Welcome to episode two of the Energy Balance Podcast. I'm Jay Feldman of jfeldmanwellness.com and joining me today is my good friend Mike Fave of sapiensystems.com. Today we're gonna be talking about gut function. This is gonna be part one of a two part series, basically talking all about our gut, why it's important in terms of energy and energy balance. And today specifically, we're gonna be talking about what ideal gut function looks like and we're going to be looking at our guts compared to the guts of other animals and basically what that means in terms of energy and how this can affect our health on that energetic level. And then we'll also be talking about how different features of the foods that we eat then affect our gut function. To check out the show notes for this episode, head over to jfeldmanwellness.com/ podcast where I'll be linking to any studies or articles that we link to or mentioned throughout the episode. And if you are looking to improve your energy and recover from any low energy symptoms or chronic health conditions, head over to JFilmNWonList.com slash energy and sign up for a free mini course on energy balance. And that'll go through all the different things that we can do to basically support our energy production and remove the things that block our cellular energy production. And with that, let's get started. 

All right. So let's start off just by talking about the goals of our gut, basically what a healthy gut looks like and how that relates to energy. So basically the main purpose of our gut is to digest or break down the food that we eat. Then we want to absorb that food. and that way we can use this fuel. And, there's a couple other aspects too, that we might want to talk about there where we want to.

Basically, the human gut is ideally fast digesting, fast absorbing. And then we get rid of our excrement pretty quickly, which is very different from some other animals where they spend a lot of time and energy digesting and consuming their food, which takes energy away from other aspects of their health. So basically in the same way that we want to have a lot of energy for all these important functions in our body, we don't want our digestive systems to be wasting a lot of energy with really hard to digest foods or slow digesting foods. So yeah, so let's just break down each of those factors. We'll also be talking about our microbiome a little bit and the different potential dysbiosis that can go on and how that affects energy too, because that's one of the main factors that people experience that inhibits our energy production. And obviously that's a main factor of our health. let's start by just...

Are we going to go into the digestive comparative physiology and anatomy too really quick?

Yeah, do you want to start there?

Yeah, I think it helps to dispel some of the trends going on too that a lot of people are talking about with like vegetarianism and veganism and all those different ideas and the general idea of people saying, the apes eat this way or gorillas or monkeys eat this way or chimps eat this way. So humans should also eat this way. And so when you actually go and you look at the anatomy and physiology of the digestive tract in comparison between humans and apes, you start to realize, wow, we have a way different digestive tract and then you start to say, well, maybe this is why when I tried to go on that vegetarian diet or that vegan diet or fruitarian or whatever you tried to do, you're like, well, I, you know, I felt good at first, but then I felt terrible. So, um, I guess the easiest place to start and we'll just keep it like pretty simple is there's like a few adaptations that humans have, um, in comparison to apes, cause we didn't necessarily evolve.

From chimps or anything like that, but we have the same lineage, at least according to genetic theory. So essentially, the first thing is that we have a very acidic stomach. And the acidity in our stomach is, from what I remember, is somewhere between that of a scavenger and a carnivore. And the reason the stomach becomes very acidic in those particular states or those particular types of animals is because of the type of food they're eating. So for a scavenger, they're eating carcasses and things like that. So the carcasses can generally be contaminated with bacteria and whatnot. And stomach acid is usually the first sort of buffer or the first protective factor against any type of infection from bacteria or organisms that are in those carcasses or wasted meat or raw meat, whatever you want to call it. And then for carnivores, They're usually eating fresh meat and protein is usually or is most easily degraded by acids, heat, things like that. So having a high stomach acid allows for the proteins from the freshly killed animal to be digested efficiently. Obviously there's other factors in there like different digestive enzymes, pepsin and things like that. We also have those.

Well, basically what you're saying is that based on the acidity of our stomach, it falls in the range of eating fresh meat or as you were also saying, like a scavenger who's actually scavenging for food. So eating a dead carcass out on the savanna, whatever you want to say, you know. So humans have the capability to eat those things and our stomach falls, our stomach acidity falls within those types of particular animals, which is different from apes, which is different from the great apes, which have a more alkaline stomach and also different from other animals that have, that don't eat these, that don't eat meat or don't scavenge. They have a much more alkaline stomach all the way to animals such as cattle and whatnot, actually use their stomach, which is in this case called a rumen, to ferment vegetable matter. We're obviously not cattle, but with the comparison close to apes, the main comparison we're going to make is that between apes, because that's the general argument that you see. So then the next step we go to is the distinction between the small intestine and the large intestine.

The small intestine generally has an absorptive capacity. So it absorbs the proteins that your stomach just sort of pre-digested for you. The sugars, the fats and nutrients, they all get absorbed in the small intestine, at least for humans and in apes. Then the large intestine functions primarily in a fermentation capacity. And it's the plant matter that goes into there, whether it's different fibers, cellulose, all these different types of things go into the large intestine and they're fermented by bacteria and the bacteria change, this is an interesting part, the bacteria change those fibers when breaking them down and convert them into short chain fatty acids. So for a lot of people who are promoting the idea of a very low fat diet on the basis of the low amount of fat that's eaten in animals like cattle or even the great apes like chimps or gorillas, they don't actually have a low fat diet because most of what they're eating is the fermentation products of the bacteria, which is generally short chain fatty acids. So they actually wind up having a high fat diet. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that I'm saying that having a high fat diet is the ideal way to go. What I'm saying is you see across large mammal species, even ones that are eating mostly plants, the diet is primarily made of fat.

As percentage of calories. It doesn't mean that it's all fat, but as a percentage of calories, think from what I've read, it's somewhere between 40 and 50 % of your calories falls in that for those larger mammals like apes, cattle, things like that, despite, and even some whales are actually, actually ferment not plants, but the exoskeleton of the crustaceans that they eat. So even in those species, you see a high fat diet from short-chain fatty acids.

So with humans, we'll get back on track here. With humans, the small intestine is much larger than the large intestine in terms of the amount of space dedicated to the intestine compared to other species, especially compared to the chimps and gorillas, which are our closest relatives. So our small intestine is something like two thirds to three fourths of our digestive capacity, I guess you could say compared other species.

And our large intestine is about one third to one fourth, whereas apes and apes such as chimps and gorillas, that's flipped. chimps, they have more of a small intestine than they do have a colon or large intestine and gorilla can compare to gorillas. So with so it's like this. Humans are here. We have the most amount of small intestine. Then we have chimps which have not as much small intestine as humans, but definitely way more colon than humans or way more large intestine. And then you have gorillas, which have much more or much less small intestine and much more large intestine. And the other thing that's interesting that you find with these animals as you go up the scale with these animals, mean, depending on how, what you believe we could consider ourselves animals, you see an increase in intelligence. And we'll get to that later on. But yeah, so you have more stomach acid in humans.

Larger small intestine and a much smaller colon. The other adaptations that humans have and they're relatively specific to like, but they indicate the types of food that people can eat in comparison to other apes or other close relatives is some humans have adaptations or a general, a large amount of humans have adaptations to digest starch and that's dependent upon, there's like genetic copies of a gene for the production of an enzyme called amylase. And amylase can digest starch, essentially. So some humans have more copies, some humans have less copies, and it's indicative of an ability to digest starches. Now, what types of starches? That will also be a different story, and we'll get into that later. And then the next aspect is some humans have maintained the ability to keep lactose, or the enzyme lactase, present in the intestines to digest milk. So some humans are also adapted to digest milk.

So some are and some are, it really depends.

Yeah, and there's other aspects to both of those things. Our ability to produce those enzymes are also dependent on our metabolic health and our gut health. So we'll circle back to those. So let's apply or talk about the implications of those comparisons in gut physiology. So you were saying that we have relative to our closest relatives have much more acidic stomachs. We have larger small intestines and smaller large intestines. So as far as what that would suggest, as far as what we are what we should be eating or on the other hand, what our guts should be doing is that the focus is much more on being able to digest proteins quickly in the stomach, quickly and well. And then in the small intestine is that we are digesting or breaking down the foods that we're eating, you know, whether it's protein, carbs or fats, even though the proteins are already more digested at that point. But then the small intestine is really where we're absorbing those things. And so the fact that our small intestine is larger, suggest that we are meant to be eating easily absorbable foods that we then absorb most of, leaving much less food matter for our large intestine. So basically, the food matter that's left, which is often different types of fibers, then make it down to the large intestine where they're fermented. And in other species, they rely much heavier on this fermentation, and they use the products of that fermentation for basically as nutrients that they use to produce energy and do other things.

But in humans, based on our gut physiology, we aren't adapted to that as much. That isn't the way that our systems are designed.

Yeah, exactly. So one thing I do want to clarify though is, and a lot of people then will make this extension then, okay, so then we shouldn't have any fiber at all. And we still have a colon. So we still have some function there. And not having any fiber at all can cause issues for people. Some people, depending on the situation, it may be helpful, you know, if you have some type of inflammatory bowel disease, or if you have some type of IBS and certain fibers bother you, then having some degree of limitation on those is helpful. But in most cases, for like general people, the goal is not to avoid fiber altogether. The goal is to choose specific fibers that our bodies are, I guess you could say more well adapted to handling. So but overall, the general principle here is the goal isn't to have a bunch of fiber and to create a bunch of fermentation in the colon. And that's something that's been promoted now for the microbiome theories and things like that. you want to have all these friend of a fibers. I mean, you're to feed yourself or you're to feed bacteria in your colon. And as far as I understand, in my opinion, you want to make sure that you don't have any pathogenic overgrowth in the colon and that you have some sort of neutral species because you're not going to have a sterile colon. It's not going to happen considering the environment.

But the number one priority is to make sure that you're eating easily digestible foods that are very limited in toxins and things like that. the focus is, considering that, that we can digest protein and we have very good capacity to digest protein, which would indicate to me that you would need a degree of protein in your diet. So all these ideas about you don't need that much protein or you need low protein, no, you need a decent amount of protein. And based on our physiology and anatomy that we just talked about, and based on understanding how different proteins and digest animal proteins would probably be the most ideal. Then the next thing is you want easily digested carbs. You don't want to have a whole bunch of difficult to digest carbs that reach the colon and ferment, especially if you have any type of issue going on, digestive issue or anything like that. And so I guess for general ideas, the easiest things to digest are simple sugars and then certain types of starches.

So it was other fiber sites of starches can be an issue. And then the last thing, as we talked about is most large mammals have like relatively high fat diets and humans have a very large capacity to digest and metabolize fats, particularly saturated and monounsaturated fats, especially considering gallbladder and bile acid function, which we'll also talk about. So having those types of fats in the diet is also very helpful. And I mean, a lot of people have the whole low fat idea and it's just, it's just not a reality.

It's not even a reality for the examples that they provide. So the idea of having super low fat and only running on carbs, I mean, I've experienced it. I know Jay's experienced it. And just from what I've read from my experiences, research, things like that, it just doesn't make any sense.

Yeah, and we'll talk specifics about all the different foods and what all this means for what we want to be doing. But let's first make sure that we tie together the relationship, like the different aspects of our gut health and the relationship with energy. So one thing that you mentioned was having the right species of bacteria in our guts or other microbiota. So basically what we're talking about is that we have this wide variety of bacteria and other microbes in mostly our large intestine.

And that's more or less normal. And we want to be eating a diet that includes some fiber to feed those, those microbes. But what you had mentioned was that some people don't do well eating types of foods that get fermented in our large intestine. And the reason for that could be, or is more oftentimes because there's some sort of dysbiosis going on, which basically just means that there's some pathogenic or harmful

microbes which could be bacteria or fungal.

The in the intestine is not right, essentially.

Yeah, there's an imbalance there.

That's it comes down to just an imbalance of bacteria. The ecosystem isn't right. So when you put certain types of fibers in, you cause the growth of certain bacterias. And when that happens, you can get symptoms from it. Floating gas, brain fog, different things from the products that the bacteria are producing when they get a hold of those types of fibers.

Right, exactly. And so when we digest our food very well, which means that we need to have the right enzymes being produced, you mentioned amylase and lactase. There's also all of our other pink. You mentioned that as well. And then the other, there's various enzymes that we use to break down our food. But assuming that those are being produced in adequate amounts, that we have enough bile production, which helps with the breakdown of fats and that then we're absorbing our food well and our food is moving through our intestines properly, which is reliant on something called the migrating motor complex. So assuming all of those things are working properly, we should have a pretty quick moving digestive system. We should be breaking down our foods very well, absorbing them very well, and it shouldn't require an excessive amount of energy to be basically for our gut to be functioning.

All of those different factors, the enzymes, the bioproduction, migrating motor complex, all of those things in many ways are dependent on our overall metabolic health. So basically if we have enough energy being produced in our cells, we're able to then effectively digest and absorb the foods that we're eating. When those things don't happen, that's oftentimes when these sorts of gut dysbiosis go on. So we get some sort of an infection or an imbalance of bacteria and that that proliferates in our large intestine.

 Sometimes it can also move to our small intestine. And this then leads to a whole other host of problems. So this is oftentimes where bloating and gut inflammation come in and brain fog, as you mentioned. So all these symptoms are oftentimes a product of dysbiosis or just poor digestion or poor absorption of food. And one of the main reasons why, or the mechanisms by which these dysbiosis cause problems is by the toxins they produce. So basically when we feed these quote unquote bad or pathogenic bacteria, they produce various toxins that we absorb. So one of those that's very commonly talked about is lipopolysaccharide or LPS, which is also called endotoxin. There's many others. There's D-lactate and histamine and other toxins that could get produced by different types of bacteria that we then absorb and these block our ability to produce energy function as they're the function of these of many of these bacterial products is to poison metabolism that's how they work that's the way they're supposed to work.

Do you want to dig into that a little bit and explain why that is? I mean, we don't need to dig into how, because the basics is that they just block mitochondrial respiration, which is the process that we produce energy through.

I think what I do think is important to stipulate here is just, like, so say you have, say your metabolism is good or your thyroid function is good, anything like that, it still doesn't mean that you'll be able to eat anything you want. Because, like, there isn't, there's like a reciprocal relationship to some extent where the foods that you eat, even if you are in a good state, they can still have a negative effect on these digestive processes and they can still have a negative effect on metabolism themselves. So because you're doing well, doesn't mean that you can eat just anything. You know, it's like, oh, my metabolism is good, so I'll be able to handle any food. It's like, you will be more likely to deal with certain issues. And also, depending upon what bacteria, you'll be more likely to deal with certain issues. But in a lot of circumstances, a lot of people are starting out well. A lot of us start off well as kids. I we all remember eating whatever we wanted when we were kids.

 And then over time, not eating well and things like that slowly start to take its toll and start to cause issues in the intestine. a prime example of this is a lot of people now are worried about antibiotics and things like that in the production of different animals like cattle and chicken for food. it's not that, I mean, a lot of the people automatically think, they must be close together, so they're getting a lot of diseases and stuff like that. And yes, that is part of the process. That is part of why they need to get antibiotics.

But the other reason that they need to get antibiotics is because when they feed these animals particular types of foods, it causes dysbiosis in their gut, particularly cattle. When you feed them a bunch of grain, after a certain percentage of grain in the diet, or if they haven't been adapted to the grain, they're rumen or the bacteria in their guts haven't been adapted to the grain slowly, then the animals actually can die from an overgrowth of bacteria.

And so they give them antibiotics to kill off these bacteria. So you're basically seeing the process that we're talking about being recognized on a large scale in industrial agriculture. And then just saying, okay, we know that when we give these animals too much grain, they're going to get different types of issues called acidosis or bloat. Because what happens is they start when they have too much grain in the intestinal tract, it causes an overgrowth of bacteria that produce like acid products, like lactate and things like that.

And then they also produce a lot of endotoxins and it causes the cattle to basically get very huge and bloated. And then they get, they also put on a lot of weight. That's how they put the weight on the cattle for this purpose. That's why they're feeding them the grain. And then they get something called laminitis, which is like inflammation of the lining of the hooves. So basically inflammation of their joints, which you can see in different people who have different types of gut issues. So you're seeing the same processes that occur in humans when you feed them particular types of foods in these same types of animals. And then the treatment is antibiotics. And the reason why is because of the bacterial overgrowth. essentially, you can have a good metabolism, yes. But to maintain that good metabolism, to keep it going, is very dependent upon what you're eating as well. And that's why it's important to eat the right things to stimulate the metabolism and to eat the right things that go with your particular digestive anatomy and physiology.

The example I like to give, it's like semi-childish, but you wouldn't feed a cow steak and expect it to be healthy. It's not adapted to eat that type of food. So when we're talking about what humans should eat or what apes should eat and things like that, in order to prevent disease, they need to be eating the food that they are meant to be eating. And so the question that we're talking about here is, okay, well, this is the anatomy, this is the physiology, this is how things are working, so this is what you should put in to the system because this is what the system is designed to use.

You wouldn't pour a bunch of water in your gas tank and think your car is going to run. And the same thing happens with humans. You wouldn't put a bunch, in this case, a bunch of grains and refined products and high unsaturated vegetable oils and things like that, and then expect your body to metabolize things well and have a good digestive function. So they go hand in hand. And then the biggest problem with these things with the different foods besides toxins and things that they could have like polyunsaturated fats or mercury and seafood or anything like that. The biggest issue beyond all of that, and I think for most people, like the first issue to occur is bacterial issue in the intestines from eating the wrong foods. And so the bacteria overgrow and then they produce products and the products directly affect the mitochondria. 

Their function is to directly affect the ability of the cell to produce energy and that's like basically how everything works in nature in general is trying to inhibit some type of metabolic process. So any cellular organism, if it's going to create a defensive compound, it's going to affect some type of metabolic process and over time, depending on the organism, just going to have to stop doing it or it's going to cause them to compromise themselves. So there's plant animals, bacteria, whatever it is, the venoms, toxins, plant protective compounds, anything, is going to affect your metabolism in some way. And that's the way that they're going to work. So when you start overeating these different types of foods, you get that bacterial overgrowth in the intestine that is not necessarily ideal for our physiology. And then you start to see the big guts, the joint issues, the thyroid problems, your hair falling out, all these different types of things.

Yeah. Yeah. All sorts of other inflammatory symptoms. Brain fog is another one that's really, really common or anxiety, depression. There's a pretty strong connection between brain function and these toxins. So, and along with that too, mean, these, these toxins are well recognized as well recognized to be very dangerous and toxic. They're used in experiments to promote inflammation basically when they want to stimulate.

Inflammatory processes, they'll use these toxins. It's also endotoxin and LPS, which are the same thing, are basically considered to be the leading cause of sepsis, which is one of the leading causes of death, at least in America. Basically, which just goes to show how strongly inhibitory these are of our metabolic function and how dangerous they are and how massive of an effect they can have on our health.

What you were basically saying was that there are certain foods that are ideal and certain foods that are less ideal. And the ones that are not ideal cause can lead to some of these gut issues, both by inhibiting our metabolism first, which then allows for the gut issues to come out or by having direct effects on our gut, which allows these gut issues to come out. So do you want to transition now and we'll start to talk about what these different foods are, why they might be good or bad and some of the mechanisms behind that.

Yeah, one thing I want to say before we get there though is a lot of people like to, at least in my experience, a lot of people like to like view the gut and the brain as separate. So the idea that having some type of issue in your gut is going to be like, it shouldn't affect my mood or anything like that. A lot of that stuff is directly interrelated. It's like, there's no separation between those things and something that a lot of people I mean, it's starting to come to light now, but a lot of people don't know is you actually have more neurons in your enteric nervous system than you do in the brain. And the idea of separating them doesn't really make any sense, but it's the entire nervous system is integrated altogether. So if you have some type of irritation in your intestines from something that you're eating, it's going to affect you the same way as if somebody was like constantly scratching your skin all day long. It's the same thing. It's going to cause a similar effect.

So the and for us and for most animals in general, a lot of the insults that they're going to take in on their physiology are generally through the gut. That's one of the first places where you're really going to have significant issues because you have a very delicate tissue. And that's where you're going to have bacteria and microbes and the different foods that you're pulling into your body interact with you. So that's the reason why it's so important for gut health to be on point is because it's one of your main interfaces with the environment and one of the main areas where things can go wrong. So and then I guess we'll get as you said we can get into the different booths now. So as we talked about before that's what you want to do. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, we can talk about, so basically as far as foods go in relation to gut health, we want to consider how hard or easy they are to digest. And because we know that if a food is very hard to digest, oftentimes that means that we're not going to have a fast moving and efficient gut system, which means that we're going to be wasting energy on it. It also means that we're going to be more likely to have bacterial overgrowth because one thing we didn't talk about, and we kind of touched on, but
is that we want to be absorbing our food very quickly because if we don't absorb it very well or don't break it down very well, then it's going to be consumed by the microbes. And that's what leads to overgrowth. And that's what leads to, more often than not, these pathogenic harmful bacteria that then produce these toxins. So when we're eating hard to digest foods, it means that we're not going to be digesting them, like breaking them down or absorbing them well. So they're going to be more likely to those sorts of dysbiosis.

And then there's other factors too to consider in addition to how hard or easy they are to digest, would the main one would be certain toxins in the foods or anti-nutrients, which we'll talk about those too.

So as far as anti-nutrients go, these are basically plant defenses. They're compounds that are produced by plants in order to animals from eating the food or from eating the plant because these are basically, they're defense mechanisms because the plant doesn't want to be eaten. So yeah, that's true. we can, to circle back just a little bit real quick, you had talked about antibiotics and I think it's a really important point.

They're essentially pesticides that you just made me think of, is that antibiotic, like we think of antibiotics as just these prescription medications that ravage our guts, but in reality, all sorts of different compounds in our foods have different types of antibiotic properties. And I guess we can leave some of that to talk about when we talk about which foods we do want to be eating and why some of those antibiotic properties might be beneficial for us. So I guess we'll actually hold off a second.

Well, I think it's important to add in that point. Most of these antibiotics are actually synthesized from different compounds from either plants or fungi or bacteria.

The prescription antibiotics you're the pharmaceutical drugs are synthesized or discovered from these plants, bacteria and fungi, and then they manipulate the structure afterwards to make new forms and stuff like that. The penicillin is from the mold. The cephalosporin classes are also from fungi. Some of the erythromycin, streptomycin, bacitration are from bacteria, things like that.

So to connect it all together, plants or bacteria or fungi, they all produce compounds to protect themselves from other species. And so they protect themselves from bacteria by producing different antibiotic compounds. They protect themselves from bugs by producing different pesticides. And they protect themselves from mammals by producing different anti-nutrients, some of which are pesticides, too. So do you want to talk through some of those different anti-nutrients and which foods have them?

Yeah, I guess the easiest before we get into the specifics of them the easiest things to consider is that there's only a few foods in nature that are really meant to be in that are like created to be in and the main ones are fruit and milk and then guess you can make you can consider honey to some extent but fruit and milk are the main foods that are produced by organisms to be eaten on purpose.

The next thing before we go before we go beyond that let's talk like obviously people know that milk is produced to be consumed by a baby so that it can grow as far as fruit goes fruit is produced by plants in order to help spread the seeds so they want animals to then eat the fruit including the seeds and then Spread those seeds by like through their excrement. So So yeah, so the  plants want to produce You could say foods that improve health so that the animals that are eating those fruits continue to eat them.

Exactly. Exactly. And then the other thing is, so the next food that we have is animal foods or animal proteins, things like that. Since animals are able to run and escape and do things like that, their general mechanism of protection is not to produce pesticides or toxins or venom or anything like that. I some animals, of course, in general, Right, some do, yeah.

A lot of these animals aren't going to produce those types of defensive compounds because they can run or they can fight or they can bite you, whatever they're going to do. So it wasn't necessary for them to develop those defensive mechanisms chemical defenses, they rely on physical defenses.

They didn't have to develop the chemical defenses. So those are like the next foods in general that would be like on the safer scale to eat. So when you have things like that, know, have chicken, beef, and there's caveats to some of these eggs, things like that. So right now we have fruit and then we have dairy and then we have animal products. The other thing I wanted to bring into focus here is that when you look at our closest relatives, which are chimps, bonobos, their diet is almost entirely ripe fruit. And they focus almost entirely on eating ripe fruit. Even if the fruit is unripe, they would rather eat the interior of the stems of the plants called pit than they would eat the actual unripe fruit. So they are very focused on eating the ripe fruit. And part of this reason, this is one of the caveats to fruit, is that unripe fruit has defensive compounds because the plants and the seeds are not ready for the fruit to be eaten to spread the seeds. So it's gonna deter, it's why tomatoes are green when they're not ripe. The green color doesn't signify to the animal, okay, I'm ready to eat as much as the red color does. So when you start to see that color change and you start to get the aroma and then the sweetness increases and things like that, it's the plant enticing the animal, okay, I'm ready for you to eat the fruit so that you can spread the seeds.

There are defensive compounds in fruit if it is unripe.

Yeah, great points. we'll talk about more specifics of fruit in a second. yeah, those are really important points for sure.

And then guess after these, after we get into the animal protein, so we have fruit, dairy, animal proteins, layer of foods to eat. And these are in a lot of cultures. These are generally seen at least in the, some of the cultures that I've studied in regards to like hunter gatherer populations. A lot of these are seen as fallback foods. They do factor in as staples in the diet, but as fallbacks. And so for those, see underground storage organs of plants, which is tubers.

So yams, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, things like that. So in general, those are, and the thing about these foods is because they're stored underground, they don't have as much defensive compounds geared towards mammals such as humans. Because the idea is that the main attacks that these storage organs are gonna, or these tubers are gonna experience are gonna be from bacteria or different microbes or fungi underground or different insects like worms and things like that. So the plant compounds that they generate are geared more towards those particular types of animals or those particular types of organisms. And when they do generate them, it's generally in the surface layer of the tuber. So generally the skin of the potato or the first few centimeters of the yam or anything like that. So peeling them and eating those types of foods are oftentimes

Also good options. And again, this depends on the individual's tolerance to those things like what we talked about before with the ability to digest starch with amylase.

Yeah, so those are very much, you could say they're more in the gray area. We also forgot to mention seafood when we mentioned meat and like animal products. guess that counts as animal products. Yeah. But the same, the same things apply again with all these foods. Some of them are not perfect. not saying all animal products are good or all fruit is good. We'll talk about those details in a second, but there's yeah, there there's different factors to consider, but we're just talking about it from the defensive chemical side, basically the how well we're gonna be able to digest and absorb these foods and how much they're going, like whether they're going to affect our gut positively or negatively. So we've talked through most of the better ones and then the kind of gray area. And then that brings us to more of the foods that have a lot of these defensive compounds.

So beans, nuts, grains seeds, basically these are all seeds. Sure. Yeah. So, yeah, as far as the foods that do have the most chemical defenses against mammals, it's basically the seeds of the plant. So that includes seeds, nuts, legumes and grains for the most part. And all of the seed is of course, you could say the most important part of the plant because it allows it to reproduce. And so there's a lot of

You want to go into those ones?

Protective compounds built into these seeds to prevent them from being digested and absorbed so that even if they are consumed, they aren't absorbed and that then they're able to continue to reproduce. And so basically a lot of these compounds are meant to deter animals from eating them and they include various compounds that inhibit our digestion, some that inhibit our metabolism directly, some that inhibit the absorption of different vitamins and minerals.

So just to name a few of these, there's lectins, which also includes gluten. So many people are very familiar with gluten nowadays as a compound that does cause a lot of gut irritation and a lot of problems. And gluten is just a form of a lectin. And there's various lectins that do cause issues outside of gluten. Then you also have phytates or phytic acid. You have oxalates or oxalic acid. You have saponins and goitrogens. Saponins are goitrogens, which just means that they can inhibit thyroid function.

A lot of these anti-nutrients can also inhibit digestive enzyme production. So we talked about amylase before and different proteases which digest protein. some of these anti-nutrients inhibit our ability to digest. They inhibit the effects of these enzymes. So they inhibit our ability to digest proteins and starches. So it's kind of a long-winded way of saying that the different forms of seeds in the plant are all pretty terrible for our digestive systems.

Yeah, specifically created to be that way. They're specifically created to target those enzymes and those different functions so that we do not eat these aspects of the plant. I mean, the question is, do you want somebody to eat your babies? That's essentially what the plants are doing. You're not going to eat my kids, so since I can't run away, they're just not going to be edible for you. You're going to eat them a few times and like, can't eat this. And that's why you see extensive forms of processing involved in involved in the ability like the production of these different grains, know, white rice or the milling of corn and wheat and oats and things like that. then that prior to the current industrial age, you all these things had some sort of type of sprouting and fermentation involved in them to eliminate the negative processes.

So basically, what you're basically touching on is that these seeds in their natural forms have, especially have a ton of these defensive compounds that cause a lot of issues, but there are various things that we can do to them to make them better, more palatable, more digestible. So you mentioned white rice where the rice is actually starts out as brown rice, which some people don't realize. And that the white rice is brown rice that has the outer part stripped off. And those outer parts have a lot of those anti-nutrients which is why white rice was always traditionally eaten rather than brown. And there's a lot of other processing that we did to these foods or to these seeds to make them more like foods, which involved cooking them in certain ways, fermenting them, sprouting them. So these are all, but you mentioned these, but these are different ways that the anti-nutrients in these foods were deactivated so that they could be eaten with less negative effects.

Exactly. Yeah. The other thing that I think is important to talk about here is in the relation of these foods to the microbiome. So a lot of these foods have components in them, particularly some lectins that number one, strip the intestinal lining. So it allows bacteria in the gut to come in contact with the epithelium in the gut. And that can cause issues because then you start to provoke an immune response.

And I don't think many people are aware, but the entire colon and even the small intestine has a mucus layer on it. And it's covered in a, especially the colon is covered in a very thick mucus. So you have the bacterial growth and whatnot, but they're always separated from the epithelium of the colon to a large extent. So a lot of these plant foods, number one, rip that or basically the lectins bind to that mucus layer and start to strip it off. And then the other thing is, the lectins actually can encourage the growth of particular types of bacteria in a pathogenic manner. So they can actually change the microbiome that you have going on in the gut and cause issues for a lot of people, especially if you already have pathogenic species or a dysbiosis present. So they can make it much worse for people. And that's why you see a lot of people when they start to develop that digestive orders.

The first things that are going to go are those types of foods. So beans, grains, nuts, and seeds. Then the next aspect that's important to talk about these is a lot of them aren't complete sources of protein and a lot of them are missing different nutrients. And even on some labels, you may see all these nuts have this much nutrients. A lot of those nutrients are bound up and indigestible. And then the other thing is even some of the macronutrients, like what I talking about, the amino acids, the proteins and the carbohydrates are in forms that are very difficult to digest compared to some of other plant foods that are available. So if you looked at these foods on a net basis, you have a food that has a decent amount of toxins that can damage not only you, but create a pathogenic flora in your intestine. They inhibit digestion. A lot of the nutrients, macros, and micronutrients are bound up and indigestible.

They require an extensive amount of processing to make them digestible. there's basically overall they're net negative on the digestive system, on the body in general, on the flora, everything. So even when you start to do things like to sprout or process these foods, you make them more digestible. You get rid of most of these issues, but they still have a degree of issues, especially when you compare them to the other foods that are available. So the question is, can you make, the question is not can you make these foods edible, because you can, you definitely can. The question is, why would you eat them in the first place when you have better options available? When you, especially nowadays, you have many better options available as food that take less time to prepare and have a net positive effect on the GI tract and the body overall.

And they don't have these toxins and their nutrients are available and we're actually made to digest these types of foods. So it's like, there's not really a strong case to go into this direction. The only reason I see these foods being, and this is an opinion at this point, but the only reason that I these foods being promoted or a lot of people going in that direction is because there's a lot of industry behind them. There's a lot of industry behind eating seeds, nuts, soy grains, all these different types of foods. The industry behind them makes them cheap and easily available, but you're sacrificing a lot. You're basically sacrificing your own health and physiology for these types of foods, for basically the cheap price of these foods. And I understand some people are in a situation where they may not be able to eat ideal, but overall, there's not really much benefit to these foods in general.

Right, as far as health goes for sure. And this also includes all of the vegetarian protein powders and also all the fake meats. A lot of them, their primary protein sources are these grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. For example, there's really common, like vegetarian protein substitutes or whatever they call them that are made purely of gluten, which is just an example. But yeah, it's definitely not ideal one other food group that we actually, kind of forgot to touch on was, vegetables, which would fall in between the, the tubers and roots, which includes like the potatoes, sweet potatoes, all of those, and the grains, the gooms, nuts and seeds. So the vegetables are typically the leaves of the plants. If you think about kale or spinach.

Before you go, just want to clarify, tubers also include things like carrots and parsnips and different things. They are storage organs, they're just not as starchy as the other ones. So those are involved there and the same sort of idea applies to those roots in general. then, because vegetables are the large classification of plant food that includes everything that's not fruit, essentially, and that's not a seed or a nut or a legume or something like that. So sort of like the stems, the leaves and everything else there.

So the word word when you talk about it, just to clarify for everybody listening, you're talking about the above ground vegetable aspects of like stems and leaves and whatever else, not the below ground, which people generally consider carrots and not the fruit vegetables that people talk about with peppers and tomatoes and eggplants, which are actually fruits, not vegetables.

Right, as well as squashes, zucchinis, that whole family pumpkin. So those are all more, those are all actually fruits. So if you think about them, they have seeds on the inside. Of course, the ones in the squash family, they have a lot of raw starches in there and things that are better broken down with cooking. yeah, so we have to make the distinction between culinary vegetables and what we're talking about scientifically as what would be vegetation or versus fruits. So a lot of the things that we call vegetables, culinarily, are not actually vegetables, they're fruits. from the health perspective, that's important to consider. So exactly as Mike said, for the vegetable side, we're talking about the stems, leaves, and I think those main ones, right? Is there another?

I mean, guess barks and stuff like that, but that's more herbs.

Yeah, yeah. And so these sorts of vegetables, do have some anti-nutrients in them. They aren't as heavily protected as the seeds are of the plant. So you do have some anti-nutrients in these leaves. Because they're less protected, it's easier to break down these anti-nutrients. So a lot of times just cooking these vegetables is enough to break down those. They still are not ideal where a lot of their nutrients are still bound up with the anti-nutrients or prevented from being absorbed by these anti-nutrients.

And they also don't contain the ideal forms of a lot of these nutrients because they're in the plant forms rather than the animal forms that we use. But they're definitely a lot better than the seed category of foods, but still not ideal.

And then they can, they also can have potent toxins in them too. And then the other thing to consider here is that as far as like adaptation to eating food as like as a species, we are way more adapted to eat leaves and things like that. Like from our, in our lineage in general, in comparison to being able to eat grains and seeds and nuts and lagoons and stuff like that. So, I mean, that, that's some, if you look at our closest relatives, they do eat some leaves. It's just, they're very specific.

That's something specific about the leaves that they eat, which the same goes for us. So it's not that overall you just to, I guess, clarify or give like a general summary of what we just talked about. The ideal foods for us is well, we could start with is animal products, including meat, seafood, and then the different fats that can go some of the different fats that can go with those animal products. And then you have fruit and juice.

Then we get into gray areas depending upon tolerance, which are the different starches that we talked about, which are tubers or the underground root organs. And then guess you can, we can put plantains and bananas, so starchier fruits in there too. And then dairy products, depending on tolerance. Then after that gray area, I guess we get into, we get into like some of the vegetables can be okay. And then we have.

Also the squashes and those types of foods were up higher with the.

Washing the squashes and different starchy um some of the starch here I guess vegetable fruits people consider you can put them with the Roots and the and the starches in general and then after that it's not really a gray area. I mean then I don't know it's in between it's in between neutral and Not really so great is you have the different vegetables some of the leafy greens and things like that um and then after that you sort of you get into
grains, nuts, seeds, beans, and the majority of those in general not ideal, very problematic, and I mean a lot of people have issues with them. And the other important point to consider with those is that the grains and things that we're eating now have been hybridized and changed in a lot of ways too, because a lot of people like to consider, know, back in the day society was living on grains and people didn't have all the sickness and stuff like that. And that is partly true to some extent, and part of the reason that that is true is because of the hybridization and because of the adjustment in how those grains, how the grains and the different, foods, those types of foods have been grown and have been bred. And I mean, some of them are even genetically modified and things like that, which can cause issues. So, and then obviously the soil quality and the amount of nutrients going into them. If you have a bunch of anti-nutrients in the plant, and the plant has already depleted of nutrients, then you're really, now you're at a net negative. So you're not even at zero, now you're now you're negative. So there's those aspects taking into consideration. again, plant animal, animal foods up here and proteins and fats, obviously we'll go into the specifics. Then you have your fruit, then you have your safe, safe starches, which is, know, plantains, yams, potatoes, bananas, other underground root organs like carrots, then you have your squashes and things like that. Then after that, you have certain vegetables, certain safer leafy green varieties, and then you basically just have grains, nuts, seeds, beans, everything below that.

Yeah. All right. I hope you guys enjoyed that episode, which was part one of a two part series on gut function. One thing that we didn't mention in this episode that I wanted to talk a little bit about is the expensive tissue hypothesis. And this is basically the idea that one of the things that has allowed us as humans to develop greater intelligence and greater brain function is that we spend a lot less energy on our guts and a lot more energy on our brains.

And that basically we've developed a more efficient gut that relies on easily digestible foods and that this reduced energy demand for gut function allows for us to spend more energy on our brain function. And so this is relevant in that it supports basically what we were talking about today as far as what ideal gut function looks like and why we want to have a fast absorbing, fast digesting gut that relies on easily digestible foods.

So I will link to a few studies in the show notes that have to do with the expensive tissue hypothesis. And you can find the show notes at jfeldmanwellness.com slash podcast. If you did enjoy today's episode, please leave a like or a review wherever you're listening really helps us to reach more people. And if you're interested in checking out some more of my work, you can head over to jfeldmanwellness.com and for Mike, you can head over to sapiensystems.com.

And if you're struggling with any low energy symptoms, whether it's fatigue, brain fog, gut inflammation, bloating, weight gain, or you're struggling with any sort of chronic health condition, make sure to head over to jfeldmanwellness.com/energy, where you can sign up for a free mini course on energy balance that will help basically guide you through the things that you can do to help support energy production while avoiding the things that inhibit or block that process. And if you guys did enjoy today's episode, make sure to tune in to part two on gut function where we'll be talking a lot more about the specific foods that we should be eating to support ideal gut function and which ones we would probably want to avoid or eat less of as they inhibit proper gut function. So make sure to tune into that episode and we will talk to you guys then.