Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast where Dr. Steven Gundry shares his groundbreaking research from over 25 years of treating patients with diet and lifestyle changes alone. Dr. Gundry and other wellness experts offer inspiring stories, the latest scientific advancements, and practical tips to empower you to take control of your health and live a long, happy life.
Dr. Gundry:
Red food dyes, well, you probably have already heard it, but finally, the FDA has decided to ban red dye number three from food products. Now, it supposedly causes cancer in rats, which is true. It of course has never been associated, according to the FDA, with causing cancer in humans. However, the FDA was worried enough about red dye number three, that over 30 years ago, it banned red dye number three from use in cosmetics for humans. Now, think about the logic of that for just a moment. If the FDA was worried enough about red dye number three applied to your face or your skin 30 years ago, wouldn’t it have made more sense to actually ban it from ingestion 30 years ago than just from cosmetics? But what the heck? Now it’s banned from everything you eat, as well.
So why do these dyes exist? Well, I like to tell my patients, and I’m telling you, walk down the cereal aisle at the grocery store or the snack crunchy aisle in the grocery store, and you’ll see some very interesting colors. Most of the colors advertising these products on the boxes on the bags are shades of reds, yellows, and oranges. Now, that’s for a very good reason. Whether you know it or not, the only animals that have color vision are fruit and flower predators, and flowers and plants with fruits use these colors, particularly reds, oranges, and yellows to, number one, get your attention, and number two, to tell you that this substance is ripe and loaded with sugar and it’s time for you to eat it. We’re hardwired to look for those colors. So it’s no surprise that most of the colors in the foods we eat and the snacks we eat are actually towards those colors, and that’s where the idea of adding colors to food products came from. If it looks like a color your brain would be seeking out, you’re more likely to eat that color and seek it out.
So that’s where all this came from. And quite frankly, it’s no surprise to me that banning a color that you put on your face is a lot easier than banning a color that you eat because you’ll more likely eat those colors if they’re in there. So we have to realize that a great number of these colors are actually made from petroleum products, like much of things we put on our face and even eat. Red dye number three is a petroleum based product. Now they’re still a legal dye, red dye number 40 with, fun fact, it’s banned in California, but it’s legal in all the other states. Red dye number 40, even though it’s legal in 49 states, still is a petroleum product, as well. And hopefully it’s just a matter of time before this coloring agent is banned, as well. So whenever you see dyes or colors added, the FDA requires that if you’re using a GRaS product, Generally Recognized as Safe, that’s what grass stands for, they have to tell you on the label what dye that is.
For instance, red dye number three. So if you see a number, that only means that it’s Generally Recognized as Safe, but the odds are it’s actually a petroleum based product and probably not what you want to put in your mouth. Now, are there alternatives to this? Well, yes and no. There are natural food coloring and those vary from what you might call natural. After all, petroleum is natural. It’s the product of plants dying and being compressed for millions of years, so I guess that’s natural, but you certainly wouldn’t want to ingest gasoline on a regular basis. And again, petroleum is petroleum, gasoline is petroleum. There are natural food colorings that most of us are well aware of.
We were talking on a podcast yesterday that have you ever actually tried to get pomegranate seeds out of a pomegranate? And it’s fun, it’s a messy, and you’ll end up with your hands stained really a brilliant red color. So pomegranate is a natural source of red coloring. Same way with beets. Beets are a very popular way of adding color. And so you may see beet juice, you may see beet juice extract, and this is, once again, a very natural way of adding a red color. Finally, you may see cherry juice or cherry extract. Once again, it’s these red colors. Why don’t people use this before? Because quite frankly, red dye, red dye number 40, red dye number 30 is cheap, and extracting beetroot extract or pomegranate juice extract or cherry juice extract is a whole lot more expensive. And bottom line is you got to use a lot of this to get the intense color that these companies want you to see, because the more the intense color, the more likely you are, and more importantly your kids are, to eat this stuff.
So buyer beware. If there is an intense color in your kid’s cereal, you probably don’t want them to eat it. If there’s an intense color in your snack, you probably don’t want to eat it. But you got to read the label. Finally, these colors, these artificial colors, these petroleum-based colors have been associated not only with causing cancer in animals, but also with hyperactivity disorder in children. Now, it’s hard to separate this out because quite frankly, most of these dyes are in ultra-processed high sugar foods, so it’s, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Is it all that sugar that these dyes are associated with or is it the dye that’s causing the problem? And as a father of kids and now a grandfather of grandchildren, all of us know the ability of sugary foods to wire our children and make them hyperactive. And we also know the ability of when that wiring wears off, how they crash so completely.
So this is an area where, yes, where there’s smoke, there might be fire, but let’s be aware that in the first place, the foods that these dyes in general are associated with are these high sugar, high ultra processed foods we shouldn’t be eating. And most particularly, we shouldn’t have our kids eating. So that’s the update on dyes in your food. And every time you see these reds, oranges, and yellows in your food, just remember that these wonderful companies are tricking you into hitting your ancient brain that this is a piece of ripe fruit and you ought to be seeking it out.
With a surge of expensive eggs flooding the market, many of us are left wondering, are these pricey options really worth it? So let’s get cracking. Now, number one we have to look at is the chicken space. When we look at a carton of eggs, we typically see the terms cage free, free-range, and pasture raise. But what does that really mean? Well, it’s referring to the amount of space the chicken has to live in. Chickens in cages don’t even get a full square foot of space. This setup leads to high levels of stress and cortisol. In the chicken, the impact on eggs means higher cortisol means poor egg quality nutritionally and in flavor. How about cage-free chickens? That sounds good. Don’t be fooled by the label. While cage-free might sound promising, it’s only marginally better. These chickens typically only also get one square foot per bird.
Believe it or not, I have a good friend who used to be a big chicken farmer. They have 100,000 chickens in a warehouse. There aren’t any cages, but they’re packed together so close they might as well be. So their stress levels are still high and the nutritional quality of the egg remains compromised. Okay, well how about free-range chicken? A step-up is still limited. They get about two by two feet of space, but the free-range chickens can be kept in the warehouse their entire lives as long as a door to the outside is open for five minutes every 24 hours, and the chicken has the potential to visit outside. No chicken in their right mind would stick their head out thinking a hawk is about to eat them.
Okay, how about pasture-raised chicken? So pasture-raised chicken get about 10 by 10 feet per bird allowing them to forage pack and move freely. Hence, lower stress equals a healthier higher quality egg. But wait. Almost all pastured chickens are given additional feed because they can’t actually get enough feed from pecking around in the grass anymore. And bad news, most of the time, grass is not growing 365 days a year. So the farmers actually have to give their chickens supplemental food. So you got to know not only where your eggs came from, you got to know the farmer. One of the best ways is to go to a farmer’s market, find out how they raise their chickens, but equally as important, find out what they’re feeding their chickens.
So for instance, even though this says pasture raised and small family farms, there’s nothing on here to describe what they’re actually given their chickens to eat. We have a lady at the Santa Barbara’s farmer’s market that I went up to a couple years ago and I said, “What do you feed your chickens?” And she looked at me and she said, “I don’t feed them anything. They work for me.” And I said, “What does that mean?” She said, “They’re farm animals, they work for me.” She said, “You should come back in October and November when I turn them loose in our persimmon tree farm. They have the most intense orange egg yolk that you will ever see.” Speaking of which, believe it or not, it’s perfectly acceptable to feed chickens colorful things like, for instance, turmeric or marigolds to give their egg yolk a darker orange color. Now there’s nothing illegal about that, and quite frankly, marigolds are really good for you and I like to sprinkle marigold flowers on my salads.
Also, egg labels ignore natural and grade levels. They mean nothing in terms of quality. Ignore the color of the egg, a white egg, a brown egg, a green egg, a blue egg. They really don’t mean anything, but look for pasture eggs. Here’s several. Now, organic. Organic doesn’t mean that the chicken was eating organically, except for a few important issues. If it says organic, that means the grower was controlling the feed, and it usually means they’re feeding them organic corn or organic soybeans or organic other grains. So just because it says organic, don’t be fooled.
All right, so let’s do a little color test. First of all, I have no commercial interest with any of these folks. I have a really heartfelt interest in one of these that we’ll talk about, but here’s Eggland’s Best. You see that advertised on TV all the time. It’s usually got a cute little EB on the end of it. And one of the things they do with these chickens is they feed them flaxseed and/or algae to up their level of omega-three. Now they don’t make long chain omega-three, they make short chain omega-three, and you’ll notice that’s a pretty nice looking yolk. This is one of the better options, particularly for my patients where money is an object, and quite frankly, money is usually an object.
So interestingly, there is another company I don’t have here today that feeds their chickens algae and seaweed, and the problem is they have to balance the amount of algae and seaweed or their shell becomes so thin that they crack all the time. Interestingly enough, I have a new patient from Nebraska who has their own farm and they’ve been desperately trying to get their chickens to lay eggs by giving them algae and other cruciferous vegetables, and darn it, they won’t lay eggs. And I told them this experience and they said, “Well, that explains it.”
All right, so how about a pastured egg? And just remember this didn’t tell us what they were actually feeding their egg. Now, one thing I noticed right away, these eggs have a much tougher shell, and this is now coming up to mid-November, and you’ll notice that this yolk looks spectacularly orange, but there’s very few pastures ready for eating, for chickens out in pastures, where there are any bugs. So more than likely, this color egg at this time of year, they’ve added something in their diet to make this yolk really orange. Now in general, when I’m over in particularly Italy, this is not even as intense as what I see in Italy, and I can guarantee you they’re not feeding their chickens anything out in Tuscany. They’re working for a living.
Finally, here’s pastured steps. Now, this is from Farmer Dan at Lectinlightchicken.com. Farmer Dan is happy to tell you that it’s soy free and corn free, and in fact, it is Lectin-light. Farmer Dan is so committed to lectin-light chicken that he actually designed his own feed so that even though these chickens are completely pasture-raised, when they have to eat something – oh, I broke the yolk. Oh, well. They are fed lectin-free food. So he goes above and beyond. Now, he does not supplement these chickens’ diet, and he’s disappointed that in the winter, his yolk is not as orangey as it is in the summer, but he’s controlling every part of what these chickens eat. And he’s actually got a waiting list of I think, what? Six months to get eggs. So color of the egg, yes, in general, the darker the yolk, the better the feed. But in the winter, be cautious that this phenomenal color isn’t necessarily from the bugs and things they’re eating. But look for the ingredients, please, at the very least look for soy-free and corn-free, and you’ll typically get a much better egg.
So in the end, if you can find Omega-III eggs for close to the price of regular eggs, please buy them. If not, try to look for soy-free or corn-free. Please don’t be fooled by cage-free and free-range. And if you’re going to spend the money for pasture raised, go to the website of the person you’re buying from and find out what the feed they’re using. And I have a number of my patients that bug these producers, ha-ha, no pun intended, about, send me your ingredient list. And they’re often shocked to find out what there’s actually being fed to their pastured chicken.
What would happen if I eat this for 30 days in a row and today, I’m going to take up kale. Now, kale is one of those controversial foods. Some people love it, some people hate it. My good friend, Dave Asprey, hates kale. Now it accumulates thallium more than just about any plant. I’ve seen it accumulate cadmium, as well, and other heavy metal. So that’s why he hates kale. And for you oxalate haters out there, kale actually has a lot of oxalates.
So let’s talk about oxalates first. Oxalates are part of the plant defense system against being eaten, and oxalates in people who believe they are sensitive to oxalates can cause pain, can cause kidney stones, can cause kidney damage. And there’s even books out there saying that most of the pain that you have in your life are from oxalates. Well, not so fast. Believe it or not, we used to have a beautiful defense system against plant defense compounds like oxalates and like lectins. We used to have lectin eating bacteria. For instance, there are bacteria that love to eat gluten, and in fact, there are bacteria that love to eat oxalates. When you look at people who are sensitive to oxalates or who actually have calcium oxalate kidney stones, those individuals lack those oxalate eating bacteria. So it’s not the oxalates that are the actual problem.
The problem, like I write about in all my books, is we lack the defense system against these plant compounds that we used to have that we could tolerate these plant compounds, and they’re part of the seven deadly disruptors that I’ve written about in the past. And interestingly enough, many of my patients who are oxalate sensitive when they start, once we fix their gut microbiome and once we fix their leaky gut, they can have all the oxalate containing foods that they want.
Now let me tell you an interesting story about kale. All of these plants, particularly the bitter plants like kale, are loaded with compounds to warn their predator, be careful about eating me because you are not going to feel very good after you eat me, and kale happens to be one of those compounds. Interestingly enough, if you look at long-lived people in general, they eat a lot of bitter compounds. And one of my sayings you may know is more bitter, more better, but that bitterness comes at a price. The dose makes the poison, as Pericles was want to say. And that’s true, a little dab will do you.
So let me tell you my personal kale story. Years ago we bought a NutriBullet and my wife decided that we were going to do kale smoothies. She made me a kale smoothie with nothing but kale in it. I drank my kale smoothie on the way to work. And quite frankly, within a half an hour, I was sitting on the toilet with blowout diarrhea. And I go, what the heck? Well, what had happened was that if I ate kale, it would take hours for that kale to be broken down, for my bacteria to digest the cell wall of kale, and I would be exposed little by little to these toxins in kale. Instead, my wife, bless her heart, had broken down every cell wall and exposed me to a massive instantaneous dose of kale toxins. Thanks a lot. We don’t do that anymore.
Now the point is I have obviously a number of people who have IBS, have leaky gut, have intestinal issues, and one of the things I found through the years is that they are very intolerant of dark green leafy vegetables for that very reason. And so for my patients like that, I make them cook kale or spinach or broccoli or arugula down to mush. And even then, some of them can’t tolerate it. So if you are one of those people with a sensitive stomach, with IBS, with loose bowels, then kale for 30 days is not for you and you will not do well.
Now on the other hand, the cruciferous vegetables in general are great sources of sulfur-containing compounds and sulfur in our diet is incredibly useful for making another post-biotic called hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is the rotten egg smell. Now, we used to think it was toxic, and it’s true, high doses of hydrogen sulfide are very damaging, but we now know that a little dab will do you and that there’s a Goldilocks effect of hydrogen sulfide in being very good for your blood vessels, in being very good as an anti-cancer agent, and also being very good for your brain. So I’m a big fan of these cruciferous vegetables in moderate amounts.
Now the third thing that I’ve noticed in my patients who really go crazy for cruciferous vegetables or kale, which is a cruciferous vegetable, is that some of them, not most of them, but some of them begin to suppress their thyroid function. Now, this is different than Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. What we do see in those patients is a gradual rise in one of the markers of thyroid function called TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone. Now, their levels of free T-4 and free T-3 remain normal, but their TSH starts creeping up. So when I ask them, “Are you eating a lot of cruciferous vegetables?” “Oh yeah, we have cauliflower, and cauliflower rice, and cauliflower pizza, and broccoli, and we have arugula in our salad and we have cabbage and we have kimchi.” I go, “Whoa, I think you’re eating too much of this. Can we back off before the next blood test and see what happens?” And sure enough, in all of those patients, it was their love and thinking of cruciferous vegetables that was actually suppressing their thyroid.
So what would happen if you had kale for 30 days in a row? If you’ve got gut issues, you’ll find out fairly quickly. If you already suffer from a low thyroid, it’s probably not a good idea. You need to find that sweet spot with cruciferous vegetables maybe every other day, maybe on the weekends. Experiment. If you really want to find out, get yourself thyroid function tests, they’re cheap to do, eat kale for two months, repeat your thyroid function tests and see where you are.
Speaker 1:
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