Avoiding UltraProcessed Foods with The Holistic Kids: Rational Wellness Podcast 381

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The Holistic Kids discuss Avoiding Ultraprocessed Foods with Dr. Ben Weitz.

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Podcast Highlights

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The Holistic Kids, Abdullah, Zain, Emaad, and Qasim are the co-hosts of The Holistic Kids’ Show Podcast.  They have co-authored four best-selling books with their mother Madiha Saeed, MD,  Adam’s Healing Adventures children book series which have been featured as Dr Mark Hyman’s Top 5 Picks.  Their book The Teen Health Revolution: Unlocking lifestyle secrets to Optimizing the Mind, Body and Soul will be releasing in 2025. Their YouTube page is HolisticMom, MD.

Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure.  Dr. Weitz has also successfully helped many patients with managing their weight and improving their athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111.

 

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Podcast Transcript

Dr. Weitz:  Hey, this is Dr. Ben Weitz, host of the Rational Wellness Podcast. I talk to the leading health and nutrition experts and researchers in the field to bring you the latest in cutting edge health information. Subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast for weekly updates, and to learn more, check out my website, drweitz.com. Thanks for joining me, and let’s jump into the podcast. Hello, Rational Wellness Podcasters!

Today, we’re going to have a discussion with the Holistic Kids. Holistic Kids. Oh, who, which three Holistic Kids are with us today?  And what are your names?

Abdullah: I’m Abdulla.

Zain:  I’m Zain.

Emaad:  And I’m Emaad.

Dr. Weitz:  All right, great. And so they’re the co-hosts of the Holistic Kids show podcast, and they have co authored four best selling books with their mother, Medea Saeed, Adam’s Healing Adventures [00:01:00] Children’s Book Series. And these have been featured as, there’s, there’s one of them as Dr. Mark Hyman’s Top 5 Picks. Their new book, which will be out next year, is The Teen Health Revolution, Unlocking Lifestyle Secrets to Optimizing the Mind, Body, and Soul. They spoke at the annual Institute of Functional Medicine conference in 2024, which is where I met them.  The Holistic Kids Show Podcast is a completely run, kid run podcast, kids empowering kids. It’s a one of a kind podcast that has featured over 160 different experts from New York Times bestsellers, top physicians, Harvard professors, actors, White House correspondents, TV personalities, and even Dr. Ben Weitz, educating and empowering [00:02:00] kids of all ages to control their health and lives.  The Holistic Kids are also the co creator of the first health course for kids by kids called Real Healing for Real Life Kids course. So welcome Holistic Kids.

Abdullah: It’s our pleasure. Our pleasure. Yeah, our pleasure.

Dr. Weitz: That’s great. So how, why did you become so interested in health? Tell us about your story.

Abdullah: Well, as you know, we go to school and we see all of our classmates.  We see all of our friends and our, like, even sometimes family. And we see them all suffering. You know, Zan as, as well had, what did you had? 80 H? No, what? What? Eczema. Eczema, yeah. eczema. He had allergies. Mom had allergies, right? You had allergies. Mom, you had sinus allergies. He had allergies. I had, um, you know, terrible headaches, really bad dizziness.  And we, and our [00:03:00] mom had a lot of, um, diseases as well. And we noticed that changing our diet, would keep us off going on the conventional way with taking kinds of medications. And eventually we started to eat better foods and we started to change ourselves, right? We started to feel better, you know, we started

Dr. Weitz: What are some of the major changes you did in terms of changing your diet?

Abdullah: We started to cut out fast food. We started to cut out the dairy, gluten. We used to eat it like all the time. Now we like barely, we don’t eat it as much. It’s more of a treat.

Dr. Weitz: It’s hard not to eat dairy and gluten, right?

Abdullah: But basically we, once we realized how much of a difference and impact it made on us, we were like, why don’t, why doesn’t, why don’t people know this?  Oh, I have, I have, um, uh, AD, I have allergies now, it’s normal. Don’t worry about it. Like back, like [00:04:00] having a peanut allergy is seen as normal. Right. And it’s so weird to us. We were like, why don’t these people know this? Like people are literally feeding themselves poison. And they’re killing their own bodies.  And these are our friends and classmates and the people around us.

Dr. Weitz: But it’s okay because we have a drug that can treat the symptoms.

Abdullah: Exactly. We were like, this is terrible. We need to do something. We need to have a change. And we want to bring this to kids in a way that they’ll understand. Because obviously back then we were like health, come on, right?  And kids in general, right? They don’t really care about health. Yeah. Like Iman, how many kids in your school actually care about health?

Emaad: Like everybody hates health class.

Zain: Exactly. No one actually wants to learn or they don’t really care about their body because they’re like, oh, we’re kids, we’re immune to everything, right?

Dr. Weitz: But they probably care when they get a rash.

Abdullah: Yeah, you know, and it’s so sad because even when they do get [00:05:00] the rash, they’re like, Oh, I’ll just take, you know, antibiotics. But like, what do you mean by antibiotics? There’s better ways to do this. You just have to eat your arch nemesis, uh, vegetables.

Dr. Weitz: Your arch nemesis vegetables.  Yeah. We have to get to the root cause and not just treat symptoms.

Zain: And that’s where really our journey started. Right. Does anyone want to add on anything? Yeah. Um, actually what’s sad is one in every second child has a chronic health condition and you’re not expected to live longer than their parents.

Dr. Weitz: There you go. So you guys want to change that?

Zain: Yes.

Dr. Weitz: So how did you get yourselves to start eating vegetables?

Zain: So it was all by the step by step process. Okay.

Abdullah: Like what our mom would used to do is she used to make smoothies and she would like, Like, um, uh, secretly put in microgreens, she would secretly put in like 10 different vegetables, and she would mix it with all these other fruits, and she’d put like stevia and stuff, and we could never tell.  [00:06:00] Right. And so that was one way. Also, vegetables are fun to eat if you prepare them like a certain way, if you prepare them right. Right? So we would make vegetables, eating vegetables fun. We wouldn’t just eat broccoli, right? We wouldn’t just eat boring broccoli and boring carrots. How do you make broccoli fun?  We would, sometimes we would steam it, like steamed vegetables. It’s

Zain: good.

Abdullah: We used to also use spices sometimes. Our mom was like amazing at turning, making vegetables fun. We’d have like a diverse amount of vegetables, like vegetables we didn’t even hear, like no existed. Right, Zed?

Zain: Also like if we’re like celery.  We have something called Ants on a Log, which basically we put celery with peanut butter and, uh, raisins. Yeah, raisins. And that tasted like, we

Abdullah: were like, how did, how can we, how did we make celery taste so good? And there’s just this negative stigma around vegetables that most kids, uh, they buy into because that’s what people tell them.  That vegetables are boring, that [00:07:00] vegetables make your life not fun. If you eat vegetables, you live under a rock and you’re depressed. This is more like most kids think, and we wanted to change that. And once we started to eat real vegetables and diverse vegetables, we started to see how fun that we can make vegetables.

Dr. Weitz: That’s great. How many, how many vegetables do you eat a day, do you think on average?

Zain: Ooh. So then there first there’s breakfast, yeah. And then there’s lunch. Uh huh.

Dr. Weitz: Do you have vegetables with breakfast?

Zain: Yes. Yes, we have. Yes. My mom makes like the smoothies.

Abdullah: Um, what are the smoothies? We have smoothies. So that has a ton of vegetables.  She, she used to call them Hulk smoothies because they’re green, but then she’s like, Oh no, no, they will become stronger. You know, drink this. And she put in maybe some like banana or apple or something like that. And we drink it and it tasted good. Right.

Dr. Weitz: Cool.

Zain: And then lunch, every single, like when we go to school, I always prepare the lunches a vegetable, a [00:08:00] protein, and a carbohydrate.  So we always get some type of vegetable.

Dr. Weitz: That’s great. A lot of kids are just eating chicken nuggets and, you know, they’re not having any vegetables at all unless you consider maybe french fries a vegetable.

Abdullah: They used to say, they used to say pizza has vegetables on it because of the tomato sauce.  Correct. They’re like, I’m having a full meal because of, you got the bread, you got the cheese, you have the tomato sauce, which is a vegetable, you know. 

Dr. Weitz: Oh yeah, when Reagan was president, they said just the ketchup on the burger was considered a vegetable.

Abdullah: I know, they’re, people are changing the idea of food so that it makes them feel better basically.  Exactly.

Emaad: Yeah, we used to like, we sometimes like, in the morning we’d have like, um, sauerkraut, whipped cream, um, graffiti, and that’s all fair frame.

Dr. Weitz: That’s great, sauerkraut, feed your [00:09:00] microbiome, it’s fermented.

Abdullah: Yeah, cause there’s so many other fermented foods. that we love to enjoy. Like before we thought there was only pickles and then we realized you have sauerkraut, you have kimchi, right?  We, anytime, right Emaad? Uh, anytime we feel like sick or like some we have a problem with our stomach, we’ll go and just, we’ll go to the fridge. We’ll have some sauerkraut because we, we know how it feels. We, the, the difference it makes, right Zen? Yes. 

Zain: And it makes a huge difference. And like also with the different colors.  Like you have to eat the entire rainbow. You can’t just like.

Dr. Weitz: You go, you guys are way ahead of most of the other kids.  I would doubt many kids even know if they’ve even tasted sauerkraut or kimchi or know about eating the rainbow. So that’s great. What about activities? Do you guys play sports? Are you active?

Abdullah: Yes, definitely.

Dr. Weitz: What sports do you play?

Abdullah: Emaad, do you want to start? 

Zain: What sports do you play?

Emaad: I play soccer and football.

Dr. Weitz: Okay.

Zain: I run, so cross country, track.

Abdullah: I play, you know, basketball, soccer. Uh, I also run in my free time. Or, I like to run. Um, and just go out in nature as well.

Dr. Weitz: That’s great.  So let’s talk about the difference between real food and Fake food.

Abdullah: Okay.

Zain: So let’s just start with ultra processed foods. So although, do you wanna talk about what a ultra processed food is? Well,

Dr. Weitz: we like to call. Yeah, I mean basically we were talking about junk food, right? Yeah. That’s term, ultra process is a new term for junk food.

Abdullah: Yeah, no, for the nickname we give ultra processed foods like fake food because they’re not actually foods.  Right. And, um, because. Children’s brains and bodies are made of food. I think it’s important to, you know, choose the foods [00:11:00] that we eat, like, and be mindful of those. So for us, the way we see ultra processed foods and the way it really is, it is basically just a formation, formulation of like ingredients, um, industrially produced ingredients that are put together to seem like, to make it look like a food, to make it have the food like shapes and textures Basically, instead of food, it’s industrially ingredients that have been created through industrial techniques.  And that’s where the ultra and ultra processed food came from. Right. Right. And the thing that really blew my mind is I heard someone say, you know, ultra processed food is a science experiment and like they’re experimenting on us. We are the lab rats.

Dr. Weitz: That is true. And that’s why you see 14 different ingredients.

Abdullah: Exactly.

Dr. Weitz: There’s something wrong with that.

Abdullah: Like, I wrote, McDonald’s French Fries, 14 ingredients in [00:12:00] McDonald’s French Fries is way too much.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah. Yeah, those are super unhealthy. Not only are they, they, they take the potatoes, they soak them in sugar, then they deep fry them, they stick them in the freezer, they take them out, they deep fry them again so they can absorb more fat, they put salt on them.

Abdullah: My God, it’s crazy, right, Zen?

Dr. Weitz: Yeah.

Abdullah: Like, yeah. Also, what’s interesting is that, um, ultra processed foods, They’re basically reconstructed from whole food that was then reduced to a molecular level and then Reconstructed to look like food. I like to think it’s like pre digested food It’s already been through the entire system of being crushed and being smashed and then they just put it back together So that it tastes good and it makes us feel good, right?

Dr. Weitz: [00:13:00] Um, so how do ultra processed foods affect kids behavior and the way their brain works?

Abdullah: Well, ultra processed foods, they, they basically alter how the brain works and how the, um, and they harm the body because of the, they’ve basically been made addictive by these companies because if they’re not addictive, they’re addictive.  Then people aren’t going to buy

Zain: or get them again. Right, Zen? Yeah. And also when we put junk food in us, we only get like junk behaviors, a junk body, a junk brain. Bad and fake foods destroy the balance of our gut microbiome. And with this, it leads to inflammation, like chronic inflammation imbalances our hormones, threatens our, our prefrontal cortex and destroys our ability to function optimally.  Yeah. So it just creates a bad. [00:14:00] Life in general, like you don’t want to live a life that’s like Messed up.

Dr. Weitz: And they’ve actually, the food scientists have studied how to get people to eat the maximal amount of ultra processed foods. And there’s actually a concept they’ve come up with called the bliss point.  And the bliss point is you just have the perfect amount of fat, sugar, and salt. So the person will just want to crave more and more and more of that unhealthy food.

Abdullah: Yeah, and then, like you were saying, when you add all of that fat and salt, you’ve essentially created an irresistible food. At that point, you know, they even have in the ads, they said you can’t have just one.  Right, absolutely. They literally put it in the ads, you can’t have just one, you have to keep eating and eating and eating and eating. Because that’s how they were created.

Dr. Weitz: Right.

Abdullah: If, if you didn’t keep eating them, then they would [00:15:00] go back and yell at the scientists. Why didn’t you create it the way we wanted?

Dr. Weitz: Absolutely. They don’t want you to feel full and they want you to be eating it quickly. So you don’t even know how much you’re eating.

Abdullah: Also, what’s interesting is when I was going into like, how did these foods become so addictive? Because I was interesting. How do you make a food? That’s like just it’s because I was thinking of food as food from nature.  How do you make something edible that addictive? So I went to the research and I actually realized that the way that ultra processed foods were made is that they activate the brain reward system in a way that is similar to drugs. It’s similar to nicotine. It’s similar to heroin. And what happens is when people they use like drugs like nicotine and heroin and alcohol.

Then they keep, they make these foods as addictive as them. And [00:16:00] there’s actually something in the field of drugs and addiction called the rate of delivery. And that is when, how fast the food goes through your body and it’s digested. It’s how fast it’s going to hit your brain. And that’s how fast it’s going to affect your body.

And, uh, I realized that because of the way that ultra processed foods were created, like, you know, how I said, um, they’re pre digested, and they go through your body fast, and like you said, they, you can’t, you don’t feel full, right? And because they go so fast through your body. Right. And actually, the faster they go through your body is the more addictive it becomes.

So I was like, oh my god, ultra processed foods are drugs based in LA. They’ve created, like, they’ve created them just like people have created drugs. And the same way that drugs work, is drugs work, or how all [00:17:00] depressed foods work. And I went more into this, like how do they do the research? Did they put, how much research did they put into developing this?  Maybe it’s a coincidence, I don’t know. And I realized that the people that, you know, created Kraft and Nabisco and General Foods, they were owned by a company called Phyllip Morris. Right. Um, I don’t know about the company, but you’re probably, you know, you’re a little, you know,

Dr. Weitz: Phillip Morris was the company that made cigarettes and cigarettes is another example where they got everybody addicted and, and, and they just kept consuming more and more of it.  And then tried to tell us that it really wasn’t unhealthy when it was killing us.

Abdullah: Exactly. And I went into this and I was like, okay, who’s Philip Morris? I went to research that. And apparently after they were exposed because they were selling, they were telling people, Oh, you know, smoking is fine. It’s fine.  After they were exposed and studies [00:18:00] came out, you know, debunking them, they decided, you know what, let’s put our resources and into something else. And so they then bought Kraft, they bought Nabisco and General Foods, like I said, and Actually, the same scientists then used those methods of studying addiction and they then implemented that and created these ultra processed foods or these artificial foods.  So the same, the same like strategies and research that went into making cigarettes super addictive went into making ultra processed foods addictive.

Dr. Weitz: Right, absolutely. Um, so, what happens when people eat these ultra processed foods is they’re no longer really in control. They’re just being controlled by the food industry.

Abdullah: Exactly. Like, you know, you look at advertisements. Advertisements are now a way [00:19:00] for these companies to basically control what’s happening inside the home. Nowadays, it’s crazy to me that advertising an addictive substance is now appropriate to advertise it, uh, to three year olds using a monkey and a tiger.  Now it’s, now it’s like, it seems as normal to use an addictive substance as an advertisement with monkeys and tigers and other animals to seem appealing to three year olds and little kids. Right. And now it seems, oh yeah, this is fine, you’re allowed to do that. Like if it was, uh, cigarettes or drugs, it’d be, oh no, no, you can’t do this.

But with ultra processed foods. They say, yep, that’s completely good. They give the green light on that, right? You see people, you see the ad, you’re like, I want to buy that. Ooh, that looks good. That cereal, the colors that they use, it tricks their brain into thinking, I want that, right? Is that like, if you see, you know, you know, those ads, [00:20:00] yes.

Like the Froot Loops ads and, um, uh, what other ads? Like McDonald’s, like the, uh, Burger King ads, they, they, Like, they make the ads so that we want to keep on buying it, so it’s an entire scheme, basically.

Dr. Weitz: So, the kid shows are all filled with these ads for ultra processed foods, so the kids get overweight.  And then the adult shows are all filled with ads for medications to try to help you lose the weight that you gain from eating the ultra processed foods. So, now all you have to do is take Ozembic and forget about eating healthy.

Abdullah: And it’s funny, it’s funny, Zan, you know, when, remember we were watching that one ad and it said side effects are death, you know, this illness, that, and the cancer, it’s pretty small letters.  They have like a whole list of symptoms that are even worse than the original symptoms. 

Zain: And then you just see like people, like happy people, like walking or [00:21:00] like swimming or just happy playing. 

Dr. Weitz: Of course.

Zain: I don’t know the background, but like the music and then

Dr. Weitz: yeah, they don’t, they don’t see when they’re, uh, suffering from these, uh, chronic diseases like diabetes and they’re getting, you know, and they’re having to go through, um, dialysis because their kidneys are failing or they’re having to get their, um, toes and feet cut off from, uh, neuropathy from diabetes.  So all these chronic diseases are, are killing us.

Zain: So. Who do we trust? Think about this. American Academy of Pediatrics? They take money from companies like Matt Johnson and Abbott. I know, remember, you were researching this for the book actually, right?

Abdullah: Yes. Yeah, so Zan was researching for the book, like, where do the money that, that, for a lot of these heart diseases, uh, heart disease organizations and all [00:22:00] of these other organizations, where do they go to?

And what Zan actually found was really interesting.

Zain: So, who do we trust? The American Academy of Pediatrics? No, they take money from companies like Matt Johnson Abbott. What about the American Diabetes Association? Koch and Cadbury give them donations. These are the same people that are making our recommendations.  And I was like, what?

Abdullah: Like, I was, I was going into all the tobacco stuff and then Zan brought this entirely different part of it that you wouldn’t think would even exist. Like all, that’s why, you know, um, uh, the people, you know, the, the people that said that breakfast, you have to have breakfast, like breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  Right. Guess who that came from? Uh, the cereal

Abdullah: industry. Exactly. Yeah. We were like, you’re telling us, because we knew by school, like everyone was saying, our teachers, that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. [00:23:00] It was ingrained into our minds that you can’t miss breakfast. And then we realized when we were doing this research, where it actually came from.  Right, Zen? Right, Ma, did you know that the teachers say that breakfast was the most important meal of the day? Yeah, they

Zain: do it

Abdullah: in

Zain: shows and stuff.

Dr. Weitz: And then during COVID, a lot of people were staying home and, uh, a lot of them didn’t want to cook because they were too lazy. So I saw the CEO from one of the cereal companies on TV talking about how great it is that people are eating cereal for dinner now.

Abdullah: Cereal for dinner? Imagine having cereal for dinner?

Dr. Weitz: It’s just totally processed, loaded with sugar, and no vegetables, no fruits, no natural foods. It’s like a bowl of poison. Exactly.

Abdullah: And now it’s weird because it’s being seen as like, Oh, [00:24:00] if I had like five bowls of cereals, that’s more things. Okay. That’s good.  That’s good. It seems normal now, right? If you don’t have, if you have anything like natural in the morning, you’re seen as like, what I can have, you know, I, I remember some person said, Oh yeah, I have toe. I have like toasted avocado on it. Avocado Toast, and I was like, what? We just eat cereal every single day.  You’re having something that, like, exotic?

Dr. Weitz: Because Yeah, you go through the grocery store and there is a huge aisle with all these boxes of cereals. And you look at how much sugar is in them. It’s just horrendous.

Abdullah: Yeah, and the kids are now brainwashed. It’s become the new norm for people to eat these foods.  Artificial foods. is now seen as food. I mean, if you thought about artificial food back in like the 1940s or something like that, you [00:25:00] would think of this as like some crazy invention, and now it’s become our daily diet. Everybody’s supposed to eat this. And, you know, several studies have actually been concluded that there’s an association between artificial food dyes and neurobehavioral symptoms in sensitive children, including hyperactivity, attentiveness, and restlessness.

And then people go say, Oh, you know, artificial foods are not that bad. I mean, come on, they’re not doing anything to our body. I’ve been eating it for 10, you know, 15 years. And people don’t realize that it’s affecting the future. Absolutely. And that’s why we really want to educate people because we are, you know, we are technically the future.

Dr. Weitz: And, and the, the group that makes out the US dietary guidelines recently said that there’s no proof that ultra processed foods are really harmful.

Abdullah: Wow, when we saw that we were like, [00:26:00] what, what are these people saying to me?

Dr. Weitz: Because they’re getting funding from Big Food.

Abdullah: Yeah, and also another thing that was really interesting is, you know, artificial dyes.  Most people think, oh, they’re just like dyes, you know, you put in sprinkles and stuff like that. But artificial dyes can directly trigger something called gut dysbiosis. Correct. 95 percent of our neurotransmitters are made in the gut. That’s why we like to say that our gut is the second brain. And so, when artificial, um, dyes affect the gut, they then affect the neurotransmitters that are being made, which then affects our brains.

So, Nowadays, like, even in our schools, right, kids are becoming more crazy and crazy and crazy, right? Like, Raizan, in your high school, in my, like, uh, in middle school, yeah, in middle school, like, kids are crazy, right? Oh, yeah. And, like, kids, they’re so addicted to sugar and, like, [00:27:00] ultra processed foods. And

Zain: additives, you know, basically, the, the teachers bribe the, uh, the students with sugar, basically.

Emaad: And Jolly Ranch. If

Zain: they, if you, if you do this, you’ll get some candy. If you win, you’ll get some candy. If you get this bingo, you’ll get some candy and it’s always, they’re pushing kids to do it for candy and kids will do anything for candy. So,

Abdullah: yeah, that’s crazy. Kids will not like, I remember when I was in middle school, kids would have entire lockers full of candy because they needed, for some kids, they need candy to survive.  It’s become from a want to a need, yeah?

Dr. Weitz: So, in our society, chronic diseases are the major cause of sickness and death, and over 70 percent of the population is overweight. [00:28:00] Why are we not doing anything about artificial ingredients and ultra processed foods that are contributing to this? 

Abdullah: Does anyone want to answer that?

Dr. Weitz: Well, it’s all money.

Abdullah:  You know, food additives make ultra processed foods taste better,

Dr. Weitz: right?

Abdullah: You know, they make them smell better, look better, be more addictive, and they last more on the shelves.  Ultra processed foods, they’re addicted by design. And it’s, it’s, it’s worked. They, all of the money that they put in, all the research that they put, obviously, they’ve made something that is an addictive substance that people can’t resist anymore. And because of that, the global food items market It used to be worth, I think around 30, 38 billion in 2021, [00:29:00] but by 2026, the value of the global food additives industry is projected to be 56 billion.

Wow. 56 billion is now, it’s like, that’s the market for food additives. And one interesting thing I heard is if kids around the world would, uh, or kids in America missed, missed even one meal of ultra processed foods, then the food companies, uh, sales would plummet by 7%. If they just missed one meal, then their sales would go down by 7%.

So it’s all money. People think so, if, if it was so bad for us, why wouldn’t they tell us? If, um, uh, Smoking was bad for you. You think that Phil Morris was going to tell you, Oh, it’s bad for us. Bad for you. Don’t buy our product. They promoted it. They said, [00:30:00] no, all this research is bad. And these scientists, you know, they’re not trusted.

And the same thing is happening now. If, uh, right now they’re not, nobody’s going to stop the food industry because they’re making so much money. I mean, there’s, who’s going to stop them. Basically people have tried to loss, have to sue them. People have tried to talk, uh, tackle them and put them down and make them change the foods, but they’re not going to do anything because for them, we are money for them.  We’re there. They’re probably, they are, we are the product basically.

Dr. Weitz: Right. And, and we’re sitting around arguing over whether we should eat a vegan diet or a Mediterranean diet. And meanwhile, uh, you can have, eat a vegan diet that’s all filled with junk fruit. So we should really be focused on the quality of the diet [00:31:00] and, and not just on the specific macronutrient content.  So how do you guys stay away from ultra processed foods when, when you say go to another kid’s birthday party?

Zain: So we like to bring our own things ’cause um Oh, okay. We’re not going to eat their junk most of the time. You

Dr. Weitz: just whip out a bag with some cut up carrots or what? .

Zain: So basically, let’s say if they’re having cake, right?  We will bring our own muffins or Oh, okay. Our own brownies. Okay. Like the real deal. You have the real deal or some cookies. And that really, we don’t really want that anymore because it doesn’t really look as appetizing as it did maybe 10 years ago. It makes us kind of even like nauseous and feel

Abdullah: sick when you see that food, right?  Yeah. What do you do when you go to a party and that’s all they have? They just have pizza [00:32:00] and, you know, all this junk food.

Abdullah: Because we know, right, Emaad? We know that they’re basically just chemicals, right? Yeah. I mean, we just see, you know, a product, a substance, that people are eating and eating and eating.  For us, it doesn’t seem appetizing anymore. Okay.

Zain: If they offer it to us, we say no. And we like to bring our own things, so we’ll have that.

Dr. Weitz: Oh, you guys got great willpower.

Abdullah: And that’s why we love to keep researching, because this information, right, it gives us power. And because we don’t want to be tricked into doing something we know is not good for us.  At school, everyone is eating pizza, and yes, it still smells appetizing to us. It’s To us, it’s still actually disgusting. We don’t crave it anymore, we don’t want it. Uh, I know you might think that we’re lying, and it seems impossible. Because kids nowadays are seeing that they’re addicted to all of these kinds of foods.  But, honestly, we can’t even stand the sight of it. Right? You know, when I was like 10 years old, I remember, Emaad, I think, [00:33:00] you brought like a Gingerbread house, oh

Emaad: yeah,

Zain: into the house, when he was in Kindergarten, they were decorating the gingerbread house, and luck could not stand it, so he like, completely like, threw it away.

Abdullah: I didn’t want this, you know, it’s like, it’s for me, I see them as drugs, you wouldn’t want drugs just like staying on, you wouldn’t want an addictive substance that’s dangerous for you. That we know destroys our body, that we know what it does to our brains. We know how it makes us feel. We don’t want that to, uh, I, I, it just didn’t feel right with me.

Dr. Weitz: So what do you guys do on Halloween?

Zain: Halloween, we just get, there are better alternatives to that candy. So

Emaad: it’s a brand that we like specifically use called Yummer. Do you

Dr. Weitz: guys go around and collect candy from other houses?

Zain: So it might be easier for us because we don’t actually celebrate Halloween. Oh,

Dr. Weitz: you don’t celebrate Halloween?

Zain: Yeah, we don’t celebrate Halloween. 

Dr. Weitz: Oh, okay.

Zain: So it would be easier. We just like give it out. 

Dr. Weitz: That’s one of our favorite pagan holidays.

Abdullah: No, but we still love anytime it’s Halloween. We’re like, Mom, um, everybody else is having candy. So we can, we have like our candy. Yeah. So we take, we get our organic, organic, natural, real.  There you go.

Dr. Weitz: Cool.

Abdullah: And for us, that tastes even better than the other stuff. Because nobody likes to, nobody likes to know that they’re being tricked into doing something or that what they’re doing has been, you know, um, been advertised to them and basically like people don’t want to know that what they’re doing is being funded and their people are researching to trick them and make them do what they want to do.  Right. So that’s why, you know, we also, we look through the ingredients and we see, okay, what does this do? What does that do? And then we make mindful choices because [00:35:00] we know their tricks. Right.

Dr. Weitz: So what do you guys see yourselves doing in the future?

Zain: So I have an interest in nutrition, so I’m thinking to become a, some type of doctor ish.  Not like normal doctor. Right.

Dr. Weitz: And how about yourself?

Abdullah: Oh yeah, no, so I was thinking of going also into medicine and learning more about this and becoming in like, you know, educating more people basically.

Dr. Weitz: Right.

Abdullah: So you can

Dr. Weitz: become a functional medicine doctor, a naturopathic doctor.

Abdullah: I’m still thinking about it, which one I want to go into, but I know I want to work with functional medicine and the holistic way.  Right. And how

Dr. Weitz: about yourself?

Emaad: I have no idea.

Dr. Weitz: How old are you?

Emaad: I’m 11.

Dr. Weitz: Okay. And how old are you? [00:36:00] 13. And you? I’m 16. Okay. There you go. So you’re, you’re almost applying to college soon.

Abdullah: Soon.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah. All right, great. So advice for other kids?

Zain: So we need to be more mindful about the food we eat. We have to use food as medicine to thrive, basically.  So make sure it’s nutritious, helps our gut microbiome. It’s nutrient dense. Yeah, nutritious, nutrient dense. Yeah. Um, it helps your, like you said, gut microbiome, gut microbiome, insulin. Balance is insulin. Insulin and Balances blood sugar levels, all of this, and it’d be what we’re looking in, in foods. And it’s good for your body in general, basically.

Abdullah: And that’s all we want. We, we think this entire problem could become much better if kids actually read what they’re [00:37:00] eating, because the problem is not that kids know that it’s harmful for them and they continue to, Oh, I want to put these chemicals into my body. Oh, these chemicals that taste so good. No, they just don’t even, they don’t know what these foods are.  So we just want kids, you know, to read ingredients because that’s what we used to do, right? Yes. When we started to do this, we wanted, we started to read ingredients. Um, uh, we started to think of food as like a molecular information that dictates our day to day, um, and long term function as natural

Zain: food because it has 5, 000 known biochemicals inside them.  Like, that’s insane. That can really help us.

Abdullah: We think of food as like medicine, food as our fuel,

Zain: food as like dictates everything that we do in our life basically. Cause like food is like the single most powerful tool that impacts our brain, body, and our behaviors.

Zain: That’s great. It’s really important to look at food and especially like the good food and like eat it.

Abdullah: That’s why, you [00:38:00] know, that’s why we are so passionate about this because we know that we, that this food makes change, um, it can make a change to our bodies. We feel it, right? So we have more, we can even have more endurance than a lot of the people around us. Like I don’t play, I don’t, um, run track or cross country, but I already have a lot more endurance when I do run against other people.  I’m like, Oh my God, they’re like exhausted. Like, how do you do this? I was like, I don’t know. This is, we just eat nutrient dense, uh, food. And the rainbow. Oh yes, we love to eat the rainbow.

Emaad: Speaking of rainbow, red foods contain lycopene that protects against cancer and heart disease. Orange foods help with hormonal health.  Yellow foods is great to sustain nitrate, fiber, and great for the digestion. Green foods indicates biochemicals such as raffinate and sulfurophane, which raises the with um, boosts the circulation and lowers cancer. I love seaweed.

Abdullah: He loves seaweed. Like loves, loves seaweed.

Emaad: Loves.

Abdullah: That’s  great.

Emaad: Iodine strengthens the immune system [00:39:00] and then blue and purple foods help the brain.  Wow, that’s some very intense, uh, scientific information for us. Thank you. He

Abdullah: even compares it. He’s like, okay, this one has glucoraphanin and this one has iodine, iodine, which, which one we need. Compares, okay, I had seaweed before, I already got my iodine, so now let me get some sulforaphane.

Dr. Weitz: That’s great. I wonder how many 16 year olds would have any idea what glucoraphanin is.

Abdullah: Especially in my, in my, uh, 6th graders.  Yeah. Well, you guys are way ahead of the curve and I applaud you for being knowledgeable and promoting health and that’s what this country needs. Tell people how they can find out about your podcasts, your books, and your course.

Abdullah: So, um, [00:40:00] Our subconscious world governs about 90 percent of our thoughts and actions. Training us to be positive is key. Especially as a teenager, I know negativity is basically our entire thing. But that is why we have to train our subconscious to be more positive. Because our subconscious is just neural pathways that need to be rerouted to become more positive.  So we can look to see all the blessings in life, be grateful, be grateful, be grateful, be grateful. Know what we’re, uh, know that we’re not missing out, you know, see the things that we do have instead of the things that we don’t. With hundreds and thousands of edible foods on the planet, we need to look at the foods that we can eat instead of the foods that we can’t eat.

Zain: And our podcast is on, actually we interviewed you on our podcast, it’s on iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music, um, YouTube, like basically all the ones that you usually do.  That’s great, and your books you can get [00:41:00] from, uh, Amazon, Barnes Noble, wherever they sell books. . Yeah. And then what about your course? It’s on your website?

Zain: Yes, it on website.

So, and the website is you definitely

Abdullah: check that out.  The website is holistic kids.com.

Abdullah: Holistic mom, md do.com.  Holistic Mom and me.com. Mom Mdmd,

Zain: md Medical doctor.

Dr. Weitz: Oh, okay. Holistic mom md.com. Mm-Hmm. . That’s great.

Zain: It’s on our mom’s website.

Dr. Weitz: Well, thank you so much, guys, for joining me today and spreading the word about health and nutrition.  Well, it’s our pleasure.

Zain: It’s our

Emaad: pleasure.

Zain: We need to empower kids. This is our mission. We need to empower the next generation. This is our purpose. Our purpose.

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Dr. Weitz: That’s great that you guys already know what your purpose is. I, you guys are way ahead of the curve. Well, thank you. Thank you. It’s our pleasure.  Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. For those of you who enjoy listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, I would very much appreciate it if you could go to Apple Podcast or Spotify and give us a five star readings and review. As you may know, I continue to accept a limited number of new patients per month for functional medicine.  If you would like help overcoming a gut or other chronic health condition and want to prevent chronic problems, and want to promote longevity, Please call my Santa Monica Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition office at 310-395-3111 and we can [00:43:00] set you up for a consultation for functional medicine.  And I will talk to everybody next week.