You Are What You Eat: The Truths About Americanitis, Unhealthy Food Consumption & Its Effects On Overall Well-being Featuring Guest Speaker Amanda Sick
We don't know exactly where the term Americanitis started. In 1881 neurologist George Beard used Americanitis to diagnose are stressed-out, eat-on-the-go, grind lifestyle. In 1882, a medical journal claimed Americanitis was coined not by Beard but by a traveling British scientist who was shocked by our meaty diets, mostly of cured pork, beef and starches.
Then in 1892, author Annie Payson Paul claimed it came from another traveling scientist, a German physician who was appalled by her overall health. Regardless of who started it, Americanitis was an oily insult thrown around by foreigners who couldn't cope with literal clouds from our smoked meats. And to be totally honest, we earned the reputation. According to the Cleveland Clinic, stomach cancer was the number one cancer in the nation - thanks to our love of cured meats. Our top diseases were arthritis, gastritis, and bronchitis. Our national anthem was a course of burps, farts and grunts.
London had its industrial fog, but America had its barbecue smog. According to the Atlantic, one Swedish visitor described Americans as different farmers, "The grain fields, the metals, the forest, the cattle, they're all treated with equal carelessness. We allow our cows to roam and graze wherever they wish, and we selected volume-based crops that would sprout like weeds mostly to feed our meat. Oh, and we shot whatever flew past the farm for breakfast." James Audubon once wrote about the flocks of passenger pigeons that would darken the Wisconsin sky like an eclipse, fleshy edible animals that were hunted by the millions for the table. The Eskimo Curlew was such a fatty bird that if you shot another sky, it would hit the ground and leave a greasy smear. These birds were nicknamed Doe Birds because hunting them was like shooting a hamburger tube.
Then there was the unending supply of wild game that roamed our states. Bear, boar, deer, elk, caribou, turkey, sheep, bison etc., many of which had zero fear of man or guns. Meat in America was the easy mode of being a nation, and we liked the easy mode. Easy mode stuck with us. Easy mode is why more than one-third of us pick fast food over cooking daily, according to the CDC. Easy mode is why food engineers and ad agencies built Industries around selling those packages too rashly. Easy mode is why one-quarter of all Americans will experience a major digestive disease like ulcers or IBS. And a third of us already take antiacids for acid reflux. Americanitis didn't die off with a doper; it just rebranded itself as the McChicken and the KFC snacker.
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A few problems come with a whole country living life on easy mode for so long. We have a persistent myth in America that we get healthier as science and medicine progress. But today, we'll discover that simply isn't true. We tell and healthy people to stay away from McDonald's, the same way we can laugh at pioneers for eating ham at every meal. But what if food cravings, willpower, and even your motor turned by the quality of your gut bacteria, what if those bacteria are telling you to order a Big Mac?
Todd: We have a very special guest today. Her name is Amanda Sick. Amanda graduated from the University of Oregon with a background in Advertising, Communications and Graphic Design. Aside from her love for design, she has a passion for health and wellness. Amanda has written a recipe eBook entitled ‘Simply Sweet,' which is full of healthy treats made from whole-food plant-based ingredients. She's our online platform to encourage others to make changes towards a healthier lifestyle while using her recipes as a way to show people how enjoyable healthy eating can be. The positive results she's experienced through changes in their own diet, fitness, and mindset are what drive her to share her knowledge with others. Amanda's primary goal is to empower as many people as possible to take their health into their own hands. So, good morning, Amanda.
Amanda: Good morning! Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Joe: We’re excited to talk about weird stuff with you.
Amanda: Yes, for sure.
Todd: Joe and I have both been in our health battles. We met when we were on deathbeds, Amanda. We both have been 50/60 pounds overweight and tipping on the obesity chart to boxing shape. And then up and down. So, tell me about your book Simply Sweet.
Amanda: Yeah, it has about 50 or so recipes in there. Everything is made with whole food plant-based ingredients. It's all vegan and gluten-free, and refined sugar-free. I've always had a big sweet tooth because I grew up eating processed sugar, junk, and all that stuff. I think I've always had a sweet tooth, but when I started making changes in my diet, I started experimenting more in the kitchen and trying to figure out healthier ways to make things that I still enjoyed eating; things that I grew up eating, but just healthier versions of that. So I decided to put together a book of recipes that all tastes really good. And I like showing people that you can still eat healthy while enjoying your food. You don't have to deprive yourself or restrict yourself and avoid eating things like cookies and cupcakes. There are ways to make them with very simple ingredients that nourish the body.
Todd: What was the wake-up call for you to just change your diet?
Amanda: Yeah, it didn't happen overnight. I mentioned I grew up eating the standard American diet of ultra-processed food for many years, and by the time I got to college, I started dealing with really severe acne, like, out of the blue, and it was along with some other issues to like acid reflux, and migraines, and headaches and stomachaches, and just little things here and there. But the main thing that caught my attention and made me start questioning what I was putting into my body was my skin. I started developing severe acne, and I tried all these topical creams, soaps and ointments, and all this stuff, and nothing was helping. If anything, it was probably just making it worse. And I went to the doctor at the time and, of course, you know, their only suggestion was I could go on hormonal birth control or I could go on a strong antibiotic, and I left that appointment. And I just kind of was trying to weigh my options and luckily, I decided not to go on either one of those pills. I decided to start researching and trying to get to the root cause of the issue because I grew up watching my family struggle with health issues, and just being on medications and not seeing they're their issues really improve. And so, I kind of was questioning whether it was worth it to for me to go on these medications. And so, I decided to go the more natural route, and I started researching and to gut health and just the link between that and skin health and overall health and how important what we eat is and what we put into our bodies every day; how important it is for our overall health and well-being, physical, and mental health. That drove me to start making changes here and there, and it started out pretty slow. I started cutting out certain things and experimenting with my body, and it wasn't an overnight change for sure. I cut out things here and there and then kind of saw what worked and what didn't. I also started incorporating juicing. That was a big thing. I got a juicer and started juicing a lot, making smoothies, and eating more raw foods, which helped a lot too. So, yeah, I really wanted to get to the root cause of the issue, which I realized stemmed from my gut health, ultimately because gut health is so huge for overall health. That’s what initially drove me to start making drastic changes in my diet.
Todd: That's interesting. I've gone through my own challenges with health, and I have a question for you about one of them. I quit drinking, and for me socially, it wasn't easy not to hang out with my same friends. What was the pressure like? Did friends treat you like something was wrong with you because you wanted to be a vegan and teased, and did it make you uncomfortable? How did you power through that?
Amanda: A good question. Friends and family were confused and surprised by what I was doing, especially when I went vegan. At first, it was more difficult, like going out to eat with friends and family and stuff and trying to find a place that I could actually eat at. And kind of just explaining why I'm doing what I was doing, but overall, I feel like they were so supportive and like now fast forward five years, they totally respect it. And I've also gotten some of my friends and family to make small changes toward eating healthier, which is great.
Todd: She's forming her own cult, Joe.
Amanda: Yes, exactly.
Todd: This is how uneducated I was about this. The UFC fighter Mac Danzig was a really good up-and-coming fighter and he was very proud of being a vegan, and he would get injured a lot. And so I just thought, well if he just ate some more steaks, he would be fine.
Joe: My experience with trying to eat vegan or healthier with sweets is I went on to Healthline, and I went on to a couple of other really good sources and I was looking for ways to eat deserts, and literally it says that like if you're battling blood pressure or you're trying to get low-calorie stuff, then just go vegan. It actually recommends like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Amanda: I wouldn't consider that a dessert, but…
Joe: So yeah, your book is incredible. The food all looks delicious. I tried to make the carrot cake, and it turned out really good.
Todd: We've got the links to all of Amanda's stuff, and we want you to connect with her; she's got myplantcreation.com and her Instagram. She shares a lot of free information that's healthy and valuable. I do want to ask you this because we are a show of doers, and all of our listeners are, you know, very educated and write books and do stuff. What would you do you encourage someone to get started? Actually write a book and see it all the way through?
Amanda: That's a good question. I think just having something you are passionate about is key because I think that's what will drive you to want to just share your knowledge with people. You get your message out to people in a more genuine way. At the beginning of the book, I have a little like intro of my story and like why I got into what I was doing. Basically, when I changed my diet, it's it really sparked my passion for plant-based food and cooking and just creating recipes and sharing those with others. And so I thought the best way one of the best ways to do that would be to create a book to share with others and some of my favorite recipes and I had the idea in my head for a while that I wanted to make it. I knew I wanted to write a book and I really have started enjoying food photography too. So I wanted to incorporate that and use my own photos in the book and put that together into something that I could share with others. But it's not like I thought one day to write a book. I wanted to do it and it just eventually, I was like, you know what, I need to start drafting up ideas and writing out the recipes I want to include in there. And it took quite a while until it was actually finished but I think, yeah, just starting with an idea and using your passions to kind of drive you and motivate you to just start and work on it a little bit each day and eventually you'll have a finished product to share with others.
Todd: That's great. What do you know? Joe and I train we teach and train public speaking and we were just talking about this the other day. We did an episode about Gandhi and believe it or not, Gandhi's an attorney, but he was deathly afraid of public speaking, which is a problem. If you're an attorney and you're trying to change a nation. But if you have a strong cause and you really believe in what you're talking about, it's so important that you want to tell people. It doesn't really matter what it is. If it's that important to you, you get over that nervousness. I think a lot of people try to do things that they think is going to interest others as opposed to things they're genuinely interested in.
Amanda: Yeah, exactly. That's huge because I mean, honestly like I never thought even 2-3 years ago I would be on podcasts and sharing stuff online and making the content that I do. I think it is my passion that drives me to do so, and the stuff that I'm talking about is stuff that I'm genuinely interested in and care about, and just really want to reach as many people as I can. It’s very important for people to find what they're passionate about.
Joe: I think that's what brings us together most days for this podcast is we have some interesting, strange things that we want to get out on and can't shut up. So, that seems to help. You mentioned processed meats. Do you mind if we start talking about the way America has sort of set up its diet as a whole? I realized how bad our habits are from the very start of like our country, are sort of food heritage by reading how we would just go out and shoot wild game everywhere. I wanted to look at how much meat we ate, but the problem with this is that shipping records for trains are the first time we actually knew how much meat we were eating. If you go back to like the early 1900s, before that we didn't keep any sort of accurate measure. We didn't really try to keep track because we were basically walking through Old Country Buffet every day and just picking up meat off the ground. When they started keeping track of livestock that was being loaded on a cars, that's when we actually got a sense that like, oh, we are eating almost exactly twice as much beef as an Englishman or twice as much meat, about 175 pounds of meat per person per year, which is around double today. In the development of you becoming vegan did you look back and think about, you know, how much meat you had eaten? Like was there like a shock and awe moment where you're like, that might have been too much?
Amanda: Oh yeah, for sure. I still to this day kind of look back at what I ate for so many years and not just the meat but mainly just like the ultra-process stuff. I never thought I would go vegetarian or vegan or any of that. Like, I've definitely done a complete 180 with my diet and I mean, it's been In five years now. So, I'm so used to it, but at the time, I had no intention of going vegan, but it just kind of that's just kind of how it happened. It's pretty crazy to think how drastically I've changed my diet. But yeah, it’s definitely true, that as a society, especially with not just meat but like ultra-processed meat and like the fast food and stuff, it's on every corner. So it's like it's pretty crazy if you really think about how much we really eat as a society.
Joe: Todd. When was the first time you were taught that you needed protein for every meal?
Todd: I was a baby.
Amanda: The protein thing is just so ingrained into our brains. Obviously, we need protein, but It's definitely overhyped and the thing with plant-based and vegan and that thing with protein, it's like all protein does originated from plants. So like the animals are eating the plants and then you know, people are eating the animals. So basically in my case, I'm just going straight to the plants and eating the plants. So really, with protein, all you really need is the nine essential amino acids which are the building blocks for protein. And so is as long as you're getting in a wide variety of plant-based foods and eating different things every week, like you're going to be fine. I mean, as long as you're eating enough.
Todd: Hosting Airbnb for years, I had a lot of European stay with me and they always said the same thing about our food. They all said that in where they live, vegetables and healthy food are cheaper, and junk food is more expensive. But in America, it's flip-flopped.
Amanda: It's convenient and it's addicting. No wonder, we're so hooked on it as a society.
Joe: I think that it's both cheap and encouraged. We get a get out of jail free card at every holiday for eating terrible meats. Todd, do you think that they emotionally felt better? Like, if you come from a culture where you eat veggies all the time or if you go with the inverse food pyramid where it's mostly a green pyramid with a little bit of meat at the top - do you think they feel better?
Todd: They are healthier, happier, thinner and they have more energy. I've always associated the things that are going in our stomach are just there. But it affects the whole rest of our body. They've been studying this for years and people are getting more informed on it.
Amanda: Yeah, 70 to 80% I believe of the immune system like originates from the gut and I think it's like 90% or so of Serotonin is produced in the gut. So, yeah, definitely affects the whole body for sure.
Todd: Well, I have a gut story for you that you are not going to believe. There's an island called Mackinac Island. I've been to it. It's a very cool place. There are no vehicles, even today, are allowed on there. In 1822, Alexis St. Martin had his musket with him for hunting and there was a terrible accident. It went off and it shot him through the stomach - shot him clean through the stomach. What he ate that day had fallen out beside him. Now he was in a lot of pain. But to his luck, there was a very educated physician right there, William Bluemont. So William on took him in and started to heal him and try to study him. This was the founder of modern day digestive health and he started to study Alexis and he started doing experiments on them. And this is where it gets really weird. He started tying strings to different kinds of food, making Alexis eat them and then yank them back out and study them.
Joe: It was officially in his stomach that he was feeding these things through that. The gunshot had never healed, and it formed what's called a fistula, which means that the tissue kind of like knit back together with a hole. So you could literally stand from the outside of him, look through the hole and see into his stomach and the digestive acids moving.
Amanda: Oh my God. Not a nice visual.
Todd: Oh, so it wasn't through the throat. It was just through the hole. How did he not die of infection?
Joe: The answer is he absolutely should have died from infection. It was a million-to-one shot that he was actually able to heal. So, they could actually see certain emotions, like anger or sadness, which I'm sure you had all the time going on with different chemical changes in his stomach. He could actually visualize these. He also started taking out parts of the fluid and then he started to see how acid breaks down food in the body. So, this was over four years. eventually, St. Martin runs away to Canada because I'm sure he's had enough of this nonsense. He's an indentured servant at this point. He runs away to Canada, and the doctor goes and gets him. He goes, what the hell do you think you're going and takes him back to his farm and tortures them some more. I mean, it shouldn't be a huge surprise knowing that you cram food directly into the organ rather than having to wait. Is there a medical basis for this? Like the idea that, you know, you put the wrong type of food into your stomach and it makes you depressed or, you know, makes you feel different?
Todd: I think just on what I've experienced from dieting, we go through streaks of eating really, really good food and do it consistently and I don't mean like kind of, you know, Amanda man has really hit the nail on the head with not trying to do too much at once. You set yourself up to fail, that way.
Amanda: Yeah, small changes are huge because I feel like it's not very sustainable to try to expect yourself to do a 180 change overnight. If you try to just drastically switch and then you're going to still be craving all those other foods and you're probably just going to go binge and eat. It's small changes here and there that definitely are going to be more sustainable in the long-term.
Todd: And I think it is chemical because I watch a lot of those shows, like the 600-pound people and stuff and they talk about their fast food addictions. They just crave those so much. It's almost like a drug addict. And then when you do eat well, you do feel you feel more active and you do more and you get moving in at that's that can be contagious to.
Amanda: For sure. Yeah, food is definitely a drug and especially sugar. I've heard sugar can be more addictive than cocaine and it's crazy because it's such a common drug, like food and sugar, and fast food, and all that. It's so common and it's so normalized, but if you think about it, it does make you addicted and it changes your brain chemistry and causes a lot of issues.
Joe: So Thank you, Todd, for what you said, that when you eat better, you start feeling better I trying to find a way to put that in context with Saint Martin, the idea that this poor bastard was being fed intentionally the wrong types of foods. So like this man is used to meat. When we talk about food being an addiction, like what is actually happening in your gut to make this messaging system as addictive as possible - there's gut bacteria. There are type of bacteria that feed better off of high sugars. And there are types of bacteria that feed better off of cheeses. I first heard about this on cracked.com started putting out articles that we're all very goofy, but they were following bacteria news. And they were like, hey, here's another bacteria that makes you crave cheese's more often when you eat a lot of cheese. So whatever your big craving is, it will oftentimes be catered to these microbes. So that's the first way they message you to eat more cheese or sugar or meat. In this case, microbes inside the gut will sort of go up to the gut lining and this is sort of like a receptor, it stimulates the vagal nerve the vagal nerve runs from your stomach up to your brain. So it's like our second brain and they're telling your brain, we'd like some more sugar cheese and meats, please.
Todd: Yeah, this validated all those weird old articles I read. And it also seems more concise than it used to be. Like 10 years ago, this stuff was not pulled together like it is in research. But now they're looking at, you know, irritable bowel syndrome, being connected to depression. And the idea that if you're on the autism spectrum, you have a higher likelihood of having digestive problems. Well now, let's talk about personally. Joe, I've had my problems with acid reflux where I haven't been able to sleep for, I don't know, a year I mean without waking up and puking.
Amanda: Not to cut you off but I that's one of the things I dealt with when I was actually in high school. I would eat dinner and then I would soon after maybe 20, 30 minutes later I'd start coughing and coughing and I would throw up and kept happening. I was on pills like prescription strength and acids for it and I was on those for a few years and then once I got to college and I was still taking them like probably like first year of college and then I was kind of as I started to change my diet, I just realized I no longer felt like I needed them and that was a huge thing that I dealt with to was acid reflux.
Joe: I still take Omeprazole for it and it's one of those things where I can definitely tell a difference if I'm eating a lot of food that’s processed. These things to be reading about this and be like, okay, here all these bacteria that benefit from me, eating the worst things possible. And when you stop doing that, if you go on a vegan diet or if you just go on a diet that has less of the things that these negative bacteria want, you’ll crave it more early on because you still have bacteria present. You're craving system changes and we will talk about an incredible study involving mice and changing their gut bacteria. But first, I want to talk about if Todd's willing, why we are kind of unlikely to adopt this model in, you know, as a country because I would prefer everybody read Amanda's book and just realize that they should be making their own food and doing it healthy. But that is absolutely not what's going to happen. Because of the way advertisers have twisted this. Amanda, do you think your love of animals has any connection to being a vegan?
Amanda: Of course. That's ultimately why I first went vegan. I guess I should have mentioned this earlier, but I always like to make the distinction that vegan isn't the same thing as healthy because you can still be vegan technically and be living off of like Oreos and potato chips and beyond burgers and all this junk food. And so when I first went vegan, I was eating healthier for sure but I was still eating a lot of like vegan products and like processed food for the first little bit of that like probably six months maybe up to a year or so. And then I kind of transition more to a whole food plant-based still vegan. I just like to make that distinction because I will say, I’m vegan for the animals and for the ethical reasons, but I'm eat a whole food plant-based diet for health and because I feel like there's a difference between vegan and eating stuff that's really healthy.
Todd: They put so much stuff on this, so much weird stuff on these.
Joe: I think that we did an episode once on like adding people to your Dunbar number. The idea that you watch enough social media or you read about one person like following celebrities that person becomes a friend of yours and they take up a place in like your sphere of how many people you can hold in your head. The Dunbar’s number is what I thought about with TikTok people. I'm starting to wonder who in my youth did I follow in like social media or in any media is consuming. So, the whole world started drinking because Michael Jackson moonwalked with his one glove, and we were simpletons back, then. We didn't have as many people to follow.
Amanda: It must work to some extent because, I mean, they wouldn't pay these people as much as they do to promote their products if it didn't work.
Todd: That's a great point. I was in the car business for many years and Pontiac which is a general map Motors when a brand one of their branches, they started advertising on cartoon channels on Saturday to target kids won't drive for another 10 years. It's exactly what you just said. They're planting seeds for when these kids are in college. They know what they're doing.
Joe: They absolutely do. A lot of these companies, like Duncan they're pointing their ad dollars more at youth than they are at us. You're talking about Michael Jackson drinking a Pepsi or something that is going away. Fewer people are watching cable TV or live TV. People are watching streaming, more people are on TikTok, more people are on social media, so they're realigning their money. Like they're aiming at the Death Star of money at TikTok and teens and people watching streaming services, and it's working. The CDC put out numbers that said that the younger you are, the more fast food you eat. So they've relined all their ad dollars, and it's working. Do you guys ever think about how many more burger and pizza places we can open in this country? And they're always busy. There's a line out the door on every corner.
Todd: How many different ways can you make a cheeseburger? And people are going to flock in,
Joe: Right. And it's directly tied to these influencers.
Joe: The University of Rochester did a study and they followed hundreds of people. And through this, they found out that two and five year old’s had seen an average of 130 fast food ads and it decreases the older you get. What you said, Todd, you just expose them. You hyper-expose them to this and then when they get older, they're watching TikTok, and it's already in their brain. And their favorite person is now holding up a Dunkin Donuts cup, telling them to order. It will determine your habits for the rest of your life as it'll promote the right type of gut bacteria to keep you in this loop.
Amanda: Yeah, and Doordash is another thing. It makes it so easy. You don't even have to leave your house, you can just like order from your phone and it shows up at your door. Like it just is making people even lazier. And it's sad.
Joe: Have you ever thought about what would happen without gut bacteria? Like a juice cleanse.
Amanda: Speaking of that, I've done a seven-day juice cleanse. I've always done intermittent fasting, which I think is beneficial for just to give your digestive system and you're going to break because digesting food is such an energy-intensive process, and when you give your body a break from doing that, it can focus on other parts of the body. But I did I did a 7-Day juice cleanse or fast or whatever you want to call it. Basically, what they're juicing, you can just flood your body with nutrients, vitamins, and minerals while giving your body and digestive system a break. And honestly, I went the full seven days, and the first couple of days were pretty hard, but I felt really good by days five, six and seven. It was a pretty cool experience.
Todd: let me ask you this, though. Did you at any point where you'd be torturous or angry to your loved ones around you?
Amanda: No. I mean, the first day I think I had like a minor headache and I wasn't like I was maybe a little moody, but honestly, I had worked up to that. I did a 3-day one before, so I kind of worked into it. Honestly, I was surprised that I felt really good even five, six, seven days into it.
Joe: I have read a couple of studies about intermittent fasting and fasting in general and the idea that short fasts will lower inflammation and help your body. It’s all blood sugar control. There's a lot to the idea that humans were built to fast; we are built to have periods of no food.
Todd: We are supposed to be hungry sometimes. That’s a good thing.
Joe: Yeah. I mean, going even back to like creative works, Hemingway once wrote that you should go to an art museum hungry because it makes you sharper; I don't know how, though.
Amanda: Yeah, it definitely heightened my mental clarity. I definitely heightened that part of my body or something because I just felt very focused.
Joe: To end with a study, the University of Pittsburgh completely cleaned out bacteria-free mice. But eventually, they engineered a cocktail that would give them their nutrients without needing their guts to have any bacteria. They wanted to find out if you completely cleaned us out and reset our bacteria button, would we not get cravings anymore. So, these mice had basically garden hose stomachs. They were just totally clean, and then they would introduce a carnivorous mouse diet. The idea is that if you are suddenly given a vegan mouse bacteria they haven’t had before, maybe they crave it more. But they found out it was the opposite. The wild rodents chose a diet with a higher protein-to-carbohydrate ratio and the microbes from the other. They went for lower protein-to-carbohydrate ratios, so they were just covering for what they'll act like. They never really had a craving based on the bacteria in their gut before and suddenly, they had cravings, and suddenly they were craving whatever was missing from their source. So there is a balance to this. That's precisely my point; if you try to go on a vegan diet or if you try to go on a totally new diet, even if you very slowly put yourself into it, they found in this study that the amino acid Tryptophan was the absolute key. Once they balanced Tryptophan, the mice didn't have those cravings anymore for what it lacked. So if you can find the right combination of amino acids, you will never find yourself craving stuff that is bad for you. Maybe you just need to look at your balance a little bit better and figure out what you're lacking and reduce that.
Amanda: Yeah, that's very interesting. Wow.
Final Thoughts
Diets haven't changed as much as we like to believe. We've evolved from walking outside and shooting fatty birds out of the sky to driving less than three miles statistically for fast food. From feeding our toddlers, cured beef in hand to giving them happy meals. The point is, we never outgrew easy mode. We may feel like we've matured toward healthier habits with green options popping up at fast food chains, but statistics and advertising dollars tell the truth - the younger you are, the more you're targeted by advertisers disguising themselves on social media. This should be a slam dunk for politicians running on a platform of protecting our children, except Dunkin Donuts isn't satisfied with just invested TikTok influencers. They've also paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into politicians' pockets - both Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the run-up to the election. Aka, political double-dipping.
Your gut bacteria determines your mood, your health, and your life span. What you eat regularly will influence your cravings. If you switch to healthier foods, you will eventually crave those healthier foods, and you'll feel better. You'll look better and life will be more flavorful. Or we can just continue eating whatever falls in our laps. It's a hard choice to make every day. Everything is stacked in favor of junk food companies, from branding to taste engineering. But at the end of the day, it's our choice and maybe, just maybe, if we all shop exclusively in the produce section of the grocery store, companies will get tired of trying to sell us more Americanitis.
We want to thank Amanda for being on the show. She's brought tons of value, and we are blessed to have her. I really encourage everyone to follow her: plant_creations/Instagram, https://myplantcreations.com/, and read her book, Simply Sweet to satisfy your sweet tooth. Thank you so much, Amanda.