Kind: captions
Language: en
hey there it's dr william lee physician
scientist and author of eat to beat
disease and i'm here
with my new video
series it's really a fun thing that i'm
doing with my friends and my colleagues
and it's real conversation between two
people that you might have seen
on a stage or on a program or at a
summit and i what i wanted to be able to
do is to to bring people in on the
conversations that we really have uh
when we're actually just you know
ourselves and so today i'm i'm super
excited to be joined by my friend and
colleague dr steven gundry um i i can't
believe anybody would not know who dr
gundry is he uh
is a pioneer uh in talking about um uh
the uh healthy nature of foods the
surprises that we actually seen and
recently he has really gotten into one
of my favorite absolute favorite areas
which is olive oil and so we're gonna
talk a little bit about this and so um
uh steve thanks for uh joining and i i
thought you know as part of sort of like
the real conversation
um
i just learned that you came back from
the south of france so
uh i'm a big fan of that area of the
world i've traveled there many many
years i've got lots of good friends
there and one of the things that i love
about that part of the mediterranean is
i'm always
surprised and delighted by something
delicious that i can find there to eat
and that's also healthy so what did you
find would tell me tell me about your
trip
well you know one of the interesting
things about
both south france and italy and we spend
actually a lot of time in both places
i think i have yet to have a salad at a
restaurant that didn't have
uh
chicory
forms of vegetables like radicchio like
trivia like uh belgian endive like
frisay and chicory
and i i and i'll bet you that you had
the exact same experience and you know
these guys are to me are so important
because they contain an amazing fiber or
inulin
and
inulin is as you know as i know is so
great for your gut microbiome and it's
always fascinated me that you go
anywhere in south france and italy and
you're gonna find you know
chicory family of vegetables in in your
salad and it's like
hey how come every one of these salads
has these
you start looking at the literature and
you go oh you know these guys knew this
long before you and i knew this
i'm telling you that's one of the things
i love about the mediterranean is that
the
foods that you get there at any place
not a not necessarily a fancy but any
place
they
use
just intuitive combinations of
ingredients they've been passed down for
generations without a lot of science but
just intuition of what actually works
and i i love that about good healthy
fresh eating that you know tastes great
right and and you know by the way like
the the chicories and stuff you know
they're they're it's so much more
interesting to eat than just like loose
leaf lettuce that you tear up uh and
then throw a little dressing on right
oh yeah
and you know and they there's an
expression that i use
you would back
more bitter more better
and you know they they love these you
know bitter greens and bitter foods and
and brightly colored you know you you
always eating the rainbow there is you
your spouse and i do it's it's just
you see it in action every day and
you're right you don't have to eat at a
fancy no and so so so
help me understand like i'm just
picturing this chick curry salad you
you've eaten over and over again
recently what else goes into it tell me
about the other stuff in the salad well
as you well know um there's there's
going to be a
bottle of olive oil on the table
everywhere you go and there's usually
going to be a bottle of balsamic vinegar
or another form of vinegar on the table
everywhere you go
and there's actually
you may have noticed there's a pecking
order
depending on how often you go to a
restaurant of which olive oil you're
going to get the oh is that right oh
yeah the the touristas and i know just
about every olive oil in france and
italy now and the teresa's will get um
a fairly mild olive oil but kind of the
more you show up there
they start bringing out the better stuff
yeah yeah they they upgrade you and you
know it and it gets more biting
and you can tell by the taste or do they
actually give it to you in a different
bottle no well you know yeah different
bottles but you can really tell by the
taste and
you know if
if it makes you cough as i say that uh
that's what you wanna you know that's
then you know you're getting all these
polyphenols
you know i mean and that's the other
thing is just like what you're talking
about the
the the the taste sensation
of the chicory the radicchio it's a
little bitter you've got the bite of the
olive oil sort of the front taste and
also the back taste of it um i love the
idea of the the balsamic so are there
anything else other things that go into
the salads that you discovered this time
well you know uh a lot of places now
it's surprising me like we'd be at one
particular hotel in
cup frog
and now
they have a half sliced avocado
as one of the things you can just you
know
pick up um from you know going going
through the buffet and that's actually
fairly new but
and it's drizzled with olive oil and
it's got a little sea salt on it and i
thought wow now i don't even have to you
know ask for it oh do you happen to have
an avocado right right well and you know
like what i what i love about what you
just said is that because i can picture
in my head it's super simple
half an avocado
not taken out a little sea salt and
olive oil like that's all you need just
take a spoon
and
that's it
yeah
so you know simplicity
is something that i really appreciate
about uh grapefruit i just myself got
back from i was in the mediterranean
doing research on my next book
and i
i was in greece and i was looking at
what they actually put in a greek salad
right so if you go
in america you order a greek salad it's
kind of a big deal and then when you
look at it it's kind of like
this looks like any american salad that
they threw a couple of olives in oh yeah
a couple of chunks of feta cheese that's
right and it's probably not actually
feta cheese it's probably made from cow
milk right yeah yeah
and you know it was like the first time
i ordered it again recently i looked at
it and i thought you know this is
this is the real greek salads elemental
it's got some
cucumbers it's got some
volcanic tomatoes just a little slim
sliver of red onion i mean all these
bioactives that are in there
um some
local wild organic
oregano sprinkled on there capers from
the volcano you know just i mean local
stuff
brined and put in there you get your
quercetin
all in there and you know like and even
if you didn't know any science which you
know obviously you and i
it's hard for us to not uh use our
spectacles to look at the scientific
goodies yeah but right like that's how i
navigate my i'm sure you did the same
way
but honestly it just tastes so damn good
yeah and you know a lot of those salads
over there they use personally
as a part and you know people go wait a
minute that's the weed that grows on the
sidewalk everywhere right it's also you
know moss rose or portulaca and i mean
purslane is just one of these other
compounds that you go holy cow you know
there's there's all this alpha linolenic
acid in purslane and a great deal of
fiber as well and so you start going
why are you know why are they eating
this weed you know what why would you
even you know put this weed in your
salad and it always you know like you it
prompts me to go okay why are they
eating this weed
and you know that that that one of the
things that i always look for in a menu
when i
am doing my research is they call them
wild greens the greek name they call it
horta and basically they're they're
literally
going out
more or less along the side of the road
or the back of the yard or
the hillside and just like ripping them
out of the ground cleaning it off and
then sauteing it very simply with a
little bottle of olive oil just a little
heat
maybe uh maybe a little garlic maybe
some spices and that's it like and they
present it to you it looks as beautiful
as if it were you know coming out of
some fancy restaurant and but it's as
simple as actually what mother nature
delivered like literally it could have
been from just 10 feet away in the
restaurant
yeah and you know you mentioned red
onions it's like and you see red onions
all the time in you know in southern
europe and it's like
well okay why the red onion um why isn't
this big slab of white onion that we
have you know in the united states well
like you said there's far more
polyphenol bioactive compounds and red
onions plus they're milder and you can
you can get that onion taste without
blowing your mouth right
one you know the other thing about
red onions that i've been sort of diving
into and doing some research about this
all right
and i like to cook i don't know about
you but oh yeah so
so well first of all here's something i
learned i um i happen to know
the chief scientific officer
uh that used to work at the usda and now
he works for
a produce organization kind of a
nonprofit trade organization
and so i asked him i said is there
something that i should know about food
safety that most people wouldn't know
like i'm pretty savvy i think i'm pretty
savvy i like to be in the kitchen and he
said here's the thing
do you wash your onions
and i'm like sometimes i do but usually
i don't he's like you should definitely
wash your onions because that thing's
been rolling around the dust in the
ground and everywhere else in a truck in
in the storage and i'm like well what do
you mean like wash your onions aren't we
just peeling off the show he said yeah
but you know like think about it if
you're actually taking a knife and
you're peeling off that stuff you're
just introducing the dirt if you were a
surgeon which you are i'm not and you
are saying like you know i'm not going
to prep the skin i'm just going to cut
right in with a butter knife you know
like it's it's or a knife that it's
coming out
that's coming out of an un uh unused
dishwasher that you know like you
wouldn't be doing it so i'd like okay i
get it so one thing i learned about that
is like rinsing the onion for about 60
seconds but then the second thing i
didn't realize is that a lot of the um
quercetin that's found in the onion
right so um i used to
uh take the the papery stuff off the
onion and then i would just like you
know usually peel off some chunks on the
outside whatever and he said no no no
actually there's a lot of quercetin on
the outer layers
so it's more concentrated on the outer
layers and it gets more
less concentrated more dilute on the
inside so now what i do is not do i wash
my onions but i actually make sure i
don't throw away
some of the outer layer
so i didn't know that did you know that
good tip no
yeah
and by the way if you take a look at the
european salad so this is what i did
when i was in mediterranean i was
looking for what layer they were
actually putting in the salad and mostly
it's that outer layer it's got more
pigment to it
and so i'm like
they actually know like right so again
the same thing is like
i don't know how come we don't know but
they don't
well because uh you know that's a whole
nother subject but they actually honor
their elders and they honor their you
know the village elders and their
parents and their grandparents and their
great grandparents
and you know these these oral traditions
are actually passed down from generation
and
these wives tales uh usually have you
know a very good
scientific basis that yeah you know you
and i like to discover but they've known
for
eons
they don't need to discover they don't
need to discover it because it's been
passed down
right you know a fun thing
recently and maybe
i did not know this but i know
particularly in italy um they do eat a
lot of beans um and they soak their
beans for actually a considerable period
of time
and like how like how long so at least
24 hours some of them soak them for 48
hours
and
because
yeah i'll go we'll go to a little
village and
find a chef in a little cafe and start
talking why you do this what are you
doing right right right and
so
i discovered a paper recently that
beans like other things actually have
their own set of yeasts on the
individual beans and when you soak them
they ferment
and it turns yeah
and so the longer you soak them the more
the fermentation process actually breaks
down the lectins and beans one of my
favorite subjects yeah and so i said son
of a ghana i talk i tell people we eat
fermented foods all the time right
and yet i never even thought that the
reason they're soaking the beans was to
start the fermentation process and in
fact you see you see this foam you know
in the water or when you're saying you
don't you don't think about it yeah i
don't even think about it no
son of a gun and so there's this paper
saying oh look there's all these
lactobacilli and all these other
bacteria that actually ferment the beans
for you and i go you know how do these
guys get so smart well you know i i
think what it is is that we're using
like folks like you and i and the people
that we work with we're using the power
and the tools of modern science to
basically simply rediscover it's kind of
like an archaeology of sorts right oh
yeah it's been known we are just blowing
the dust off the cover and opening it
back up to see what was inside right
uh and having a modern understanding of
course i i love that so when you um
when you are in the mediterranean do you
are are you do you stick with the purely
vegan diet are you
what what other what other if not then
what are the goodies that you have well
yeah so you know i i classify myself as
a veg aquarian
and by
by that i mean i i eat lots of plants
but i actually on the weekend my wife
and i
supplement our diet with wild shellfish
and wild fish and we do that for a
purpose
uh i'm a i'm a big fan of a class of
phospholipids that
make
plasmalogins um
that you i know are aware of and
one of the best sources of plasmalingens
are
shellfish
particularly mollusks and bivalves
and it's it it's always entertaining to
me that these things feature very
prominently in in the cuisine of
of of the mediterranean um so what what
from your perspective what are the
what are some of the most
uh striking health
benefits of that
yeah great question
well you know the these phospholipids uh
have become very intriguing to me
because
in in alzheimer's research we know that
one of the things that's absent
or very sparse in the brain of
alzheimer's patients
are this class of phospholipids that are
called plasmalogens
and there's been some very elegant
studies particularly in japan
looking at supplementing the diet
with
plasmalogins from scallops
in in mild cognitive and bait impairment
patients and these are the by the way
these are the big scallops right the sea
scallops yeah sea scallops
and the tiny tiny yeah not the little
base alps that you guys eat up there
um but you know they're also present in
all the other shellfish um
another interesting place speaking of
why do people eat these things are seeds
oh i love sea cucumbers yeah well sea
cucumbers are a rich source of these
phospholipids that we
really don't have in our diet anymore
and so what what the heck i you know i
like i like my i like my brain and you
know i i want to why not yeah i want to
keep it working but
did you eat sea cucumber in the
mediterranean no
they don't they didn't that's in asia
yeah that's in asia but yeah
yeah but they they use far more uh
shellfish and mollux
what what and you know what i love um
that you know when i i'm doing research
in the mediterranean i love to go to
their
seafood markets and ash markets and wet
markets and one thing that always blows
me away um
is the
diversity and a variety of shellfish
that you can't get at home
right so we get what do you get you get
like steamers and you get mussels and
you know a couple of crabs but you know
like when you go to these places and you
see all these um it's like a shellfish
going to a shellfish collector store
live whole
and and just so mesmerizing to me um
like okay so shellfish how how do you
like to have them cooked how did you
have the meat
well it again it depends on where you go
but a lot of times you know they'll
bring out these towers like you talk
about and there's like
you know there's there's 10 different
little cockles and you know and they
give you a little bitty welks and they
give you these little forks and you go
i'm not going to you know how that's a
lot of work
but you know it's interesting it is a
lot of work to
eat shellfish
you know we forget how easy we make it
for ourselves whenever
we're eating oh i want popcorn shrimp
that'll be good for me
no
that's true or fried chicken in a bucket
like that yeah
you know but give me the chicken tenders
no it's actually that's a good that's a
really good point you know one of my
favorite ways of actually cooking
shellfish is um i learned this from a
friend of mine who's a professional chef
if you have a just a griddle or a
plancha
and all you've got to do is put a little
bit of olive oil and i didn't realize
this but the this whole issue about the
smoke point of olive oil it's all kind
of crap i mean you can cook olive oil
any reasonable temperature is fine and
in fact fun fact it is actually the
least
oxidizable of any oil
exactly even it's even better than
coconut oil yeah i know yeah and the
smoke point has nothing to do everybody
oh it's oxidizing no it's horrible no no
the the polyphenols and the extra virgin
olive oil protects the oil at heat yeah
right so it's so it's so amazing i want
to come back to olive oil in a second
but so you know i love to just put a
little olive oil put the shellfish down
yeah let them just let and you can put a
little cover on top of it and they will
just pop
open when they're done and they release
their briny juices yep
so delicious
and a lot of you know a la plancha like
you say
you see that so many places yeah
exactly all right let's talk about olive
oil because i i noticed that you know
i've been i've been following you of
course
and um because who doesn't and there's
all this information that you've been
talking about olive oil how did you get
into olive oil
well uh one of my
expressions from long ago is the only
purpose of food is to get olive oil in
your mouth and that was actually
based on looking at very long-lived
cultures particularly in the
mediterranean yeah and some of these
cultures use a liter of olive oil per
week
which is about 10 to 12 tablespoons a
day and
there's been several very good olive oil
studies i think the best one was the
predimed study where um and i think that
that's a i thought it was a very well
designed study yeah maybe you could
argue about it
that's a study from spain
that looked at how people actually live
their lives and eat their food but they
designed it to really track um the diet
by categories of ingredients including
olive oil and then they looked at
important health outcomes that we all
care about and then they found the
patterns so what what what patterns do
you think people need to know about from
about olive oil what's good about it
well you know they looked at multiple
patterns and they basically took 65 year
old in year old individuals who had
coronary heart disease
and they
made one group use a liter of olive oil
per week and they actually made people
bring their you know jar or bottle
yeah the empty one and exchange it at
the at the clinic
uh which is real better control than a
lot of experimental studies and they
followed them for five years and
the original plan was just to look at
coronary disease and there was actually
a tremendous benefit in
lessening a new
event from the outwell group
but then one of the things that really
caught my eye and they had lots of
little sub
variants that they published on one that
caught my eye was memory
and
the olive oil group at the end of five
years
actually had improved memory
compared to when they started at age 16
yeah there you go that's better that's
better that's better than before not
less worse exactly and the other group
were
worse you know they were worse which one
would expect okay they're now 70 and
blah blah blah but better you know five
years on it's like you know what that
that's like lengthening telomeres as
opposed to just slowing them down yeah
exactly exactly like you know and you
know
as you know one of the things that you
and i share in common is that like you
know our background isn't like serious
hardcore research for you at the nih
yeah
and and you know and and
you know we don't expect
as biologists doing medical research to
see reversal or improvement from
baseline
our our training shows us in disease
models that you know kind of the best we
can hope for is less bad slowing things
down like that's the expectation of
science but when like what you were just
describing when we see something
improving
that means that we got to pay attention
to what's going on
yeah that's exactly right and so so then
of course you go all right
oleic acid which is you know the major
monounsaturated fat in olive oil isn't
particularly interesting as a fat it's a
monounsaturated fat
and i had the pleasure a few years ago
of talking to the head of the olive oil
council in italy who's a physician
and he says you know
it's not a particularly interesting fact
but it's what it's carrying that's what
we're realizing you know all these
polyphenols
that it's just an agent to get
polyphenols delivered
it's a carrier it's a carrier and he
says we we
forget about oleic acid yeah it's in
lots of other stuff too but it's hydroxy
tyrosine yeah actually tyrosine so
here's what you're here's what you just
said
food is just a carrier for olive oil
olive oil it's just a carrier for poly
females like hydraulic entire cells yeah
and they're you know and there's
multiple other ones but
that's like that's like the russian doe
right so basically
that it's a trojan horse of goodness
delivering the polyphenols that is
really truly amazing so do you have your
own olive oil now is that what you did
well yeah but it is a fascinating story
um we got
it's a great story you'll love this uh
it goes right up our alley so
you and i know
that in general great wines come from
stressed vines
they are
in rock they're underwater they're often
at high elevation exposed to sunlight
and the more the plant is stressed the
more polyphenols that the plant uses to
protect itself and its grapes
and so there's a there's a young man by
the name of other maine who lives in
morocco whose family is fourth
generation olive oil producers they
actually own
a million two hundred thousand olive
trees
and his
he's a wine snob and he approached his
father
and he says you know i'll bet you
that olives would respond to the same
stresses that grapes are and i bet you
we could get a much higher polyphenol
content in ours if we stressed them and
he said would you
let me do it
in the day
how did so how did he stress them oh so
he goes out in the myrtle of the
moroccan desert
finds
rock
and
it's near the atlas mountains and it's
really hot so he plants the olive trees
in rows just like vines rather than yeah
and he grows them in rows like vines he
grows them in rock he underwaters them
it's hot in the rock in the middle
and so it takes five years to get a crop
and
it's such a it's actually a great story
so he gets his olive oil press
and he takes it in to the local
olive oil guy gets it pressed he takes
it to his dad and he says dad you know
look at this this is great and his dad
tastes it he says this is horrible this
isn't even extra virgin olive oil son
you're a failure
so he takes it to the local
certification guy and he certifies it as
extra virgin he says but you know this
is really interesting stuff he said
would you mind if we send it up to paris
to
the olive oil yeah to analyze it and so
he gets a call
from paris a couple weeks later says hey
are you the guy with the olive oil from
morocco yes
he says
what the heck are you doing this stuff
has 30 times more polyphenols than we've
ever tested in ever in any olive oil
what the heck are you doing
that's the so that's the mic drop right
yeah basically the the the the lab in
paris that had no skin in the game had
no idea what was being said it was a
blinded blindness yeah yeah right yeah
just came up with a number and they know
what all the other numbers look like for
regular olive oils they test correct and
they found something different so what
about the taste what is it what was the
well
and he so anyhow so his dad said okay
smart guy you did it
but who's going to buy this
and so that's you that's me so i get i
literally get a cold call from this guy
because he had been at a trade show in
in france and he was telling him about
this he says you know
i did it but who wants this he says you
know there's a guy that you need to look
up and he's dr gundry because he's a nut
about polyphenols
so i get a cold call from this nice
young man and the next thing i know i'm
in a plane over to morocco i'm going i
i got to see this for myself
and
it yeah so and then i saw his production
process and he presses actually in the
fields it's a great story so i said
done deal i'll take it and wow and now
it's actually one of our biggest selling
products what is it can you hold it up
let me look can i tell you yeah so it's
do you have a polyphenol yeah
polyphenol rich olive oil from gundry md
wow
i got to get you some
and
fantastic and so the cool thing about
this is all right so you're supposed to
have a liter of olive oil per week
the polyphenols in here all you need is
a tablespoon a day
okay so you can do that
so you can you know you can have it as a
shot you can put it on your salad you
it's easy to do
and um so my job is to get olive oil
into people and if just a tablespoon
will get you the hydroxytyrosol that
would be in you know
a leader
can i ask you what is the varietals name
that they planted do you happen to know
that i don't know it off the top of my
head but now you've got me curious i i'm
sure i know it or knew it but it's one
of those things that left well you know
the the reason is that there have been
some really nice studies looking at high
polyphenol like within the mediterranean
the highest polyphenol uh mono varietals
and they found that korneke in a
peloponnese oh yes
uh that picuol in spain and mariolo and
umbria all have you know markedly higher
levels so sort of the the best of the
best but it would be really interesting
if they planted those naturally high
polyphenol
mono varietals and stuck them in the
desert so could you find would you like
to find out
yeah i will find out we should see it's
easy to do
let's um let's do that in fact it'd be a
lot of fun to actually even collaborate
on um
maybe maybe like a comparative research
study we can find some other olive oils
and just kind of see what the graph
looks like yeah you know
that that would be an awful lot of fun
that you do with you okay so listen um i
i know your time is so valuable i i
thank you so much for having this
conversation
tell me about um
where
where can people find out more about you
your olive oil your amazing books like
where do we go where do people go well
you can go to dr gundry.com you can go
to my uh supplement food company
gundrymd.com
you can find me on instagram facebook
i've got two
youtube channels you can find me on the
dr gundry podcast we've had the pleasure
of having you there and
vice versa
and so and you get books wherever books
are sold but
please go to your local bookseller they
were decimated during covet and anything
we can do to keep them alive is greatly
appreciated yeah and that goes back to
that generations old traditions right
like where
books you know by the way an interesting
thing is like a printed book can last
for thousands of years
um you know a cd only lasts like 15
years and you know something on a flash
drive is even shorter so you know go
back to
the basics and i think the the the
people that sell these books are are so
they're they're precious
people in our society we've got to kind
of keep them kind of keep them going
well well that's great and um listen and
you know i'm big passion for food and
health and polyphenols and olive oil and
so for anybody who wants to actually get
more information about food as medicine
and food and health
please come to my website it's dr
william lee dr drwilliamli.com
you can find me on instagram facebook
twitter tick tock um like you know i i
got one and i got more than a million
views on one of the videos from my tech
talks like who would have thought but
yeah i know i'm i'm trending on tick
tock now it's like really it's it's
amazing it's
it's quite amazing but you know like i
think what's amazing is that it's
because
someone like you like the stuff that we
were just talking about like that's
that's the stuff that is not just fun
and it's not
funny but it's really valuable for
people to have and you know it's like
that light bulb going off your head hey
if i planted olives in the moroccan
desert and it actually has you know huge
numbers of polyphenols like that's a
that's a good little tip but please come
to my website sign up for um my
newsletter you can find out about master
classes that i give i've actually done
an online course to really help people
do a deep dive if they're really
interested in this and i mean and you
know what i love about just our
conversation uh dr gundry is that you
know we're kindred spirits we're both
researchers we're both doctors
we were created out of that same factory
that pumps out md's and yet you know
like we went and did something a little
bit different yeah yeah and and listen
and a lot of people don't know this but
uh your birthday
is july 11th and it happens to be
national polyphenol day right it is
i i want
people to take a shot of olive oil uh uh
which i have here i'm gonna do i'm gonna
toast you in advance and um and then use
a hashtag which is a hashtag national
polyphenol day tag you on social media
and um we should actually toast
to longevity and good health yeah and
what better way with polyphenols and
olive oil cheers
ah
thank you very much we'll see you again
soon thanks for having me good to see
you again take care bye