Paul Saladino on the Negative Effects of Eating Too Many Plants

So the intent of plants is very clear here. It's saying if you eat too much of me, I'm going to affect your thyroid negatively and that's going to affect every other hormonal system in your body. So yes, sulforaphane can be beneficial because it turns on our antioxidant response system, but it also has many side effects which are ignored. And we see this pattern over and over and over. And this is what was fascinating. We see this pattern over and over and over with plant molecules. And then if you look at these two, people might say, well, is the risk worth the benefit? And I would argue it's not, or I would argue the benefit is not worth the risk because you can get your NRF2 system turned on without those molecules because you can do environmental hormesis. You can go in the sauna, you can exercise, you can fast, you can be in ketosis. There's really good studies in cold water swimmers in Berlin and they show that cold water exposure. So they go and they swim in cold water for like an hour and they'll show that their glutathione level goes down, meaning that they, their oxidized level of glutathione goes up, the reduced level of glutathione goes down. They're using their endogenous antioxidant molecule, one of them, which is glutathione, to mitigate these newly produced oxidative radicals, these free radicals in the human body produced by cold water swimming. And then the next day they'll see their glutathione is a little bit above normal. That's hormesis. That's environmental hormesis. So my argument is, can we really say that plant molecules give us a net benefit? I don't think we can. There's lots of interesting studies here that would argue that we don't really get a net benefit from plant molecules. It's kind of a redundant effect. We can get this NRF2 system, this antioxidant response system turned on without them and then we're getting all of the downstream negative side effects of these plant molecules. Have there been any independent studies that show people taking like broccoli sprouts and then doing it for a prolonged period of time, measuring their system and then doing environmental hormesis and seeing if they measure up? Well, there's actually studies that show they have two groups of people, and I can pull these up if you want. There's studies that compare people that eat essentially no vegetables or low fruits and vegetables to high fruits and vegetables. And then we'll compare them at four, eight, or 12 weeks. And at the end, they see no differences in the oxidative stress markers, the inflammatory markers, markers of DNA damage. So it's pretty shaky ground to say that invariably all the studies of fruits and vegetables show that they provide this benefit. In the short term, sulforaphane can create more antioxidant response. You can get more glutathione. But if you take it out a little bit of time, it doesn't look like there's any difference between people who are eating things like broccoli or Jerusalem artichokes or carrots or cabbage or any of these other vegetables compared to a group that eats none of them. So there's these fruit and vegetable intervention studies which don't show any differences between these people. That's bananas. So all the people that are thinking that they're doing a good thing for their system by taking these vegetables and fruits that have this, your body has this hermetic response for, you can have the exact same response from cold plunge, from sauna, from exercise. You're turning on the exact same system in your body. But what about the vitamins that you're getting from plants? There are essential nutrients and phytonutrients that you get from plants. What about those? So this is really interesting when you look into it. There are really, this is going to sound extreme when I say it, but I'll back it up. There are no nutrients in plants that you cannot get from animal foods in essentially equivalent or more bio equivalent forms. How come when cats eat an animal, they go for the guts first and they'll actually eat the grass that's in the guts of the cow? I don't know. The guts of a ruminant. I don't know why they would do that. I guess it's fermented, I don't know. Because if you look at the nutrients in animal foods, right, there are many nutrients in animal foods that do not occur in plants. And we know this. B12, but the list is much bigger. Vitamin K2, choline, carnosine, carnitine, anserine, taurine. The list is extremely long, but you can't say the same thing about plants. There are no nutrients that occur in plants that you can't get from animal foods. None. Vitamin C? You can definitely get vitamin C from animal foods. And you get it from, what do you get from liver? Liver, heart, muscle, it all has vitamin C. Episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience are now free on Spotify. That's right, they're free from September 1st to December 1st. They're going to be available everywhere, but after December 1st they will only be available on Spotify, but they will be free. That includes the video. The video will also be there. It will also be free. That's all we're asking. Just go download Spotify. Much love. Bye bye. Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah!