#1546 Smart Bites: Processed Foods and Their Impact
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Macros – personalizing intake
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Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.
Welcome to my nutrition series with Jenny Smith. Jenny and I are going to in very clear and easy to understand ways walk you from basic through intermediate and into advanced. Nutritional ideas, we're going to tie it all together with type one diabetes. Talk about processed foods and how you can share these simple concepts with the people in your life, whether it's your children, other adults or even seniors, besides being the person you've heard on the bold beginnings and Pro Tip series and so much more, Jennifer Smith is a person living with type one diabetes for over 35 years. She actually holds a bachelor's degree in Human Nutrition and biology from the University of Wisconsin. She's a registered and licensed dietitian, a certified diabetes educator. She's a trainer on all kinds of pumps and CGM. She's my friend, and I think you're going to enjoy her thoughts on better eating. If this is your first time listening to the Juicebox Podcast and you'd like to hear more, download Apple podcasts or Spotify, really, any audio app at all, look for the Juicebox Podcast and follow or subscribe. We put out new content every day that you'll enjoy. Want to learn more about your diabetes management. Go to Juicebox podcast.com up in the menu and look for bold Beginnings The Diabetes Pro Tip series and much more. This podcast is full of collections and series of information that will help you to live better with insulin. Nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the ever since 365 you can experience the ever since 365 CGM system for as low as $199 for a full year visit ever since cgm.com/juicebox for more details and eligibility. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes and their mini med 780 G system designed to help ease the burden of diabetes management, imagine fewer worries about Miss boluses or miscalculated carbs thanks to meal detection technology and automatic correction doses. Learn more and get started today at Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox Jenny, we are back talking about everyone's favorite topic, nutrition,
Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:42
it's my favorite. Well, it's one of my favorites. I have any favorite topics, but nutrition, we're
Scott Benner 2:47
onto our second part here. We broke the first module up into two episodes. But the second module we're gonna call intermediate nutrition. This is for ages eight and up, teenagers, adults seeking to expand their knowledge. And again, I'm just going to let you talk, so you jump in Absolutely.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:03
So I like how we've kind of broken these up, mainly because it gives a base to start with. That's my goal. Is a base to start and then build on the base, right? So now that we understand those big macronutrients and kind of a general idea of why to eat all the different foods, from vitamins, minerals, water, fiber, kind of standpoint, a big question that always comes up when I get to talk to people, is okay, but I'm eating all of these things, right? I'm eating all of the different food groups, and I need to understand, or I believe that they need to understand, how much of it do you need to take in, right? So just because you have, let's say, a balance you don't, maybe need three of the burgers and four salads. Does that make sense? It's like, Great, I'm eating really good food. Or, baby, you're not eating great food. But it's, it's quantity, I guess, is the base. The baseline here is, how much is going in, and how much is your body using, and where is that use going? Because there are two different reasons that we take in food. Do you know the two reasons?
Scott Benner 4:13
Point I'm going to say energy and like carbohydrates, energy, and then like building blocks, like nutritional building blocks, the I'm definitely, I'm not right about this close. I think you're kind of skirting, okay. I don't have the words, maybe, right, your
Jennifer Smith, CDE 4:32
your explanation is kind of what I'm getting at. It's the what we take in has kind of two purposes, energy to kind of fuel everything that we need to do in a day, inclusive of adding exercise and all that. But then the other piece, you said building blocks, and I think of it more as what's the baseline of what our body needs in order to just function if we seriously were just sitting on a couch all day long? Yeah, and this is the big term. It's called BMR, or basal metabolic rate. Essentially, it's kind of how much our body just needs at rest in order to fuel, you know, the lungs to do what they do, and the heart to pump. And, you know, just structural changes, basic functions, right? All of the cells to turn over the right way, etc. So I think you had a gist of halfway there. You're kind of there, by the
Scott Benner 5:28
way, the thing you were talking about a second ago, about, like, you know, you need something that's good for you, but you can eat too much of it. You can also, I think, have too little, right? Like, so you could say, like, oh, I have protein in my diet every day. But you might not as an example, like you're you might have some, but not enough and correct? Yeah, okay.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:45
In fact, I think you know, eons ago what we got away from understanding the overall concept of balance, and we focused a lot on carbohydrates, right? What was that like the 80s and 90s? If I'm remembering correctly, carbohydrates were get away from fat. Fat is horrible. It's the evil thing. So let's eat carbohydrates. And so then we had all these foods that were very maximally processed, but they were carbohydrates, so they must be grateful. You
Scott Benner 6:16
must see this argument online, right? Like somebody says, I think I'm going to try a lower carb diet, and it will only take eight seconds for someone to say, your kids can't grow without carbs. And then I'm like, I think that everybody has a point, and nobody understands it well enough to articulate it to each other. Did you feel like that when you watch that conversation? I
Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:36
do absolutely. And I think is you were bringing up. You said, you know, we might be eating, but we might not be eating enough of something. And you said, protein. And if there is something that I think is, I guess it's under explained, or the emphasis isn't quite in the right place, is that overall protein is something that I think a lot of people are coming to understand, to focus on, especially those in the much lower carb world. But then they get, you know, sort of slapped in the face, like, no, no, no, you have to have carbohydrates too. And like you said, the conversation sort of just continues to go back and forth and back and forth without real explanation.
Scott Benner 7:14
Exactly it's surface. Each of them has a point. I don't think they have all the information, which I guess is why we're here. So you two reasons that we're eating caloric intake and versus expenditure. Wait, so yeah, calories
Jennifer Smith, CDE 7:28
can be kind of broken into those two places, right? Like you said, it's what we need to expend because our body is moving and functioning what we call activities of daily life, right? We have to get up and do the groceries or the laundry, or we have to get to work, or we want to exercise at the gym, or whatever that is extra on top of just that baseline, that BMR, basal metabolic rate, what our body needs to breathe, think, digest, et cetera. So when we take the food into our body, I think that's another place that is absolutely not taught, and I wish that it was, is when we put food in our mouth, like, what ends up happening to it once it goes in, it turns
Scott Benner 8:11
into poop, probably something else in between. You're
Speaker 1 8:14
saying totally something that my second Creator would have said, Well, Mom, we have
Scott Benner 8:18
to tell you. I think a lot of people just thought that, like, oh, I eat it and it comes out as poop, and then body does things. I think we need to understand what's happening between mouth and poop, right,
Jennifer Smith, CDE 8:29
right, yeah. And, I mean, I'm certainly chemistry, biochemistry, all of those types of things. You could have a very deep in depth, 24 hour conversation about all of the different systems and how they work. But really we put food in our mouth. We have a quick eating habit in today's world, and our mouth is the first place that digestion starts. And I don't think most people think about that or realize it, but because we've gotten so busy school lunches, even when I talk about kids, they have maybe 10 to 12 minutes to actually eat their food, and then they're off to the next thing that they do. But what is that teaching from an early age? It's shove the food in, maybe chew twice, swallow, and then digestion kind of gets all disrupted. We should actually be chewing the food in our mouth for a minimum of about 15 to 20 chews per bite.
Scott Benner 9:23
This is why my grandmother would say that all the time, chew your food, chew your food, chew
Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:27
your food. She's probably worried that you're going to choke up. She's
Scott Benner 9:31
like, this kid looks like an idiot. I think he's going to choke.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:36
There are a whole bunch of different things that happen in the mouth. I mean, within the saliva, there are enzymes that actually start to break down certain nutrients in the food that we're eating, so that by the time it gets down your esophagus into your stomach, your stomach doesn't have to do as much work. The process has already begun, and then the stomach churns things up, and other things get added into the mix. And then. Moves into the small intestine is the next place that food kind of moves, and that's where a lot of really good absorption takes place. Of what we're supposed to be getting out of the food, which are those nutrients that we initially talked about, right? Not only are we hoping to get the big nutrients, but we're also looking for those small ones, your vitamins, your minerals, fiber is huge in your intestines. It helps to move things through, or move things through clump with them, and then, as you said, so lovely, it turns into poop, and then we eliminate it.
Scott Benner 10:32
Listen, if you're lucky, some people get constipated, and then they don't feel good. And I wonder about this stuff all the time. I know about as much as I know, which is to say, not a lot. I know how my body functions, like, right? Like, I know that if I eat fewer processed things, you feel better, and the end result comes out nicer. I just want to say it like that. So that must mean that something in between is working more properly, correct, right? Yeah. Like, there's a difference between dropping the kids off at the pool and throwing them out of the car and crying while it's happening. I think that happens. I don't just everyone know the term drop the kids off at the pool for going poop.
Unknown Speaker 11:13
I mean, I made the association only because that's what we were talking about. No
Scott Benner 11:16
one's ever said to you, I gotta go drop the kids off the pool and then disappear for 10 minutes. Nope. No. No, okay.
Speaker 1 11:21
Have never, ever heard that. Now, I've learned something. I don't know if you've learned
Scott Benner 11:25
anything valuable. What I'm saying is that, like, no kidding, there's a reason that there's 1000 charts online that explain to you what your poop supposed to look like, correct. I think that there's a disconnect between what goes in our mouth and what comes out the other side, and, more importantly, what happens in between. And that's really, yeah, where the value is for you. So
Jennifer Smith, CDE 11:45
I mean, the number of people that I get to talk to, and you probably have heard from or conversed with, you know, within your online community, it really is, my question to a lot of people is always like, how are you going to the bathroom, especially the women in pregnancy that I work with, right? How are you going to the bathroom is, it's an odd kind of conversation to have when you think that you're here to talk about diabetes, but when we know that with type one diabetes, especially gut health, is something that pushes us into sort of our immune health, right? Yeah, then we also have to be very aware of, well, maybe what I'm putting in my mouth either isn't the right combination of things, it's not the right quantity of things to fuel my body or do what needs to be done, or maybe it's not the right stuff for me, or maybe I just need to clean up my intake, because you know that about 70% of your immune function lies in your gut? Yes, that is a lot of your immune system function.
Scott Benner 12:45
I think that idea suffers from the idea that it sounds like hocus pocus to people. Do you know what I mean, like my gut health, it sounds like a thing that got co opted by some social media platform, and so you just think they're trying to sell you a probiotic. Today's episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, who is making life with diabetes easier with the mini med 780 G system. The mini med 780 G automated insulin delivery system, anticipates, adjusts and corrects every five minutes. Real world results show people achieving up to 80% time and range with recommended settings, without increasing lows. But of course, Individual results may vary. The 780 G works around the clock, so you can focus on what matters. Have you heard about Medtronic extended infusion set? It's the first and only infusion set labeled for up to a seven day wear. This feature is repeatedly asked for and Medtronic has delivered. 97% of people using the 780 G reported that they could manage their diabetes without major disruptions of sleep. They felt more free to eat what they wanted, and they felt less stress with fewer alarms and alerts you can't beat that. Learn more about how you can spend less time and effort managing your diabetes by visiting Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox this episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by ever since 365 and just as the name says, it lasts for a full year, imagine for a second a CGM with just one sensor placement and one warm up period every year. Imagine a sensor that has exceptional accuracy over that year and is actually the most accurate CGM in the low range that you can get. What if I told you that this sensor had no risk of falling off or being knocked off? That may seem too good to be true, but I'm not even done telling you about it. Yet, the Eversense 365, has essentially no compression lows. It features incredibly gentle adhesive for its transmitter. You can take the transmitter off when you don't want to wear your CGM and put it right back on without having to waste the sensor or go through another warm up period. The app works with iOS and Android, even Apple Watch. You can manage. Your Diabetes instead of your CGM with the ever since 365 learn more and get started today at ever since cgm.com/juicebox, one year, one CGM.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 15:12
Very much. And I think along with it, which I hate the term, but I think in terms of explanation, it does explain a lot. Is leaky gut, right? Right? It's a horrible way to explain any type of gut dysfunction, because it really doesn't explain anything outside of like a leaky faucet. Kind of effect is what I always think of it like. But right? Our digestive system is supposed to be a really nice tight allow this in, allow that to go out really contain things and then poop out what's not supposed to be there, essentially. But we know that with diabetes, there is a lot of gut function testing research that has been done, and we know that there is some disrupted absorption and gut function in those who have especially type one diabetes, what it boils down to is finding the right foods the better quality, nutrient dense types of things to put in, one to make sure that you're not irritating your gut more than it might be, and to allow it to try to do what it's supposed to do for us, which is Keep the good stuff being put into our body that's supposed to be there, and getting rid of the stuff that's not supposed to be there. And
Scott Benner 16:26
if this is boring you as you're listening, just eat real good food there. It's tough because you're trying to explain why. So I think that people don't understand, generally speaking, why that's important. I think there are some people also don't understand, like, well, I'm buying food at the food store, like, it's food. Yes, I'm eating food. Like, what do you want from me? And then, of course, the problem is that when you start talking about eating, well, you start saying things to people like, eat fiber, rich foods include some fermented foods like yogurt or sauerkraut or, you know, for your probiotics. And then people are like, Oh, that doesn't taste like sour cream and onion potato chips. No,
Speaker 1 16:59
it's not going to that doesn't sound like fun at all. And it goes back to what we talked about last time, which is that
Jennifer Smith, CDE 17:05
the manufacturing companies have gotten so good at tricking your taste buds, which then essentially tricks your brain into becoming it's like an addiction, yeah? No, no, it really is. I
Scott Benner 17:19
would draw a direct line between how your phone has you captured and how food has you captured? Yes, it's somebody who went into a laboratory and was like, I'm gonna turn a dial here. I'm gonna stick a needle in this. I'm gonna move this over here a little bit, and I'm gonna make it so this person's meat bag cannot resist the thing. I'm gonna give it to them 100% Yeah, right. They've tricked you into scrolling, and they've now, I sound like the hippie Jenny, but like they've tricked you into scrolling and they've tricked you into how you eat. And it's sucks, because the back end of it, literally and figuratively, is you're not pooping the way you should be, and everything that's going through you is not great. Also, I'll draw a line between sitting and scrolling and not pooping well, but that's another time, because if you're not moving. Like, what did you say to me before we started Rick, we talked about, before we started recording, that I had a knee surgery, and Jenny was like, just keep exercising. Build the muscles around the knee. The muscles will support the knee. Those similar muscles, smooth muscles, are how that food gets through you and comes out the other side, right? So if you're painting your toilet, it might be because, yes, no, that's 100%
Jennifer Smith, CDE 18:24
correct. It really is, I mean, and if you as another consideration here, in terms of gut health and overall caloric intake, what your body truly needs in general, and then where there is overage that's not really needed, at least not on an ongoing basis. It's Apples are good for you. Broccoli is awesome for you. Spinach is fabulous for you, right? Like, but I guarantee you're not going to sit down to whatever those big buckets of salad greens are, and you're not going to eat the whole thing, right? Whereas you could probably sit down to that favorite bag of nacho cheese flavor, non name, branded chip that I won't say, they
Scott Benner 19:09
just came out with another color, by the way. Is it blue or purple? This, I think it's green. Now they have purple and blue and red, and there's orange, and I think there's a green one. Now, anyway, go ahead anyway.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 19:20
You could sit down to that whole bag and you could finish it. And do you know what's propelling you to finish it? It's the trick that your brain has now received from your taste buds, grab another. Grab another, get another. And then by the time you're done, you know you shouldn't have eaten that whole bag. You can tell you can feel it, but you wouldn't feel that way. If you even ate three plates worth of salad. You'd be like, Oh, nope, can't eat more salad. I just cannot eat more salad because somebody
Scott Benner 19:53
didn't sprinkle something on the salad. That just makes you the eating version of scrolling, which is like, Oh, I can't stop doing this. This is all. Awesome,
Jennifer Smith, CDE 20:00
and eventually it cleans things when you start moving to cleaning things up, and you may not do it all at one time, or maybe that's your personality, and that's the way that you have to do it, right. But it's like the sugar addiction, the whole concept of getting rid of sugar in your diet, meaning not from a kiwi, but from Sweet Tarts, let's say right is, once you break what is a true sugar addiction, you will no longer crave it. Yeah, and the craving is what draws people and it out steps what your body is telling you need in caloric value. Sure,
Scott Benner 20:41
like, it's no different than like a drug dealer might say, like, hey, Here, try this. And then your body goes, woo. And then you get into a position where you're like, I'll do anything, by the way, if you want to be insulted and give yourself a reason to stop eating this stuff that's not health related. Somehow, over the last two years, they've decided that eight ounces of those chips are worth $10 Oh, I know. I mean, a bag of chips is like, eight, nine bucks. Now in some time, you know what I mean, and like, so the game that gets played right is throughout the winter, when you're sitting around, the chips are super expensive, and then in the summertime, they'll put them on sale, you'll consume the crap out of them, and then you'll stop moving during the summertime, and then you'll be willing to pay $9 a bag for them again, be insulted by that, is what I'm saying. And like, stop eating them, just to say to them, Hey, you. I'm not doing this right. Listen, when I caught my little brother smoking right when we were kids, I said, stop for your health. But if you can't stop for your health, I'd stop, because somewhere in a boardroom, 10 millionaires are laughing at you for smoking these cigarettes. 100% you know, just get angry about that and find a way to help yourself right? Because I know you're you're caught now by it, you know what I mean you are. And
Jennifer Smith, CDE 21:54
I think this also begs a little bit of a cleanup consideration too, in Well, I'm not buying that name brand one anymore, because I understand, gosh, the ingredients. I can't even read them. So now I'm going to go to the bag of chips that I can read the ingredients. They're organic, and, you know, they don't have yucky oils in them or whatever. But it's still a bag of chips, right? So you may have cleaned up the ingredients, meaning, nutrient wise, you're probably getting more than you were from the name branded. I don't care what I put in here, as long as the flavor is, right, you're getting more, but you still don't need to sit down to that whole bag. Yeah. So just as a whole concept, right? The process nature of things that don't look any longer like the banana or the Apple or the broccoli are processed.
Scott Benner 22:44
So eliminate as much processed food from your diet as possible. Correct? And oils that aren't like, I mean, I would only use a cold pressed olive oil in the house like I don't have any other oil at this point. I That's not fair. I have coconut oil to make popcorn with,
Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:00
but coconut oil, avocado oil, the olive oil are quality that are not going to be disruptive in the body, because they're the body knows what to do with them, right? If we break it down into the seed oils, and especially the nasty one, canola oil, right? We're looking at, I heard this comment the other day on another thing I was reading through. But it's really like, how far from the actual, let's call it food, has the oil come and when we start looking at some of the ones that we should definitely not be including in our intake, it's definitely the ones you know canola oil is. It's so processed that
Scott Benner 23:42
it's rapeseed oil, right? Is that? Right? So it's rapeseed.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:45
And then what they do is they process it into this form that gets really, like, sticky and like, goopy, like you wouldn't even be able to pour it's gross. And then essentially, what they do is they process that to make it more liquid. But what ends up happening at the end of that is it causes this, now, oil to become rancid. Well, we know what rancid. Rancid is not something you eat, right? It's not something you could smell or be able to even put in your body. And then after that, what you end up having to do is process it further with a whole bunch of extra chemicals in order to get it palatable. You know, it's the reason that, like when you go and you buy your coconut oil, like I buy a nice brand, that you can definitely tell the differences in it, even jar to jar. Even olive oils, you can tell the difference. This is where the region is. Is it Spanish olives? Is it, you know, Italian, where did it come and they all have that slight difference and nuance to it, whereas when you look at the aisle of oil, which is quite big the grocery store, no matter where it came from, they all look the same.
Scott Benner 24:56
In the late 19th and 20th centuries, rapeseed oil was. Prized for its high temperature stability and lubricating properties. It was used to grease steam engines and as an Industrial Lubricant. Traditional rapeseed oil contained high levels of uric acid, which in large amounts, was found to be harmful to health. In the 1970s Canadian plant breeders developed low uric acid rapeseed varieties named canola. It comes from the idea of the wording, Canadian oil, low acid. That's where you get the word, oh, look at that. Can o, so, C, A, N, Canada O, oil, low acid. La, the new canola oil retained the flavorable cooking and healthy attributes, high in monosat, monosaturated fats, and low in saturated fats, while being safe and palatable for human consumption. Imagine that I describe my food to you as safe and palatable, and you're like, Oh, awesome. So keeping in mind that it's, you know, obviously it's been tested, and they're like, it's not going to hurt people enough for us to say no to this. Keep in mind that there's also a level of rat hairs per million that is allowed to be in peanut butter or cinnamon. The action level of cinnamon is 11 rodent hairs per 50 grams, ground off spice is allowed to have one rodent hair per 10 grams. Crushed oregano, two rodent hairs per 10 grams, and an average of one or more rodent hairs per 100 grams of peanut butter is allowed. So my point is, is that just because it's not going to kill you doesn't mean it's something you really super want. And we are doing this all day. Like, just walk down the grocery store and look around and say, I'm not buying what Jenny's telling me to eat, right? Like, we sprinkle a couple of bananas and an apple in the house and everything. And then what happens? Like, sometimes people eat them, and sometimes you toss them out. Nobody even touches them, right? Or we'll over, steam some broccoli and throw it next to food and go, here you should have some vegetables, but you're saying you should be eating from that. And we should maybe be going back to when I was a kid to like, you know, when I went to school, I got this little bag. I remember clearly it being 1.34 ounces of potato chips, like it was this little, tiny bag that my mom would toss in. It was like a treat, sure I didn't go home and there was another bag of potato chips and another one and another one. So Right? They gave you a little and then they gave you a whole bunch more, and it's killing you, or at least hurting your life, you know, in some way, probably shortening it, or maybe just making it more difficult. Or listen, maybe you just in the bathroom, like talking to Jesus, someone set you up, and now you're part of their money program. They're making. They're taking your money and making you less healthy. Yeah, and
Jennifer Smith, CDE 27:40
you can, I mean, as you said, going down like the grocery aisles, you can easily not buy probably 97% I wouldn't go that far with the produce and that kind of stuff. I don't know the percent that you could get rid of, but in the package dials, specifically, yeah, you could get rid of the majority of what you purchase by just turning it over, looking at the ingredients and saying, You know what? Out of all of the rest of the stuff that I can't even read, if it has canola oil, I'm not going to buy it, right? And if that transforms you into buying the stuff that's still a snack food, like another chip, but it's made with avocado oil or coconut oil, I would smile at you, at least making that transition right now. That's not without, as you brought up before a cost, you think a bag of the regular stuff is expensive. You look at the stuff that now doesn't have all of those things that are now big name made and so lower cost. You go to the other stuff, and it's it's definitely more expensive, right?
Scott Benner 28:37
So even in the case of, like, the tortilla chips that you brought up earlier, like there is a healthier version of tortilla chips you could buy, but they have to charge you more for it, because not that many people are buying it because it doesn't taste like heroin on a potato chip. They have to charge more to make it like it's
Jennifer Smith, CDE 28:53
and it's not as easily processed type of oil as you're gonna get with again, I'm using a broad sense, canola oil or the likes of that, right? So we have lower cost, not anywhere near nutrient quality, food that contains these low cost ingredients. So if, even if that strikes you, well, goodness, you know, like low cost ingredients did that. I mean, it sounds like you're being told to eat, like out of a trough, instead of eating at the table with
Scott Benner 29:23
that right? It's cheaper to make food in oil that also does a great job at lubricating steam engines, apparently, than it is to make it in I said cold pressed olive oil earlier, because, and trust me, I don't have all the details of this, but when you when they press the olives and turn it into oil. It would be easier to press it and while you heat it, but when you heat it, it actually physically changes the oil, and it's not as healthy for you, which is why I changes the chemical structure. I buy a cold pressed olive oil only. And if you've been listening to the podcast long enough, I've been on a journey, obviously, but the first place. Place I made a change in my life was with oil. Like that was the first place I changed. I was like, I'm not gonna eat anything that isn't cold pressed olive oil. And again, there's coconut oil in the house that we literally only use to make popcorn with, sure, right? And so I got rid of canola, vegetable, grapes, any other oil is in the house that I thought. I used to think canola oil was super healthy because it didn't have as much. What was the fat that they told us was bad for us? Oh, it was low in saturated fats, or something like that, saturated, right? Yeah, okay. And so I was like, Oh, well, that must be better. And I grew up in a time like you, and I talked about this earlier. I grew up in a time where my mom was like, butter, bad for you. I'm gonna use whatever this grease is, margarine, margarine, yeah, 100% her whole life, somebody told her that was better. So through the 80s and the 90s, what she thought, right? I became an adult, and we had it in the house, and I said to my wife, I think butter is milk and salt. Maybe we should just go back to butter
Jennifer Smith, CDE 30:58
and use it in the right portion. Yeah, correct. I mean, when it what we kind of like boil it down into is, once you're paying closer attention to food versus what's pretending to be nutrient quality, calories, right? You also start to see that how often you're hungry through the course of the day. So we talk about, how much should we eat? We should also look at, how do we break that down through the course of the day? You know, you might have a breakfast and a lunch and a dinner, and if it's really quality, especially as an adult, you probably shouldn't be hungry in between meal times. Yeah, right. You shouldn't have this snack, snack, snack, snack, snack, snack. Sort of habit. Kids being a little bit different. Oftentimes kids will with just their metabolic turnover. And many kids are so busy these days with sport after sport after activity that they have a meal and then they need a little bit something in between. They have a meal and they need a little bit of something in between. And that may be fine, as long as what you're putting in then is actually fueling their true need. And it's not just because everybody else is getting a snack at the same time. There's a really big difference following the herd versus paying attention to what your body needs.
Scott Benner 32:12
Also, when you're that active and that young, you could eat a rock and your body could take care of it, you know what I mean, like, which you couldn't do. But I'm saying like, you can put some pretty crappy stuff in you, and it can look like it's going, Okay, I'm gonna say something that, God, I hope nobody hears, but which is a weird way to start on the podcast. But my kid played baseball since he was four, right up through college, right? So I know a lot of little boys who are now men, and I met a lot of men who are now older men. And if you want to see a group of people go to pot fast, it's formerly active people, because they were covering for a lot of their eating sins by how freaking active they were. And the minute that the activity went away and they were left with their eating style habits, yeah, and their habits, right? And the crack cocaine, like draw of of those chips and candy and any other thing that they would easily throw in their mouth for energy while we're playing or something like that. Those people degrade quickly. It's interesting how old they look all of a sudden, correct? Yeah, in their mid to late 20s, and
Jennifer Smith, CDE 33:23
it's the No, I mean, it leads to a good you know, even from a childhood perspective of metabolism, we have a very high incidence in this day and age, of kids who are given way too much caloric value, right? And I shouldn't say value, or value in terms of intake, they're taking in too much, even if they're active. If you look at a general population of kids on a sports field, or whatever, you would expect that because they're athletes, that none of them should be over the healthy weight that they should be at, right? That's not the case anymore, right? There are active kids who are out eating their activity, and their body weight shows it.
Scott Benner 34:07
Yeah, that's and that's an insane idea, like for a little kid who sleeps, gets up, goes to school, moves around at school, comes home, goes right to a practice, and they're still a surplus, I guess, of calories, unless you have a real medical issue like that should be able to say to you, like, wow, like, we're eating too much. Like, like, there's calorically, there's just too much happening.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 34:26
And it could also be the way that their body is using the calories. Maybe the calorie value isn't wrong, but maybe it's where the calories are coming from. You know, so many favorite shopping place that most people have in their neighborhood and will go to now has another very favorite coffee shop housed right inside of this store, right the lines that are at this place where you can get coffee and treat types of things. It always astounds me as I come in the line there to get something and then walk around with a. Drink or a snack while you're shopping? Yeah? To me, is, it's just very interesting again, having grown up kind of within the range of where you did, yeah,
Scott Benner 35:11
it's part of the experience now, like, I'm out, it's a Saturday or whatever, and I'm gonna wander around with my drink. I listen. You won't say it, but there's a Dunkin Donuts in my grocery store? Yeah, so Well, I was gonna say Starbucks, Starbucks. Sorry, my grocery store is not as fancy as yours. But I Yeah. I mean, I take your point like it's we're eating while we're shopping for food,
Jennifer Smith, CDE 35:32
or other things. Like, why would you need to eat while you're shopping for underwear or socks or, like, housewares? I don't understand the and it boy. What I was going to with this is the number of kids who are also walking around with drinks that are well over the size that they should be. Yeah, there is no value in the calories that they're taking in there. Liquid calories are not the way to go drink water. Yeah,
Scott Benner 36:00
I was at the store the other day picking up a couple of items, and I was going to my car, and there was an older woman loading heavy stuff into her car, and she was in her mid to late 60s, she was overweight, and she was struggling with what she was doing, So I stopped to help her, and I moved two cases of bottled water into the back of her vehicle, and then an amount of Coca Cola that I think I can't explain to you how much she had, that it was so much and different, like versions. She had cans, she had two liter bottles, she had little 16 ounces. She's got herself set up for in any walk of her life. She can have a coke in her hand, yeah, jumping in the car. I'll get one in a bottle around the house, but don't want it to be flat. I'll work from the can. Want to cut back on cost. You know, we're gonna drink a bunch of it all at once. I'll open up a two liter. She's got, like, I don't know, heroin, that she could smoke some, that she can inject, something that she could blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I was like, oh, gosh, and she's not a I talked to her, she was lovely, right?
Jennifer Smith, CDE 37:07
It has nothing to do with personality or who you are as a person, but these are choices that make an immense difference. Yeah.
Scott Benner 37:14
I mean, honestly, Jenny, if, if she had 48 cans of Diet Coke, probably 816, probably 50 of the like, 12 or 16 ounce bottles and eight two liter bottles. I don't like, I don't know, like, that's not a week's worth of soda or a month's worth of soda. It's,
Jennifer Smith, CDE 37:35
I think she visited my store on Saturday morning. Oh, you saw her there. I saw her too. I went to pick something up. Actually, it was a, was the big thing of salad creams, is what I went to pick up, because we were all out. So anyway, I went after yoga, and the woman in front of me, she must have been literally the same woman, probably about the same age. She had in her basket several bags of the chips that we were describing before, and then lining the outside. And underneath her cart were the, I think it was the eight packs of the bottles, yeah, of coke and Dr Pepper. And the woman checking her out just came around and scanned them all. She didn't even want her taking them off, because there were so many of them. And I was like again,
Scott Benner 38:20
and in 1978 when I was seven, I had a soda once in a while, but it wasn't as available as it was. And this is my point. Like, this is where commerce has gotten in the way of your health, because they got you hooked on it, and now they're giving you an unending supply of it, and it's affordable to you, obviously. I obviously, I mean, she didn't have trouble paying for it, so, like, like, she could afford it. It's hers, like, etc. And listen, if that's what you want to do, I'm not stopping you. I'm also not, like, a holier than male person, and I'll tell you too, that I understand the flavor profile having a hold of you, and I it is only in the last two years, you know. And I'm happy to say, like, from using a GLP medication to lose weight, that also impacts the kick you get from flavor. And I'm not lying like it was really helpful to have something jump into my brain and go, Hey, you're not going to enjoy this as much. Sure, I almost feel like a heroin user who's on Suboxone, like, you know, isn't that like the medication they give you? Like so that like, you don't,
Speaker 1 39:20
I don't know you're up on that. I'm not more information. But
Scott Benner 39:24
I was given something that just turned down the judge that I got from eating food, right? And that was really helpful in breaking connections to some of that food, of course. And so I was sitting there talking to her and helping her unload her car. I wasn't judging her. I just thought, like, oh, this poor lady, like, she probably started, like I did, like, oh, we have a coke on Saturdays with lunch, and then ramped it up and ramped it up and ramped it up till it's got a hold of her. And then they made it cheap for and now she's, she's addicted to it. I don't think there's another way around it, right?
Jennifer Smith, CDE 39:55
No, I think, and you said something, that is, honestly, the way that I. See it. I used to feel like I was judging. And that's not, that's not where this comes
Scott Benner 40:06
from. Yeah, I feel bad. I feel bad. And
Jennifer Smith, CDE 40:10
that was my reasoning for wanting to do something within this like nutrition series, is because the information is out there, only if you're willing to go to a billion sources to pick through it and get it and understand it and putting it together in one place. My hope is that I wish I could have talked to that woman, right? I wish I could have talked to her and just had a good conversation, and not from a judgment, but just an understanding like you. You're wondering what led her to having as much of that as she thought she actually needed. Right to be helpful is that's my angle. If
Scott Benner 40:47
you want to hear from the liberal side of me, I think somebody tricked her into that situation. I think for money, I you know, somebody at a business somewhere decided, if we make this a little more flavorful, a little more zesty, people eat a little more we'll put a little more. We'll put a little more salt in it. We'll put a little more fat in it. We'll get them going, like, you know, and then we'll, we'll give them more. We'll make the bags bigger then. And then, you know what? Then we'll put the price up and make the bag smaller. And then, in my mind, there is no difference between her with that soda and somebody somewhere who's struggling with an addiction to literally, like, the heroin or cocaine or something like that. Like somebody was like, Here, have a little bit. And then right, your brain lights up, and they go, you want more. You want more. Oh, now it's expensive, right? I don't see the difference. Like, I really don't like, so
Jennifer Smith, CDE 41:30
there isn't a difference in putting it together like that. Sometimes that jogs somebody to say, Oh, I see now. I see how I've been tricked into thinking that this was actually nourishment for my body, when really it's just calorie value that I'm putting in. And from a again, going back to like the kid perspective, when you look at how much kids need, from an activity standpoint, their caloric needs could be very high, but what we put in as those calories can also make a difference in what their body does with it. Does it? Storm of it, more of it, right? I mean, things like fructose that comes not from not naturally, like we find it in fruits, but fructose that's actually been processed and broken down, and our body doesn't actually use it the right way. It's more prone to packing it away and storing it. And then we have kids who, again, they get addicted to a flavor. Mom and Dad unknowingly purchase it, because, hey, at least Charlie will, you know, eat this. And so then it keeps coming in, and you don't see the damage until they get to be 30 plus years old. No
Scott Benner 42:32
one is doing it on purpose. Like, look and look at me. I'm 50. Listen, I am 53 and Jenny, you we've known each other a long time now. Like, I'm a different person today than I was two years ago, right? Yeah, right. It's not like I was just like, oh, I figured it out. Like, I figured out very, very slowly over a long that idea of, like, don't eat oils that was, like, eight years ago. I was like, Oh, maybe I should cut oil up because, and we talked about this before we started. So I'll bring it up here, because I think it'll help us, like, button this up. Sure my mom was not trying to hurt me. Okay, no, but I told Jenny before we started that, because she brought up Velveeta cheese.
Speaker 1 43:08
Okay, I was like, is it still even on the market? I don't even, I don't even know how we got on
Scott Benner 43:12
it by Velveeta cheese. Yeah. And so for those of you who don't know what it is, I have, like, a very pleasant memory of a cardboard box that was probably about nine inches or a foot long, and probably four inches square, and inside of it, there was a foil thing, and it sell Velveeta across it, and you unfolded it, and then took a cheese slicer and took hunks of cheese off of it. It was not cheese. It was, what do they call it? Cheese
Speaker 1 43:41
food. Cheese food, which makes it even better. Like, food, you're putting it in there like, well, it must be food. It's
Scott Benner 43:47
cheese food, like at the at the movie theater, look at the theater that it's called buttery, flavored butter. I forget how they put it at a movie theater, but they can't call it butter because it's not butter, not buttery flavored something. But anyway, so in my life, Wonder Bread, so white bread, the bread most devoid of any value for you at all, I was given endless access to wonder bread, oil that wasn't butter and Velveeta. If I was being treated very well, they would butter the bread like put it on a pan and melt the Velveeta inside of it and give me a grilled cheese sandwich. But if no one had time for that highfalutin cooking, then what I would get was the styrofoam bread with the oil schmutz with the Velveeta inside, pressed together. And then I was explaining to Jenny that I can right now feel my teeth going through the soft bread into the oil and then breaking off the cheese food, and then it all swishing around in my mouth and me going, I love this. Yes, yeah, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me, because
Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:51
even at that point, the companies had figured out how to hit your taste buds,
Scott Benner 44:55
right, right? Bread, the bread is soft. You. So, and my mom is completely sure that the grease that she bought instead of butter is better for us because it doesn't have low it's low in saturated fats, and then the cheese, cheese cow, come on, like, right? So I'm eating nothing real, correct? And it took, I'm telling you, it me up. Yeah. I am not a person who pooped great. As a person like, for life, I was holding weight, even though I wasn't taking in a bunch of food, like, right? This is a struggle for me. I might live a shorter time because of Velveeta and the other things like that. That my mom was like, this is food, right? And now, today, as an adult, I still have those textural things, like, right, like I bite into something and I want it to feel a certain way in my mouth, like, right? I want it to like, Baba. And I'm telling you, God bless the good people at Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly has, I don't know what's in that juice,
Jennifer Smith, CDE 45:55
but it has done something to change your brain to think, well, now broccoli, I can change
Scott Benner 46:00
my whole life seriously, like, I'm gonna live longer because that. I'm sure I'm gonna grow a tail 10 years from now, and it'll, it'll actually say, like, ozempic on it, or something like that, like, but it'll be like, a marketing ploy. But I'll tell you, I mean, what am I gonna do? Jay, right
Jennifer Smith, CDE 46:13
now, you feel better. You can make better choices, and you almost have not that this is about those men. But over and over I hear the ability to choose wiser, because the sound that comes the inviting, I guess, nature. Voice, yeah, food. Voice, right. It's not there for like. You can bypass that Starbucks now and just do your trip at whatever shopping center you're at because you're actually you're not encouraged any longer to grab something without really desiring it.
Scott Benner 46:48
If you gave me a Velveeta sandwich right now, I'd be like, Is this a joke? And I would drop it in the garbage. But, and it's not my point, by the way, if you're eating Velveeta, I understand well, my point is this, now is the time like if you're the parents of young kids, or you're, you know, a younger person listening to this, like, you don't need to be me when you're 50, like, you could end up being Jenny, who somebody gave like, I don't know, Jenny eats flowers or something. I don't know what she does, but she's, I'm looking at her right now. She's 12 years old, and you look like you could run across the country if you decided to, like, if you just grabbed your shoes and a coat, you'd be like, Hey, I think I could just run to California. Now. I'll just be forrescu. Yeah, no, I 1,000,000% believe you could do that. By the way. Everything you need to know is, I asked Jenny one day, when you go on a car trip and you stop for gas, you don't go in and get food, and she goes, No. And I was like, how do you eat? And she's just incredibly goes to me, I bring food with me. And I was like, oh, oh, that makes sense. I was like, you've never had a Mars bar on the highway. And she's like, What are you talking about? You don't need to be Jenny, but you could make some better decisions. And by the way, all of this would help you with diabetes, right? Like, with managing insulin and all like the problems you're having. Like, listen, I am proud. I'm not gonna lie to you. I am proud to teach people how to use insulin because, and I just heard myself say this on the podcast this morning, if you're not eating in a healthy way, right, I hope that you can find a way to that, whatever that way is, but if you can't, you don't deserve to be eating in a less healthy way and have crazy blood sugars, like I am here to teach you how to use your insulin and you go apply it to the life that you choose to live. This here is us trying to say, like you could choose some things that would
Jennifer Smith, CDE 48:34
be easier and better would improve Exactly. Yeah,
Scott Benner 48:38
that's all. What did we not do off of your list today that we need to finish this. I think
Jennifer Smith, CDE 48:41
the only other one that we would need to kind of move back into was the idea of exploring, kind of some of the special diets. And the reason I included it here was mainly because of some of the concepts we've already touched on. So I think next time we can add that into more advanced nutrition discussion, okay,
Scott Benner 49:02
all right, awesome. Thank you. I kept you long. I apologize this way. Yeah, hold on one second.
The podcast episode that you just enjoyed was sponsored by ever since CGM. They make the ever since 365 that thing lasts a whole year. One insertion every year. Come on. You probably feel like I'm messing with you, but I'm not. Ever since cgm.com/juicebox thanks for tuning in today, and thanks to Medtronic diabetes for sponsoring this episode. We've been talking about Medtronic mini med 780 G system today, an automated insulin delivery system that helps make diabetes management easier day and night, whether it's their meal detection technology or the Medtronic extended infusion set, it all comes together to simplify life with diabetes. Go find out more at my link, Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox Yes, hey, thanks for listening all the way to the end. I really appreciate your loyalty and listenership. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. My diabetes Pro Tip series is about cutting through the clutter of diabetes management to give you the straightforward, practical insights that truly make a difference. This series is all about mastering the fundamentals, whether it's the basics of insulin dosing adjustments or everyday management strategies that will empower you to take control. I'm joined by Jenny Smith, who is a diabetes educator with over 35 years of personal experience, and we break down complex concepts into simple, actionable tips. The Diabetes Pro Tip series runs between Episode 1001 1025 in your podcast player, or you can listen to it at Juicebox podcast.com by going up into the menu. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording. Wrong wayrecording.com you.
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