversations with celebrities. She, of course, has a follow-up cookbook for her bone broth diet, and also a couple of other books on cleansing, on detoxing, and overall just getting rid of that. horrible belly fat. What is it with bone broth and collagen powders that are all the rage right now? As if bone broth has just been unearthed from the ruins and discovered as a secret formula for a long, healthy life. Bone broth has been around for a long time. When I went to cooking school, though, we called it stock, chicken stock, vegetable stock, beef stock. Stocks are the basis for making food taste great. And suddenly they are the cure. for everything. Go figure. What I do know is that these are products that promise and products that sell. Okay, so I have a bonus for you. Anthony Williams, aka the medical medium, is neither a naturopath nor is he a chiropractor. Rather, Williams is a psychic. He has zero medical training. He has zero training at all for anything that I can find, except for one story of how he diagnosed his grandma with lung cancer when he was a young boy because he just saw it. Since then, the medical medium has sold millions of books on all sorts of far-off craziness. He has a huge celebrity following amongst others. It’s true. truly senseless and mind-boggling. This one endlessly fascinates me. Anthony Williams claims he has psychic abilities and ways to cure certain diseases. He derives these cures through what he calls spirit and the guardian angels. Anthony Williams has absolutely no medical training and he’s also been a featured guest on other pseudoscience websites like Gwyneth Paltrow’s goop.com. Now, William’s real claim to fame and what got my attention, because I have had a number of people ask me, is an entire book he wrote on celery juicing. The spirit came to him and proclaimed that juicing and drinking celery juice daily would cure everything from general fatigue and anxiety to other illnesses. Name it, it cures it. His other big claim to fame is the dire warnings he has regarding the Epstein-Barr virus. Now, a little background on the Epstein-Barr virus. Almost all of us have it living in our bodies. Epstein-Barr is the virus that’s responsible for mono that you likely got as a teenager. And like many viruses, Epstein-Barr can lie dormant in your body for decades. While it’s recently been linked to some autoimmune diseases, like MS, for example, the medical medium claims that the Epstein-Barr virus causes all of your illnesses. He makes many suggestions for foods to eat and the links they have to assisting the removal of Epstein-Barr, such as common foods like spinach or garlic, both of which are entirely unproven. You can’t just remove. the Epstein-Barr virus from your body. His books are best sellers. He has a plethora of products for sale on his website through his Amazon store, millions of followers on Instagram, and tons of celebrity endorsements, which are meaningless as we know, but I imagine gets the attention of unsuspecting converts. He also has an incredible amount of people who have bought hundreds of pounds of celery. juicers, and other new equipment to make juice. But celery juice? Yes, celery juice, the cure for all that ills you, including addiction, digestive issues, and mental disorders. One 16-ounce glass a day, ordered from God, those are his words, to help with literally everything. This is insane. So my question for all of this, how does this happen? How do you people latch onto ideas of alternative doctors saying that their ways of healing are life-changing or will make a huge difference in your health, and they fall for it. Now, there’s a couple things. Rather, there’s probably a lot of things, but a couple of my favorites and things to look out for when you are doing your own research. and looking on people’s websites, or you’ve seen something on Instagram, and you want to look further into it. Number one is that we have a huge lack of suspicion, especially if there was a book written. If there’s a book written, it must be credible. You’ll start to notice that many alternative doctors write books, and they write lots of them for whatever nutrition and food fat is happening in the moment. This makes them look like experts and the old belief that if you have a book written, you must be credible. But let it be known that anyone can write a book, especially nowadays. And they could also write whatever they desire to scare you into following their diets. Now, another thing, supplements and other superfoods are highly promoted on these alternative doctors’ websites. And they’re promoted as being necessary, as if we have all been totally unhealthy and malnourished until something like bone broth came into our lives. Like as we haven’t drank bone broth, and now we risk a lifetime of poor health if we don’t start. In turn, they fail to tell you that they are making a living off of these products. The alternative doctors and their websites and their promotions. Promote effortless weight loss as long as you follow their mysterious plan and buy their products. Listen, obesity is an epidemic, but the ability to lose weight is not dependent on something like essential oils and collagen powder. Weight loss takes a mindset shift. I have talked about this many, many times on this podcast. It takes eating less and eating the right high-quality foods. So let’s not forget that. think that we have to turn to some obscure, expensive products to lose weight. One of my favorites is that alternative doctors like to claim that they look for the root cause of your health issues and say that mainstream doctors fail to do this. So problems such as food sensitivities, food allergies, chemical sensitivities. hormone imbalance, and a misaligned spine is typically at the bottom of what ails you, according to them. Now, if you believe this root cause theory, you likely have a distrust in the medical system in general. This term makes a claim that real doctors are just not doing their job, which is not true. Alternative healers use messages from God. They use messages from high-frequency vibrations and other energetic sources to make claims about health. And lastly, my other favorite is alternative doctors love to use celebrity testimonials. the stories of healing their mothers from cancer, like Dr. Axe has talked about, or their grandma from lung cancer, like Anthony Williams. We trust famous people, and if they’ve tried it, it must be true. I could talk on and on about these alternative doctors and the quacky claims, but I think that you are off to the right start if you just pay attention. to some of these claims and supplements that they sell and the money that they are going to be making off of you. We want to be healthy. We want to lose weight and stay vibrant and energetic, but it does not have to cost you money to do that. As always, thank you so much for listening today and following my conversation. If you have any thoughts on today’s topic, you please feel free to leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or feel free to always send me an email. I love to get emails from my listeners. Look for my links in the show notes. And if you love this podcast, do not hesitate to rate and review. It helps me so much and I would love it. Have a great week and bye for now.