Unlocking the Secrets of Whole Foods | Dr. Stephan Van Vliet

Transcript

[: 00:00

We talk a lot about macronutrients and we talk a lot about protein, carbohydrates and fats. But on another level, there is again this idea of bioactive compounds, and you published a paper looking at the nutritional composition. There were pasture-finished beef and there were grain-finished beef. I'd love for you to expand on this and, if it is meaningful...

[: 00:22

Yeah, that's the million-dollar question: “Is it meaningful?”, for sure.

[: 00:30

Welcome to the Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show, where cutting edge science meets innovation and practical application for everybody. In today's episode, I sit down with Dr. Stephan Van Vliet. This episode is so fascinating and here's why: he educates us on information and nutrition from in the womb, how food that we eat during pregnancy can affect the choices of our children and beyond. How those nutrients are impacted from the cattle that we eat, beyond macros. We're talking about the phytonutrients in cattle, things that you haven't thought of before, we learn all about the food matrix. Please join me in conversation with Dr. Stephan Van Vliet. Dr. Stephan Van Vliet, welcome to the show.

[: 01:23

Thank you so much, Gabrielle, I really appreciate it.

[: 01:26

I cannot believe how much we have in common. You went to the University of Illinois and you also went to WashU. You were in Bettina Mittendorf's lab, which, well, I guess she was with Sam Klein, so we were all together, Amazing.

[: 01:42

Yeah, that's right. When I arrived at the University of Illinois, Dr. Don Lehman had just retired, but he often visited the lab still, so I worked with Dr. Nicholas Bird. So another name in the field of protein metabolism. So yeah, it's a small world.

[: 02:01

It is a small world. Actually, I didn't know that you were in Nick Bird's lab. He published one, really, I mean, many interesting papers, but you know, he published that paper about muscle protein synthesis and obesity. There's a potential blunting effect which I have found fascinating. So that's truly amazing. I want to tell you why I wanted you to come on the show. Number one: you are a fine scientist, you are well-rounded and just very seasoned, and the work that you produce is thoughtful and puts into perspective, not in isolation, the nutrients that we eat. There's protein and there's leucine… but really thinking about the food matrix, the practicalities of how we consume food, right? We eat a burger, or, you know, we eat some blueberries. We don't eat anthocyanins with a side of leucine. You've really paved the way in changing perspectives and the way in which you come about it is deeply intelligent. So thank you so much.

[: 03:12

Yeah, I appreciate that. I appreciate the kind words. Yeah, I think you're going to make me blush.

[: 03:18

Well, I'm going to work on it. I'm going to throw in mom jokes, probably really bad humor. and a little bit of science. For the listeners, I'd love for you to bring us up to speed on some of the current work that you're doing and why you're doing it.

[: 03:36

Well, let's start with the reason why I'm doing it because I want to know it for myself, for my family, for my friends. But luckily enough. there's also other people that want to know it and were able to get funding for it. But just to take you back, it started as a passion. I got into weightlifting when I was around… I think it was about 16, 17 years old or so and I did that throughout the latest years of high school. Then, I actually went to business school because I didn't know what I wanted to do, and going into business is a logical step, I guess, right? You're all around it.

[: 04:13

But during business school I really started to develop an interest in how nutrition can help, in that case, sports performance. As I was lifting weights, I got myself reading physiology journals, nutrition journals instead of business journals. So I did finish business school. But after that I made a career switch and I volunteered in a lab in the Netherlands, a muscle physiology lab under Dr. Luc Van Doon. And then I did my master's in England exercise and nutrition science and did my PhD in kinesiology.

[: 04:42

So I kind of worked my way up through that and what initially started with interesting sports performances, since then in our current work kind of morphed into also linking the fields of agriculture and human nutrition.

[: 04:55

During my PhD we did some work, interesting work, on egg whites versus whole eggs and actually found that whole eggs because of the food matrix which you can talk about what we exactly mean by that, it actually resulted in a higher muscle anabolic response. That could not be explained by the protein content of the eggs, because the egg whites and the whole eggs are similar… They were matched for protein. So what that told us is that there's other foods or other compounds within the food that can impact our metabolism, in this case muscle proteasynases, which we were measuring. What is the most obvious way to maybe increase those bioactive compounds in an egg? Why would you feed a chicken? So later on, as that work evolved, we also kind of naturally flowed into work feeding chickens different feeds and then, with now the current concerns about the sustainability of food production and climate change, we started to kind of blend the fields in our most recent work.

[: 05:52

And one of the things. Well, first of all, it makes a lot of sense that the quality of the whole egg would be different because they're fat-soluble vitamins and other, probably other… I don't even know… nutrients of concern or ways in which we can optimize based on what we feed chickens, and that makes a ton of sense. You know, when I was looking at a lot of your work, one of the things that we hear a lot about primarily is organic versus non-organic, and then this idea of this food matrix. I would love for you to explain to us what the food matrix is and how, potentially, looking at that is more impactful than looking at things again in isolation, which is what a lot of the research does.

[: 06:47

Yeah. So the food matrix typically refers to the compounds that are contained within the food and specifically the interaction between those. So it's based on the idea that the food matrix is more than the sum of its individual nutrients. So if you have these nutrients contained within a food matrix, as, let's say, compared to a multivitamin pill, is that these vitamins interact in a way with each other and interact maybe with other phytochemicals polyphenols that increases their bioavailability and that also increases their metabolic effects. So typically the food matrix would have a synergistic effect.

[: 07:27

In food science, it may refer to actual physical structure, but how I look at it, from a human nutrition standpoint, or maybe an animal nutrition standpoint even, is the interaction of nutrients within the food and indeed even if we look at the eggs in that work. Yes, fat soluble vitamins, other very bioactive compounds that may be found within that, amino acid metabolites, peptides. All of those play a role in metabolism and what is, I think, key about the food matrix is that we probably cannot pin it down to a single nutrient, even though we try. We can say well, we know that retinol, vitamin A or vitamin E works on certain muscle anabolic pathways. We also know polyphenols actually can, strangely enough. It's more of a novel discovery in animals that even polyphenols can impact the mTOR pathway, so maybe even the anthocyanin in a blueberry can impact that pathway. So I mean, these are a lot of things that we're learning now at the moment. So the food matrix really highlights the complexity of food and how the interaction of nutrients within the food can impact metabolism within the organism, in this case, the human or the animal.

[: 08:48

There's one paper. There's many papers actually that you've published, but one in particular… and again, for the listener, what I want to put into perspective is we talk a lot about macronutrients as you know, being trained by Don and still being mentored by him we talk a lot about protein, carbohydrates and fats. But on another level, there is again this idea of bioactive compounds and you published a paper and this is pasture finishing of cattle in Western U.S. rangeland improves markers of animal metabolic health and nutritional compounds in beef. And just to highlight, looking at the nutritional composition, there were pasture-finished beef and there were grain-finished beef. There were differences in the composition somewhat.

[: 09:42

I don't know if these were statistically significant, but just looking at this. And then I want you to expand upon this. Looking at this, pasture-finished beef contained four-fold higher omega-3 fatty acids. Again, we're probably not eating beef for fatty acid content or omega-3 fatty acid content, so we should put that into perspective, but it sounds like a lot. Four-fold higher increase. And alpha-tocopherol, which is vitamin E, a three-fold higher increase. Choline, myo-inositol… again, I'd love for you to expand on this and, if it is meaningful…

[: 10:26

Yeah, that's the million dollar question: “Is it meaningful?”, for sure. I mean it's meaningful for the animal because the other finding that we made was that the animal has less oxidative stress, has improved antioxidant status and what was interesting is that those animals if we, you know… In the past we did muscle biopsies on, or still do, on endurance strength athletes and a piece of meat from a pasture finished scout that walks five miles a day, it looks surprisingly similar to endurance strength human.

[: 10:56

You mean the muscle tissue?

[: 10:58

Well, yeah, like metabolically, yeah, you see the mitochondria being improved. You see various amino acids, metabolic pathways being improved. Like I said, probably if I was blinded well, we were blinded for the groups, but if I didn't know it was coming from a cow, I might as well have thought I was looking at an endurance-trained athlete, to be honest with you. And then, comparatively, it doesn't mean per se that animals in feedlots have metabolic disease.

[: 11:31

That's not what I'm trying to state here, but, comparatively, the animals out on pasture seem to have improved what we would consider an improved metabolically healthy phenotype, I would say. Now, are these findings meaningful? It's a question we're trying to address in randomized controlled trials. What I will tell you, though, is that we've done a few randomized controlled trials, even comparing bashed versus grain fed. While there may be some subtle differences, if you take people off a standard American diet, that becomes a detail. So if people just stop eating two-thirds of their calories from ultra-processed foods and actually start eating some whole foods, fruits, vegetables, meat, milk and eggs, pretty much irrespective of the production system, you see these major increases in people's metabolic health. But this is in a short-term trial, and to your question of like, do the omega-3s have a meaningful effect? I would argue that maybe, yes, they would, because there's various modeling studies from populations in Australia, in Ireland, and also in the UK that get a lot of their omega-3s actually from grass-fed meat and milk. So, while it's pale in comparison to salmon, if you look at the amount of salmon that people eat versus especially within a Western diet or a U.S. diet, the amount of beef that people eat, that, yeah, it could have a meaningful effect.

[: 13:06

And then the other part of this and here's tying it back to the food matrix. If I look at a spreadsheet and look at, ‘oh, this contains 50 milligrams of omega-3s’, this piece of grass-fed ribeye, I would think that is not enough to make a dent in people's blood levels, but in fact it does. And I think this comes back to the food matrix where maybe the absorption of the omega-3s because if you would take that in a pill I'd say it probably doesn't move the needle, but if you take this from a whole food matrix, I think the omega-3s are protected from oxidation. Probably they're more bioavailable, they're absorbed because of the phytochemicals that could also be a thing that prevent lipid peroxidation. So I think that's where you see the whole food matrix is that the effect is stronger than you would gather from just looking at an excel spreadsheet.

[: 13:55

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[: 14:57

That is fascinating and also really important because the first line of defense, it sounds like, would be a whole foods diet. Again, I understand that I'm saying this blanketly, but, based on what you just said, if we're thinking an individual would determine that they're going to eat four grams of omega-3, you know, oil, omega-3, fatty acid or whatever it is do you think that there's a particular dose of foods that would optimize for human health? And I understand that that's a somewhat of an arbitrary question, but you've been looking at the metabolomics and the various byproducts of foods for a long time.

[: 15:43

Yeah, I would say I do like a food first approach. Try to get as much of your nutrients from foods. Because even though, you know, a piece of salmon, while rich in omega-3s, it probably provides a whole host of other nutrients that are beneficial for you. So we don't know exactly. I mean, we're scratching the surface, even with the food metabolomics you have… we go all out using on target metabolomics, maybe we can discover or measure or identify, I should say, but not quantify 1,000 or 2,000 compounds, but it is estimated that the food metabolome probably contains 30,000 metabolites. So that's probably still a conservative estimate. So we are scratching the surface of this for sure.

[: 16:27

But, yeah, to optimize, for you know, like… if I look at my own diet, yeah, of course I use this data also to inform myself. I'm also a consumer… is that for me to reach those levels, I probably take in about three milligrams of omega-3s a day. I use the old world method of taking a tablespoon of cod liver oil every morning. But that is the European remedy.

[: 16:56

Well, I can't get my kids to take it, so we’ve got to come up with a better solution. How advanced are we in measuring metabolomics? What is it? How are we doing it?

[: 17:10

Yeah, so metabolomics it's basically a fancy word for saying it's a study of metabolites, and if it's a big data set, we put the word omics behind it. I'm not sure how that part came about, but if we measure a lot of proteins, we call it proteomics. But it's basically a study of metabolites. And what are metabolites? They're products of metabolism when we break down amino acids within our muscle for ultimately renewal through muscle protein synthesis. Those are metabolites.

[: 17:47

Now, if we look at this in the context of food, many of the metabolites that are produced because of the metabolism of a plant being a carrot or a piece of kale or an animal right, because the plant and the animal is not producing these nutrients for us, even though we sometimes like to think so. It's producing those for its own metabolism. But many of the metabolites found within plant and animal sourced foods have neutral value to us. So, yeah, B vitamin is a metabolite and amino acid is a metabolite, but yeah, they have a neutral value to us.

[: 18:15

So we use the study of metabolomics, which is usually done using mass spec based technology. And what a mass spec does? It's actually a similar instrumentation that will be used in drug testing of athletes, for instance. Now I'm not really interested in whether the cow has used testosterone or not, but you know. What it can do? It can measure small molecule metabolites very precisely. So that is the methodology that we use. So we apply it to food to understand the complexity of food beyond just simply total protein, total fat or individual fatty acids.

[: 18:51

And there's probably a minimum effective dose of those metabolites that we don't know about. That would inform our food choices. In my mind… how do we feed the muscle? What are the choices that we make to feed the muscle? Would that reach us this optimal level of these metabolites, based on the foods, or the foods and the substances that these animals are eating? I do think it's fascinating. Do you think we'll eventually get there?

[: 19:19

Yeah, I mean, I think so. You know, we don't have RDAs for vitamins and minerals. Those were just established between 80 and 30 years ago or so.

[: 19:32

I do think we're in sort of a second revolution, in that people are now applying food metabolomics to discover a lot more nutrients and while these nutrients may not be essential for health, they're certainly helping good health. Think about it, for instance, antioxidants, which is what many of these polyphenols or phytochemicals are. They have antioxidant effects, and diseases that we currently struggle from are diseases - obesity, cancer, heart disease - that have probably been rooted in some sort of inflammatory or maybe aberrant genetic effects, right? So this is what another part of it would be… the nutrigenome, which would be the interaction of nutrients with a gene that maybe turns on or turns off certain cancer cells, or… We even know that polyphenols can impact our pancreatic beta cells and alter insulin signaling pathways. So it does help in the glucose metabolic health. So, having a lack of those compounds within your diet, while you won't develop a classic nutrient deficiency, like you would see with vitamins, you're certainly not having optimal health now in terms of minimum doses.

[: 20:48

Actually, the American Dietetics Association actually came out with the first official recommendation on this, or semi official recommendation from an official body, that recommended flavonoids, which is a class of polyphenols at… I believe it was 600 milligrams a day, based on, I think, about 120 studies or so, both randomized control trials as well as epidemiological studies. So will it appear in dietary guidelines for Americans in the next five years? Probably not, but in the year 2030 to 2035, I definitely see this being mentioned. So for the reason that currently our standard American diet is just not rich in these compounds and, of course, the reason why we have metabolic disease within Western society in general is not just because of the foods that we eat, it's our lifestyle. We're under stress, we're probably not very active enough, we're not sleeping enough, but diet… there's some really interesting metabolomics work that was from a group out of Israel that applied these metabolomics analysis on neumoplasma and they modeled that about 50% of the metabolites that circulate within our body, within our blood is directly related to the foods that we eat.

[: 22:16

That should make us all concerned about the foods that we're consuming. When we look at this pasture finishing of cattle, you know I am of the belief that it's whatever anyone could afford. I wouldn't want them to be limited to make poor food choices because they couldn't afford grass-fed, grass-finished. Would you agree with that?

[: 22:31

Yeah, I would agree with that. Also with our studies, it's just, you know… Maybe these are details, but I think you get 80% of the way there by just buying some meat and vegetables instead of soda and pop tarts.

[: 22:43

Yeah, anything is better than that. The grain-finished... What were some of the biggest differences in grain-finished animals?

[: 22:54

So when we did metabolomics, we saw about a 40% difference in compounds, so in abundance of compounds, and basically what we saw was that an animal is what they eat, just like a human would be, right? Like, if we had done a randomized control trial in humans and we have one group on their habitual diet and we put the other group on maybe a Mediterranean diet, we would expect to see similar magnitude of differences and we actually see the same thing in animals.

[: 23:24

So it's just another mammal, not that different from us. So you do get differences, considerable differences, I think, larger differences than people previously appreciated. But if you just think about it, it's like you put a cow on two completely separate diets. One can maybe select from… in this case they were on diverse western rangelands and they had access to over a thousand different plants. So picture you and I walking into a buffet with maybe not a thousand different foods, but a hundred different foods. Or we get our plate put in front of us, right? And we cannot really decide what we get. We'd probably be able to nourish ourselves if we were able to select from a variety of different foods.

[: 24:07

So if the mammal, in this case a cow, can do that, you do get what we consider… maybe more in some ways additional health-promoting compounds that become available within the animal and you see a slightly healthier metabolic phenotype. Now what does this do for us? I'm not sure about that at the moment, beyond studies that suggest that you can raise the omega-3 levels in your blood by eating pasture-finished animal source foods, compared to eating grain-fed foods or grain-fed animals. But I do have to be that realistic that the effects are going to be… the details are going to be a piece of the puzzle of overall health.

[: 24:51

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[: 26:38

What about the phytochemical content, which I had never thought about that before. You've published some work discussing the phytochemical compound of beef. It sounds like an oxymoron.

[: 26:53

Yeah, yeah, it's, you know… The question is always, well, ‘why don't the readers eat those plants yourself?’ And then the answer is of course, we cannot eat the same plants a cow can eat. But what was particularly novel I think about that, and again, I don't know the answer to this at the moment. But a cow is another mammal and actually the antioxidants within the cow are similar to the antioxidants within our body: Hyporic acid, precursor, sulfate, glutathione, all of these things are higher. Now we do know from other nutrients, such as iron, that iron in an animal form is more bioavailable. Now if we eat blueberries, our hyporic acid also goes up within our body, or some of these microbial metabolites. Could there be a benefit to directly getting these antioxidants from eating another mammal in similar versions that are already within our body? I don't know about that.

[: 27:49

But that is, you find striking differences between a human that will be consuming a lot of polyphenol-rich foods versus an animal that is getting these phytochemicals, but it does pre-process these for you. So that's the next question: Is there a benefit to that?

[: 28:07

Well, good news is you're going to be working on it. I think this is a fascinating conversation. What about the hormonal residue? I think that there's a lot of misinformation around hormone use in animals and what that actually means for the consumer.

[: 28:26

Yeah, this is not a part that I'm particularly worried about. To be honest with you, those are typically in minor amounts. Another thing we often get is the pesticide exposure to the animal. The animal provides a buffer. So again, you find very low amounts of that in there and in fact in the animals that were out on pasture they had higher levels on average of some heavy metals like arsenic or lead, which could be due to the drinking water or just due to the forages, but again, they stay within safe levels. So, to be honest with you, that's not a part that… Yeah, I think that wouldn't personally concern me too much, just given the low doses that are used and within sort of the animal finding a buffer for that.

[: 29:20

I also agree with you. I do have less concerns about that and I do think we're still in this really weird space of plant versus animals. I'm curious as, if you agree with that, I again, coming out of Don's lab, we didn't see that, it wasn't really until this rise of social media that you know we saw so much controversy around eating plants versus animals and just so much of the scapegoating on cattle. I would love, for… I'd love your perspective on that.

[: 29:57

I think it's a minority of people that… they just tend to be a louder minority. But if you ask me as well, just look at this. I get the whole… the ethics part of it. Of course, don't get me wrong. If you find it unethical to consume another living animal, I totally respect that and I understand that. If I just you know, take that out of the equation and just look at it from a sort of a standpoint of physiology.

[: 30:23

Humans being an omnivorous species, we derive benefits from eating both plants and animals, and if you are excluding either one from your diet, you're excluding nutrients that can be of benefit to you. In the animal source foods we have things like creatine, anserine, taurine. These are all things that we know have impacts on our neurocognitive function. Maybe the obvious thing is, of course, vitamin B12, but you could argue ‘well, why don't we supplement that?’ Yeah, you could, but what about the other estimated 30,000 metabolites found in a piece of meat? You're not going to be able to supplement this, so you're going to be bound to miss out on some things.

[: 30:59

On the other side of the equation, to me it also doesn't make any sense to you know for the average individual, I should say I'm not debating the fact that some people may find some benefits with gut healing or by severely limiting their amount of plant foods for a period of time. But then you probably have an underlying issue that you have to deal with, because if you cannot eat some sauerkraut without issues, then there's probably an issue that you have to overcome. But even then you get a wide variety of compounds that are maybe not found in animal-sourced foods. So, as an omnivorous species, I'd say an omnivorous diet rich in plants and animals is the way to go, and there's no good physiological reason to exclude either.

[: 31:49

Do you find that… Do you personally get a lot of pushback from various academics or other individuals about how cattle is affecting the environment? Is that something that you are lucky enough to receive?

[: 32:07

Not so much from other academics, no. People are pretty reasonable and have reasonable conversations. I'm sure many of the folks that will give you feedback or - feedback or pushback, however you want to call it - on social media, if you had a conversation with them in person, I'm sure they would be a little less… how do you say it? It'll be a little bit nicer, I think, right? Because you're having a conversation with someone one-on-one.

[: 32:33

So no, I mean, when we publish this paper comparing the impossible burger versus… - may, or may not have been an impossible burger, by the way, it wasn't in the paper, but, okay - you know a popular plant-based meat alternative to grass-fed beef in this case. Yeah, I did receive some pushback on social media with people saying like you know, ‘how can you?’ I mean, we always pointed out… we didn't even talk about health, like hey, these are different products. I think it's important for consumers to know that these, even though they can both consider quote-unquote protein, they're completely different. 90% difference in metabolite composition.

[: 33:12

I definitely got some pushback on that, with people sending me emails like ‘hey, how can you live with yourself?’ And things such as that, because you know cows are destroying the earth and… But, I mean, those are minor… Typically, you know, with other academics, in papers there may sometimes seem like people really disagree with each other. If you get to the… there's people in the same room, then you notice you have a lot of commonalities. But yeah, sometimes there is a little bit of like, you know, do I per se agree with an Eat Lancet report or something like that?

[: 33:49

Can you just mention what that is for the listener?

[: 33:54

Yeah, Eat Lancet was an influential report that was published a few years ago and there's definitely been follow-ups on that. It's a bit too prompt. But it plants the environmental and health effects of different types of fruits and in that case animal-sourced fruits do not really come out very favorable because of the metric of looking at emissions, so a cow or an animal produces more emissions than a soybean does. That is the case.

[: 34:24

Now, luckily, if we graze animals, usually with rotational grazing or a biodiverse species, it's the interaction with the plant that can actually then draw down some of the carbon again. So it's kind of like the best way of looking at it is that, let's say, if I have a business and I'm spending, if you look at my expense report and I have, my expenses are a billion dollars a year and then you look at another business and it has an expense report of a hundred million a year, you would say, ‘well, business B is doing better than my business’, but if my income is 2 billion and the other business income is 50 million, then it flips. So it's kind of the way of looking at it. You would never do accounting like that. But why do you do accounting for emissions that way? You only look at the emissions but not the sort of moralistic approach of how animals, integrated with plants or even crop agriculture, can then draw down some of this carbon that is being emitted.

[: 35:24

So, that's, I think, one thing that is a nuance that is missed and that I think especially many folks within the field of animal science or ecology often push back on, which I think maybe, in my humble opinion, is missing from that report. And then the second part of it is that animal source foods are often conflated with a standard American diet. So various randomized controlled trials or even epidemiological studies that consume animal source foods within a healthy overall diet Mediterranean diet, mind diet, bold diet, traditional Japanese diet, traditional American diet, if such a thing exists, but a whole foods-based diet you typically see that these concerns of animal-sourced food on negative effects on cardiovascular health or diabetes which, if someone can explain the pathway to me, I'd be very happy to hear it by which eating meat would cause diabetes…

[: 36:22

Because we've heard that, right? I think it was… it might've been the same group that was part of the Eat Lancet report. I don't remember. Do you remember?

[: 36:31

I mean, it's epidemiological research which suggests that is the case. But then if you look at randomized controlled trials and if you feed people meat, then typically you see neutral effects, right? Because I mean, even in our studies that we did, we feed people meat and it's like the glucose response is a blip and the insulin response is a blip as well. Now I know the pathways that people bring up is that it works on… it's inflammatory, pro-inflammatory and therefore the inflammation acts on pathways that result in, ultimately…

[: 37:03

Is that what people say?

[: 37:06

That's the mechanism behind it. But again, you know… maybe there's something to it in the context of a standard Western diet, maybe because you know there are studies to suggest that if you marinate your meat or add some spices to the meat or add it with some plant foods, that many of these advanced lipoxidation hand products or advanced glycation and products are actually greatly reduced. So maybe if you eat meat as part of a fast food outlet diet, maybe then there could be some negative effects, but those effects seem to be negated the moment you eat that with an overall whole foods based diet.

[: 37:42

Do you think there's a particular percentage? You know, I was talking to Don earlier today and we were talking about cholesterol. We were talking about the egg and the egg, according to the FDA and the dietary guidelines, is never going to be considered a healthy food because it has 18% saturated fat, even though it comes out to a little over one gram of saturated fat, but based on the percentage, that will never fall into the category of a healthy food.

[: 38:14

Yeah, that's strange to me, because I would consider an egg a healthy food. Yes, just looking at its nutritional makeup, it's a very nutrient-dense food that I think one should include in their diet, or can include safely in their diet, for sure. So, I think it comes back to the fact that, you know, you have to consider all lines of evidence, right? And I do think that some of the work leans heavily on epidemiological research and even but the interesting part of that, and within the Western society, because even that, there's a really interesting systematic review of epidemiological research that looks at processed meat versus unprocessed meat within Middle Eastern populations and, strangely enough, well, not strangely enough, it's easily explainable when you look at the detail, but processed meat is associated with a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease within that study. Well, what is processed meat in this regard?

[: 39:19

It is traditionally cured ham, it is maybe meat cured with certain spices, and to think that maybe a parma ham that has been cured for 12 months is the same as an ultra processed breakfast sausage is, in my opinion, ridiculous. But this is how it's being approached. So we need to point out those nuances and I think that's oftentimes missed. And then the overall diet quality piece is also missed, and I think that's where some of this misunderstanding comes from. But if you're able to kind of dig into the details, you see that these patterns start to emerge and I cannot come to anything else but the conclusion that eating a 12-month cured ham and eating a piece of red meat and an egg as part of an overall whole foods-based diet is perfectly compatible with good health.

[: 40:15

How would you expect or how would you encourage the listener to think about when they're hearing these headlines? Because typically when you see these headlines, dietary protein causes type 2 diabetes. You know, I remember when they said something about branched-chain amino acids causing diabetes. And then you look back and it typically comes from epidemiology, which is low quality evidence, and then you move on to a randomized controlled trial to see and test that hypothesis. What would you say to someone who is listening and their doctor said you shouldn't eat red meat, based on this study, it's going to increase your risk for cancer? How would you help them understand those kinds of statements that, by the way, people are hearing frequently?

[: 41:05

Yeah, you know, first and foremost, it's really hard because if your doctor says that to you, it's a figure of authority and if you get a second opinion, then hopefully the next doctor would not say that to you and then maybe that's the way to do it. But you know, I would seek out instead maybe a registered dietitian that is actually someone who has formal nutrition training and, and even in that case, you know, like you want someone who can objectively or critically look at the research, right? And apart from that, if you can get educated yourself as well, that would be helpful. But I realize people don't have time for that. So it means I think that ultimately, to solve this, we'd have to have collaborative conversations with academics, with doctors, with registered dieticians, to see if we can point out or come to some sort of agreement on these nuances and educate healthcare professionals on that as well. I think that's the ultimate way to do it.

[: 42:16

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[: 43:34

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[: 44:07

And you know, thinking about some of your work and your research, looking at the food matrix, do you have concerns about the overall impact on some of the plant-based proteins versus, say, eating whole foods proteins just purely? And maybe concern is the wrong word, but again, we're typically thinking about it as just the macronutrient and that we've seen data that a rice pea blend has the same impact on muscle protein synthesis as a whey protein. But again, I think that the next level of thinking is those metabolomics are probably vastly different.

[: 44:48

Oh, yeah, it's like you're eating a carrot or an egg, right? Like those are both paper flats and beta carotene, but they're going to be very different, right? So, yes, from a muscle protein synthesis standpoint, yes, you can… and there have been many studies to suggest that if you just eat enough plant protein that you can get a similar rate of muscle protein synthesis at, for instance, 20 grams of whey versus 40 grams of soy or pea. You would get a similar response. So I am not so much worried about… Well, it depends. I mean, for an athlete, a young individual that is on a plant-based diet, I think they can get enough protein. That part I wouldn't be so worried about. What I'm more worried about is that what does it mean? The lack of other nutrients within animal-sourced foods beyond just vitamins and minerals that you're missing out on? And what would be the multi-generational effects of that? You might not see it in your lifetime, but maybe a few generations down the line you see a drop in, maybe, cognitive capabilities.

[: 45:52

I mean, these are things that you know within the rat model, you typically see these things appearing later on in an offspring, and it's very hard to see in humans. And I would also say, to complicate the picture, people that are on plant-based diets, they definitely have a lot of other healthy lifestyle factors going for them, so they might still end up being healthier than the average person on a standard American omnivorous diet. So these are important nuances. But yeah, I mean coming back to the fact that you know we find a 90% difference when we compare this plant-based meat alternative with meat. You're getting very much different nutrients despite getting similar amounts of protein, and I think that's important that we start considering these things.

[: 46:35

When you think about how… if you get pushed back or if you hear concerns about this regenerative agriculture, do you think that there are solutions or have you begun to consider ways in which we improve the soil? Have you thought about that in your research? Because I do know, based on your lab, you're very interested in raising awareness and kind of the nexus of agriculture and human nutrition.

[: 47:02

In our work, we're definitely starting to see these relationships… that if you are able to improve soil health and plant health, and these things are probably all related. I mean it's a circle, right? You cannot think of it like soil, plant, animal. It's probably an end to be plant or animal, plant soil going all the way back in sort of a cycle. But we do see that if you grow food in a more biodiverse or more complex system, so picture this: you grow a couple of different crops within your land, or maybe you have a cornfield and your neighbor has some cattle. Maybe it's worthwhile to run this cattle over the land after you harvested the corn to put some nutrients back in, to create some of the crop residue.

[: 47:51

That is what you would typically see in a more agroecological or… I don't like to use the word natural because it's been a little bit co-opted, natural foods… What does that even mean? But in a more system that mimics what you see in nature. So if you have more diversity within your system, you typically see more life within the soil and you see that that translates to a healthier plant, because a more nutrient-dense plant is a healthier plant. That's how simple it is, and typically I'd say, if you can improve animal health, you have a more nutrient-dense animal and in humans we also… It's safe to say that a more nutrient-dense diet leads to a healthier human.

[: 48:33

Do you think that there's benefit from combining in the same meal? Do these things like the food matrix? So we talked about the food matrix from a beef patty or a ribeye. But what about the combination of a ribeye with blueberries together? Is there a more amplified effect?

[: 48:53

I think there is, I don't know from a ribeye and blueberries per se. But I mean, there's probably a reason why native peoples made the pemmican right, where they mixed berries with… beyond just… Well, why did they do it? They did it for preservation purposes, and now we know that these antioxidants within a blueberry actually prevent lipid peroxidation within the meat, so they probably got more omega-3s as a result as well. Besides, it's not spoiling. But you know, we do know from studies that, let's say, if you make chili and you throw both ground beef and beans in there, that actually the non-heme iron is from those black beans. The absorption is increased because of the beef that is in there and it's called the animal factor. We don't really know what factor it is.

[: 49:41

I've never heard of that.

[: 49:43

Yeah, there's a recent paper actually that coined that term. It's called the meat factor, but broadly speaking it would be considered the animal factor. The paper is called the meat factor, but I think it's the animal factor because you know you would get it from an egg as well.

[: 50:03

Have you thought about the way in which we cook foods? Do we know if that affects the metabolomics of the food? The bioavailability… And bioavailability is a silly word, because we're not talking about bioavailability, we're talking about the compounds that come after one ingests that macronutrient per se.

[: 50:20

From, yes, cooking. Actually, Dr. Stein, who was a food chemist within the University of Illinois, has done a lot of work on that and what his work found was that different cooking methods… Yes, they impact the amino acid availability specifically, and he studied this in a pig model, which is actually a very good model for humans, and yes, he found that. I don't know it off the top of my head, but I think roasting or slow cooking helps with the availability of these, probably because you know you've tenderized the meat already. So it's a note from ground beef as well. When you eat ground beef versus a steak, the initial uptake of amino acids is faster, probably over a five-hour period, doesn't matter, but you know… So by changing the phytochemical properties of the meat, cooking would have an impact on this.

[: 51:15

And one thing we also noticed from this is that if we pasteurize cheeses, we see a drop in phytochemical compounds, and phytochemical compounds are also flavor compounds. So it has been some really nice work done from French and Italian scientists. Why do the French and the Italians not pasteurize their cheeses? Because these phytochemicals, besides conferring health benefits, also provide deep flavor to it. So we know that heat treatment can impact some of those things on the phytochemicals, and we also know that the cooking method can impact the protein digestion and absorption, and also with vitamins, we notice as well that if you really cook the hell out of your steak, you see a drop in some of the B vitamins that are not heat stable.

[: 52:04

But it's so tricky, right? And, by the way, I am someone who eats my food fully cooked, well done, and every time I go to dinner people look at me cross-eyed. But I will tell you I have zero interest in getting a parasite. Yeah, and so it's kind of… You know, it's a give and take.

[: 52:21

I agree. And plus, if you're eating a nutrient-dense enough diet, then maybe that 30% drop in thiamine…

[: 52:28

30%?

[: 52:30

There's some work done on pork, which is actually a very rich source of thiamine. Well, you have to consider, you have to cook the hell out of it. Don't get me wrong. But you do see a drop in thiamine, versus maybe something that is pulled pork that would be slow cooked, for instance. Yeah, you do see a considerable drop. But, then again you could argue if you eat a very nutrient-dense diet and you have intakes that are well above the RDA, that you're probably okay.

[: 53:06

But maybe not. So I should reconsider my food cooking choices. Throughout your study of metabolomics, which I really think that you've done the most work in metabolomics when it comes to metabolomics and meat and kind of this crossover have you found one particular compound that is just really of interest to you?

[: 53:38

Yes, I think so. I mean, one of the compounds that we've been particularly looking at is some antioxidants. I got really fascinated by the fact that if we feed livestock a very plant, diverse or phytochemically rich diet, that we're actually increasing the antioxidants within their bodies that are in similar versions as our antioxidants within our body. So we found some really good markers, such as hyporic acid, but probably people have never heard about it. If you google it, you'll probably find that kidney disease patients have it.

[: 54:08

It's kind of like, you know, when we're on a high protein diet and you have higher levels of creatinine and then people think, ‘oh, you have kidney disease’, yeah, if you have high amounts of hypoic acid in your body and you have an underlying kidney condition, yeah, this is a problem. If you have high amounts of hypoic acid in your body because you eat blueberries and maybe eat animals or fruits that are high in it, it's probably okay, it's indicative of good health. So this is one compound that we've been particularly looking at. Also, just in general, I would say compound classes as well. I mean we've done some work on blueberries, on oats, on buckwheat, and if we see that those are grown in what we consider agroecological systems or regenerative agriculture, you see an increase in these compound classes, in these polyphenols, and I think that's also particularly fascinating because we know that these compounds impact our metabolism.

[: 55:03

Like I said, even probably a blueberry, coming back to the example of a ribeye and a blueberry, we know that polyphenols now can impact the mTOR pathway, which is a major anabolic target within our muscle, right? And this probably comes back to the fact where we found this in whole eggs as well, so I think I've become really interested in this broader array of compounds now, how they impact metabolism, because not just us, but others as well, are constantly finding things that you would have never thought about.

[: 55:34

So the pathway is beyond what you're saying is the pathway to stimulate muscle would be beyond mTOR pathway, or are you saying that these blueberries potentially have a compound that also stimulates this?

[: 55:49

Yes, yes, polyphenols can… there's been some work to suggest that polyphenols directly can impact those pathways.

[: 55:57

That's wild and do we know what kind of doses... And does it need to be in combination with, say, leucine?

[: 56:05

Yeah, well, you definitely get a stronger additive effect. I think, right? Because it's kind of like you give the signal, but if you don't give the substrate, which would be protein, then you're not going to get very far. So, but the doses, no, I'd say no. At the moment we don't really have any minimum dosing that we can clearly say, like in humans, this is going to have an effect. All we know now is that diets rich in antioxidants are associated with an improvement in metabolic health and that randomized, controlled trials where people are being fed blueberries or blueberry extract, or that's a lot of the type of studies, have been done. Yeah, you see that antioxidant pathways improve. Now, I'm not aware of anyone who has done a muscle biopsy after that as well, which would be nice to see if it also impacts anabolic signaling within a muscle when people, for instance, eat blueberries or in this case, probably oftentimes it's in the context of freeze-dried blueberry powder, but that would, I think, still yields a similar effect.

[: 57:15

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[: 58:43

Do you have any concerns about the nutrient density of, say, for example, blueberries? Let's say it decreases because the soil isn't as robust as it used to be, and then we're using these freeze-dried powders from places that are not producing again, hypothetically speaking, not producing robust enough blueberries. It's just not the anthocyanins, the phytochemicals are not robust enough. So let's say 20 years ago, when we would have blueberries or some kind of fruit that's probably way more bitter, not as sweet, and we could probably potentially see a much bigger impact. Have you thought about that? Do you have any concerns about that?

[: 59:31

I do have concerns about it. And in fact, you know, there's some nice work on minerals specifically, you know, both from the UK and the US that looked at compositional changes between the 1950s and now, and you see that there's maybe a 50% drop in minerals on average. I think you will probably see the similar effects in antioxidants and in fact, what we've seen is that we did a study where we compared blueberry varieties. You see that these quote-unquote heirloom varieties and we've also studied some wild berries. Yeah, it's orders of magnitudes compared to the conventional blueberry and, honestly, you can taste these things as well. If you have a blueberry, you know the big, plumpy ones, they don't have a lot of flavor, right? They don't have a lot of flavor, I think.

[: 01:00:14

But compared to maybe tasting a smaller wild blueberry, it bursts full of flavor. I think the most thoughtful example is that, for instance, a strawberry, a strawberry from your yard, fresh, it tastes very good, very rich flavor. Why is it that? What are you tasting? You're tasting these polyphenols, you're tasting these flavonoids. So you know, and don't get me wrong, I think we need to find a balance between productivity and yield and nutrient density, but at the moment, farmers are being rewarded for who can grow the biggest blueberry, it's yield, right?

[: 01:00:50

You're being paid per pound or per ton, probably if you're a blueberry farmer, but you're not being paid for nutrient density per se. So if we can find more of a balance in that within our food system, I think that will be a good step forward. I'm not saying like let's overhaul our system completely and get rid of all pesticides and fertilizers. That would be a bad idea

[: 01:01:13

Does pesticides and do pesticides and things like that actually affect the nutrient density of the fruit or vegetable?

[: 01:01:23

Yes, pathways would suggest that's the case, because, you know, a lot of these compounds, they're actually defense compounds for the plant. So if the plant is quote-unquote stressed a little bit more because of… maybe it has to compete with another plant, maybe it can handle some mild pests, right? This is the plant defense mechanism. It cannot run away, but it can produce polyphenols and now, due to evolution or sort of we have, and both animals and us - we're also an animal, right? - we can obtain benefits from these things.

[: 01:01:56

But the plant way would be to increase these amounts to maybe protect itself from it. So if you're providing the pesticides a lot of them are synthetic derivatives of things that you would find within a plant, then you kind of make the plant a little lazy, I think, is the best way of describing it and it won't produce as many of these compounds. And then the other question of course is - and again, we don't really know the answer to it - is all we know is that people that consume an organic diet, their urinary pesticide levels drop below detectable levels. If you have detectable levels, what would it do to you over 30 years, I don't know. I mean, I don't know if that's a concern or not. I mean we just don't have the data for that in humans, but it's probably a dose response thing.

[: 01:02:46

These are all fascinating questions and, I think, important questions, because on one hand, we all want to believe that organic is better. I know that I do, because we eat organic. I would love, in theory, to minimize - I have two very little children - I would love to minimize their pesticide exposure over a lifetime. Will that be remarkably different? I hope so, but again, we don't know. And also what you're saying is that right now, farming is not necessarily rewarded for cultivating small heirloom berries that are probably massaged and all these other things to increase their essentially their nutrient density. So it becomes very difficult. Would it be fair to say that when we can buy organic, there may be some benefit to that?

[: 01:03:40

Yeah, there could potentially be yes, and even from organic. You know, it really depends on… because even organic is not per se always better than conventional. I've been on, you know… if you're in organic monoculture then you're still wondering - or half the year there's no vegetation on the soil. It's probably not that great, you're having a conventional system, but you're just not using many pesticides or maybe some more natural versions of pesticides but, that's not really what builds health, soil health or plant health.

[: 01:04:10

So the regenerative agriculture movement tries to account for that by not so much being, by being more outcome driven as opposed to like, okay, you just have to follow these sets of rules, which are organic. I've definitely been to organic farms where I was like ‘this is a deserted monoculture’, not really what we picture, right? But yes, I do think in general, you know, I mean… I agree with you to the sense that am I fortunate enough to be able to buy local foods or go to farmers markets and, you know, buy organic foods, which would minimize my pesticide exposure? Is it going to be… It's probably not going to harm me by minimizing my pesticide exposure, right? So that's the thing that I'm thinking of.

[: 01:04:55

And we don't really know its effects on human health quite yet. We do know it in some rat models, but it's quite high doses. And the other thing about that is that they usually studied isolated pesticides, but maybe there's also something as the pesticide matrix, if you get exposed to 30, that they have a synergistic additive effect in a negative sense, and there's some work to suggest that that is the case when you provide multiple mixtures and couple that with other environmental toxins that we're exposed to right through our… maybe our drinking water due to, I mean, air pollution, and then you got this load of different things, and if there's one thing you can control, it's typically your food, but I cannot control if everyone drives a big V8.

[: 01:05:44

That's a really good point and I like the idea of thinking about it on the flip side, the pesticide and environmental load. If we're talking about, you know, the way in which we're consuming foods, and this metabolomics and this phytodiversity, why would we also not consider the other things that are potentially sprayed on these fruits and vegetables and it's also probably very difficult to do organic, right? What happens if, I don't know, some kind of bug eats everything? Then that farmer is completely out of crop, or…

[: 01:06:14

Yeah, and I think that's how we should approach it, the same way that we would approach an animal. It would be, you know, this is, I think, sort of the idea of zero antibiotics on meat packaging. I don't think that's a good thing, because I'm thinking if an animal is diseased when it's 16 months old and you give it antibiotics after 24 months, you're not going to define those residues anymore, right?

[: 01:06:41

So then it's like I hope you treat it with antibiotics, like you would treat your child with antibiotics too if it gets infected. So we have to… and the same thing would be if there's maybe a pest, or that you don't let your crop go to waste but apply it strategically, as opposed to, you know, making… which would be sort of integrated pest management is the technical term within science is that you use these with a common sense approach to an extent. I'm not saying that farmers are not doing that at the moment, but I do think that as we move, we have to find a little bit of a balance between growing our food as much as possible in monocultures by just adding a bunch of pesticides, adding a bunch of fertilizer, versus this black and white thinking of absolutely not using any.

[: 01:07:30

It's complicated, basically, is what you're saying? It's just really complicated. How do you think about feeding yourself and your family? Do you try to go to farmer's markets? Do you think about a certain percentage of animal versus plants? How do you guys do it?

[: 01:07:45

Yeah, I mean for me and my family, I definitely think we eat a very nutrient-dense diet, absolutely. I mean, both myself and my partner. She now consumes cod liver as well, so… After a while. And actually maybe kind of likes it. I don't know

[: 01:08:03

Definitely does not like it. There's no chance. That's a hard pass, hard pass.

[: 01:08:09

Yeah, well, interesting story. When I first started, I mean, I had this as a kid and I also ate liverwurst as a kid growing up, and then I didn't eat it during college years because, you know, during college you kind of eat scrappy and you party and drink, at least that's what I did in college.

[: 01:08:25

Speak for yourself. Don's probably listening, yeah.

[: 01:08:30

I still went to the gym, though, so that was okay, but the main thing is, though, that once I started to eat these things again later on in life, I actually was kind of accustomed to the taste of it.

[: 01:08:44

So I think that definitely helps a lot, and you know, we're doing some interesting work - not to diverse too much, but a little sidebar - we're doing some work in cows where, if the cow is exposed, the fetus is exposed in utero to certain plants. What you can actually see is that when it then comes out of the womb, it knows that it should consume those plants because it's been exposed through it in utero already. So could you make the argument that maybe in utero exposure to a wide variety of foods, or exposure if you're able to breastfeed through breast milk that you can get the child accustomed to certain flavors, because these flavors are just chemicals that you know… If you eat a lot of kale, then maybe the child will get accustomed to kale. If you have cod liver oil, then maybe the child will get accustomed to it. I'm not sure, but my point being is that… and even if you don't have cod liver, it's fine, you eat salmon a couple of times a week.

[: 01:09:35

I mean, I think this is very… It's fascinating, it's a fascinating conversation.

[: 01:09:41

Yeah, I think so too. But for me personally the diet would be you know… I don't think it's much in ratios. I mean, I'm still very passionate about lifting weights. So I eat a high protein diet about 200 grams a day or so, 180, 200 grams a day and then, other than that, a lot of whole foods. I mean I also eat probably three pounds of vegetables a day, three pieces of fruit. On days that I work out, I eat some more carbohydrates. On days that I don't work out, I eat some more fat. And, yeah, three meals a day, very simple.

[: 01:10:09

It sounds very balanced and I love that you're still lifting weights. I would expect nothing less. Where is your field going? Where is your future research? What are you working on now? Because, as we know, it takes a long time for things to be published.

[: 01:10:23

Yeah, what we're working on now is… Initially, we did a lot of food metabolomics work, starting with the animal, so we did a lot of work on meat and milk.

[: 01:10:34

What we're moving now towards is including more crops as well, from also different agricultural productions organic or regenerative agriculture. We're doing a lot of food profiling on that, trying to connect these linkages between soil health. And the other part that we're doing is doing randomized control trials where we're feeding people food from different production systems to see if this has an appreciable effect on their metabolome, essentially by taking plasma or blood before and after and then seeing like, ‘can we shift people's metabolism when we give them foods from different productions?’ If we know this food is more nutrient dense and it contains more polyphenols or contains more of this antioxidant hypoic acid, does this also translate into higher levels within the human? And my background is more as an interventionist so I don't do epidemiological work. So we typically do randomized control trials where we feed people these foods for six weeks, eight weeks, four months or so, depending on the invasiveness and the timeline.

[: 01:11:42

That's going to be amazing. I'm hoping that you'll come back on the show when it is ready to be shared. Stephan Van Vliet, thank you so much for joining us. You really are doing amazing work and leading the field in this conceptual way of thinking about food as a food matrix, and I believe it will lead to better decisions for all of us. So thank you so much.

[: 01:12:05

Thank you so much for having me.