Chris Wark (00:23.4)
Okay gang, today I'm interviewing Dr. Matthew Negra. He's a naturopathic doctor devoted to bringing the most up-to-date evidence-based nutrition information to his patients in Vancouver. And he's pretty active on social media and he's just out there like me trying to correct misinformation and disinformation and help people make good dietary choices. And he has contributed to multiple nutrition textbooks.

the Springer nature's handbook of public health nutrition. he's a nutrition science advisor for the upcoming movie, the game changers two and the game changers one is a great film. talk about it regularly. comes up a lot. Anytime someone asks me about, where do vegans get their protein, you know, that's just such an easy, resource, great documentary film that to refer people to. may get into that.

But anyway, Dr. Neger, thanks for taking the time to talk.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (01:22.766)
Thanks for having me on. Looking forward to it.

Chris Wark (01:25.138)
So how did you get into this? How did you get into nutrition and become a naturopathic doctor? What was your path to become a naturopath?

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (01:39.054)
Yeah, I mean, it started when I was pretty young. You know, my childhood into my early teens, I often struggled with like weight management, asthma that at times was quite bad. I, you a other little things as well. And it wasn't until I was about 15, I was working with a personal trainer who really promoted more plant-based nutrition or plant-based diet. Then I eventually started making some changes and shifting that way. And

once I finally did make some of those shifts and it wasn't wholesale, was reducing the ultra-processed food intake, increasing fruit and veggie intake, reducing meat intake, I actually eliminated dairy at that point. That's when I started to see changes happen pretty quickly. Within a couple of weeks, I noticed my weight sort of melting off. I was feeling better, was breathing easier again when it comes to asthma.

And that's when I first started considering that nutrition actually might play more of a role in a lot of things, or it might be more important than I thought as a 14, 15 year old kid at the time.

Chris Wark (02:46.494)
Well, it's surprising that you had a personal trainer that was into plant-based nutrition. That's pretty rare. mean, most personal trainers, gym bros, you know, they're, big on the whey protein and, know, eating tons of meat and meat and some of them may be down on dairy, yeah, that, that was a, that was a blessing, think in your life at that time.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (02:50.412)
Yeah, yeah, I think they're... Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (03:05.261)
Yeah, I think there's certainly an aspect of luck to it. And I think that's where a lot of what I do now, and I will get back to the story in a moment, but a lot what I do now is hoping to put the more correct information in front of people and allow them to make informed decisions. Whereas I think about being that age, if I was coming up today and I was faced with all the pro-carnivore stuff, know, the shirtless muscular dudes in a grocery store, know, whatever ridiculous videos we're seeing.

Like I wonder how I would have been influenced, you had that been what I was faced with, right? So I think that's a big part of it, right? So I did, there is an aspect of luck there for sure. in, who I ended up being surrounded with and, know, from there, my dad had a cardiovascular scare. I think the next year, that obviously, could be nutrition related in a lot of ways.

Chris Wark (03:39.708)
For sure, me too.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (04:01.306)
He started seeing a lot of improvements in his biomarkers after he started making similar dietary changes. And so I had the sort of short-term how I felt kind of aspect and then I had more of a look at the longer term side of things. And when I was going into school, I had been interested in healthcare for a while, but now I also have this larger interest in nutrition. And I took some nutrition courses in my undergraduate studies as well.

that's where I really started thinking about, how can I utilize kind of the best of both worlds? And I had one of my teachers in undergrad for, was like a public health class or I can't recall exactly which specific class it was, but one of my instructors actually worked with a couple of naturopathic doctors locally and suggested that, hey, well, why don't you shadow them and, you know, see what they're all about. And so I did and it's different.

depending on where you are and the regulations, but here in DC, we have a very broad scope and that's what sort of opened my eyes to it. It's like, okay, you can actually prescribe meds. can, you know, go through all the standard blood testing and all of that. You, you have access to a lot of other modalities. You can obviously do the nutrition counseling. You spend more time with patients rather than 10, 15. I'll spend an hour with an initial, you know, patient. And, and so, I started thinking more and more about like, this might actually be a good way to utilize both sides of the coin.

and to have the time to do so because in a general practice you don't really have the time to go into the nutrition counseling side of things. And then I ended up shadowing, don't know if shadowing is the right word, but I ended up sitting in on some classes at our local school here just outside of Vancouver. And I spoke with a lot of the students and I sort of saw what they were learning and there was an anatomy class in particular I remember sitting in on that actually ended up being really fun.

And that's what sort of drove me to making the decision to go that route over more of the conventional route is because I really did want to have that extra piece of the nutrition side.

Chris Wark (06:06.088)
feel like there's two paths that people come at when they find, you know, they discover the power of plants, right? A plant-based diet. One is that it's just personal experience, right? Maybe they've got a health crisis and someone makes a recommendation and they try it and they start to feel better. And so now they're on the path. And the other way people come at it,

you know, maybe is more clinical or more evidence-based where they're reading and they're researching and they're learning and maybe, you know, kind of that may be more like your path, but was there a specific study or was there specific evidence that you stumbled across that, you know, was like so compelling to you that, you know, it stands out in your mind.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (06:58.478)
I know if it was me that's messed up here or what but I've...

Sorry, you're back now. Okay, sorry. Totally. I missed a lot of what you just said. It totally froze. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Chris Wark (07:09.982)
All right. I'll repeat it. Yeah. I had a feeling something weird was happening. All right. So there's, there seems like there's two ways that people come, you know, sort of come around to eating a plant-based diet. One is they, maybe they don't feel good. They've got a health crisis. Someone recommends it, you know, and they, they try it and they start to feel better. But the other way is sort of this evidence-based way, which is a lot of clinicians sort of discover some studies or research or evidence.

And it really opens their eyes, right? It sort of shatters the paradigm, the false belief or whatever that everyone needs to eat, you know, chicken and beef and pork and fish and every day, were there any studies in particular or evidence in particular for you that really stood out early in the, in the process that convinced you or really, you know, move the needle for you.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (07:59.214)
Yes, this is what's so challenging because again, you know, I made a lot of these shifts so early on that like I didn't understand scientific methodology. I wasn't reading papers. A lot of it did come from things like blogs. I mean, YouTube wasn't even as big a thing, you know, at that point or insert certainly not Instagram and all of that. So a lot of it was coming through these like secondary sources. And so I try to to factor that in when I think about how I present information, because I know that that's how a lot of people will.

get your that's where a lot of people get their information. They're looking at the study. So I want to make sure that people understand not just what the study said, but like why it's good information, why that study was done in a good way or what factors were considered. And when it comes to these more anecdotal experiences like my own, which actually led me to wanting to pursue this, is that you can find that on any diet. But that's that's the whole issue here. If you go on

Chris Wark (08:47.912)
Same.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (08:53.398)
even like a carnivore diet and because you're eliminating most food groups, end up cutting down your overall intake, you lose a bunch of weight, maybe you feel good in the short term. But how does that translate out to long term? And I think that's where a lot of the research really comes in. And when it comes to plant based diets, some of the earlier ones that I was made aware of were like the Adventist health studies, specifically Adventist health study two, where you're taking a generally healthy population, certainly healthier than the average American. And

You know, they have a lot of similarities, you know, whether they're eating meat or not, as far as generally low smoking incidents or prevalence, low alcohol intake. They're generally pretty active. They live in similar communities typically, or they engage in community activities, but some of them eat no animal products. Some have modest amounts of animal products. Some have, you know, maybe meat a few times a week in some cases more. but

but that's a good way to sort of study differences when it comes to nutrition without having huge differences in those other variables. And they present pretty good evidence that yeah, shifting towards more plant-based tends to be, you know, a really good way to go for long-term health. Could you split hairs about like, is it really going to be better to be a hundred percent plant-based versus like 90, 95 percent plant-based? Probably not, but it also doesn't appear to be worse. Like that last little bit is often the ethical, you know, principle that will drive you. And I think that's...

a very good reason to do it, like myself, but I think that's a pretty good study to start with.

Chris Wark (10:24.414)
Yeah, it's a great study. I've actually interviewed Dr. Gary Fraser and he's, he's a, yeah, really interesting guy. And yeah, if we dug, we really went deep on the AHS one and AHS two and all the, the findings and I'll link to that below this. So we don't have to get a revisit it, but just for folks that don't know, you know, this is a very, there's a long, long-term study on seventh day Adventists following their diet and their diet habits, dietary habits, and then their rates of disease and.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (10:27.678)
nice.

Chris Wark (10:53.042)
Generally speaking, the ones that ate the most plant-based had lower rates of cardiovascular disease and cancer and just better health. It's not super complicated. It's pretty simple and a really nice study for reference. There's not a whole lot of studies like that where they're following people for a long period of time and they're able to follow them closely and really look at how they're eating and living. So those are great studies.

What are some of the other ones that you really like? mean, I know there's a lot of, there's a lot of mythology, dietary mythology out there, especially with paleo and carnivore. know, this, there's this idea that, you know, our caveman ancestors were these ultra healthy humans. You know, if we just eat like them, then we will be ultra healthy as well. What do you see? Where are the holes in that argument?

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (11:53.09)
I mean, there's number of holes. For one, average life expectancy was very poor through most of our history. so even if we were to grant that, hey, you maybe they weren't dying of cardiovascular diseases because they weren't generally living long enough to die of cardiovascular disease, other things would get them first, whether it's infections or what have you. Another hole is, and I've seen this brought up a few times and actually made a video responding to it, is some people will say, well, the reason life expectancy is so low is because there's a high infant mortality and that really drives it down.

Well, there's actually a study that accounted for that. And basically what they found was there's a relatively even spread of mortality from like the teenage years into the sixties and very few living beyond that. And so every year a similar proportion of people are dying. Whereas if you look at modern day, very few people are dying at those young ages. And then it starts to really go up around the

know, 40s into 50s, 60s peaks, somewhere in the 70s or whatever. And then I think the average life expectancy is around 80 or something. I can't remember exactly what the number is, you see that like, no, there's still a ton of people dying all the way through the teens and 20s and so on. If we go to more of those historical or more hunter gatherer type populations. So that's one of the big flaws. And then second,

We have modern day health outcome data. We actually have more modern studies looking at populations eating plant-based versus more animal-based. We have studies looking at high carb versus low carb and where those nutrients are coming from, so food sources as well. We have a lot of data on people actually living today, which is going to be more relevant to people actually living today. I mean, it's pretty straightforward when you put it that way. And we see that, yeah, generally speaking, focusing on a predominantly to exclusively plant-based diet.

focusing on unsaturated fats from things like nuts and seeds over the saturated fats from like butter and lard and all of that. And then focusing on plant protein over animal protein tends to be what leads to the best health outcomes. I mean, it's very straightforward. Again, like I said, could you argue 90, 95 % versus 100%, you know, is there a clear winner there? Maybe not. But there's a clear answer that we should be shifting towards at least predominantly plant-based if you're looking for best health outcomes.

Chris Wark (14:15.932)
Yeah. And I think that that's a, I think that's a good message because it does, you don't have to be all or nothing. You don't have to be a hundred percent dedicated card carrying vegan. And by the way, being a vegan doesn't make you healthy, right? There's a lot of junk food that's vegan, but let's just say a whole food plant based vegan. You don't necessarily have to be that. You don't have to assume a dietary identity, but if you're really shifting your

food consumption towards eating predominantly plant-based whole foods, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, herbs and spices, whole grains, all these wonderful foods. and you will experience some wonderful health benefits. And I love what you said earlier, because there's, there's this sort of common sense idea where we should be studying and paying attention to the longest living humans now versus

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (14:50.51)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Wark (15:16.698)
sort of latching onto this fantastical mythology about cavemen, right? It's like, okay, there's a lot of speculation on your ancestors. Well, I want to eat this ancestral, ancestral diet, right? It's a big buzzword. And the reality is, is like, you don't know what your ancestors ate. Nobody knows what they ate exactly. mean, there's speculation. There's some evidence here and there, but we're studying human diets much more precisely now.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (15:45.59)
Yeah, and we're often learning more and more as techniques advance into like, you know, what our ancestors ate. for one, it seems to be highly variable depending on where they were, because obviously what's available is different. In some cases, it might be more plant based and other cases, maybe not. And also, animal matter is especially like bones and that are preserved a lot better than plant matter is over time. And so

There might be, there are actually cases now where we're discovering, they were actually consuming certain types of legumes in these areas that we didn't know about before. And that's because there are, again, advancements in these techniques as far as studying remnants of things that might be around there. So yeah, I mean, we can make general inferences around what made up a portion of the diet in different areas, which is variable, but at the same time, yeah, we're still learning more about what they ate in certain areas. And nor do I think we should be...

aiming to live like our ancestors did. That doesn't seem to be the best way to go about it. Anyone who's listening to this is listening to it on a phone or computer or something. Our ancestors didn't have that. We could go down a whole bunch of lines of argumentation around, is what our ancestors did really the best for us?

Chris Wark (16:56.03)
Well, the one aspect of it, you know, there's a kernel of truth in it, which is we know what they didn't eat. Right? We know they didn't eat McDonald's, right? They didn't eat Twinkies and Cheetos. They didn't eat fast food, processed food and junk food, right? It's like these things didn't exist 200, 400, 600, thousand years ago. Like those kinds of foods did not exist. And so...

in terms of an ancestral diet being eating whole foods, I'm all for it. Right. Whole foods from the earth, minimally processed. Yeah. I can get behind that, but eating a diet that's, you know, predominantly, you know, just all beef or whatever, is, there's, there's not much evidence that any humans ate that way that had exceptional lifespans. And, so what are some of the other, you know, what's, what are some of the other

misinformation topics that you feel really passionate about, uh, sort of debating, right? It's just like, you know, I, there's certain, certainly I have some, but, you know, you see people spouting a lot of, a lot of ideas, a lot of claims at what are the ones that really sort of drive you nuts that you're like, man, I've just got to keep, keep standing up to this, keep debating this.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (18:22.99)
The one that I think stands out the most or maybe comes up the most or maybe it's just because I talk about it a lot and that's why I stop my radar, but is the plant versus animal protein debate. I find that that one is sort of nonstop and there's sort of two aspects to it, right? There's the aspect of, well, is plant protein as anabolic or can it stand up to animal protein when it comes to gaining muscle and strength? So that's one side. Then the other side is what's healthiest.

I mean, when it comes to what's healthiest, that's just an easier one to respond to, basically across the board, almost every substitution analysis. So these are studies where they'll follow people over time, like with the Adventist studies, but then they'll model out like, okay, if we keep diet quality about the same, or if we look at people with say similar diet qualities, does replacing a bit of the animal protein with plant protein, you know, yield some kind of benefit. And they generally do for total mortality, for cardiovascular mortality, for even cancer mortality, provided

that were replacing like the plant proteins with meats or eggs typically. With dairy products, it depends on which one, it might be kind of neutral in some cases, and then with fish, again, it could be more neutral, but generally speaking, that shift towards plant protein is quite beneficial. Now, when it comes to the gains or the muscle strength gains, there's three real, say, points of argument to come up. One of them is, can you get the same amount of protein from plants?

And yes, you absolutely can. It just comes down to replacing high protein animal foods with high protein plant foods. So if you were to switch to a plant-based diet and just kind of pick, you know, whatever is labeled as vegan, you know, to fill up your diet, you might end up with less protein. But if you're replacing meat with tofu or tempeh or seitan or TVP, those are things that are going to be high in protein, perhaps comparable in the cases of seitan or TVP, maybe even more protein per calorie than the meat.

When it comes to milk, if you replace most dairy milks with soy milk or pea-based milk, you actually can increase your protein. The only case where you wouldn't is if it was like a skim milk that you were replacing, then it's more equivalent or close to equivalent. If you're replacing eggs with tofu or even a chickpea omelet, you can have comparable or more protein depending on the recipe. So there's a lot of ways to replace these animal proteins with plant proteins, get the same amount. But then the next bit of argumentation that comes up is, well, do you absorb as much?

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (20:49.006)
Or actually even before that, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, before that there's do you get all the essential amino acids, the nine amino acids or building blocks of protein that we need to consume in our diet? And yes, all plants contain all of the nine essential amino acids full stop. The only issue is if you were to eat just one food through your whole day and just barely scratch your minimum protein requirement, you might end up falling short on amino acid. But if you have some variety in your diet and this doesn't mean combining

things at every meal, just throughout the day, you're fine. It's really not anything to stress about. Then we move on to digestibility. And some people argue that you absorb significantly less protein from plant protein than animal protein. And this typically comes from either what's called the PD-CAS or the DAS score. So these are like protein digestibility scoring systems, but they're just grossly misunderstood. For one, they don't actually just measure absorption of protein. They measure

how much of the least prevalent amino acid you absorb. Okay, so if you take beans, which are lower in the amino acid methionine, and you were to compare that to something like eggs, which has more methionine, even if you absorbed 100 % of the protein from beans, you would still end up with a low score, because it just doesn't have as much of that particular amino acid. And so you sort of dock points from plant protein sources, which just have more variety in their amino acid scores rather than like a straight line.

often compare this to like a report card where if you had nine subjects representing the nine amino acids or essential amino acids and you got straight A's on eight of them but you ended up with like a C plus on one of them and your report card would just read C plus, it wouldn't even tell you rest, right? That's sort of how these scoring systems dock points off of plants which again is completely irrelevant if you just have more than one protein source in your diet. And so putting all those together, these concerns just largely fall flat.

When we look at actual digestibility of legumes, they tend to be around 80, some even reaching 90%, which for reference, animal proteins are usually around 90-ish percent or slightly above. If you look at plant-based meats or tofu or soy milk, it's like mid to high 90s. If you look at isolated proteins like a protein powder or something, it's usually like mid 90s. Like what we're talking, very comparable to the animal protein sources. And then at the end of the day, what ultimately matters is

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (23:11.872)
If you give people plant proteins and then you give another group of people animal proteins and you have them lip weights, do you see different results? And we have multiple trials now showing that no, you don't, as long as they're eating the same amount of protein. So any of these little differences in absorption or amino acid profiles or whatever clearly don't matter very much because you get the same result at the end of the day.

Chris Wark (23:31.932)
Yeah, that's great. It's great to know that the studies are finding that, you know, it doesn't matter where the protein comes from, you're still going to benefit. And the other piece of the puzzle, obviously, is you have to challenge your muscles and bones. You have to lift weight if you want to get stronger. I've been actively doing, you know, CrossFit functional fitness type stuff for almost 15 years and have never had an issue. They've stayed healthy and fit and

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (23:46.862)
Yeah, 100%.

Chris Wark (24:00.124)
gotten more fit. I'm the strongest I've ever been right now at 48. And so that's eating a predominantly plant-based diet. don't, I don't count protein grams. I don't worry about macros. just eat, you know, a very diverse whole food, plant-based diet and go to the gym four or five days a week and challenge myself. You know, it's like, it's, it's not complicated. It's very, very simple.

So what role, I mentioned the game changers two documentary coming up and just for this primer, this is an endorsement for the first one. this is a documentary film that follows athletes who are, who are plant-based, know, or vegan, who are competing at the highest levels in the Olympics, know, MMA, NFL, ultra runners, you know, you name it like Olympians, I'm sorry, world-class athletes competing at the highest levels.

who are eating plant-based diets. And when you see that these are real people, like they're way fitter and stronger than you or me. Right. And when you like the epiphany is like, wait a second. If they don't need it to be healthy, fit and strong, right. They don't need animal protein to be healthy, fit and strong. Why do I need it? And it's a, you know, common sense sort of takes over. It's like, well, you don't right. That just, just it, this disproves the claims of

protein industry and the meat and dairy industry. Like you just don't need it. So what was your role in this? How much can you tell me? A, cause I'm curious about the followup film and I'm curious about what your role in it is.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (25:43.692)
Yeah, so I had no role in the first one. I actually met James either after the movie came out or when it was coming out. I can't remember exactly when. I think it was just after. I think actually I first met him at a conference in California right before he recorded that debate on Joe Rogan. I think it was right around then, just before he was going on. He was like prepping for it. And then in the second one, mean...

honestly can't say much about the film, obviously at this point. There will be more athletes. I think that's easy one. And I'm just helping. Yeah, I think I'm helping a lot with the nutrition claims, making sure that, and it's not just me, there's a few of us on this sort of nutrition panel, so to speak, where we're discussing like the nutrition claims, what are we gonna say, what does the evidence support?

Chris Wark (26:20.83)
You're allowed to say that.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (26:40.066)
and those types of things, just trying to make sure that we're really bulletproofing the doc as best we can against the inevitable criticisms it's going to get no matter what. people are going to claim all sorts of biases and whatever, but if they can't actually poke holes in the science, then they let them. And so that's really what we're trying to make sure is that the claims are sound.

Chris Wark (27:04.529)
Yeah. What I, what I saw happen with the first one, there's was, there was a lot of attacks, but it was a lot of sort of cherry picked attacks on, small things in the first one while ignoring the big things, right? That's a very common tactic, right? They, they, they ignore the big evidence and they'll just find some little statement to, to attack and try to discredit the whole thing. And, in my, my mind, it didn't, you know, all the criticisms,

Criticisms really fell flat and it was mainly just meet lovers bias

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (27:40.568)
But that's the thing that we want to address though, right? Like with this second one, we want to make it ideally bulletproof to those, right? So if you give them little things to point at, can sow enough like doubt in kind of what's being said, right? If somebody can point out something that might be false or at least could very easily be interpreted as false. And so that's where like that little bit of extra thought comes in. And one thing that I do a lot on social media is I'm...

Chris Wark (28:00.2)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (28:08.492)
responding to these arguments all the time and sort of not just responding with, this is what the science actually says, but pointing out the flaws in the logic and kind of just understanding like the framing issues and those sorts of things. So I'm hoping that I can help bring that to this a bit. But yeah, we'll see how it all comes together over the next while. And not sure exactly when it'll be slated to come out or anything. We're still working on it, but it's looking good so far.

Chris Wark (28:35.986)
Well, I'll let you guys know when I learned something, when there's a release date, I'll definitely share it. Cause I, I definitely support that project and it's just, it's just great. It's great to see people excel at that level. It's such a high level and eating super healthy and, and just the dispelling the, you know, the animal protein myth and that we've been indoctrinated.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (28:39.16)
Yeah.

Chris Wark (29:01.342)
into since birth, at least in the US, right? And so I recently posted, so this is a side rant, but someone had shared the food pyramid. And so there's this big, you know, there's a big sort of backlash against the food pyramid. Everyone's, the food pyramid, it's so terrible. That's the reason we're all so unhealthy. Is this food pyramid? Right. And I recently posted a video maybe a month ago.

sort of attacking this idea, which is that the food pyramid's not the problem. The food pyramid was actually pretty decent. It's actually pretty decently organized. If you look at it, the problem is no one followed it. No one followed the food pyramid. People didn't have the food pyramid posted on the wall in the kitchen, right? And they didn't like, let's make sure this next meal is following the food pyramid children. Like that didn't happen. You know, it might've

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (29:58.488)
No.

Chris Wark (29:58.78)
been stuck in textbooks and one day in a textbook, you read about the food pyramid and the next day you're on something else. I mean, so it's like no one followed it. And what we ended up doing as a culture is, you know, in the last 50 years, I don't know when the first food pyramid was rolled out, but anyway, you know, 50 or 60 years ago, or maybe even longer, we just ate more processed food, more fast food, more junk food. look at the number of fast food restaurants,

in 1970 versus today. mean, it's, it's exponentially like the number is, I mean, I don't even know what the number is. I should Google it before I, we did this interview, but you know, it's like tens of thousands of fast food restaurants exist today that didn't exist back then. And the, the, the nature of food processing has changed so much, even genetically modified foods now are a thing. Like there's so much has changed. It has nothing to do with the food pyramid. What do you think about that?

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (30:57.262)
Yeah, so well, there's a few issues we can even backtrack a little bit. The food pyramid, at least that original version of it that everyone criticizes, hasn't been in use by the USDA since what, like 2005? Like it is retired forever ago. And yet you have people like I've seen Eric Berg and others commenting on, we want to revamp the food pyramid or we need to get rid of the food pyramid. It's like, no, it got it was gotten rid of 20 years ago. So I don't know why you're still talking about it. So that's one issue. then second,

Chris Wark (31:24.51)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (31:26.574)
Not only from what you're saying around people weren't following this strictly, we actually have research looking at adherence to dietary guidelines, and they're terrible, absolutely terrible. If we look at the times, at least through the second iteration of the food pyramid, which I believe ended in 2014, I think that's when that one was retired. Yeah, well, my play came in after, yeah. I think the original food pyramid, I think, went up to 2005, then the second one was...

Chris Wark (31:46.743)
plate was that what the my plate one or the

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (31:55.726)
done away with in 2014. But around that period, 2010, 11, 12, 13, the people who adhered to at least 80 % of the recommendations or more was like 2 % of the American population. So if roughly 2 % of the population was adhering to this pyramid, how could that explain the cardiomyabolic health of Americans as a whole? It just can't.

And so there, just doesn't make any sense. It's like when people on the carnivore camp blame like vegetables for our issues. It's like how many people are really smashing back the vegetables? Like let's be real. It's just not happening. So there's a number of issues.

Chris Wark (32:35.676)
No, my, that's great. Yeah. and I didn't know about that 2 % statistic, but I mean, that's like, you know, that just, I love it because it's, this is what I'm saying. Like no one followed it. Like I grew up, you know, I was born in 77. I grew up in the food pyramid era for sure. was like, nobody, nobody followed that. We were all excited to get, you know, pizza hut and subway and McDonald's and Burger King and Wendy's and Taco Bell. And just like, you know, this, you know,

Tasty fast food. That's like, that was my generation. So, really Gen X is, it was the first fast food generation, right? Gen X grew up like starting in early seventies, like we grew up in the, the explosion of fast food and microwave food, convenience food. Like we were the first generation to just, to, to eat it in this massive amounts. My parents' generation, it was more home cooked meals. And if they ate out, was, you know, sit down restaurant.

more whole food restaurant food, as opposed to the fast food thing. And like a fast food chain, sure, McDonald's was around, but there just weren't very many chains and it was a special occasion. wasn't every day going through the drive-through, you know, so that's a big, you know, big change. But then, you know, in addition to what you said,

It's funny how, it's funny how when you think about the change that has happened over time, right? All of these changes that have happened, no one's like putting the pieces together, right? They're not thinking about history. They're not thinking about what's different now. Everyone's looking for a scapegoat, right? And let's scapegoat this food pyramid. Let's somehow blame the government for our own bad food choices.

Right. And the reality is we live in a land of abundance. That's the truth. We live in a rich nation. There's food everywhere. Right. There's just food everywhere. It's everywhere. It's a blessing to have access to so much food. And the reality is, yeah, it's, you know, are the food companies, manufacturers, big food, whatever have figured out ways to make it cheaper and make it tastier.

Chris Wark (34:54.012)
and light up your pleasure centers and make it more addictive, right? All of these things. so part of it is their sort of sneaky insidious behavior in the lab, right? Formulating. So they're partially to blame, but we also have to take responsibility for our own choices and what we put in our mouths.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (35:14.83)
Well, agree to a degree. I would say that the larger onus is placed on the sort of food system as a whole versus the individual. So when we think about what drives obesity, a lot of the main drivers are in some ways influenced by genetics. So for example, satiety signals, for example, hunger signals.

And if we look at twin studies, so you compare, say, identical twins who share just about 100 % of their genetics versus, and they're reared in the same environment versus fraternal twins who share about half of their genetics and also reared in the same environment, we find that genetics drive about 40 to 70 % of differences in weight across populations, which is a massive proportion. And when you take people with these genetic differences, but you place them in, the environment of the 60s or 50s,

even though they have those differences in genetics and signals, they simply can't act on them. They aren't going to be triggered as easily because there aren't McDonald's on every corner or Starbucks on every corner. Whereas you put place those people in today's environment and they're fighting a losing battle to begin with because they walk down the street. Now I can see an advertisement for a burger or something and just not think twice. I'm fortunate to be that way.

but somebody else might walk by that same advertisement and it just consumes their mind for the next however long you are within a smelling distance of that place and maybe beyond that. And that is a big part of the problem. So when we look at things that have really worked to improve public health from a nutrition standpoint, one of the biggest success stories is actually the North Karelia project. Have you ever heard of this out of Finland?

Chris Wark (37:07.441)
No.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (37:08.43)
Yeah, so this is really interesting. So Finland used to have, at least among men, I don't know if the data was for the women, for men, the highest or one of the highest coronary heart disease rates in the world. And this was back in, I don't know if it was the 70s or 80s. they actually had, the government actually got together with a bunch of scientists and then they reached out to food manufacturers and they had this plan to lower the saturated fat content of the food supply.

to lower the sodium content of the food supply. So they were replacing a lot of the saturated fats with unsaturated fats. They were replacing a lot of the sodium chloride with like potassium or magnesium based salts, which tastes similar, but don't have that same effect. They also took out ads that again, government funded ads on like harms of smoking and stuff. Cause that was obviously more prevalent at the time. It was this really focused and coordinated effort.

to actually not just educate people because that's a part of it, right? The advertising and the educational resources, but also to actually change the environment. And they dropped their coronary heart disease rates by over 80%, which is insane, right? You will not, yeah. So this is where like, yes, there's an educational component and informing people of the effects of their choices, but that's only going to have so much of an effect when you're inundated with everything that we're inundated with.

Chris Wark (38:16.259)
Whoa, that's amazing.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (38:32.052)
And when access is sometimes an issue potentially with affordability and whatnot. But if you can have these sorts of coordinated efforts, which would take a pretty ballsy effort on the part of the government at this point to do with all the food supply and everything. But to have that sort of coordinated effort, you could make a huge impact on the state of chronic disease.

Chris Wark (38:54.568)
Well, it sounds like a great benchmark study that, you know, the, the maha movement should know about, you know, and I, I'm fully behind it. I do want to make America healthy again, for sure. that's been my miss mission since before that long before they coined that phrase, but, you know, talking about that specific study, my guess is they replace saturated fat with the dreaded seed oils.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (39:00.547)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (39:21.518)
That's a part of it, yeah. That was certainly, that or like olive oils and stuff, but yeah, definitely seed oils were a prevalent one.

Chris Wark (39:24.338)
Right?

Chris Wark (39:29.214)
Do you want to talk about seed oils and that, you know, that's the latest, you know, I've been around for 20 years, It tuned in my cancer journeys. a 22 year survivor now. And so I've been tuned into, nutrition research and health claims and really all this stuff. I, you know, I met my first naturopath and worked with him in January, 2004. So that was the beginning of my journey into, into holistic health, but

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (39:31.277)
Yeah, sure.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (39:41.678)
Congrats.

Chris Wark (39:58.386)
I've seen a lot of these food fear fads, right? Come and go. The latest one is the seed oils, right? The boogeyman seed oil boogeyman. Do you want to talk about that? What, you know, what do people need to know? What's the truth? What's the fiction about seed oils? Should we be afraid of them? Are there some that are legitimately unhealthy and others that are actually, healthier than say tallow or butter or, know,

be fat.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (40:28.322)
Yeah, yeah, I'm actually working on a huge paper on this topic, which hopefully in the next few months or so we get out there, we're just putting some finishing touches on it. But yeah, to summarize, mean, one of the big concerns that comes up is that these seed oils, so things like corn oil, safflower, sunflower oil, soybean oil, cottonseed oil,

Canola oil gets lumped in even though the fat profile is a little bit different. Canola oil is actually lower in the Omega 6 than a lot of those and higher in the Omega 3 fats and the Mono and Saturated fats, but maybe we don't need to get way into the weeds on this. Yeah.

Chris Wark (41:04.424)
Well, it's no, it's good that you mentioned that because I think people, people think canola is the worst of all.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (41:09.184)
Yeah, I know it is funny because it gets lumped in even though from a fat profile standpoint it's actually closer to olive oil but richer in omega-3s than olive oil. So it's like, if anything, it's almost a better one in some ways.

Chris Wark (41:20.966)
In canola is a brassica. So it's actually related to cruciferous vegetables and things. Right? Yeah. From what I understand, maybe double, you could track, check me on that.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (41:26.734)
I actually didn't know that. That a good, good, good, poll. Yeah, no, you might be right. Yeah, you might be right. I don't know. But anyway, so one of the concerns is the high omega-6 content of most of these oils. And what the theory goes is that the omega-6 linoleic acid that's in there can theoretically be converted into another omega-6 called arachidonic acid, and then that could theoretically be inflammatory.

What's funny is it can also be anti-inflammatory depending on context, so it's like not automatically inflammatory. But people take that to mean that, it's going to be inflammatory. So one of the problems is, I mean, that's great in theory, but you need to ultimately test it in people. And that's been tested to death now. We have a number of randomized controlled trials and we find that the linoleic acid does not get converted to arachidonic acid to any meaningful degree. It does not raise arachidonic acid levels in people when they're fed large amounts of these oils.

we also have studies looking at inflammatory markers. Again, they don't raise markers of inflammation. There's one study where they compared, I can't remember which seed oil it was. It might've been soybean oil, but one of them to like flax seed oil and flax seed oil lowered inflammation more than the other oil. So it made it kind of look like, hey, it's, it's causing inflammation, but it wasn't, it just didn't lower it as much as the other oil. but other than that, like there's really no evidence of this pro-inflammatory effect.

Chris Wark (42:51.88)
Well, and they've been head to head dietary studies, you know, in humans where they, you know, gave one group, you know, eat butter, use butter and the other group use, you know, canola or different types of seed oils. And then they look at their metabolic profile, their cholesterol and different things. And they found benefit from the seed oil.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (42:52.307)
And

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (43:11.534)
Yeah, across the board. Yeah, we see better cholesterol levels. We see lower liver fat accumulation, if they're both matched for calories. We find a number of studies suggesting cardiometabolic benefits, but what ultimately I want to look at is the long-term outcomes. What about like heart disease risk or cardiovascular mortality risk? And there's one really great study called the LA Veterans Administration Hospital study where they had about 850 or so people.

they had them split in half. And so you're randomized to be consuming food at this cafeteria or that cafeteria. Essentially. one cafeteria is regular, you know, food with animal fats. And the other one, what they did was they actually extracted the fats from the animal foods and they basically injected them with seed oil. So like they're replacing the fat, they're infusing that the, the linoleic acid, the seed oils into those foods. And over the course of eight years, there was about a 31.

Chris Wark (43:53.726)
That's not

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (44:05.07)
percent or so drop, I might be slightly off on that, around 30 % drop in atherosclerotic cardiovascular events, believe mortality as well. So pretty significant benefits when it came to heart health. Now, what some people will then, I mean, a lot of people ignore that study altogether, and it's arguably the best study we have on the topic, because in addition to what I just mentioned, they were also blinded, but people didn't know which one they were consuming. And so like there's there's an extra layer of

protection against biases there. Now what people, yeah, right. And they actually did another study prior, a small study where they had people consume these foods and, you know, to assess for the palatability, the acceptance of the food, could they tell the difference between the foods? And so like that is just never done today, like that level of rigor. And so this was an excellent, excellent study pointing towards benefits over the animal fat.

Chris Wark (44:35.271)
Yeah, that's good.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (44:56.898)
But what a lot of the people in the sort of anti-seed oil camp will do is they cite a couple specific studies, namely the Minnesota Corn Area Experiment and the Sydney Diet Heart Study. And these were done back in like the 60s and 70s. And the Minnesota Corn Area Experiment was a study that originally enrolled over 9,000 people and gave half of them corn oil and corn oil margarine. Then the other half had mostly animal fat. And now they actually didn't identify a significant difference between

you know, between groups for like cardiovascular events or mortality, but there's like a trend towards higher mortality. like, basically it could be a chance finding, but they, sort of point towards that anyway. But what they don't mention is that for one, three quarters of people dropped out by one year. So they have this huge attrition rate and the margarine that they were using based on what was available at the time likely was loaded with trans fats. And they try to

glaze over that. So it's actually suggesting that possibly trans fats aren't so good. Now, the Sydney Diet Heart Study had a similar issue. It didn't have the huge dropouts. Its design was actually pretty good, but they used a safflower oil margarine that at the time did contain trans fats and a lot of it. And so they found that, the intervention, the seed oil group did worse, but it was because they were loading up on trans fats, not because the seed oils themselves were harmful or those.

And that is pretty well understood at this point. That's been reported on over and over, but often it gets glazed over.

Chris Wark (46:26.8)
And hydrogenation was a problem too with seed oils, right? Yeah. That's what creates the trans fats, which are very unnatural, form of fat. you want to explain what, what trans fats do in the body? Why, why, what's the problem?

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (46:29.72)
That's the partial hydrogenation. So, yeah, exactly.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (46:41.526)
Yeah, so, so in order to make a fat solid margins are made differently nowadays, but at the time, to make a fat solid, like a liquid oil, say you want to turn safflower oil into a margarine, you would hydrogenate them. So basically you add hydrogens to them so that like a, unsaturated fat will have like a kink in it. And then if you add the hydrogens, it strains it out. That's like the easiest way to put it. And then the straighter they are, the more they can be packed together. And that makes it a solid.

like butter is rich in saturated fats, right? It's solid. But if you have partial hydrogenation, it sort of unkinks it, but it's still missing one of those hydrogens. So it's got a double bond in there. And because it has that double bond in the chemical structure, it acts differently in the body. So for one, it does raise our cholesterol levels. And that explains a part of the effect. But there also seems to be a number of effects on like endothelial function. So the health of the artery wall.

there's possible other like metabolic harms associated with trans fats. A lot of the mechanisms are like fully fleshed out and they're quite complicated. but there seems to be sort of a double whammy of increasing lipids, then also, like increasing lipids like cholesterol, but then also facilitating the transfer of that into the artery wall and damaging the lining of the artery and all that sort of stuff, that can sort of accelerate that progression to, to plaque buildup and to a heart disease down the road.

And that's why they've been banned from the food supply at this point. So you won't see like partially hydrogenated oils anymore. Fully hydrogenated is better. Yeah. You can't use, at least in US and Canada, you can't use partially hydrogenated foods or oils, sorry, as ingredients in the food that you're selling.

Chris Wark (48:14.279)
I didn't realize that. they're not in any products anymore.

Chris Wark (48:29.246)
That's great. So, okay. Thank you for the seed oil.

Masterclass. Hopefully that, we'll just call it the Cliff Notes, masterclass Cliff Notes, but hopefully that helps to alleviate some of this food fear. And by the way, we don't use a ton of seed oils in our home. We use olive oil, not even technically a seed oil. That's the main oil that we use for almost everything. And we love flax seed oil. It's just an incredibly healthy oil.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (48:41.996)
That's a very quick master class, I don't know about that.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (48:57.218)
No it's not.

Chris Wark (49:06.59)
high in omega-3s, lignans or anti-cancer compounds and flax oil. We love flax oil. And then occasionally we might use a little avocado oil or sesame seed oil in a special recipe where it just enhances the flavor and it's nice. And coconut oil here and there, again, in a special recipe for the flavor. But olive oil is the champ. That's our favorite. What about you?

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (49:33.442)
Yeah, I mean, I like if we're looking at health outcome data, I'd say olive and canola are actually top of the list. They seem to be comparable in any head to head studies, canola oil actually lowers cholesterol a bit more, but the the actual cardiovascular event risk ends up being about the same. And my suspicion there is that yes, there's the

the extra cholesterol lowering from the canola oil, but perhaps some of the polyphenols and olive oil have other positive effects that leads to like a neutral overall effect. And that's one of the reasons that I try to focus on those end outcomes versus just on those intermediate markers, because you can have some benefit here, but you might have another benefit over here that just ends up making it a wash. And that's sort of what I see with those two oils. So I don't think you can really go wrong. think they're both excellent. And for some, it may come down to the taste. Like, you know, olive oil has a specific

know, flavor to it and that might be really needed in certain dishes. And so I sort of fluctuate between a couple different kinds, all of being one. have a sesame oil that I'll use for stir fries actually infused with sriracha. So it's really nice or with chili. So it adds like a nice spice. then, and then I've got, I can't remember if it's canola or another seed oil, but I've got a seed oil in there somewhere.

Chris Wark (50:36.588)
yeah.

Chris Wark (50:45.086)
Yeah, we don't, we don't have any corn or soybean or canola oil in our house. I don't know. Just whatever, you know, just don't really haven't bought those in years. But, but I do think it's important that, and my one, this is going kind of going back to the ma thing. one disappointing issue is that they seem to be pushing, you know, tallow and, saturated fats and they're

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (50:50.914)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Wark (51:11.368)
They're sort of on this anti Ancel Keys. Ancel Keys was wrong and he unfairly demonized fat when sugar was the real problem and saturated fats. Wonderful. So what's your response to that? I mean, I know we've already kind of covered a lot of this, but is there anything else that you would add to that conversation?

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (51:25.57)
Yep.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (51:30.486)
Yeah, mean, so for starters with the saturated fat stuff, I mean, that's just gonna be harmful. If people were to fall off, it's just gonna be harmful.

Chris Wark (51:38.526)
And let me just interject because, uh, cause there's even been announcements that made me cringe. It was like such and such fast food restaurant is now cooking their fries and in beef tallow instead of, I don't know, peanut oil or whatever they were using before some seed oil. And that's like, ah, first of all, it's definitely not any healthier and it may actually be even worse.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (51:44.053)
I know.

Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (51:52.535)
Yeah.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (51:57.475)
Yeah.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (52:01.612)
Yeah, exactly. That would be my takeaway as well. you getting to the Ansel Keys point, I find that's funny. You know, it sort of sucks because they're, you know, hammering a guy who can't fight back at this point. You know, he's long gone at this point and they misrepresent his research over and over. For starters, they say that he cherry picked countries. He didn't. There's very clear evidence that they reached out to a number of countries and there were only certain ones that based on their resources that they'd be able to participate and collect the data that they needed to in all of that.

So that's absolutely nonsense. They say that he didn't look at the associations between sugar and outcomes. He absolutely did. in there. That suggests they've never read it. And then they also tend to pick out a different image where there was like 22 countries or something. they're like, look, why didn't they include all these? There's seven countries. Or they say that they left this out of their analysis or something. It was from a completely different prior analysis. It actually wasn't a part of the seven countries study.

That they, there's just that whole Ansel Keys story that they tell is just misrepresentation after misrepresentation. And it's unfortunate because a lot of people will then just repeat it over and over and over again without actually looking at the original sources and what was actually said. so his whole, like his work has been so bastardized at this point that it's just really unfortunate.

Chris Wark (53:26.322)
It is. Yeah. I think he's, yeah, I've been unfairly demonized. And it seems to me that he was an earnest, you know, thoughtful, meticulous researcher that really did care about human health. And, you know, I don't, I just don't think he was, had some secret agenda to enrich the

sugar industry or whatever, know, this conspiracy theory about him. just don't think it's true. He was a pioneer in human health research, right? Dietary research, like he and many others, but that, know, like we really, we, you know, they were at a point in human history where, you know, there's a sort of, I guess it was like an epiphany where like we have the resources now, the technology and the resources and the ability to travel. We can actually go study other countries. We can study their diets and their lifestyles.

Like we, we should be able to learn what diets are contributing to disease. If they, if diet is a contributor to disease, right? Like hypothesis, if diet is causing disease, we need to figure out what diets are promoting disease and what diets are promoting health. And so to me, it was a noble mission. And, um, I mean, obviously we're still doing this stuff today, but, uh, he was, you know, on the forefront of that research in a lot of ways and did a, did a big study. So.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (54:49.102)
Yeah. And I would say he did more for nutritional science than almost anybody you can name at this point, like laying the foundations of a lot of what we know today and that we've expanded upon. Like that's the thing, even if people wanted to criticize him, we don't have to cite any of his research now because we have newer research using more advanced technologies and methodologies and whatnot. But he started that to a large degree, right? He really laid the foundation that we then built upon.

Chris Wark (55:19.388)
Yeah. And that's a great point. It's like, Hey, you want to throw it, throw his research out. Fine. There's better research. There's newer research, same conclusions. You know, so that's okay. Like you can still think he was terrible, but, you know, there's, there's a lot more research out there that, is, mean, there's so much it's, it's, mean, I've, you know, I'm a fan of Dr. Michael Greger. I've interviewed him a few times. We've spoken together at events and whatnot. And, know, I mean, he's done such a great job.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (55:28.428)
Yeah, exactly.

Chris Wark (55:49.086)
Of just combing through nutritional science, finding all these wonderful studies on all the benefits of, uh, plant food and all these unique compounds, health promoting compounds in fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, herbs and spices. like nutrition facts.org is such a great resource for somebody that really, you really want to educate yourself on nutritional science, man. You go watch some of Dr. Greger's lectures and his videos and you'll learn a lot real quick or read his books, which are essentially textbooks. I mean, they're pretty dense.

So I'd love to ask you, do we got a couple of minutes left, as a, this is sort of a fun, just fun question that, I like to ask folks is like, if you could only eat the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, right? So you got three meals for the rest of your life. What would breakfast be? What would lunch be and what would dinner be?

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (56:39.366)
There's like, I need a clarification on something. Am I preparing all of these meals or are they prepared for me?

Chris Wark (56:46.999)
Hey, no, you don't have to prepare them. You do not have to prepare them.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (56:49.31)
Okay, okay. That gets a little more interesting. Okay. I'm going protein pancakes with blueberries for breakfast, even though... So there's protein, well, I mean, you can make them yourself as well, but there are some mixes I've had where it'll be the pancake mix, but they add pea protein or something to it, and so you get a high protein pancake. Something like that, but with blueberry sauce or something of the sort for breakfast.

Chris Wark (56:58.204)
What is a protein pancake? What does that mean?

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (57:18.062)
Maybe I'm just craving that right now and that's why it's coming to mind. don't know. Yeah, for lunch, I'll say I'm pretty simple with lunch. Like even if I could have someone prepare something super fancy, I don't know if I would. I'd probably honestly do some kind of like a Buddha bowl type thing, but specifically with the Japanese like Okinawan sweet potatoes. Like those are my favorite sweet potatoes. I'd specifically use those. Probably some kind of tofu, smoked tofu maybe in there.

Chris Wark (57:19.87)
Mm-hmm. Making me crave it.

Chris Wark (57:40.914)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (57:48.418)
And I don't know whatever mix of veggies and like that's unique based sauce or something and then for dinner For dinner, I'd this is where the the question of am I making this or someone else comes in I probably have like a there's some good like like plant-based lasagna is with like a cashew cheese and like some veggie grounds and stuff or lentils and the you know sauce like something like that But that those often take a lot more work, so I don't have it that often

Chris Wark (58:01.519)
Okay, yeah, yeah

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (58:18.38)
something like that and then for for dessert I like making just like a simple berry base like nice cream or whatever you want to call it something like that and then throughout the day if I was to snack I'd probably say a good ripe mango yeah I really like mangoes yeah so something like something like that would be generally what I would go for

Chris Wark (58:34.824)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Wark (58:40.506)
yeah, yeah, that's great.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (58:46.574)
It's not all that different than how I eat other than the breakfast is more often going to be oatmeal than like the protein pancakes as I mentioned or you know something simpler and then the dinner is definitely not going to be lasagna most of the time just because it's too much work.

Chris Wark (58:54.899)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Wark (58:59.494)
Yeah. So I, so people are everybody wants to know now. So what is a typical dinner? What's your typical.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (59:06.754)
Yeah, typical dinner. So I do have pastas pretty often, not like I'll have a lentil pasta. So like the lentil pasta is with like a tomato sauce and I'll sometimes like blend like a cashew thing into that make it like a creamy tomato sauce. So that's one. Stir fries I do pretty often I find them really easy. And that might be like a tofu and veg and then there's some different sauces that I'll rotate through like I make them myself but there's different recipes online I'll follow some or more.

Chris Wark (59:11.496)
Mm-hmm. We do too.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (59:35.566)
teriyaki style, some are actually more like peanut style, like it just varies. But I tend to use a similar sort of base, I guess, for like what the meal is, and then I'll change up the sauces or flavorings or even the types of veggies. And I think that's just an easy little hack for people who are maybe eating similar meals day to day, but want to add a little bit of variety just for like, you know, the nutrition and whatnot, is you can essentially make the same meal, just swap out a few things, like, you know, instead of sort of broccoli, maybe you do, I don't

Brussels sprouts or something in a dish or instead of one type of sweet potato maybe use another instead of kale maybe use spinach or collard greens or something like you can you can essentially make the same meal just very out the specific ingredients in some ways

Chris Wark (01:00:18.534)
And the sauces, right? It's like, can have a sweeter sauce. You can have more savory sauce, something spicy, something creamy. Yeah. You can really, there's so much variety in the same exact ingredients, just a different sauce on top. And yeah, it's a great way to mix it up and keep, it interesting. Well, Dr. Neger, this has been so fun. I really appreciate the work you're doing. I want to make sure people know how to connect with you, follow you, learn more from you. So.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (01:00:20.374)
Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (01:00:31.81)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Wark (01:00:47.644)
Where can they go to do that?

Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND (01:00:49.762)
Yeah, I'm definitely most active on Instagram. So at Dr. Matthew Niagara or dr.matthewnagra. also cross post to all the other social platforms, YouTube, TikTok, et cetera. I also have a website drmatthewnagra.com where I'll link to podcasts and things that I've been on like this one. So you'll see those there. And then I occasionally put out some longer blog articles as well when relevant there. So you can contact with me in a number of ways and happy to have you on board wherever that may be.

Chris Wark (01:01:17.522)
Good. All right, folks. Well, make sure you do that. there's, there's a lot to learn, but you know, the truth is simple. If you want to go down the research route, rabbit hole, there's so much fascinating nutritional science research, but it all comes back around, right? It's all going to bring you right back around to the simple truth that whole foods from the earth, minimally processed are really good for you. Fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes.

Herbs and spices, nuts and seeds, and yes, even some seed oils are health promoting foods. You can enjoy them. You know, the wonderful thing about eating this way is for most folks, can really, you don't have to starve yourself. You don't have to count calories. You can really eat an abundance of whole plant foods and thrive, lose excess weight, maintain or gain strength and, and turn chronic diseases around.

And we've seen it over and over in our community. no Dr. Negra has too. So anyway, thanks for watching gang. Please share this with people that you care about and I'll see you on the next one.