Episode 264
Title: Ancestral Living Trend: Trend Diets Perpetuating More Problems
Host: Dr. Nicole Rivera
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Transcription:
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Integrative You Radio. And I, I actually have had on my list to talk about trendy diets and how they are actually causing problems and causing toxic overload to the liver and the body and then In taking requests for podcast topics, I had some people that were asking about discussing the ancestral living trend, which really goes hand in hand with this idea of another new trendy diet.
And. I want to talk about this, you know, from, um, from a high level in the perspective that this isn't just about the ancestral living trend. This is really about this constant introduction of new trend diets and how they are being marketed as the end all be all. And listen, guys, I'm going to take full accountability.
I created it. A cookbook series called Eat for Your Condition, which was influenced by the paleo movement and the autoimmune paleo movement and how to, you know, use diet in order to overcome diseases. And, At the end of the day, yes, there is value in understanding what foods are creating inflammation and what foods are not.
But I got away from it. I still have three cookbooks that I have never published and I never will. And it's not that the food isn't delicious, the food is lovely, but the The foundation of what those cookbooks were built on, I don't subscribe to that belief system because I've learned, I've evolved, and I think that there is a level of mental toxicity that is coming from these trend diets because it's taking people farther and farther away from understanding any fucking thing about food and nourishing their bodies.
You know, some of the things that I talk about today might sound really, really simple, but it's actually very difficult in places like the U. S. because food is not fucking food anymore. We've gotten so far away from just eating food. And this is why people are overwhelmed, confused, and they're giving up before even trying.
It's too hard to sustain, you know, eating a, a, a healthy diet because of the accessibility and the influence of processed convenience foods. So, you know, before going off on a tangent there, this idea of, of ancestral living, So, really, at the end of the day, they're, you know, this is talking about people growing their own food.
People eating, you know, like a hunter gatherer, eating, uh, products that come from plants and products that come from animals. Makes logical sense that that could be beneficial. The thing is, this isn't just about knowledge of understanding what's good for you. It's about the fact that it's so easy to default back into the sad American diet because it's everywhere.
You know, I live in Italy now. You know how many times I'm like, Oh my God, I want a fucking burger. I want a good burger so bad. I can't get it here. I can't. I can't go and just get nachos. I can't go and just get a burger. I can't go. I can't go and eat like shit. It is actually very, very difficult.
Virtually impossible. You go to the average restaurant here and Tomato mozzarella salad. You know, yeah, there's pasta, but like the pasta has a little bit of olive oil on it and maybe some cherry tomatoes. Maybe there's, you know, some seafood on it. You're not getting pasta covered in ricotta cheese, covered in mozzarella, covered in tomato sauce.
Eggplant parm is not breaded. Chicken parm doesn't exist. You know, you can't, it's actually really difficult to eat like complete shit. And so then people might say, Oh, but you know, they eat so much sugar and they eat, uh, croissants in the morning and cornetto. Technically they eat, you know, they eat pastries and cannolis.
And so this is really the driver that I want to point out because I've just been observing over the past year of being here. And it honestly flipped a lot of what I'm doing. I have thought it to be true upside down because it's, it's easy to just say, you know, consumption of sugar is bad consumption of, you know, too much sugar is going to be bad no matter how you want to swing it, even if it's good quality sugar.
And again, this is more of an observation than doing scientific research. Um, I just don't care to do scientific research about this right now in my life, but there are people that, well, Mostly, everyone starts their day with a cappuccino and some type of pastry. And so, my integrative medicine brain and, and understanding the body and organs and blood sugar would say, it doesn't matter if it's quality or not, that's a terrible way to start your day.
You can't start your day with sugar, empty carbs. You need to start your day with protein. It is. Such a fucking bizarre concept for Italians to ever eat an egg in the morning. They're like, what, like, no. They, eating an egg, eating, like, bacon, they're like, they think that that is crazy. Like, that is not happening in any Italian households, let alone at any restaurants.
The only restaurants you can find that stuff are restaurants that are geared towards Americans. Or English, I should say. And so, I was just like, okay, this culture has been doing this for generations, generations. Like, who am I to say that I know better? Because when you walk around Italy, this is not one part, one city.
There are generally no obese people. There are generally not many people, unless they're, they're significantly old, like 80 and above. Like, you don't see people in wheelchairs. You don't see people with like, uh, you know, uh, like major injuries that they're, they're limping. They have a cane again, like you're gonna see this if they're, they're very old.
And you'll see this in some of the old, the villages where a lot of, um, people have lived there their whole lives. And there's a lot, a big population over the age of 80, but for the most part. You're not really seeing people that have like, you know, different disabilities, essentially, you know, most people are very active into their older years.
They walk everywhere and they're not. overweight. It's very few and far between. And so, you know, again, I'm like, well, you're not seeing a major epidemic of obesity here. So they clearly figured something out that other, other people haven't. And France is the same. France, they're getting up, same thing, espresso, cappuccino, and a pastry.
Croissant, we call it cornetto here. And it's just kind of like, well, how does this make any sense? And really, what I realized is that, one, I think that there are, uh, various iterations of sugar, something that I've noticed here, and I've actually asked some of the pasticherias, the bakeries, I'm like, do you not use a lot of sugar in making your, your pastries and making, you know, the cannolis, everything else?
Or Do you feel that it's the quality of the sugar and they, you know, they essentially, most of them said both, but some of them said like, no, we use a, you know, a decent amount of sugar, but things don't taste sweet here. It's a completely different taste profile than what you're getting in the U. S. It doesn't matter if it's organic or not in the U.
S. Like a cannoli here, I grew up eating this stuff. I grew up with cannolis, Italian cheesecake. My grandmother had cousins with a huge bakery that still exists in New York City. And, you know, we had that stuff in, in the house every single week. There was a delivery every single week. And the taste is completely, completely different.
You have a cornetto, a croissant in the morning, it is not sweet, even if it's filled with cream or filled with marmalade. So that is something that I've been finding very interesting. And it really leads me to believe that even, you know, what we call natural sugar or cane sugar or just sugar in the U S is not really sugar.
It's still chemically manipulated to be sweeter. Then what actual sugar is like plain old cane sugar and then don't get me started on the whole high fructose corn syrup and all of that because I think the biggest thing that I've taken away from being in another country is that Italians don't Overthink about what they eat and they don't eat they just eat And part of it is what is normal, like what are, what are the normal things that they're eating, which, yeah, it's a boatload of pasta.
And yes, their pasta is a very different quality. A lot of the pasta is being made within the restaurant or, or within the, um, the place where you're buying it. There are literally pasta shops that solely make pasta, but even the, You know, the pasta that you're buying for one, one euro inside of the grocery store is still significantly better quality than what you're getting in the U.
S. But as I mentioned earlier, even if you're having a big bowl of pasta, you're not having pasta, then having a huge piece of protein, then having, you know, a side dish. You're having that, that beautiful bowl of pasta, but just the normal. The way to prepare pasta is not covering that pasta with tons of oils and fat and sauce.
They're keeping most of their dishes very, very, very simple. And so I don't, like I eat almost anything that I want and I don't think I had to think about everything that went into my mouth because if I wasn't eating properly, I was going to get inflamed. I was going to have a gut issue. I was going to get a headache.
I was going to have swelling. I was going to feel like shit the next day. I was going to, you know, there were all these things that I had to consider. And. Now, after being here and my body changing, my gut changing, my microbiome changing, it's a completely different ballgame. And so the point that I'm trying to make here is that what it comes down to is, is Yes, eating food that you know where it came from is always going to be beneficial for you eating protein from a farm, eating dairy from a farm that you know that it's quality and it's not being compromised by hormone and antibiotic treatment.
Consuming plants is going to be beneficial. So, yes, there is truth to this idea of ancestral living. But the thing is, is that eating sugar, having some dessert, having those things, it's not that we shouldn't be doing any of that ever. Those are things that it's all about the context. It's about the quality and the context.
It's about how you pair. Your food, it's about how much food you consume, and it's about how, how chemically manipulated was the food or the ingredients that built the food. And this is something that is extremely, extremely, extremely hard to navigate in the US. And one of the reasons, in all transparency, that I left was I was so sick of spending hundreds.
Thousands of dollars in a month, hundreds of dollars a week to eat food that I knew was still mediocre. You know, I, I would order from this Amish farm out in Pennsylvania and in, in the beginning of them being, or beginning of them existing, you know, it was very reasonable to get, you know, raw dairy products from them and raw cheeses and everything else.
And then it got to the point that a quart of goat milk was 28. And it's like, I value food and I value nourishing my family, but like, it was just fucking ridiculous. Like, this is what I have to do in order to try to be healthy. And if, if I felt Fantastic. And my gut felt fantastic. And my kids' health was fantastic.
If all of it was fantastic, I probably would have just said, this is what it is. And I'm just gonna, this is an expense. That's just part of my life. When I look at my, And, and I'm sure that some of you guys see it when you see videos, like I used to have the worst bags under my eyes because my kidneys were stressed all the time.
And yeah, I'm sure part of it was actual stress, emotional stress. And then part of it was constantly being exposed to toxins that my kidneys had to filter out. My gut had highs and lows. It wasn't constantly a problem, but it was never a hundred percent normal. Bowel movements were not always normal. My son, I look at pictures of him and he had that distended belly when he was little, when we were still in the U S he doesn't have that now.
His stomach is completely flat. That kid eats. Cornettos and cannolis, and he drinks milk. Like the other aspect of this is that we're not stressed as a family about it. Everything we eat and everything we put in the house like there's so much freedom for me around that for me to be spending so much money on food and then just be like, I know that there's still problems with what I bought was so fucking frustrating to me.
It was so unbelievably frustrating because you eat. Every day you eat multiple times a day like it's not something that we can escape and don't beat yourself up if it is Something that stresses you out. I'm not saying that you should move to Italy. It's definitely a great life But it is something that really has to change in the US And this is one of the reasons why people are saying, Fuck it, I'm gonna move on, move into a house where I have property.
I'm gonna start my own garden. Like, people are prioritizing this. And, you know, and then there's a whole sector of people that are saying like, Oh my gosh, like, what are we doing? Like, what are we doing? You know, there's like the conversation about trad wives, traditional wives, and you know, all these women that are raging about the idea of going back to more traditional ways.
And listen, I can relate to that because I've been a business woman my whole life, but there's a reason why that's being valued because people are sick of working their fucking ass off to make money, to spend it on products that are still killing them. It's like such a fucked up concept when you really, really think about it.
We're literally working ourselves to death and and destroying our own health because if you're gonna be that busy, you're forced to eat out, you're forced to grab and go, you're forced to live on coffee to keep your energy levels up, like you're forced to do all those things and then you're forced to pay Professionals to help you with your health when your health gets really bad because you're just burning the candle at both ends and then you're paying your child care, you're paying other people to raise your kid and then your kid is acting in ways that are stressing you out more and then you don't know what to do because you just feel like a hamster on a wheel going, going, going and and then you're also spending a boatload of money on food that is still actual shit.
This is the reason why people are moving towards ancestral living. They're moving towards, you know, more old school, traditional ways of living. What I find comical is that that's how the majority of people still live here. Like, I'm on an Airbnb right now, and I'm, you know, on a decent sized property, but like, I can go outside and pick lemons, oranges, pomegranates, uh, olives, like, that most people in Italy, doesn't really matter if you're in the north, the south, the middle, there is some type of agriculture on your property.
And, and if it's not on your property, there's a farm stand or an or to fruta that is what they call, that is, is within a kilometer of your house. So, you have the ability to get things that came from somebody else's property. Like nothing, you're not finding produce in most stores that has come from far away.
Like the, don't get me wrong, um, I love avocado. I don't eat it often, but avocado, pineapple. I would say those are probably the top two that you're gonna eat, and bananas, and you'll find that here in grocery stores or even Hortofrutas that are obviously not local. They're not, they're not locally grown.
Um, but even the Italians, they look at me like I'm fucking weird that I'm even buying it because they're just like, why, like, why? But I'm just like, I love Mexican food and you cannot get Mexican food here. So this is, uh, this is how I meet in the middle. Um, So the moral of the story is, give yourself a little bit of breathing room because yes, navigating nutrition and navigating food is, it has its stressors.
It's definitely very difficult and I know that, you know, there's a lot of people talking about America turning a new leaf and I really hope that it is, but you know, we need to get away from these big stores. We need to get away from, you know, going to these big grocery stores and buying things from these big companies because this is perpetuating the problem.
We vote with our dollars and if we can start either growing our own food or we can start to source from other people that are doing it, support them. You know, if you're like, fuck that, I don't want to grow. I don't want to have a farm. I don't want to have a garden. I don't have time for that. It's not my passion.
Like that's kind of the way I feel like I kill everything. I killed a succulent, but I'm happy to support someone who is doing that and give them more reason to keep it going and be able to, you know, stock my house with that. And so the ancestral living, like, In reality, it's not really a trend. It's actually us going back to one, the way that it used to be, and two, actually how a lot of healthier cultures still live.
You know, when you get into the idea of the blue zones, the blue zones are talking about You know, areas of the world where people live really long and they live very healthy lives. There is a blue zone here in Italy and, you know, that's in Sardinia. But most of Italy still subscribes to the same ideas.
People are very active. They walk. They, they, there's a lot of hills. They climb hills and they eat food. That is. either grown on their property or grown on their neighbor's property. So it's not rocket science, but it's the difficulty in, it's, how do I want to say this? It's the ease of defaulting back into the convenience lifestyle in the U.
S. Because like, like I said earlier, if I could, I'd probably eat a burger once a week. I'd probably, you know, eat, like, nachos and, and, and deep fried tacos, like, but I can't get it. I can't access it. So In the U. S., you can access shit food every hour of the day delivered to your door by Uber Eats. You know, like, there is temptation.
There is convenience. Like, this is one of the reasons why obesity and chronic illness are such a problem. So, it's really, for us, To try to overcome that, you know, through, I don't want to say discipline, like some of it is discipline, but it's through making a conscious effort to choose differently. So, with that, maybe all of you guys are going to move to Italy now after this.
I promise you the food is fantastic. Overall, my intention is to help you to understand why food is potentially consuming you from a mental and emotional perspective, why it feels so difficult to lose weight, why it feels so difficult to just eat well, um, it was designed that way. It was designed that way and it takes a level of discipline, a level of choice, a level of perseverance in order to choose differently for you and your family.
It's not easy, but it's worth it.
