How to Read Food Labels

Hey folks, Dr. Joe Esposito. Here I am so glad you’re with us today, as always good to teach you a lot today. So pay attention. We’re going to teach you how to read food labels. Now, you might think that’s not that big a deal, but it really is. And I still get confused when I read food labels sometimes and I have to sit down, I have to think about it. Sometimes I have to look up the words. There are words that are out there that I don’t understand. And sometimes I think, well, we change the words of things. So example we might want to call something natural flavor, which could actually be monosodium glutamate. So you look at your natural flavor. That looks pretty good. Then you think about it, why would natural flavor be in something like packaged chips or something like that? So there’s deceptive things that can be on those food labels that can really be confusing. Autolyzed yeast, hydrolyzed vegetable protein – those words all are other terms for monosodium glutamate. Now, monosodium glutamate is dangerous for a lot of people. And the reason is we monosodium glutamate the bad part of monosodium glutamate is called glutamic acid. Now glutamic acid is necessary – the body needs it. Okay. It produces neurotransmitters with it. But the problem is when it’s all by itself. Amino acids have specifically glutamate and aspartic acid or aspartame – they don’t well with others, they don’t play well by themselves. So if you’re going to have monosodium glutamate, that’s a high concentration glutamic acid, it’s an excitotoxin to the brain. It actually causes the brain to fire faster than it’s supposed to, and can literally burn out your brain cells. Same thing with aspartic acid, aspartame – aspartame is in, over last I heard, like 8000 products, and it’s in artificial sweeteners. Zero calories, that must be good. It’s actually bad. Of all the things I’ll teach you, if you see aspartame or sucralose or Acesulfame K, those are artificial sweeteners. I would advise not to eat or drink that food. Artificial sweeteners, of all the things I teach you, are probably the worst things you can put your body in when it comes to the food groups. So it can be deceptive, it can be confusing. I remember when I was younger, and naïve. And I saw something that had hydrolyzed vegetable protein. And I thought hydrolyzed vegetable protein. Well, I don’t know what hydrolyzed means, but vegetables are good. And protein is good. So I guess hydrolyzed vegetable protein is good. Well, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, when they hydrolyze usually soy, they free up glutamic acid. So it’s like eating monosodium glutamate. So I can’t do autolyzed yeast, hydrolyzed, vegetable protein, textured soy protein. These are all things that you think might be good, but actually they’re not. So that’s why it’s a little confusing for even the pros. So I can imagine it’s confusing for some of you folks that may not be – starting out in this journey, let’s say. So I want to teach you a few things, what to look for on your food labels. We talked about some of the deceptive advertising in there. And a couple other rules, general rules you could follow. Now there are some things that one of the rules I’ll teach you today is if you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it. Well, that can be confusing, because if you see methylcobalamin, you might say “methocobalamin? Yeah, I don’t know what that is. I better not eat it.” Methylcobalamin is vitamin B12. And it’s in a methylated form, which is actually very good for you. In fact, we use that in our supplements, we use the methylated become B vitamins. Because methylation is your body taking something and converting it into something that you can use, and a lot of folks have trouble going through the methylation process. So that’s why we put it in a methylated form. So methylcobalamin, you think well, I don’t know Cobalamin is .Cobalamin another word for B12. So not everything you can’t pronounce is bad. But generally speaking, if you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it. That’s a real simple rules to follow. Okay, so packaged foods that look healthy, are oftentimes misleading. Because they have these fancy packages on them, or that picture of a pasture on it, or nature’s healthy food, or whatever they want to call it, you think, Oh, that looks pretty good. And then you flip it over, you read the label, which is a great skill by the way. You go, Wait a minute, maybe this isn’t the best thing. So we want to try to stay away from packaged foods at all costs. That’s not always practical. You might wanna have crackers, you might want to have a snack. In my car, I have some granola bars. For an emergency case, I’m really hungry case I skip lunch or whatever. I get stuck somewhere. It’s all natural. It’s all organic. Still not the best food because it has some natural sweeteners in it, but it’s preserved and I can eat it in emergency. But if you eat that stuff every day, just be careful. Just because as a pretty label doesn’t mean it’s good just like people just because they look pretty doesn’t mean that they’re normal. Sometimes they’re a little crazy. So when you make your trip to the supermarket, I want to make it easier for you and what to have what not to have I have a canned soup in my house.

Why Emergency I come home late from work, I’m tired, I could whip up some quick canned soup. I don’t do it very often I have some, in fact, I just did one the other day. And I don’t know how many years I had it. Like, I don’t know if I should still eat this or not. But there are general things you could look for the word organic is always good, safe thing because if something’s organic, the chances are less that it’s going to have a lot of junk in it. But they still can’t sometimes can be deceptive. So a whole food plant based diet means you’re going to eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds. And that’s going to be the best diet. Now I’ve talked about this in the past the disconnect in healthcare. The disconnect in healthcare is the research is their diet affects every condition known to man, good or bad diets gonna affect it. And yet, diet is so seldom taught to patients. Well, the reasons I talked to pate talk to patients, why do you think that is? So I talk to doctors. I have doctors that listen to my shows, my podcasts, read my books, and they just call me up and say, This is amazing. I’ve never heard any of this before. I never heard any of this. I didn’t even know it existed. And now you’re teaching this. This is amazing. I wish I’d learned this in medical school or chiropractic school, whatever it is. So doctors don’t know so they can’t teach the patients. That’s why I’m here. On our website, Dr. Joe calm we have over was about 2000 hours of podcast, video audio, we have so many different ways to teach you blogs. Follow us on social media, we post every single day we post helpful tips on health. It’s all free. I don’t know how to make it easier for you. So doctors don’t know this stuff. So they can’t teach the patients. The few times I’ve ever been in a hospital, I lose my mind. I look at what they’re serving these people. And as a guest I’ve ever been asked when I was young, they took my tonsils out I wish they didn’t. But I think the only time I was ever in the hospital. Guess I was three I remember being in a crib actually. So if I visiting someone in fact, a while many years ago, a friend of mine got really sick. She got food poisoning. And I was bringing her in foods smuggling her in food basically, because she was there for several days. And it was touching go for a while. And I was bringing her in food and I Please don’t eat this does hospital food and hospitals business folks, every word. I’m a business. Everybody’s a business. Everybody’s trying to make a buck. And so I understand that. But we’ve got to be careful that you know we’ve got to cut costs, I’m going to cut costs by serving lesser quality foods. Well, that may not be the best thing for the patient. And so I don’t want you falling into that trap. I mean, I’ve seen them serving gelatin, die of sugar free gelatin, which is low to it aspartame and gelatin itself freeze up glutamic acid, and I’m like, Oh my gosh, how can you do that bacon in a cardiac ward. Friend of mine years and years ago, he was a salesman, and he was in a cardiac Hospital in Houston, Texas. And he calls me up, he says you’re not going to believe what’s in the lobby of this hospital. It’s cardiac hospital. And he told me once one of the big famous hamburger joints. And I thought that was shocking. Now it’s everywhere. It’s accepted. You know, people drinking coffee all day every day with high blood pressure. So anyway, I digress. Let me get back to my point here. So I want you to start learning to read labels. And what are you looking for? Sometimes it’s tough to figure out. Nutrition labels always aren’t transparent, aren’t always transparent. And you need to really be thinking about is this a whole food plant based and really the best rule is if it has a label on it, you probably shouldn’t eat it. Because fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds. Uh, yeah, they have a label, but not a lot of ingredients in there. But don’t fret. I’m here to teach you all the things you need to know. Basics. This is gonna be a food labeled reading 101. Look for minimal ingredients and chemicals and preservatives. So if you’re reading food labels, give the ingredients a quick look over is the list a mile long are you able to pronounce some of the words, the products with the most definitely not whole food plant base, if they have a lot of junk in it minimally processed foods are probably going to be a better choice. So if it says organic, whatever, whatever. That’s great. When you start seeing preservative added dyes, red dyes, yellow dyes, they’re linked to cancer linked to attention deficit disorder sometimes, so stay away from it. Simple, easy ingredients is really what you want to be. So let me talk about sodium first because this is one of the things we talked about last week in the show. You really want to cut down on your sodium American Heart Association recommends 2300 milligrams of sodium a day 1500 would be a much better choice but for giggles 2300 Either way processed foods restaurant foods the average American is getting about 3400 grams milligrams of sodium a day so double what you should be getting.

So how do you keep your sodium count down? Learn how to read the nutrition labels. A quick and easy trick when it comes to sodium is this. Ideally the sodium milligram should equal or be equal or less than the number of calories per serving. So if something has 100 calories in it 100 milligrams of sodium with 100 calories and 500 milligrams of sodium, not something you want to do. So that’s a real simple rule about sodium. The best thing is to avoid sodium altogether. Now, I like salt. I think we all do. So if you’re going to eat salt, I recommend air dried sea salt, Himalayan salt, Celtic salt. Those salts have over 70 different minerals still intact. In the salt, white salt, we take salt, good salt, we process our process out all the minerals, we serve it as white salt. What do you think we do with minerals, we sell them as supplements. So why not just take the salt with the minerals in it, and by the way, that salt is gonna be a lot saltier. So you’re going to enjoy it a lot more because it has a lot less salt with a lot more flavor. You’re not going to see that usually in processed foods are going to use white table salt, sodium chloride, not a good thing to do. But if you’re going to add salt, personally, air dried sea salt and yet minimally, the least you possibly can. Now get doesn’t have to be exact. It has to be 100 to 100, whatever it is. So on your lower salt diet, steer clear most packaged foods unless they say salt free. So if your goal is to get 1500 2300 milligrams assault a day, keep that in mind as you go throughout your day. If you’re eating a whole food plant based diet, you’re not gonna have to worry about it. If you’re eating processed foods you do if you go out to restaurants you do. I went to a big farmers market in Atlanta. Huge down on Buford highway. And they had a little restaurant there and had some tofu stir fried with string beans and some carrots. And I had some and it was spectacular. It tasted great. It was spicy. It was salty. It was great. Blazing headache that night. They probably put monosodium glutamate in there. Why do we put monosodium glutamate in anything? Monosodium glutamate is a flavor enhancer. What that means is it stimulates a part of your tongue, which is by the way a new taste, but we found relatively recently. It’s called the umami taste, bud. Yes, that’s That’s right word. And that’s savory. So when I went to school, we learned about salty, sweet, bitter and salty, sweet, bitter and sour. And I always wondered, well, what about things like meat? Meats very savory. Well, there was no taste bud for that. And there was no explanation for it. Well, turns out we do have taste buds for that. We just discovered it recently.

And monosodium glutamate stimulates the umami taste buds stimulate making things taste more savory. And so we like it. So originally monosodium glutamate came from seaweed in Japan. And it was a more natural process. Now we use bacteria. They feed bacteria it basically poops out or spits out what it doesn’t like. And that’s where you get the glutamic acid from the monosodium glutamate. And in a concentrated form like that can cause a lot of headaches can cause neurological issues, numbness, tingling, brain issues. It’s too much glutamate all at once. So I’m going to guess that my little tofu and string bean experiment probably had monosodium glutamate in it. So if you see MSG, autolyzed yeast hydrolyzed vegetable proteins. That’s all the same name for monosodium glutamate. In my first book, eating right for the health of it, I have a whole chapter. It’s like 40 Different names on monosodium glutamate. So be careful with that, folks, especially if you’re a pain patient. I mean, of course, our offices if you don’t know we have offices in Marietta, Duluth, Stockbridge in West Cobb in the Atlanta area. And I’m board certified in chiropractic, orthopedics, pain management, double board certified in nutrition certified in traumatic brain injury. So I’ve got a bunch of degrees after my name. And so we see a lot of pain patients. And we’re really good at dealing with pain patients naturally without drugs and surgery. So when we patient comes in, we do a chiropractic evaluation, we do an orthopedic evaluation, we do X ray evaluation, but we also do nutrition evaluation, I think we’re the only clinic in the world that even does all that. So we do nutrition evaluation, why because I want to get you well as quickly as possible. And if I can teach you what to avoid and what to eat, you’re going to get better results from my doctors, and you’re going to like us better. And you’re gonna refer your friends and their friends gonna refer their friends. And that’s why we’re we have such big clinics, because we get really good results in most cases. So I want you to consider that, that when you come to our office, you’re gonna get a lot more than just chiropractic care than just orthopedic work than just X rays and just exercises. It’s a whole lot more. And if you’re doing things like monosodium glutamate that can actually increase your pain levels, and doesn’t give you the same results. Now, if you’d like to make an appointment to come see us and I think you should, by the way, go to our website, Dr. Joe calm Dr. JL e.com. And you can see it says booking appointment now it’s all over every page, bottom page, top of the page, click on it. You’ll it’ll bring you up to our offices, click which office you want to set an appointment in, it’ll give you times and you can book it right there or call us. And we’ll answer any questions you have. We accept almost all insurances. We accept Medicare. And in fact, with Medicare if you have standard Medicare, your copay is only like $8.30 or something like that. So there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be seen as if you have a VR secondary, it may be no cost to you. So there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be making an appointment right now, even if you don’t have insurance, it’s still the most effective, least expensive treatment for back pain in most cases. So what are you waiting for Dr. Joe calm, or you can call us, we’ll get that booked for you. The initial visit normally is $720. That’s the first and half of the second visit, we’ve reduced that to 299. We’re gonna raise that in the next few weeks. So if you want to make an appointment, do it now. And we want to see you your friends, your family and your children. If a child starts out with a healthy spine, chances are they’re going to continue life with a healthy spine. If the spine is bad when you’re young, it’s only going to get worse. So Dr. Joe calm stop suffering needlessly, we want to get you under care as quickly as possible. So kind of went off on a tangent there. But again, when we take on a patient, we want to do everything we can to get them well including teaching them what to eat, what not to eat. So fats, not only packaged foods, usually high in salt, they’re also oftentimes loaded with unhealthy fats and oils. So helpful list of things to avoid butter, milk, lard, cheese, even coconut oil in large quantities can be bad palm oil, even olive oil in large quantities.

I’m Italian, I cook a lot, I use olive oil on my salad, sometimes I cook with it, but very small amounts. Getting the body can only process so much. You want to really stay away from things like trans fats, hydrogenated oil, partially hydrogenated oil, vegetable oil shortening. These oils, when they get into the body are extremely toxic. And they can really raise your cholesterol levels and cause the cholesterol to stick to the artery walls. So again, the less fat in a food the better. But don’t buy something that says fat free. Because usually, if it’s fat free, it’s loaded with sugar to make it taste good in packaged foods. So oils got to be careful with you also don’t want to go rancid. rancid oil is worse than the oils I just listed. So a healthy rancid oil is worse than a bad non rancid oil and always go rancid very quickly. So what happens is, like omega three fatty acids for example omega three fatty acid, you might consider fish oil as an option. Well, fish oil is high in omega three fatty acids. Absolutely. However, if it’s not a very good high quality, oil, chances are it’s gone rancid. Also fish oils usually high in mercury and other heavy metals unless it’s been properly processed. The problem with fish oil even if all the safety measures in place is that fish oil has to be converted into something called a phospho lipid form. Krill Oil is already in the phospholipid form and it’s an Omega three oil and it’s less processed and run much less risk of heavy metal toxicity. So krill oil is a better choice than fish oil for omega three fatty acids. However, krill which are little shrimp don’t make omega three fatty acids. They get it from eating algae. Algae is the purest form of omega three fatty acids. That’s the oils that I use in my doctor Joe’s omega threes. I take Dr. Joe’s omega threes every day as part of my protocol. It’s anti inflammatory helps the brain function. People ask me a lot. How does your brain work? So well, I take care of myself, I take brain protocol every day. Dr. Joe supergreens and Dr. Joe’s essential source the minimum supplements everybody should be taking every day in most cases, I can’t imagine why you’re not taking it yet. If you’re not you should be if you are and you sign up for automatic renewal subscription you save was 10% I think it is. So we make it cheaper for you. I don’t know how to do this any easier for you folks. I’ve taken the super greasy essential source what I consider to the best supplements in the world. And we even put it on a subscription. So you don’t even have to order it and you get a discount for it. So Dr. Joe calm and it’s very inexpensive, by the way, unfortunately gonna have to raise the prices in the next couple of months. I hate to say that. But our supply chain you heard that word before is killing us. So that’s going to happen. Let you know, I don’t mean to have to. But omega three fatty acids are great and fatty acids, omega three should always be in a brown bottle, and dark because when sunlight hits it, it changes it. So be careful. The rule of thumb with oils is you don’t want to go rancid. So when assessing the fat content on a food label, avoid saturated fats. And in general look for fat content that’s 20% of the total caloric content or less. So if a package has 100 calories in it, you want to see fat content of 20% or less. Anything more than that no matter what the fat is not a good idea. refined carbs is another thing you want to look out for when it comes to your food labels. And that’s what talking about today food labels. Carbs are not the enemy. In fact, whole carbs can be great part of a whole food plant based diet. You can do quinoa, you can do millet, you can do Rice’s Rice’s are okay too. If they’re organic rice, you want to make sure it comes from California. lowest amount of arsenic comes from California. Just Fun fact on rice, even organic rice is. So refined carbs often find in packaged foods like white pastas, crackers, cakes, cookies, breads, doughnuts, they’re stripped away of the fiber, they take out the germ, which is where a lot of nutrients are in the wheat, they take out the wheat germ. And what’s left pretty much is sugar. And when you put that in your blood sugar spikes it raise your insulin levels, and we’ve done many, many shows on diabetes and insulin levels. Just know that’s bad for you.

So what do we do? Well, the food industry can use the word wheat in any nutritional label, even if the grains have been highly refined. The good news is the FDA approved words for whole grains that can help you navigate the carb thing. So if you see words like sprouted whole cracked, stone ground, better choices. If you see these words, it means that if you see bleached, white, enriched, fortified, don’t eat it. It’s essentially eating sugar. So remember, stay away from bleached, white, enriched, and fortified. This is essentially pure sugar. And it’s not good for you. It doesn’t have fiber, and fiber, what happens is wood fiber fiber gets into your colon, and it kind of swells up in your colon it causes the colon to expand out. And as the colon expands out, you have something called stretch receptors in your colon. And as the colon stretches it gets to a point and then it contracts. And when it contracts, it moves everything along your bowels that’s normal and healthy. Fiber does that. If you’re eating alcohol, meat, sugar, dairy, coffee, soda, artificial sweetener, white breads, cookies, cakes, donuts, and pastas, essentially zero fiber. And so now you have to put so much food in there to bulk it up that the colon eventually contracts, but that can lead to severe constipation. Constipation is a very serious condition. your bowels should be moving at least once a day preferably twice. easy, quick, simple. If you’re not, the bowels may be maybe compacted. Now it could be a pinched nerve in the low back the nerves and low back control the bowels. It could be not enough fiber could be not enough water. It could be your stomach is pushed up against your diaphragm and the whole colon is spasms. You might see things like acid reflux, heartburn, burping, gas, bloating, in many cases, we need to adjust or pull the stomach down away from the diaphragm to fix that. And that’s something all my doctors are trained to do. So Constipation is a warning sign. It’s just like pain. It’s a warning sign. It’s telling you something’s wrong. Don’t ignore it. Now we have a supplement called Dr. Joe’s intestinal cleanser and it works very well. For temporary relief. It doesn’t irritate the bowels, it’s not like taking a laxative, we have to run to the bathroom. Very good, very easy for the bowels. But my goal is to get you on a good diet open up the nerve supply to the bowels fix the stomach if we need to. So that you don’t need to take all the supplements we talked about supergreen central source vitamin D digestive enzymes tumeric. What do you have like 20 different supplements, all of them. I recommend you take on a regular basis except the intestinal formula, the intestinal formula, the temporary fix. Now if you want to get the supplements and we have go to the website, we have two pages of supplements and explains what the supplements do. Dr. joe.com If you have questions about it, you could send the questions through the website there’s little pop up box that pops up and says Hey, you want to chat? Send us your question. put your email in there we’ll get back to you as quickly as we possibly can. Or you can come pick up the supplements at our offices. We have offices in Marietta Duluth Stockbridge in West Cobb, we would love to be your doctors. We would love to naturally get you well and keep you well. So if you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, a lot a lot a lot of phrases were thrown out in here a lot of colloquialisms. If you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired if you’re ready to get well without drugs and surgery, Dr. Joe calm sometimes you need drugs and surgery, and I support that. But let’s work together and CO manage your case. If you’ve ever been in a car accident ever, if the car was damaged, chances are you were damaged. You need to see us right away. The longer you wait, the less likely you are to get a settlement even if you cause the accident. book the appointment Dr. Joe calm. I’m Dr. Joe Esposito. We’ll be right back

Hey folks, Dr. Joe Esposito here. Thanks for being here. I do appreciate that. I know everybody’s got a busy schedule. And I appreciate you taking time out of your day. We’re talking today about reading food labels. And earlier we talked about fat content, you want to make sure the fat content is no more than 20% of the total caloric content. You want to avoid margarines, and larges and hydrogenated oils, you want to make sure that you don’t have a lot of processed chemicals in there, you won’t be able to read the food label, if you can’t pronounce certain words don’t eat it. We we talked about refined carbohydrates as well, you want to look for something called fiber. And you want to look for something called net carbs. And those two go together. So what happens is if something has 20 grams of carbohydrates, let’s say, but as 10 grams of fiber, the net carbs are actually 10, you take the amount of carbs minus the fiber, and that’s the net carbs. So you want to bring down your net carbs, if you could bring your net carbs down to about 40 a day. That would be ideal. Because even things like let’s say a potato, okay, a potato has carbohydrates in it, but also has fiber. And so if I’m eating something that doesn’t have fiber in it, it’s just pure carbs. And fiber, pushes the food through the colon, and it blocks up the sugar receptor sites. So less sugar is getting absorbed. Because it’s blocking up its ability to absorb it. So not only do you push it through the colon, you absorb less you block up the receptor sites, pure sugar, bam, gets absorbed real quickly. Not a good thing. So you’re looking for those net carbs. Another trick you can do is let’s assume you like potatoes. But you don’t want the carbs. You like rice, you don’t want the carbs. If you take the carbohydrate and you put it in frigerator leave it overnight, eat it the next day, you’re going to absorb about 40 to 50% less of the sugar than if it was warm. How about that it’s called a resistant starch. So you can create resistant starches by simply eating something cold. So if you make a big potato, an organic big potato and I do this, and I’ll have my frigerator and I need a quick snack, I’m running out the door I got to bring lunch I bring lunch with me almost every single day. It’s very rare that I go out to lunch unless I have a business meeting, business meeting then it’s a lunch meeting, but by myself on an average day. I can’t remember maybe 1520 years ago I did that. But bring your lunch with you I bring a salad usually it’s real simple salad. I make my own salad dressing. In my book eating right for the health of it. We have a whole chapter on salad dressings. The ginger is amazing.

But you can make your own salad dressing by organic if you want to salad dressing such a ripoff. You can take one part raw organic apple cider vinegar, one part olive oil and one part water. Shake it up, you’ve got salad dressing. It’s just that simple. You want to sweeten it with stevia to it if you want to get crazy, which you probably shouldn’t maple syrup, you could add some garlic to it and pepper. Some deal if you want to make your own salad dressing folks, it’s quick. It’s easy. It’s so cheap. I can’t imagine why you’d buy it. If the only time I ever buy salad dressing it was on a discount rack. It’s an organic salad dressing. It’s not a discount racket, my rule is $2 or less a bottle, then I’ll buy it just in case for some reason I’m in a rush and I got to grab something fast. But salad dressings are just ridiculously overpriced and so easy to make. So you bring a salad, you bring a big potato to bake the night before and put it in a frigerator and just bring it with you, you’ll get absorbed by 40% less carbs if the potato is cold and if it’s warm, and you still getting all the fiber and you still get all the nutrients. And if you want to put something on it because you think it’s a little dry. Don’t use butter. Too much fat. How about Mustard? Mustard is great. You’d have to John you have spicy you have chunky, you can pick a mustard and put it on there as well. And then you just squirt it on. It’s really easy. It’s real quick doesn’t have to be refrigerated. Simple, simple meals. So inexpensive, and so delicious. And you won’t have that afternoon crash. How many of you fall asleep around three o’clock and eat coffee? Hmm, raise your hands. I know you do. If you’re eating a good lunch, you won’t have that crash in most cases. Now for energy. I take Dr. Joe supergreens and Dr. Joe’s essential source of course I take them every day. Nitric oxide I take that everyday to opens up your blood vessels, a ton of energy. Really great adrenal support just because I’m getting older, I want my adrenals to work better, and be complex. So supergreens essential source nitric oxide, B complex and adrenal support. still cheaper than buying those fancy cups of coffee in the afternoon. And you’re getting benefits from it as opposed to coffee, which is very dangerous. And the result is the same actual result is better. You have better energy you’re not shaky like coffee, and you don’t crash like coffee, you don’t get headaches if you stop taking it. Amazing results. So there’s your answer. More more effective, less expensive, better for you. Non toxic, no downside. I don’t know I can’t make it easier for you. I’ve done to work If you’re just looking for energy, there you go. There’s your trick. Really simple, really easy. Then you’re using resistant starches and you’re having a salad with it, which is really easy to digest. The number one consumer of energy we have as humans is romance, keep it clean. The number two consumer of energy is digestion. And if you’re eating a hamburger on white bread with cheese and french fries, and a soda and a milkshake, that’s so much energy, there’s no way you can be functioning at your peak if you’re eating those types of foods. And yet for a salad and a couple of big potatoes, three bucks, maybe not even. And you’re gonna feel great afterwards too, and you’ll lose weight, you’ll feel better you go to bathroom better your love life improves, your brain works better, you’re able to have energy to go out at night afterwards and spend time your family go on a date. No reason why you shouldn’t be doing these things. Except one. The only one thing that I can see why you wouldn’t be eating a better diet is to junky food tastes good. But so does everything else. Healthy food tastes great too. And once you start morphing into a healthier lifestyle, it’s really hard to go backwards. People do this all the time they start eating just a week, they start eating well, and they say Doc, I had a piece of cake. Oh my god, I thought it was gonna die. So much sugar. I felt awful. I felt bloated. I felt gassy. I couldn’t sleep. Yeah. So just so you know, once you come to the light side, it’s hard to go back to the dark side. So. So anyway, that’s what we’re talking about today we’re talking about today is reading food labels. And you want to be looking for those non refined foods. So we said if you see the word bleached, white, enriched or fortified, any of those words on your on your food label, don’t eat it. That’s not good for you. So continue with sugar. A whole food plant based diet does not include refined and processed sugars. This is all good in theory. But in real life, is it really practical? The answer is probably no, it’s probably not practical. But there are certain things we can look for and certain things we can do to avoid these issues, quite a lot of names for refined sweeteners, and they may be hard to spot because you don’t know what you’re looking for. But the good news is, I’ve put together a little list of refined sugars and what you want to look for. So white sugar that’s pretty obvious brown sugar sugar in the raw cane sugar invert sugar, coconut sugar, palm sugar, corn syrup, cane juice, evaporated cane juice, lactose, high fructose corn syrup, malt syrup, fructose dextrose, maltodextrin, ethyl sucrose, sucrose glucose, molasses, agave agave. Wait a minute. Agave is a health food Dr. Joe, I see it sold in a health food section. I see health food restaurants use agave as a sweetener. Let me tell you a little story.

plain old white sugar 50% fructose 50% glucose. Glucose is the fuel your body needs to run. Fructose has to be converted into glucose. And when fructose converts into glucose, it creates something called uric acid. uric acid gets in your joints and it hurts. As a chiropractor as a pain management specialist as a non surgical orthopedist. I want my patients get better and out of pain as quickly as possible. Me too. I’m a patient too. So if you’re eating sugars, fructose converting into uric acid, uric acid gets into joints and hurts uric acid prevents the body from properly producing nitric oxide, nitric oxide opens up your blood vessels. It’s one of the supplements I take every day, you probably should too, unless you have low blood pressure. Don’t take nitric oxide if you have low blood pressure. So nitric oxide makes feel great opens up your blood vessels. It’s so many benefits. So you’re preventing nitric oxide properly being formed if you’re doing fructose white table sugar 5050. High fructose corn syrup, 55% fructose, little bit more fructose and white table sugar. That 5% is so dangerous. So 55% high fructose corn syrup of fructose bad agave nectar 85 to 90%. fructose. Not good. I don’t want you doing agave. I had a patient come in the other day. And in our Marietta office. That’s where I see I see patients periodically. And he’s walking down the hall and he sees me down the hall. And he says you’re Dr. Joe. I said, Yeah. And he almost got teary eyed. In fact, he got a little teary eyed. And he said, I have to thank you for saving my life. And I said, good. I don’t know you but good. He said I’d had gout on for a long part of my life and it gave me all these different drugs and I was getting worse and worse. Nothing was helping. He says I heard you say on radio that fructose converts into uric acid and that can make out worse. He said I immediately cut out all the fructose within a week my gout was gone. I went back to the doctor told the doctor what happened. My medical doctor, he said the doctor never heard of that before, but if it works, he should keep doing it. He says I’m off my medications. I feel great. I’m a to walk again, he says, Thank you, I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done. It’s moments like that, that make all the work we do worth it. And it’s a lot of fun because it happens not every day, every couple of hours. I get emails, I get messages, I get patients and so it’s really neat. So if you want to become a patient of ours, I would love the opportunity to have my doctors see you, meet with you and put together a protocol, get the nervous system working the digestive system working, get your diet straightened out, put together a specific protocol for supplements just for you. So if you’re ready to get Well, only if you’re ready, don’t go kicking tires if you’re ready to get well do book an appointment right online, Dr. joe.com. We have offices in Marietta, Duluth, Stockbridge and West Kabini Atlanta area, we would love the opportunity to see what we can do. And if it’s something we know we can’t help, we’re not going to waste your time we’re going to say hey, listen, you know what, Bob, this isn’t something that’s out of our ballpark. Let’s go send you to an orthopedic neurologist, primary care physician, gynecologist, podiatrist, whatever it is, because we co manage a lot of our cases and doctors send their patients to us all the time. hospitals, doctors, nurses, nursing homes, because we try to get to the cause of your problems and not just treat the symptoms and usually without drugs and surgery. So if you’re ready to get well Dr. Joe calm, we accept almost all insurances we accept Medicare, folks Medicare, if you have just Medicare after the first visit your visits probably gonna cost about $8.30 a visit if you have a secondary it might be free or free to you I should say. So if you want to make an appointment, please do it. Most insurances we cover, we do the filing for you. It’s the most it’s the most effective, inexpensive treatment for back pain in most cases there is. And in our office, we go through the digestive system, we do the nutrition, we do dietary workup. I don’t know how to make it better for you folks. If there’s any process or technique or procedure that’s going to make your treatment better. I’m going to add it to our protocol. So Dr. Joe calm first visit is normally $720 We’ve reduced that to 299. I can’t make it better for you 50% off and that’s an exam X rays consultation first adjustment going over the X rays on the next visit and a complete nutrition evaluation. Do it right now we booked up quickly. We don’t want you to be bumped or have to be put out too long. Dr. Joe calm booked the appointment online or call us so we went off on a tangent they would sugar but sugar can make your pain a lot worse. Artificial sweetener can make it even worse still. Aspartame number one side effect of aspartame is headaches. countless patients have come to me over the years from radio shows from lectures from blogs and from patients. Dr. Joe, I’ve had headaches all my life. I cut out the artificial sweetener, my headaches went away.

I was done. I can’t make it any easier for you to stop doing artificial sweetener. You could use stevia monk fruit xylitol, yearthe for tall if you have to use a sweetener. But here’s what happens. As you change your diet and as your palate becomes more sophisticated, you’re going to need less excitement, you’re gonna need less salt and less sugar. It’s less caffeine, it’s so cool to get well and stay well it really is. And so we’d love that opportunity for you to be a patient and your friends and your family and your children. I love to evaluate children’s if they have a problem, it’s easier to fix. And if they’re healthy, they start out healthy chances to stay healthy. If they’re sick, they may stay sick. So Dr. Joe calm book the appointments. Alright, so back to sugars I digress. Sugars are hide hidden in so many different places. So choose foods without sweetener or whole sources like we said date sugar, dried fruit, raisins, prunes, whole fruit, apples, bananas. Remember nutrition labels list ingredients in the order of quantity from the highest to the lowest. So if sugar is in the first three to five ingredients, just put it back on the shelf. It’s very simple. This is not something you want to eat top three to five ingredients of sugar. It’s not for you. How’s that? It’s pretty simple. Fiber we talked about fiber earlier. Fiber can reduce the risk of stroke heart disease type two diabetes, it’s only found in plants you can’t get fiber anywhere else. It only comes from plants. Animal products don’t have fiber. Choose foods with at least two to three grams of fiber per serving. You want to get about 35 or 40 grams of fiber a day. Most people get about 15 If that. And so you really got to up that fiber game and the cool part is you got to eat more fruits and vegetables get more fiber if you eat more fruits and vegetables you’re not going to have to eat the other food because gonna be full and you’re gonna save a ton of money in most cases. Wow. This is so easy. I don’t know I don’t want everybody jumping on this cholesterol. When it says zero cholesterol we can proceed. If an item’s nutritional factors have cholesterol in them. I wouldn’t do it because that means they have animal products in them. Cholesterol only comes from animals. It doesn’t come from avocados. It doesn’t come from coconuts. Animals are the only things that produce Cholesterol, you’re looking for zero levels of cholesterol in your food. So follow that. So remember whole food plant based diet is about eating, you know, as much as fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds as you can. Fresh and frozen is okay, whole grains. And if it has too many words in the label, don’t eat it. So you’re looking for minimal ingredients, a one to one ratio of sodium to calories or less, hopefully less fat content that’s 20% of your total caloric intake, sneaky sugar words, sneaky monosodium glutamate words, two to three grams of fiber per serving, and zero cholesterol. It’s pretty simple. It’s not really hard. Now I want to cover this, how your diet can impact the severity of a COVID-19 infection. Now this is provided by fit unwell food, it’s a company out there. So as we approach a two year mark now on COVID infections, the most preventative measures advised by authorities in health care is still focused on short term actions washing your hands, wearing a mask staying at home social distancing, but nobody’s talking about the impact of your diet on viral infections. But I have in the past I want to cover today. And again, I’m just quoting the research now, don’t shoot the messenger or praise the messenger if you want to. Research is far more data available now than they did at the start of everything and allowing them to establish links between the severity of viruses and the health and fitness of the patient. The evidence is starting to just how you eat may change your experience with any type of viral infection. Most recently a study published in the British Journal of Medicine nutrition prevention and health. So I have this quote there found that a plant based diet significantly reduces the odds of moderate to severe illness by 73%. If you contract COVID-19, again, British medical journal Nutrition prevention and health 73 present prevent percent reduction in severity not saying you’re not going to get it, reducing the severity. To 2884 frontline health care workers in the UK, US and Europe were followed three months 568 contracted COVID 19 138 suffered moderate severe symptoms, and 430 experience mild

symptoms. Here’s the take home. They found that participants who followed a plant based diet had 70 or 73% lower odds of severe COVID-19 While pescatarians vegetarian soy fish were 53% lower to lower risk of moderate to severe symptoms. So 73% success rate. That’s pretty high, isn’t it, compared to other things may be out there. Hmm. Comparatively, anyone follow a low carb high protein diet often associated with increased meat consumption had a 48% greater odds of severe illnesses 48% greater odds of severe illness, the diet seemed to be related to the severity of the symptoms, researchers didn’t see any effect on duration or risk of infection. So it didn’t lower your risk of getting it it lowered your risk of being severe. Is this something else out there? That kind of does that supposed to make it less severe. However, they did note that plant based diets are usually high in vitamins and other nutrients and they bolster the immune system. And this is in line with earlier research, which found the link between COVID-19 and vitamin D deficiency. So again, plant based diet very important I’ve been teaching for years. Also, you want to make sure you get your vitamin D levels up I talked about this year and a half two years ago, reduces the risk of severity by about 40 to 50%. If your vitamin D levels are where they should be. Now the recommended dosage for vitamin D is around 30 nanograms per milliliter in your blood. That’s how you measure it. I like to have your vitamin D levels around 60 to 80 nanograms per milliliter. Now you can take too much vitamin D it can be toxic. So what I recommend is five drops of Dr. Joe’s vitamin D every day. It’s on the website Dr. Joe calm. Along with Dr. Joe supergreens. Dr. Joe’s essential source this is what I personally do for my immune system. What you decide to do for your immune system is totally up to you. I take supergreens an essential source vitamin D, I take glutathione glutathione is the master antioxidant in the body and I take probiotics those that’s my anti My immune building protocol. Now we have two other products one is called Dr. Joe’s wellness booster once called Dr. Joe seasonal tonic, the wellness booster you can take everyday as well and I think you should. It’s akinesia paudi arco olive leaf extract and Summa root. I’m not saying I have a cure for any disease. I’m telling you what I do for my immune system. It’s a dropper. It has a little bit of alcohol in it. So if you’re alcoholic, it’s not something you should be taking. But it’s amazing and I can’t tell you how many people that are high risk people, pilots and flight attendants people I travel a lot people around groups have been taking this stuff for years. and they say Dr. Joe, I would get sick five, six times a year now don’t get sick at all. So the wellness booster is an everyday thing. We have something called seasonal tonic. Seasonal tonic is very powerful. It’s ginger, horseradish, cayenne pepper, onion, garlic, can we puree that in an apple cider vinegar? It tastes the way it sounds. Make me salivate, just saying because Apple cider vinegar in there. If I feel an infection coming on, I take this every hour, it says take once a day, I take it every hour, it’s food, you know, don’t worry about overdosing. I take it every hour. And usually within a day or so all my symptoms go away. So we have protocols in place for you. Again, I’m not making any promises or any claims. I’m just saying this is what I do. And this is what the research shows. Research shows that a plant based diet reduces your risk of severity. It says that vitamin D reduces your risk of severity. And that’s according to American Society of microbiology, they found that people had good gut health

had better results when it comes to infections like COVID-19. That’s why I take Dr. Joe’s probiotics. Dr. Joe supergreens, an essential source have prebiotics and probiotics, which feed the bacteria in the colon, keeping my gut healthy. I’m not saying I’m not going to ever get sick. I’m saying I reduce my risk dramatically of severity. And so reading food labels is where we kind of started today, but it’s really important. So if you take the supplements and increase your levels of good nutrients, you’re moving in the right direction, plant based diet better still. If you don’t know what to eat, go to our website, Dr. Joe calm, and you type into words. So what can I eat? And I did a whole hour I was in a studio one day I just sat for a studio in an hour. And I did a whole lecture on breakfast lunch, dinner snacks laid it out for you. How much does it cost to listen to the podcast on my show? On my website? We have about 2000 hours audio and video. How much think that’s worth. It’s no charge to you. Absolutely free. And if you’re a podcast junkie, go to your podcast service and type in Dr. Joe for the health of it. Dr. Joe for the health of it, hundreds of hours there as well. We have blogs, we post essentially almost every day on social media. We do our live podcasts, you can tune into our live podcast we’d love love to have you join us. We do live radio shows on Sunday night WSB radio in Atlanta, all those shows are stored at our website and on our podcast services. So what I want you to do is this it’s really easy. I made it simple. Nothing for you to do but follow us on social media at Dr. Joe Esposito. At Dr. Joe Esposito, we post every day we let you know we’re doing live podcast lets you live radio shows. We post our podcasts if you want to listen to them. Can’t make it any easier for you folks. At Dr. Joe Esposito. It’s free. The podcast service Dr. Joe for the health of it free Dr. Joe’s podcast on a website free. So whatever you have type in what you’re looking for in the search bar and website. Chances are you’ll find an article a radio show or a TV show we’ve done can’t make it any easier for you. The supplements again minimum supplements I would suggest would be Dr. Joe supergreens. And Dr. Joe’s essential source that two powders I mix them together they taste great. Dr. Joe calm you can pick them up at our offices, Marietta dilute Stockbridge in West Cobb or Joe, my right hand man will ship them to you. And so you can save a few dollars in shipping if you want to pick them up. But if you want to shift it’s very inexpensive to ship as well. We charge you what they charge us so so we want to do everything we can to get you well and if you follow us on social media, many times we have giveaways, we’ve given away supplements. We gave away concert tickets the other day with a parking pass huge concert. We give away sometimes books, ebooks, we have discounts on supplements. So if you’re following us chances are you’re going to get a lot of benefits. And to follow us again is at Dr. Joe Esposito. Couldn’t be any easier for you. If you have questions you want to make an appointment to come see us neck pain back pain, shoulder pain car accidents workers comp sports injuries, Dr. Joe calm, easy to book online or call us. We accept almost all insurances out there Medicare car accidents. We want to be your doctors again, the website Dr. joe.com.