Watch the full interview below or listen to the full episode on your iPhone HERE.
Stu: This week, I’m excited to welcome Eduardo Corassa to the podcast. Eduardo is a frugivore, nutritionist and health and nutrition coach from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the owner of Frugal Health, a Brazilian based health and nutrition company that offers coaching, consulting, and raw vegan wellness retreats. In this conversation, we talk about the nuances of the frugivore of our diet. We dig deep into nutrient density, and discuss how fasting can play a role as part of this lifestyle.
Audio Version
Some questions asked during this episode:
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When following this diet, what are the best foods to consume with nutrient density in mind?
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How might we best navigate this way of eating if we can’t afford organic produce?
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Are there any specific supplements that are key to supporting this diet?
Get more of Eduardo Corassa:
https://www.youtube.com/@drcorassarawfoodnutrition777
https://www.instagram.com/drcorassa/
https://www.pinterest.ph/drcorassa/
If you enjoyed this, then we think you’ll enjoy this interview
Cyrus Khambatta – Mastering Diabetes With a Plant-Based Diet
Dr Joel Fuhrman – Smart Nutrition, Superior Health
Jason Fung: The Complete Guide to Fasting (& how to burn fat)
The views expressed on this podcast are the personal views of the host and guest speakers and not the views of Bega Cheese Limited or 180 Nutrition Pty Ltd. In addition, the views expressed should not be taken or relied upon as medical advice. Listeners should speak to their doctor to obtain medical advice.
Disclaimer: The transcript below has not been proofread and some words may be mis-transcribed.
Full Transcript
Stu
(00:03)
Hey, this is Stu from 180 Nutrition, and welcome to another episode of The Health Sessions. It’s here that we connect with the world’s best experts in health, wellness, and human performance in an attempt to cut through the confusion around what it actually takes to achieve a long-lasting health. Now, I’m sure that’s something that we all strive to have. I certainly do. Before we get into the show today, you might not know that we make products too. That’s right. We are into whole food nutrition, and have a range of super foods and natural supplements to help support your day.
(00:33)
If you are curious, want to find out more, just jump over to our website. That is 180nutrition.com.au and take a look. Okay, back to the show. This week, I’m excited to welcome Eduardo Corassa to the podcast. Eduardo is a frugivore, nutritionist and health and nutrition coach from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the owner of Frugal Health, a Brazilian based health and nutrition company that offers coaching, consulting, and raw vegan wellness retreats. In this conversation, we talk about the nuances of the frugivore of our diet. We dig deep into nutrient density, and discuss how fasting can play a role as part of this lifestyle. Over to Eduardo.
(01:19)
Hey guys. This is Stu from 180 Nutrition, and I am delighted to welcome Dr. Eduardo Corassa to the podcast. Dr. Corassa, how are you?
Eduardo
(01:29)
Doing pretty good. When you’re healthy, it’s hard to not be feeling awesome, so.
Stu
(01:35)
Absolutely. It’s a blessing. Yeah. Well, you certainly look healthy and sprightly and vibrant today. So interested in your story, and interested in sharing that with all of our listeners as well. But first up, for all of our listeners that may not be familiar with you or your work, I’d love it if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself, please.
Eduardo
(01:56)
For sure. Making a long story short, I was really, really sick when I was a child, but I was always playing video games and eating, [inaudible 00:02:07] … my parents were always outside working so that, it is what it is. But when I grew up, when I was 17, I became one of the best Counter-Strike players in the whole world. So I ended up traveling the whole world, competing in the most played computer game back then. I think it still is. So that made me got worse lifestyle habits than I used to. So I started smoking, drinking. I was already into a lot of junk food. I got more into junk food. So I ended up almost reaching a hundred kilos. I have 173 centimeters, so that was already BMI for obesity, obesity one as we classify it. So I started to play bad. I wasn’t worrying about, I wasn’t worried about my health because my health was going downhill, but still I was worried about my gaming, and I couldn’t play any more professionally.
(03:13)
So I started looking for what I’m doing wrong to play bad. So I started understanding that my health was bad, so I had back issues, respiratory issues, so I felt like this is influencing my game. So I started lifting weights. I started trying to stop smoking and drinking and eating better as fast as I knew back then. And I saw great changes, but I felt inside of me that there was more. But I was going to a lot of medical doctors, and they were all, I’m sorry if anybody’s listening or hearing is a medical doctor. I’m not bashing anybody, but my medical doctors back then were fats, and they were looking healthy. So I felt like after a while of going to them, and they’re all like, “Drugs and pills, drugs and surgery, drugs and surgery,” and I was like, “This cannot be it. I’m 22 years of age. I’m already cutting my back to fix a back issue.”
(04:17)
“I’m already cutting my nose to fix a respiratory issue. This doesn’t sound right.” So I started looking, and then thankfully I stumbled upon raw foods. And I was like, “Well, I already tried a lot of allopathic medicine treatment. I already tried every kind of natural treatment from acupuncture, to osteopathy to [inaudible 00:04:43] to homeopathy. I tried everything. I just didn’t try eating like animals.” So I felt like 700,000 species on the planet eat raw foods only. Just human beings have been cooking for a really short time in term of human evolution. So I felt like “This makes a lot of sense.” I still didn’t try this, so “I’m not going to die of trying raw foods for a few days.” And I search on Google, and I was like, everybody, “I healed cancer. I’m working a lot better mentally, physically. I do everything better.” And I was like, “This is it.”
(05:21)
And when the moment I saw about raw foods, I was like, I stopped eating cooked food at the same moment I read it on the internet. I knew it was what I was looking for for years. And then in three days my allergies and then my respiratory problems went away. My medical doctor said, “You can go to surgery, but that you were born with those issues. So it’s never going to heal the heal. It’s going to make it a little better.” And it was done. For almost 17 years now, I haven’t had pharyngitis, laryngitis, rhinitis, like mucus. I didn’t have a day off of because of fever or allergies or anything like that. So I was like, “Whoa.” In three days I could breathe better. I could run a lot faster because I could breathe better, right? So I was like, “Wow. I found something.” I knew I was onto something.
(06:26)
And then in two months, I was like way too thin, way too thin. But because back then I was lifting, eating a lot of rice, beans and meats. I was probably lifting and swimming for two hours a day. I was pretty big and looking really, but ripped and muscle up. But I was like, “I’m still on track, but there’s something.” And then I went to the internet again. I found a guy that, he’s called Doug Graham. He’s American. He was living a frugivore diet for back then was 25 years or something that, and I knew he had what I wanted.
(07:15)
He was like 50, but he was really, really fit. The mental capacity, the logic behind what he was saying, he was like, “We are anthropoid primates. Our DNA is built like the anthropoid primates. 99% is the same.” So the opposable thumbs, the capacity to see colors, the capacity to feel the sweets, it is only anthropoid primates that have that. So I was sold. Since, because before that, I was already trying raw foods for two months. And I didn’t know how to sprout stuff. I didn’t know how to. I tried even to eat a sweet potato, but I couldn’t.
Stu
(08:03)
Oh.
Eduardo
(08:03)
And then yeah, it tasted so bad raw, and then I just gravitated towards fruits because that was the only thing I could enjoy eating raw, right? So when I found Doug, I read his book, and I was like, “Whoa.” And then six months afterwards I did a 24-day water fast. I started reading what we call natural hygiene, the science of health. It’s like a medicine model, like Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, there’s Indian medicine, allopathic medicine, homeopathic medicine. Then there’s hygiene completely opposite from all these medicine models.
(08:48)
Because us hygienists, we propose that nature provides all that we need. We just have to interact with nature, that is biological needs that were created by throughout evolution, and if we don’t comply with these biological needs, we end up living a worse quality of life, worse health, less life, what we call in science, health span and lifespan got reduced. So I started to understand, for example, here in my garden, I have bananas, mangoes. I have a lot of fruit trees plant. But when I tried to plant apples, apple trees, they die because it’s tropics. It’s too hot for apples. I can’t try to water them. They don’t grow. But when you go to Portugal, for example, you have bananas grow, the banana tree can grow, but they don’t give bananas. But if you go to the Antarctica, the banana tree will die. The apple will die. So there’s some biological. My camera went out. Is that it?
Stu
(10:04)
Oh, that’s okay. Well, you’re freeze framed at the moment, but I can still hear you.
Eduardo
(10:10)
No worries. I changed it for the easy camera.
Stu
(10:15)
Okay, no problems. That looks good. So yeah, you were saying funny, you should mention the banana tree because I realized we went away for a few weeks a while back, and when I came back I realized that I had bananas growing in the back garden as well, which is wonderful. Looking forward to that.
Eduardo
(10:32)
It’s so good to be around plants. But nowadays, we have a lot of science behind plants secrete [inaudible 00:10:40] that are gases that can help our immune system to fight cancer, help our or glycemic control. If you have diabetes or if you have cancer, you need to be around plants. They help you out just by being around you. You don’t even need to eat it. It’s so insane. It’s mind blogging, all the science nowadays that they’re coming out. But nobody gives. People think that it is quackery like you said before the beginning of the interview. But that’s actually that’s the actual medicine. All the other kinds that we try it’s just palliating, treating and suppressing symptoms.
Stu
(11:27)
So tell me then a little bit more about the frugivore or diet. So I’m very keen to understand the principles behind it, and also when following that, perhaps the best way or the best foods to consume with nutrient density in mind, because we’re all told that, “Hey, we need protein and protein for muscle growth and synthesis, and every cell in the body needs protein. We need fats for healthy brain and metabolism, hormones, et cetera, carbohydrates for energy if we’re not in ketosis. And then of course essential amino acids, fiber, antioxidants, all of that stuff.” I mean, that could be really hard if we don’t perhaps select the right foods I’m thinking. So tell us how you do it.
Eduardo
(12:14)
It’s like I went to nutrition school here, Brazil, right? So it’s like five year university. So I know a lot about nutrition, but we can go to the easiest routes and to the logical routes because we can talk a lot about the medical nutritional allopathic mentality that is quite shortsight, shortsightedness. But we can look at the bigger picture as a holistic way. So if we think about it, what does human beings ate through our evolution? Because we start cooking food. Some people say 1 million years, some people, but there’s a lot of data to suggest that we start really cooking our food after the last ice age, during the last ice age that was called the warm glaciation. You can look up these things on Google. It’s quite easy to find. So it was like a hundred thousand years ago, there was an ice age, and it froze all the planet.
(13:25)
So fruits and vegetables don’t grow when it’s too, too, too cold. So human beings have to find a way to survive. What was the way that we managed to survive? It was the fire. So even if you go to Greek mythology, Greek mythology has this quite similar view from our Catholic view of the Garden of Eden. They suggest, of course people who start saying like, “Ah, he started about theology or mythology.” No, it’s not. I’m going to end up in science. Don’t worry guys. I’m science based mind. But still, so Greek mythology suggested there were cold winds taking men out of paradise, and then came Prometheus, the titan of fire with the meats and fire to men. And then Zeus opened the Pandora box because men accepted meats and fire.
(14:27)
So the Pandora box is the confusion, the madness, the chaos. So if we look at the science, we know geology shows that there was an ice age a hundred thousand years ago, and this ice age ended up with the beginning of the neolithical period. The neolithical period is the period that when we started learning that we could plant grains. And then we started developing our civilization as we know it today. And there’s a lot of science background in different kinds of science to suggest that it was probably at that time that we start eating meat and cooking food.
(15:12)
But even then, pots, pans, pots and pans were developed 6,000 years ago. So we couldn’t eat rice beans or potatoes for example before the fire because that’s what other animals can eat through what we are going to talk about it later. So it’s pretty quite simple to show a lot of science behind it that we were like frugivores. Even our Alan Walker, a family anthropologist did a study on paleolithic teeths. He got scrolls from 8 million years ago to a few thousand years ago, and he was showing a hundred thousand years ago, and he was showing that their skulls were frugivores, were the same type of the wearing and tearing of teeths. He showed with laser rays analyzing the teeth in the skulls that they were the same as anthropoid primates have, the same wear and tear in the teeth.
(16:28)
So well, if we look at our anatomy, physiology and biochemistry, we are still anthropoid primates. So if we look at science nowadays, modern science, like nutrition science, there was a study called The Global Burden of Disease funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates institution that suggested that under consumption of fruits was the main cause of early death in the planet, even worse than salts. So if we look at every kind of epidemiology or science whatsoever, we see that fruits and vegetables are inversely correlated with diabetes, heart disease, cancer, autoimmune diseases, neurological diseases. Every kind of health issues that we have, it’s correlated with low consumption of fruits and vegetables. Why? Because we are anthropoid primates. So if you go to a chimp, even primatology shows that chimps get most of their protein from fruits.
(17:46)
So if we look about at it, for example, the blue zones, blue zones, right?
Stu
(17:52)
Yeah.
Eduardo
(17:53)
Okinawa for example, if you see their macronutrient ratio intake, it’s pretty similar from chimps. Why? Because they eat 70% of their diets is sweet potatoes and fruit and vegetables. If you eat primarily fruit with a lot of vegetables every day, like chimps, like any primate do you end up getting around 9% protein, 6% fat, like an 80 10 10 diet as we call it. So if you, you can look everywhere to animal lab animals, you want to stand the life of lab animals. David Sinclair, all these famous gerontologists in the world shows in lab animals that if you lower protein intake, lower fat intake, and raise carbohydrate with an abundance of micronutrients, you end up getting a longer lifespan and longer health span that is in blue zones in lab animals, in anthropoid primates. And everybody that I saw last 16 years living in a frugivore diet can give their own testimony.
(19:05)
“I feel so much better.” But human evolution, human progress is quite slow. So you have to teach primates that they’re supposed to eat bananas. It’s quite funny when we talk about it, but only primates can stand upright, and talk, and have the brain capacity to do what we do. So even our biology classify us as anthropoid primates. So I know most humans don’t like to be called as primates, but there’s only too much to classify in our biology. So what I suggest is the best diet for sure. I’m not, if you call our biology called anthropoid primates as frugivores, animals that eat primarily fruits and vegetables, it doesn’t mean … But even our scientific article suggests no specialized frugivores. That means we can eat seeds, we can eat meats, we can eat a lot of stuff, but we are, the whole anatomy, physiology and biochemistry is more adapted to fruits and vegetables. So with that being said, fruits and vegetables provide practically all we need in terms of macro and micronutrients.
Stu
(20:33)
So I caught up on a couple of points, and I’d love it if you could just talk to these. So, and I know that we’re going to be inundated with questions about, “Hold on a minute. What about X and what about Y?” So to start off with, and I’ll throw these two questions in together, and I’ll let you explain that. So I would imagine that our audience will say, “Well, hold on a minute. Our digestive tracts are very different to primates in terms of … “And I read a while back that our physiology in terms of digestive system is most similar to that of a dog. So it’s quite different to that of a monkey, a chimp, an ape et cetera, which allows them to consume volumes of fiber in a very, very different way. So that first question is how does our digestive system handle that amount of fiber in respect to perhaps other animals as well?
(21:30)
Second question is, I think you mentioned 10% protein, 10% fat, 80% carbohydrate. What about sarcopenia in terms of muscle wastage? Because I’ve been told many times that muscle is the organ of longevity, and with lean, healthy muscle gives us the ability to be strong and resilient as we age. We can be steady on our feet. We don’t fall and bones don’t break. How can we maintain lean muscle mass as we progress through the years because we lose X percent of muscle decade after decade. How can we do that without accessing the building blocks that contain the amino acids for muscle synthesis ie proteins? So couple of questions there.
Eduardo
(22:20)
Sure. Can you start with the second one?
Stu
(22:22)
Yes.
Eduardo
(22:24)
So first of all, if you look at the scientific research, it all suggests that fruits and vegetables are inversely correlated with sarcopenia. So the more fruits and vegetables you eat, the less sarcopenia you tend to have. So what people understand is protein builds muscle, but it’s not that simple. If protein builds muscle, why don’t you get at a hundred years of age and eat a lot of protein and get like a bodybuilder? It’s not that simple. It’s a lot of things in the body for the body to biosynthesize. Sorry. Sometimes I can make a small English mistakes, but it’s not my first language as you can see.
Stu
(23:11)
Yeah, you’re doing well.
Eduardo
(23:13)
So the body is, he needs the building blocks from protein. But for example, as I gauge, we know that we need a vitamin B complex to metabolize every micronutrients. So to use carbohydrates, protein, fats, you need B vitamins. So if you’re low on B vitamins for example, it’s hard to biosynthesize protein. If you look at research on rats for sure, people who say rats, but still a lot of things that were proven in rats are proven in human beings with the MRPs. What is MRPs? Maillard Reaction end Products. So these Maillard Reaction end Products, the most famous one is the AGs, Advanced Glycation Endproducts. AGEs in rats increase diabetic myopathy. So that is myo for muscle, pathy for disease. So diabetic muscle disease that we know that they have muscle wasting a lot earlier, they end up with more sarcopenia and a lot of muscle issues like with less hypertrophy, less maintenance, less biosynthesis, a lot of muscle issues.
(24:34)
So for example, if you cook your food, even if you cook protein and fats like animal products, you end up producing more AGEs. AGEs are not just correlated with diabetic myopathy in rats, probably in humans as well. We have some data, but it’s also correlated with, for example, the reduce of [inaudible 00:24:59]. Probably have most of your listeners already heard David Sinclair talking about the [inaudible 00:25:04]. They’re like the longevity, one of the longevity genes, a protein that is needed for body repair. So if you increase, increasing AGEs, you end up damaging even cancer. Cancer tissue have more AGEs in it. So just to give a perspective, so if you think about it, you can see for example, Okinawa, how they are so they’re the most famous civilization for longevity. If muscles were the only explanation for longevity, how Okinawa eating 70% of their diets from sweet potato, like sweet potato’s 4% protein, is like a banana for example.
(25:57)
It’s the same amount of protein that a banana provides. How they’re so longevity, how they’re so long.
Stu
(26:06)
Yeah, they live so long, right?
Eduardo
(26:11)
Yeah. How they live so long that in Brazil we have the word [foreign language 00:26:16], and you have to understand there’s a lot of things behind it. For example, excess muscularity in animals, it’s actually harmful for the health and longevity. So for sure we need muscle mass, and for sure we can build up muscle mass with low amounts of protein. Why? You can see, for example, Papua Highlanders, it’s a famous, one of the most famous and last hunter-gatherers civilization out there. And it’s quite funny because when you look at their research on that, they’re really buffed black men living in nature since the beginning of their life to the end of their life they hunter-gathers, right? So according to the research, 35 grams of protein per day, it’s like WHO recommends 56 for a usual man, and they are eating almost half of what WHO recommends. And the research suggests they’re way more fit and stronger than Japanese men eating double the amount of their protein intake.
(27:36)
And probably because of their low protein intake, their body adapts to the low nitrogen balance and can better utilize the protein that they consume. But, if we look to the other parts of the equation, for example, when you sleep, you’re producing growth hormone. So a lot of things can dampens your testosterone or raises your testosterone. There’s also correlated with protein synthesis and muscle mass. So what we need to understand that we need to stop to look to individual nutrients or individual things to understand the whole, because the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts as we say. It’s like there’s several parts of the puzzle that is not just protein. As I said, vitamin B complex, even sunshine raises strength nowadays, even good vitamin D levels. Sleeping is important for a growth in general. So I would suggest that we can grow well but not excessively with the amount of protein that a frugivore diet would have or else chimps wouldn’t be five times stronger than a human being.
(29:15)
We have research from a guy called, I forgot his name. He was a scientist in the thirties like 1930s. Bauman, Bauman was his name. He got chimps from a zoo from a circus, and he got a football players, American football players. And then he tried who lifts more weights, and even what the female chimpanzee would lift twice as much or three times as much as the man, the really strong football players. But the normal chimp, the male chimp would do a [inaudible 00:29:58] as we call with more than almost 600 pounds with one hand. It’s like he suggested that weight by weight, they’re five times stronger than we are because they’re 50 kilos, right? They’re not that big. So there’s a lot to consider. So I can also speak for my perspective. I have been doing this for 17 years.
(30:26)
I still lift sometimes more than a lot of omnivores around me. So I don’t think we are lacking off. I think we’re in the right amount. But if we look to the other part, David Sinclair and Valter Longo and all the famous gerontologists are talking one thing, raise your protein intake too much and you end up higher mTOR, higher IGF-1, lower AMPK, [inaudible 00:30:57]. That means low lower longevity, lower health, and more diseases. So …
Stu
(31:05)
It’s a tricky one, and I always struggle with that because as you know, nutrition is a religion to most people and …
Eduardo
(31:16)
For sure, for sure.
Stu
(31:18)
Sure. And I believe that it’s hyperpersonalized. And it’s an individual, and we have different genetic lineage as well. Those of us that come from the Northern Hemisphere, perhaps we’re exposed to a different diets and foods than those that were born and raised in the Southern Hemisphere. The Polynesians consume huge amounts of coconut oil, for instance, which now is a trend for those living in the Northern Hemisphere. So it’s kind of crazy. But that like mTOR activation in correlation to consuming less protein flies in the face of those who say, “But muscle is so important as we age. We need to be strong. We need to be vital.” It’s so hard to know where to navigate. And even those in the blue zone, everybody in the blue zones eats meat. And we’ve done a lot of studies, and I’ve spoken to Dan Buettner as well.
Eduardo
(32:22)
Small amounts. Small amounts, but they eat for sure.
Stu
(32:24)
Yeah.
Eduardo
(32:25)
I’m not bashing that.
Stu
(32:26)
No.
Eduardo
(32:26)
That’s one of the research that I read, and I always use the paper on my lectures it is the average amount of calories coming from animal protein is like 4% in an Okinawa diet.
Stu
(32:42)
Yeah.
Eduardo
(32:43)
So 4% is like 70 calories, 102,000 calories. It’s like eating meats once every four days or five days, a small amount, and it is real small amount.
Stu
(32:55)
Right? And I think the bigger question is perhaps it’s more centric on nutrient density. So what’s happening in for instance, the blue zones from a nutrient density perspective, I know for a fact that Okinawans are consuming large amounts of iodine, for instance, because they have access to lots of seaweed and lots of other sea vegetables for want of a better phrase. So they’re consuming a whole heap of nutrients. And iodine and selenium and everything that comes with that, as you probably know, is very beneficial for the thyroid, which is the master controller of the whole body. And so I just wonder that many of us are focused on certain things. And I know personally myself, it’s just such a, I’m bamboozled with all the different techniques out there, but I think if we boil it down, we just need to make sure that we are getting the most nutrients, life-giving nutrients each and every time we consume food.
Eduardo
(34:07)
Agree 100%. And that’s why one of the things I always touch upon is increasing the amount of fruits and vegetables in your own diets, not bashing meats or bashing anything else, but increasing the fruits and vegetables. Why? Because there are lowest caloric density and usually the highest micronutrient density in the planet.
Stu
(34:34)
Yeah.
Eduardo
(34:36)
Because you know cannot lettuce for example yeah, people say like lettuce, there’s no vitamins in it, but 17 calories per a hundred grams.
Stu
(34:40)
I know I normally-
Eduardo
(34:42)
30 calories per hundred grams. So if you eat 3000 calories of watermelon and you end up getting reaps of micronutrients.
Stu
(34:59)
No, that’s right. So I normally liken lettuce to being a vessel for pesticides which leads me into my other question. I completely agree. There are so many micronutrients, macronutrients, all of the good stuff, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, all of the above associated with fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately with modern day agriculture, monocropping, industrialized agriculture, et cetera, when talking about vegetables perhaps because I understand that factory farming is another evil on the other side of the coin, but organic produce is very expensive, and those of us with less cash, larger families, less availability for organic produce have to purchase conventionally raised or conventionally grown product, produce. How can we navigate this when wanting to consume more fruits and vegetables, but while wanting to reduce the amount of pesticides, herbicides, everything under the sun?
Eduardo
(36:07)
Good, good. Good question. It is why I was going to just add to the other question. One thing that is also will happen help with this one is when we cook it, we all know that we lose nutrients, and we can also form this MRP Maillard Reaction Endproteins. It’s the cook food toxins as we can suggest that can also induce malnutrition in lab animals. You only increase AGEs in a diabetic human diets in a human person with diabetes. And it can raises a lot of other health issues just with the AGE content of the diet. But let’s talk about petrochemicals in general. They’re lipophilic and hydrophobic. They love fat, and they fear water. So what we have in science is that they’re way more easy to bioaccumulate in living animals, human beings or cattle, and also they not just bioaccumulate, we biomagnify as we call in science because for example, cattle, we like a cow who eat for four years Round Monsanto-
Stu
(37:45)
Yeah.
Eduardo
(37:45)
… soy sprayed with Monsanto Roundup.
Stu
(37:48)
Yeah, Roundup.
Eduardo
(37:50)
So if she’s eating for four years with the soy with hypertoxics, she’s bioaccumulating them. And when we eat the cow, we end up biomagnifying it. We end up eating the whole thing that the cow eat for four years. But we end up eating several cows through our lives. So we biomagnified all the other toxic that those cows ate for several years. But besides that, there’s a few things that we have to consider. First of all, phytonutrients are famous for accumulating petrochemical action. For example, they bind to the action of these heavy metals and dioxins that the you guys call agro, we call agrotoxins, you guys call pesticides, right?
Stu
(38:44)
Yeah.
Eduardo
(38:46)
So they bind to them, and are able to remove, to neutralize their effects is their effects is primarily oxidation, raises of free radicals and inflammation. So the more phytonutrients we have, the less damage from these molecules we end up having. So if you don’t cook it, and you eat the plant raw, we know all these micronutrients are what we call in science, labile, thermolabile, photolabile, oxygenlabile. So they’re sensitive to oxygen, heat, and light. So the more we cook the food, the less micronutrients that we have. So the less micronutrients that we have, the less cell protection that we have. You can go to Bruce Ames, a famous scientist, American one, he’s probably a hundred years of age right now. He did, he’s one of the most intelligent science out there. He’s pretty impressive. And he did a paper called the Triad Theory.
(39:58)
The body, when he has less micronutrients, it can focus on living right now, and end up reducing your longevity. So the more micronutrients we can ingest, as we’ve said, as well can raise our every kind of aspect of human physiology, and functionality, and wellbeing. So when we cook it, we end up having less of these nutrients. But the things that we cook it end up having less of these nutrients as well. Because for example, the more water, the more fresher food is, the faster it goes bad, the more nutrient it has. So I always eat … So to my patients, “Eat foods that spoil quite fast” because if we eats foods that spoil in a year or so, even rice and beans for example, you have less micronutrients than a kale for example. So it’s pretty common sense. But if you look at nutritional tables, you end up with that. So-
Stu
(41:09)
What about cooking certain vegetables to release the nutrients that aren’t readily available? For instance, you mentioned sweet potatoes, so it’s a good source of vitamin A, and cooked and cooled, great source for prebiotic fiber, much like rice cooked and cooled as well. That, does that fall into your … Would that be something that you would consider in order to access stuff that just isn’t readily there initially?
Eduardo
(41:37)
Before I answer that one, I must say everybody at home and even to you, I’m not imposing anything. And I for sure each one of us have our own beliefs depending on what we research it, what we fell with us. So it’s not black and white. You can have your own thoughts. The only thing I’m suggesting is eat more fruits and vegetables, go to bed earlier, get exercise every day, get more sunshine, try to take care more of yourself in your way.
Stu
(42:11)
Yeah.
Eduardo
(42:11)
Just be active.
Stu
(42:13)
Absolutely. So it’s a good strategy.
Eduardo
(42:16)
Yeah, yeah. So let’s think about it. First of all, for sure lycopene. And there’s a few nutrients that become more bioavailable when we cook it. But you’re thinking ahead of nature. You’re trying to, thinking that nature did something wrong, and that we need more of the bioavailability of that nutrient. For example, protein malnutrition is not just not enough protein, but it’s excess of protein can also damage the kidneys and liver as we know it. So we need the Goldilocks nutrition, we need the right amount, not too much, not too little. So for example, all these nutrients that become more available with cooking, you end up with one or two nutrients that become more available and hundreds of thousands phytochemicals that are micronutrients that become less available. And we end up chewing water outside of the food. For example, if you boil a tomato, it get mushy because the water is becoming evaporated.
(43:37)
And what is the after air what is the second thing you cannot live on?
Stu
(43:43)
Water.
Eduardo
(43:45)
It is water.
Stu (43:46):
Yeah.
Eduardo
(43:47)
Air we can’t spend three minutes without air. Food, I already went 39 days without food. I already did a 39-day water fast. But water you cannot live for a few days without water. More than a week you’re starting like to, you start to die. So I’m suggesting that the water is probably one of the most important nutrients and the most underestimated nutrients in the food we eat because we can drink water for sure. But eating the structured water in fruits and vegetables, it’s pretty underestimated by science yet. But we are going to for sure give a lot more attention in the future.
Stu
(44:30)
Nice.
Eduardo
(44:30)
So you end up creating the Maillard Reaction Endproducts. These cooked food toxins that are correlated with, they’re neurotoxic, carcinogenic, neurogenic, protosclerotic, diabetogenic. They are correlated with, they’re geotoxic, [inaudible 00:44:53] they’re actually aging toxin, [inaudible 00:45:00] toxin as we call. So I don’t want Maillard Reaction Endproducts being for my food. I don’t want lose the water just to get a little bit more of lack of-
Stu
(45:08)
Sure.
Eduardo
(45:08)
So my shot on that one.
Stu
(45:14)
No, no, absolutely. Well look, we’re slowly coming up on time, but the question I think that everybody wants to know is run us through your daily diet. So what would you eat from the moment you get up to your evening meal? ‘Cause I’d love to know then how you put this into practice personally, because you’re definitely the expert in this.
Eduardo
(45:36)
Quite easy. I eat everything that is able to be eaten raw in its natural state without seasoning. So if it is tasty, and chewy, and juicy, and soft, I eat it. If it is not, for example, tubers. I cannot eat a raw potato, so I don’t eat it.
Stu
(45:43)
Yeah.
Eduardo
(45:44)
It’s not even tasty for my mouth, I don’t eat it. Rice or beans-
Stu
(45:57)
Yeah.
Eduardo (45:58):
Beans, I beans for example I already harvest chickpeas for my garden.
Stu
(46:03)
Yes.
Eduardo
(46:03)
So if they’re immature, if they’re young, I can eat it, so no issues. So usual a day I fast until noon. I exercise before my lunch, like an hour and a half of tennis, lifting weights and running, things like that. And then I have a big lunch for an average two and two and a half to three kilos of food, like a fruits, maybe a little bit of vegetables but and some nuts or seed or things like that. And then at dinner around 5:30 PM, I end up eating a lot of vegetables, some nuts and maybe some fruit. But nowadays as I want to look a little bit more buffed, gain more weight, I’m using legumes as a staple on the dinner as well. That means chickpeas, lentils, peas, every bean that you can sprout it or eat fresh while.
Stu
(47:06)
Oh, that’s fascinating and-
Eduardo
(47:09)
But I can include mushrooms. I can include roots like carrots and beets. Even nowadays after vitamin B12 deficiency, I keep questioning that I don’t want to keep taking supplements. So I think about blue zones, but I still have my heart, the caring for the animals. I don’t want to go there. But still, that’s what I mainly focus on. I want to make people understand that what we agree on, increasing fruits and vegetables, taking out the junk food out of our diets, and try at least cooking less, cooking with steamers. That’s a way, much better way to get more micronutrients.
Stu
(48:00)
Yeah, well absolutely. And at the end of the day, nutrient density rules, hands down over time. It doesn’t matter what diet you’re following, if you are not consuming those nutrients, if you are deficient in nutrients, then something needs to change. And hands down you can’t argue that fruits and vegetables offer that huge variety of every possible micronutrient under the sun, with the exception of a very few, very few. But no, that’s fascinating stuff, fascinating stuff. So I’m just mindful of time. So kind of last question here that I’d love to ask you is it’s really the non-negotiables. So the things that you do every day, each and every day to allow you to crush your day, to feel your best, and to have a day full of clear thinking, vibrant energy and happiness, what might they be? And it doesn’t have to be related to diet at all. It could be that you come up and you like to get sunlight in your eyes in the morning and drink fresh water to start your day, things like that. What might they be?
Eduardo
(49:05)
For sure that that’s one of the things that people don’t get it when they see me on social media. They think I just think about diet. But I’m a lot more worried sometimes about chrononutrition, chronobiology, exercising every single day, getting sunshine, living around plants and nature. There’s a lot of science that we cannot cover in these five minutes, but so I try to exercise. I try, not I try, I exercise every single day for the last almost 17 years. The only days I haven’t exercised is the days that I fast.
Stu
(49:45)
Right.
Eduardo
(49:46)
I do water fast. So I really don’t exercise. Every day, practically every day for sure sometimes there’s no sunshine. But I try to stay a little bit of time at least outdoors because even without sunshine, there’s a lot of benefits to being out in nature in the parks or it’s outdoors. Also, I try to, today because of the podcast, here’s night in Brazil, but I usually don’t turn on my lights at night. That can sounds like crazy to a lot of people. But we call nowadays there’s a lot of data on chronobiology and circadian illumination, circadian lightning as you guys saw.
(50:32)
So understanding that our brain caps clues from the environments to know what time of the day it is, it makes us to rethink our lights at home. So as I’m single at the moment, I stay in the dark with just my PC and the cell phone with blue light filters, and I go to bed around 8:00 PM. But if I have a date or something like that, I have always a small lamp with really low lights, like candle lights style. So I make sure I have dinner earlier and go to bed really early. That’s one of the main things I always focus on. And for sure intermittent fasting for most of the day. When I sit down to eat, I eat huge meals, but most of the day I’m out of AGE mode.
Stu
(51:25)
Brilliant. Fantastic. No, that’s excellent. So much wisdom there. And you touched on intermittent fasting. I think that that’ll have to be a conversation for another time as well because I had a whole heap of questions that I really wanted to ask you. And I know that you’ve written a book called Hygienic Fasting: Nature’s Surgery as well, which there it is.
Eduardo
(51:44)
It’s here.
Stu
(51:45)
There it is. Fantastic. So-
Eduardo
(51:46)
Ready man.
Stu
(51:48)
I think we’ll pick this up for another conversation, but for our listeners as well, I know that you’ve had a hugely successful TEDx talk, which we’ll put the links to in the show notes, which talks about your journey in more detail than we’ve managed to dig into today. But what’s next for Dr. Corassa? I know you’ve got so much going on. What have you got in the pipeline?
Eduardo
(52:16)
I’m getting all my books published to English, and I’m getting all social medias in English as well. I already had, but it’s too small, and I almost didn’t post content. But now I’m going strong in it because I want to take my work to the whole world because I think I have a lot to share and a lot to improve. I want to impact the whole world like a nutritional and medical science visionary because there’s so many good people out there, and so many intelligent people doing a lot of good stuff, but they just didn’t connect the dots.
Stu
(52:54)
Yeah.
Eduardo
(52:54)
So I think with all the books, they have hundreds of references and to make people connect the dots. So for example, I see David Sinclair talking a lot about longevity, but he scared of fruits because sugar in fruit. So people make small mistakes. There’s a lot of people. It’s like the blind men and the five blind men and the elephants. You ever heard that one?
Stu
(53:22)
Yes. Yes.
Eduardo
(53:24)
So people get a lot of good ideas and a lot of good things going on, but they don’t have small datas that meant make up end up making them making bad decisions. I think.
Stu
(53:40)
Yeah.
Eduardo
(53:40)
My humble opinion.
Stu
(53:43)
No, well definitely look forward to following your journey. And for all of our listeners that there that want to find out more, well listen to the TEDx, order the book, follow you on socials. Where would be the best place for me to send them?
Eduardo
(54:00)
My YouTube channel in Portuguese I’m on one. All the last videos that I posted, I gave, I put subtitles-
Stu
(54:13)
Yes.
Eduardo
(54:14)
… for six main languages like Germany, Italian, English, so that would be a good start.
Stu
(54:21)
Yeah.
Eduardo
(54:22)
But also I did it a documentary for Tanglewoods. It’s a fasting center in Costa Rica. So it was the documentary for my 39-day water fast. And it is all in English, so it’s pretty much, and my YouTube channel in English, Drcorassa raw food nutrition.
Stu
(54:42)
Okay.
Eduardo
(54:43)
That’s pretty much it.
Stu
(54:44)
Wonderful. Well look, we’ll put those links in the show notes, and I watched a whole heap of your videos this week as well and can attest that they’re super easy to watch. You read the subtitles. Very, very, very fascinating a lot of the topics that you cover as well. So I’m sure there’ll be huge amounts of value for there for our listeners. But Dr. Corassa, it’s been an absolute pleasure, and I’ve learned a lot today. Thank you so much for your time, and hopefully we can touch base again in the near future, and we’ll talk about fasting.
Eduardo
(55:14)
For sure. It would be a pleasure. Just message me and reschedule. Thank you.
Stu
(55:19)
Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Eduardo
(55:19)
Bye everybody.
