Dr Rupy: William, great to have you back on the podcast. We're going to go right into this. What are some of the warning signs that people have too much sugar or refined carbohydrates in their diet?
Dr William Li: One of the things that people need to look out for, which is sensed by how you feel as an individual, so everyone's different, when you actually have overloaded yourself with sugars or carbs, is really a feeling of lethargy or not having as much energy. And it sounds ironic because sugar gives you energy. Anybody knows you drink energy drinks, it's loaded with sugar and caffeine, you'd think that it would actually pump you up, but it's really the fact that the aftermath of having too many of an overload of sugar and carbs tends to make you feel tired. A lot of people talk about the glucose spikes and dips, and that's part of it as well, but I think that there are many other things that can actually occur, especially if you're a serial overloader of sugar and carbs.
Dr Rupy: And where are the sources do you feel that people are slipping up with sugar and refined carbohydrates? Because I don't think people equate sugar in their diet as accurately as they perhaps should be. Because most people, particularly patients that I speak to, are like, well, doctor, I don't put a teaspoon of sugar in my coffee, or I don't have that many desserts in a day. Where are the places that people are actually slipping up when it comes to sneaking in sugar and refined carbohydrates in their diet, unbeknownst to them?
Dr William Li: What you're talking about is the person who feels like they're actually pretty healthy, yet they're not feeling that well, and they will tell you or me as doctors, you know, I'm actually, I'm a pretty healthy person. We all have people like that. When you really question them and ask them in detail what they're actually doing, you find out that they're drinking soda. Now, soda is probably one of the secret agents, evil agents of sugar that loads you down, anywhere from seven to nine teaspoons of refined sugar. And I always tell people who are surprised by that, you drink a can of your favourite soft drink, the colas, and they're like, I can slug one of those down on a hot day or when I'm really thirsty. I remember when I was in medical school, I had classmates that would drink a six pack of sodas every single day while they were studying. And this was long before I really got into, I was really researching food as medicine, but it would astound me. So, think about that. A can of soda having seven to nine teaspoons of refined sugar. If I gave you an empty glass in your kitchen and filled it with seven teaspoons of sugar and just handed it to you to say, down that, people would go, no way, I'm going to do that. So I think soda is a sneaky way that you get actually a lot of an overload of refined sugar. Now what about the other person who basically, and of course, if you're snacking, the ultra-processed foods often taste good because they add sugar. But also so do the pastries and cakes and things that people have around, sort of eating nonchalantly without realising they're getting the sugar in. Now, there is an alternative culprit, frankly, where people who overdo things. So here's the athlete, the the marathoner, who basically said, no, no, no, listen, I'm really healthy. Let me tell you, I've got like 0% body fat and I eat fruits and vegetables. I'm like Mr. Plant-based. But then you find out that they're somebody who does extreme things. So they'll sit down and they will actually eat 10 oranges a day, or they will, you know, have a bucket of blueberries. And yes, I think the other thing, the other extreme is that you can actually get a lot of sugar by eating a lot of fruits that actually contain that sugar. So although, I think that this is where I try to get people to understand that fruits are a safe form, a safe route to get sugars because you get so many other good things with them, and your body does need sugar, but like everything else, moderation is the key. You can have too much of something that's good and tip over the point where you're actually getting a little too much of it. So those are some of the sneaks, I would actually say. Or, you know, the person for carbs, you know, somebody who's a real pasta lover, right? And and by the way, you see this in people who work in restaurants, especially people who work in the kitchen. They make these incredible dishes and all of a sudden you measure their blood pressure, their blood pressure is really high, and their blood sugar is really high. And they're like, well, you know, I don't even have time to eat. I don't know what you're talking about. I go to the gym. And you find out that they're eating, you know, pasta and and salted restaurant food all the time. So I think that's another, another place that it's very sneaky to get carbs and sugar in is if you eat out all the time. Busy people who are travelling that don't have the luxury of being able to plan everything, you know, mindfully, sometimes they're just downing whatever they can, and that's another sneaky source of getting too many sugars and carbs.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. I think they're all super valid points. And just to underline what you were saying about the weekend warrior or the, you know, want to be athlete or someone who's just really into the gym. Someone like myself, actually, I love going to the gym myself. I go most days in a week. But I have a lot of friends who subscribe wholly to the calorie in, calorie out phenomena. This this sort of understanding that as long as you are within your calorie count, you'll be absolutely fine and there's nothing to worry about. Now, you were just talking about binging on on fruits, like having way too many fruits. But there are some other people who may not even get the sugar from the whole fruit forms, which are obviously packed with fibres and polyphenols that are super healthy and you talk about in your books as well, in both of them, Eat to Beat Disease and Eat to Beat Your Diet. What about those people who are slugging the Lucozades, the Gatorades, the the high sugars, but they're still within their calorie count and they feel that that's healthy. Are they doing something untoward to their health despite that that calorie fitting?
Dr William Li: The whole thing about calories is that it's one word that has become a loaded time bomb because everyone feels that you can have that magic bullet, simple answer solution to all of your health ailments. Calorie in and calorie out is way too over simplistic and it's really an outdated idea in and of itself. Back in the day, let's go back into a time machine and step 30 years behind, okay, to where we are today. And yes, I mean, I think that the state of the art of thinking about nutrition was looking at calories and proteins and fats and carbs. But we're way beyond that now. And so in today's world, what we realise is a calorie is simply a unit, a measure of energy that we get from our food. And that energy is sort of the fuel, the gasoline, the petrol that we load into our body, the same way that we actually go to the gas station and get fuel, petrol, to load into our car, if you drive a car that uses, still uses petrol. And you know, you fill it up and then you drive off. But I like to use that analogy about the car and petrol because if you think about it this way, we all know that our cars run on fuel, but we don't think about that fuel very much and we don't think about all the interconnections between the fuel tank and the fuel injector and all the carburetor and the, you know, all the complicated things in the car engine. We just get in and go about our way, just like we go about in our life. The only time we start to focus on the fuel of the car is when the gas meter runs down, the fuel tank gauge runs down. And then all of a sudden, that's all you can think about. I got to find a station to be able to fill up, right? And that's really the same thing in our body. When our body's fuel tank runs low, our fuel gauge registers low, and it's a complicated system, but think about our, the gut brain axis as being our fuel tank, using hormones to signal our fuel gauges low. All of a sudden, all you can think about is going to the kitchen or to the refrigerator or to get something to eat, grab something out to eat, right? So that's kind of that, and then the more you are hungry, the lower your fuel is, the more panicked you actually get about it, just like when your fuel gauge is almost empty, like you're on the red line, all of a sudden, like your pulse is racing to find that petrol station so you don't run out of gas on the side of the road. That's that's when we get hangry, right? You go, you're like totally agitated. All right. So the point is that when you go to the gas station to fill up your tank with petrol, we in our bodies fill up our our body with fuel, which are the unit of fuel is not gallons, but it's really calories. But just like the car, you know that you have a choice of different types of petrol you could put in. There's the poor quality, cheap stuff. There's the more expensive stuff that's higher quality. And you know, if you fill up your car a few times, once in a while with really crappy fuel, it's going to be okay. No problem. Your car is going to be able to do it. But if day after day, week after week, all you're doing is using the cheapest, poorest quality fuel, all right, eventually your car is really just not going to run very well because that car needs to be cared for. Same deal with calories. If you're putting in fuel, calories, that is higher quality, meaning having those polyphenols, having the fibre, all the good stuff, like eating whole plant-based foods, fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes, it's all giving us fuel, but all the other stuff really enriches the engine of our body so that we're going to run longer and better. Just like a, if you, and by the way, here's the other thing. If you owned a jalopy, an old, crummy car that's been handed down from, you know, an older sibling and then maybe from an uncle, and it's like barely chugging along, you know, the the the chitty chitty bang bang kind of like jalopy. All right, you might, you might be tempted to put poor quality fuel. Those, a crappy car is going to break down faster if you don't feed it quality fuel. All right? So that's one thing to, and a lot of people start out with not such a great health. And so you want, this is, if you're starting out behind the eight ball, all right, if your body is sort of the jalopy and you want to get better, you want to actually immediately put in higher quality fuel, easy, farmer's market, produce section of the grocery store, um, you know, choose the right fuel, not just calories, but all the other good stuff, and your car will run better. You'll notice it right away. On the other hand, if your car is a Ferrari, I guarantee you, if you've invested that much into that beautiful Ferrari red vehicle, when you pull over to the station, you are not going to be putting the cheapest quality gas in there. So you need to actually step up your game, regardless of what end of the spectrum you are. And that's why a calorie is not a calorie and a calorie in and a calorie out is way too oversimplified. Not to mention the fact that there's many ways, I was just talking about the calorie in part. Not to mention there's many other ways of thinking about the calorie out.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I really love how you've used that analogy that is quite commonly adopted as a way to explain calories in, calories out, to actually explain why it's not as simple as that. And actually you've got to think about the intricacies of a car, whether it is an old banged up chitty chitty bang bang type car or a performance car, you know, you've got to really think about the quality of what you're fueling said car with. Um, and I think you're right, it does get super oversimplified for people. And actually, you know, we've had many conversations on the podcast now about how chronically underfueling your car, which is what a lot of people do with, uh, uh, diets in particular, can lead to worse outcomes in the long run in terms of changing your body set point and then actually having this yo-yo phenomenon where you're actually putting on more weight as well. So there's so many pitfalls there that people need to be aware of. Um, and in terms of, um, uh, calories, um, and and this is something that comes up quite a bit. And although I don't like to talk about alcohol through the lens of calories and it does tend to have quite a bit and people don't really realise the the energy consumption that people have with alcohol. I'd love to know your thoughts on alcohol because there appears to be a changing consensus on what is a healthy amount of alcohol, what is an unhealthy amount of alcohol, what moderation actually means, and whether we should really be aiming for abstinence in its entirety and whether that's a reasonable approach. What what are your thoughts on it?
Dr William Li: I'm glad you asked me about that because I I have a maybe a a very humanistic way of thinking about alcohol. And and I will talk about the science and the medicine in one second. But here's what I want people to know from my voice. First of all, alcohol is part of our humanity. As far back as humankind has been growing things and fermenting things, uh, and, you know, whether it's uh, uh, hops for beer or grapes for wine, we've been making alcohol and fermented products can actually have some good things. You know, other fermented foods, we know is good for gut health. But alcohol, which is a byproduct of fermentation, um, uh, is first and foremost something that's been part of human ritual for tens of thousands of years. We drink together as a community, uh, in celebratory ways, in times of, uh, uh, of, uh, special occasions, holidays, weddings, funerals, New Year, and and I think that it's something that we can't, um, just brush off with this sort of, um, paternalistic view about alcohol and and sickness and illness. And the reason I put that out there is because I don't want to say, you know, abstinence versus indulgence. Now we're starting to talk about feast or famine, gluttony, you know, and all those other kinds of humanistic words, right? But here's what I, so, so I do think that alcohol plays a very important role to to who we are as human beings. That said, I think that if you start taking alcohol in some of the context that we often see it, drinking alone, drinking too much, whether you're alone or with other people, drinking hard liquor, uh, not just for celebration, uh, but drinking it, uh, for to treat anxiety or depression or loneliness or having another some other addictive, um, uh, issue that using it as a as part of a of a salve, uh, for other ailments. And then of course, genetics also play a role, can play a role into overconsumption of alcohol. That overconsumption is is quite tricky because, and here is really the second, um, main point I want to make. The first being alcohol is part of our humanity and part of human ritual. The second part is that there is no data that I know of, and I study this stuff, that alcohol itself, ethanol, EtOH for those of us who have studied chemistry, is actually beneficial to your health in any way, shape, or form. Ethanol, which is alcohol, or methanol, if you actually want to get the toxic form of it, um, is a toxin. It it actually does make you disinhibited, it does make us feel great, it does, uh, it does make you drunk, all right? But in no way, shape, or form is ethanol beneficial for you. Ethanol poisons the liver, ethanol poisons the heart, ethanol poisons the brain. Again, take a drink, no problem. Your body will recover. Take two drinks, still going to recover. Take two drinks every day, okay, which is what was the healthy amount that people were thinking, two glasses of wine a day is probably good for you. That alcohol in those two glasses of wine still is a poison for you. And so people who were going to embark on scheduling two drinks a day were were going in the wrong direction. And I think this is what you're talking about, this course correction, which is that the alcohol isn't good for you. What what, so what is it that's actually potentially beneficial or what did we recognise or what do we now recognise as maybe some upside of beverages that contain alcohol? Well, those fermented products of the grape skin in the case of wine, so red wine being better than white wine, is really the fermented poly, the polyphenols that get extracted from grape skins. It's the what makes red wine red, not what makes wine, uh, uh, capable of making you feel tipsy. It's the, it's the polyphenols. And so what's really interesting, and this is a research area that I'm actually pursuing now, is that if you were to actually take fermented, um, uh, uh, if you take wine, uh, and you take the same from the same place that grew that wine and processed that wine, and you take a look at the grape juice, not fermented, and you compare the polyphenols and the sugars. So they're largely the same, minus the alcohol. I'm really interested in, and this is my one of the areas of research I'm looking into. So are there real differences between grape juice versus wine? And and if and if you took wine itself and then removed the alcohol, because you can remove alcohol, there are lab techniques to do that. Now you've got, uh, alcohol-free wine. Do you actually have the same polyphenols and other, uh, healthful benefits? Because I think this is what we really need to be doing studying food as medicine is not character assassinate, uh, an entire beverage or or any food on the basis of, you know, well, we thought it was good, now it's going to be bad. This is what causes whiplash. I I say for those of us who study this, let's take a measured approach. And so what I just told you is that number one, wine, uh, alcohol is part of our humanity. Number two, rituals are probably fine. You know, it's just part of who we are. Uh, number two is that, you know, alcohol itself, ethanol, the stuff that makes you tipsy, is never healthy. It's always a toxin. Your body can recover it most of the time. And number three is that the good stuff associated to wine and beer are really in the juice, in the liquid that's not alcoholic. It's the hops in the beer. It's the fermented, uh, grape skin in the wine. And by the way, the reason we know this is almost certainly true is because if you take vodka, if you take pure straight liquor, okay, and you look at the health benefits of that, there's none. When you remove most of the other stuff, you get no benefits and all downside.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, I love that answer. Uh, that's completely in line with my thinking on on alcohol right now. Uh, as someone who has actually reduced their alcohol consumption massively over the last 10 years, um, from med school days. Um, now, you know, it it it'd be rare to find a week where I consume more than one to two units. What I am noticing in the market are lower, um, uh, ABV, uh, drinks being promoted out there. So instead of a 40% uh, uh, ABV drink that you'll you'll find, uh, like a gin, you you see quarter, uh, levels of that. Um, and that's interesting to see and overall, I think that's a net positive thing as long as people still drink the same amount, uh, and not having, you know, four drinks instead of the one that they would otherwise have. This is really fun. I love like throwing these kind of questions at you because it it promotes a healthy discussion. And this leans into my next question actually about coffee. Now, I'm a, I'm a coffee lover. I love my coffee. Um, I'm currently doing a coffee fast for 30 days. So I'm trying out different drinks. I'm having a cacao drink. I'm adding, uh, I'm having beetroot lattes. Uh, I'm making some hibiscus teas with mint and clove. I'm really experimenting with my hot drink in the morning. But I'd love your thoughts on coffee and particular the ingredient of concern for some people, which is caffeine, uh, because again, in a similar way to alcohol, you know, you get some divisive views. Some people think it's a fantastic ingredient. Some people think that the caffeine negates the, uh, benefits of the coffee polyphenols in yourself. What is Dr. William Lee's take on on coffee?
Dr William Li: All right, I'm going to confess, I am somebody who loves coffee. I I grew up as, uh, as with an Asian background, uh, in a family that drank tea all the time, green tea, oolong tea. I was around my my parents, my grandparents, they drank six to 10 cups easily a day. You could never find them without a cup of tea. But when I went to college, I um started drinking coffee and I and I drank it, you know, kind of to stay up to do my homework and study for exams. That changed for me actually, because I did, before I went to medical school to get, you know, to learn medicine, I did a gap year. And in my gap year, what I was, what I set out to do was to study the connection between food, health, and culture. That was something that's always interested me personally. So I spent a year doing that in Italy and in Greece. And so this was long before people talked about the Mediterranean diet. I I was just naturally curious about this intersection of of culture and food and health. And the first thing I noticed was the difference in the way that people drank coffee there. And so something that was sort of a a side habit in college, suddenly became something that I learned, you know, you could become an aficionado, you could actually become sort of a a true student of coffee and and you could taste the differences. So I developed a lifelong habit of having an espresso or two, uh, in the morning, occasionally a cappuccino, uh, uh, and and then I would drink coffee throughout the day. Of course, in med school all the time, I drank coffee. Probably not very good quality coffee. In fact, definitely not very good quality coffee. But but now now in my home, I actually do like coffee. So let's circle back, you know, now that I've actually made my, you know, confession, uh, uh, to Father Rupy. Um, I will I will I will now tell you that, you know, as a food as medicine researcher, coffee, like wine, is, uh, uh, goes way back. In fact, we don't even know where the origins of coffee came from other than probably around Ethiopia and that part of Africa at some point where the coffee plant naturally grew. And coffee was, you know, cooked in different way, I mean, prepared in different ways. You could boil the green coffee beans, you could roast them. What we see now at the, uh, coffee, at the cafe, you know, what the baristas actually do or what you might do in your own little, you know, kitchen espresso maker, totally different than how traditional coffee was actually made. Um, uh, and so there's so many ways of doing it. Uh, you get largely the same flavors and you get different amounts of caffeine. I'm going to talk about caffeine in a second, but I I'm putting this cultural context around it. So, um, so people don't feel like, again, this whole paternalistic, judgmental character assassination. There's a there's a real component to this. I remember when I went to, um, uh, uh, Italy for the first time and lived there, I was amazed that depending on how finely you ground the coffee, the taste would change and the amount of caffeine that you would actually get also changed completely. And then I was, uh, dumbstruck, uh, uh, and um, I think you would say gobsmacked when, uh, when I went to Greece and I watched people just dump coffee grounds into a container, they would just boil and then pour the whole thing into the cup and you'd be drinking the coffee grounds. And I'm like, wow, that's amazing because you get this giant hit of caffeine, right? Um, I mean, Greek coffee is like the equivalent of matcha tea. You're just drinking everything. All right? So, the fact of the matter is is that caffeine is very much part of the neuroactivating components of coffee that we tend to assign to coffee. But going way back to the origins of this beverage, which we don't, which we don't really know about, but it really again transcends different cultures where the plant was encountered or beans were traded. Not so much in Asia, uh, but but mostly in sort of the Europe, European side. I think Asia was mostly tea. The fact of the matter is that this became one of the common beverages, you know, after drinking water that was consumed. The amount of caffeine is what we attribute to it, but there's many other polyphenols, um, and even some dietary fibre that's found in the coffee bean. And depending on whether you filter it and how finely you ground it, you get other benefits. So, look, I want to come back to caffeine in a second because that's what everybody thinks about. But a lot of people don't know this, but coffee contains a natural bioactive, a natural chemical from mother nature's pharmacy with an F, not a pH, that's called chlorogenic acid. Chlorogenic acid. All right? And chlorogenic acid does a lot of great things for our body. Number one, it promotes a healthy circulation. All right? It it helps the lining of our blood vessels, the endothelium, function better. Chlorogenic acid in the lab has also been shown to actually cut off the blood supply to cancer. So it actually can sort of act as a volume switch to control how where the healthy blood vessels are growing. So that's a really good thing. Chlorogenic acid also helps promote our stem cells for recovery. So it actually helps us, uh, our stem cells repair our own body from the inside out. Chlorogenic acid, um, also is a prebiotic for our gut bacteria, healthy gut, healthy body, healthy immune system, healthy brain, coming from a cup of coffee that has nothing to do with caffeine. All right? Chlorogenic acid, powerful antioxidant to protect us from, uh, environmental exposures to the chemistry, chemicals that we might have, uh, from our water bottles, from the off-gassing of our cup carpet, from the ultraviolet radiation from the sun, chlorogenic acid is protective against that, like many other, uh, bioactives. And then chlorogenic acid also lowers inflammation, improves immunity, and it actually triggers our metabolism to burn down harmful body fat. So in fact, it's good for our metabolism as well. And studies have actually shown that coffee or chlorogenic acid in the lab and in clinic and caffeine, but also caffeine-free coffee will do the same thing, will help you burn down excess harmful body fat. So, all this to say that there is, uh, a plethora of natural chemicals that food as medicine people are studying. Oh, and one one more thing I got to tell you. Why do, why does coffee even have, why does the coffee bean even contain caffeine and chlorogenic acid? All right, here's the thing. Um, tea also contains some caffeine, right? So if you were a botanist, and I've spoken to many in my research, I was, uh, amazed to learn that tea and coffee plants both produce caffeine because caffeine made by naturally by the plant, uh, is a natural pesticide, insecticide. So bugs, it keeps down, keeps away the bugs from ravaging the coffee plant. And and the later in the season you harvest the bean, the deeper into the summer when the bugs and the gnats and the flies and everything are crawling, flying all around, they produce more and more, um, uh, caffeine. Okay? So late harvest picks have much more caffeine right now. Same as chlorogenic acid, but for a different reason. Uh, uh, chlorogenic acid, again, I learned this from a botanist and then really dug into it myself and Eureka, like the light bulb goes in my head like, oh, I really get that now. So chlorogenic acid is a natural substance made by the plant as a wound healing response. And you and you might say, what do you mean? Well, look, when you actually grow a plant in a natural way, no pesticides, the bugs are out there. The coffee is going to make more caffeine to keep the bugs down, protect the, keep the bugs are going to say, ah, you know what, I don't want to be eating that. But then, uh, but there's some will get through. And the bugs nibble on the leaves and the stems of the coffee plant. And as a result of that injury to the leaf or the stem, the plant heals itself with chlorogenic acid. So it produces more. So when you are actually having organic coffee grown without pesticides, you will actually get more chlorogenic acid. In fact, up to threefold more chlorogenic acid than coffee beans grown in a conventional pesticide setting. So not just less of the bad stuff, nobody wants pesticides in their coffee, but more of the good stuff. And that's what, that that would, that would excite me. That would make, give me reason to invest in organic coffee.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, absolutely. And so your thoughts specifically on caffeine, it's wonderful to know that that's the original sort of pesticide if you will, and that's the the the actual reason why coffee has caffeine in itself. And I think there's just so many interesting chemicals of interest, uh, that have their roots in the plant defense system. In terms of the caffeine content, it sounds as if if you opt for caffeine-free, you're still going to get a lot of the benefits. For some people, I imagine caffeine is an issue. And, uh, what would you say? Is it, would you say there are some extra benefits if you have some caffeinated coffee or does it not really matter so much when ingested for for users?
Dr William Li: So, so every individual's different. Uh, uh, someone like me, I can drink a lot of coffee and the caffeine doesn't actually do, I'm not that sensitive to caffeine. All right? In fact, I don't drink my coffee for the caffeine. I like the taste. But for some people, and I and I know, and I have many friends that are like this, they're exquisitely sensitive to caffeine. If they have even a sip of coffee after 5:00 p.m. in the afternoon, they'll be up all night. They just, you know, maybe some of it's psychosomatic, but but the bottom line is that, um, they it really it really agitates them. Some people who have, um, uh, uh, trigger happy heart rhythms like atrial fibrillation, if you drink coffee with a lot of caffeine, it can trigger your afib, which we as doctors know is a dangerous condition and that you need to really try to prevent your heart from being, from getting into that situation. And so another example about, uh, it could be in your brain, it could be in your heart. Um, uh, and and caffeine, by the way, is not just, uh, activating in one way. Uh, caffeine can also actually by itself, uh, can stimulate your metabolism as well. So a little bit actually is not going to be bad for you. And when you have decaf coffee, let's say you're sensitive to caffeine, but you like the taste of coffee, definitely go for the, um, uh, decaffeinated. But I'll tell you, the way they, the way that the the manufacturers do decaffeination, it's impossible to remove all the caffeine. They can remove 90% of it, but there's still a little tiny bit. You can still get a little bit of caffeine. And so you might, so even decaf coffee, you're getting a little bit of that. And again, caffeine is not a categorically good guy or bad guy. If your body can tolerate it in the decaffeinated side, you're probably fine if you like the taste of coffee. If you find any amount of coffee is somehow makes you feel uncomfortable, I always tell people, first and foremost, listen to your body. All right? Don't follow a trend or a recommendation from anybody, ourselves included, if when you try the food or the beverage, it makes you feel bad. That's a warning signal. That's a red flag, a distress signal inside your body. You should always pay heed to that.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. And it's the same with a lot of trendy ingredients, you know, down to traditional uses of ginger. For for a lot of people, ginger is quite, um, uh, an irritant to people's heart rhythms. They feel hot, flustered. Same thing with mushrooms. Mushrooms are becoming very popular, but they have genuine medicinal value and people need to be respectful of that actually, because I think shiitake, reishi, chaga, they're just being mixed into these concoctions without real due diligence of like how the combinations can react in certain people. So always be,
Dr William Li: Yeah, I want to I want to make a comment about um mushrooms because I think that's really important. I I've been, you know, I've studied mushroom, first of all, I love to eat mushrooms. I've I've studied mushrooms, I like to cook mushrooms as well. Uh, and I and I and I have an opinion about the current, uh, state of mushroom or mycology, you know, the the fandom of mushrooms. Okay. Yeah. First of all, mushrooms are pretty powerful, uh, uh, uh, fungi, uh, you know, they're, um, and they're the what the way easiest way to think about mushrooms is that there's culinary mushrooms that are used in cooking. You know, your portobello, your white button mushrooms, your morels, um, and yes, shiitake mushroom also is a culinary mushroom, okay? But then there's medicinal mushrooms, and you've got your lion's mane, you've got your chaga, you've got your, um, reishi, a whole bunch of turkey tail, etc, etc, etc. Shiitake also falls into that category as well. Okay? Um, and maitake also bridges culinary and and and medicinal. But what I tell people to do is that if you're trying to incorporate mushrooms into your everyday life, think about that in the culinary sense because you're going to get the vitamin D, you're going to get the, um, dietary fibre, the beta glucans, the healthy things that activate your body's health defenses and activate your metabolism, uh, help you burn body fat, just by having the culinary version. And I think in the, let's call it the Western world, the world of trend making and trend setting, some very excited person, uh, reached over into the, um, canon of Asian medicinal mushrooms, okay, uh, and and started pulling out these, um, mushrooms that were never eaten regularly, but only used for healing purposes. And this is the reishi, the the cordyceps, the, you know, uh, the turkey tail, everything all that kind of stuff. Ganoderma lucidum. Look, it's the stuff that you can find easily on social media. You can find them actually in a grocery store now, believe it or not. Yeah. Those contain, and researchers like me have now discovered that those medicinal mushrooms contain previously undiscovered polysaccharides, peptides, and other small molecules that actually are not present in the culinary mushrooms. They're not present in the edible stuff, the portobellos, the porcinis, but they're present in these medicinal mushrooms. Medicinal mushrooms, by the way, tend to be very, very bitter. You know, they're hard to actually have by themselves. And so, uh, you know, the bitter, bitter, bitter tends to be kind of a sign of a medicinal property, right? So, what I tell people is don't mix mushrooms into one category. You got your culinary mushrooms that you can cook with every day and enjoy them and eat. Good source of dietary fibre, good for gut health, good for your metabolism. Then there's, um, they're healing mushrooms, medicinal mushrooms. Take a look, if you're going to do your research on these, take a look at their traditional medicinal uses. You know, were they used for, uh, uh, illnesses that were characterized by hot versus cold, you know, the Asian way of thinking about it. Look at their uses in Ayurvedic medicine. They were not used on a daily basis to be ground up in your pepper mill to actually put into your coffee or sprinkle on your salad. This is a modern translation of things that were used originally in medicine. By the way, you would not go into your medicine cabinet, okay, and take a puddle of pills and open them up and put them in a spice grinder and sprinkle them on your on your salad either. So I would say, be careful with these medicinal mushrooms. We don't know enough about them when they're used in the outside of the healing setting, supervised healing setting, to know what they do. So this is an area of research. I think the whole mycology field is super fascinating. We are sure to discover more health benefits from these incredible medicinal mushrooms, but I just caution people that if you want to get the real benefits of mushrooms, for the most part, you can get them just from the culinary side that you would get, you would see a a home chef, your your mother or your grandmother would have cooked with them.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time to do a deep dive into that because I think it's very trendy right now. I'm very interested, but I'm also very cautious because of respect of the medicinal impact of these new novel substances that have been used for millennia, but from a research point of view, we we don't know enough about them. And I think mixing them, the analogy that you made there about mixing, you know, medicines in your medicine cabinet, you wouldn't do that and certainly wouldn't do that on a daily basis. I think it's that's, you know, it's certainly caution, um, that people need to heed. So I really appreciate you you, um, you talking about that. And actually, as you were talking about that, you mentioned you were a tea drinker, uh, before, so you had oolong, uh, matcha has caffeine in, um, but on from anecdotes of people who are sensitive to the caffeine in coffee, but they can tolerate matcha, that there appears to be, um, some, uh, better suitability of matcha to people who are sensitive, even though matcha on the face of it has similar amounts of caffeine. Is there, are there any other elements of matcha that a, provide benefits, but also can explain a phenomena that I see anecdotally?
Dr William Li: This is what I love to talk about is the origins of food, right? So what is matcha? I mean, matcha is this beautiful green powder, fine green powder that is so fine, you need a whisk to really kind of get it to stir into hot water properly. That's the traditional, what they call a ceremonial matcha. You can also buy just simple, uh, powder, you put it into hot water and it dissolves instantly. Okay, crystallized matcha. But here's the thing. If you understand tea, you'll realise that, and I I've been actually at tea plantations, uh, in Asia. My my great uncle who lived to 104, lived at the base of a tea mountain. So he used to take me walking around the tea plantations, um, you know, when he was in his 90s, he was walking independently and he was drinking, attributing his longevity to tea drinking. Okay. So, um, mostly little ladies would go out there with a bamboo hamper and pick leaves at different times of the season. In the spring, they get the early buds, which there's not many insects out, so the caffeine is low. Later on, uh, in the summertime, later in the summer, more bugs out there, they pick the leaves and a second crop of picking, there's more caffeine. So again, the time, the season of picking, the time in the season also matters in the amount of caffeine that's in there. Number one. So it depends on your matcha, what part of the season it was picked on in terms of the quote caffeine content. Now, the other thing about matcha is that it's quite different from loose leaf tea that you might find in a Chinese restaurant. It's very different than the tea you would have in an English, uh, afternoon tea ceremony with a tea in a bag, you know, or steeped tea where you get the pure liquid, but you don't see the leaves or you have the dunking bags. Okay? Um, now matcha is actually the powder. How is matcha made? Well, about three weeks before harvest in Japan, where the original matcha was, uh, methodology was developed, they they throw a canopy over the leaves so that they don't get direct sun anymore. That canopy or shade mellows out the strong flavors of tea. Okay? We don't know exactly how, but it changes the chemical makeup to make it a little bit more mellow. Less direct sunshine, you don't need as much sunscreen, your your skin's not going to react as much. That's what they do. They actually put a canopy over to shade the matcha plant. I want to say it's 21 days or 20 days before harvest. And then when they pick them, they take the leaves, they dry them, okay? They're dried in the open air and then they kind of roast them very, very slightly. They're not oxidized, all right? Most tea, especially English breakfast tea, you know, or Earl Grey, highly oxidized. So it's a processing. The processing changes the flavor, uh, alters the chemical structure, the chemicals in them a little bit. But for matcha, they don't really, really oxidize it deeply. Then they ground the entire leaf into this powder. So whereas if you are steeping tea in a bag or in a pot, you are not getting any of the leaf. There's no fibre. You're not getting all of the polyphenols. You're just getting whatever dissolves out into the water. For matcha, you are getting every bit of dietary of fibre that's in the tea leaf. That fibre means that you are actually activating your gut microbiome. It is a powerful prebiotic that feeds your gut microbiome. So matcha is much more gut healthy than other teas because you're getting that big bolus of fibre. It also contains all of the polyphenols. You're not leaving it to chance that some of it might dissolve out, some of it might be stuck in the leaf, right? In the tea bag, you throw the tea bag away, you're throwing away some polyphenols. Here, you're grounding everything and you're drinking everything. Now you're getting the full dose, everything that that tea plant can actually contribute to you. And in addition to the catechins, uh, and the theaflavins and the theobromines and all these other things that are found in tea that can activate other parts of your, um, uh, brain, other parts of your metabolism, other parts of your body's health defenses, you're just getting more with matcha because of the nature of of what it's had. So if you ever go to a Japanese restaurant and you're sitting at the sushi bar and they ask you and they want some green tea, often times they'll pour you some matcha tea and you you know you're getting really high test stuff. Matcha is the espresso of tea.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, I love matcha. My my wife has recently, uh, moved on to matcha from her, uh, her coffee, um, her two coffees in the in the day. And she's really enjoying it. And there's just so much, you know, ceremony around it, you know, the the ritual, the smell, the different qualities, and it's just, again, another world of flavor that people, uh, can really lean into and also, uh, rest, uh, in the knowledge that it's actually providing all those wonderful benefits that you were just talking about too, the gut and and the other chemicals that you consume. And and on that vein, I love this discussion. I just love like, you know, having an open discussion about all these different topics because it's just so important. One of the things that I feel again, on two, uh, in two areas is, uh, misinformed is, um, uh, the healthfulness of oils. So there is a camp that suggests that we shouldn't be having any oils whatsoever because they are refined, they are processed, they are very high in fat, high in calories, etc, etc. So that's one camp. We shouldn't be eating oils at all. There's another camp that, uh, reasonably have suggested seed oils are not healthy for us. Um, and there are plenty of different seed oils. There's, uh, we have rape seed in the UK, also known as canola, um, sunflower oil, uh, pumpkin oils. There's also super healthy oils, extra virgin olive oils. There's, uh, ghee, there's traditional fats that we tend to use in cooking. I would love to know Dr. William Lee's take on, uh, those different, uh, topics. Oils, are they healthy and which ones, if they are, are healthier?
Dr William Li: Okay. Look, oils are all fats, and our body needs some fats, but not too many fats. So regardless of which fat you choose, if you have too much of it, it's going to overload your body. The way that we were started this conversation talking about overload of sugars and carbs, we need sugars, we need carbs to run our engine, the Ferrari of our body, we need that. And we need oil too. We need some fats, but if you overload on it, you're going to run into trouble. Okay? So that said, I will tell you that the oils that I like to use in my own kitchen, um, and I think we've had this conversation before, but I I really cook with two types of oil. I I like to cook with, um, olive oil, extra virgin olive oil is my preferred, and I can, I I also will enjoy extra virgin olive oil uncooked, like outside of cooking, but I'll also cook with it as well. I'm always mindful of how much oil I use, all right? And I never deep fry things because that's just automatically inviting a huge amount of oil. That's just my preference in in my kitchen. Um, I will use avocado oil as well. Um, uh, that's also a healthful oil, and and it's very light and you can actually cook at high heat. I like to cook in different techniques and so I I like to use oils that are able to actually take high heat like avocado oil can be cooked at a higher temperature than olive oil. Olive oil, by the way, can be cooked at high temperature. That's also a little bit of a urban legend. But it has a lot of extra flavor to it that avocado oil doesn't. Now, both of those happen to be healthier oils, but again, the quantity, the amount, um, uh, is is, uh, important. Now, when it comes to olive oil, uh, you know, most of the studies, epidemiology studies looking at the correlation, the association between, uh, olive oil and health has shown, you know, people who have olive oil, who who use olive oil, consume olive oil are healthier than people who don't consume olive oil. Well, how much is, how much is the dose? I'm always into the food dose. The healthy amounts tend to, um, uh, revolve around three tablespoons of olive oil a day, generally. Now, I don't recommend that people go out and, you know, take a measuring spoon and then drink that. I know some people hearing this are going to go immediately, I'm going to go out and buy a measuring spoon for my olive oil. Look, if you cook foods using olive oil, try not to use three, more than three tablespoons, or if you do, try to drain the oil so you're not getting too much more than that. So that's kind of like this the reasonable man's way or reasonable person's way of looking at this. Okay, so we know olive oil is healthy for you. It's a healthier fat. It also has, um, uh, lots of bioactives, which give you the flavor of of the olives. The back of the throat, um, uh, taste for olive oil. That's because it's still got the, and extra virgin means that it's not filtered. You're getting the little bits of the olive. Again, like wine, you're getting the kind of the good stuff from the plant itself. It's not the fat, it's actually the stuff that is floating around in there. Extra virgin olive oil. Um, avocados, avocados have something called avocatin B that's also present in the flesh and therefore a little bit in the oil that activates your metabolism. So not only do you get some healthier fats, you also get some extra bioactives as well. That's one way to think about these oils. Now, back to your question about like unhealthy oils. My, this is my feeling is that because I'm very reluctant to do character assassination of foods. All right? Oh, not oils are bad. Let's let's let's put a a scarlet A on all of them and then let's imprison them all. I don't I don't go for that. I would say that if you are using any oil in moderation, it's probably fine. Uh, be very careful about saturated fats. Even but even for that, the jury is still out about ghee. I mean, ghee might might appears to be a healthier way of using, you know, the the clarified butter is better because of the clarification process. We're still actively researching this. So I think that, you know, a lot of the stuff out there in, um, in social media and on the internet that categorically, uh, denounces, uh, one entire category of food on the basis of a theory is probably the, you know, kind of the premature death, uh, kind of concept. I think I would stick with the things that we know are beneficial, consume those in moderation, and then try not to overload on anything because by the way, let's say you found this magic oil, health oil that's good for you, you still wouldn't want to drink, uh, uh, drink that, consume that in in large quantities anyway every day.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's definitely the heuristic that I use myself. I go for the oils that are appropriate for the cuisine. I go for the oils that I know have health benefits attached to them. I think there's a demonization of seed oils right now. I personally just don't like the flavor of quite refined seed oils. Um, other than if I'm making a a chili, uh, oil. So it's just an easier fat to use when you're taking it to a high temperature. I haven't tried it with avocado oil though. Um, so I might I might actually try that in the future.
Dr William Li: Give it a give it a shot. Give it a shot.
Dr Rupy: I will. Yeah. Yeah. I'll let you know when you're in the studio next time, maybe we can try it on something that I'll prepare.
Dr William Li: We'll we'll we'll do a chili oil taste test.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, you mentioned one thing, uh, organic earlier, uh, when you were talking about coffee. And, um, uh, you prefer to go organic with coffee. What what are your thoughts on organic versus, um, uh, conventional produce? Because, uh, we just did a podcast on organic versus conventional and my my personal stance has changed. I'm leaning more toward organic, but it is fraught with difficulty and inconsistencies within the research itself. Uh, but it it feels like there is a bit of a turning point at a agricultural level, at a at a governmental policy level where they are more appreciative of organic, which I think was previously seen as a bit conspiratorial. I wonder if your thoughts have have morphed or changed or or whether you're you're either pro or against organic.
Dr William Li: Yeah, again, you know, I've been learning along the way as you have about organic. I originally, when the concept of organic first came out, and I think it was in the 90s, we started seeing this more commonly, certainly in the United States. I actually rebelled against organic. And the reason was, I was seeing all these beautiful foods that, you know, looked like they were painted by, you know, Rembrandt, uh, and they were super expensive. Uh, and I just thought, uh, and the argument was you get less pesticides by growing, by growing more naturally. And I just felt bad. I I literally had this internal revulsion about paying more money for less harmful ingredients or chemicals. Why would I want to do that? You know? Like what what kind of, um, what kind of sick world are we in where we actually have to pay more for less harmful things? Uh, and and so, but I have actually changed my mind because over time, the botanists have actually been educating me about, as we were talking about with coffee, the role of a plant living in its natural ecosystem that's unperturbed by artificial chemicals. All right? And so I thought about it less from the health side, I learned about it from the plant side. I I'm one of these really curious people. So when somebody is an expert in something that I, you know, that I happen to encounter, I I want to know everything about it. And so the botanist told me, you know, um, the best way for a plant to grow, for a fruit or a vegetable that we eat, the edible part to be produced, is really to grow with natural sunlight, with natural rain, uh, uh, with natural soil irrigation, uh, and, um, and surprisingly to me, with natural insects. So you've got, um, and other and other creatures. So, by the way, you've got the microbiome of the soil. We think about gut microbiome, but there's actually a microbiome of the soil. There's also a microbiome that grows around the plants itself, natural bacteria on the plants. Yeah, you're rinsing off for 60 seconds and when you take the plant home, you think you're getting rid of all that bacteria? Nope. We are eating most of these vegetables are slightly probiotic, all right? Um, but but the the bacteria on the plants actually play a huge role. But these insects that we don't see, and if we saw them, we probably wouldn't want to see them for most of us, that are flying around, crawling around, nibbling on the leaves and the stems of the coffee plant. This is the whole thing. Most of the insects don't, birds will eat the fruit or eat, you know, but but insects actually eat the leaves. Uh, they they like the leaves more. Okay? And so they nibble on the leaves, they nibble on the stems. And a universal part of plant biology seems to be when grown in the most natural setting, which is better for the plant, that the plant's reaction to wounding by having these little nibbles and injuries is to produce more polyphenols, more bioactives, more chlorogenic acid. In the case of strawberries, which was published in the journal Nature, organic strawberries compared to grown without pesticides, compared to strawberries grown with, uh, uh, pesticides, the plants definitely looked better, uh, when there was pesticides used because you got the leaves are intact, there are fewer bugs. Um, there were more, uh, uh, fruits that were harvestable because the yield was better because there was less bugs, uh, nibbling on the plant. But when you looked inside each strawberry, the the ellagic acid, which is one of the, uh, bioactives found in strawberries, uh, was in the organic part was 30% higher because the ellagic acid is produced by the plant as a wound healing response to heal the area that the bug nibbled on. They make more ellagic acid, like the coffee plant makes more chlorogenic acid. Um, okay. And so, I as I started to realise that this was a universal phenomenon, it's the same thing for brassica. If you have to have, you know, leafy greens, kale, grown in an organic environment, you're going to get more of the sulforaphanes that are beneficial for every aspect, every defense system in our body and our metabolism. I started to realise that this discovery of nature, you know how like Darwin discovered, you know, natural selection by going to the Galapagos and looking at finches and turtles and things like that. Well, look, botanists are really discovering another part of how nature, uh, has developed a program to protect plants that are growing in the most natural environment. By the way, the other thing that has made me more, um, uh, given me higher affinity for organic growing, okay, I I still have a little bit of catch in my chest when I think about paying a lot more money. And so the price has to come down. The governments need to make the price come down. But but also pesticides are not good for our planet. They're not good for our soil. All right? Um, and in some cases, like a strawberry, for example, or an apple, or a peach, the pesticides that are sprayed on actually penetrate the skin. You cannot wash those off. All right? I mean, think about how, if you ever tried skinning a strawberry, forget about it. All right? It never happened. And you're getting, like there's, I think a, I think one study by the University of Massachusetts showed, if you spray with pesticides, 20%, it'll penetrate, the pesticide will penetrate 20% into the skin and stay there. You cannot wash it off. You know, that's enough to convince me that like I'm not, for especially the thin skinned, uh, fruits and vegetables, I, you know, I think I'd rather, I want more of the good stuff, the good polyphenols, and I don't want to be, I definitely don't want to be eating any of those artificial chemicals. We now know that that stuff is going to be bad for our gut microbiome. We know the gut microbiome, gut health protects brain health, protects, you know, immune health, lowers inflammation. So I don't want to go there.
Dr Rupy: I think there's a lot a lot more reasonable approaches now to, uh, any exogenous chemicals, including plastics, uh, that unfortunately are littered throughout our produce and our, um, our bodies as well. There was a study, I think, uh, looking at the, uh, quantity of plastic consumed in a typical year in Europeans and it was around the size of a credit card every single day. And I think there's more and more research looking at the negative effects of plastics in general and I guess, uh, pesticides as well. And and I guess, you know, we really want to take that pragmatic approach, the precautionary approach, uh, before we sort of allow, uh, the contamination of our of our food supply chain, um, with these chemicals without like due diligence of what the long-term consequences are.
Dr William Li: Well, and and this is where policy, you know, like, you know, I I don't like to get into public conversations about, you know, one side of the fence or the other side politically, but I will say anybody who's listening to this or watching this, you know, if you have a voice to support officials who are making governmental policies or rules that help to, um, make our planet healthier, it's likely to also make our bodies healthier as well. To me, if you only had one reason to vote, uh, in a positive direction, regardless of what it is, vote for yourself because that's, that's, you know, like I always vote for myself and I think that that's the reason we need planetary policies. It's not about the country, it's about the whole planet. Better for the planet, better for the plant, better for the plant, better for our person. That's just how it works.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, absolutely. I want to get round to some quick fire questions because I know my audience are dying to ask you a few of these, uh, topics around, um, fat burning foods. Now, we've talked about coffee. I know that's one of your favorite ingredients. What are, let's say, three or four of your favorite fat burning foods? And and perhaps we should preface this, I know I just said quick fire, but perhaps we should preface it by what we mean by fat burning foods as well.
Dr William Li: Okay. So earlier, we were talking about the body like your car that you are filling up with, uh, fuel. The car uses petrol, the body uses food to get its fuel. Whatever you eat is going to be turned into fuel. That fuel gets stored in our, um, muscles and in our body fat. Okay? And, uh, and a lot, many people don't realise this, but I wrote about this in my book, Eat to Beat Your Diet, that, um, our, uh, in your car, your fuel tank is on the side of the car and you put the petrol into a little, through the nozzle into a little hole and you fill it up. The tank fills up with petrol and then the nozzle goes click and now you can't put any more in there. And then you put it away and you drive off, um, uh, into the sunset, okay? Now, in your, in the body, what actually happens is that, uh, we, uh, are pulling over not to the petrol station, we're pulling over to the kitchen table and we're loading up on our fuel. We're what we're a conversation we're having is to please, please load up on higher quality fuel because whether, regardless of what you believe, your body is a Ferrari. So please take care of it as you would, uh, you know, the to make your car the race, to make your body the race car it is. That fuel goes into your fat, um, and stored in your fat. Our fat cells, which are called adipocytes, are actually fuel storage tanks. And actually, fuel, those fuel storage tanks formed when we were still in our mother's womb, okay, uh, in the uterus, um, uh, right next to blood vessels. So, you know, most people don't realise this when because when you step out of the shower and out of the corner of your eye, you see, you know, a lump or a bump on your arm or the muffin top or under your chin, you don't like, you don't like that. That's not where fat started in your body. That healthy fat that's our fuel tank started when we were, when your mom, when your dad's sperm met your mom's egg and you were just a ball of cells, blood vessels were first formed, nerves were formed next, you need circulation, you need electrical signals to power your organs. And then the third thing that formed, third important organ that formed was body fat. These adipocytes formed like bubble wrap around blood vessels. They wrapped around the blood vessel, right? And so, people are listening to me go, that doesn't make sense. I don't have fat around my blood vessel. Yes, you do. That's where they formed. And the reason that fat first formed around blood vessels is because when you eat food, your fuel, the fuel goes into your circulation, your bloodstream, and you need to be able to put the fuel into the fuel tank, which are your fat cells, the adipocytes. So naturally, it makes sense to put the fuel tank right next to where the fuel is running through. Okay. Now, when we go about our ordinary day with normal body weight, this is what's happening. We we eat, we store fuel. When we're eating, our body is focused on storing fuel. When we're not eating, including intermittently fasting when we're sleeping, our body's our metabolism switches gears like in a car, and now we're focused on burning fuel. So yes, we do burn fat, we do burn, we do burn fuel from our fat while we're sleeping. You're not working out, you're not exercising, you're not swimming, you're not lifting, okay? Uh, you're not doing, you're not doing any exertional, you're sleeping and your body, your metabolism is burning body fat. Okay. Now, this is how we're hardwired. Eat, load up fuel, we're focusing on loading up fuel, just like when you're at the gas station, what do you do when you're at the gas station? You turn off the engine. Don't burn the fuel while you're filling up the tank, right? Okay? So, but what do you do when you're done filling up the tank? Turn the car back on and go. So when we're, so when we're not actually loading up on fuel, we're burning it. That's how our body is hardwired. Now, what happens if we ate the, if we all ate the perfect amount every day, just what our body needed, um, uh, to, they call it eucaloric, all right? E-U-caloric means, you know, you're not getting too much, you're not getting too little, it's this would be the idealistic, you know, uh, calorie in, calorie out, if that's all you cared about, you didn't have one extra calorie that you didn't burn that day. It's a complicated mathematical equation and it's not practical and it's not healthy. But if you did that, you know, um, you you wouldn't need to burn, I mean, you would be burning all the fat from your fuel that you would need. You never accumulate any extra fat. Okay? You'd have just the right amount of body fat. That's not reality. In reality, Rupy, and every one of your listeners and viewers knows this, we sometimes eat too much and we sometimes don't eat the right things. All those things conspire to putting more fuel, more low-quality fuel into our body. And what does our body have to do? That's loading into our fuel tanks, which is into our fat. Now, because our fat gets loaded up, we can fill up our, uh, our fuel tanks pretty large. Unlike a car, which has a metal fuel tank, you can't make it, you can't overfill it. If you, uh, if you didn't have the clicker on the fuel tank, uh, what would happen? You fill up the tank, if you if it kept on overloading, it would run right out of the car, down the side of the car, along the wheels, it'd pool around your feet. And what would happen? You'd be standing at the petrol station in a in a pool of a dangerous, toxic, flammable mess. Same thing in the body. If we overloaded our fuel, unfortunately, our body isn't hardwired with a clicker. Okay? We our body is designed by evolution to give us, store as much fuel as possible because we did not always live in a land of abundance where you can drive down to the corner convenience store to buy something to eat. We used to have to like work pretty hard to get our fuel. So if you had it, you ate it. Now, here's the deal. Day after day, week after week, month after month, if we're actually overloading on fuel, the a fat cell, an adipocyte, can expand from its normal state three times, 300% its size. Small fat cells are fuel tank can get big fuel tank. Think about it like a water balloon, right? You remember when you were a kid at a birthday party, you take a small balloon, you could blow it up much larger, okay? And it feels kind of tenuous, it's sloshing around, you know, if you dropped it, it would actually explode. You got to be careful with your big water balloons. That's what happens when we overload in our fuel. Okay? And poor quality fuel will actually allow it to expand even faster. Now, in our body, we don't, we don't, we can overload and spill out our fuel. That happens, uh, when you're when your fat cells are like way overloaded. But our body has this unique ability to make more fuel tanks. Your car can't do it, but our body can. So if you load up on a fat cell and it's completely full, that water balloon stretched to the hilt, is tied off and now you got to get a new one on there. That's what our body does. Our body uses stem cells, adipocyte stem cells. It just grows more fat, grows new fuel tanks. Now new fuel tank, now you can fill that up. Now you can fill up three times larger than it's supposed to be, tie it off. Oh, you're still eating more calories. Let's go take some more fat and make some more fat. So this idea that we, that I went to medical school with like you're born with all the fat cells you ever have and it just they just get bigger, wrong. We now know we can make more and more fat. So you can see now, and I'm hoping that the listeners are getting this, if you have years, a lifetime of overloading your fuel into your fuel tanks and your body's making more fuel tanks, you are just going to have a larger and a a large supply of fat. You've got more fuel than you need and you're carrying it around. All right? And that's why people actually grow this very harmful body fat. And by the way, if you keep on overloading it, keep on overloading it, keep on overloading it, at some point your body, your body's fat system goes, gives up. They're like, I cry uncle, we can't take this anymore. And then you know what the fat does from those fuel tanks? It leaks out. And when fat leaks out, okay, um, it leads to something called lipotoxicity because fat itself when it comes out is toxic. All right? Like like the fuel that comes out of your gas tank. Lipo and your body races in an emergency like a fire engine, like a like a firehouse to put out a fire to try to deal with that. And the body's fire department to try to put out lipotoxicity is in the liver. So the fat gets sequestered, trapped in the liver. Okay? And now the liver becomes fatty liver. And so, as you know, we know as doctors, one of the silent epidemics in modern society is non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. And it's due to overload, fuel overload over the course of a lifetime of eating ultra-processed foods, overloading on calories, not getting enough exercise, putting poor quality fuel, uh, into our bodies. This is what our we're paying with in terms of the health of people in society today. Okay, so back to the original question. What, how do you actually reverse that? How do you prevent that? How do you deal with, um, you know, many of us are walking around, uh, uh, probably with a lot of extra fuel tank, uh, in our body? Well, the good news is our body is also hardwired to burn down body fat. If we eat the right foods, mother nature's pharmacy, some of these bioactives, like chlorogenic acid we talked about, ellagic acid we talked about, anthocyanins in blueberries and strawberries, uh, and blackberries that give them their color, the natural dye. Um, uh, quercetin in onions, allicin in garlic, hydroxytyrosol in extra virgin olive oil. Okay? Um, and I'm I don't want to overwhelm people with chemical names. I just want you to know that we're making these discoveries in modern food as medicine research to find out that these natural chemicals found in the foods that we eat, more when the food is grown in an organic setting, because of the nibbling of the bugs, okay, more of the good stuff, they actually can trigger your body to burn down extra fuel, burn down body fat. Now, how do they do that? There's a lot of different ways to burn down extra body fat. The way, one of the most surprising to me as I was doing my research is that many of these plant-based bioactives, and by the way, I I know, you know, of course, we want to emphasize the importance of eating, um, uh, produce, but even fish containing omega-3 fatty acids, and you can get omega-3s from to a much lesser extent from eating plant-based foods, but omega-3s, okay, um, will also do this, will trigger a kind of fat in your body that is not wiggly, jiggly, not unsightly, not disgust provoking, does not cause the number on your scale to increase, but it is a kind of fat that is a hero kind of fat. So there's good fat and bad fat in our body. And the, first, let me tell you, the good fat is called brown fat. Brown fat is actually the color of the fat. First, brown fat is not close to the skin. Therefore, you can't see it under your chin. You can't see it under your arm. You can't, it's not your muffin top. It's not on your thighs, it's not on your butt. All right? So, brown fat is not there. The hero fat, brown fat, is not close to the skin, it's close to the bone, deep around your neck, under your breast bone, uh, a little bit in your belly, a little bit behind your shoulder blades. In fact, if you were to actually scan the body to look for where the brown fat in, it's kind of like a girdle that sits around our chest area and around our neck, close to the bone. All right. Now, what does brown fat do? Well, brown fat does something called thermogenesis. Its job is to fire up like the gas, uh, range on your in your kitchen if you cook with gas. So what happens when you actually cook with gas, right? You want to heat some soup up, you put the pot on the stove, you you turn on the handle, you go click, click, click, whoosh. Now you got the flame. Now you're heating up the stove. That's what brown fat does. Okay? When you turn on brown fat, and these plant-based bioactives, like ellagic acid, chlorogenic acid, quercetin, I mean, lycopene, tomatoes and onions and strawberries and blueberries and blackberries and and uh, uh, sulforaphanes like kale, cabbage, uh, all those kinds of things, click, click, click, whoosh. They turn on your brown fat. They turn on the fire of your brown fat. Thermogenesis means making heat. Thermo heat, genesis making. Brown fat does thermogenesis. Now, to make any kind of heat, you got to actually burn fuel. Now, in the kitchen, your gas burner draws, uh, gas, okay, natural gas from a tank. It might be in the street, might be on the side of your house or your apartment, but it's drawing that fuel in. If you didn't have fuel, if the gas line wasn't there, you wouldn't you wouldn't be able to heat create the the the fire, the flame, right? Makes total sense. Brown fat is able to create the flame because it actually draws the fuel it needs to create heat from your white fat, from the bad fat, from the excess fat that's accumulated in your body. When your brown fat is triggered and turned on, it siphons off that harmful extra fuel that you've loaded up year after year in your body, or maybe over the holidays, and it burns it off by firing up and creating heat. All right, how does it create heat? How does it create heat? If the fuel is actually coming from harmful fat and your brown fat is like the gas burner, burning it down, consuming the fuel, all right, because you overloaded on it, how does it, how does it actually do that? What's sparking the the the fire? It turns out your mitochondria. Now, some people might have heard about the concept of mitochondria as, uh, uh, for anti-aging and for prevent cell senescence and activating your energy. Exactly. And Rupy, you and I, when we were in med school and doing biochemistry before med school, all those recommendations like we're studying in the mitochondria, you know, the mitochondria is the the battery of all of our human cells. It's a little nuclear fuel tank. It's like a watch battery you put in your watch. It it it has, it's small but mighty. It generates all the energy. Forget about the ATP and the Krebs cycle and all that kind of stuff. Most people are not going to be interested in that. I mean, I'm sure if you're like me, I I could I I'm so glad that I'm not even thinking about that stuff anymore. But I am thinking about mitochondria because brown fat has a lot of mitochondria. Now, mitochondria is the engine that helps to trigger the fuel to burn and create heat. Mitochondria being the fuel cell, creates the heat to burn down the fuel. So you can actually burn away harmful body fat triggered by healthy plant-based foods and the bioactives. Now, why is brown fat brown? Because it turns out that mitochondria have a lot of iron in it. And iron, what happens when you have a lot of iron? You got a pile of nails made of iron, you put it out in the porch, outside, what's going to happen? The silver nails turn brown. Indeed, brown fat has so much mitochondria to be able to fire up the gas range to burn down the extra fuel in your body, that that that it there's a lot of mitochondria with a lot of iron that oxidizes and that's why brown fat is brown. That's why, because it's got these fuel tanks in it that happen to be very, have a lot of iron. And now you'll never forget why brown fat is brown. Yeah. So there are lots of foods and in my book Eat to Beat Your Diet, I list all the foods that can activate them. The good news is that many of these foods are the same foods that you would find in, uh, recipes you would cook from the Asian, uh, food traditions or the Mediterranean food traditions. You know, you're talking about whole plant-based foods, healthy oils, mixing them together, you know, maybe adding a little bit of seafood once in a while, uh, and and you'll get nuts and legumes, all the things that we already know are healthy. Now we're having a new interpretation, a new deeper understanding of like, in addition to just, I don't know, good for gut health or making us feel a little bit better or less saturated fat or whatever, now we know that many of these foods light up our brown fat to burn down the harmful white fat, thereby lowering inflammation. And by the way, as a side effect of all of this, you get better metabolism and more energy. So this is actually the reason to do it. And you'll shrink your waistline and you'll fit into clothing a lot better and you'll look better and you'll feel better and you'll have more cognitive energy, more mental sharpness as well. This is really why the simple question of Dr. Lee, you know, what are the your favorite fat burning foods? I I wanted to explain this because it's not as easy as just putting up five foods. I could do that, but it's much more powerful to explain to people how I learned this, how I arrived at the list of foods and why they're actually good for you. By the way, um, tea and coffee will also activate brown fat.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, absolutely. That's why I'm a big coffee and tea drinker as part of it. And I really appreciate that response because it's really important for people to understand the mechanisms behind which foods can trigger all these very, very complicated pathways that lead to ultimately improving your weight management, improving inflammation levels, preventing the the diseases of modernity. Um, but the other thing that I really appreciate about your books and and your message is that these foods are super accessible as well. They don't have to be particularly exotic. They are littered across most supermarkets and they are simple additions that are cross-culinary. So onions, garlic, chili, uh, uh, ginger, um, all the other plant foods that we've already mentioned, uh, coffee and and tea, like, you know, the surprising benefits of these everyday foods.
Dr William Li: And don't forget chocolate. Don't forget chocolate.
Dr Rupy: Dark chocolate. Chocolate as well. I will I will never forget chocolate. I'm a big chocolate, uh, uh, eater myself, 85% plus and and now cacao actually. I I I do drink a bit of cacao every now and then. I and I I want to bring this, um, because this has been such a full interview and I just I want to talk to you about so many other subjects, but it'd be great to do it in the kitchen where we can actually talk through different foods and and show people on on the channel and and the podcast like what we're talking about and how we would put it into a recipe. But are there any sort of ingredients on the horizon that you're, uh, getting excited about? They don't necessarily need to be exotic, but there might be foods that you perhaps haven't come across before. I'll go first. I mean, cacao for me is something that I've long enjoyed, but I haven't really been drinking it before and I'm enjoying the the, uh, process of experimenting with different flavors and putting them to, you know, a a sweet drink that's actually quite bitter and actually has those health benefits of flavonoids and blood pressure lowering and all the rest of it. Um, are there any ingredients that you're sort of experimenting with or perhaps you haven't come across before?
Dr William Li: Well, you know, I I, uh, I regularly experiment with different foods. So in my kitchen, mostly because I enjoy doing that for eating purposes, but some of the things that when I when I find that there's a food I'm playing around with that has a new property, that makes me doubly interested in it. Um, I'll I'll tell you one. There's one called, uh, persimmon. Kaki, I think you find in, uh, in the Mediterranean. It's a, looks like a tomato, about the size of an apple. Uh, it's got kind of a firm skin and it's a kind of firm fruit until it's actually ripe, in which case it gets really soft. And when and the skin can be a little astringent, but when it's really ripe and soft inside, kind of like an over, like a super overripe tomato, you can cut it and literally with a spoon, you can eat it like pudding. And it's bright red. It's, uh, incredibly, it's got a very nice sweetness to it, mellow sweetness. It's not overly sweet. Um, it's actually the, um, it's one of the national fruits, I think of of Japan. Um, uh, uh, persimmon, but you can find it in the Mediterranean, so it's cross-cultural. Um, but there's, uh, there's carotenoids in it, lycopene, beta-cryptoxanthin. Uh, persimmons actually have been shown to actually improve your immune system and good for your gut health and also improve your metabolism by by activating brown fat. Now, there's so many different ways you can eat persimmon. Like I'm I'm still at the, um, joyful discovery of just letting it ripen and finding different varieties and just eating it with a spoon or cutting it. Love it. But I do know that there are, I was just talking to a, a chef yesterday who was telling me, oh, you can make a jelly out of it. Um, uh, you can make a puree out of it for the, you know, so you can put a bed of other food on top, uh, for it. So I'm designing a meal for a charity event. My good friend from college, uh, in New York City, it's to celebrate, um, a dance institute that actually, um, called City Step, that brings youth, uh, and allows them to discover self-expression and creativity through body movement. It's been around for, uh, 40 years. Anyway, so there's a big charity event, a celebration. So I designed, they wanted to do a healthy menu in celebration of the body. And so one of the things that I wanted to throw in there, um, is, um, oh, I'll tell you. Uh, so, so, uh, I wanted to throw in some persimmon. Uh, so we're going to do, uh, a salad with, uh, a kind of, um, radicchio, uh, called Castelfranco. It's a very, very mild, like, nice. Oh, you like that? Oh, man. That is a, it is almost, it's sweetish, sweetish. It's very delicate. It's got beautiful little speckles of color in it. Um, it really makes a salad much more than a salad. Um, and, uh, and we're going to, we're going to dress it up with some persimmon, uh, in it as well. So, anyhow, the, I, so that's an ingredient that I I found, um, new and delightful because of its health benefits. But I'll tell you, um, something old that has something new to it for me are strawberries. I know we've talked about strawberries a couple of times on this. But, um, I was astounded to learn just a few months ago that strawberries are also, that we know good for immune health and inflammation, lowering inflammation and and gut health, uh, and and good for your circulation. Strawberries are good for brain health as well. Brain health. There was a study published by the University, by researchers from the University of Cincinnati in the United States, where they took a look at 30, uh, people who are middle-aged, men and women, with mild cognitive deficits. All right? So we're not talking about full-on dementia. We're talking about people who are having real trouble remembering things. Okay? If if anybody listening to this sounds like you, you know, what was that again? You know, there's a there's a continuum. Uh, but what was interesting is that they they and this is a small study, but it's a clinical study. They actually compared, uh, they they did two groups. One had a placebo, um, uh, uh, one had strawberries. And they took fresh ripe strawberries, they dried them up, they crushed them into a powder, and they had them put them into a drink. So it's really one cup of strawberries a day. And they found after six weeks of eating just one cup of strawberries a day, that memory improved in this group compared to the control, and depression due to and frustration, lack due to the lack of being able to remember, decreased as well. And they were able to perform cognitive functions better. Strawberries, one cup a day. That's eight medium-sized strawberries. Eight. Right? So, like to me, like I I I always feel a sense of elation when there's a food that is accessible, that tastes good, that I already work with, that there's a new benefit. And and and you don't need to eat a lot of it. Uh, so, anyhow, like those are those are two foods that have come up recently.
Dr Rupy: I love those. I love those, uh, both the one like a bit more exotic and one, uh, a lot more accessible. It's great. And you know what, there's there's not many doctors unfortunately talking about this food as medicine practice, the appreciation of both the culinary and the nutritional medicine values of food. So I really appreciate your work, William. You know that. We've met a number of times now on the podcast and outside of the podcast. And I'm I'm looking forward to the next time that we'll meet in person, whether that be in the kitchen or on the podcast. Hopefully it'll be in the kitchen because there's definitely some interesting things that we could do. I you just mentioned the supper club that you're doing. We did one for a good friend of mine who's, um, a gynecologist, uh, who who just put out a book on, um, problem periods for women. And we designed a supper club menu around, uh, some thoughts around, you know, adding fennel because that's been shown to improve dysmenorrhea. We added beans and legumes, we added certain iron-rich vegetables, we added some seafood, we added omega-3 rich ingredients and, you know, just starting a conversation about how your food is the gateway to improving health overall in a preventative manner and potentially even in a managerial point of view as well. So there's definitely some interesting things that we can do there. Um, and I'd love to, I'd love to talk about that further when when you're next down.
Dr William Li: We should definitely do it. Nothing would be more fun for me than to get together with a fellow physician who also has a passion for cooking and the knowledge of, uh, and the creativity to be able to, um, mix it up and and do fun things together. I, you know, when I talk about my style, when people say, Dr. Lee, what's your diet? I always tell people, I'm not on a diet. You know, um, diets to me are impossible to stick to. They're all about extremes. They're more about philosophy, uh, uh, and ideology, uh, and and, you know, sometimes a little bit of science, but they're more importantly, they're just really tough to stick to. I'm somebody who enjoys my food. I don't want to fear my food. I want to enjoy it. I have a great respect for ingredients. I love the flavors of food and I love to, I wouldn't say I don't like to pig out, but I do love to, uh, sample foods and have my taste buds lit up. It's it's part of my quality of life. And so I tell people, I don't have a diet I'm on, but I have an approach to my food, my eating. And the approach that I take is I call it the Mediterranean way of eating. Um, I lived in the Mediterranean, I've been Asian background, I also lived in Asia. Um, if I go to a restaurant and I'm looking at a lots of choices on a menu, I will automatically gravitate towards the more Mediterranean or the more Asian, uh, choices. If I'm entertaining in my home or cooking dinner just for myself, I'm thinking, what should I have? What should I have? What should I make? I'll automatically gravitate towards those genres of ingredients and and techniques of preparation. Um, if I'm, uh, at a buffet, uh, you know, and I've got all this a huge spread, uh, of choices, uh, what you could actually have. Um, you know, recently I did a little video, uh, I went to, um, see, uh, an incredible performance of U2, the rock band U2 at the sphere, which is this epic, um, uh, uh, live performance with, uh, huge definition and audio visual. Now look, if you're in Las Vegas, it's impossible to avoid the classic Las Vegas buffet. I did a video literally because because I was overwhelmed and I was watching people pile as much food on their plate and it just made me realise, OMG, there needs to be, this is, this is a teaching moment. So I took out a video, I busted out a video and I did a video of like walking through the buffet line saying, this is good, this is not so good. Don't take this much, take this much. You know, blah, blah, blah. And so I always think that, but I, what the things that I focused on and gravitated on, thought about, were the Mediterranean preparations or the Asian preparations. So my style of eating is Mediterranean. I challenge people who are listening or watching this to go to a restaurant and say, if you went to a Mediterranean restaurant, that there's nothing that you could find on the menu that you wouldn't like, or an Asian restaurant, there's like, ah, nothing I can find here. I think most people like something in these genres. And that makes the food of the the idea of healthy eating much more approachable. It's something that is pleasurable to do. You can embrace a healthy diet. You don't have to fear your food. You can lean into it. And as I say, you can love your food to love your health.
Dr Rupy: Absolutely, absolutely. Honestly, I can't wait till the next time. Lee, you are an absolute inspiration. Um, and, uh, yeah, I can't wait till we get to enjoy a meal together and maybe even cook together as well.
Dr William Li: Let's let's do it.
Dr Rupy: Let's do it. Awesome.
