This is Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast More What You Here Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. Don Harris Shirling is an MD who specializes as internal medicine and also an author and works out the rampant diet related misinformation that is out there to try to simplify it, and in her new book she does it in a book called Eat Everything, How to Ditch Additives and Emultifiers,
Healed your Body and Reclaim the joy of Food. And as I understand this, Dawn, this came out of your own battle with irritable bowel syndrome. It is so after the birth of my second child, I started struggling with the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome and I thought, well, my body had changed and I just need to deal with it. And so it was taking
up a lot of time, a lot of time in the bathroom. We won't get into that, but you know, I was pretty miserable, still plugging ahead, like fifteen to twenty percent of Americans actually do, actually do have this problem. And a trip to Italy that I got to take with my family changed my thinking about it a little bit because when I was in
Italy. I did not have this problem at all. And I remembered hearing from my patients who told me that when they travel to some countries that have a whole food based kind of eating patterns, they didn't have the same kind of problems that they had back here in the US. And so it really reframes my thinking around what I was eating here in the US. I've experienced
a little of this myself because I like to cook. And one of the things that I've recently discovered is with the new gadgets that are out like souvied and the pressure cookers, I can make my own refried beans, my own baked beans, red beans. I've rediscovered the beauty of beans. I didn't realize what I was missing in terms of the protein, how much it makes
me feel so much better, and the dietary fiber that's in them. Oh, beans are great, and those and those pressure cookers are really great because they can make something from dried beans to fully cooked in an hour. Yeah, and you'll worry about cooking them all day. So I agree with you. And beans are great because they do have that natural fiber and what I talk about in my book, what's really important is that that fiber come from whole food. We need fiber, We need it to nourish our guts,
to nourish those creatures in our guts that we call the microbiome. But we need to make sure that we're getting it as much as possible from whole real food. Well, and that's that's the point I was making. Yeah, sure, I could go down to the store and get canned beans. I could get canned refried beans, but they've been processed to the point where they don't taste as good. And I gotta believe the homemade is better for you.
So homemade is the way to go if we can't. Yeah, so, I and being a cook is great, And unfortunately a lot of us have lost the knowledge of how to cook and how to cook quickly and efficiently because we're all so busy. We're also overburdened and overstressed and overscheduled. And if we can't do things quickly and efficiently, they can't get done, they can't fit into our lives. So knowing how to cook and being an efficient home cook is great. But I don't want to discourage people who aren't home
cooks. There are short cuts, there are things that we can do to minimize the amount of ultra processed food, even if our cooking skills aren't quite up to par. Eat everything, how to ditch additives and emulsi fires and heal your body and reclaim the joy of food. We're talking to doctor Don Harris Shirling about this new book, and you really do have I mean a little bit of everything, even bread, pasta, ice cream can be included.
Absolutely. The issue is not the whole food. We have spent a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of years demonizing whole food, real food. My take in my experience, my experience with myself and with my patient, is that it's for most of us, not the whole food, not the minimally processed food. It is the additives, the multifiers, and the sickeners that are going into these ultraprocessed products, which by the way, now make up nearly sixty percent of the standard American diet.
And it's these things that are leading to a lot of the health problems like blood sugar issues, statty liver, irritable bowl and a whole host of other things. And if we can get those out of our diets and go back to enjoying real food again, it can make a big difference in our health.
This is the conflict lovely wife and I have. Certainly she enjoys my cooking, but when she is watching what she eats, she goes to these pre prepared meals, usually because okay, they're already they're already portioned out. But we got to watch out for some of those pre proportioned meals because are they the ones that are more apt to have those additives and things you just discussed they are, So I advocate being a big label reader for whatever you're
eating. If you can get pre made items that make your life easier, if you're having certain dietary concerns that you want to follow, and it makes your life easier, great, But please please please check those ingredients and make sure particularly that the additives that I talk about in my books are not in those food items. Don't trust the front of the packages. Don't trust words
like organic and natural and handmaids. Those are advertising words. Turn the package over, look at those ingredients, and make sure when you look at those ingredients that you can pick in your mind's eye what those things look like in nature. If you are not able to picture what karaghenin and zanthan gums look like in nature, and I certainly can't then still't need it. So that's simple, and you can have a little bit of everything, just don't eat
all of it. Has always kind of been my philosophy, exactly right. I had a friend say to me the other day, well, you know, I got a whole pint of ice cream without additives in it, and I ate it because I'm doing what you said. I'm like, no, no, no, all eat everything all at once, right, So we want to be able to eat everything that's whole foods and minimally process foods.
But in moderation, we can eat butter a small amount, we can eat sugar a small amount and not demonize those food items, for it's a damage that the additives are doing. At the same time, Yes, you have to follow your moms in your grandmothers and your great grandmother's, your great grandfather's advice and all things in moderation. We're talking with a doctor, doctor don Harry shirling Of. She's a She specializes in internal medicine and her newest book
is Eat Everything, How to Ditch Additives and Emulsifiers Heal your Body. And reclaim the joy of food. I salute you for bringing this to our attention because we are eating better and we are cooking better as Americans, but there's still a lot of shortcuts being taken. And I am not opposed to shortcuts. I am into shortcuts. I am into making things easy. We want
things to be easy. But we have to find a way to get these ultra processed foods out of our diet because the data is showing that as hard as we're trying, and it's as much money as we're spending on trying to eat healthy, we are falling behind in this country on expectancy, on rates of obesity, on rates of diabetes. And the way to kind of catch up and the way to improve our health, amongst other things, is to
get rid of these ultra processed foods. We can find shortcuts that aren't ultra process and that's what I talk about in my books, and the book is Eat Everything. Don Harris Shirley, MD, thank you for joining us. I'm off to plans and lunch. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to the Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and I Heart Media Presentation