Hi Byte Wellness Fam,

How are you feeling?

I feel inspired for all sorts of reasons. Keep reading to see why.

This week, we extended our conversation on eating as a wellness superpower. Our goal here is to understand why whole food plant-heavy eating is such a wellness win.

In our #PhyteWellWednesday Workshop, we explore how eating lots of meat, refined starch and processed food is essentially a shock to our systems.

Watch the recording below to see why.

If you’re not getting invited to these workshops, make sure you’re on the Daily Wellness Text Thread. Text TEXT to 1(866)717-1919 to join.

Discussion Question

• What is your relationship with sweet food and drink?

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Last week, we talked about ​the food category that undercuts our wellness efforts (ultraprocessed foods)​.

-​Ultraprocessed foods are products made from industrial ingredients​ (chemicals that we couldn’t/wouldn’t cook with in our kitchens). These foods might have a whole food or whole food derivative in them. But, they also have these industrial ingredients (like preservatives, food dyes, etc).

We unpacked how the industrial ingredients in ultraprocessed foods just might be wellness kryptonite.

Many of these ultraprocessed food ingredients have been ​banned from cosmetic products​ because they’ve been shown to cause disease in animals (including cancer and reproductive problems).

Some of these ingredients are even linked to some neurotoxicity in humans.

There’s enough concern about these ingredients that many have already been ​banned by the European Union​ and the ​state of California​.

This week, we pulled back our discussion from ultraprocessed foods to plain old processed foods.

Processed foods are whole foods that have had plain old kitchen ingredients added to them. The ingredients in processed foods aren’t always bad for us- especially when we do the processing at home.

For example, cooking okra with olive oil makes in processed. Olive oil has tons of heart-healthy monounsaturated fat, so I’m not mad at that addition.

But, ​add heaps of salt, and we might increase our risk of developing high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke.​

Then ​add lots of sugar, and we might increase our risk of developing obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. ​

Don’t “at me” for mentioning sugar and okra. I’m sure someone out there is doing it.

The takeaway is not that we should be completely scared to eat anything that has been processed. The takeaway is that we need to use our judgment. That’s all. Choosing how to nourish ourselves everyday is an immense responsibility AND an incredible power.

Healthy eating studies don’t show that we should NEVER eat processed food. They don’t even suggest that we should NEVER eat ultraprocessed food. What they show us is that ​we need to prioritize whole food plants as much as possible​.

Here’s what we need to understand about that.

Our ancestors’ bodies evolved over the course of tens of thousands of years to thrive on eating mainly plants with minimal processing.

Our current eating habits are drastically different from that earlier pattern. And, they’ve only been around for 50-100 years, which is not long enough for our species to adjust to a brand new food landscape. So, eating anything that we didn’t evolve to thrive on is a risk because it doesn’t fit perfectly into the system that is our bodies.

That’s all.

This week, think about the ways we choose honor ourselves, our bodies and our ancestors. How can we make our food part of those choices?

Happy, Healthy Living,

Dr. Wuse