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Vegetables are NOT "Super Healthy"
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Are you following health trends that actually harm your health? In my eye-opening masterclass "The 7 Popular But Deadly Health Fads," I reveal how common health practices promoted by influencers and gurus might be ravaging your gut, accelerating disease, and shaving years off your life.
Discover which popular diets, supplements, and health rituals are secretly sabotaging your health and learn what to do instead. I explain why these seemingly healthy habits are damaging your body and provide actionable alternatives for true longevity.
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The Live Longer Formula is your go-to podcast for cutting through the noise and discovering practical, science-backed strategies to not just add years to your life, but to add life to your years. Hosted by longevity author and functional health practitioner Christian Yordanov, this podcast dives deep into the truths (and myths) behind longevity, health optimization, and addressing chronic health problems.
Each episode offers actionable insights drawn from the host's own research, clinical practice, and personal journey, helping you make informed decisions to restore and enhance your health. Whether you're interested in reducing stress, boosting your energy and mental performance, improving your gut health, or simply looking to optimize your diet and lifestyle, this podcast delivers the tools you need to live a healthier, longer life.
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Transcript
Introduction to Christian's Perspective on Vegetables
00:00:01
Christian Yordanov
Hey there, it's Christian Yordanoff. I'm a longevity author and functional health practitioner. And today I'm going to tell you why vegetables are not super healthy.
00:00:14
Christian Yordanov
And i almost don't eat any vegetables. Now, before we get into it, I want you to understand, please, I am not a carnivore. i don't think plants are trying to kill us and stuff like that.
00:00:27
Christian Yordanov
so I'm not on that extreme.
Critique of Extreme Diets and Vegetable Health Claims
00:00:30
Christian Yordanov
And I actually think a lot of what they're doing on on that extreme of the spectrum, the you know fully carnivore keto people are actually shortening their lives and they're causing a lot of very slow degeneration that will only, you know, it will take years and years to really manifest.
00:00:47
Christian Yordanov
But nonetheless, they are doing that. But on the other hand, the fully plant-based folks are destroying their lives. And I'm going to do a whole separate episode specifically on the plant-based diet. But today I'm just going go over why i don't value vegetables at all you know in the diet. I could i could like basically take them or leave them.
00:01:10
Christian Yordanov
right And it kind of comes as a shock to many people. But what's interesting is when new clients when we enrolled and when we enroll new clients and then we're doing the intake session and I'm going over through their intake forms, they'll be like,
00:01:23
Christian Yordanov
you know, I yeah try to eat well, I try to eat pretty clean, you know, some meat, some vegetables, you know, some fruit and... everyone always seems to like show their work.
00:01:35
Christian Yordanov
Like, yeah, yeah, I eat vegetables. Okay. I like broccoli. I have it like three times a week. I'm like, I tell people, listen, and if do you feel guilty for not eating enough vegetables? Sometimes. ah Do you feel feel like it's a bit of a burden? Do you feel like you don't like them and you're kind of forcing yourself to eat them?
00:01:53
Christian Yordanov
And a lot of the time, yes That's what they say. Yes, it's a burden. I don't like them. I never liked them. Sometimes people will say, yeah, I like them. I like them. But it's can kind of sense that they're again trying to almost to impress me like that. I'm um'm a health, you know, I'm doing my best and I like I like these. um I like these healthy behaviors and stuff.
00:02:13
Christian Yordanov
But I just tell people, listen, let's just cut the crap. Do you like them? If you don't like them,
Questioning Nutrient Value and Health Benefits of Vegetables
00:02:19
Christian Yordanov
don't eat them. I hereby absolve you of any guilt around eating vegetables because I'll tell you why and I'll get into why why they're not good for you necessarily. Not not that they're bad for you,
00:02:33
Christian Yordanov
Not that they're going to harm you necessarily, but that they're not really adding value to your diet. So, but anyway, you know, I was going to tell another story, but if you know me, you know, brevity is not my strong point. So let's just get into it.
00:02:47
Christian Yordanov
So the first thing i did just just to get the conversation going is I asked Chad GPT. So what did I ask it? I asked it, why are vegetables so healthy?
00:03:00
Christian Yordanov
Huh? is enough and it spat out the answer in in half a second. Didn't even think about it. So it said vegetables are considered healthy because they pack a very high nutrient to calorie ratio and support the body across multiple systems. Here's why they're so beneficial.
00:03:21
Christian Yordanov
Micronutrient density, rich in vitamins, C, K, folate, et cetera, and minerals, potassium, magnesium, calcium.
00:03:30
Christian Yordanov
These nutrients are essential for energy production, blah, blah, blah. Phytonutrients and antioxidants. Oh, actually, let me pause for a second. Just I want you to before I get into the rest of these things, I want you to just take a second and kind of think about why do you think if you do, maybe don't. Some of my plenty of my kind of subscribers and and and readers and stuff, they they understand that, you know,
00:03:55
Christian Yordanov
vegetables are basically super low on the totem pole of food quality but think about it for a second why do you think that they're healthy if you do and when i usually when i kind of press people and i don't do this with you know i don't just do this often because it becomes altercation but like i think I remember re a few months ago I was at a family thing and I asked a family member, like, tell me why these things are so good for you. And when you press people, all they can say really is phytochemical, phytonutrients, phytoantioxidants, nutrient density.
00:04:35
Christian Yordanov
But really...
00:04:38
Christian Yordanov
What phytonutrients are so... like Can you name some phytonutrients that are so beneficial that without them you cannot survive and thrive?
00:04:48
Christian Yordanov
Can tell me what phytonutrients you learned about in like school that are essential for a mammal... a mammal, a warm-blooded mammal to survive and thrive?
00:04:59
Christian Yordanov
Like what receptors do they activate? What sort of enzymes are they a part of? Like, think about it. Like what do these chemicals a plant makes to support its own plant metabolism?
00:05:12
Christian Yordanov
What can be so beneficial about a mammal ingesting these in copious amounts? When you kind of press people a little bit, Usually, like if someone doesn't know anything about nutrition, they just look, I don't know. like i just i've been This has been hammered into my head since I was like a little kid.
00:05:31
Christian Yordanov
Eat vegetables, eat vegetables, eat vegetables. you know that's that that's okay. and no No issues there. But someone with a little bit more of a nutritional sort of understanding, if you start pressing them,
00:05:42
Christian Yordanov
they they will kind of sort of feel like a little bit cornered at some point and they just might scream at you, are you denying the science? Stuff like that, you know? So, but think about, okay, so let let's ask, we'll see what ChatGPT said. So, phytonutrients, this is such a manipulative word, by the way.
00:06:03
Christian Yordanov
It's phytonutrients. It's actually, ah ah nutrient means it you need it Like you need to kind of, so for some functioning in the body, right? That's what a nutrient is. It's nutritious.
00:06:14
Christian Yordanov
So instead of calling them phytonutrients, If they call them chemicals, phytochemicals, you know you could accept it. But then it says phytonutrients and antioxidants. So vegetables contain compounds like flavonoids, carotenoids, glucosinolates, and polyphenols.
00:06:29
Christian Yordanov
These neutralize free radicals, reduce oxidative stress, and and lower chronic disease risk. Okay, so lower chronic disease risk. We'll talk about that later. Then fiber content, third point.
00:06:40
Christian Yordanov
Soluble fiber helps feed gut microbes. And then insoluble fiber helps support regularity of bowels and detoxification. And then listen, another point for low calorie, high volume.
00:06:56
Christian Yordanov
So vegetables provide satiety without excess calories, making your weight control easier. They help regulate blood sugar by slowing digestion and absorption of carbs. Support. This is where we get into like fantasy land.
00:07:08
Christian Yordanov
Support for longevity systems. Improve endothelial function of blood vessels. Lower blood pressure and cholesterol. Enhance liver detox pathways. Modulate hormones through gut and liver interactions. Okay? this it now Now it gets crazy land.
00:07:24
Christian Yordanov
Disease protections. Now...
Challenges to Dietary Guidelines and Study Reliability
00:07:26
Christian Yordanov
ChatGPT is telling me that of vegetables protect me from disease. Strong evidence links higher vegetable intake with lower risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and several cancers.
00:07:41
Christian Yordanov
Cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, kale, cabbage are especially potent, potent. due to sulforaphane and related compounds that activate cellular defense pathways and then alkaline forming effects on many vegetables help buffer dietary acid loads from meat, dairy grains, supporting bone and kidney health. Okay, so those are the seven points. So, all right.
00:08:03
Christian Yordanov
I mean, very easy to take at face value if this isn't your job and you kind of haven't looked into it for, you know, some time.
00:08:14
Christian Yordanov
It's very easy to say that. you know And if look, if i'm if I'm not an expert in a field and then ah ah go to chat to be asked, let's say, i don't know, like financial markets or something, it tells me stuff. If I'm not like a financial analyst, I will take it at face value and then you know i will I will base my sort of decisions based on the information it gives me. However,
00:08:35
Christian Yordanov
We know a lot of the so-called you know health advice decimated from the top down to us over the years has proved to be incorrect. Remember the six to was it six to eight hillll ah ah servings of healthy whole grains a day at the bottom of the the pyramid? you know Let me just find the the pyramid here. So food pyramid...
00:08:57
Christian Yordanov
80s. Was it the 80s? don't even remember. Well, so let's see. nineteen seventy s it was grains at the bottom of the pyramid. Then it was fruits and vegetables.
00:09:09
Christian Yordanov
And then it was, you know, dairy, meat, stuff like that. And then some oils and fats at the top. Right? So that was wrong. Yeah. Yet, here's the thing.
00:09:21
Christian Yordanov
Yet, I still talk to people every once in a while that still think grains are, whole grains are healthy. They literally, i've I've had people say, I want to, like, my diet is healthy whole grains, grains, ah vegetables, and <unk> etc so we know a lot of bad advice has been decimated the only problem is that we've been living with this all our life therefore we don't question those beliefs they're so ingrained that we it's like a fish uh you know questioning the existence of water what is
Animal Products vs. Vegetables in Nutrient Density
00:09:54
Christian Yordanov
water you you're living with it all your life therefore how are you supposed to ever like even question it
00:09:59
Christian Yordanov
So let's, okay, then I asked ChatGPT, give me the the research. What did I ask? Give me the research that corroborates what you just told me. So I asked it to give me evidence, right?
00:10:13
Christian Yordanov
So micronutrient density, it tells me vegetables are disproportionately rich in vitamins and minerals that act as enzyme cofactors in core metabolic pathways. And then it gives me K1, vitamin K1,
00:10:27
Christian Yordanov
folate and potassium. Here's the thing. when you When someone tells you that vegetables are richer in vitamins and minerals than animal products, that person is retarded.
00:10:42
Christian Yordanov
Okay?
00:10:44
Christian Yordanov
All right? just not in like an insulting way but like in something happened in their edumacational process that stalled their development to actually learn and understand things right and i have friends plant-based vegans type friends that could not believe like when i tell them meat is more nutritious than spinach or or cruciferous vegetables.
00:11:15
Christian Yordanov
I had was this one friend like laugh at me, sort of psychotic. no You say say ah meat has nutrients? I'm like, I mean, how how is that not not like...
00:11:28
Christian Yordanov
deficient in in knowledge, that sort of state, like to laugh at that. Think about it this way. Muscle meat, for the muscle to its job, those cells in the muscle have to produce energy.
00:11:41
Christian Yordanov
That means they have mitochondria. That means they have coincid the the the muscle cell, which is what your steak is made of, is made of cells that have...
00:11:53
Christian Yordanov
you know, copper and iron and be various B vitamins required for energy production inside every cell, mitochondria, right? They need all of these sort of nutrients, B1, B2, B3, B5, coenzyme cutane, like there's like other like detox processes going in, you know, in ah ah certain cells.
00:12:15
Christian Yordanov
So all of these cells inside, that tissue have like a bunch of different nutrients, right? For methylation, there's B12, folate, right? So oh sure, some of this stuff happens ah largely in the liver, but every like every cell has a bunch of like enzymes and sort of ah ah organelles that are built from proteins, fats, and for their act to for them to like make make stuff happen in that cell, they need various kinds of nutrients that includes vitamins and minerals.
00:12:48
Christian Yordanov
Right. So to say meat is not nutritious, it's like literally one of the most most nutritious freaking things. If you think about the process is going inside that, you know, each one of those cells that make it up.
00:13:01
Christian Yordanov
And then what vitamins and minerals are required produce to catalyze those processes, right? And then if, of course, the steak has fat, that fat is going to have fat-soluble vitamins that a lot of those you you won't even find in that form in in plant foods, right? So that this is this is completely a fallacious statement that ChatGPT says. It just knows that most people will not question that.
00:13:28
Christian Yordanov
this is the it is This is a dogma that it's just programmed. it' It's been programmed with this dogma, basically.
00:13:38
Christian Yordanov
Now, the evidence here it that it gives me is... Listen to this, Jesus Christ. It gives me two papers. One is the DASH trial showed that our diet rich in fruits and vegetables lowers blood pressure.
00:13:53
Christian Yordanov
right so that is associational data, not not actually like yourcus experimental data. and So this this is like this is the evidence for the micronutrient density claim, by the way.
00:14:06
Christian Yordanov
It's talking about blood pressure. This is one of these papers. And then the other paper it gives me is an EF essay panel on dietetic products, scientific opinion on dietary reference values for folate and cardiovascular outcomes.
00:14:24
Christian Yordanov
So these two papers is the evidence Chad GPT gives me for the micronutrient density of vegetables. Then Phytonutrients and and antioxidants. Vegetables supply secondary metabolites with direct antioxidant and indirect signaling effects.
00:14:44
Christian Yordanov
Carotenoids, beta-carotene, lutein. They're like antioxidants. Glucosinolates in crucifers. Hydrolyze to isothiocyanates like soforaphane inducing phase 2 detoxification enzymes.
00:15:01
Christian Yordanov
Right? Let me just pause here just to kind of break what that breakdown what that means. so glucosinolates that become isothiocyanates, like sulforaphane, induce phase 2 detoxification enzyme. Well, what that means is
00:15:19
Christian Yordanov
So foraphane is toxic. yeah It's toxic. And then when you ingest it, it activates, induces phase two detoxification enzymes. So it activates the detox system.
00:15:32
Christian Yordanov
So the stupidity of this is absolutely mind-boggling. So they're saying, and that's what a lot of these quote-unquote antioxidants in in in phytochemicals,
00:15:45
Christian Yordanov
are doing, they're basically treated like a toxin by the body and in response to them it upregulates its detox stuff like phase 2 detoxification enzymes are upregulated, right?
00:16:00
Christian Yordanov
or activated. so what are So what are they saying? So we need to eat something toxic to activate our detox system. Okay, that's how stupid it is.
00:16:11
Christian Yordanov
You have to understand, like the more you learn, the more a person, at least for for me, the more I learn about nutrition over the the last you know decade, The less, the more you can see through this BS, the less vegetables you eat, the more you learn, the less vegetables you eat.
00:16:30
Christian Yordanov
And that's why when I say someone that decides a plant-based diet is the best diet for them, but for their health.
Transition from Veganism and Plant-Based Critiques
00:16:39
Christian Yordanov
That person, it clearly means that their education in nutrition halted at a specific time when they, through a religious belief, decided that this is the best diet because the the whoever the influencer or influencers they were listening to were convincing enough.
00:16:57
Christian Yordanov
to to to convince them that this is the best diet and they they stopped learning from there on. From there on and I'll tell you this and I'll talk about it in a different episode but when I was doing the the vegan diet, the plant-based diet, you know, 10 years ago, all I would do is listen to vegan people like, you know, vegan YouTubers, Dr. What's-His-Face, Dr. dr The dude that that that um is like... a Even that looks like just a gentle breeze could take him out. He's so degenerated and fragile and like decrepit.
00:17:37
Christian Yordanov
What's the name of the guy? Anyway, it will come to me later. um But yeah, so like all I would do is I would just... watch those guys and I'll continue to brainwash myself, brainwash myself, brainwash myself.
00:17:51
Christian Yordanov
So then when I kind of, when it clicked for me, this is stupid. Then it took me like a year, year and a half to actually unbrainwash myself. And I went to the, to the complete opposite, opposite of the spectrum. I went to the carnivore people because they had all the arguments around all all this stuff, which a lot of them are super valid. I'll let you know. Right. Right.
00:18:10
Christian Yordanov
Although the whole diet in and of itself is not good good for you long for your longevity. It will make you hypothyroid, you know, if it's low carb. But the arguments around some of the stuff is straight up ah truth. So they're telling us you you need to poison yourself with plant compounds to upregulate your detox systems. And I just tell people, listen, your detox capacities do not need to be upregulated properly.
00:18:37
Christian Yordanov
What you need is to support them with the nutrients that support detox capacities, which is amino acids and vitamins and minerals and and and you know fuel for energy. So you' you're living in the modern world. You're getting hit dozens of times with micro exposures every day. There's not a reason to further poison yourself to ah ah to upregulate your detox capacity.
00:19:01
Christian Yordanov
And this is another thing that completely... grinds my gears but every once in a while and I would do a genetic test with a client or a client will come to me with a genetic test and looked at like quite a lot of different types of genetic reports and what really grinds my gears is if you have like certain glutathione genes missing like GST, T1 and whatever the other one was certain like phase two detox enzymes either you you might have a polymorphism or you might have the uh enzymes completely missing which in my case that's the case i have two of those enzymes uh genes missing and so
00:19:39
Christian Yordanov
a lot of their recommendations on those auto-generated reports is to eat cruciferous vegetables because that will induce the, it will upregulate phase two detox enzymes. It's like literally, literally, they're telling you eat things with poison inside them, with toxins inside them,
00:20:00
Christian Yordanov
Don't want to sound too sort of over the top, but there are toxins, right? The body treats them like toxins. So eat those things in order to upregulate your detox capacities. Like how, like, is this really, are we really at the pinnacle of science and medicine? Or is this like absolute just... just, I don't even have words. It's just horrific.
00:20:24
Christian Yordanov
It's horrific. and And we like, we lap it up. Like, that's the thing when you're like a new practitioner, you're learning or you like, you get a report as a consumer, health consumer, you just lap this stuff up. You just,
00:20:34
Christian Yordanov
You just assume they know what they're talking about. But it's the same thing about the cholesterol thing. And that's another thing. I have people in their 60s plus and even younger still sometimes come to me obsessed with like their cholesterol and how to get it down or it's a bit high. It's it's a little bit over.
00:20:53
Christian Yordanov
That was just pure propaganda designed to push people Drugs, Zonya. like People still haven't gotten that memo. So I completely understand if it's hard to believe because on face value, the evidence is overwhelming.
00:21:10
Christian Yordanov
If you start grabbing little slices of the evidence and actually looking into them, you will see a lot of the stuff is just plain ridiculous, right? Polyphenols, then it says, flavonoids and anthocyanins, right? So there is, look, and I will i will tell you. So...
00:21:30
Christian Yordanov
There is definitely, definitely a lot of chemicals inside plants that are beneficial for us. The problem is that they are across the board um um ah sort of painted as...
00:21:49
Christian Yordanov
beneficial. And that's not true. If you look at how many species of plants exist on planet Earth, it's, I don't know, a couple of million? I'm not even sure.
00:22:00
Christian Yordanov
It's hundreds of thousands at least, right? If you look at it, how many of those are edible? It's like a couple hundred. And the reason a lot of those are edible is because we have cultivated and sort of, not not hybridized, but you know, we've kind of cultivated them for, i guess, centuries, in some in some cases, maybe even like millennia.
00:22:23
Christian Yordanov
So we've made them edible and less toxic over time by selective breeding right so those things in the wild might not be ah at all good for you in fact they might actually like make sick so you have to understand it's like the fact that they're uh painting all of these polyphenols and glucosinolates and carotenoids and stuff there's definitely some of them that do awesome stuff but here's the thing a lot of the time the reason they are beneficial is because they sort of resemble in structure things that are inside the body. right So they might their shape might activate a receptor that you know an endogenous hormone, like let's say testosterone, progesterone, might activate.
00:23:15
Christian Yordanov
So due to their shape, and then due to the their shape, maybe they can carry electrons, like, you know, CoQ10 could, for example. So, and then due to their shape, they may be able to, you know, accept electrons,
00:23:30
Christian Yordanov
which which can allow them to act as antioxidants. But in in a healthy functioning human being, you should be able to produce a lot of you know your own antioxidants. Like you have so minerals that have antioxidant properties, you have minerals that are part of like antioxidants made with amino acids, and you have antioxidants that are made from amino acids, right?
00:23:54
Christian Yordanov
so you you have a ton of antioxidants that you can make yourself in the body. So if if your like diet is deficient in protein and you and and minerals, which can happen if you're not eating well, then maybe some of these plant antioxidants may be helping you, right?
Fiber, Antioxidants, and Gut Health
00:24:10
Christian Yordanov
But a lot of the time, like you if you just provide the building blocks for your own body's endogenous things, you should be all right. like there's like You can absolutely thrive without getting a ah ah ton of like flat flavonoids or beta-carotene or lutein or anthocyanins, right?
00:24:30
Christian Yordanov
they They don't actually have like an essential role in the body without which you are going to have like some deficiency happen and then you're going to die or develop a disease. Then they talk about fiber, soluble fiber.
00:24:43
Christian Yordanov
And this is another really very sort of, they like they really like to dumb things down in the mainstream because simple dumbed down ideas stick there. They can kind of propagate very well across the big population. So fiber,
00:25:00
Christian Yordanov
Fiber is good for you because fiber feeds the gut bacteria. However, many people, many, many people have an imbalance of these gut bacteria where they have more inflammatory bacteria overgrowing.
00:25:13
Christian Yordanov
And if you just throw fiber in there, you are going to be feeding and allowing those inflammatory bacteria to reproduce and grow their population. And then when they die, they might have...
00:25:26
Christian Yordanov
If they're gram negative, they might spill their contents when they're dead, you know, ah spill spill their contents into the gut that can trigger inflammation in the gut, you know, by activating the immune system.
00:25:37
Christian Yordanov
I mean, that they can that can get into the bloodstream, trigger the immune system there, trigger inflammation that way, which causes damage in the body. So fiber isn't like this sort of magical thing that everybody just needs to eat more and and you'll be better.
00:25:50
Christian Yordanov
But that's exactly what the mainstream says. And I'll tell you how many clients with constipation and other gut problems, you know, gas, bloating, they tell me, like, they they might go to a nutritionist, a doctor, or a few other different kinds of practitioners that you normally would go to, and they're like, everybody, that's the first thing they freaking say.
00:26:11
Christian Yordanov
Just eat more fiber. as if like this is some kind of panacea. And the the thing about fiber, the fact that it's three on chat GPT's list out of the seven points, why vegetables are so healthy, is is just it just tells you how much it's scraping the bottom the bottom of the barrel here to give me why vegetables are so healthy. Even it can't come up with the all the like major talking points. if If fiber is its third point, then its fourth point is low calorie, high volume.
00:26:45
Christian Yordanov
So vegetable vegetables provide satiety through volume and fiber with minimal caloric load. As if that's a good thing. This is what really annoys me, man.
00:26:54
Christian Yordanov
Like, how eating low calorie, high volume? What it's telling us, I'm sorry, I'm getting a little bit wound up here. by Soulless AI.
00:27:06
Christian Yordanov
They're good, they're good at getting me. So and what how is eating, check it out. So first of all, they're they're like micronutrient density so that vegetables are disproportionately rich in vitamins and minerals.
00:27:20
Christian Yordanov
That's a lie because it's all fiber and water mostly, a vegetable. And then it's It says that it's low calorie. So it's low calorie, high volume. So you' you're eating a lot of volume, right?
00:27:36
Christian Yordanov
For very little calories, right? So what does that mean? Well, first of all, if you buy your vegetables organic, which if you're not, you're for sure buying like poison pesticides.
00:27:48
Christian Yordanov
Not a lot, but there is definitely going to be poison pesticides in your vegetables. So if you don't buy your vegetables organic, That's really not good.
00:27:59
Christian Yordanov
But if you do, you're paying a lot of cash for very low calorie, high volume food. So what you're doing is you're basically wasting your precious resources because not just for the actual cost of it, because I'll tell you, like here right now,
00:28:17
Christian Yordanov
3.5 ounces or 100 grams of spinach organic is like 3 bucks, euro. It's like $3.50, you know, $3.50. Or even more even now.
00:28:28
Christian Yordanov
So if I, let just imagine, if I buy a kilogram of spinach, I would get, would be 30 euro. And actually for 30 euro, I can buy a kilogram, 2.2 pounds of organic spinach.
00:28:43
Christian Yordanov
Freaking beef. You know what mean? Really high quality beef. So, on the one hand, you got beef, protein, fat animal fat, full of nutrients, clean food.
00:28:57
Christian Yordanov
On the other hand, you have spinach. Tastes like shit. Is an oxalate bomb. It's the highest oxalate containing food by a huge margin.
00:29:09
Christian Yordanov
Tastes like shit. Did I mention that one? And then they say it's it's packed full of calcium, but even if you look, and I have these points down below, but if you look at it, the calcium in spinach is 5%, 5% bioavailable.
00:29:27
Christian Yordanov
So it's not like, what do you what's in the damn spinach that is so healthy for you as a mammal? Think about it. I can tell you with the beef, there's amino acids,
00:29:40
Christian Yordanov
that in a ratio that a mammal can use well, there's B vitamins because of the the muscle cells cells have to have mitochondria, a lot of them that need a lot of B vitamins, CoQ10, just a ton of stuff, copper, iron, like zinc in protein.
00:29:57
Christian Yordanov
I mean, like you could list like two dozen different things, right? Spinach, iron, who cares about iron? It's like not even bioavailable ions. Calcium, 5% bioavailable.
00:30:14
Christian Yordanov
700 milligrams of freaking oxalates per 100 grams. Yeah, that's what you're getting. so Or you're getting a little bit of potassium, but actually meat has potassium because the cell needs potassium on the inside to function.
00:30:29
Christian Yordanov
So like what are you getting from the spinach other than wasting a lot of money? And here's the other thing. The bigger problem beyond the money wasted is then you're filling up your plate with this stuff and it's displacing more nutrient dense food. So you can fill up on vegetables and be full and you know, you're like actually malnourishing yourself. And here's the thing in
00:30:53
Christian Yordanov
In chat GPT sort of little list here, yeah, low calorie, high volume, itity it helps if you want to lose weight, right? But what if you're chronically under eating and that's why you you have so many health problems, which so many of my clients don't realize until they, of course, ah kind kind of explain to them that a lot of their health problems stem from chronically under eating.
00:31:14
Christian Yordanov
And the trick isn't to eat less to lose the weight. Because then you eat even less and your metabolism is shutting down even more and you get even less nutrients, right? The trick is to improve the metabolism's functioning and they actually start eating more without gaining weight. In fact, you can actually lose weight, right?
00:31:29
Christian Yordanov
But you have to do a lot of, you have to dial in a few things along the way, you know? So if you have like a ah food sort of overeating problem, maybe that's good.
00:31:41
Christian Yordanov
But most people At least most people that come to me, they don't have that problem. So I think this maybe looks at across the board. if If you look at kind of how many people are overweight in the States and so on, maybe maybe it's a benefit then to eat less. But the problem is, again, if you're if you're going to displace other food that is more nutrient dense like animal products and stuff like that, then in the long term, you're still mal malnourishing yourself.
00:32:09
Christian Yordanov
So I don't see how... You can actually lose weight eating more animal products and kind of, you know, like... I'm not saying not eating any vegetables at all, right? But I'm just saying, if you focus more and on the nutrient-dense foods, you will feel more satiated because your body is not like...
00:32:26
Christian Yordanov
starving and craving of things that have zinc or calcium and so on. So lot of these cravings come when people eat like just suboptimal foods that don't provide the nutrients and then they're seeking more and more. So they think, oh, we just stuff you more with vegetables, you'll feel more full. But it doesn't really work that way because I have clients that, you know, when we dial in their diet and their macros, they stop craving foods. And i had one client just recently tell me that she hasn't craved, she stopped craving food and it hasn't been like that for ages.
00:33:00
Christian Yordanov
You know i mean? would always like have some craving for something, right? So there's better ways to fix the cravings, right? and And the weight, the overweight and stuff like that, than to just stuff ourselves with basically fibrous water containing vegetables that we just waste our money on, right?
00:33:20
Christian Yordanov
And have very little calories and very little actual nutrition. Then it gets even crazier. ah Support for longevity system. So apparently endothelial functions, if the vegetables are nitrate rich, like beets and leafy greens, that increases nitric oxide bioavailability, that improves vasodilation.
00:33:41
Christian Yordanov
Then the liver the liver detox, cruciferous upregulating glutathione S-transferase and quinone reductase, then the hormonal modulation, so fiber and phytoestrogens influence estrogen metabolism and enterohepatic cycling. So these are the support for longevity systems claims.
00:34:00
Christian Yordanov
And then the evidence it gives me is beetroot juice. This is ah ah ah ah the study title here. Beetroot juice improves blood pressure via nitrate NO pathway.
00:34:11
Christian Yordanov
Great. So evidence, so very evidence. And then the other one, cruciferous vegetables and modulation of estrogen metabolism. This is the evidence for its supporting, vegetable supporting longevity systems.
00:34:27
Christian Yordanov
Yeah. Disease protection, vegetable consumption consistentency consistently correlates, correlates, correlates, cor like
00:34:40
Christian Yordanov
with lower incidence of major chronic diseases, okay? Cardiovascular disease, cancer type two diabetes. Then some meta-analysis here it gives me.
00:34:51
Christian Yordanov
Then the alkaline forming effects. I mean, just this is just, I don't even wanna like entertain this nonsense. And then the summary, listen to the summary. This summary is just, ah it made my day.
00:35:37
Christian Yordanov
Okay, now I asked ChatGPT, pretend you are a competent research scientist whose job is to poke holes in all of these studies and supposed evidence, systematically go over each of these points and give the counter arguments for why they're not true or have been misrepresented in the media.
00:35:59
Christian Yordanov
Okay, so... And here's the summary it gave me, right? So it's like, okay, yeah this is going to be fun. Yay, great question. Summary of of why all that stuff above was bullshit.
00:36:13
Christian Yordanov
So most strong public claims about vegetables are healthy, quote-unquote, rest on observational associations, short random controlled trials of dietary patterns,
00:36:29
Christian Yordanov
mechanistic animal work and in vitro as essays, so like you know test tube studies and stuff. Each of those evidence streams has distinct failure modes, measurement error, residual confounding, healthy user bias, publication bias, short follow-up, poor external validity, dose bioavailability disconnects and translation gaps from mechanistic endpoints to patient relevant outcomes.
00:36:54
Christian Yordanov
And basically,
00:36:58
Christian Yordanov
Where do you even start here? So if you look at what... If you look at... So first of all, the whole thing about... Let's let's talk about the major one, right? So the major one is they say the studies find that people that eat more vegetables...
00:37:19
Christian Yordanov
live longer or have less diseases or are healthier in some other sort of metric. And the biggest, so I'm sure you probably know, like if you're like into health stuff, you've probably heard other people talk about that a lot of this observational data, the sort of epidemiologic studies,
00:37:40
Christian Yordanov
The problem with those is that it's just shit science packaged at science, pseudoscience, because there there's a few there's a few sort of reasons for that.
00:37:51
Christian Yordanov
But the main one, sort of the most important one, to understand is that when you have a study of, let's say, fish oil, omega-3s, or vegetables, right? Or not eating meat, or eating less salt, or something something like that, right?
00:38:09
Christian Yordanov
These are confounded by what is known as healthy user bias, right? So let's say someone, if someone is going to be vegetarian, or or they're going to eat a lot of vegetables, let's say, it's likely they're doing this because they were told sort of top-down this is healthy, like not not eating meat, you know, veganism will save the planet, or, you know, meat causes rectal cancer or whatever.
00:38:39
Christian Yordanov
So they're going to, like, eschew or avoid the things that are unhealthy, like smoking, you know, drinking alcohol, Too much alcohol, you know lines of blow on the weekend, shots of Jaeger with your body, this kind of stuff.
00:38:53
Christian Yordanov
And they're going to do healthier stuff. Exercising, you know buying organic food, taking supplements, eating more vegetables, not eating as many processed foods. So when you have this bias, that can completely skew the data, right?
00:39:10
Christian Yordanov
So people who eat more vegetables... are generally likely to to fit this healthy user bias. And then on the other hand, you know, people that, for example, if you look at some of this epidemiological research that where you have like people that let's say they eat more meat or or or or smoke, they might be doing number of other things because they just don't i just don't care about, they don't want to be told what to do.
Study Biases and Misinterpretation Issues
00:39:36
Christian Yordanov
They'll do whatever they want to do, right?
00:39:39
Christian Yordanov
Okay, so healthy user bias is a huge, can't emphasize how huge of a confounding factor it is, you know, but there are other common biases in nutritional epidemiology, right? So you have, first of all, think about just for a second,
00:40:04
Christian Yordanov
how they actually collect the data now if you don't in case you don't know they don't like monitor these people for a year two years like they don't have them most of the the research will not have people like track their diet for like a very long time but they they don't do any of that shit okay all they do and this is like this is just blows my mind all they do is they kind of complete these food frequency questionnaires or 24-hour recall questionnaires. So basically, they ask people to remember what they ate over the last year, you know?
00:40:48
Christian Yordanov
Like, my diet is very pretty sort of limited in terms of, like, the stuff I eat. And even I can't remember what I eat ate two weeks ago or how much meat I ate for, you know,
00:41:02
Christian Yordanov
Four months ago. Or how much carbs I ate. Or like how much like fruit I ate. Or vegetables I ate. But not how much vegetables I ate. Almost none. Right? Almost none. And maybe you have the occasional onion and carrot and potato and stuff like that. you know but So that's... The problem is the data selection makes it not scientific.
00:41:24
Christian Yordanov
Right? It's not real really science. It's just... pseudoscience that can be used to manipulate public opinion and to shape policy. It's very useful because they have very smart statisticians and data crunchers on the back end after these studies.
00:41:42
Christian Yordanov
They can take the data and massage the numbers in a way that when you publish it, you have sort of quote-unquote evidence to support whatever claim you want to sort of Propagate or so whatever um however you want to shape public opinion or you know policymakers opinion, right?
00:42:02
Christian Yordanov
the Like the whole thing around, you know meat being associated with cancer like that really just has to For the most part be because of healthy user bias and unhealthy user bias, right?
00:42:17
Christian Yordanov
but like There is no actual mechanistic evidence that meat can cause cancer, right? And the only thing the only sort of stuff stuff that kind of I've seen being thrown around is that TMAO can then be be be turned into like some carcinogenic compound, which TMAO is like this choline derivative that is found in like fish and meat and me just stuff like that. But like that's really...
00:42:45
Christian Yordanov
That's really kind of the only thing. And even that is just so like pathetic that to to actually stop your meat intake because of like a few papers around that is just like really like not no sane human would ever believe that is sufficient evidence that meat like causes cancer is not good for you.
00:43:06
Christian Yordanov
So the other problems, the other biases that ah ah plague nutritional epidemiology is things like recall bias. i So not only are these people asked to remember, but people can lie, right?
00:43:21
Christian Yordanov
If I ate four bags of Doritos last week and you were there like asking me what I ate last week, i might like say, I had a couple of Doritos here and there. And you wouldn't, you'd be none the wiser that i when I say a couple of Doritos, I meant a couple of bags a couple of times, you know.
00:43:41
Christian Yordanov
So like people lie and then people misremember or just plain forget and then they come up with some other stuff. right? that's It's a well-known bias that that plays nutritional epidemiology.
00:43:54
Christian Yordanov
Then you have other stuff, right? that yeah The whole thing with the confounding variables. So you have so many things like age and the the the biggest one is actually socioeconomic status, right?
00:44:06
Christian Yordanov
like That's a huge confounder, right? That in and of itself is associated with less more less morbidity and more ah and lower mortality, which means richer people, wealthier people would tend to be healthier and live longer in the aggregate. right So that is a huge thing.
00:44:25
Christian Yordanov
you know yeah But you don't hear your local government telling you, hey guys, we figured out a way to live longer, just become richer. you know like nobody Nobody talks about that. It's a huge confounder. Smoking, like things like the way you live.
00:44:40
Christian Yordanov
had client, had one client in Ohio, and like I've had a few clients in Ohio that are like living in, like their their environment, the area they live in is pretty like heavy on the toxins, you know on the metals, exhaust, fumes, things like that. And I've other clients that live in more sort of industrial parts of town.
00:45:02
Christian Yordanov
So that in and of itself will confound the data. So you might be living there and you might be eating you know no vegetables and score yourself as you know very low on the vegetable intake, but your health span and lifespan being are being affected by the fact that you live in like basically air pollution, toxic metals in the air, like because you're near an industrial era.
00:45:28
Christian Yordanov
So you could be your mortality and disease sort of rates for for that sort of population there, that that might be being brought down by the area they live in being toxic, not the fact that they don't eat vegetables, right?
00:45:42
Christian Yordanov
So there's so many like other confounding variables. It's literally probably, I don't know, thousands, millions of confounding variables, right? That it's it's very difficult to kind of control for all of these variables. Therefore, if you take epidemiologic research and you use it for anything other than informing what kind of randomized controlled trials you're going to do with actual humans that are like you know randomizing groups you have a placebo group and then you have another group that with the kind of the whatever you're going to test be it like a veg in the high vegetable intake whatever so nutritional epidemiology only useful as
00:46:25
Christian Yordanov
kind of an idea generating exercise that maybe we should look look, hey, check this out, you know, people that eat a lot of vegetables, or they they they live longer or whatever, they have less less diabetes or cancer.
00:46:38
Christian Yordanov
Maybe let's look into that, you know, maybe we can do some animal research and then feed the animals but more vegetables on the one arm, then less vegetables, more meat on the other arm, see how they do, you know.
00:46:50
Christian Yordanov
So that kind of feeds into that sort of research. And then you could actually you know do some human trials, which is obviously the ah ah better evidence than animal trials.
00:47:01
Christian Yordanov
But that's kind of the only real the only real value, true value that comes out of these epidemiologic studies. However, they're being used as a weapon against you.
00:47:16
Christian Yordanov
to make you think certain things are are more healthy than they actually are and other things that are... that that other things are less healthy for you than they are.
00:47:29
Christian Yordanov
So this is a control mechanism where they shape not just public opinion, but also behavior of people, right?
00:47:40
Christian Yordanov
Their consumer choices, what they buy, what what industries do they kind of support through their, you know, but how they spend their dollars. So this is a tool, that is used, unfortunately, a lot of the time is used to actually make you less healthy.
00:47:55
Christian Yordanov
So that's that's kind of, of course, the way I see it. I've researched a lot of other different things as well as this kind of stuff. So I have a ah ah ah view on some of these associations and organizations giving top-down advice as not necessarily for our best interests a lot of the time.
00:48:20
Christian Yordanov
If that makes sense, right? I know we're gonna post this on YouTube, so I'm trying to tiptoe through the tulips with some of the stuff. But yeah, so then... other Other biases in nutritional epidemiology epidemiology include things like selection bias, so the study population is not representative of the general population.
00:48:42
Christian Yordanov
Measurement bias, so the fact that... they're measuring diet with recall and and like these kind of like three day 24 hour recall and like three day food diaries and things like that so again people can lie people can misrepresent they can log the data wrong they can kind of you know, there's a lot of error and a falsity that can be recorded with this sort of, when you're you you're trusting the people you're interviewing or you're you're having inside your your study group, right?
00:49:15
Christian Yordanov
That's huge. But then the other thing is the fact that the fact that a lot of the time they're just looking at that, like self-reported food intake and not actual like biomarkers and stuff like that. So they're not like monitoring people yeah, okay, let's say these people eat a lot of vegetables, they eat it like a mostly plant-based diet, and then 10 years later, they look at the guy aggregate data, how many of those people died or developed a disease. like But what's a better way to kind of do it is to actually, let's check these people's markers, like
00:49:45
Christian Yordanov
biomarkers and not and I don't mean cardiometabolic bollocks cholesterol and hemoglobin ayc like actually useful biomarkers like things like
Misuse of Epidemiological Data
00:49:56
Christian Yordanov
what we test with our clients lipid peroxidation right oxidative stress markers right because with the cardiometabolic sort of nonsense all those kind of standard things that they measure that's that's so
00:50:16
Christian Yordanov
irrelevant for actual longevity that I it just... it I would old cry if it wasn't so funny or I would laugh it if would laugh if I didn't want to cry of how like horrific this this whole sort of science, medicine, pharma, industrial complexes and how badly it has skewed our entire perception of like what is healthy, what biomarkers actually matter when we're measuring them, what should we do to improve our health. just it's so bad that I would i would laugh if if I didn't want to cry or something like that. Then publication bias, right?
00:50:57
Christian Yordanov
There's other things like you might not... publish your findings if they don't support your agenda or or or your sponsor's agenda.
00:51:08
Christian Yordanov
In fact, you're you know if you're just a scientist, you know you you don't usually you have ah ah sponsor. you know It could be a university or you know whatever institution.
00:51:20
Christian Yordanov
And if they're not happy with the results, you either are told to massage the numbers more or we just don't publish that thing that doesn't doesn't either doesn't support our theory strongly enough or our agenda strongly enough or we can have better quote unquote better results right reverse causation right the other that's another bias so residual confounding I mean just like it just gets really the amount of error and bias in in these epidemiological studies basically makes them irrelevant
00:51:55
Christian Yordanov
and useless for anything other, again, other than just like and being ah an idea generating exercise where it just kind of tells tells tells these people what kind of like research to sponsor to further elucidate some of these potential things that the epidemiology kind of found association with.
00:52:20
Christian Yordanov
So again, let's say, for example, you know, people that... in your study you stratify by people that ate or drank lemon water in the morning and then they suddenly those people had a lot less uh know incidence of colon cancer or something like that then from that sort of curious finding you could then do some research maybe in rats you give some lemon water you give others you know like lemon enemas you like uh you know give others like grapefruit as a control or like water as a placebo and then you see what happens there if you cut if it actually if any like meaningful results uh occur that corroborate the initial theory then maybe you know you can do something else and something else and bigger animals and
00:53:07
Christian Yordanov
Whatever. Then you might like do some some potentially some human randomized control trials, right? So that's kind of the only reason. And the problem is, again, they are using epidemiological findings, which are so easy to massage with a good statistician on the back end.
00:53:23
Christian Yordanov
that they can make, it's like there was one guy used to follow, he's like, if you if you were like so such an ardent believer of these epidemiological studies, you could very easily say that the increased consumption of ice cream
00:53:45
Christian Yordanov
causes more more shark attacks to happen. That's kind of the the crazy example he would give. So it's like, it's summertime, people eat more ice cream, in the summer, right?
00:53:58
Christian Yordanov
Because it's hot. And then, but more people go to the beach on in the summer. And when there's more numbers of people on the beach, more shark attacks happen by virtue. It's a numbers game, right?
00:54:13
Christian Yordanov
So if you use it the way epidemiological research, if they use it it that way, you can say more increased ice cream consumption increases risk of shark attacks, right? that's That's how they're doing it.
00:54:30
Christian Yordanov
But what, you know, the more intellectually honest researchers where they're probably not being pushed to say this increases risk of that, what they actually say in the papers and even in even in the study title, the paper title, they use increases risk of this.
00:54:48
Christian Yordanov
that is That is disingenuous. That is a lie. the What the the honest researchers say is X is associated with increased incidence of Y. So in the shark attack ice cream example, but the increased consumption of ice cream is associated with an increased incidence of shark attacks and then if you get in there and you kind of tease apart the data you you will see what kind of like any rational person will say well
00:55:27
Christian Yordanov
You know, summer, more people eat ice cream, more people go to the beach, there's sharks near the in the water, there's more people that have a higher chance of getting attacked by a shark, therefore more shark attacks.
00:55:40
Christian Yordanov
But the two are not, they're correlated, but there is no causal relationship. And this is the thing where they that that's being used as a weapon against you, is they're using associations to...
00:55:53
Christian Yordanov
convince you of causation. So they're saying meat consumption associated with more disease disease risk, therefore meat causes cancer or or meat causes disease or or or meat will shorten your life.
00:56:09
Christian Yordanov
That is a lie. Okay? So hope hopefully that made sense. So that's that the bias thing, right? so but like ah Like I said, I asked ChatGPT to kind of...
00:56:22
Christian Yordanov
start dismantling these arguments. So it it gave me the argument. It's such an interesting exercise. If you ever have time, ask it something and then ask it to poke holes in the thing it just told you.
00:56:35
Christian Yordanov
And if you do that, at least get more balanced argument.
00:56:41
Christian Yordanov
sort of view of everything. So those seven points above, right? So the micronutrient density, the phytonutrients, the fiber content, low calorie, et cetera. Let's just see what it gives us. It's not great what it gives us, but it it is it it it's it will at least make you question why,
00:57:03
Christian Yordanov
you to make it sort of question a little bit more the the the belief, if you have it, I'm not saying you hold that belief, but there's there's a lot of people still out there that believe vegetables are or healthy, like really healthy, or they're above and beyond healthy. like And again, i don't want i don't want to say don't eat any vegetables or I will never eat vegetables, but they are not the top priority. like They're like literally...
00:57:30
Christian Yordanov
The last thing I think about and i' but you know when I'm grocery shopping and stuff like that, actually, ah ah had if you if in about 18 minutes ago, if you thought i got felt a little bit like out of breath and flustered, it's because I just got just got a gro grocery grocery delivery.
Grocery Habits and Final Thoughts on Vegetable Consumption
00:57:48
Christian Yordanov
So I just ran downstairs to pack it all away as quickly as possible before whatever thought I had in my head sort of escapes it. wanted to kind of continue where I left off.
00:57:59
Christian Yordanov
So I was just running around, like putting things in the freezer and stuff like that. I ran back upstairs here. But just in hindsight now, when I look at what did I buy there, this was like a €350 order, which is $400.
00:58:17
Christian Yordanov
they I don't think there was any vegetables in there. There was no vegetables in there. I'm not saying there was no plant foods, right, at all. Did buy some fruit and stuff like that. Just, I said, the vegetables specifically, they're like the last thing.
00:58:32
Christian Yordanov
the The grains, orlthough all the things that were like like um the food on the food pyramid in the 1970s, you know, the healthy whole grains and all that nonsense. Then the vegetables, like they're...
00:58:43
Christian Yordanov
They're at the bottom of of that pyramid. And that's kind of the way I see them. They're at the bottom of my priority list. They're not even on on the priority list, you know. So just in case you're wondering, what what what do I do? Well, I don't even buy most of these vegetables. I buy them once in a while because my my wife likes to make a soup. And now winter is coming. So we're going to do a stew here and there. Have a slow cooker where you can just like throw some meat and throw throw some vegetables. But i ah ah let me put it this way, case you're wondering.
00:59:11
Christian Yordanov
I haven't... eaten or bought spinach in maybe three years maybe more same with broccoli cabbage probably two years had a big sort of sauerkraut phase don I don't I don't do cabbage anymore so yeah i don't i don't I don't even think I will ever buy broccoli again, like ever.
00:59:39
Christian Yordanov
You know what i mean? or Or spinach. like That's like the last thing I freaking... Or kale. There's people out there... And you know no offense. I'm not trying to insult you. If you like kale and if you like spinach...
00:59:54
Christian Yordanov
I have a great therapist that can help you overcome the trauma that led you to to those to liking those things, but I'm not judging you, you know what i mean?
01:00:03
Christian Yordanov
it's just like I would never like i would never eat kale. oh It's leaves, inedible leaves that somehow we think can become edible or like give us nutrition.
01:00:18
Christian Yordanov
It's crazy. It's crazy. Anyway, so the micronutrient density thing, the counter argument thing. so So the counter arguments for the first point of micronutrient density. So people who eat many vegetables differ systematically.
01:00:36
Christian Yordanov
So have they tend to have higher socioeconomic status, more healthcare access, as if that's so beneficial. They exercise. They don't smoke in general. Their overall diet quality is better. They eat less at like Wendy's and McDonald's.
01:00:51
Christian Yordanov
They're more, you know, probably like, you know, eat more organic food, right? So observational links between more vegetables and better outcomes can reflect these residual confounders rather than a causal micronutrient effect, okay?
01:01:07
Christian Yordanov
Then the measurement error in intake, of course we covered this, so most of these epidemiological studies, they use food frequency questionnaires or 24-hour recalls that misclassify intake.
01:01:23
Christian Yordanov
And, you know, that they often don't do any biomarker validation because, again, you might take this group that eats more vegetables, but if you if you take their markers, you know, let's say, like the test we do, the the urine test where we can see like toxic metals, nutrient elements, deficiencies in vitamins,
01:01:45
Christian Yordanov
detox capacity. like I'll tell you this and I'll cover this in the next video about this topic, but i' in the last year, I've had quite a few sort of former vegetarians or kind of plant-based folks that switched over to eating more animal products. And when we do their, when we look at things like oxidative stress, detox capacity, like they tend to be low and you see a lot of like deficiency in minerals and stuff like that and and B vitamins. So that's You don't see that by looking at the person. you know
01:02:16
Christian Yordanov
The outside can be misleading as to how how the inside is, obviously. right I saw this in kind of folks you know closer to 70, but also like younger younger folks that have been doing like the plant-based thing for for years.
01:02:33
Christian Yordanov
And so far, i've i've i've seen one guy... one guy where we did some you know some deeper testing he's like been a vegetarian since like the age of 17 he's like in his early 40s and he his his stuff looked generally okay uh pretty much across the board but he he wasn't like fully plant-based but he was like a major outlier because he's like uh he's like a real kind of, I don't like i don't want to give away the person, but he's he's pretty famous like in in in of the motivational speaking space and stuff.
01:03:14
Christian Yordanov
So like people like that, there there are outliers, but he he was like, think he was like a professional athlete earlier in his life and stuff. So that's a major outlier.
01:03:25
Christian Yordanov
Like most people, at least that I've seen that were doing a lot of plant-based but whenever we do some testing, especially with this metabolomic mapping that we do, I've not seen, I've not, first of all, that that's people that generally felt better, but of course I've also worked with some folks that absolutely destroyed themselves with a plant-based diet, right?
01:03:48
Christian Yordanov
So, and I've had friends as well, close friends as well, that I've seen them destroy their health over the last couple of decades. So there's there's a lot of there's a lot of, like, the reason I'm kind of doing ah video like this is i don't want to, like, dump on, like, vegetarians or sort of insult people for eating vegetables. I want to spread awareness that a lot, and i want I want people to, at least the open-minded people that listen to this, which I'm sure you're one of those people,
01:04:21
Christian Yordanov
But I want to let you know that, hey, it's okay if you hate vegetables and you don't want to eat them because they weren't giving you much. They were giving you something like bit of potassium and some some minerals and maybe some vitamins and you know, like some carbs and you were getting something but you weren't getting a lot and you were basically like that space on your plate and in your tummy could have been better utilized.
01:04:51
Christian Yordanov
okay So the ChatGPT thing, so single nutrient trials contradict simple causal narratives. So for example, So epidemiological studies will find that a single nutrient would have like a benefit, but like maybe associated with a higher lifespan.
01:05:12
Christian Yordanov
When they actually take that specific nutrient and they do a randomized controlled trial with it, they don't actually find the the benefit that that that the epidemiological study found.
01:05:24
Christian Yordanov
So there's a ton of these. ah There's a ton of these where you know You could say like you know there was one about beta-carotene was associated with like higher lower mortality, but then they tested it and then it's it's actually found they found harm, but that was in smokers. So that's another sort of thing where yeah on the one hand,
01:05:48
Christian Yordanov
they're testing like the general population and then they take it, but they don't test it in the general population. They actually test it in smokers. So then that is further confounded, that research. So we can't really extrapolate that to to ourselves that are non-smokers.
01:06:05
Christian Yordanov
So just the to to be to be really evidence-based right now in terms of nutritional science means to be extremely limited.
01:06:17
Christian Yordanov
Because the the evidence is so bad and so limited. So to be evidence-based means to be evidence-limited, which is not great, you know. What else? So phytonutrients and antioxidants, that was the second point.
01:06:31
Christian Yordanov
So but check this out. Here's the the the the thing to understand about and the antioxidant claims, right? So Many antioxidant claims are based on ORAC chemical essays or cell models.
01:06:46
Christian Yordanov
These tell you chemical reactivity in a test tube, not clinical benefit in humans. Regulatory bodies have warned against extrapolating ORAC to health. And what's ORAC?
01:07:00
Christian Yordanov
So TIC is total antioxidant capacity. right So they do these in in kind of in vitro in test tubes, right?
01:07:12
Christian Yordanov
So if you if you're told and honestly, I haven't looked at the sulforaphane research because it just I think it's ridiculous, you know, we can toxin from extracted toxin from from a plant is so there's this amazing thing, you know, it's just ridiculous.
01:07:30
Christian Yordanov
So I'm sure now they've done human studies with it and And I'm sure you can do a study with a toxin that if you're measuring the things that you want to measure, you can show an outcome there, right?
01:07:44
Christian Yordanov
But if you're not if you're measuring, like fat fasting, for example, fasting can, if you're looking at like BMI and weight loss and you know so C-reactive protein maybe and cholesterol, whatever, eat fasting can show you benefits in those markers that you're looking at. But if you look at things like cortisol,
01:08:00
Christian Yordanov
and adrenaline and muscle mass lost, lean tissue mass lost and testosterone. Yeah, fasting is horrific. You know what i mean? So a lot of these studies, they will look at the markers they care about. They want to show you not the full picture or at least not the things that they don't want you to see. that that That's huge about fasting. Just as an example again, like you can vary, like there was one study i have in my book, How to Actually Live Longer, Volume 1, where the men's testicles shrank by 17, 18 percent, 70.7 percent or whatever it was.
01:08:34
Christian Yordanov
They test their friggin' balls shrank and their testosterone plummeted, I forget now how much, like 20 percent and DHEA fell down 30 percent. so they They were like, this is great.
01:08:52
Christian Yordanov
Their Euroflowmetry tests showed positive improvements. Euroflowmetry tests showed positive improvements. Even though you're basically castrating these men with...
01:09:07
Christian Yordanov
with fasting over like on and on a long enough timeline that that would equate to castration level freaking testosterone for these men you know what i mean like so they're very good at like showing you what they think are valuable markers that they know that you know the the study will improve quote unquote without taking into effect what are what are the other side effects that we didn't document at all or maybe we did document but we didn't want to publish Right.
01:09:39
Christian Yordanov
So mechanistic complexity, so many phytonutrients act as signaling molecules and antioxidant activity can be context dependent sometimes pro-oxidant in certain tissues doses.
01:09:51
Christian Yordanov
So they don't even like, a lot of the stuff is like theoretical based on like cell culture and like in vitro studies. So they don't they don't really know a lot of the time, like what what's happening in the body. Is it actually beneficial, right?
01:10:06
Christian Yordanov
fiber stuff then. So counter arguments. So microbe, like microome microbe dependency and inter-individual response.
01:10:17
Christian Yordanov
So that is like something you never freaking hear from all of this stuff. that they just say fiber good eat more fiber vegetables good source fiber i don't know why they have a russian accent but that's just the way things go so randomized control trials show modest variable effects isolated fiber supplements show modest metabolic effects in some trials but not universal or large effects
01:10:49
Christian Yordanov
many trials are short and use surrogate biomarkers rather than hard outcomes. So they the epidemiological data is well massaged to to to show us fiber, fiber good, fiber live longer, fiber less disease, etc.
01:11:06
Christian Yordanov
But when they actually do randomized control trials, they can just show moderate or modest effects. and And of course, they're using short trials. A lot of these trials as well, if you look at it, not just with supplements, but actually like with other interventions, including drugs, they're too short to show all the negative effects. Just to go back to to fasting, which we'll cover in a different video, but if you do it an eight-day fast or a 10-day fast,
01:11:37
Christian Yordanov
or you take a plant toxin for, you know, four weeks, you might get a benefit. like like I'll just give you an example of something I know a bit better, but if you take fish oil for four weeks, oh yeah, it's going to really show certain inflammatory markers are going to go down because it's suppressing the immune system, right?
01:11:58
Christian Yordanov
But if you don't if you continue that indefinitely, yeah, okay, maybe maybe those inflammatory markers will kind of stay low and they won't rise.
01:12:10
Christian Yordanov
But think about the other things that fish oil is going to be doing, and like potentially increasing oxidative stress stress. So if you don't measure oxidative stress before the study starts, during the the four weeks of the study, and then let's say those people continue it, if you don't have like measurements let's say in three months, six months, 12 months.
01:12:29
Christian Yordanov
It's very easy to say fish oil good, fish oil lowers inflammation. Take fish oil. Here's the, we have solid science showing it. And that was a four week study or even an eight week study for that matter or 12 week.
01:12:40
Christian Yordanov
But then, Over time, what are the negative effects associated with a suppressed immune immune system? that's what That's what is not being studied. So similarly with these plant toxins, you know, curcumin and soforaphane and whatever other stuff, right? So they might get the effect they want on the markers they're measuring and showing you in the paper, but did they measure other things, other markers? Again, like then I'm just using...
01:13:13
Christian Yordanov
Again, I'm just using the fish oil example because we I've seen it on clients' tests where we do the we check the oxidative stress markers and they're elevated or in the yellow kind of danger zone.
01:13:29
Christian Yordanov
And then we we used to do the the fatty acids more often. So we would see the the fatty acid composition and the omega-3s would be low. And the the test report would say, you need more omega-3s.
01:13:42
Christian Yordanov
But if you actually look at it like from a human approach, not just like an algorithm approach, you see that it's very likely whatever's causing oxidative stress in this human is...
01:13:56
Christian Yordanov
causing the omega-3s to be peroxidized and degraded and broken down first because they're the longest, the most fragile with the most double bonds, which means they're like the first target to when when like stress causes oxidative stress in the body.
01:14:13
Christian Yordanov
They're like the first thing to get peroxidized, right? So you can do your fish oil study for four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, And if you're not even measuring oxidative stress along the way, you might never even, you might be well-intentioned as a researcher, you might never catch that this was happening because you just didn't know that that was a risk factor, right?
01:14:36
Christian Yordanov
You know? could It could be like ah nutrition brand, that a supplement brand that has their own fish oil. They just want to show studies with positive effects. So they can just do like, let's let's check maybe, i don't know, interleukin-6 or NF-kappa beta.
01:14:51
Christian Yordanov
And maybe those went down. But if you look at across the board, is the person getting healthier or not? Or is are they showing... signs that other systems are are of the body are actually being compromised by this supplement approach, then that would be like a more intellectually honest way to approach things. The problem is a lot of the time we're looking at people, so organizations kind of using epidemiological research that has been skewed in a particular direction
01:15:22
Christian Yordanov
two to basically push an agenda on us, okay? That's kind of... think I said that like 25 times today, so apologies if I'm repeating myself, but sometimes these things...
01:15:34
Christian Yordanov
Bear repeating because like you have to understand, like and ah ah I don't know, maybe this video will not make it on YouTube or it will be taken down. But like if you think that like certain organizations with three letters they are there for your health benefit...
01:15:55
Christian Yordanov
I mean, like, i don't I don't even know what to tell you, you know? Anyway, let let's talk about... so So, the low-calorie, high-volume argument, right? So...
01:16:08
Christian Yordanov
Vegetables are low calorie, high volume. That's a good thing apparently because you want to fill up your tummy with very little calories. You want to spend a lot of money on organic, low calorie foods with a lot of indigestible stuff in them because that fills you up, which means you get less nutrition from the more nutrient-dense foods, the more calorie-dense foods.
01:16:29
Christian Yordanov
And... so So even chat GPT is like short-term satiety, yes, it does help, but long-term weight management management is not so clear, right? So controlled experiments show low energy density foods reduce short-term intake, but many long-term weight loss trials show modest or mixed de effects unless overall energy intake and behavior change are sustained.
01:16:56
Christian Yordanov
Vegetables alone are rarely a magic bullet for durable weight loss, right? I mean, if it was just that easy to lose the extra 20 pounds we gained over the last few years, just eat more vegetables, who who in their right mind that's tried to lose weight thinks that eating more vegetables is going to help them lose the weight?
01:17:20
Christian Yordanov
I don't think anybody thinks. like And this was like one of its seven claims why vegetables are so... like This is completely just air. like is just... It's they called AI slop.
01:17:33
Christian Yordanov
The reason i'm I'm using it is just to to get the conversation going, obviously. It's a great way to prompt some talking points. I'm not like, you know... I'm not relying on it to to give me even its its own sort of counter arguments are never going to be great because the dogma that has been programmed in it are certain things like, you know, ah ah vegetables are good. but So it's going to, even if it gives me counter arguments, they're not going to be like really well thought out and researched.
01:18:01
Christian Yordanov
But the fact that it it gives me these like really weak arguments to begin with, it It's kind of that it itself debunks. It's kind of telling, isn't it? How how sparse the the actual evidence for vegetables are good for you is, right?
01:18:18
Christian Yordanov
Heterogeneity by vegetable type. So...
01:18:24
Christian Yordanov
I don't even care. Support. Okay, the point the fifth point it gave me earlier was support for longevity systems. Ooh.
01:18:35
Christian Yordanov
Sounds so biohacker-y now. So... Endothelial nitric oxide evidence is mostly short-term and mechanistic. So beetroot nitrate interventions produce reproducible short-term blood pressure reductions minutes to weeks in many trials, but translation to long-term cardiovascular disease events or mortalities unproven.
01:18:56
Christian Yordanov
The blood pressure effect mag magnitude is modest and may attenuate over time. So basically they' what they're saying is Yeah, mechanistically, beetroot or you know these nitric oxide boosters, they may give you a short-term blood pressure pressure reduction, but does that translate to actually long-term better health outcomes, less less cardiovascular disease events or stuff like that, or shorter life or longer life?
01:19:24
Christian Yordanov
that that There's no actual evidence for that. right so ah the it the the The very fact that they're talking about boosting nitric oxide to lower blood pressure, it means like that's kind of the other dogma.
01:19:38
Christian Yordanov
The other dogma that everybody is being fed top-down is nitric oxide good, nitric oxide vasodilation.
01:19:49
Christian Yordanov
Nitric oxide, lower blood pressure. Very simple things, right? But if you've seen my 7 Deadly Health Fads Masterclass, you see nitric oxide is actually not something we want to be boosting. To say you want to boost your nitric oxide would be like saying I want to boost my cortisol for the benefits that will occur, you know?
01:20:13
Christian Yordanov
That mechanism relies on fragile biology, oral bacteria. I mean, like, just a drivel, AI slop. The detox via enzyme induction is plausible but not proof of benefit. So here's the other thing, right?
01:20:27
Christian Yordanov
So earlier it said that... The isothiocyanates like sulforaphane from broccoli and crucifers induce phase two detox enzymes in the liver, right?
01:20:41
Christian Yordanov
But this is a mechanistic observation, right? So whether that reduces clinically meaningful cancer incidence in humans is not proven and depends on dose exposure timing. Human data are mixed in bioavailability variable. So what they're saying is, yeah, so the toxin...
01:20:58
Christian Yordanov
so foraphane in you know induces the these enzymes the detox enzymes but there's no real there's no real like actual proof that that will actually make you healthier.
01:21:13
Christian Yordanov
right So they there are mechanisms where if the mechanism exists and you and you kind of leverage that mechanism, we don't actually know that doing that in the body for longer periods of time is actually going to make you less healthy, more healthy. Is is it neutral? Is it detrimental?
01:21:31
Christian Yordanov
There's no real evidence. But when you kind of think about it, like just think about it this way. what inside the metabolism of a broccoli flower thingy, very good-looking, cool-looking thing, inside that thing, that green big old bulb of broccoli or whatever, in there, in its metabolism...
01:21:55
Christian Yordanov
What in there do you think is compatible, is the same inside the metabolism of you, a mammal that runs pretty warm, 98.6 Fahrenheit? You know what i mean?
01:22:08
Christian Yordanov
what What does a broccoli eat? A broccoli... or a plant in general eats sunlight, CO2, and, you know, water from the soil, and then minerals and, you know, other, I guess, humic acids and other phobic acids and things like that in the soil.
01:22:30
Christian Yordanov
So that,
01:22:32
Christian Yordanov
organism eats those things and it turns itself into this thing with a lot of fibrous tissue, cellulose, lot of indigestible structural components. that they're It's structural components because it needs to have you know stems and branches and just plants in general need need those things.
01:22:51
Christian Yordanov
So a lot of in a plant's metabolism is structure that is not is not something and an animal, a mammal actually has in its structure.
01:23:03
Christian Yordanov
right And then inside the the the proteins and the amino acids and the the fat the types of fats and the forms of minerals, like they are compatible. They're perfectly designed. All of that those combos of ratios and things, that's perfect for a plant of its sort But in when you think about it, in a broccoli or in a spinach leaf, in the metabolism of those plant cells that make up that leaf of the spinach, what is
01:23:36
Christian Yordanov
what similarity does that have to you to do with with like your body? like Where do you see those things in your body? Nowhere. is it such a leap of faith to say that For the most part, what's inside of plant is not compatible, is not necessary for a mammal's cells to function and rebuild themselves tissue built.
01:24:06
Christian Yordanov
you know for tissue to be built No, it's not a leap of faith. It's a leap. In fact, it's a leap of faith to say that the chemicals inside of a, you know, carrot or leaf of spinach or, you know, whatever, broccoli, that those chemicals, which we don't have in our body, because we're a different thing, we're an entirely different organism, we move, we're warm-blooded, you know, we poop, we have all, like, we have a digestive system, entirely different freaking organism.
01:24:37
Christian Yordanov
right? That runs at a different temperature. To say that those things are what it needs for its functioning, even though even though they don't exist in it, is the leap of faith.
01:24:51
Christian Yordanov
That is the leap of faith. And then to say that eating something closer to that animal that has the same amino acids, similar amino acid profile, similar fats, similar like organs, you know, let's say your cow has liver, has kidneys, has a, you know, digestive tract, little bit different, right? A little bit different, sure.
01:25:17
Christian Yordanov
But then we have muscles that are kind of, you know, muscles. Cow has muscles. So if you eat the muscle from a cow... kind of makes sense that what's in the muscle meat of a cow or other you know tissue of a cow is going to be the body will have a use for it.
01:25:37
Christian Yordanov
and It will take it, digest it, break it down, assimilate and it will divert it to areas that may utilize some of those things, those minerals, vitamins, amino acids, fatty acids.
01:25:53
Christian Yordanov
Isn't that just like plain as day logical?
Nutrient Bioavailability and 'Eating the Rainbow' Critique
01:25:58
Christian Yordanov
And isn't the leap of faith that eating the colors of the rainbow is so good for you? Why?
01:26:07
Christian Yordanov
I don't mean to rant or sound preachy, but why? too late for that. Why, in the name of all that is good and holy, is eating the rainbow good for you because you're getting all the different colors of chemicals phytochemicals of all different colors and why is that good like somebody tell me why is eating the rainbow good for me because it has different kinds of nutrients
01:26:43
Christian Yordanov
What nutrient is in red? Take a bell pepper. Take a bell pepper. It's red. What is vitamin red? Like, are you getting vitamin red and vitamin G, vitamin green when you eat like the spinach and then the the yellow pepper?
01:26:58
Christian Yordanov
It will have vitamin Y? yellow vitamin like what are you getting in the but like a pepper green yellow sure tastes good red pepper love red pepper great ah ah don't eat a lot but i do like it when i eat it but i eat it for the taste for the texture for the dish for the fajitas the you know the whatever we're making here and there i don't eat it for the nutrition it's gonna give me right?
01:27:29
Christian Yordanov
Eat the rainbow. Like, I mean, like when you think about it, at first it's like, it's common sense. You just eat a varied diet and why do you need to to eat a varied diet if...
01:27:42
Christian Yordanov
If what you eat it gives you all the nutrients, why do you have to diversify the diet? It's like Warren Buff... You know the investor, legendary investor, Warren Buffett?
01:27:55
Christian Yordanov
He says something like, diversification is good if you don't know what the hell you're doing. right So if you don't know what the hell you're doing with your diet, yeah, eating a lot of different things is good because if it's likely you're going to cover your nutritional basis. But if you know exactly what a mammal needs, like you, a mammal like you needs these foods, carbs, proteins, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, if you know how to get them from several foods that's that you're covered, then the rest is just...
01:28:26
Christian Yordanov
You know, if you were a foodie, you like different kinds of foods, great, do that. But don't allow yourself to be tricked that you're getting all this extra nutrition because you're eating a diverse diet of vegetables and stuff like that.
01:28:39
Christian Yordanov
Right? Okay, I think I beat that point into the ground. Okay, the the the other claim, six, disease protection.
01:28:50
Christian Yordanov
this is
01:28:52
Christian Yordanov
If ever there was a ah ah leap of faith, is that plants, vegetables give you disease protection? Let's let's see. So, counter-arguments. So, observational associations are real but small and heterogenouse heterogeneous.
01:29:09
Christian Yordanov
right Large meta-analyses find the inverse associations, but effect sizes are modest. Relative risks often 0.9, 0.8. And heterogeneity, publication bias are concerns.
01:29:21
Christian Yordanov
population no Population attributable estimates assume causality, which may be false. so So observational associations, it's like in our study group,
01:29:37
Christian Yordanov
we found that, you know, let's say 100,000 people and those that ate red peppers had, you know, less of an incidence of food odor, right?
01:29:52
Christian Yordanov
So what what are we going to, what are we other than an association, what can you extrapolate from that data? Can you say that eating red peppers cures food odor?
01:30:06
Christian Yordanov
who want like Who in their right mind would think that? right so On the other hand, let's say in our 100,000 cohort of of people, we found that you know eating drinking a ah cup of milk or more a day was associated with you know higher incidence of colon cancer.
01:30:31
Christian Yordanov
so Do you think, from a study like that, it's intellectually honest to say milk increases risk of colon cancer?
01:30:46
Christian Yordanov
I mean, the way we've been trained, the way they they word these things, yes, but you know you researchers that do it properly, they say there is an association between increased milk intake and incidence of colon cancer.
01:31:03
Christian Yordanov
And they they ah a good researcher... a well sort of written paper they will never say it increases risk there's an association that merits further study so again all of these disease disease protection claims are simply observational associations that do not actually tell you causally more vegetables prevent cardiovascular disease, cancer or diabetes.
01:31:34
Christian Yordanov
There's zero, zero proof and much more likely that there's confounding variables, health user bias, and then all the other stuff around, you know, how they measure the data and so on and so forth, right?
01:31:47
Christian Yordanov
And you know what? That is kind of it. Like the alkaline acid forming ash bone health claims counted. Like the stuff is like, I think it doesn't even merit kind of ah further discussion there. But um just hope this kind of gives you an idea of the amount of like bias there is in nutritional epidemiology on which the sort of notion that vegetables are good for you rests.
01:32:18
Christian Yordanov
and so Simply put, the research, the science that proves, quote-unquote, that vegetables are good for you or nuts are good for you or whatever, like whatever pick pick your but your sort of claim you want to prove, the research that, quote-unquote, proves it is very, very, very badly done and it's very biased.
01:32:44
Christian Yordanov
Like we said, you know, we have the healthy user bias, residual confounding, selective reporting, blah, blah, blah. It just, it goes on and on. There's like a dozen sort of things. And then on top of that, so bad data in, and then on top of that,
01:32:56
Christian Yordanov
the you can spin the data the way you want it spun to support the thing you want to kind of program the masses with right so our vegetables really all that good for you well think about it think about it like this what vitamin vitamin vitamin mineral amino acid fatty acid what nutrient is in vegetables that is not in animal products.
01:33:30
Christian Yordanov
right Okay, vitamin C is much more abundant, but this earlier nonsense of the micronutrient density that it told me, like, vegetables are rich in vitamin A, C, K, folate.
01:33:43
Christian Yordanov
So vitamin A, they're not rich in vitamin A at all. They, again, this is another sort of sleight of hand that they they use. So they say the beta-carotene in carrots and whatever other, it's pretty, you know, it's pretty kind of, you find it in quite a lot of other things other than carrots. But they say that that's vitamin A. But that's not vitamin A. Beta-carotene is beta-carotene.
01:34:10
Christian Yordanov
Vitamin A is retinol. So beta-carotene can be converted to vitamin A in the body to retinol, but not not it's not preformed vitamin A. So the whole the whole thing, like you're getting vitamin A from from plants, you're not, okay?
01:34:25
Christian Yordanov
And by the way, i have personally, I have a genetic mutation, not mutation, but you know single nucleotide polymorphisms. that kind of lower the conversion of beta-carotene to vitamin A. So some people have those.
01:34:38
Christian Yordanov
So it's not like you're going to get eat a ton of but carrots. You're going to get all the vitamin A that your body needs in a day. I think that's another lie. And then the vitamin K, it's K1. It's not K2, which it's well-known.
01:34:52
Christian Yordanov
that K2, vitamin K2 is the one you want, right? And then folate, sure, folate is there, but if you cook the bejesus out of your spinach to inactivate its toxins, which it has, you're going to destroy a lot of the folate. A lot of the water-soluble vitamins get destroyed by heat.
01:35:10
Christian Yordanov
you know so that's it just gave me those those uh those ones but then if you what about vitamin the b vitamins you know but uh b1 b2 b3 b5 b12 know b five b twelve you know choline that's another huge one that you won't find in in plants and then the the calcium and the magnesium so oftentimes like we said there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff inside the actual plants that is kind of like structural that it uses but it's not of no value to us or can be detrimental to us so things like oxalate they bind up the calcium
01:35:52
Christian Yordanov
but possibly the other minerals. And then if you eat them, they're going to be binding various other um minerals in your digestive tract, so phytic acid, the tannins. There's a few other kind of compounds that can actually be, but even some polyphenols can actually bind certain minerals like zinc, iron, and so on, and copper, and then make them not bioavailable to you. So you're pooping out, you're pooping out like...
01:36:15
Christian Yordanov
stuff you could be absorbing, right? So the whole micronutrient density thing, i think, I hope, you if you thought that there's a lot nutrients in in vegetables, I hope you now understand there is some, like there is like potassium and a little bit of, you know, there's manganese and there's a little bit of magnesium and maybe maybe a little bit of calcium. Sure, there's always going to be something in there, but the fact that it's, that they're, the the the statement that they're disproportionately rich in in nutrients, that that's freaking lie.
01:36:47
Christian Yordanov
Because if you look at an egg yolk, the amount of stuff in an egg yolk, go and compare an egg yolk's nutrients to like any plant, any sort of vegetable, and then kind of see see what the difference is, or or liver.
01:37:02
Christian Yordanov
Or even, like i said, beef, like meat. Just the amount of nutrients and the amount you get per hundred, the amount of bioavailable stuff as well. Because again, a lot of the stuff in in plants, it's inside the cell, which is very like, it it has cellulose, it has other fibers, it has structural components. so So to get the nutrients out of that, you have to cook it well or steam it or crush it or blend it.
01:37:29
Christian Yordanov
I mean, there's a lot of stuff you have to do to make these things more bioavailable. At the same time, you're going to be destroying the the more fragile vitamins, like, you know, potentially the ah the but the B vitamins, folate, things like that.
01:37:42
Christian Yordanov
So, I mean, the like the whole thing, but just think about it. Like what, like if you're like a fan of vegetables, think about it. What are you actually doing?
01:37:54
Christian Yordanov
getting in that vegetable other than the fiber, you know, and and the phytochemicals and the antioxidants that you can do without. That's the thing. You can live your entire life and thrive without any of those phytonutrients, quote-unquote, or phytochemicals, as I prefer to call them, because they're not nutrients. They're chemicals that some of them can be useful to the body. they Their shape and and other properties allow them to be useful.
01:38:24
Christian Yordanov
to to be used but on the other hand like even toxic metals some toxic metals can be used by the body to perform some of the jobs nutrient elements can do like cadmium can perform some of the roles of zinc for example right so does does that mean you want to eat cadmium more cadmium in your diet no it it uh you're always better off having the the optimal nutrient uh or or component in that sort of enzyme or chain or whatever like your process right so the fact that these things can substitute for some of our endogenous things and and do their jobs
01:39:06
Christian Yordanov
Doesn't mean that eating more of those endogenous things like from animal sources isn't actually better. It's actually better, right? You always want the most bio-identical, bio-available thing going into your body.
Conclusion: Advocacy for Animal Nutrients
01:39:22
Christian Yordanov
And then, yeah, sure, of course, can if you don't have a hammer, you can use your shoe to hammer in a nail. But that doesn't mean that if you can get a hammer, the better decision isn't to use the hammer to hammer the nail.
01:39:33
Christian Yordanov
So similarly, yeah, you can get things in the plant that are useful to your body, but you can get a lot more useful, valuable nutrition, nutrients, actual nutrients that you can't go without from animal products.
01:39:46
Christian Yordanov
So, holy cow. One minute. Wait, one hour and 41 minutes. think I'm going to stop. We're going to call this. We're going to put this in the rant playlist.
01:39:58
Christian Yordanov
Hope that you got value out of this. But who are we kidding? There's nobody ah ah this point in the video actually watching or listening. On the off chance that there is. Thank you for watching and listening. And I will see you on the next one.