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Episode 32 - ADHD And Food Glorious Food
65 Plays2 years ago
Paul and Martin (co-Mayors of ADHDville) chat about their favourite subject, Food... that explains why they went on for too long (again!). Anyhoo... Paul gets all Italian and talks pasta, and Martin talks about his fridge organizational prowess. Dig in!
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Theme music was written by Freddie Philips and played by Martin West. All other music by Martin West.
Please remember:
This is an entertainment podcast about ADHD and does not substitute for individualized advice from qualified health professionals.
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Transcript
ADHD-Friendly Fridge Organization
00:00:01
Speaker
back in the room. I've just, I've just, um, I've just filled up my, I've just gone shopping, grocery shopping. I filled up the fridge and we have this, um, probably an unusual, more ADHD friendly way of putting the, where the food goes in the fridge. Okay.
00:00:31
Speaker
So one one thing that we were doing is that we would have stuff like vegetables or whatever and they'd be like and you'd find them weeks later in the back of the fridge where they kind of gone to die. Yeah. And those have like a forgotten food would be back there. So so we've actually changed out where everything goes.
00:00:57
Speaker
So in the drawer, you know at the bottom of the fridge there's those kind of vegetable crisper drawers, right? Yeah. That's where all of my little, all of the jars of things, like jars of pickles or jars of paste or whatever it is, all those kind of like things, they all go in there. Right. And the vegetables go in the door. Yeah.
00:01:28
Speaker
okay in the door all in the door right right all of the all so the the the general principle is all of the things that um are specific that you want like oh there's there's a you know a jar of
00:01:48
Speaker
of Dijon mustard or ketchup or whatever it is. Right. Very specific thing that you will hunt the fridge for. They go at the back and they go down in the torals. Right. Because you put in effort to find them. Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah.
00:02:07
Speaker
And then anything that kind of like is a bit more like, you know, like lettuce, salad stuff, green things that you kind of like just use, they're always at the front. So you always see those. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. And then the stuff that is like, is like, won't go off or specific, you hide that shit at the back.
00:02:34
Speaker
because you'll hunt for it. And that way, all of the fresh stuff, the stuff you've got to use is right out in front in your eyeballs.
00:02:50
Speaker
Right. So my general rule is I don't like fresh vegetables to go any further than halfway at the back of the fridge. You know, it has to be at the front and anything else goes in the back, goes behind it. Okay. Sounds to me like another West classic West hack.
00:03:09
Speaker
Well, I mean, I, I didn't come up with it. It is the end of hacking. Yeah. All right. I'll take that. And with that slightly undeserved what what what.
00:03:27
Speaker
I'd raise you. No, I'm not raising you. Oh, okay. No, it's just because I generally just keep various stages of mold culture in my fridge with no particular regime for where they're positioned. Right. They can have to start by themselves.
00:03:43
Speaker
Yeah, no, I was like that. And I do find this makes more sense. There's less food wastage that way. And with the cost of food, especially fresh food, makes sense. I've got a fridge hack. Oh yeah, okay.
00:04:04
Speaker
yeah i bought a fridge i bought a smoke fridge second hand oh yeah right sent someone to to collect it yeah and um didn't bother to to work out or be sure whether it was actually for working condition or not
00:04:21
Speaker
these guys hiked it up, this is in Palermo in the summer, paid these guys, they're sweating buckets, they could take it up three flights of stairs, and they're heavy, make ovens, their fridges, turns out that didn't work. So what's my hack?
00:04:39
Speaker
So what's my hack? I'm hearing you say, my hack is your hack. My hack is you say to yourself, Oh, fuck it. I use it anyway. Strip out the engine to make it lighter and use it to store my cycling gear in the entrance way. I use it as a cupboard for like gear.
00:05:00
Speaker
All right. Here we go. Love it. There you go. There's your hack. Don't throw away your old fridge. Just use it as a, use it as storage. And on that Bob shell, welcome to ADHD world.
00:05:21
Speaker
Oh, I love to laugh. But my baby just loves to dance. He wants to dance. He loves to dance. He's got to dance. Oh, I love to laugh. But my baby just loves to dance. Oh, I love to laugh. But there's no time for a romance. No, no, no.
00:05:42
Speaker
Who's that? Who's that? Very familiar. Oh, I love to love. But my baby just loves to dance. He wants to dance. Oh, I love to love. Yeah. I almost want to feel like it's the word brothers in the title somewhere. Anyway. All right. Yeah. No, I don't think so. You're thinking of. Yeah. I know what you're thinking of. That's not that.
00:06:12
Speaker
No, right. All right. Cracking on.
Introduction and ADHD Focus
00:06:16
Speaker
That clears it up then. That clears it up nicely. Sometimes I'm scared myself with how slick we are. Yeah. But if you're slicker than us, just let us know where that song came from in the comments. Thank you. That would be appreciated.
00:06:36
Speaker
All right. So, going back to the script, we are two mates who, by coincidence, hold on. Hold on. After.
00:06:52
Speaker
I'm just waiting for Paul to kind of find his script here. Oh, you want me to? Okay. Okay. I thought you were taking over. After three to 39. So we're just two mates, hello, who by coincidence or not, after 39 years of friendship discovered that with co ADHD is hurrah. No, it's really important to say that this is an entertainment podcast about adult ADHD and does not substitute for individualized advice or qualified health professionals.
00:07:19
Speaker
Okay, so don't take any advice from us. Yeah. Yeah, I took a run up. I had to take a run up for it. We're just here as a kind of all-inclusive ADHD part best with room for everyone, including your doppelgangers, your alter egos, your personal trainers, your body doubles, your chaperones, and even your best buddies, if you want to invite them to.
00:07:46
Speaker
Still here? Great! Fantastic! Happy you're here. So grab your jack packs, your petalos, your space hoppers or any other transportation methods and let us take you to ADHDville. And imagine a town that we've created in our minds. We would like to explore different parts of ADHD.
00:08:06
Speaker
There you go. So well done Paul. That was like energy vigor. That was a Lawrence Olivier performance. Thank you. Oh darlings. Oh darlings. Oh well we start off as always. That's my impression of a thespian. Oh darlings. Oh darlings. That's it. That's it. Nailed it. We start off as always here at the town hall.
00:08:36
Speaker
uh in the mayor's office where we the joint mayors of ADHD will take care of business and we are looking at the uh agenda i'm just looking down the uh agenda here um and uh yeah so this is one of our focus episodes um yeah oh boy and we're going to be talking about focuses we ever ever get
00:08:57
Speaker
Yeah, we're going to talk about ADHD and food. I think it's important to say that, boy, is it a big subject? It's a minefield. It's vast.
00:09:13
Speaker
This is just going to be kind of like a bit of an overview. I think even like within our slot, we will, we'll kind of scratch the surface and we'll, we'll be going back to some of these subjects in more depth later. If it's like put into a context of food, if, if this podcast episode was, was a supermarket, it would have a whole aisle just for biscuits. Ooh.
00:09:42
Speaker
I've got a lot of biscuits as well. Well, that actually does happen in Italy. Italians are obsessed with biscuits. That actually happens whole aisles just for biscuits. Yeah, I think when you go down a cereal aisle in the States,
00:10:04
Speaker
It is quite stunning, the amount of cereal there is coming from, you know, the UK. Well, we have a fairly decent amount of cereal options, but America is just like, it's just rows of them, rows of it.
00:10:24
Speaker
Do you know what I noticed? I had a little observation about supermarkets. The last time I was back in England, I went into a random supermarket in Rygate. And it's sort of like last time, yeah, Rygate's Surrey, just somewhere between Gatwick and London, sandwiched in there.
00:10:42
Speaker
And just off Junction 7 off the M25, if you want to know. If you feel
Supermarket Experiences and Anxiety
00:10:51
Speaker
a want to do that trip. Onwards. Onwards. So it wasn't like 15 years ago when you walk around the supermarket, every now and again, there'd be this really nicely designed packaging that was really nailed, terms of marketing and everything.
00:11:09
Speaker
everything was really, really like they'd gone to like massive effort to sell their stuff. And it's like everything had gone through a really good design agency was everything was like, like shouting out by me by me by me. But seriously, in terms of marketing, it's just off the scale. How could it was? Oh, wow.
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah. All right. All right. Yeah. Spinal thoughts about supermarkets. Food, Martin. You know what? I will say about supermarket things. We've brought them up. When I came over here from the UK, I now live in the States in New York. And for a while, going into a supermarket caused me a lot of anxiety.
00:12:04
Speaker
Oh really? Because it was a new environment, everything was laid out, all the products were different.
00:12:14
Speaker
Right. So all the products that I would know, I'd know roughly where they were and I could get around a supermarket because it's, you know, it's, it can, you know, it's, there's quite a lot of opportunity for anxiety doing a bit of a food shop. But then I'm in this foreign supermarket and I don't know any of the brands. I don't know.
00:12:39
Speaker
i don't know where ending is uh nothing i just yeah i just yeah that was a that took me quite a while to wrap my head up now i kind of get it but yeah i just have a lot of anxiety around that okay
00:12:55
Speaker
I get anxiety when it's like someone's really not, you know, not on the same page in terms of what things go what to other things like you get like chocolate section section next to the toilet roll or something. What this like they're trying to play with you to play with you. You know, just trying to upset me.
00:13:17
Speaker
Yeah. There's a supermarket that I go to call H mark, which is an Asian supermarket and it's weirdly divided up. And I've, it seems to me that there are, that it does it by culture. So there'd be like a Japanese area and then a Korean area and a Chinese area.
00:13:46
Speaker
And so things can be scattered. You can have the same product or groups of products, but in the Chinese one and in the Japanese one and in the Korean one and in the
00:14:01
Speaker
and somewhere else in the store. So rather than all, they're more being in what, like noodles, for example, that's a broad thing. All of the noodles are not in one place. They're scattered everywhere. All right. All depending on regional variants, it feels like. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, quite for someone, for someone is a logic.
00:14:25
Speaker
Yeah. Someone. I think so. Yeah. No, it's a fascinating store. All right. Well, let's get into our, into our, let's put an hour, get into the car and grab our Wellington boots. And so we're going to go over to, where are we going? The farm. The farm. Yeah. Hence the wellies. The farm. Yeah.
00:14:52
Speaker
uh these these sauces so much of our of our food um all right let's just jump in the car i mean let's get out into that fresh country air ah i'm gonna hear those birds tweeting
00:15:21
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I found that Martin, when I started researching this, wouldn't she actually go online and start researching it? I found that actually there seemed to be a hell of a lot more about ADHD and food in terms of research than any other area of ADHD. I don't know why that is.
00:15:43
Speaker
But maybe it's because there's a hell of money amongst the multi-billion dollar food industry. And they're all trying to get on the bandwagon and trying to understand that community, which is big now, right?
00:15:59
Speaker
Right. A lot of hell of a lot of studying in got into into ADHD and food, it seems to me. Yeah. Well, there are strong links between ADHD and the food that you eat. So I'm, you know, so I guess, you know, like there's, you know, there's a lot of
00:16:21
Speaker
Yeah, we have to eat food, right? So it's something that is a necessity. So I guess there's a lot of... It seems to be a lot of consistencies. Actually, there's certain things that come up time and time again, things that are good for you, right? Like in a normal diet, non-neurotypical diet, the whole subject of diet is just, oh my God, it's a minefield.
00:16:50
Speaker
But with ADHD, there seems to be quite consistent kind of level of, you know, what's actually good and what's bad. Hmm. Right. Yes. So I've got here. Let's start off with the good stuff. All right. This is some more be more of a surprise than others, maybe. Walnuts.
00:17:16
Speaker
dark chocolate. Oh, walnuts. I put walnuts twice. I like walnuts. Flax seeds.
ADHD and Diet Recommendations
00:17:23
Speaker
Flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, oily fish, spinach, liver pate or any kind of liver. It's really amazing for you.
00:17:34
Speaker
I've also got carbs, but slow release carbs, complex carbs. The cheap stuff, don't do it. It's basically like it's just going to give you brain fog. It's not good for you at all.
00:17:55
Speaker
Um, a more general thing that they've seen to agree on breakfast, try and have a high protein breakfast, get some salmon in there and, uh, um, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. Um, I've got broccoli in there and eggs as well as part of a diet, complex carbs and protein. Yes. So there's like, there's kind of general groups. There's the high protein group, which is like beans and meats.
00:18:25
Speaker
nuts, eggs. Then there's, then yeah, I love me a pulse. There's the complex carbs like vegetables and fruits. Then there's the omega three fatty acids. So you're talking about like salmon.
00:18:47
Speaker
uh yeah yeah so those are kind of like some basic I can imagine I can imagine people listening to this podcast are thinking oh god really you know we've this but and it's like you've heard it before maybe you've heard this before you're diagnosed and stuff but this it goes up a level with your ADHD it's even more important with your ADHD right
00:19:11
Speaker
especially to when you start talking about stuff that you should avoid to like sugars. Right? Because you have, you have helped me somehow, you've got to give it a helping hand somehow, right? You have ADHD, right? There are some foods that help with your symptoms. And there are some others which make your symptoms worse, right? So, you know, all of us should be like paying attention to what we eat and seeing if it makes a difference and whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, right?
00:19:41
Speaker
yeah so that's a that's that's a bunch of bad of good things yeah the bad stuff the bad stuff um refined sugars
00:19:57
Speaker
I mean, pretty much anything that you would classify as a stimulant, it's just really, you should be thinking about either taking it out completely or reducing it even significantly. Like refined sugars, okay, obvious one, right? For me, like we joked before about Haribo, but some stuff out there that's got ridiculous amounts of sugar in it, okay, just like,
00:20:24
Speaker
just keep away from it you know especially the full sugar you know sodas you know you know that's just insane but we'll get onto these artificial sweeteners in a minute. Also read the small print because actually
00:20:43
Speaker
added sugar can sometimes be camouflaged a bit. They're kind of quite sneaky. Sometimes anything that's got O's at the end, O-S-E, like fructose or any kind of O's at the end, it's sugar. They're just trying to make it sound like it's something else. And even corn syrup is corn syrup. It's in the ingredients, that's sugar.
00:21:08
Speaker
Yeah. And some people don't realize that carbs is actually just another form of sugar as well. Totally. Yeah. Which is why you should use, you know, if you can, do some research on what good pasta, you know, find a good brand. Oh, pasta. You're Italian. Yeah. Is there good pasta and bad pasta? Oh, God, yeah.
00:21:35
Speaker
I mean, as far as ADHD goes. Well, no, not necessarily brands, but I'm eating the brown pasta, the whole grain, wholemeal pasta at the moment. Well, it's a bit different for me because I'm reducing my cholesterol at the same time. I was trying to manage my ADHD.
00:21:58
Speaker
But there's actually, it took me a while, but there are actually some good ones out there. It's called here, it's called Pasta Integral. So it's like five cereal kind of grain-based, whole grain-based pastas. Much better for you.
00:22:18
Speaker
It takes a bit of while to find the good ones. Some of them have like a really odd consistency about them. But we found a really good mark. It's great. I think you can get it anywhere in the world. It's called dichekki. It's a really good pasta. All right. Okay. So you've heard it from an Italian? Yeah. Are you Italian?
00:22:40
Speaker
I mean, I am not nationalised, no. Oh, OK. So you're not an Italian? No, no, no, no. Eric, not yet. I take that back about you being an Italian. Right. But there's also natural sugars. I was. People, a lot of people, you know, dieticians are saying keep away from drinking too much fruit juice, keep it consumption low.
00:23:09
Speaker
don't go like all out on it. The concentrated fruit juices. For sure. Yeah. I mean yeah. Because when it says zero sugar you know look at the ingredients they'll be sneaky again and there's other stuff in there disguised. Yeah because they're going to try and make it tasty and cheap.
00:23:32
Speaker
What else is on your bad bad list? Quite a lot. Artificial artificial sugars. Wow. For me, I don't know if it's me, you know, I'm no expert. I just think artificial sugars are goddamn evil.
00:23:50
Speaker
the terrible terrible things actually it's made of most artificial sugars are made of a substance called sucralose that's actually used in rat killer okay it's one of the main ingredients of rat killer all right is sucralose um and is is particularly known to cause joint inflammation and brain fog so there you go yeah artificial sweeteners Jesus
00:24:17
Speaker
I used to have two sugars in my tea, for example, and then I just went down to zero sugars in my tea. And actually, after you... I forced myself to kind of drink my tea or coffee without sugar for quite a while. And then after a while, you just get...
00:24:38
Speaker
Are you used to it? Yeah, totally. It's just a top tip. I've for years, I've kitted myself that brown sugar was somehow healthier than white sugar. Do you know that? No, it's not. It turns out it's a process to do after they've made the white sugar, they turn it brown. Right, okay.
00:25:03
Speaker
Right. So what I do is I buy really expensive sugar. If I have to use it, I've got a really expensive unrefined brown sugar. Unrefined sugar, yeah. That's better at least. All right. So what else is on your desk?
00:25:20
Speaker
I've got again low-quality carbs again. That's really bad for brain fog. Simple carbs. So that's like... Simple carbs. Yeah, because they tend to spike your blood sugar. So that's like white flour, white rice, potatoes without their skins. There are some examples of simple carbs.
00:25:46
Speaker
Exactly. I've got one here that people are going to hate. Coffee. It's just not good. Especially with meds. Especially with meds. I tend to find it just gets all screwy-uppy.
00:26:05
Speaker
I stopped drinking coffee about three, because you have to like, don't ever, I tried to do it once, don't ever stop drinking coffee just like from one day to the next. Just you have to like, it's like a drug, well it is. Reduce it slowly but surely. I bought a mix of decaffeinated, I used to have like a whole mocha every day, every morning.
00:26:28
Speaker
and I started normal mocha and then I started reducing it so mixing it with decaffeinated until I was just on decaffeinated and then stopped oh yeah and that was before I started meds because it's really hard well two reasons I think it's really hard if you're
00:26:51
Speaker
just started to take meds it's really important to reduce these kind of things like coffee and sugar and alcohol just while you are like listening to your body
00:27:05
Speaker
and working out what's going on, you know, how it's working, how it's not working. And so you know there's nothing else going on that's actually, you know, messing up actually your ability to, you know,
00:27:22
Speaker
work out how effective it is. Yeah, I would definitely interject here that before you make any changes, certainly any big changes, do your research, check with your doctor or whatever. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. There's a myth about coffee that it's a pick you up.
00:27:45
Speaker
actually all the research says that it's actually the pick the the the energy you get from a coffee is really really short lasting and actually the the the drop off from it is really quite sudden and dramatic so you know the the motive to get coffee because you want to be woken up generally is it was a big myth it's a very short term kind of kick all right i did i did tend to find that
00:28:12
Speaker
The more you drink it, the less effective it is, and the more coffee you have to have to get the same kick out of it. Oh, by the way, you're going to save yourself a hell lot of money as well. But I know it's difficult. I found it hard.
00:28:28
Speaker
I miss it a bit. It's because in Italy, God, you know, it's like it's like a whole culture. Oh, yeah. You know, I can. Yeah. You know, this bar is huge, right? It's huge. It's something that's like a habit. It's a really nice habit routine. It's actually I really enjoyed. I came down from so I reduced my coffee. Then I went on to black tea, which has less caffeine in it.
00:28:58
Speaker
And now I'm onto green tea, which has some caffeine, but it has less than the black tea, so... Yeah. But I guess it's people who say, I don't want to give up coffee. Well, OK.
00:29:11
Speaker
Yeah, but you know, the research is there, you know, especially if you're just starting out on meds, you know, just, I'd really recommend doing that. What else have I got here? I've got a really interesting piece of advice here.
00:29:29
Speaker
If you're doubt, it's like if you if you have a doubt, you go to the supermarket, and you look at the back of whatever product you pick up, you look at the ingredients.
Healthy Eating and Food Industry Critique
00:29:38
Speaker
And it's like a really small print. And if you're a bit old, like me, and it's like you're squinting at it, and it's like ridiculous, condensed font. There's only one thing you really to remember, if you want to eat, eat healthily, make it as unprocessed by stuff, this is as as little processes as possible. Mm hmm.
00:29:59
Speaker
right so easy one uh eat a carrot no process and then you go up from there okay anything the least process there is in it therefore the least language and the ingredients you don't understand the better yeah the simpler it is usually the better it is yeah as a general rule okay i've got i've got unhealthy fats
00:30:27
Speaker
in here as well. So that's like, you know, there's like good, you know, there's big, good, I mean, well, you can talk about cholesterol.
00:30:39
Speaker
Yeah. Right. Yeah. You're, you're trying to reduce it. And if, if I'm, I'm going for some blood work soon, so that's going to scare the shit out of me because my cholesterol is going to be big and they're going to be some big numbers and I'm going to have to make a change. Yeah. Yeah. So that's like unhealthy. 305. And all right. So I have that to beat.
00:31:06
Speaker
yeah or my girlfriend who's been laughing at me for the last few weeks she had her blood test came back last week she was 318 all right so we're both luckily we're both on a low cholesterol diet
00:31:21
Speaker
doing our best. Luckily, my girlfriend's a really great cook. She's really, really good. Yeah, she's amazing. She worked as a chef in a Japanese restaurant for a while. Jesus Christ. Yeah, she's really good. I'm lucky boy.
00:31:41
Speaker
would teach me a thing or two I mean I like cooking Asian food generally yeah I do it a fair amount but yeah not to the to the chef standard in fact I will be making sushi for lunch so after this
00:31:58
Speaker
I will be doing so I've got some sushi rice that I've cooked. That's just waiting for me. I've got the wraps and I put that down. I've got some got some tuna. Look at you like me. Tuna avocado. So so the tuna has got a little bit of sriracha in it and and and olive oil mayo.
00:32:21
Speaker
No, avocado oil, mayo. And because it's a healthier oil. Yeah. Yeah. And so I've got Philadelphia and sushi shouldn't be mixed in my world. Right. That's that's the classic California roll. Oh, is it? Yeah. We've got some little some little pickles that I pickled earlier in the week. So I've got a mat and I will roll up
00:32:49
Speaker
in and make a whole sushi roll that you kind of cut up nice yeah no there ain't no flies on me but um no i yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't say that i'm i'm not chef i'm not chef level i am happy happy foodie level
00:33:12
Speaker
OK, you know, go on. No, go on. So now I've got I've got get tested for intolerances. This is the last thing I've got on my list. Get tested. Weird thing is, in autism, this is quite particular. Sometimes, not always, sometimes in autism, the very thing that you crave is actually really bad for you.
00:33:39
Speaker
Ooh, well that's the same for me. There's a thing in autism specifically about, you know. And a big mac, I mean, you know, just saying. Quite like a big mac. But if you get tested for intolerances, that's always a good thing. Intolerances can come and go as well. They're cheeky little buggers. You could be 15, you've never had an intolerance, and all of a sudden you've got an intolerances of a scale.
00:34:07
Speaker
So we're talking about sort of gluten, we're talking about dairy, we're talking about lactose. We're talking about, oh, oh, cracky. Yeah, there's like ferrous grains and soy. Yeah.
00:34:27
Speaker
yeah because it's funny because my wife will you know she will for some reason like kind of go I feel I feel so much better this this week and then we have to kind of go back and look at what she ate and she goes
00:34:44
Speaker
Oh, yeah, no, didn't have didn't have any carbs or much in the way of carbs or or or I I I mean our big one is is cabbage. She feels so much better after eating some after eating after eating your cabbage. Yeah. Then we kind of go, OK, well, maybe we'll just do more of that. Yeah. I mean, a lot of this, you know, a lot of the list we've we've, you know, good and the bad stuff.
00:35:11
Speaker
They're not, it's not rocket science. Most people have heard it all before, you know. It's like, oh yeah, broccoli is like a super food. Yeah, it is. A top tip though, if you struggle with, like I do, with cooked veg and cooked spinach and broccoli, for me it's the devil's work. But. I love cooked food. Yeah, if it's for me, that's me. I have a real problem with any cooked veg. I'm just going, no. I hate cooked veg. Devil's work.
00:35:40
Speaker
Give me a raw carrot and I'm the happiest man in the world. Give me a cooked carrot. Oh, I'm just gonna, you know.
00:35:49
Speaker
Is it this classic overcooked English vegetables? No, it's not any cooked, any cooked. I've tried because my girlfriend, she's a great cook and she tries really hard. Right. But yeah, but stick it through a blender and down it goes. All raw. Down it goes. And I've sorted a smoothie. Nice. Investing a good blender.
00:36:14
Speaker
And of course I spent a fortune on a smeg blender and it makes the whole thing more pleasurable for me in my silly little mind. But get it down you, if you don't like it or if you just haven't done much time.
00:36:31
Speaker
Or you just get bored. You don't find it stimulating to cut veg up or, you know, stuff like that. Prepare it. Shove it in a blender and down it goes. Lovely. So one last thing on the bad list before we go off the good and bad list is like something specific, which is like red dye number 40.
00:36:57
Speaker
so we know we're like we were talking about the less you know artificial chemicals that your food has the better i mean one to look out for it's certainly in the states is like the red dye 40 is
00:37:12
Speaker
has had links to your brain. It kind of causes these things called brainstorms where it kind of messes up with the electrical stuff going on in your brain.
00:37:30
Speaker
And I've seen some people on TikTok talk about it. So, you know, it gets linked with like, you know, temper, panic attacks, anxiety, depression. So that's... The thing is with... Yeah. But there's stuff out there that's even way more common. There's artificial sweetness. They're... God damn it. They're evil. If I remember rightly,
00:38:00
Speaker
The sugar industry or whatever food industry were trying to get legislation through the American government, the Senate, to get it legalized, these artificial sweeteners for years and years and years and years. And finally they got it through, I can't remember, I think it was with the Bush administration.
00:38:19
Speaker
they let it go through and all of a sudden it was just this onslaught of artificial sweeteners. But they didn't allow it before that for very good reasons. There was a lot of very negative research that actually came from it as well. But it got through. The food industry is very powerful.
00:38:39
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. So all right. So we'll come off of that onto some other general things. One thing that I will say is that is that in a week we're kind of talking about
00:38:54
Speaker
Um, changing food or, you know, like, you know, are there any changes you can make? And sometimes, um, especially when you kind of get over to the more old autistic side, there are what they call safe foods. So I quite like.
00:39:14
Speaker
very bland food and it can be just like like for example straight pasta you know or just rice or just simple bread like like very very bland
00:39:31
Speaker
flavored things and safe foods for someone else could be chicken nuggets for example which is like well it takes off a lot of the unhealthy boxes but the thing about safe foods is that sometimes in order to kind of like
00:39:51
Speaker
regulate our anxiety sometimes you know food is a good way to do that and you have to have kind of safe foods you know even if it's unhealthy sometimes you just kind of have to have some thing there that kind of helps but on the flip side of that
00:40:12
Speaker
is that there are a lot of eating disorders, I think we talked about it, up front, which are attached to ADHD because
00:40:23
Speaker
ADHD causes anxiety in you and food is a really good way to, to kind of regulate that anxiety. So, uh, food. So we'll talk about, you know, you can, you can binge eat. So that's one way where you kind of like eat to kind of like calm yourself down all. And there's also, um, it's kind of a regulator, isn't it? Yeah.
00:40:50
Speaker
Yeah. EGT is a kind of a regulator. Yeah, I've done that. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's the classic, you know, I've broken up with my girlfriend, with my partner or whatever, and I'm going to eat, just eat a load of bucket of ice cream and whatever. You just, you know, make yourself feel better.
00:41:12
Speaker
I had one lady say that though that if you're in front of the television and you know a lot of people eat in front of the television if you're if you happen to be watching a program that's not particularly stimulating at that time there's actually research found that you actually binge eat much more if the thing that they're watching is not particularly good amongst ADHDs specifically. All right. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's like I'd stimulate. Yeah, and you binge eat.
00:41:41
Speaker
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, yeah. No, I mean, I watch quality TV. That's the point. Take out from that. What's quality TV? Be useless. Quality TV. You know, and it's funny because the I don't know what I'd be interested to hear what the Italian eating thing is like. But the typical evening
00:42:08
Speaker
meal would be quite protein packed. So you would start off the day with a, with a carb kind of breakfast, you know, like cereal and toast, maybe. And then you, you, and then, well, I'm just saying that in, in, in this, in the, in the States, it tends to be like pancakes, carb in the, in the, in the morning. And then in the evening, it's quite protein based, where it's actually
00:42:36
Speaker
that's the wrong way round if anything like it should be your breakfast should be much more protein packed um and complex protein is energy protein is energy essentially yeah so it's like you're taking your waking your body up at the wrong time of day so so what's what's it what's a typical Italian sweet breakfast
00:43:04
Speaker
They don't do savoury in Italy for breakfast. No one has a savoury breakfast. So what's the typical breakfast? It's not even muesli. Brioche, croissant, donuts, cannoli.
00:43:23
Speaker
Yeah, that kind of stuff. The cannoli for breakfast. Yeah, that's cannoli. That's cannoli. They're basically like big tubes of like pastry filled with ricotta cheese. Yeah. Sicilian, basically. It's a very Sicilian thing. Except in Sicily, they're enormous. They're like a barge.
00:43:53
Speaker
Unbelievable things. Yeah. Sounds amazing. All right. So you start off the... And then the pasta is for lunch. Pasta is for lunch. Basically people in the north... In Italy, pasta is not really eaten much in the evening.
00:44:12
Speaker
All right. Good idea. Yeah. Right. But then pizza a good idea in the evening. But we do that, don't we? Oh, yeah. So then in the evening, he got lots of carbs in the in the morning, sugars and carbs and then lunchtime, more carbs.
00:44:31
Speaker
Yeah. Evening, less carbs, more like to have like a piece of meat or piece of fish with like a kind of a salad with a vegetable, with vegetable cooked vegetables or something. Right. So again, it's the wrong way around. Yeah. You have the protein at the back end of the day when you don't actually need it and you start off the day with carbies.
00:44:58
Speaker
Carpies. But it also depends on the time of day. It's like in Italy people eat later, much later. In Italy, pretty much no one eats before eight o'clock at night, not even at home.
00:45:13
Speaker
right yeah we uh americans will tend to eat uh earlier than that yeah for sure which is good right we'll start we'll i think it's somewhere around like seven maybe six thirty seven somewhere around there i think my problem with that is if i do that i'll snack in the evening which is bad not good
00:45:37
Speaker
Yes. Yes. That's that's my my one. One of my wife's complaints to me is if if so, when I cook the evening meal, if it's not quick, if if I do it, if I don't do it early enough, she'll be hungry and then she'll start snacking on like.
00:46:00
Speaker
You know chips crisps or saw that there'll be some other unhealthy stuff and she would just kind of start eating that So I have to try and get my getting the food on the table before she gets to that point
00:46:18
Speaker
Okay, yeah, I'm the same. I'm the same. I did hear something about this, actually. Is that, I was sorry, I've been distracted because my headphones are at 10%. I think we're okay, hopefully. But this, there's a thing, sorry, what were you saying, Martin?
00:46:40
Speaker
You were talking about... I was just saying that I have to get the food in on the table earlier so that my wife doesn't start to snack.
00:46:51
Speaker
yeah so there's a thing apparently if you're um on ADHD meds it's more more important than ever to eat little and often to um help you know if you've got depends obviously depending what meds you have but some of them are slow release so it's less of a problem if you don't have slow release
00:47:14
Speaker
better to eat little and often with meds I think it's I think that's a better way anyway anyway totally yeah if you can yeah yeah it is that you know
00:47:29
Speaker
So typically our lives are not set up that way, you know, it's like we cram in a breakfast in the morning and then we've got work for a lot of us and you don't really eat chewing work. And then if you've got ADHD, it can be so easy just to kind of work over lunch as well.
00:47:51
Speaker
totally yeah and I've got to skip that a little hack I mean because it's one of the one of the great things I actually did have this in the summary but I'm gonna say put it up there now it seems like the right place to say it right point to say it
00:48:06
Speaker
you kind of got an advantage it's not like us we grew up in the 1970s and it was all shit the food you know i had real problem with eating and i would come on to that with eating behaviors just the children the food was really crap in the 70s now you go into any place you go to any supermarket almost any supermarket or you go to a coffee shop and there are tons of really really good healthy options out there
00:48:32
Speaker
you know, there's really good stuff. And you can, if you if you find yourself you bit of a snacker, all you have to do is like get yourself organized and make sure you can snack healthily. Like I love dry fruit. Give me a dried mango to snack on. I'm not happy as Larry. Here's a hack.
00:48:51
Speaker
which we do in our house is if we have anything that is like a healthy snacky thing could be a banana could be like a an orange could be some nuts um yeah some like sunflower seeds um yeah uh pretty good we we store them in bowls lovely yeah and we have them out right
00:49:14
Speaker
they aren't in a packet somewhere over in the pantry or they are they are in so they are in front wherever we are we try and put them there yeah so so if you kind of go oh i'm a bit hungry i can't be asked to get up off my seat and go and find a packet of chips but there is a but there is a banana right in front of me i'll just go with the easy option just eat the banana yeah
00:49:42
Speaker
So again, it's like the banana evolved to help you snack. Exactly. It's like ready made packaging. It's genius packaging. It is. So it's it's like it's the same mindful as how I pack the fridge.
00:49:59
Speaker
It's right. It's you have the healthy stuff right in front of you wherever you go in it. So your healthy snacks are right in front of you wherever you are. They're not in a cupboard. They're out. All the unhealthy stuff is back in the cupboard is behind closed doors somewhere. It's just it's that it takes away having in front of you just takes away a one of those. Yeah, it just makes it easier.
00:50:27
Speaker
yeah i do have a vice though we'll do that yeah crisps oh i love me some crisps i love crisps love them chips oh my god if you're american yeah chip canadian but anything in the end anything crunchy
00:50:46
Speaker
because that's the subject of consistencies. Let's go on to ADHD and consistencies with food, right? Yeah, crunchy. It's all good. All crunchy, all good. All good. Let's move on to the next podcast. No, all good. But some things like grits, they call it in America, in Italy it's called polenta.
00:51:10
Speaker
It's just vile for me in terms of consistency. Pulses don't like pulses. Yeah. You and I are just like so polar opposite on some of this stuff. Pulses, great, polenta, fantastic. Devil's work. Food of the gods! Look at the difference between the scrambled egg and a boiled egg. Come on. No contest.
00:51:42
Speaker
Scrambled eggs are like oozing with delight and wonder and magic. The boil takes like, oh god.
00:51:53
Speaker
Has a special charm. Like a ball dig in this little cup and you get like some toast, which is like, and you just cut that up and just slice off the top and you dip your little bit of toast in the yolk. Oh, come on. It's a bit like the bananas. They've got their own packaging even, haven't they?
00:52:14
Speaker
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i think i think i think i think that film with steve mcqueen put me off cool hand luke oh yeah yeah 28 50 boiled eggs and he imploded or exploded fun fun scene great scene
00:52:32
Speaker
that's good there's a there's a little there's the little the bit that i liked about that was that he he'd eaten so steve mcqueen i'm not sure why i can't remember he's he's eating all of these boiled eggs right and he's like laying there i think he's in jail he takes on a bet that he can't
00:52:53
Speaker
And then I'm sure I'm remembering this right, but he's got this kind of... I don't think he's lying down or something. He's got this bulging fat... His stomach is just bulging out. And I think someone flicks it. He goes... Yes! Yes! Yeah, it's like a tight... Yeah, exactly. Like a drum.
00:53:15
Speaker
genius film. I love that bit. I think it's my top 20 films. Cool hand look. I've not seen it happen on DVD.
00:53:26
Speaker
Okay, so I've got So we've done big eating right? We've done little and often we've done cooked veg or have we? We've kind of covered it off in that it is a complex carb and you know veg is is a
00:53:46
Speaker
is good you know and as a you'd like yours raw you can stick it in a you know you know what my wife does is that she hides veg in food so spinach for example so she might make a spaghetti bolognese or something right or something like that and then she'll throw in a handful of of spinach leaves
00:54:15
Speaker
and they're just in there and you don't even realize that they're really there really i mean they're just like yeah yeah totally you can just yeah she's one for hiding vegetables in food i'm a bit like your missus actually on that front i know that they're there but i kind of eat it i don't really you know i don't really yeah yeah yeah i think fine okay
00:54:41
Speaker
Next up, we have a tricky one. More related to eating habits. Tricky one. Tricky one. Trauma related around 18.
00:55:02
Speaker
Go for it. Okay, because I've got... My hate... You're right, Marty. Partly my hate for a cooked veg came from school. You know, like hyper-boiled.
00:55:14
Speaker
Cabbage. I've got ooze to make my stomach churn. Now, I have no excuse for it because my grandmother, she was a professional cook. She used to cook everything with a steam cooker and all of her vegetables were cooked perfectly.
00:55:34
Speaker
So it's not about how good or bad they were cooked, actually, I just have a problem with it. And I had a real shame about it for years, and years and now just like stopped, like made peace with myself. I mean, apart from the fact that my my, you know, my
00:55:51
Speaker
Um, in my kind of, um, eating time at home was full of trauma, full of trauma. Uh, cause I wouldn't eat the things that I was supposed to eat. Um, I hated vegetables and it was just a freaking nightmare. It really was. Um, the only good thing that happens. Yeah. Eat all the food on your plate. There are kids starving in Africa.
00:56:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. If I knew it was that easy, actually, it was actually much worse than that. So, and then if I ever, if I ever, when I was a kid, if ever we went to my mate's house, the mate's mum would say, oh, you're a fussy eater, aren't you?
00:56:36
Speaker
And it's like, oh, so the shame of it all the time. Anyway, it got to a point where I was as skinny as a rake. And I just like anything to do with eating was just not pleasurable for me at all. And then I had body shaming.
00:56:55
Speaker
You know a real problem is the aesthetic side of how I looked you know right up until I was in my late 20s even I Even had to I I didn't wear long. I didn't wear short-sleeve shirts T-shirts until I was in my late 20s from shame. Oh, yeah Yeah, so there's a lot of good crap going on now. I know that it's sorry cool. I
00:57:21
Speaker
I was going to say that, you know, like certainly, you know, ADHD can be part of that, you know, and I know that autism is very much in that kind of camp, you know, where there are only certain foods that actually you can deal with mentally.
00:57:41
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And so it kind of comes into the... I was quite easy, actually. I thought I was quite easy, actually. Just give me what I like, you know? Yeah, which is that safe foods that I was talking about earlier. Those are the safe foods, the kind of foods that you go, yeah, all I want is that. Yeah. Quite simple. Because I never...
00:58:07
Speaker
I had shame about it, but in the end, I always, in the back of my mind, always thought, I'm not fussy. I'm not fussy at all. Give me a freaking raw carrot, and I'm as happy as anyone.
Personal Food Experiences and Trauma
00:58:19
Speaker
I can munch all day on raw carrot.
00:58:25
Speaker
So then it got easier because then I could, wouldn't have got to a point where you could decide what I ate. I was fine. And then actually the joy came into food. And then I moved to Italy, where food is basically a national pastime.
00:58:44
Speaker
and just one of my favorite things in the world now. So yeah, I just, yeah. So I think now I'm making the link or trying to make a link between, you know, actually what people call it as fussy eater. I just had problems with the consistency of certain types of food and nothing more, nothing less than that, you know.
00:59:10
Speaker
you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's called it was called an eating disorder. I wasn't fussy. It was called an eating disorder. Fuck me. disorder again, I've already got it ADHD. And now it's popping up as an eating disorder as well. Oh, come on, give me a break. You know,
00:59:28
Speaker
Right. Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, there are certain, I mean, there are some very definite eating disorders that come out of ADHD. And then there are just issues or problems like, you know, like I will only eat certain foods or, you know, I don't enjoy eating other foods.
00:59:50
Speaker
I can't eat other foods you know and then there's that as you say there's some shame you know that gets put on you certainly as you're a kid um yeah and even as an adult I know because I'm very aware that when we were going through the good bads and the and the good and the bad foods that you kind of go right well you know you should be eating more of this or more or less of that um yeah
01:00:18
Speaker
And I am kind of aware that that is a kind of a privileged place to be us telling you, like, well, yeah, you know, these kind of basic things. And we can't all afford the good stuff, you know? Right. Well, actually, here in Italy, luckily, Italy is quite an expensive country, actually, except when it comes to food.
01:00:49
Speaker
In Italy, you can eat really, really well and spend very little money. It's become good for healthy food. You know, in London, it can be quite elitist, for example, and available to privileged few. And as you know, it's more food banks are opening up in the UK and probably, I guess, in the States as well. You realize that it is, in other countries, it is a privilege to be able to eat that kind of stuff.
01:01:17
Speaker
in italy luckily thank goodness um healthy food is available to everyone everyone literally boy i mean i i have to point out that from an american perspective our food industry has fucked us over ridiculously so you know so you so what you end up with is large
01:01:45
Speaker
um lobbyists who will lobby for their industry they will make the cheapest cheapest food that they can like yeah like the cheapest um cheese american
01:02:01
Speaker
There's a specific name for the cheese. I can't remember. It's called like welfare cheese. But anyway, there's like, there's like, you know, high fructose corn syrup in so much stuff. So, you know, they, they, they make the cheapest, cheapest, cheapest food that they can possibly get away with. And they'll lobby to make, to make sure that, that, you know, that, that they can get
01:02:31
Speaker
their cheap crap food out to everyone. And if you live on the edges of the States, like New York or California or anywhere in the ages, there's much more options to eat healthy. But for a large chunk in the middle,
01:02:57
Speaker
If you want really good food, it's really expensive. You have to drive ages to find it. There's no decent restaurants. They're all the big chain restaurants that are just pumping out the same unhealthy, cheap food.
01:03:15
Speaker
And they wonder why Americans are generally obese. In the States it's quite famous, because in the States they bleach chicken. I mean, for Christ's sake, bleach chicken.
01:03:38
Speaker
What the hell? Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Well, I mean, you know, in the UK, you know, there's lots of, you know, it's not just the States, is it? In the UK, you know, it's a lot of crap going on in the UK as well. There's a lot of people trying to do something about reducing sugars in drinks, for example. Like in, it's sometimes, it depends on what country you are. You buy Fanta in one country and it'll have half the amount of sugar.
01:04:08
Speaker
just because of how countries legislate. It's insane. It's insane. You can bet whatever the worst legislation is, it will be in the States. Yeah. But also some Switzerland, fairly enough, weirdly.
01:04:26
Speaker
Also, Switzerland is really bad. Fanta in Switzerland has twice as much sugar as exactly the same product you buy in the UK. Because in the UK, artificial sweeteners or any kind of sweetening is taxed and so they reduce the sugar content in them.
01:04:47
Speaker
Right. It's insane. Yeah. All right. All right. Boo. Boo. All right. Well, let's wrap that up there. And we're just going to. Yeah, I guess, unless there's anything else that you want to say, I know that we're kind of like. I just get on with past an hour. OK, I know. I like a recap. I've got a quick recap.
01:05:19
Speaker
Yeah, like repeated what I said before, we're kind of really lucky actually. It's not like the 1970s or 80s. Now you can eat really amazing food. It's like people don't go into extra effort out there to like, so you can help you eat healthily.
01:05:35
Speaker
more difficult if you don't have money, totally accepted, but that can be done as well. You might have to shop around a bit more, but it can be done depending on what country you live in, of course, as we were saying before. What's the other good news? Yeah, supermarkets are full of like really super excellent coffee shops full of amazing, amazing food. Yeah.
01:06:05
Speaker
What's the other, other things are, the other things are. Oh yeah, that hack, and I think Marty's got another hack that I've forgotten about. Another hack is it makes snacky, healthy snacky foods like freely available to you. So you could like, when you need to reach out for it, it doesn't have to be, you know, potato chips or Chris, whatever.
01:06:25
Speaker
you know, you reach out this, like for me, it's dried fruit. And you can make it, you can actually make snacking, you know, doesn't have to be a torture because you're not maybe eating crisps or chocolate bars, you can actually make it enjoyable. Other hack is make shopping enjoyable. If you can go to farmer's markets,
01:06:50
Speaker
I personally find supermarkets really boring as hell. As boring as hell. Too much plastic, you know, blah, blah, blah. Just don't like the environments generally, personally. You can make the whole thing much more enjoyable if you go to a farmer's market and actually becomes actually a social event too. It makes the whole food thing less of a torture or a chore and more of a pleasure that you just add to your week.
01:07:20
Speaker
Yeah, right. If you have one anywhere near you, which I know that most of America doesn't. Oh, really? I thought it was quite a big thing, a farmer's market in those states. Yeah, but again, it's like there's certain places where it is. OK. But for most of America, it's not. So coffee shops, for example, most of America will have unhealthy things in it.
01:07:48
Speaker
Okay, because those things are also really good for the environment as well, because you're not shipping tons of food around the country. You know, you're buying it straight off the farm, most of the time, or virtually.
01:08:01
Speaker
So it's a win-win, you know? Okay. Well, yeah. But unfortunately, because of subsidies and lobbyists, lobby groups, you end up with it's sometimes more expensive to eat the stuff that's up the road than it is if it came from some other country. Yeah. That's how that works.
01:08:26
Speaker
Yeah. I did see what's the example of, I think it was like a box of cashew nuts that were grown in Argentina, packed in Thailand, and actually on a shelf in America somewhere. It was insane, you know, for a box of cashew nuts. Me. Your cashew nut, man, I know. I do like them. I mean, you shouldn't eat too much of them.
01:08:53
Speaker
yeah yeah they're good okay all right let's let's jump back into the mayor's car and we're gonna go and head back uh well we're just gonna jump over to the to our humble old post office yeah right let's let's get in oof
01:09:18
Speaker
There's a long line here for stamps, no doubt. There is a long line. There is actually some post. Oh, great. There is actually some post. It's coming really late. That's why it's not in the script. Coming really, really late, Martin. Actually, it's from, do you remember Betty that used to work in finance? Yes. Because you put a lot of expenses through the company.
01:09:45
Speaker
through the business. We got rid of some staff. Yeah, we had to get rid of Betty in finance. The Maya, she's a bit cheeky, but I appreciate her enthusiasm. She's asking for a job back. Oh, yeah, I feel through. Yeah.
01:10:07
Speaker
Yeah, you even put a onesie, you put your onesies through the business, you put your taxi, the taxi renovation put through the business. Right. Well, all of these things make my mind comfortable, therefore better at my job. I call that an accommodation.
01:10:23
Speaker
Maybe I've been going a bit too nuts on the accommodations. Nuts. Cashew nuts. Maybe I can just reel that in a bit so that we've got enough in the budget to get Betty back. Let's get Betty back. Let's work on that.
01:10:39
Speaker
It's a song. It's a rock song. It's a classic 80s. It sounds a good list. It doesn't sound that way. It doesn't sound that way. All righty. Other than that, okay, let's get Betty back. We should do like a thing on TikTok for the campaign to get Betty back.
01:10:57
Speaker
Yeah. All right. Yeah. So, yeah.
Engagement and Conclusion
01:11:01
Speaker
That just leaves me to say, ATHD World is delivered fresh every Tuesday to all purveyors of Fines, podcast.
01:11:12
Speaker
Oh, lovely. Please subscribe to the pod and rate us with the most stars that you can afford, which will be free actually, because you just click a button. So yeah, please do. It makes a lot of difference. Feel free to correspond at will in the comments. We do read them and we do reply to them.
01:11:37
Speaker
And they do make a difference to us. I know we joke around, but we do really love it when people give feedback. I'm here for it. And if you want to see our beautiful faces, you can sally forth to the... Sally Fields.
01:11:59
Speaker
Oh, good woman. You can also pick up a quill and email us at ADHDville at gmail.com. Yes, off pigeons. Send us your favourite pigeon. We'll look after it, don't worry. We'll give him some food and we'll send him on his way back to you. Absolutely. So, to visit us on all of our socials, TikTok, YouTube, cover the friends, Facebook, Instagram, but in the meantime, be fucking kind to yourself.
01:12:29
Speaker
And I beseech you, fellow ADHDers, know thyself, sons of the hounds, come hither and get the flesh. Right. There, says the Mayor. That's that.