Crash Course 214: Food Labeling

For better or for worse... food labeling (or should I say... food marketing) has a powerful effect on what people eat.  Foods in the U.S. are labeled based on the rules and regulations of two separate government entities - the FDA and the USDA - both with different guidelines and procedures.  While +80% of all U.S. food supply is regulated by the FDA, there are stark differences between the two agencies. If you've ever wondered what the "organic" or "GMO" labels mean on your produce, or the difference between cage-free and free-range poultry, or grass fed and grain fed meats - this is the podcast for you.

Transcript

Coach Shaun: What is up? What is up? What is up? My main fam, my friends. How is everybody doing out there? I hope you are all having a freaking amazing week, because why not, and if you're not having an amazing week, let's make it one.  By listening to this podcast, by getting out and moving our bodies, by hydrating them, by eating something delicious. That's good for us. I don't know, just get out there and make this your week because you deserve it. Friends, we are in to February. Oh my gosh, I can't even believe it. Seriously, we're already 31 days into 2022. Just to clarify, and I feel like this year has gone by really fast, but also kind of slow at the same time... I don't know, it's a weird feeling. I don't know if you guys out there feel the same way, if you do let me know because I would like to know that I'm not the only one out there that feels this way.

So, welcome back to another episode of The Crash Course podcast. This podcast, just as a refresher, was designed to create a crash course in a bunch of different topics because I feel like I want to share some knowledge and experience, and everybody has a ton of questions and it's really hard to find answers.  I wanted to be a resource for those questions, to be able to answer them and have some sort of scientific reasoning behind it and be able to share some of the stuff that I've spent the better part of my life learning.  I can actually say that it's dating myself but that's okay. Learning and experiencing and going through myself. So today's episode is going to be a big one.  It's about food labels and not being scared of them, and also understanding fear marketing and how that works because as some of you may know, my background is in marketing, and literally it's all psychology.  “How can we get people to buy the thing.  Does it sound good? Can we get away with it? And how do we make it better?”  Which crazy, right? That's not how I run my business. That's not how LiveUnbreakable is run. At the end of the day, these big corporations are really just trying to get you to buy their thing, whatever that thing is, and for a lot of Americans, it's food.

So a bunch of questions that I get, whether it's social media or with my clients or even just people I talk to on the daily, get confused about food labels.  This astonished me because we need food literally to survive, we're always eating or, we should be eating.  And so for us to not understand something that we purchase every week or that we're looking to purchase or that we put in our body, it's just not comforting to me to know that.  So, I wanted to share some information and hopefully shed some light on or clarify a couple of things in regards to nutritional labels and food labeling and all that kind of stuff, so if you’ve stayed with me this far, let's talk about some food labels.

So the first thing to know is that food labels in the United States.  And I know I have some international is here, so I don't want to lose you, because all of this is important. But food labels in the US are based on rules provided by the FDA and the USDA.  The FDA sets the rules for almost all of the foods that we eat, but the USDA sets the rules for meat products, poultry products, and egg products. Now, the FDA is a Food and Drug Administration, the USDA is the US Department of Agriculture, so close, but not the same. So this is how I like to describe it, I think about pizza. Frozen pizza.

Pretty comforting to know this little fact, maybe not. So let's say you have a cheese pizza and a pepperoni pizza, in the US, there are two completely different government agencies responsible for regulating or inspecting those two different pizzas because one has meat on it and one just has cheese.  There are still animal by products now, it doesn't matter, a frozen pepperoni pizza because it contains meat goes through three separate USDA inspections, one of the slaughter house, one at the pepperoni making facility, and then one at the pizza factory. But because there's no meat on the cheese pizza, it only needs approval by the FDA one time: at the pizza manufacturer, as the nutritional label, which we will absolutely get into in just a second. Okay, so that's just one example. You think you're eating the same thing or they're regulated by the same company because they are the same type of food. And they're not, they're just not.

Coach Shaun: So almost everything that we eat, including through that you're getting in a restaurant; food that you're seeing on menus to that you're getting in the grocery store (unless you're buying it from a local farm, and even then, sometimes this is regulated too).  It has to be approved, by one of these two government agencies, so the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, or C-F-S-A-N for short, (I don't think that’s shorter, but okay) as part of the FDA and a division of the US Department of Health, not only regulates all drugs and dietary supplements; it ensures according to government language, essentially government speak that the foods that people are eating in the US are not only safe, but are wholesome and sanitary and labeled properly.  Now, I will warn you, “proper” means something different to everybody.  And I mean something different to the United States government that it does to you.

On the other side: the USDA works to support the American agricultural economy and provide a safe, sufficient and nutritious food supply for the American people.  So, we'll just back that up one more time, so the USDA works to support American agricultural economy and provide a sufficient and nutritious food supply, whereas the FDA regulates drugs, dietary supplements, and ensures that people in the US are eating safe, wholesome and sanitary foods that are properly labeled.  Subtle, but so, so different.

So you can see there's a big difference between the two. There's a difference in what they're looking for, how foods are labeled, and already we're getting into this division of what is being regulated by what foods fall under what categories, what types of food are being regulated, about what type of government agency and who's making money off of your grocery list. So to make it simple, the USA, mainly overseas, meat, poultry and eggs, and under its umbrella also falls the Center For Nutrition policy and promotion.  It establishes the dietary guidelines, and the Food and Nutrition Service also falls under their umbrella, which administers food stamps or SNAP benefits, if you will.

The FDA is responsible for regulating all processed foods that are created or sold in the US, and also responsible for creating the nutrition facts label.  If you follow my Instagram or you listen to a couple of my rants on these podcasts, you already know how I feel about nutrition labels. They are conveniently designed to a specific type of human.  Also these days, very specific serving size to cut out things that they don't want to tell you are in the label.  Who is keeping track?

To talk about USDA labels, and if you're looking on your food packaging somewhere for USDA label, if it's an inspection seal from the USDA, it means that your food meets a certain quality standard, which is way lower than you think it is.  It has been inspected by USDA employees or a company employee is under USDA supervision, so it doesn't even have to be regulated by the USDA, just someone who's already been certified by the USDA.  The person can say, “Sure, this meets guidelines.”  The vast majority of the meat in US grocery stores is a USDA inspected meat or poultry, and it should have that seal of inspection somewhere. If it doesn’t, start asking some questions. Meat and poultry with grade A or something like that, are graded based on the quality and the size, so has nothing to do with production methods at all these days.   Grade A is all you should be eating. That seal tells you nothing about the company's practices, it only relates to the quality and the size that you are purchasing.  So just keep that in mind as you're purchasing, and it's also important to know while you're looking for these certifications that private programs do 100% exist, and they vary in standards as one would assume, but it's a good idea to do research on some of them, I'm not going to list any of them because I'm not backed by any of them, nor am I backed by the US government, obviously, but there are a number of private labels that can be included on foods anywhere from veggies, produce, all sorts of meat, stuff like that, but they all have different standards and regulations and all this other stuff.

Coach Shaun: So do your research, if you're noticing the grocery stores that you're going to or whatever it is, have these labels and you don't know what they mean, do the research because it absolutely matters.  It matters because it's going into your body and it could be contributing to a number of factors that you are feeling.  So fun fact, going back to the FDA, it regulates over 80% of the US for the supply, including but not limited to dairy, seafood, packaged foods, produce, bottled water, and eggs. So one of the fun facts I like to list out here, because it kind of demonstrates the point, if you are gluten-free, like me.  If a food is not labeled gluten-free, but it does follow the rules of the FDA, you should still be looking to see if the label contains wheat, barley, rye, oats, malt extract, or brewers yeast to see what it contains.  You should also be looking for maltose extract and brewers yeast, or also included modified food starch, and starch in the ingredients list.  So in the “contains” statement and in the ingredients list, so the FDA, if it is not labeled gluten-free and it follows the rules of the FDA, you should look for those words in a “contains” statement, and if it's not labeled gluten-free but it follows the rules of the USDA, look for these words in the ingredients list.

Isn't that fun? That's so fun, right? Welcome to a very small part of my life looking at all of these labels for all of these things in multiple different places regardless of who certified what.  But it's important because if I ingest one of those products, I have a reaction and then I have to go back and be like, Oh well, what did I eat that has wheat in it, but it's not just wheat. It's also barley or malt extract, brewers yeast, modified food starch, and that's not even including cross-contamination. Don't even get me started. Alright, so now that we know we have these two governing bodies that are looking at all of our foods and telling us they are safe to eat.

Some things are safe, it doesn't mean you should do them, you can jump off of a cliff with a parachute on your back, and some people are completely safe, other people are not.  You can absolutely dive really deep in the ocean. That doesn't necessarily make it safe. There are people that do all sorts of things every single day, doesn’t mean if you do them that it's safe.

Coach Shaun: So take it with a grain salt, because safe is very individual and can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.  I’ve got one of the most meaningful labels on your food today, and this one, especially if you're looking at autoimmune nutrition, this is really important to pay attention in terms of upholding specific government requirements.  The USDA organic certified seal is right up there as number one for a product, to be certified organic, it has to be very, very, very specific standards, including crops cannot be grown with synthetic fertilizers or pesticides or sewage sludge is disgusting.  Organic crops cannot be genetically engineered or radiated, animals must eat only organically grown feed without any animal by-product. And cannot be treated with synthetic hormones or antibiotics, animals must have access to the outdoors, and ruminants like cows and things like that, have to have access to pasture and animals cannot be cloned, so those last ones depending on where you are on the animal may be pretty important, but the crops cannot be genetically engineered, the animals cannot be genetically engineered, and there's no sewer sludge anywhere near your food.  So that sounds really important. And it is.

It is very important. And every single year, if you're following the up and up on the news, I'm sure you've seen the headline of the Environmental Working Groups, shoppers guide to pesticides in produce.  This is the kind of scary headline because you think probably most foods have pesticides, but the list that comes out from EWG, which is a non-private organization, not associated with the government.  They release their list of foods that have the highest and lowest pesticide residue every single year, and this is important because if you are not super thorough and rinsing your food that you get, you're definitely probably having pesticides in your foods.  Which is gross and also disrupts our gut microbiome and causes all sorts of other issues.  So if you are really regimented in washing your fruits and vegetables and the product you're getting from the store, that's awesome, you should be.  If you are not regimented about that, I would strongly suggest you start researching or just hit me up and I can give you the wash that I use online and how you can incorporate that into your life going forward.

So this list of produce is tested after being brought home from the grocery store and it's washed easily.  So it's rinsed with a little bit of rubbing it, so they are testing it based on what they think you are going to be doing with this produce when you get a home.  Then they're like, Oh, actually, probably not because of pesticides on this particular food are really high, so this year, that EWG released the list and it is as follows: strawberries, kale, collard and mustard greens, apples, grapes, cherries, peaches, pears, bell peppers and hot peppers, salad and tomatoes.  All 11 foods I just listed, you should buy organically this year because they have the highest amount of pesticide residue of all produce you can bring home. I'm not going to get into the science behind it, but just know that those are the foods that you should be having organically, you should purchase organically if you are not purchasing 100% organically right now.  But if you do eat some of those foods, especially when it comes to strawberries, apples, and grapes, those are pretty hard to wash, you just don't really think about it, sometimes they're softer to wash, salad greens are really hard to wash, too.

So when you bring them home, if you rinse them off and leave them on some paper towel or whatever it is that you're doing, that's not enough to get it rid of the pesticides.  You are going to end up eating them and then it's going to upset your stomach and cause some issues.  I'm not saying it's going to give you cancer tomorrow, but it definitely has a higher chance of giving you some sort of disease down the line or causing your immune system to have some sort of an upset.   One down, the next one is antibiotic-free or a non-antibiotic, I see this label a lot, it's just kind of like thrown around, raised without antibiotics or no antibiotics administered means in relation to meat and meat products that the animal received no antibiotics over his lifetime.  Some large scale producers feed animals antibiotics at very low doses to prevent disease, and that is linked to the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can make people sick and difficult to treat. Here's a heads up for you. If you're looking at pre-shredded cheddar cheese in the grocery store, it has cellulose in it, because think about if you shred cheese at home and then stick it in a bag in your  refrigerator, it sticks together.

It’s kind of weird, and then you buy it in the store and it doesn't stick together because it has cellulose in, and to keep you from having a reaction to the cellulose, they put antibiotics in the food so that you don't get sick from having the cellulose in there. Is that gross? I was like, Wow, that's so nasty. Why would I ever eat that?  Because it's easy, you can just pick up some cheese and use it wherever you want to, but it's gross when you think about it, maybe it's not gross, but I think it's kind of crazy. Okay, so the antibiotic-free label or the no antibiotics administered label doesn't tell you about any other condition that the meat or the poultry was in, or how the animal was raised at all.  It only means one thing, and it means if an animal receives antibiotics for any reason, any reason at all, it was sick or whatever it is.  Milk eggs, whatever, it cannot be labeled Certified Organic, because going back previously to our last little label, organic means a 100% organic, if it's going to get the seal, it literally means that it have to have met all of those other previous criteria.

Like six check marks, right. So I can't have any synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, whatever it can't be genetically engineered, etcetera, etcetera, so I can't have any synthetic hormones or antibiotics, that was one of the things for animal meats, so if you have antibiotics in your meat, it cannot be 1) organic or 2) antibiotic free because it has antibiotics. So just thinking about that one related to that is GMO-free or non-GMO. So way back in 2016, Congress passed a federal law for labeling genetically modified food as GMOs and not block states from requiring stricter GMO labels such as those that existed in Vermont, the state that I grew up in.  But it does require food companies to disclose whether their products contain GMOs, but they can make the information as difficult for you to process as possible and hard to access to. So for instance, instead of saying bio-engineered on their label, companies can put a QR code on the food or a web address, or a 1-800 number or whatever that connects the consumer with the information, so they don't have to say anything on the label.  But they have to have some way for you to access that data, so that means you have to take time already after you've listened to this podcast and also research all those other labels that you looked at to figure out if the food is GMO or not GMO.

And despite any number of industry claims, there is no scientific consensus regarding the safety or non-safety of GMO foods or the process for approval.  Now, I will say more than 95% of animals used for meat and dairy in the United States, eat GMO crops.  The scalability of it all, that's just how it works. So chances of you eating meat and dairy that was raised on GMO crops is relatively high, but I will also say that there are only 11 foods in the US that are commercially available genetically modifying crops. 11 sounds like a small number, but when you bring it down to it, they're included in a lot of other foods, so the 11 crops that can be genetically modified that are available commercially in the US include corn, both field and sweet. So before I ask questions about that the others include potatoes, apples, summer squash, papaya, alfalfa, cotton, and sugar beets. So those are the 11 crops that are commercially available genetically modified in the US, so when you think about it, that’s in a lot of foods that you eat, probably on a daily basis, at least soybeans, corn and canola, and then apples and potatoes.

Coach Shaun: So if you are not a vegan, the chances of you having had meat that has had GMO crops at some point in its lifetime, super high. So even if you are not eating GMO crops directly, because you're super careful about that, the meat or the poultry that you have could have eaten it, just that food chain business, you always thought it was a little fish, it's the smaller fish and the biggest.  That’s not always how it works. We can be a really big fish, but sometimes we're a really tiny fish too, it's a really, really big circle. Alright, moving on. Another one that kind of was it in the same genre as the ones I just listed, so it's called all natural. So according to the USDA, and this is from their website, natural meat and poultry products could not contain artificial flavors, colors or preservatives, and should be minimally processed.  Now they do not have a definition for minimally processed on our website.  However, again, this label doesn't tell us how the animals were raised, what they were fed, if antibiotics or hormones were used or any other aspect of production that you might expect comes with this label, it literally just means there's no artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, and it's minimally processed.  Not going to tell you what I think minimally processed is because I think produce is processed, so eating something from a box or a bag, probably supper processed to me, but to the USDA, maybe not so much. So it really depends on who you're asking there.

For all other foods, milk, eggs, and non-animal food products, the natural label basically means nothing. I don't know if I'm not ruining anyone's grocery list right now or ruining anyone's day.  I started out saying, I hope you're having an amazing day. And I do hope that I'm not ruining anything, I just want people to be educated on this because it's something that's so hard to find information on, but it's so mind-blowing once you know it, and then you don't even maybe have realized what has been in your cart this whole time. But it's so crazy that it's literally everywhere.

So far, just to recap, you gotten this far with me, we've talked about the FDA and the USDA, that's great. We talked about what the label of organic, GMO versus non-GMO, antibiotic-free, and all natural means. Now, we've mentioned this one, so I just want to wrap up this section with it, it's hormone-free or no hormones. I'm so passionate guys. So labels that say raised without added hormones or no hormones administered or no synthetic hormones, they all mean the same thing, and they all mean that the animal has received no synthetic hormones.  They do not disclose what the animals were fed or if they had access to a pasture or not pasture, how they raised.  Federal law does prohibit the administration of hormones to poultry and veal, so that would be your bison and stuff like that.

Coach Shaun: And any hormone-free label on those products is intended to mislead shoppers, (that’s you) into thinking that the product is worth the added price.  If you're trying to be healthy and trying to be the most conscious consumer, and you see something that says hormone-free on it, probably like, Yeah, I don't want any of those hormones in my food.  But the FDA literally doesn't allow any hormones to be administered to poultry, veal, or exotic meat, so if you're looking at a bison, two different brands and one says no hormones and it's more expensive, that's literally fear marketing at work. And it happens all the time, think about if you're going to a Whole Foods and it has a hormone-free bison, and then you're at Wegmans and you just see bison, you're probably going say Whole Foods knows what they're talking about. Hormones for you, for sure. But it doesn't mean anything because the government is literally not allowed to give hormones to exotic meats, poultry, or veal, so if that label is on there, it means nothing.  The USDA requires that these labels also include a disclaimer that there are no hormones approved for use by federal regulations, but when was the last time that you read the label? I'll wait.

Because until I got into this field, I didn't really either check either, if there was a class in college on how to read food labels, I didn't go to it, if it was there, it was not included in my major. So when I went to the store, I just bought the things that I like to hear it, and then that included all of these other things until I started doing my own research and I started getting my certifications on my education behind this.  I was like, Wow, all this stuff is in there, that's so gross.  I will say loudly when I'm in a grocery loud enough for other people to want to ask any questions. Wow, look at this fear marketing at work, people lose what is going on, stop saying things loudly in the grocery.  The company requires the label say these things because it's important, and yet people will still pay more money for it, like I saw this cheaper down the road at so and so.  And at least to get people starting to think, maybe they don't change their life right away, but maybe it starts to get them to think, and maybe one of them is listening to this podcast and it completely changes their life, but especially in autoimmune.  These little things like hormone-free and antibiotic-free, and all these other things make an enormous difference because they impact your immune system, and if you have a healthy immune system, you might not even ever have any symptoms or any problem with your microbiome or anything like that.  Those of us who have altered immune systems, and we're fighting harder than y'all, there is a difference and it does impact us differently and it does have a bigger impact.

So just to keep that in mind, now let's go to the fun ones that we talk about and hear about all the time, like grass-fed, free range pastures, all these other things, because this is one of my favorite topics to talk about.  It blows people's minds.  You probably want to come back to this, you can rewind: cage-free means that birds are raised without cages. That's fun, right? But it doesn't tell you anything about their living conditions, so they're not in cages.  That's it. It doesn't mean anything about outside, it doesn't mean anything about organic, it doesn't tell you anything about anything.   It does tell you that they were probably in a more overcrowded space in a barn or at a larger factory than if they were in cages to be completely honest, but it doesn't tell you anything else. It's not organic or antibiotic for your home, nothing, cage-free literally means just that, and it got lumped into  “oh, it's so much healthier for you.”   It's actually probably worse for you, to be honest, because there are no cages, and so all of the birds are just all together in their own filth with other birds.  Not regulated as much as being in a cage or being able to have a specific number of birds per square foot.

Coach Shaun: Well, we're going to talk about this in a lot of different ways, but essentially, if you're thinking about a cage, there's only so much space and there's only so many birds you can fit into the cage.  According to government regulations, there's so much space that each bird needs.  Now, if they're in a cage, that means that the space in your cage is what you're dividing per bird, so you can only have, (I don't know the specifics), but for argument's sake, let’s say, in every cage, you can only have 10 berths. Now, you take away the cage and they're just in this huge farm that has floor to ceiling is 70 feet. I don't know how big barns are. Don't pick on me, I'm from Vermont, but I didn't know farming.  A 70-foot barn, so now that has all of that space that they can fit birds in, but there's no second level, there's no anything else, so now you're dividing the entire space of that barn by the number of birds, so you can obviously stack so many more birds in there. But their living condition is worse, but they are cage-free.

Doesn't that sound worse now that doesn't sound healthy at all, that doesn't sound good, and it sounds like some chicken is probably really upset at you. Cage-free is unsustainable also.  So it was lumped in with this healthy movement and food, and it is not healthier at all, so don't fall for it, don't buy cage free things.  Let's skip over to free range, because that's another one that we hear when we're talking about cage-free lumps in free range. So free range is when the animals are kept in natural environments with the freedom of movement, the USDA standard, the industry standard, this is also taken from their website for a free range, is that versus have outdoor access or access to the outdoors.  And in some cases, this can mean through literally like a tiny little hole in the barn, the side of the barn with no full body access to the outdoors at all, there's no minimum space requirement at all.  Free range just means that the bird has the ability to maybe be outside at some point in time for however long or not long. It just has to be able to have access to it. Access to the outdoors. Okay, that also doesn't sound great.

It's not good, but literally that's all that level means if you see something that has free range on it.  So now we went from cage-free, which is you're assuming is better than normal eggs which are kept  in cages. So you're not buying the $4 eggs. Now you're buying the $5.99 eggs because it says cage-free, but literally that just means there's no cages.  So these birds never see cages, and then we jump up to the next tier, which is free range, which literally just means that the birds have access to the outdoors, it's like getting your 13-year-old son to break from the TV or computer and go outside.  They have access to the outdoors. But are they going to take it? I don't know, you tell me. So the next level up, and this is the most expensive, but also the only real one in this healthy category is pasture raised.   Pasture raised is animals get a sizeable portion of their food from organic grass grown in a pasture, and most pastures raising producers offer anywhere from 35 to 108 square feet per 10 animals.

So I'm not talking about cows.  Yeah, we're talking about poultry, so going from her standing on top of another’s head to having 35 to 108 square feet of her own to do whatever she wants to, that's a pretty big difference.

Coach Shaun: And the difference between that and standing on top of another’s head or being in cage is pretty drastic. It's a pretty big difference. And in order to have the label “pasture raised” more than 30% of the nutritional intake has to be from organic grass, it isn't treated with synthetic pesticides or fertilizers. So I say that again, in order to have a “pasture raised” label, not only do they have to have their own space available outside, they also have to be given the majority-ish of their food from organic grass that isn't treated with synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. Now, from a nutritional standpoint, this means a great deal.  Pasture raised eggs contain 2x the omega-3 fats, 3x as much vitamin D, as many vitamin Bs, 4x as much vitamin A, and up to 7x as much beta-carotene as eggs raised on traditional feed, just because they're having this organic grass.  Chances are, if you're guaranteeing that at least 30% of the diet comes from organic grass, at least we're going to up that number because you have it available, the animals are going to eat that over anything else.

They're going to choose that more and now it's more expensive, for sure, and it's not necessarily sustainable or scalable, which is why it is the most expensive version of this unhealthy food, but pasture-raised animals are not regulated by the USDA, and that's a pretty big deal. The USDA is important for a bunch of labeling and then we're just kind of leaving it out of pastures because can you imagine what a nightmare that is? But pasture-raised chickens are also labeled as certified humane, which is another big label, we're not going to dive too far into that one, but it basically means that the chickens were given a minimum of however many feet to roam around outdoors, not necessarily to themselves, but just in general, they were given that much space to rotate.

We're talking about pasture raised versus free range versus cage-free, and there's a drastically big difference between them.  It almost makes you question what you thought was healthy at one point. I hope it does. Because that's how we change. That's how we effect change. So you can say whatever you want about animal rights and all this other stuff, but when we're talking about labeling our own food and what we're putting into our body is and what we're in taking into our system and all that kind of stuff, at least these three need to be front and center because they matter so much if you're eating meat, and if you're eating poultry, and if you're eating dairy, and you have that in your system. Because again, a pasture-raised egg has so much more nutritional value than a normal egg because it's cared for differently and it's fed differently, and so the food that you're putting in your body was fed food that you would actually put into your body instead of this corn meal situation, which you would probably never even feed to a stray dog, let alone your own self.

So if you're thinking about, you're really starting to cleanse your body, you're starting to consider the things that you're putting into your shopping cart, these are labels that you need to pay a lot of attention to in that area.  This last one does kind of tie into all of those is grass-fed, so if you've subscribed again to my Instagram, I went on rants about this long ago, the only meat and poultry that I buy are grass-fed pasture raised. Because I have noticed a significant difference in my own everything: my attitude, my energy levels, my microbiome, the symptoms I had from outbreaks and my auto-immune disorders, all sorts of things, brain fog even by eating grass-fed pasture, so grass-fed means that the animals eat nothing except for their mother's milk and grass from breath to harvest.

Coach Shaun: It's pretty significant. That's really significant. How a friend say that a lot to me... That's really significant. So that's in stark difference to corn fed, which exactly how it sounds, which was corn-based for its food instead of grass-fed. So grass-fed pasture-raised. It's eating organic grass, it's eating mother's milk, it's eating things that again, you would also be okay putting into your own body instead of food that just keeps it alive until it gets into your own body.

I do know more gross or whatever, is really what it comes down to when you're thinking about what goes into your body, you spend all this time caring for other people, maybe you're a parent and you're like, you want the best for your child.  But you should want the best for you too. And you should want the best for your child. And to do that, you should be really educated about what's going in your shopping cart and what's ending up in your system, because these food labels, they're just a 10 that I find the most relatable that are kind of everywhere and are on so many things that people eat on a daily basis. And if you understand the difference in these labels and the difference in what you're getting, even if it doesn't make you change what you're buying, you have a better understanding of what your system is feeding off of and what fuel you are giving your body. And down the line, to think about it in a much more drastic way, like I was just saying, is to literally think about the food that you're putting in your body isn't just what's in your hand or on your work, it's where it came from, and especially when you're talking about poultry, milk, eggs, dairy needs.

You have to think about what it ate before it got to your plate, because that's also going in your system... Yes, it's been digested and yes, there's only traces and blah, blah, blah... I'm sure.  Absolutely, from a scientific standpoint, but it matters.  And when you're thinking about produce also specifically, like we started, the first half of this podcast was produced half as much more poultry and meat-based, but when you're thinking about produce too, if you're not really washing your produce, you are subjecting your system to unnecessary stress, that doesn't need to be there, because you can wash your produce better or you can buy organically, or you can have natural foods or Whole Foods or whatever it is, whatever the label is that you're looking for, at least make that educated decision now.

Is it of just going along in this habit and just assuming that what you're doing is fine, hopefully, now you have a better understanding and you have a little bit of education behind the decisions that you're making and you can rationalize them a little bit better. Thanks for listening to this rant guys.  I do hope that it was helpful, and I hope that it really does change the way that you think about what you're putting in your body, what you're putting in a shopping cart, how you're treating yourself and what you're doing to your system, because if you get nothing else out of this podcast, and you're just detained by the podcast, it gives you a really good understanding of how even though we have these regulations and these standards and these governing body is looking over our foods, it doesn't mean that they're safe, it doesn't mean that they're okay, it doesn't mean that we should be eating them, it just means that we are not going to die if we eat it, and the varying levels of what that means to every individual are completely different, so yes, they're doing a good job at labeling things and having standards for each of those labels, but they're also doing not a great job at educating the American public about what any of them mean, and it's not as easy as looking on the website because not every definition is going to be listed there, and not every definition is the same based on whatever website and year that you're looking at and whatever, so that's the other thing, is that because these are standards and regulations created by the US Government and governed by these bodies, they can change the definition.

Coach Shaun: So let's take a gander at this podcast again in three to five years and see if these definitions are still the same, and it's still something that we're even concerned about, maybe there's something else that we're concerned about at that time from a health standpoint, but at least we have this look back on, and at least we have this to always be a baseline, but good luck shopping this week would look with all of this and guys, if you have any questions, honestly, send me an email,  shoot me a DM, message me on social, because this is the kind of stuff I love talking about.  Because it's really a little change it is to start eating those 11 foods organically or to start understanding those GMOs that are commercially available, or any of the other things that we talked about it, they are smaller changes, but added up over time make a really big impact, so if there's something that you can do today, even if it's understand, even if it's research, even if it's asking another question. That's really awesome, and I hope that I sparked that change in you. So thanks for listening and I will talk to you next week.