0:00:02.5 Kurt Baker: Are you interested in gaining a fresh perspective on food and how it impacts our bodies and minds? Do you wish to explore nutritious recipes and receive informative handouts on making healthy food choices, understanding the nutritional benefit of nuts and seeds, and more? Marion Reinson, the Executive Director of Eating for Your Health, a non-profit organization based in Princeton, New Jersey, is dedicated to bringing nutrition knowledge from clinical settings to the kitchen where real transformation takes place. She’s here to provide you with the knowledge and empowerment you seek. Well, that’s awesome. I’m a big believer in the food thing, only ’cause I’ve had, let’s just say, not very good food habits in the past.
0:00:46.7 Marion Reinson: Okay. All right.
[laughter]
0:00:47.9 Marion Reinson: Well, it’s…
0:00:48.6 Kurt Baker: And it’s so… [laughter] And I think it’s a constant battle, because for some reason, salt and sugar seems to be tasty and that’s bad for us. I tend to be one of these people that has to fight all the time. So I’m like, “Uh-oh.”
0:01:04.9 Marion Reinson: All right.
0:01:06.1 Kurt Baker: Anyway, maybe you can help me out.
0:01:07.2 Marion Reinson: Well, we’ll see what we can do about that.
0:01:08.1 Kurt Baker: Maybe you can help me with my power. I guess we’ll start off by telling the… I guess everybody… What I’ve found, when anybody gets into something really good for you, they usually have a story behind that. Because anything I’ve done that tends to be good for me, there’s usually a part of my life that I go, “Oh, I better go do that now.” [chuckle] Or I saw somebody else or some inspiration. What got you into this? And tell us a little bit why you’re really focused on why this is important.
0:01:31.2 Marion Reinson: Okay. I think part of it is curiosity. Part of it is just really looking at… Over the years, raising a family and looking at, what does it take to make a healthy human, and really struggling with the need for there to be convenience and quick food, but also food that really fuels your body and your brain. And when my kids were younger and I was… Actually, my younger son was playing Pop Warner football where you have to make weight. He was always played up. Always big for his age, always played up. Got to a point where if he didn’t make the weight, he was gonna play two levels up, and that wasn’t going to happen. So…
0:02:16.7 Kurt Baker: He might get hurt.
0:02:19.2 Marion Reinson: Well, he was not going to play two levels up.
[laughter]
0:02:21.1 Marion Reinson: So that was just… So I said, “Let’s… “
0:02:21.8 Kurt Baker: Yeah, that could be bad.
0:02:23.0 Marion Reinson: “Let’s really look at it… ” And they don’t drive, they don’t shop. It’s up to me to really figure out what are they going to be putting in their body. So I really took a look at, at how we were eating, what we were eating and made some changes to just have more whole food ingredients and cooking more, but in a simple way. I’m not a chef, I’m a cook, but it has to be delicious. So, started doing that and then had lunch with a friend of mine and we were having these delicious salads and talking about how it’s great to have food and sometimes salads that somebody else makes are so much more delicious than what we make. And then she asked me if I knew Dorothy Mullen, and I said no. And she said, “Do you know Suppers?” And I said no. And she said, “Well, you need to know both.”
0:03:05.4 Marion Reinson: So she said, “You go to this lunch and you help cook or you help clean and you cook together and you eat together, and it’s great.” I was like, “All right, I’ll try it.” I went and did this… Was there for lunch. It was a little weird, and I’m like, “Okay, it’s kind of cool but a little weird, but I get it.” And… But really, everything on that table was a whole food ingredient, and everything from the salmon that really fuels your brain with the omega-3 fatty acids that a lot of those cold seafood brings you, all these different things. And I was fascinated, but I didn’t really have an hour and a half or two hours in the middle of my day to be going to these things. Then I saw that there was going to be a kraut-making workshop. So I was like, “Ooh, sauerkraut, I like sauerkraut.”
[laughter]
0:03:54.0 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:03:55.9 Marion Reinson: So I said, “Let me go to the sauerkraut workshop.” I went to the workshop, and not only was it about making sauerkraut, it was about fermented foods, it was about knife skills and it was about gut health. And I really didn’t have any kind of knowledge about gut health. My background is not in health and nutrition, it’s in marketing and strategic planning. But I was interested, I was curious and I learned a lot in just this one session and made my own sauerkraut, which was something that I didn’t know that I was going to be doing.
0:04:25.9 Kurt Baker: Right. Cool.
0:04:26.2 Marion Reinson: And then, started a gardening program that the founder, Dorothy Mullen, was running from her home garden for six months. It was once a month and we would work in her garden, which was absolutely an amazing place to be. And I learned a lot about not only the fruits and vegetables that we eat, but the herbs and spices that we eat, and really how all of these whole food ingredients really do fuel our body and our brains. Started working with Dorothy, asking her if she needed any help with the organization, started working on building the… Basically the inventory of what it would take to run the organization and help her put together a strategic plan. Worked on that with her for about a year and a half, really getting granular in how the organization was run. And Dorothy, I say, was an amazing human, because she passed away in March of 2020. But we would be creating an inventory of what it would take to run a program. And for her, it would be three hours. For a normal human, it would be about six hours. So…
0:05:32.4 Kurt Baker: Wow.
0:05:33.4 Marion Reinson: So we would put together all this information. And then Dorothy was diagnosed… Well, I was also on the advisory board and then I served on the board. And then, Dorothy was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer…
0:05:48.0 Kurt Baker: Oh my goodness.
0:05:48.2 Marion Reinson: In April of 2019. Stopped delivering the programs that she was doing in June of 2019. And she was delivering about 90% of what we did. But for the last year and a half, I had worked with her and Dorothy had worked with other people, interestingly enough, to really gather all the information about what it takes to run this organization if she wasn’t there running it. So, we looked at what the future would be. And at that time, I was just coming off of five years I’d been working with a Columbia Business School professor named Rita McGrath. And Rita is… She lives both in New York and here in Princeton Junction, but working with her on her marketing and developing some courses, helping her to develop some online courses and programs. And her focus was innovation and growth strategies during times of uncertainty.
0:06:46.6 Kurt Baker: Wow, that’s good timing.
[laughter]
0:06:49.4 Marion Reinson: So I felt like for the last five years, I was immersed in that space. And here we were in this such uncertain time. And I was just getting back into my own consulting practice and I didn’t have the
Ung resort po daw namin catleya gabriel poolUng resort po daw namin catleya gabriel poolstable of all these clients that I was working with, so I said, this would be a time that I could actually help to lead this organization half time and then do my consulting work the other half time. That’s what I did. I put together a proposal for the board and said, “I really feel like I have the skillset to lead this organization through this time.” And just, we didn’t want to see it die with Dorothy.
0:07:30.8 Kurt Baker: Right. Sure.
0:07:31.1 Marion Reinson: Fiona Capstick was the board chair at the time and she and I put our heads together and said, “Let’s make this live on, let’s continue the legacy that Dorothy had started.” Which it was meeting together, cooking together, eating together and learning together. At that time, everything that we did was in-person.
0:07:50.6 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:07:52.6 Marion Reinson: And we would almost always cook whenever we can or have a cooking demo, always having something to taste, because tasting your way to healthy eating is what really…
0:08:06.2 Kurt Baker: Oh, absolutely.
0:08:07.6 Marion Reinson: It works much better than talking about it. So we were doing that, and then realized that we really needed to focus on some new curriculum that was all evidence-based. And a lot of the work that Dorothy had been building upon was a counseling model. It was based on a 12-step program, was really effective. But when I started looking at the resources that we had to deliver programs, realized that we really would need some licensed clinical social workers to do that kind of work, and so we pivoted to a coaching model. So really creating curriculum about the why we eat. I think that a lot of people have become disconnected with the reason why we eat.
0:08:53.4 Kurt Baker: I eat ’cause I get hungry.
0:08:55.8 Marion Reinson: Right. Right. And…
0:08:57.1 Kurt Baker: And I like it. [laughter]
0:09:00.2 Marion Reinson: Right. But as humans…
0:09:00.9 Kurt Baker: Oh, okay. Oh, oh…
[overlapping conversation]
0:09:02.5 Marion Reinson: It’s like the whole human thing, we eat because we need to fuel our bodies and our brains.
0:09:06.4 Kurt Baker: Oh, that too.
0:09:07.2 Marion Reinson: Right. And when we don’t, we get cravings to eat some other things that your brains would think would have nutritional value. Sugar is what… Every carb that we eat, which is everything but your animal proteins and your fats, everything else is a carb. That gets converted to sugar. And when we’re eating food products that don’t really have nutritional value but still taste sweet, our brain thinks it’s getting nutrition, but it doesn’t. So it tells you “Eat again,” because it didn’t get anything.
0:09:43.2 Kurt Baker: Yeah, the famous sugar soda, the sugar water, right?
0:09:45.8 Marion Reinson: Yeah, yeah. Or sugar and everything. Just sugar and everything. We really looked at that curriculum and also realized that we needed to put a pause on the programs. And this was January, February of 2020. And then COVID hit. We were able to hit a pause button, like the rest of the world, hit a pause button, and worked on building a new curriculum and a new model of the Eating for Your Health program. And that was The Suppers programs. We moved over to a new brand of Eating for Your Health, because that really explains what we do. We just started building curriculum around the why we eat, and that is to fuel our bodies and our brains.
0:10:33.3 Kurt Baker: Well, that’s really awesome. We’re gonna take a quick break, ’cause we’re gonna… I know that’s a great time to pause, ’cause the whole world paused for a little bit. So, we’re gonna take a quick break. You’re listening to Master Your Finances. We’ll be right back. Welcome back. You’re listening to Master Your Finances, and we’re talking about good nutrition here with Marion Reinson. And, interesting, I know, when the founder, Dorothy, passed away, who I met years ago, I remember when she first started the organization and she did a chamber event, and she had us all in, and I was like, “This is really awesome. The food’s fantastic, and I love it.” And one of the things that I always hear about, and it happens to me a little bit personally, is like, “This is really good, but I don’t really have time for all this stuff.”
0:11:14.5 Marion Reinson: Right.
0:11:15.6 Kurt Baker: We all wanna do it, and I know we “paused for COVID”. We’ve got a couple of things to talk about here. One is, I wanna just… Maybe that’s… I know a lot happened during that period where we all paused and had thought about a lot of things during that period of time. I guess one is, how do you address the fact that people said, “I’d love to eat better, but going through the drive-through and getting something that was just fried like 30 seconds ago is pretty good and it makes me happy for the next couple of minutes, but then I feel really groggy and I can’t keep my eyes open an hour later because it’s weighing me down, in ways it really shouldn’t be”? And it’s not really nutritious, as we know. A lot of this stuff is not… When it’s 90% fat and maybe 2% lettuce and whatever else is in there. It’s like… [laughter]
0:11:54.9 Marion Reinson: Yeah. I would say it’s not nutrient-dense. Something we can… [laughter]
0:11:57.6 Kurt Baker: That’s a kind way of saying it. But I do remember when I had the stuff that she laid out, which you point out, it was like, “This is really delicious.” In fact, some of the best meals I’ve ever had were very good for you, but it was like, “Wow, this is real… ” Well, yeah, but a gourmet cook can do that and it’s easy for them. How do we address that societally? ‘Cause not just for anybody who can go out and pretty much order and get what they want, but also you have to deal with the people who are a lower socioeconomic range where they tend to buy things because it’s cheap to produce these things that are not nutrient-dense. It’s cheaper.
0:12:36.1 Marion Reinson: Right. It’s cheap.
0:12:37.0 Kurt Baker: How do we address these things, the time, and the fact that sometimes people feel it’s more expensive?
0:12:42.7 Marion Reinson: Sure. Sure. When it comes to your healthy eating, we know that planning is everything. If you don’t have the food to eat in your house, it’s not going to happen. If you haven’t found a source of convenience food that’s also nutrition, it’s not going to happen. I keep emergency nuts and seeds in my car for those times when I’m like, “Oh my goodness, it’s 2 o’clock, I really haven’t eaten much and there’s… I don’t have any time for much of anything,” but I will open up the nuts and seeds that I have and grab a handful of almonds or any other nuts and seeds, and it’s going to hold me over till I can eat something real. And it’s… If you look at the nutritional label of nuts and seeds, it basically reads like a vitamin. There’s just…
0:13:36.5 Kurt Baker: I love nuts and seeds.
0:13:37.5 Marion Reinson: There are so many good…
0:13:39.6 Kurt Baker: Yeah, I think they’re fantastic.
0:13:40.9 Marion Reinson: You get your proteins, you get your fiber, you get a lot of your IUMs, which is your magnesium, your calcium, your potassium, all of that. I just call them the IUMs.
0:13:52.3 Kurt Baker: I like to eat pistachios in the shell because that takes me time. So I figure, the longer it takes me to eat it, the less I’m probably gonna eat. [chuckle]
0:14:00.2 Marion Reinson: Sure. Well…
0:14:00.4 Kurt Baker: I have to unwrap every one of them. [laughter]
0:14:00.8 Marion Reinson: But it’s all right because, well, we also talk about…
0:14:02.1 Kurt Baker: That’s psychological, purely.
0:14:05.3 Marion Reinson: If it works for you…
[laughter]
0:14:07.5 Marion Reinson: That’s… So long as it works for you, then it works. But you can eat a lot of almonds. An ounce of almonds is about 24 almonds, 23, 24 almonds, and that’s a lot of almonds. If you eat that many, you’re going to be full, and you’re gonna be full for a while.
0:14:22.1 Kurt Baker: Yeah, no, I agree. I eat a lot of nuts, so I agree with you 100%.
0:14:24.6 Marion Reinson: People do say to me, “Well, but the calories, there’s a lot of calories in almonds, so I might as well just go get a Big Mac.” And I’m like, “No, a calorie is not a calorie is not a calorie.” That’s what we look at. We also… We make the assumption also based on the coaching model and the integrative health model that people really do want to do what’s best for themselves most of the time. But again, if you’re not planning and if you haven’t thought it through, then healthy eating isn’t going to come easily unless you have somebody who’s doing it for you. But what we do know is that in the US, we have the standard American diet, which the acronym is SAD.
0:15:03.7 Kurt Baker: SAD.
0:15:03.8 Marion Reinson: And it…
[laughter]
0:15:05.8 Kurt Baker: I was gonna ask you, what is the standard American diet? Does that have golden arches on it? [laughter]
0:15:12.7 Marion Reinson: It has a lot…
0:15:13.1 Kurt Baker: Not to pick on McDonald’s, but…
0:15:14.4 Marion Reinson: Processed foods, right?
0:15:15.1 Kurt Baker: I know.
0:15:15.8 Marion Reinson: And so it’s a lot of… That’s one of the things that we talk about. We don’t talk about different eating styles except to really look at the processed foods that you’re eating, those white flours, those white sugars. And every single time that…
0:15:24.0 Kurt Baker: Yeah. That’s a biggie.
0:15:26.9 Marion Reinson: The hyper-processed foods. Every time a food is processed, it loses a little bit of its nutritional value. So when these foods are hyper-processed, there’s really nothing, no nutritional value left. It’s really cheap and it’s making people a lot of money.
0:15:42.3 Kurt Baker: True.
0:15:45.1 Marion Reinson: So when you’re choosing to eat that way, you’re really not feeding yourself, you’re putting something in your stomach, but it’s not really feeding you, so oftentimes you’re going to be hungry, within a short amount of time. Versus when you eat a meal that has the fiber, has the protein, has the healthy fats and the nutrients that you need, you’re not thinking about eating again for three or four hours. And that’s the point of eating. That’s the point of eating…
0:16:14.3 Kurt Baker: I agree, 100%.
0:16:15.3 Marion Reinson: Is to eat and not be hungry again. But when we’re on the standard American diet and we’re eating things like waffles and pancakes and bagels and muffins for breakfast, you’re going to be hungry again, or you’re gonna be really tired.
0:16:24.8 Kurt Baker: Agree.
0:16:26.4 Marion Reinson: Because you get that sugar… The sugar rollercoaster. So choosing those foods that keep your blood sugar stable, keep you full longer, is actually really… That’s the value meal, that’s what’s keeping you full. You’re not hungry looking for something else in another hour and a half. And when there’s not… When you look at the nutrition label and there’s all these words that you don’t understand, you don’t recognize them as food because they’re not, it’s up to our body to eliminate that from our body… From…
0:17:00.8 Kurt Baker: If it’s not in English, it’s probably not good for you. [chuckle]
0:17:02.9 Marion Reinson: Probably not. If it comes out of a lab…
0:17:05.1 Kurt Baker: If the word’s more than 20 characters, it’s probably not good for you. [laughter]
0:17:09.4 Marion Reinson: If you don’t recognize it as food, you know what? It’s not. It’s not.
0:17:12.3 Kurt Baker: Probably not.
0:17:13.4 Marion Reinson: And then our kidneys and our livers need to filter it out. So you’re really taxing your system and we do have an epidemic in this country of type 2 diabetes, a lot of starch-related diseases, your IBS, your celiac, your… There’s just a whole slew of new diseases that we didn’t have 50 years ago.
0:17:35.5 Kurt Baker: I know what I did, but I’m gonna ask you this question generically. I had a really poor diet for a while and then I switched. I fully agree with everything you’re saying. But one of the struggles that I had initially was, well, I’m used to having a bagel every morning for breakfast, I’m used to having a Big Mac for lunch and I’m used to having this for dinner. I’m used to having this. And I’m used to my routine. You get into a habit.
0:17:53.5 Marion Reinson: Sure.
0:17:54.2 Kurt Baker: So it becomes more, not that you’re necessarily hungry, but, “Oh, it’s 11:30, it’s time to do this.” “Oh, it’s 3:30 or 5 o’clock, it’s time to do this. It’s time to do this.” And you get into this routine, and I found that difficult to break. And I’ll tell you how I did it, but I’m curious about what kind of strategies you offer to people to say, “Okay, I know I shouldn’t be eating these things in the morning, but I’m hungry and that helps me and it gets me to my next level, whatever, lunch or dinner, whatever the case is, whatever my current habits are”?
0:18:22.3 Marion Reinson: Sure. Sure.
0:18:23.3 Kurt Baker: So how do I start breaking… My feeling is you can’t break them all…
0:18:26.3 Marion Reinson: No.
0:18:26.9 Kurt Baker: You can’t change 100% overnight…
0:18:28.1 Marion Reinson: Nope.
0:18:28.4 Kurt Baker: Because you’re gonna be miserable. So, what do you recommend?
0:18:31.2 Marion Reinson: So, we… One of our pillars is called “How You Feel Is Data”. When you eat something and really… If you become mindful about what you’re eating, how you’re eating, when you’re eating, and we ask people to start doing experiments with themselves, “Eat certain things for your first meal of the day and see how it works for you. See how it makes you feel. Do you feel alert? Do you feel tired? Are you hungry in an hour? What works for you?” And again, just because it’s what we have been programmed to eat here in this country, doesn’t mean that we need to eat those breakfast foods. I’ve never really been a breakfast food person. When I was growing up, I would drive my mother crazy and we came to an agreement that I would have a half of an English muffin with a piece of cheese on it, because I didn’t really want any breakfast.
0:19:23.4 Kurt Baker: Oh, you liked to fast for breakfast?
0:19:26.2 Marion Reinson: Well, I just am not…
0:19:27.7 Kurt Baker:…
0:19:28.3 Marion Reinson: But it’s just the way that my body works.
0:19:31.6 Kurt Baker: Right. Yep.
0:19:32.4 Marion Reinson: We also look at nutritional harm reduction, which is, like you said, if you… Nutritional harm reduction.
0:19:38.5 Kurt Baker: Nutritional…
0:19:39.2 Marion Reinson: Nutritional harm reduction.
0:19:39.9 Kurt Baker: Harm reduction. Okay.
0:19:41.3 Marion Reinson: Harm reduction is a term that is used in the addiction world, moving people away from those substances that are harmful.
0:19:51.8 Kurt Baker: Gotcha.
0:19:52.4 Marion Reinson: And the foods that we eat that are filled with processed ingredients and filled with the sugars are harmful to us. We ask people to just make small changes, little incremental changes, to subtract those foods that aren’t really fueling your body and your brain and maybe adding a few that are. It might be having a handful of berries in the morning, eating an apple instead of the cookie, having a whole grain product instead of the white bread product. Just really looking at different ways to feed yourself that works for you. Because what works for me and what works for you might be completely different. I might be fine with having oatmeal with a spoonful of nut butters, and… But for you, you want eggs with vegetables or, whatever it is that works for you, just pay attention to what works for you. And you don’t have to be listening to what… We’ve been told over the years that you need to have a breakfast of whatever this American breakfast looks like, because it really is not…
0:20:56.3 Kurt Baker: Bacon and eggs.
0:20:57.1 Marion Reinson: Well, bacon and eggs…
[laughter]
0:20:58.7 Marion Reinson: We also say, if you can recognize it for what it was…
0:21:01.9 Kurt Baker: And hash browns and…
0:21:03.7 Marion Reinson: What it was in nature, it’s closer to… It’s not so processed. Eggs are a great protein. I love eggs, and whole eggs. Not egg whites. Whole eggs. They’ve got the fat…
0:21:13.7 Kurt Baker: Right. Me too. I love eggs too.
0:21:15.5 Marion Reinson: They’re cheap, they’re versatile, and they’ve got B vitamins, they’ve got selenium, which is really important for our immune system. If you eat two eggs, that gives you 50% of your daily dose of selenium. So, don’t skimp on the eggs, eat the whole egg.
0:21:32.0 Kurt Baker: Won’t skip on the eggs. We’re gonna take another quick break now. You’re listening to Master Your Finances. We’ll be right back. Welcome back. You’re listening to Master Your Finances. I’m here with Marion Reinson and we’re talking about food and how… I guess it’s incremental changes. Right?
0:21:51.3 Marion Reinson: Incremental change.
0:21:52.1 Kurt Baker: It’s just a matter of doing little things. And I guess two things that I personally did that helped me. One was, what I started doing was I just started buying more good food. And I ate the same amount of bad food originally, and so I felt fuller. And then eventually, I go, “Well, I’m really full because I ate three bananas” or whatever it was. And then, so I said… Then I started eating those first, and then I started being more full. And then I started eating… I still ate it, but I would eat less. Instead of two bagels, maybe I had one bagel. I just started off by adding the good stuff on the end as the dessert or the extra, because then I felt like, “Oh, I still had my normal meal.” But over time I started realizing, then I started… ‘Cause what I found very interesting is my taste started to change.
0:22:35.8 Marion Reinson: Exactly.
0:22:36.6 Kurt Baker: I became much more sensitive to sugar. Now, if you give me a triple dark chocolate cake with whatever on it, I’ll actually… It’ll shock my system because…
0:22:47.6 Marion Reinson: Yes.
0:22:48.0 Kurt Baker: And before, like 10 years ago I would’ve been like, “Give me another slice.”
0:22:50.9 Marion Reinson: Right. Right.
0:22:53.5 Kurt Baker: But it’s very different. And the other thing that I did that helped me a little bit is sometimes when I’m hungry, I realize that I’m actually just thirsty. So what I’ll do is drink a glass of water and wait five minutes and say, “Well, am I really still hungry?” And maybe half the time I am, and other half, I’m really not. And so that just slows me down a little bit, because… And I started actually doing what you said as like, “Oh, it’s whatever, 8 o’clock, I’m supposed to eat breakfast.” And I’ll actually ask myself, “Am I actually hungry?” And sometimes, I’m yes, and sometimes it’s no. Like, “Well, I’ll just wait till 10:00 and see how I feel at 10:00.” And so I’ll just delay and listen to more about how I’m feeling right then. And it’s not always… Your body doesn’t work on the exact same clock everyday, is what I personally found.
0:23:39.4 Marion Reinson: Absolutely.
0:23:40.5 Kurt Baker: It does vary. Sometimes I’ll be hungry earlier, sometimes it’ll be later. Those are just little things that I personally did. I don’t know if anyone…
0:23:45.4 Marion Reinson: No, that’s… Developing the taste for healthy food is again, another one of our pillars.
0:23:52.3 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:23:55.1 Marion Reinson: So when we… When you’re used to eating those foods that have actually been engineered for you to crave them and want more…
0:24:01.3 Kurt Baker: And that’s very true. I’ve seen specials on this. It’s crazy.
0:24:04.3 Marion Reinson: Oh, it’s real. These people work in a lab, to have the crunch and the salt and the sweet so that it triggers our brain in a way that drugs do.
0:24:17.7 Kurt Baker: It’s exact same thing. I rea… Yeah, I saw the special…
0:24:19.5 Marion Reinson: It is. It’s…
0:24:21.7 Kurt Baker: I was blown away by how detailed these… The ones I was watching was on snacks. These different kinds of snacks. And they’re literally engineered to make you want another one.
0:24:30.5 Marion Reinson: They are, they are.
0:24:30.6 Kurt Baker: Which is a little bit scary, to me.
0:24:34.7 Marion Reinson: No, it is… Well, people are getting sick. So that’s… What we know is that people are buying the 99-cent snacks and they’re developing type 2 diabetes. They’re developing, like I said, these other digestive diseases that we didn’t have before.
0:24:54.9 Kurt Baker: That’s true. Before the age of processed food, we were actually healthier baseline, which is interesting.
0:25:00.6 Marion Reinson: Well, we had… We ate whole food ingredients. People had to cook things. And if you didn’t cook something, you found somebody who would cook something. And we ate a lot of soups and stews and things like that that you could really just put together what you have in your house and make something out of it. And if you were fortunate to have those herbs and spices that you can also use to make it delicious, then you… That’s what we ate. But then we had World War II, when we had everybody… We had tens of thousands of people that we needed to feed out on the battlefield. There was no refrigeration. There was no real easy way to be preparing the food for the masses in that way. So we developed… Had these technologies to develop these processed foods.
0:25:39.1 Kurt Baker: Like M&M’s.
[laughter]
0:25:40.6 Kurt Baker: That’s true. That’s one of the things…
0:25:41.0 Marion Reinson: SpaghettiOs…
0:25:42.4 Kurt Baker: They said M&M’s was sent out because it had… The coating was send in to battle.
[chuckle]
0:25:46.0 Kurt Baker: It was, seriously. It is.
0:25:47.6 Marion Reinson: But… No, I believe it. Yeah, it’s all part…
0:25:48.8 Kurt Baker: ‘Cause their hands wouldn’t get chocolate on them.
0:25:49.3 Marion Reinson: There’s probably a good reason for why we did this to begin with.
[laughter]
0:25:53.2 Kurt Baker: It’s like, everybody eats them. [laughter]
0:25:54.1 Marion Reinson: But now… And then, after the war we were like, “Oh, we have all these convenient foods, let’s sell them to the public.” And again, they’re cheap.
0:26:04.8 Kurt Baker: True.
0:26:05.2 Marion Reinson: And people… The big food companies were making a lot of money on them. That’s where we need to really go back to those whole food ingredients and work with foods that don’t trigger us. And like you said, “Am I hungry or am I thirsty?” It takes about 20 to 30 minutes for your stomach to tell your brain that you’re full.
0:26:36.4 Kurt Baker: Yeah, there’s a lag there, I know. For sure.
0:26:38.4 Marion Reinson: Yeah. Yeah. So giving yourself time after you’ve eaten to see if you really want that other helping. Same thing with when you start to look at how foods make you feel, that how you feel is data and how it works with your biological individuality. Once you realize that you eat that piece of cake and three hours later, you are ready for a nap in a really, a big way.
0:27:03.7 Kurt Baker: True.
0:27:04.5 Marion Reinson: And you can’t afford to do that. You may not want to do that. The other thing that we see where… A lot of us have a job where we can decide we’re not going to eat till 10:00. But when you’re dealing with people like nurses and teachers…
0:27:14.5 Kurt Baker: Yeah, they’ve set breaks and things.
0:27:16.7 Marion Reinson: They have… It’s such a challenge for them to be eating healthy, ’cause so many times they will just grab and eat whatever they can fit in their pocket.
0:27:20.7 Kurt Baker: They won’t even get their break and it’ll be like, “Oh, we need you back right now.” And…
0:27:22.4 Marion Reinson: They don’t. Exactly. They don’t. And teachers and nurses are the highest rate of bio… The bio… Oh my goodness, what is the word? Not biometric. The bariatric surgery. The bariatric surgery.
0:27:39.8 Kurt Baker: Oh, really?
0:27:41.2 Marion Reinson: Yeah.
0:27:41.3 Kurt Baker: Oh my goodness.
0:27:43.3 Marion Reinson: Yeah, yeah. Because they really don’t have control over their schedules and they are constantly having bagels and pizza…
0:27:53.5 Kurt Baker: Well, that’s not good.
0:27:53.7 Marion Reinson: And donuts and muffins in the break room.
0:27:53.9 Kurt Baker: Yeah, ’cause it’s all readily available. You mentioned in the earlier segment that part of this… ‘Cause we’re all busy, so it’s like you wanna eat right, but most of the stuff that’s good for you starts essentially from scratch, ’cause it’s whole food and you have to put it together or make it… Somehow get it made. But if I’m working five days a week and I have two or three kids running around, I gotta get them to school and I have a spouse that’s off to work or I’m off to work or we’re both off to work, how do you fit all that into your day when you feel like all you wanna do is just grab something, unwrap it and throw it in your mouth?
0:28:29.1 Marion Reinson: I love frozen vegetables.
0:28:29.6 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:28:30.6 Marion Reinson: I think frozen vegetables has helped me get food on the table in a really short amount of time that a lot of other… If I have to prepare the food myself, it’s not necessarily happening. So again, it is planning. It’s not easy, but if you make that a priority to fuel yourself and your family in a way that is healthy, you can figure it out. And it doesn’t have to be fancy. We also do a lot of cooking demos where we show people how easy it is to put together a sauté. I do a lot of sautés. You name your protein, whether it’s a chicken or tofu or whatever ground, whatever you wanna do, and you just sauté in some olive oil, garlic and onion. And then you can add some bags of frozen chopped vegetables, do different seasonings depending on what it is that you’re making. Like I said, I do a lot of sautés. I’ll use sesame oil and then some other Asian spices and a lot of cilantro, and that’s my Asian stir fry. I’ll do the same thing, only I’ll add chili powder and some other spices, and that’s my Taco Tuesday’s sauté. Same thing with adding a lot of vegetables to a pasta sauce. So I’ll add… When I was doing my panic pre-COVID grocery shopping…
[laughter]
0:29:52.4 Kurt Baker: You and a couple of billion other people.
[chuckle]
0:29:54.8 Marion Reinson: I know. And so I’m in the frozen food aisle, and I’m looking, and there’s nothing left.
0:30:00.8 Kurt Baker: I’m sure.
0:30:01.2 Marion Reinson: There was a bag of frozen chopped collard greens. And I was like, “All right, well, I guess this is what we’re eating,” because that’s…
0:30:06.8 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:30:07.4 Marion Reinson: And I added it to whether… I guess it was maybe a Taco Tuesday thing’s sauté. I add it to everything now.
0:30:12.8 Kurt Baker: Oh, interesting.
0:30:17.1 Marion Reinson: Because it doesn’t really change the flavor profile, but it gives you the fiber and it gives you the dark leafy green, so you get the micronutrients from that. And like I said, it doesn’t really change the flavor, so I’ll add it to a pasta sauce, I’ll add it to an Asian stir fry, add it to a lot of foods, just to boost the nutritional value of it. And then also making enough to have leftovers. I know a lot of people say, “Oh, I don’t do leftovers.” I’m like, I live on leftovers. I have leftovers for breakfast all the time. I have leftovers in my freezer. So it’s planning. If you’re going to be making a meal, try and make two. And then just easy, easy, easy, easy recipes. If they’re… They can’t be complex. Baked chicken thighs. Just, I call it the… You bake the crap out of them. You just…
0:31:02.9 Kurt Baker: Bake the crap out of them. [laughter]
0:31:04.4 Marion Reinson: You just put them in the oven and you wait until it’s like they’re nice and crispy and they’re delicious. [laughter] But it’s easy. But it’s… Also, I know people have a challenge with what their kids will and won’t eat, but they also do tend to mirror what they see.
0:31:20.6 Kurt Baker: That’s true. Some of this is just training and learning how to make… ‘Cause you always hear these things where there are simple recipes that are good for you. And I think if people are used to just pouring out a box of cereal and throwing milk in and eating it, then that’s really what they know. But it’s like, it’s really not that much more difficult. It takes only a… ‘Cause I… And I’m no gourmet cook by any means, stretch of the imagination, but…
0:31:43.8 Marion Reinson: Neither am I. I’m a cook.
0:31:46.2 Kurt Baker: But you put two or three things together, and you either bake it or blend it or whatever, and it’s done. And you’re talking a couple of minutes at the most.
0:31:54.6 Marion Reinson: And if you use fresh herbs…
0:31:55.1 Kurt Baker: Right, it’s better.
0:31:56.5 Marion Reinson: Fresh herbs just boosts the flavor. And every single herb and spice that we eat has a medicinal value, every single one. Adding them to your food not only boosts and livens up the flavor, it really does fuel us in a meaningful way. But really, it is planning, it is experimenting. But it is, just trying not to make things more complicated than they need to be, and looking at making sure that you have a clean protein, you’re using the healthiest fats that you have access to and can afford, and making sure you’re eating plants, ’cause that’s the fiber. If you’re not eating plants, you’re not getting fiber. Period. And when people talk about the convenience of a cereal and milk, I look at what’s in our cereals, which are super processed foods. And they’re basically human kibble.
0:32:44.7 Kurt Baker: Human kibble. [laughter]
0:32:47.9 Marion Reinson: They’re human kibble. They’re sprayed with vitamins that our bodies don’t even absorb.
0:32:51.3 Kurt Baker: Right. Agree. Well, we’re gonna take another quick break. You’re listening to Master Your Finances. Welcome back. You’re listening to Master Your Finances. I’m here with Marion Reinson and we’re talking about eating healthy.
0:33:05.9 Marion Reinson: Yes.
0:33:06.5 Kurt Baker: And just before the last break, you actually said that cereal is like human kibble, which… I’ll tell you a quick story, which is not directly related to humans, but we have a lot of dogs. We have six dogs at home, and one of them was getting… They were starting to get things like allergies and the paws were getting all funky where they would scratch them and they licked, and this kind of weird thing’s going on. And we kept changing dog foods. And what we found out was we’d go buy good brand, it would get sold, they would change the formula, then it wouldn’t work anymore… We gave up after a few years. And we had this one thing we couldn’t find out. One of our dogs, Mickey, is now I guess 15. He was having these… He would pass out. He’d have these episodes where he would… First time it happened, my wife thought he died.
0:33:51.5 Marion Reinson: Oh.
0:33:52.0 Kurt Baker: ‘Cause he would… Went limp. And then, a few minutes later, he’d come alive… Nobody could figure out what it was. Spent many… Let’s just say a lot.
0:33:56.7 Marion Reinson: Invested a lot. [laughter]
0:34:00.4 Kurt Baker: Let’s just say a lot, a down payment on a house kind of thing.
[laughter]
0:34:03.8 Kurt Baker: We tried to figure it out, we couldn’t figure it out. So we said, “Let’s just change the diet.” We started actually making our own organic natural food and researched everything that’s good for the dogs, and literally put it all in there. They get salmon, they get beef, they get turmeric, they get all kinds of vegetables, they get blueberries, you name it, anything we could come up with. Anytime my wife… ‘Cause she’s a dog trainer, so anytime she’d find something that was good for them, she’d go, “All right, that’s going in the formula.” And they’re all extremely healthy. And so we actually spend quite a bit of money on the dog food, but we spent almost zero on the vet.
0:34:37.1 Marion Reinson: Right. Right. Right.
0:34:39.8 Kurt Baker: So, just from a pure economic standpoint, it’s insane how much healthier the dogs are than they were… Not that they were sick. It’s just they would have these weird things happen that we couldn’t explain. You spent all this time on these testing and things like that. In fact, we had one dog… And the other thing that threw us was we had one dog who passed away early from… He had these internal growths and so we were… And he was only nine. And our dogs typically live quite a while, at least 12 to 15 years old.
0:35:07.9 Marion Reinson: Okay.
0:35:10.0 Kurt Baker: And that was… I think it was that, plus the episodes, was like, “All right, we’re done. We’re not gonna rely on third parties. We’re just gonna go ahead and make our own stuff.” And so that really elevated our personal stuff and said, “Well, if we’re doing that for the dogs, I guess we should really pay attention to our own diet even more so.” Ironically, the dogs kind of led the movement. Not that we weren’t always thinking about it, but that was like, “All right, this is really pretty serious.” And the other thing that I learned about over the years, which I guess was talked about, but I guess they’re researching it more and more, is the microbiome and how basically, if your gut is healthy, everything else stems from that, which actually makes a lot of sense to me, just anecdotally.
0:35:52.2 Marion Reinson: Sure.
0:35:52.3 Kurt Baker: I’m like, “Oh, that makes sense. If everything in your… ” ‘Cause that’s where everything’s processed and starts and the nutrition comes out, and that’s where the whole manufacturing process for what we’re doing is going on. And the more I thought about that, I go, “That actually makes a lot of sense.” So when I’m eating, I’m attempting to… On my good days. There are bad days. Let me…
0:36:11.3 Marion Reinson: We all have them.
0:36:12.2 Kurt Baker: Let me be straight about that. I’m no angel by any means. [laughter]
0:36:13.9 Marion Reinson: That’s… We also talk about… We talk about non-judgment. That’s another one of our pillars, is non-judgment.
0:36:18.0 Kurt Baker: I definitely have my off days. There’s no question about that.
0:36:21.7 Marion Reinson: Sure.
0:36:22.2 Kurt Baker: But the majority of the time, I’m thinking, “Okay… ” ‘Cause I know if I feel bad, it actually makes you feel much better. That’s the interesting thing, is it takes a while before you figure that out and before you notice it, but you definitely notice it over time, you have a higher energy level, you actually sleep better.
0:36:39.0 Marion Reinson: Everything works better.
0:36:41.0 Kurt Baker: Everything. And so anyway, that’s my little story about the dog. I know it’s not related to humans directly…
0:36:45.9 Marion Reinson: But it is. It is.
0:36:47.4 Kurt Baker: But it… I think we follow the same kind of profile.
0:36:49.8 Marion Reinson: It’s about the caregivers taking better care of those they’re caring for than they often do for themselves.
0:36:56.3 Kurt Baker: And that’s the problem. We have almost too many choices.
0:36:58.2 Marion Reinson: Well…
0:37:00.0 Kurt Baker: If the choices were, you can only eat the… Back in the farmers 200 years ago, you had to go out and grow it, or raise it.
0:37:05.8 Marion Reinson: Right. Right. And that’s…
0:37:09.6 Kurt Baker: That was it. You had three choices. They were all healthy. [laughter]
0:37:11.9 Marion Reinson: That’s the way it was, from the ’40s. So yeah. So it’s…
0:37:16.5 Kurt Baker: Now you go to Uber Eats and you can have anything in your house within a half an hour.
0:37:17.2 Marion Reinson: You can, you can. And…
0:37:19.4 Kurt Baker: Anything pretty much.
0:37:19.6 Marion Reinson: Right. Right. But should you… Should we?
0:37:22.3 Kurt Baker: Right. That’s the problem. That’s the problem.
0:37:22.5 Marion Reinson: There’s that should word, that should word. One of the things that you also said was, so yes, the food might be more expensive, but we are saving money in other ways. Or, it might be more expensive, but we are healthy.
0:37:37.1 Kurt Baker: Correct.
0:37:38.4 Marion Reinson: So when you become ill, it’s not cheap. It’s not cheap. And when you look at things like eczema and a lot of these different health issues that people have, a lot of it really is food related. And it might be something that could be healthy for me, but not healthy for you. So identifying what are the triggers that cause you to have your disease. The story with the dogs is just… It’s the same model with humans. When you make the decision to eat in a healthier way, a lot of the issues that you are having goes away, the inflammation. And then when you talk about your gut health. Your gut starts from your mouth to your anus, and basically it’s a tube that runs through your body that’s from your brain and touches every single one of your organs. So if your gut is not healthy, then chances are there could be an issue with one of the other organs in your body. And our gut needs to be fed with good bacteria. We have… There’s trillions of bacteria in our bodies, and when you’re not eating the food that is feeding your gut and you’re not eating the food that’s really fueling your body, which are your macro… Your plants and… Basically, your plants are feeding your gut. Fermented foods. Almost every culture has a fermented food. They have a yogurt or they have pickled vegetables or different fermented foods.
0:39:12.9 Kurt Baker: Why don’t you delve into that a little bit? Why are fermented foods a good thing? Just explain it.
0:39:16.5 Marion Reinson: Again, it’s the bacteria. So when you… My foray into sauerkraut, who knew?
0:39:21.3 Kurt Baker: There you go. Right.
0:39:22.3 Marion Reinson: I like sauerkraut. I just…
0:39:22.4 Kurt Baker: I do too.
0:39:23.5 Marion Reinson: And it’s one of those polarizing…
0:39:24.5 Kurt Baker: I like it better now that I found out it’s good for me.
0:39:25.3 Marion Reinson: Well…
[laughter]
0:39:26.3 Marion Reinson: Just don’t heat it because you’ll kill the bacteria.
0:39:28.0 Kurt Baker: Oh, all right. Okay.
0:39:30.1 Marion Reinson: You want it at room temperature. I always craved sauerkraut when I was younger, and now I’m like, all right, I get why. I also like pickles.
0:39:40.8 Kurt Baker: I love pickles.
0:39:40.9 Marion Reinson: Fermented pickles. Our bodies need bacteria to process all the food in our system. And when you have those hyper-processed foods, the bacteria that are being fed are not the good bacteria, they’re a bad bacteria. You need to feed your body the good bacteria so that it can compete with and overtake the bad bacteria. And again, what you eat matters.
0:40:04.7 Kurt Baker: That’s true.
0:40:05.3 Marion Reinson: When you’re eating food that… If you’re not getting enough fiber and the food is taking a while to be digested through your system, it’s fermenting. And that’s when you get bloated, that’s when you get gas. That’s when you feel disease in your digestion, is when your food is not really being digested properly, and it needs that good bacteria to do that. So feeding your gut with just a little bit… One thing that we know is that bacteria likes to grow, right? It likes to…
0:40:33.2 Kurt Baker: True.
0:40:33.3 Marion Reinson: It will replicate, whether it’s the good or the bad. So feeding it the good just a little bit at a time, just a fork full of sauerkraut, or two ounces of a kombucha, or a yogurt, is fueling and feeding your gut in that meaningful way. And then the prebiotics are the leafy greens that also are providing those good bacteria. So when we are… When people are placed on an antibiotic…
0:41:03.0 Kurt Baker: Yep. You kill them.
0:41:05.7 Marion Reinson: You do. So you need to feed them again.
[laughter]
0:41:07.6 Kurt Baker: They forget that part.
0:41:08.3 Marion Reinson: You need to feed them again. That’s why…
0:41:09.3 Kurt Baker: Right. We forget that. You are killing the biotics. That’s what you’re doing.
0:41:13.2 Marion Reinson: You are killing the bacteria. Making sure that you’re replacing what you just killed off. And just looking at it as a supplement. I look at certain foods as supplements. The fermented foods, that’s a supplement. A lot of our tinned fishes, like our sardines and salmon, they’re also… That’s a supplement. There’s so much to them. Our nuts and seeds, it’s a supplement. So many of the vitamins and minerals that come in the bottles, we don’t absorb. What we’re doing is creating really expensive urine.
0:41:52.8 Kurt Baker: Right. [laughter]
0:41:53.9 Marion Reinson: And when I look at people like, “Well, should I buy this?” I’m like, “Just eat better food.” And you know your body absorbs it and you know that it’s able to get the nutrients out of the food. It’s not able to get the nutrients out of a pill.
0:42:12.5 Kurt Baker: Right. Yeah. And you mentioned briefly the inflammation, which I think is a huge issue.
0:42:15.9 Marion Reinson: Yes. It is.
0:42:17.0 Kurt Baker: And I think we underestimate most of it, just how important it is to prevent inflammation.
0:42:22.3 Marion Reinson: Yes.
0:42:23.4 Kurt Baker: I look at it as, what… Well, I know some people have EVs, so forget the EV owners. But for people that have an internal combustion engine, if you took the oil out of the car, how long is it gonna run? You have the heat and you’re gonna rub everything, and… So inflammation in your body’s like, it could be everywhere, literally, every part of your body.
0:42:38.9 Marion Reinson: Inflammation is what causes the disease. Inflammation is what a tumor is, inflammation is what diabetes is. Inflammation is… All of these digestive disorders are all inflammation-driven. And one thing that we know is that sugar fuels inflammation.
0:42:56.4 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:43:00.4 Marion Reinson: And so, if you’re going to look at ways to reduce inflammation, it’s really looking at where your sugar comes from. And for everybody that’s listening, if you just remember one thing about what I said, is that four grams of sugar is a teaspoon. As Americans, we usually don’t think in terms of grams, but a 12-ounce can of Coke has 39 grams of sugar, so that’s almost 10 teaspoons of sugar in a can of Coke. Oftentimes, there’s 16 grams of sugar and a little cup of what I used to think was really healthy yogurt.
0:43:30.1 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:43:30.2 Marion Reinson: And now I look at my sugar and it’s like, if I’m going to have sugar, I’m going to pick out where it’s going to be. And it might be in something that’s delicious and a small serving of something, but I’m going to choose it. I’m not going to get it out of other food products that are in sauces or dressings or things like that, that are filled with sugar and are… That’s what fuels inflammation. Same thing with a lot of the oils that are used in restaurants. The canola oil shows up on the naughty and nice list all the time. And some people won’t ever use it. Again, it’s what you can afford. And canola is an affordable oil. It’s better than some of the other seed oils that are out there. But the way we cook in our home kitchens is not the way that the oil is being treated in a restaurant. If you’re eating out at restaurants a lot, you have no control over what’s going in your food. You don’t know how much sugar, you don’t know how much salt, you don’t know what they’re doing with the oils. But oftentimes, they’re heating them to a very high heat and reusing them over and over and over, which is what creates inflammation in our body. So everything, every disease that we deal with is usually inflammation-driven. And if you can figure out how to reduce those foods that are causing inflammation, and we know sugar is one of them, then that’s going to help.
0:44:43.8 Kurt Baker: Well, thank you, Marion. We appreciate you coming on today. You’re listening to Master Your Finances. You can like and subscribe, go to masteryourfinances.us. Thank you very much.
