402: Whole Food Plant-Based Eating: Fad or Real Healing?

Jarrod 0:00

And I would like to share with you some different studies that have come out since the early 1900s, and this is gonna fly in the face of what some of the carnivore and paleo people have been preaching for however long, last 20, 30, 40, 50 years, so starting back in 1903, there was a German physician named Carl von Noorden. He started treating his diabetic patients with simply oatmeal, nothing added other Think about all you've accomplished in life. What if you could quickly 10X those accomplishments because your body's finally backing you 100%? That's what we help Christian entrepreneurs do

Anita 1:41

Welcome to Power On Plants, the podcast where we harness the incredible power of whole plant foods and God's Word to optimize your energy and productivity so you can maximize your reach, revenue, and impact. I'm Anita Roussell, a nurse and certified integrative nutrition health coach

Jarrod 1:59

And I'm Jarrod Roussel, a physician assistant certified in lifestyle medicine. As the performance coaches to purpose-driven Christian entrepreneurs, we show you the exciting way to optimally fuel your body for maximum performance so inflammation naturally fades away, your energy skyrockets, and you finally feel good without any exhausting dieting methods like a stacking list of meds to manage symptoms or keeping up with numbers, small portions, or willpowering through your meals you don't even like in another attempt to get healthy

Anita 2:26

We know there's so much confusing information out there about how to heal your body that it can wear you out. If you're thinking, "I just wish someone would walk me through the exact system to finally feeling good in the way that's enjoyable so it lasts," that's exactly what we do inside the Accelerator Experience. Join the wait list to find out when applications for the next cohort are available at poweronplants.com/accelerator. That's poweronplants.com/accelerator. Now, the topic for today's podcast came up when I started thinking about how every time I hear someone mention whole food, plant-based eating, it's almost like it's a new concept. It's put out there like, "Oh, this is kind of new, and we don't know if it really works or not."

Jarrod 3:13

Like it's a fad diet

Anita 3:15

And so what we need to think about, and the question I wanna ask today, because if you've been listening for any amount of time, you know how important it is to us to ask the right questions. When we start asking the right questions, we get to the bottom of the information so much faster.

Jarrod 3:30

And you get better answers.

Anita 3:32

you get the answers, right? That's what Jesus did. And so the interesting thing is you have people talking about things like paleo, eating carnivore, even keto. It almost seems like these are the ancient paths. These are the ways that men have eaten for thousands or millions of years, But what we know is whole food, plant-based is the original plan. Have you read in your Bible Genesis 1:29 yet? I would encourage you to read Genesis 127, 128 through 130, so Genesis 1:30. Finish up there and read all of that. Read what people were originally designed to eat and what animals were originally designed to eat. And then after that, the next best question is, when did the way we eat change? Okay, so first of all, If you have the designer of a product and you buy that product, what's one of the first things you're probably going to do if you don't know how to use it or you wanna optimize

Jarrod 4:33

that depends on who you are because, i- if you're a guy, you might just throw that user manual away, like, "I'll figure it out

Anita 4:39

you might. But a wise person who doesn't know even where to start with that thing is going to look at the user manual. Well, that's exactly what the Bible is. It's our user manual. And so when you go back to the beginning, thousands of years ago, what you're going to see is God telling us in Genesis 1:29 what our bodies were created to fuel optimally on, and that is whole plant foods. So we wanna look at when did the diet change, and were animals ever meant to die to have to feed us? me- were animals meant by God to have to die for us to be able to fuel our bodies for living?

Jarrod 5:18

I mean, the Bible says that there was no death in the Garden of Eden. Death didn't enter the world until the fall of man

Anita 5:26

So with sin entered death. So it would have been impossible for animals to feed our bodies originally according to God's plan if things were working in the garden way, if sin had not entered the world. We're not gonna dive deep into all the scriptures today. There are a lot of scriptures to support whole food plant-based eating. There are a lot of things that people argue about, but we want to go back to the beginning, the original design, Because what we know is when you get back to the garden, you're doing well. So how long has whole food plant-based eating been around? It's the garden way.

Jarrod 5:57

Since the beginning

Anita 5:58

the beginning. That's the Biblical answer. But then, what if you're talking about the research? Because what I always say is when you have the point where your research, the solid research, not research that's backed by the Animal Council or the Dairy Council, but the solid research that Jarrod knows how to analyze having a cellular molecular biology degree and having been in research for years, This solid research. What does it show? It shows consistently that eating whole plant foods heals and prevents disease. In fact, the most common chronic diseases of our time, which completely goes against the definition of chronic. But this evidence has been out there for how long, Jarrod? I want you to talk about some of the things you found, because it's really very interesting

Jarrod 6:41

it's been around for many, many years, and our whole scientific way of analyzing things has been the last few hundred years. But we see the most medical advancements really late 1800s, early 1900s, and that's when we really start to feel like the dawn of science has just exploded with information.

Anita 7:00

And even as you say that, I'm thinking it's kind of funny because you're talking about the dawn of information, but we've had all the information we needed from God from the beginning. Science talks about people like we were born as cavemen, and yet Adam had the ability to name all the animals and do the things that he did that we see in Genesis. So clearly he was able to think on higher levels. And God gave us all the information we needed about plants even then. But some people just feel like, okay, I just wanna know what the modern-day science shows. And how long has that been there? And what you're saying is hundreds of years

Jarrod 7:34

Yes. I mean, it's been around for a long time, but when you start looking at design studies for the last 100, 150, maybe 200 years ago, but really for the solid amount of science that we see and with the journals out there, last 100 to 150 years. But with whole food plant-based and the recent start of, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, that got started in 2004. So it might seem like, well, this is all just recent information, but it is not. And I would like to share with you some different studies that have come out since the early 1900s, and this is gonna fly in the face of what some of the carnivore and paleo people have been preaching for however long, last 20, 30, 40, 50 years, so starting back in 1903, there was a German physician named Carl von Noorden. He started treating his diabetic patients with simply oatmeal, nothing added other than maybe some spinach, and he might allow people to have some black coffee or some black tea. But for one to two weeks, he treated his patients with nothing but plain oatmeal. Now, the reason why that's significant is that even back that far, they treated diabetics with meat and high fat diet. They called it the meat fat diet, which is a very appropriate name for that.

Anita 8:49

Wow

Jarrod 8:49

Now, did that control the blood sugar? Yes, it did. Now, back in that day, they had no idea what the cause of diabetes was. 1921. But they noticed that there was sugar in the urine. Whenever there's sugar in the urine, the diabetes has been there for a while, and it has gotten really bad. I mean, the levels have gotten super high at that

Anita 9:10

but the problem is they were looking at sugar, and so when you saw the sugar rising, you would think, "Oh, well, the sugar is causing the problem," but they weren't getting to the root cause of the problem. So you think, "Oh, diabetes is a sugar problem, therefore it's caused by sugar," but that couldn't be any farther from the truth

Jarrod 9:28

But back then they didn't understand the mechanism. The sugar was all that they saw. So in their mind, they thought low carb diet, high meat, high fat diet, but this may have been controlling a number, but it wasn't curing the problem

Anita 9:41

So the reason it would control the number is because they weren't eating the sugar. But the sugar is not what's driving the problem, it's the animal fats. Now today, we know that the animal fats are clogging the lock and key mechanism in the cells where the insulin fits in to open up the cells so that the sugar can get in. So if the animal fats are blocking that lock and key mechanism where the insulin fits, the sugar cannot get into the cells, and so you see the sugar going up in the blood, and now you have high blood sugar, but it's not the sugar causing the problems, it's the fats that are blocking the entry of the sugar into the cells for its use

Jarrod 10:21

but Dr. Von Noorden recognized that there was an issue here. Had to be something with the meat diet because he would put people on just plain oatmeal for one to two weeks, and they recognized that if people returned back to their pre quote-unquote diabetic diet, which was the meat, the eggs, the dairy, just all the high meat, high fat diet, that very quickly their condition would return. So he said, "We need to do a very careful, controlled return back to the standard diet." And so they found that that gave better long-term results. But ultimately, if they returned back to that full diabetic diet, the condition would return

Anita 11:02

So how long did he have them on that oatmeal?

Jarrod 11:04

It was one to two weeks

Anita 11:05

And was it just that he was adding it or that

Jarrod 11:08

No, that was all they were eating. So they were removing all food and eating nothing but the oatmeal for that one to two

Anita 11:13

So it was all whole plant food, which is great

Jarrod 11:16

And it was carbohydrates and grains

Anita 11:18

But can you imagine thinking, "Okay, I'm gonna go whole food plant-based, and I'm gonna get rid of this diabetes, but all I can have is oatmeal." And people do this kind of stuff to themselves, and therefore, that's why you can't stay on it, and you're not able to sustain it, because you don't learn the ways to substitute and get the variety foods and the things that you really enjoy. You think you're gonna have to just do something crazy, Like, only eating oatmeal for the rest of your life, and that's just not true. But I love this study, because they're on whole plant foods, and so you're getting all that fiber, which helps to carry out cholesterol, fats, all these things. and there are all these other nutrients in there. Like, we know there are 1.2 million nutrients in whole plant foods that haven't even been named by scientists yet. They just know they're there, and then there are all the other nutrients that they don't even know are there yet. And all these things are working in synergy together. And what we see is, when people with type 2 diabetes start eating whole plant foods, and they cut out the animal products, now that lock and key mechanism can clear. Now the insulin can fit in, open up the pathway, allowing the sugar to enter the cells, and then what happens?

Jarrod 12:26

the insulin sensitivity returns. Things return back to normal. Your body heals just like the Lord made it to do

Anita 12:33

And this is why we see so many people eating whole food plant-based and completely reversing their type 2 diabetes

Jarrod 12:40

So next study, we fast-forward three decades. In 1935, there was a British physician named Dr. Harold Hemsworth. He made a bold claim: high carbohydrate, plant-rich diets actually improve insulin sensitivity. Now remember, in 1921 was when insulin was discovered. The first patient to receive an actual insulin injection came about a year later in 1922, and they noticed that, wow, we've injected this insulin, now the sugar levels are normalizing. So they did recognize at that point that insulin was directly related to blood sugar control. But in 1935, Dr. Hemsworth made that claim. At the time, the mainstream approach was still to put diabetics on a high fat, low carb starvation diet. but Dr. Hemsworth said no, the carbs aren't the problem. He was decades ahead of his time, and his work laid the foundation for how we now understand type 2 diabetes today I mean, think about that. That was 90 years ago He recognized that it wasn't the carbohydrates, it wasn't the refined sugars and things that were causing the problem. the plants actually held the power to heal in the whole food form

Anita 13:47

And we're not saying highly refined sugars don't cause problems, because they do. But it's sugars in general is not what is fueling type 2 diabetes

Jarrod 13:56

So next, shifting away from diabetes, looking at heart disease. In 1940 to 1945, during World War II, in Norway, When they got occupied by the German forces, Germany took all their rich meats, their dairy, their eggs, their chicken, all of these animal-based foods, they took them from Norway to feed the German soldiers. That forced the entire population of Norway to then eat a plant-based diet. What was noticed is that the cardiovascular death rates plummeted. Then once the war ended and they were able to return back to those foods and start growing the livestock, their heart disease deaths shot right back up to where they were before. So I mean, you really can't get a better study just because this is a situation where you wouldn't normally be able to get an entire population to do something. And I'm not saying this was a great way for this type of, study to occur, but the results are unmistakable. The cardiovascular death rates plummeted in those five years and then came right back whenever they started eating the old way Then around that same time in 1944, there was a German physician, Dr. Walter Kempner, who was also a research scientist. He had immigrated into the United States and went to work at Duke University. So he did something remarkable. He took patients with malignant hypertension, which is when your blood pressure reaches levels of 200 over 120 and above. Now, normal blood pressure is 120 over 80 and below. Malignant hypertension is when you get 200 over 120 and above. The reason they call it malignant is because at that level, you're starting to have damage to the small blood vessels within the body, which then goes on to then cause organ damage. So obviously, this is a very dangerous state to be in. So back in 1944, this would have been a death sentence because they didn't have ways to treat malignant hypertension. Dr. Kempner decided to put them on a diet of nothing but white rice and fruit. Blood pressures dropped dramatically. Heart damage reversed. Retinal hemorrhages, which is bleeding on the retina of your eye, the part of the eye that actually interprets light into an image. Well, whenever you have high blood pressure, those little, blood vessels can burst and cause damage and could eventually lead to blindness. Well, he was seeing retinal hemorrhages or bleeding healed, and this was years before we even had an effective blood pressure medication to use. He did it with food, simply with food

Anita 16:22

Isn't that crazy? And it was just rice and what?

Jarrod 16:25

white rice and fruit

Anita 16:26

White rice and fruit. So what if he had done whole grain rice where you have more fiber? And

Jarrod 16:32

That probably would have been better 'cause there

Anita 16:32

know what kind-

Jarrod 16:33

are certain nutrients and vitamins that are in the bran around the fiber

Anita 16:37

And then you think it's just one food, oatmeal in the other study, or it's just white rice and some fruit. I mean, what if it was more of a wide variety and you added leafy greens in there and you started stacking more and more whole plant foods? What we find out is you start stacking wins. And very quickly, listening to all these studies that Jarrod is sharing from hundreds of years worth of research, you start seeing the truth of how we were originally designed to eat, to optimally fuel our body. But you start thinking, "They just ate one type of food," or, "They were just eating a couple of types of food." And we know that there are five power foods. You start stacking those, you can quickly see why it reverses so many different diseases

Jarrod 17:18

Now it's probable they didn't just stay on white rice and fruit, but when they were at that critical moment of, "I could die soon if I don't get this controlled," going on the white rice and fruit, that quickly, quickly brought those blood pressures down. And that's what we see in our clients. That's what I've seen in my patients, that when they go all in 100% plant-based, very quickly, within a few weeks, the blood pressures normalize

Anita 17:41

And again, you don't have to just eat white rice and fruit. We actually recommend whole grain rice and bunch of other delicious grains, and a bunch of delicious sauces and things so you don't feel deprived, so you'll stick with it, so you love the lifestyle and you never dream of cheat days. That's what we're all about, making this so enjoyable you would never think of going back. white rice and fruit for life isn't gonna do that for you. But sometimes when you're desperate and somebody presents something like that to you, what year was that? I mean, I don't think, you know,

Jarrod 18:10

That was in 1944, so that was 80 years ago?

Anita 18:14

It was long before they had the accelerator method, so you can understand why once they found something like that that worked, they might stick with that for a little while. You can push through pretty much anything when you get results. But what if you didn't have to just eat white rice and fruit? And you don't. That's the great news. You can have all those same foods you like. You're just gonna have 'em in a upgraded way, and now imagine all the incredible benefits that come along. And we know, we see it time and time again

Jarrod 18:41

Advancing into the 1960s, there started the Adventist Health Studies, where they looked at nearly 100,000 Seventh Day Adventist over decades. They followed their eating patterns. And most Adventists, they advocate a healthy diet. Some will be completely plant-based, some not completely, but not near as much meat as what we see in our current modern diet. And what we find consistently over time is that they have a 40% lower risk of coronary heart disease, a 12% lower overall mortality risk, significantly less diabetes compared to meat eaters. And this isn't just a small study. I mean, this is nearly 100,000 people. So we're seeing a fantastic cohort size here

Anita 19:22

And this reminds me of the Blue Zones. If you haven't ever looked up the Blue Zones, look that up because That's something great to look at when we talk about these studies, because you'll see in those areas where they eat majority whole

Jarrod 19:32

which the Adventists were included with that

Anita 19:34

people live longer and they live more productive and fruitful lives, and that's what we want. obviously we don't just wanna live longer. We wanna have more life in our years

Jarrod 19:45

All right, now jumping continents. From 1969 to 1971, there was a British surgeon named Denis Burkitt who was working in Uganda. He noticed something that changed nutrition science. Middle-aged Africans eating over 50 grams of plant fiber a day had dramatically lower rates of colon cancer, diabetes, heart disease, diverticulitis, and obesity compared to people in England eating a fraction of that fiber, less than 15 grams a day. He published his findings back in 1969, And his fiber hypothesis Has been validated by studies involving over 17 million people. So it is well established the benefits of fiber. And what does not have fiber? Animal foods, meat, chicken, eggs, dairy, none of it has any fiber. What does have fiber? Plant foods Also in the 1970s, There was a study looking at the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico. They live in the northwestern region of Mexico, and what they found is that population of people ate a 96% plant-based diet, mostly corn and beans. Their average cholesterol was 136, and that's right, total average cholesterol, not LDL cholesterol. Their average blood pressure was 111 over 73. In the four years of study, researchers could not find a single case of obesity or hypertension, Then they brought some volunteers in. They fed them a standard American diet. Within one week, their LDL shot up

Anita 21:08

It's not surprising, and the reason that this doesn't shock me, but I just love it so much, is because these are studies that we can share with you, and you can say, "Oh, wow, this has been known for a long time. Why has no one told me this before I found Jarrod and Anita and started searching to find somebody to help me? Why was I not hearing about this?" Yes, it has been around for such a long time, So all these studies are there. We're just scratching the tip of the iceberg here and the research that's there. But we can tell you our own experience. We can share with you our clients', our patients' experience. We see this daily. these are not some random studies that people just happen to find this thing. This is the reality of returning back to the garden way of eating the Genesis 129 way, optimally fueling your body the way God created it to eat And our passion is seeing you live your passion to the fullest. So God has put these dreams on your heart, these desires of things you wanna accomplish in your life, and what we know is if you don't feel great, you're not gonna be able to do it. Yes, you can have some success, but you're not gonna be able to fully live everything that God's placed on your heart if your body is not backing you up. Jarrod and I on the regular see type 2 diabetes reverse, high blood pressure return to normal, cholesterol lowered to normal Digestive diseases like IBS and Crohn's completely gone. Rheumatoid arthritis gone. Regular arthritis gone. Migraines gone. Skin issues gone. It's amazing. It works for so many things, and the reason is, and we talk about this, I want you to get inside Peak Performance Network at poweronplants.com/ppn, and you can look up, there's a little magnifying glass there. If you get in the community on your laptop or on your computer, you're gonna see that little magnifying glass. Press that, and you can search any word you're looking for, and it will search all 400 plus of our podcasts. We have set this up for you to help you get a jump start on your understanding so that you can jump in quickly and start getting results even before you apply to work with us inside our accelerator experience The reality of eating this way is that it heals, it prevents disease, and it reverses disease. And it's not just some old studies, but we wanted to show you these to help you understand this information has been in the scientific community for a very long time, and for whatever reason, some of us know a lot of the reasons, it's not being taught in medical schools, and therefore, the doctors don't know it when they graduate. It's constantly that Jarrod speaks with patients of his who are medical providers that have never heard of lifestyle medicine or the fact that a whole food plant-based diet can and does prevent and reverse, quote, "chronic disease."

Jarrod 24:14

And when I mention what some of those diseases are, they're just looking in amazement.

Anita 24:18

Blown away

Jarrod 24:19

away. It's like, "Really? No, I've never heard of lifestyle medicine." Just this look of surprise on their face, which I'm sure that's how I looked the first time I learned of. It's like, really? This is what I wanted to learn just years and years ago in school, but they just don't teach it

Anita 24:34

Yeah, because we went into nursing and to medicine wanting to help people heal from their diseases, not manage disease. Helping people manage diseases is not fun. What we're doing right now, having clients who reverse these diseases, that is fun.

Jarrod 24:50

That never gets old.

Anita 24:51

it never gets old. And that's what we want for you, and that's what we know can be possible for you when you get more of these foods on your plate, but not just force yourself to eat them. It's important to learn the ways to get your mindset right, your environment right, to learn how to make them delicious, to make it quick, and to make it super simple even in everyday life situations like traveling on the road, traveling in the airport, going for business meetings, going to gatherings, having people over to your home, having a spouse or no one else in your house who eats this way, what do you do? Going out to restaurants, all these things we're going to help you walk through inside Accelerator You're gonna come out on the other side and say, "What in the world just happened? This is amazing. I had no idea this was possible. Thank you, God, for showing me how to eat this way." It's the same exact reaction Jarrod and I had when we first found this way of living, but we had to figure out all the different ways to do this, and you don't, because you have somebody who can walk you down this path and show you how this is done. Accelerator isn't right for everybody, but it's going to be absolutely perfect for some of you if you'd like to apply and see if you're a good fit, You can do that today at poweronplants.com/accelerator Isn't it awesome that you can walk away from this episode knowing that there is hope for whatever you're going through? When it comes to your health Your maker wants you healed spirit, soul, and body. That is His desire for you, and that is clear throughout the Bible from beginning to end. Know that you are loved, you are prayed for, and we will see you very soon