Healthy Travels, Coke is Crap, Insulin Insights, Diabetes Cure, SANE Baby

Jonathan Bailor- Hey everybody, Jonathan and Carrie Brown coming at you with another Living The Smarter Science of Slim podcast. Carrie has some exciting news to share with us, folks. Carrie Brown!

Carrie Brown- It’s not the same news that I was deliriously happy about on the other podcast.

Jonathan- You’re having a streak of good news.

Carrie- I have more news! I finally quit the Diet Cherry Coke.

Jonathan- Whaaaaat?

Carrie- Yes.

Jonathan- Decades, decades, after decades.

Carrie- No, no, no – I only started the Diet Cherry Coke last July.

Jonathan- Oh, ok. Was this in place of regular Cherry Coke?

Carrie- Dr. Pepper.

Jonathan- Ok. But this is after, I would assume, decades. You mentioned in a previous podcast that when you grew up, you didn’t drink water, you drank squash.

Carrie- Squash, right, which is completely different.

Jonathan- But it’s sugar water.

Carrie- Sugar water, yeah. Sugar juice (kind of) that you dilute with water. I did get in to this whole Dr. Pepper thing, but I drank fat Dr. Pepper because Diet Dr. Pepper tastes nasty.

Jonathan- Yep.

Carrie- Then, of course, I met you and the Dr. Pepper had to go.

Jonathan- Mmm-hmm.

Carrie- I went with no pop for a long time. Then I was in Georgia and it was 106 degrees. I hate water, so I started drinking Diet Cherry Coke.

Jonathan- Mmmm.

Carrie- It had to go.

Jonathan- And it just went.

Carrie- Just? Yeah, it’s a struggle but I’m going to do it. I’m done with it.

Jonathan- So, wait, let me get this straight, Carrie…

Carrie- Now that I’ve told the world that I’m done with it, I’m accountable, right?

Jonathan- Here’s what I’m so impressed with, Carrie, because last week you shared with us that after (you know me – I’m Mr. Green Tea. I’m all about green tea) a year of podcasting with me, you finally found a way to incorporate green tea in basically the same week that you eliminated the last remnants of sugar water. It’s like, beverage hallelujah!

Carrie- Actually, you are right. It was the same weekend I went…

Jonathan- Look at that!

Carrie- …“I cannot do this diet soda, I can’t do it anymore.” Then I started ripping open tea bags and tipping it in my smoothie. Yes, we’ve had a beverage revolution at the Brown house.

Jonathan- I love it. It gets back to our other podcast talking about as we get better and better and better. To be clear, as we start going SANE, we’re going to find that on a pretty regular basis, things that may have been a little uneasy at the very beginning, start to become habits. Then you start to look for other ways, other things we can do, and pretty soon before you know it, not only are you saying like Carrie – but you’re doing things like – you got your green tea, you don’t even need any sort of sweetened beverage at all. I’ll bet, Carrie, two years ago…

Carrie- I haven’t passed the “need” bit yet.

Jonathan- You know what I’m saying – pretty soon these successes start to build on one another and we look back a year later and we’re like, Whaaaaat? Pretty amazing.

Carrie- But I have to confess (you know this, nobody else does, but I’m about to confess this too because hopefully that’ll make me even more accountable) I drink twenty times more water on podcast days than on any other day. It’s because I’m sitting in the studio with you. I need to figure out a way to translate podcast water drinking into every day.

Jonathan- Well, Carrie- here’s what I can do…

Carrie- But at least I do it on podcast days, right?

Jonathan- Here’s what we can do. I’ll get you an eight by ten picture of me that you can frame and put up in your office, and you can just set it right there on your desk. That way you can be like, “Jonathan’s watching me, Jonathan’s watching me.”

Carrie- Ok, actually- the thought of not having to have the picture there…

Jonathan- I’m going to sneak in to your office and I’m going to change your desktop wallpaper to just be a giant picture of me.

Carrie- We love you.

Jonathan- Oh goodness. It was funny because before we were recording the podcast, Carrie shared with me two bits of soda – and it’s ironic that you call it pop because I thought people just called it pop in the midwest. But you call it pop, I thought it was called soda everywhere else, or soda pop in the south.

Carrie- Actually, in England we call it fizzy drinks.

Jonathan- Fizzy drinks?

Carrie- Fizzy drinks.

Jonathan- On the lift when you go to the loo.

Carrie- Yeah, I think I’m just confused at this point. Whatever it is, I no longer drink it.

Jonathan- Carrie, speaking of fizzy drinks – share with the wonderful listeners the awesome website that you discovered over the weekend.

Carrie- It’s the Coca-Cola company Beverage Health and Wellness Institute.

Jonathan- That’s awesome! The Health and Wellness Institute founded by Coca-Cola.

Carrie- Seriously, when I saw the link, I’m like – I have to click on that because that’s a joke, right? Is it April 1?

Jonathan- Yeah, it’s April fools.

Carrie- I just stood there (and Daisy, the cat, will vouch for me) – I just sat there staring at my computer with my mouth open, going – I am not looking at this, this is not real. The whole website basically is saying why fizzy drinks (soda, pop, sugar, artificial sweetener, aspartame) is all goodness and why we need to drink it to stay healthy. The subtitle was something like, resource for health professionals on the science of beverages and hydration. I still…my brain cannot process what I saw when I was up there.

Jonathan- Carrie, this is going to sound a little funny but (stick with me here, it’s gonna sound odd) to me this is really good news. Here’s why I say that – because in the late 50’s we saw a similar thing created, it was called The Tobacco Institute. The Tobacco Institute we may be more familiar with was depicted in the 2005 movie Thank You For Smoking, as The Academy of Tobacco Studies. It essentially was this organization that did “science” to show that smoking wasn’t addictive and that smoking in moderation wasn’t bad for you. So, the fact that today’s new nicotine (actually, I like that phrase)… “The new nicotine” (aka added sweeteners) the fact that they feel they need to bring up, create, and start throwing millions of dollars at creating faux science via their own “new nicotine” institute, actually shows me that this collective movement to get back to eating food and not edible products – people are taking note of it.

Carrie- Right. However, without people who just see that -who haven’t heard the science, read the science, or been introduced to the kind of things that you teach us- there are going to be people who believe this.

Jonathan- Oh absolutely.

Carrie- They’ve got “health” studies all over this website. It’s just staggering to me. I don’t know how anybody can actually…

Jonathan- Sleep at night.

Carrie- …look at themselves and do that. There are going to be people who believe it to be true.

Jonathan- Absolutely. The good news is – I feel that truth does win out, it just takes some time. As we saw with tobacco, it took decades and decades and decades. I’m even surprised (in my life) about the fact that it’s basically illegal to smoke in any public place-anywhere. Twenty years ago, if you told someone that that would be true, they would probably think you’re crazy. –“Oh, no, like a bar? I can’t smoke in a bar in downtown Chicago?”– They would say that’s ridiculous. But it’s true now.

Carrie- It’s a good job that I’ve given up pop because in twenty years it will be illegal. People will be carrying pop around in paper bags.

Jonathan- I don’t think it will be illegal. For example, I was speaking with someone on a guest podcast recently and they mentioned that in their children’s school, when they answer a math problem correctly, they’re given their choice of a Pixie Stick (or something). They are given candy in the classroom to encourage good behavior. I like to call that second-hand sugar. It’s fine if you want to smoke but it’s not ok to take a drag of your cigarette and then blow it in your kid’s face. That’s not ok. So, do we ban smoking? Absolutely not, but do we protect those who can’t otherwise protect themselves from having that decision made for them? Yes, and I think that’s the world we’re headed towards – which is great. Once we know something is deadly and addictive, to say that we should be allowed to advertise it specifically at children is immoral. We’ve already established that precedence in our country. That’s why you’re not allowed to market drugs that are addictive, to children. This is a drug that’s addictive and they market it to children. Is it going to become illegal? No. Will it become regulated like other substances of abuse? I hope so.

Carrie- So, what do you think about the New York City ban on big pop then? Since we’re having a pop podcast.

Jonathan- I think to me, I don’t support it. It would be like saying- you can’t buy two packs of cigarettes at a time. That doesn’t make sense. If an adult wants to drink a lot, you could just buy two, twenty-ounce sodas. It’s not meaningful. It causes there to be debate in an area where there shouldn’t be debate. If we want to start setting precedences around sugar – why not attack marketing directed at children? I don’t think anyone thinks that it’s a good thing to market a detrimental and addictive substance to children that cannot delineate the difference between advertising and facts. Studies have been done all around the world that show that children under the age of nine – if it’s on television, it’s all the same, doesn’t matter if it’s educational or it’s an ad to them, it’s just stuff. There’s a reason why kids are like, “Mommy, I want this because it has this cartoon character on the front of it.” Right? To me, if we want to start making a change in the world, let’s start making changes in ways that are not going to cause unnecessary controversy and are going to protect those that can’t protect themselves. Versus a law that essentially says – you just can’t buy two packs of cigarettes at a time, but if you go to the end of the line then you can buy a second pack of cigarettes. It doesn’t really make much sense to me.

Carrie- Don’t you think it has some value in the fact that it’s making it more inconvenient for people? It’s also raising awareness that – why are they doing this? Maybe there is something… I dunno, do you think that has any value – the fact that we’re talking about it?

Jonathan- I don’t.

Carrie- Not you and me, but the fact that…

Jonathan- My personal opinion – if we’re going to spend time and money on it (it’s gotten a lot of mixed signals) there are better ways to spend our political capital. For example, we subsidize the production of corn, sugar, soy, and all kinds of other crappy starches and sweeteners. Why not subsidize the production of spinach and grass-fed beef? Make it more profitable to feed your beef grass (that which doesn’t kill them) versus corn (which if you keep up, causes their stomaches to erode and they die). Let’s do that and that will then make healthy eating more convenient. There’s a reason if I’ve got a choice between buying a $1.99 Happy Meal for my kid and something that’s $5.99 because it’s fresh produce (and I’m financially strapped), at some point in time, I just gotta get calories in my kid’s stomach, right? I think if we’re going to do things in the political arena, doing the wrong things can actually do more harm than doing nothing. You are going to stir up controversy and you are going to get people to argue against you – who, if you would have come at it from a different approach…Carrie, it’s a basic principle of sales – get people saying yes. You take someone who would agree with: yeah you probably shouldn’t be able to market an addictive detrimental substance specifically at children. There’s a lot of people who would agree with that, that don’t think you should limit the size of sodas an adult can buy. Just like you don’t limit the amount of cigarettes an adult can buy. We don’t. We don’t limit the amount of cigarettes an adult can buy – we don’t limit the amount of alcohol an adult can buy. So, why would we limit the amount of soda an adult can buy? Let’s look at precedences (sorry, I’m on my political soapbox now) there is a precedence for saying – if it is addictive and detrimental, you cannot advertise it to children. We all agree on that principle. Now the question is – are added sweeteners addictive and detrimental? Yes, that is not controversial, that has been demonstrated clinically.

Carrie- Except if you go to the Coca-Cola company…

Jonathan- The Coca-Cola Institute of Research.

Carrie- …Beverage Health Institute, where you’ll hear that nothing has been proven bad about anything.

Jonathan- Oh my goodness. It’s so funny too, Carrie, because you know I love science, but for anybody who doesn’t think added sweeteners and processed starches are addictive – try to stop eating them. It’s not easy to stop. There’s a reason why it’s hard. If you (for example) were just to say, “I’m not gonna eat chicken anymore, I’m only gonna eat every other kind of meat and fish”. You wouldn’t be like, “Oh my God, I just need chicken, I have to have it!” It’s not that food is addictive, that’s not true. Not all food sources trigger… You can do brain scans, it’s not hard. Sugar (and these concentrated sources of sweetness) trigger the same opiate receptors in the brain that heroin, nicotine, morphine, other opiodes (that class of drugs) do – that other foods do not; they are uniquely addictive.

Carrie- I have been trying (since I went to Georgia) to not drink pop. It’s been nine months of endless struggle – it’s hard. You get addicted to it and it’s the hardest thing ever to stop – but we’ve got to stop.

Jonathan- You’ve got to stop. You know what the easiest (this is kind of a stupid point, but I’m already going in that direction)… What a gift we can give our children to not cause them to ever have to go through that addiction in the first place. Right? That doesn’t mean they can never have anything sweet. Carrie has introduced more sweetness in to my life…

Carrie- Awwww.

Jonathan- Awww. I’ve got my fifteen pound bag of xylitol. I swear, anytime I want something sweet – I enjoy it and it’s wonderful. We’re not talking about giving up the taste of sweet, just like we’re not saying no one in the world can ever enjoy intimacy with another person. We’re just saying – be safe about it. We’re saying be safe, protect yourself. Same kind of thing. We preach safe sex, let’s preach safe sweeteners. I’m all about the analogies today with “the new nicotine” and “safe sweeteners”! It’s a good day, Carrie!

Carrie- Something you just said made me remember that I had a conversation earlier today with somebody that I work with. She came in to my office with two cans of Diet Cherry Coke and I was like (gasp!). Because I’m struggling here, people.

Jonathan- You’re a recovering Dr. Pepper-holic.

Carrie- I’m recovering, right. I’m like, “Get that out of my office!” She was like, “Well, I bought you one.” She clearly didn’t get the memo that I’d stopped. I said, “I’m not doing that anymore.” We got in to a conversation about it and she said about aspartame. I’m like, “So, you know all about aspartame?” She’s like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “How can you keep drinking that stuff if you know about aspartame?” Then we carried on talking and she said to me, “My daughter is not allowed to drink pop, she drinks maybe two cans a year.” I’m like, “So, if it’s not good enough for your daughter, if you have a compelling reason why your daughter doesn’t drink it…” She was adamant, “That child is never going to get that addiction.” I said, “But then over here…how are you ok with that?” Obviously she couldn’t answer me. She just sat there and kind of looked at me. I went, “You’re going to have to think about it now, aren’t you?” Because, how do you do that?

Jonathan- You’re story inspired me, Carrie. In a previous podcast we talked a little bit about how: if you’re one of the survivors of the great nutritional depression (as I’m calling it now – which was the period of time at which sugars and starches were “good for you”, any natural food that contained fat was bad for you, and protein was, frankly, irrelevant) some things happened to your metabolism. Which we can mitigate the bad effects of, but not the metabolic propensity to store fat (once you have a fat cell, you can’t get rid of it – that’s a fact, that’s not controversial). If you were subjected to dietary guidelines that put an additional 10,000 fat cells on your body, we can shrink those fat cells but (unfortunately) it’s like if you smoked for 20 years – there’s going to be some damage to your lungs that we can’t do anything about. The good news is we can make you healthy, but, we can’t get rid of those fat cells – it’s not going to happen. One of my favorite authors in the entire world (a gentleman of which a quote I used in the wedding vows to my wife) is an Austrian Psychologist by the name of Viktor Frankl. Viktor Frankl was a survivor of the concentration camps and his whole theory around human motivation and psychology is called Logotherapy. What logotherapy talks about is – it’s all about finding meaning, even if someone has to endure something as terrible as a concentration camp (as Frankl did). You can find meaning in suffering, you can transcend it – you just need a meaning. For example, Viktor thought to himself – I can endure this suffering in the concentration camps so that I can survive and make sure it never happens again. He could put meaning to it. Now, it is horrible that individuals had to live through this great nutritional depression and may have tens of thousands of additional fat cells on their body because of it. However, you can put meaning on to that. You have the power to ensure that you are the last generation that ever has to be subjected to that. You can be a transition person and you can be that change. You can ensure that your children do not have to face that same subjugation that you did. While you may not be able to have six-pack abs, you can leave a legacy that will enable health and happiness for generations to come. I don’t know, Carrie – but personally, that might bring a bigger smile to your face than any abs ever could.

Carrie- I think it’s brilliant that this friend is not allowing her daughter to get in to that physiological addiction with pop, but at the same time, the power of example is incredibly powerful.

Jonathan- Absolutely.

Carrie- My concern is that that adorable little girl is going to think- when I’m an adult, it’s going to be ok for me to drink that. We’ll just throw that out there to people – yes, you may be doing a great job of not letting your children eat things that you now know are harmful, but be a good example. Let that be a motivation to help you to live a SANE life. I, unfortunately, don’t have that built-in motivation because my cats don’t care. But, most people do have someone they live with that can hold them accountable. I think that’s just very, very powerful.

Jonathan- Carrie, you hit the nail on the head. I’m going to even take it one step further and demonstrate that even if you don’t have individuals that you live with (Carrie, you are a perfect example of this), people you work with see you and see what’s happening. You being that example, provides an “emotional subconscious” argument that no amount of science and logic will EVER be able to duplicate. Right? If an unhealthy, sick person is like, “Well, eating this way is clearly good for you. Look, I do it. Look at the results.” You’re like, “Dude, I can’t – I’m not going to listen to what you say because the results aren’t there.” You, by being SANE, by getting eccentric, and by being the radiating element that you are – even if your light isn’t shining on individuals that co-habitate with you. We all live in a world that’s interconnected and we will touch lives that we’ve never even known. I feel like what you’re saying is- having a motivation like leaving a legacy and improving the lives of others indirectly, just because you’re such an awesome example, is a hell of a lot more motivational than trying to make the needle on the scale go down a little bit lower. At least for me it is.

Carrie- I have never been described as a radiant element before. I’m going to have to think about that.

Jonathan- A radiant element – your luminosity is quite high today, Carrie.

Carrie- Ha! I don’t know what to say to that.

Jonathan- I think I might have to get you a Christmas present, like a shirt, that says “radiant element” on it. It sounds like the name of a band, “Radiant Element”.

Carrie- Yes, yes, there we go.

Jonathan- To all the “radiant elements” out there sharing this wonderful podcast with us.

Carrie- Stop drinking pop!

Jonathan- And please don’t support the “new tobacco research institute” – the Coca-Cola institute of sound science with no ulterior motives at all. As you remember from The Smarter Science of Slim text, that quote, “hydration is very important and consuming six to eight ounce drinks of any kind, including soda, can contribute to a wonderful, hydrated life.”

Carrie- (Buzzer sound)

Jonathan- Fortunately Carrie, we’re eating smarter, we’re exercising smarter, and we’re living better. So, we’re all good.

Carrie- And we’re not drinking pop anymore.

Jonathan- We are gonna eat more and we’re gonna exercise less – but we’re gonna do that smarter. We’ll see ya next week.

Carrie- See ya.