661: Must Listen If You Drink Wine + Conscious Consumption & Longevity With Todd White

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Must Listen if You Drink Wine + Conscious Consumption & Longevity with Todd White
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661: Must Listen If You Drink Wine + Conscious Consumption & Longevity With Todd White
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I’m joined today by my good friend Todd White, a serial entrepreneur from the age of 17. He’s spent over 15 years in the wine business and now focuses on educating and helping people make better choices about their food.

As healthy as I try to be when it comes to my food and drink choices I was pretty surprised to find out that wine isn’t as natural as it’s touted to be. Only 4% of wine in the US is organic, but that’s not even the worst part. Ever notice how there isn’t an ingredient list or nutrition facts on the back of a wine bottle? Thanks to some legal regulations, wine isn’t required to have those things. Not only that, but they can have 76 different additives including toxic ones derived from toxic black mold, animal organs, and more.

Todd has set out to change all this by creating natural wines with simple, organic (and disclosed!) ingredients. Of course, not everyone drinks and Todd will be the first to tell you that alcohol in itself is toxic. But if someone already drinks and is looking for a healthier option, then there’s a better wine out there. Personally, wine is one of my 80/20 things and I enjoy it on occasion with friends and family.

If you’re a wine drinker, this episode is a must listen!

Episode Highlights With Todd

  • The problems with most wines today
  • Why most wines are not natural and the unsavory things added to most wines today
  • What we don’t know about wine may be hurting us
  • Alcohol is objectively toxic and why Todd, as the wine guy, explains this in depth and why it can be best not to drink it at all
  • Todd’s own rules around drinking to minimize negative effects and why he chooses it for joy and not for health reasons
  • Why they started adding toxins and additives to wine
  • Wine has been made for 9,000 years and all wine was natural, but this changed in the 1920s
  • Only 4% of US wines are organic but it’s worse than that
  • Grapes are #6 on the dirty dozen so organic wine is important
  • Beyond organic… the nasty stuff added to most wines (even some organic ones)
  • The massive consolidation of the wine industry that led to 3 companies controlling over 50% of wine
  • There are 76 additives approved for use in wine
  • Why Todd believes wine labels should have a contents (ingredients) label and nutritional info
  • The only two ingredients found in a natural wine: grapes and native natural yeast
  • Other ingredients in conventional wines: sugars, dyes, animal products, 12 additives classified as health hazards, 8 derived from black mold, and two classified by NIH as acute toxins meaning too much in a 24 hour period can be fatal
  • How big wine companies respond to claims about natural wines (and how they responded to a lawsuit showing arsenic in wine at 5x the amount allowed in water)
  • The reason Prop 65 in California can actually let companies get away with additives in wine based on disclosure
  • What is natural wine and the standards it adheres to
  • Why wild native yeast is important and what makes it so different
  • How conventional wines often contain GMO yeast
  • Why they only accept 21% of the wines they test (and they only choose organic wines to start with)

Resources We Mention

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Katie: Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com, and this episode is a must listen if you drink wine at any time. And I’m here with a dear friend of mine, Todd White, who has been a serial entrepreneur since he was 17. And now, after 15 years in the wine business, his life is dedicated to educating and helping people make better choices about food, nutrition, and how they think about consuming alcohol with what he calls conscious consumption. So he definitely doesn’t encourage anyone to drink. And anyone who doesn’t drink, he firmly respects that and definitely doesn’t want them to start. And he recognizes that alcohol itself is toxic, but also realizes that many people enjoy it as part of a healthy lifestyle in moderation. And he wants to find ways to help people do that without harming their health, which is why he founded Dry Farm Wines.

He’s now a writer, a speaker, and a leader in the Natural Wine Movement, as well as talking about how to integrate wine into a healthy lifestyle, if that is the choice you want to make. We talk about the problem with most wine today, why most wines are not natural and the additives that you’ll find in a lot of them, and why alcohol is objectively toxic, and why he, even as the wine guy explains, that it often can be best not to drink at all. He talks about his own rules around drinking and how to minimize the negative effects, and why he chooses it for joy and not for health reasons. He talks about why they started adding toxins to wine in the first place, and why only 4% in the US wines are organic. But why it’s even worse than that even the organic wines can contain some really unsavory additives, of which there are 76 approved for use in wine.

Todd believes that wine labels should have contents, ingredient labels and nutritional info, though they are not required to. And the only two ingredients found in natural wine are organic grapes and natural yeast that is already present on the grapes, and how conventional wines can contain any of those 76 dyes, including sugars, dyes, animal products, two compounds classified by the National Institutes for Health as acute toxins, meaning that too much in a 24-hour period can be fatal. Twelve additives classified as health hazards, eight derived from black mold, and much more. How big wine companies respond to claims about natural wines and how they’ve responded to him, and why Dry Farm Wines only accepts 21% of the wines they test, and why they lab test every wine they sell. So we go into a lot in this conversation. Todd always has plenty to talk about. And let’s join Todd for this conversation. Todd, welcome back. Thanks so much for being here.

Todd: Oh, wow. I am fresh in today from Los Angeles. So as you know, I’ve been spending the winter in Miami Beach, which is like super fun, but we have offices in Los Angeles, so I am calling in from LA today.

Katie: Awesome. In both places you get good sunshine, which is wonderful.

Todd: Love that Florida weather.

Katie: Yes, well, I love that we’re in the same state now most of the time. But today I’m so excited to talk to you and follow up on our previous conversation, which I will link to, about alcohol consumption in general, about wine in particular, and about how and if to integrate this into part of an overall healthy lifestyle. Because you are a Serial Entrepreneur, someone who cares deeply about health and someone who is probably the most knowledgeable that I know in the world on the topic of natural wine and all the unsavory things that people may not even realize are lurking in a lot of the products that we can consume off the shelves, especially in America. So to start broad, I know that this could be probably an eight hour series all by itself, but what are some of the problems with wine today?

Todd: Well, I think we have to look at let’s look at the origin. So let’s start back 9000 years ago when wine was first made, right? And for most of those 9000 years, it’s been a natural product. It’s been natural wine. And natural wine is a confusing term to consumers who don’t know about it because they say, oh, I sell natural wine. And they say, well, aren’t all wines natural? And I say no, for the reasons I’m about to tell you.

Most wines are very unnatural. Most wines contain unneeded toxins and additives that are simply not necessary. Natural wine means it’s additive free. We can talk about what a natural wine means, but I want to talk about the context, about how we got here first.

So if you’re a wine drinker and there are 80 million regular wine drinkers in the United States, if you’re a wine drinker and you don’t know about what I’m about to tell you and you care anything about wellness, your health and longevity, then you need to listen very closely. And one of the things we’ll talk about, in addition to the toxins that are in wine, that alcohol is very toxic. And so it surprises most people to think to hear from the wine guy tell you that alcohol is super toxic and maybe you shouldn’t drink it at all. We’ll get back to the toxicity of alcohol and how you should think about drinking, and also some of the guardrails and rules. I put around drinking because I probably drink more than I should, but I have some rules around that because I love drinking wine because it makes me super happy. And I love drinking wine with my friends. And I was celebrating food with wine. And I just love drinking wine in spite of the fact I don’t think it’s healthy. We’ll get to back to that in a moment.

But let’s talk about the context of how we got to all these extra additives and toxins in wine and what that means. So wine has been made for 9000 years, and for most of that 9000 years, all wines were natural. That changed in the 1920s. So in the 1920s was the advent of chemical farming. So we went from organic farming and biodiversity to monoculture and chemical farming. Today, and by the way, all the facts I’m going to share with you are both surprising and sometimes shocking. And nothing I’ve made up, everything is verifiable by Google search. Or you can simply go to our website and there are documents and links there that cite back everything I’m going to tell you, back to accredited third party sources, including the World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Health, all the government agencies, all that is cited on our website. Because what I’m going to tell you, you can do it on your own on Google, but it just makes it simpler just to go to our site and we’ve done all the work for you because people will say, oh, this can’t be true, or this is kind of surprising.

So here’s what happened. In the 1920s, we started chemical farming. And then today only 5%, 5% of vendors worldwide are organically farmed. And in California, it’s only 4%, 4% of domestic wines. Most wines are made in California are grown in California. Only 4% are organic. And for me, that’s a deal killer right out of the gate, right? I try to eat organic, raw, whole, real foods and drink as much as I can. I’m not guaranteed that in restaurants, but I largely eat in restaurants that feature farm to table. So I want to eat organic. I don’t want to consume pesticides and residual toxins that come from farming. I know you feel the same way.

So the problem with grapes is that they’re on the Dirty Dozen list, which is a widely published list. They’re number six on the Dirty Dozen for fruits and vegetables that maintain the highest residual of chemicals and pesticides and herbicides from harvest. And so grapes are of particular concern as it applies to glyphosate or arsenic or other toxins that are coming in through farming. So what happened, how we got to this very low number of organic farming, and how we got to all these additives that we’re going to talk about in a moment, was a massive consolidation of the wine industry. So just like the food industry, where they’re in the food sector, there’s nine or ten companies that make virtually everything that you eat out of the grocery store in the center aisles, right? In the wine business, it’s even worse. The top three companies in the United States, this is in the US. Wine business. The top three companies make 60% of all wines, and the top 25 companies make 90% of the wine that you see on the shelf, 90% is made by 25 players.

Now, in order to make wine in that volume and to keep it preserved and serving in this consistent format in these large volumes, they use additives and chemicals. And by the way, this is not just the big box wines you would think about. These wine companies own a lot of what we would call small family trusted brands. And they trick you into thinking that you’re drinking from this cute vineyard or this beautiful winery that you see in a magazine ad, when most of these wines are made in huge factories that are football fields, multiple football field, big, massive factories in Central California. Although they sell it a little bit differently. They put a picture of a cute animal or a farmhouse or a chateau on the label to have you believe that you’re drinking from a place when in fact, you’re drinking from a factory.

But let’s talk about these additives for a second that these companies are using. There are 76 additives approved by the TTB. Now, that’s the TTB, Trade and Tax Bureau. The interesting thing here is that wine gets carved out of normal additive and food regulatory review because it’s managed by the Trade and Tax Bureau. The Trade and Tax Bureau, their job and mission is to create tax dollars through the sale of this product. If it were a regular food product, it would come under the purview, or a lower alcohol wine is kind of carved out. If it were under the purview, if it were a food product or most other lower alcohol wine products, it would be under the purview of the FDA. And the FDA has mandated standards for transparent labeling and mandated standards for nutritional information. So we believe that a wine bottle should contain both a contents label. It does not. No wine has a contents label on it other than ours.

And number two, we believe that it should contain a nutritional panel. So primarily, you know how much sugar is in it. Neither of those are on a wine bottle, and both of them are strenuously opposed by the industry. And the industry is very powerful. So they’ve been able to keep nutritional information and contents labeling off of wine bottles. So what are these contents? Well, it’s not just grapes. Normally, there are two things that are found in a natural wine. There are only two ingredients. One is grapes, and the other is wild, indigenous, native yeast. That’s it. That’s all that’s in it. However, in conventional wines, all the wines you see in the grocery store and most of the wines you see in bottle shops, these are what I call conventional wines. I call a conventional wine anything that’s not natural. So in conventional wines, and I’ll define natural wine for you, it only has three cornerstones in a moment. But these wines that you see in the store which are not natural, they contain up to 76 legally approved additives that are approved by the TTB.

Now, here’s the problem with the additives. Some of them are natural, and many of them are quite unnatural in the 76 list. And again, all you all cited back on our website, or you can do this research on your own. It’s just easier to get it from us since we’ve already done the work. But of these 76 additives, two of them are classified by the National Institutes of Health. That’s a government agency that has a subdivision called PubChem, which is the public chemical profile. And this is where the government issues their assessment of all known chemicals, right? And so the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization combined with the National Institutes of Health in the 76 legally approved attitudes, two of them are acute toxins. Acute toxin has a very specific clinical definition, meaning that one dose or multiple doses over a 24 hours period can be fatal. Twelve of these additives are classified as health hazards by the National Institutes of Health. Four of these additives are derived from six different animal organs. If you care about animal rights or you’re a vegan, then you care about this issue. Of four of these additives are derived from six different animal organs, including pig pancreas and cow stomach and the like, right? Eight of them are derived from black molds, including Ochratoxin A, which is a known carcinogenic.

We’ll get back to Ochratoxin A in a moment, because that’s another issue that’s happening in wines that the Europeans monitoring require testing on the US does not. So you’ve had this consolidation of profiteers. Right. And I have no issue with people making a profit in business, I do it every day. But when you have people who just don’t care and have no integrity in terms of disclosure, that’s where I’m deeply troubled by this. Right. Because I bet you and most of your audience, when they go in to a packaged product, whether it’s packaged in glass like a wine bottle, or whether it’s packaged in plastic like some kind of a drink or glass, or it’s in a box or a bag. My guess, because this is what I do, is if it’s something I’m not familiar with, I look at the nutritional label or I look at the contents. I want to know what’s in it. And most of the contents you wouldn’t understand. In processed food, I don’t eat that food. But since I’m eating generally low glycemic, if I do have some kind of a snack product or something, the main thing I’m looking for are carbohydrates and sugar. I’m sure that’s true for you as well.

And so you don’t have that option on a wine bottle. So the moment you drink it, you have no idea what you’re consuming none, zero, right? Unless you buy it from us. And so the wine industry’s response and we’ll move on to what a natural wine? But here’s the wine industry’s response to all of these. And you might guess, I mean, I’ve done a couple of hundred of these podcasts and appeared in hundreds of news articles and been featured from Fox News to the Today Show. The wine industry is not happy with me or informing consumers about this. So their response is very simple. Their response is the same response they had to a 2015 lawsuit on arsenic in wine. There were 85 wine companies that were sued in California in 2015 in a case that was eventually dismissed. And the arsenic issue was: Three independent laboratories had shown that there were arsenic levels in wine at five times the allowed amount in drinking water by the EPA. Five times, 500% higher up to that case was eventually dismissed on the basis of that, the wine industry had done everything necessary under the law to disclose the dangers of arsenic and wine.

And I’ll tell you briefly how that happened is that in California, where most wines are produced, there’s a sticker that goes on to any, it’s called Prop 65 that goes on any consumable that contains one of over 700 chemicals that are deemed dangerous by the state of California. This is only in California. So under the law, because they have a Prop 65 warning sticker which is very benign on the bottle, that gets them a get out of jail free card for up to 700 chemicals it may contain. And so the case was dismissed on that basis.

But here was the wine industry response to that case and the same response that they’ve had since then and the response they have to me and the disclosure of these additives and chemicals and toxins and that is that they just say simply we are in compliance with all state and federal regulations. Well, first of all, there are no federal regulations and the only state regulations, Prop 65, we just talked about in California. So they said we’re in compliance. Which is true because they’ve been successful at lobbying. They are in compliance. That’s a true statement. Number two, they say, look, these chemicals, these additives in wine are not used in high enough amounts, the poisons in the dose, so they’re not used in high enough amounts to be dangerous to humans. That’s coming from the industry. There’s no independent research to collaborate that. That’s just coming from the industry.

And here’s my response to that. It’s very simple. That may or may not be true. We don’t know because there’s no science to validate whether these additives are dangerous or not. We know that they’re toxic. We know that they’re considered health hazards, many of them by accredited third parties. But the poisons in the dose, so they say, and I’m like, fair enough. I don’t know whether they’re dangerous or not either because there’s nothing to validate it one way or the other. But here’s what I do know. If given a choice not to drink these chemicals, toxins and additives, I’ll take it. And so that’s the wine I sell, they’re additive free. They’re free of all toxins except for alcohol. And so given a choice, and I know you have the same choice because you drink our wines, A, they make you feel better, as you know, too, given a choice, I’ll choose not to drink these chemicals even though I’m not aware of their dangers. Although because again, the response is the poisons and the dose. And I can tell you since there’s no scientific evidence to dispute that. It’s just that if I have a choice not to drink them, I feel better about not drinking them. And actually, I feel healthier and better not drinking them. Right? And so the only toxin in our wines is alcohol.

So let’s move to that topic for a moment and then maybe you have a question or two and we can talk about after we talk about the dangers of alcohol and the toxicity of alcohol, which surprises people, as I mentioned earlier, to hear the wine guy who they think is here to sell wine. And yes, by the way, we like selling wine and we are extremely grateful to earn a decent living selling this pure better wine. So yes, we’re here to sell wine, but I’m also here to tell you that alcohol is very toxic.

Breaking news just came out in the last two weeks all over these New York Times and Wall Street Journal and all the mainstream press breaking news, alcohol, even in moderate amounts, is not healthy. Duh. Okay, well that’s not a surprise to me. I’ve been telling people for years that drinking alcohol is not healthy. And I don’t think consuming ethyl alcohol in any amount enhances the health of a human animal. I just don’t buy it. And so I’ve never thought that it was healthy. Some people shouldn’t drink at all. And if you don’t drink today, I’m not advocating that you start, but if you’re like me and you love wine and I love wine for we talk pre show about here’s what I really love about wine is that first of all, I’m super interested in it. I’m a taste guru geek. I love the taste of things, anything, food, wine. I just love taste. I’ve loved taste ever since I was a kid. So I love the taste. I’m fascinated with different types of wine from different places.

And most importantly, I love drinking, as you know, since we’ve drank together many times. I love drinking wine with my friends and I love the euphoric effects of alcohol. I love laughing, I love banter, I love telling stories. I just love being around the table or at a party. You’ve been with me, I love to party. And so this is just part of the joy of my life. And so even though I’m a health evangelist and I advocate for people to meditate, for them to fast, for them to eat low carb, for them to live a largely sugar free lifestyle, I advocate publicly for all of these things because I want to help people think through health, wellness and longevity. I’m trying to play the long game here to extend my health span, right? In addition to lifespan, too. We’re all going to basically die from the same diseases. The question is, what is the onset of that disease?

And so I’m a huge health evangelist and advocate for people making better choices around consumables what they put in their body, what I call conscious consumption, to be conscious of what we consume. That being said, I’m conscious of the fact that alcohol is toxic. And guess what? My life might even be better off if I didn’t drink any alcohol at all. It might be now we’re not likely to find that out anytime soon because I’m not ready to stop drinking because you know what? I like it and I have fun with it and it’s part of my lifestyle. Unless I’m on an extended water fast, which I just broke a water fast last night, a short one, three day extended water fast.

Unless I’m on an extended water fast, I drink wine every single day. We’ll talk about some of my drinking rules in a moment, so I put some guardrails around how I think about drinking. And we want to talk about that because I think a lot of people right now are thinking about drinking, not because of this news that alcohol is not healthy. I mean, I think anybody who’s a regular drinker probably came to that conclusion a while back. But alcohol is something that I get along with wine, right? Remember, I just don’t want to drink all these other added toxins. But I clearly but I freely and have for many years said drinking alcohol is probably not great for humans, but I’m going to do it anyway. And so if you’re like me and you want to drink and do it anyway, then even though I’m a health advocate and an evangelist for better living, I still drink and I love it and I’m not going to stop anytime soon. So if that’s you, then this information is useful to you, right? And that’s what I am educating people to think about.

If you are going to drink, I think you should drink natural wine and lower alcohol. So let’s talk about before I take your next question, let’s talk just briefly about what is natural wine and the certifications and the standards that Dry Farm Wines, my company puts on around wine and how we think about wine. Because we’re not only just natural, we take it a few steps further. We raise the bar, including we lab test for sugar. All of our wines must be sugar free. Not all natural wines are sugar free. Our wines must be twelve and a half percent or below in alcohol. We sell wines as low as 7%. Why is that important? Because I believe alcohol is dangerous and toxic, and I love drinking wine, but I don’t like the negative impact that comes from excess alcohol. So if I’m going to drink like a bottle of wine, I’m not a guy who drinks a glass or two. I drink like a bottle, sometimes two. And if I’m going to do that, the only way to lower the amount of alcohol I’m consuming, since I like to drink in volume, is to lower the amount that’s inherently in the wine to begin with. And most of the wines I drink are between 9% and 11%.

But let’s talk about what makes natural wine. So one, natural wines are always organic or biodynamically grown. And biodynamic farming is a prescriptive advanced form of organic farming. And it was developed in the 1920s by an Austrian scientist named Rudolph Steiner, who was shocked and made a very deliberate move against chemical farming. And so he took it to the next extreme and created this, what’s called biodynamic farming. No reason to go down that wormhole, but it is organic and advanced.

Number two, natural wines are always fermented with wild native yeast. Now, what does that mean? Because this is the most confusing part, which is commercial wines are fermented with GMO Lab-cultured yeast. Natural wines are always spontaneously fermented with yeast that already exist in the vineyard. So to make a natural wine, you don’t require anything other than harvested fruit, because on the exterior, on the skin of all grapes worldwide, doesn’t matter where they’re grown or how they’re grown, on the skin at the time of harvest is a white waxy film. You can scrape it off with your fingernail. That white waxy film is actually yeast. And that yeast was collected naturally through the air in the vineyard throughout the growing season. That yeast is how natural wines are made in what’s called a spontaneous fermentation, because you don’t have to add any yeast to it. The sugar meets the yeast and it starts fermenting spontaneously. Because the yeast is already present in conventional wines, what they do is they pour sulfur dioxide, which is one of the acute toxins, onto the juice to kill the native yeast, and then they inoculate it with this GMO Lab-cultured yeast.

Now, why do they do that is because these native yeasts are temperamental and they’re fragile and difficult to work with. And you can’t make wine in large volumes with it. It’s too unstable. And so that’s the reason conventional winemakers use these Lab culture yeasts, which have been modified, genetically modified, to be stronger, to withstand a higher alcohol environment. And you can buy them in different flavors. So if you want to buy yeast that tastes like wine from Italy, but it was grown in a chemically farmed vineyard in Central California, you can buy that yeast. Just like you remember during the pandemic, the sourdough baking craze where everybody’s trying to get somebody else’s mother yeast because it had all these complex flavors and so on and so forth. So yeast can be modified, genetically engineered to be different flavors. And so you want some pineapple flavor in your Chardonnay. They have a yeast for that.

And then number three is that they’re additive free. So those are the three standards of a natural wine. As I mentioned, Dry Farm Wines takes that standard a few steps higher. In addition to alcohol that we talked about, we lab test for sugar, and our wines are sugar free. Only way to know if a wine is sugar free is to lab test it. And we’d lab test many natural wines that come back positive for sugar for us, and we reject those. In fact, we’re so selective in the wines that we do sell. Of all the wines that we taste and lab test, we only accept 21% of the wines into our program, meaning the balance of those wines either. 79% of those wines either didn’t agree with our very strict taste protocol. Because if wine is not delicious, I’m not interested in sharing it with you. I want to share you with something that is like super fun and delicious and interesting and that you’re going to love. I know you’ve drank a lot of our wine, so you know that’s true.

And then the balance of them get rejected by lab testing. They don’t meet our criteria, which we also test for sulfur or sulfites. So the US legal limit is 350 parts per million. That’s the allowed. Now, naturally occurring sulfites. And all wines contain sulfite. Sulfites are naturally occurring in anything that is fermented, and many other different types of food products contain sulfite. Most people don’t have an allergy to sulfites. Less than 1% of people suffer from an actual allergy to sulfites. Some people may be sensitive to them, but not an actual allergy. And some of the other symptoms that people get drinking, particularly from red wine, are caused by other things. If we have time, we can talk about, like Histamines and Tyramine and other biogenetic amines cause most of the negative reaction, particularly that women have. But those amines are not found in our wines because the maceration period, the way that they’re made is different from a commercial wine. And so women who generally have a problem drinking red wine don’t have that problem with our red wines. And I know you’ve probably had a similar experience and know what I’m talking about.

So in addition to that, so the legal limit is 350 parts per million of sulfites. Sulfites can be naturally occurring up to 70 parts per million. And our average wine tests out at 32 parts per million, a 10th of what’s allowed in US wines. So if you care about sulfites, that’s interesting to know. We also, if a wine company, we have a bunch of knockoff lookalikes who try to pretend to be natural wine, not natural wine. They’re not organic, but they say they’re sugar free. Or they’ll say zero sugar. There’s never zero sugar in any wine. There is a statistical measurement that qualifies both legally and statistically as sugar free, and that’s 0.5 grams per glass. Ours is way below that because we don’t allow more than 1 gram per liter. So remember, the sugar free definition is 0.5 tenths of a gram. We only allow twice that in a liter. Right. And a liter is actually 250 ml, bigger than a wine bottle. Than your normal wine bottle is 750 and a liter is 1000 ml. So we’re talking about you can’t say zero sugar. That’s not true. But it’s so small that it’s not even statistically measurable. And it certainly legally qualifies and statistically as sugar free. So we’re very concerned about all the things that we’ve talked about. So if I make a choice, I choose not to drink these additives, chemicals and toxins. I choose not to drink sugar. But you don’t have that choice if you’re a consumer. Who cares when you go in and you look at a wine bottle because there’s no transparency there.

Katie: Yeah, and you made so many important points in that, more than I can even break down in one follow up question. But I think it’s really important for people to realize, and we may not have thought of it this way, that most wine is very much a processed food. And because of what you mentioned with there not being accurate labeling, you might be consuming a whole lot of sugar and not realize it. You’re likely consuming much higher alcohol in most conventional wines without realizing it, unless you’re really paying attention to that.

And you guys, like you said, go to great lengths to test these things, to confirm and make sure that everything follows these standards. But outside of that rigorous testing that you guys do, I’ve found it’s almost impossible to even try to identify what might be a natural wine in a wine store because there is no labeling. And the only thing that might be on the bottle is the actual alcohol content, but they’re not even listing the sugar content. How much sugar could someone be consuming without realizing it in the form of these conventional wines?

Todd: It depends on variety. It depends on the color. Like, white wines will be higher than red wines. It can range anywhere from, listen, let me be clear about this. You don’t have to be a natural wine to be sugar free. There are many conventional wines that are sugar free, and there are many that are not. I’ll tell you, from our standards. Last year, we did lab testing on the top 20 selling wines in the United States. Those lists are easy to find. Like all the other list, the top 20 wines. We tested them all. Most of them were domestic. A few of them, including one with the cute animal on it from Australia, is the top 20 selling wine. So we did lab testing. Of the top 20, only two met our standard for sugar. Only two. Now they ranged. We don’t publish any of this because it’s not our goal to this is one thing we haven’t published because we don’t want to name these people out. It’s not our goal to go after people and call them by specific brands and names and we get into this assertion and that assertion and lawsuits. We’re not here to attack anybody.

What we’re here to do is educate and say, if you care about the same thing we care about, and we have integrity and we look the part. We look and act the part. It’s one of the reasons, I think that we’ve been so widely accepted and celebrated in the health community is because when you meet us, you can see that we walk the walk, right? Like we’re doing everything possible to not only drink well, but to live well and to live by the standards that we you know, as you know, many people in the health and wellness business and even supplement business or whatever, they don’t look very healthy. And I’m just like, well, I put as much effort into everything that I reached. I walked that walk myself, except I probably drink too much. But that’s just kind of how it goes because I like drinking.

Now, I do have some guardrails around and I have some rules. One, I don’t drink anything but pure natural wine and lower alcohol. Number two, I don’t drink Spirits. It’s super rare. I end up late night out with some crew, right? And Espresso Martinis come to the table and I might occasionally taste one because I think they taste pretty good. It’s just that I’m just not interested in drinking raw spirits because the alcohol content is too high and I like to drink a lot and I try not to get messy too often, right? So I only drink pure natural wine and lower alcohol and sugar free. I think all those are important to how I feel as a part of my drinking rules.

Number two, I never drink in the daytime. I don’t recommend anybody else does. It’s just a rule I have because for me, I just rather save that for the evening. Number three, I am almost successful at this, but not always. I don’t generally drink without eating because I only eat once a day, as you know. I eat once a day and then I do regular extended water fast. But because I only eat once per day, if I start drinking without eating, I’m drinking in a fasted state. Alcohol is going to have a much more rapid and different effect on me than if I have some food. So I don’t drink on an empty stomach.

And then number four, I generally don’t drink late. So the great news about wine, that’s different from spirits, particularly when you get my age, I’m 62, and so as you age, you have a different relationship with alcohol. Most people believe falsely, especially when they’re young, that, oh, you drink a lot, you have a high tolerance. Well, actually, as you age, your tolerance decreases to alcohol. It doesn’t increase because you’ve been drinking longer, more, it actually decreases. And the great news about wine, as opposed to spirits, is that eventually with wine, you’ll just go to bed. You just go to sleep, right? Where spirits will charge you up. If you’re drinking Espresso Martinis at 11:00 at night, you’re likely to be drinking them at one, right? If you’re drinking natural wine up to 11:00 at night, you’re going to go to sleep. And so for me, I just don’t drink late, I don’t drink during the daytime, I don’t drink on an empty stomach, and I don’t drink anything but natural.

So those guardrails kind of particularly the daytime drinking. I have a lot of customers, one in particular that comes to mind, who I met after I moved to Miami Beach, who lives in New York and Miami. I know he thinks a lot about his drinking, as I think a lot about my drinking, but he is a daytime drinker, so on Saturdays and Sundays I’ll see him at the Beach Club drinking rose all day, rose. And I just can’t do it and feel like I’m functioning correctly. So, you know, that that’s a big one for me.

I also had a recent discussion with a mutual friend of ours who’s been a godfather of the health movement, and his name is Mark Sisson. Mark called me last year. Well, I talked to him just a few days ago, but we often talk, and I ask him on this call. This conversation started last summer. He was in France, and I was vacationing in Italy and going to see wine growers, and he called me up and he said, hey, man, how are you feeling about your drinking? And I was like, I think a lot about it, but I probably drink more than I should. And he said, yeah, I’ve been thinking about it. I don’t know. I was like, okay, well, so then I called, he took a little break from I saw him about a month ago, and we were out on a boat with some other friends of ours, JJ Virgin, and a crowd down in Florida, and I was like, it was drinking going on. It was in the daytime. And then when 5:00 came, around 5:30, I pour myself a glass of Rose, and I said, Can I pour you a glass? And I noticed he wasn’t drinking, and he said, no, I’m taking I took a month off. And I was like, wow, how’s that going? He said, I’m on day 23, what I can tell you is anybody who can tell you the day that they’re on that they haven’t drank, that they’re missing it, right? And so I said, wow. And he said, yeah, I’m going to St. Barts next week and I’m going to drink there because I’m gonna be with a bunch of friends. Cool. So I just called him last week. He had just gotten back, and I said, oh, how did drinking go? And he said, yeah, it was good. I’m having wine with dinner and things got a little we got a little big in St. Barts, but I’m back home and I’m drinking wine with dinner. He said, giving up wine is just not fun for me. I just don’t enjoy it. I like drinking wine with my dinner. Dinner is not complete without wine. I just like it. So I’m going to do it. I just keep it in check. But I’m going to drink.

Look, everybody’s having these conversations. All regular drinkers. There’s not a single regular drinker. I’m talking about somebody drinks daily or near daily. There’s not a regular drinker who doesn’t believe A, they drink too much and B, they should think more carefully about it. Not a single one. But you know what? It’s not that they’re addicted. They’re addicted to the fun that they have drinking. I’m not talking about people who have like serious addiction problems. Those people shouldn’t drink. And alcohol ruins millions of lives every year. And so a lot of people just shouldn’t drink. But if you can keep it in check and it’s fun for you, then it’s part of the joy of your living, then those are the people I’m advocating for. Those are my customers. Those are people I’m trying to help the most, or people who drink the most, still mindfully what we call mindful or conscious consumption just to help people think about don’t; forgive yourself. It’s okay if you drink more than you think. You probably should just be smart about it, right? Just apply as much strategy to it as possible and think through it. That’s how I like to just help people think.

Katie: Yeah. I think for many people, and myself included, it’s part of my 80/20. And for me, it’s not a daily habit just because life is so busy with the kids. I don’t do anything every single day, but I have similar guardrails where I’m not going to drink so late at night that it messes with my sleep because I take my sleep very seriously. I do make sure there’s food, especially protein, in my stomach first, and then I like to anytime I’m going to drink interspersed with a glass of water in between every drink. Because I feel like the problems most people run into are actually from drinking just way too much alcohol in general, in the form of spirits or something that’s extremely high in alcohol. Or it’s actually the dehydration and the lack of water that goes along with it or that they’re accidentally consuming a lot of sugar with whatever drink they’re having. And that’s kind of the perfect storm for feeling really bad the next day.

Whereas I feel like if you like you talk about have conscious consumption and it’s meant to be enjoyed. I also never drink alone. I only want to drink with friends in great conversations and enjoying spending time with people. And I think if you have whatever your guardrails are and there’s very much a way to integrate it as part of your lifestyle, of course, except for the exceptions you talked about of people who absolutely should not drink. But I think having those in mind lets it become a healthy part of someone’s 80/20 where it’s part of their lifestyle in a way that they can enjoy that’s sustainable and that’s not going to destroy their health because they’re conscious of it. I think that’s really the key at the end of the day.

Todd: Yeah, there’s just so much good wisdom in that 80/20 thing I think is a really important concept. One of the travel tips. I travel a lot because of business a lot. And when I go into hotels, I oftentimes have them remove the mini bar contents, meaning the snacks and chips and candy bars and gummy bears and all the things that I can find dangerous in there at 11pm or 12:00 at night after consuming some wine. I’m making a conscious effort to regulate that sugar content in cases where I don’t bring things in the house I don’t intend to consume. As an example.

And so if it’s here, then I’m likely to eat it at some point, usually under the influence of some wine. But that being said, I take the same approach to how I think about sugar as I do how I think about alcohol. I occasionally just last week I was at a hotel in Chicago where we were having a Dry Farm Wines member dinner and I got into some gummy bears one night and they’re really delicious and at that moment they were providing immense joy for me. Right? But it’s just not something I do often, right, but I’ll stick my toe down in that sugar water every now and again just because it’s fun at the moment, but it’s just again about regulation and regulating kind of how I think about my exposure to that toxin. Anyway, there’s always a lot to cover.

Katie: Yeah, well and I think also like you said, you very much walk the walk as well and you’re aware of the fact that alcohol in large amounts is not great for your body but you do many, many things to make sure that you’re also always building your health and you get movement every day. When I’ve traveled with you, I know you’re getting movement every day, you’re getting sunlight every day, you’re getting hydration every day, you have community every day, which I’ve talked about so much on here being a huge factor in longevity and health. And so I feel like you have found the rhythm of fitting that into your lifestyle in a way that is sustainable and that isn’t going to harm your health so much over the long term because you have all these positive factors. You fast, you intermittent fast, you water fast, you do all these things to make sure that your body is still functioning very well. Yes. And you reverse age for anybody watching the video. I’ve watched Todd age backwards for the whole time I’ve known you.

Todd: It’s crazy, right? I attribute most of that to meditation and fasting like crazy. If I look at photograph myself 20 years ago, I actually look younger today or healthier less inflamed. I used to have like the breadhead, what I call, inflammation. And so, yeah, I’m just a huge advocate for sharing tips on wellness with people and just walking the walk. And when people dine with me, they see I don’t eat these things, I don’t eat those things, but I eat this. For me, it’s what I call a wellness and longevity lifestyle, right? So it’s like I just put some rules in place and I basically live around those rules but still enjoying an incredible life of taste. It’s the elimination of the elimination generally of certain food types, you know, around I know you have worn a continuous glucose monitor and I do from time to time to really, what I’m really interested in is maintaining a very stable blood glucose and diminishing the secretion of insulin naturally occurring, of course. I think that the hyperproduction of insulin is a leading contributing cause to inflammation and most chronic diseases that is largely avoidable.

If we avoid certain types of foods or certain types of glycemic responses, meaning the response time to a food that we eat and how it affects our blood sugar and if you want to get really technical about it and you really care about it, then you can wear a continuous glucose monitor and experiment. We talked about, I think, like sweet potatoes and experiment with different food types that have a positive or negative effect on your blood glucose. You mentioned here’s really important. You mentioned a moment ago I talked about not eating, not drinking on a fasted stomach, but you mentioned more specifically, and this is super key, is you need to lay down a foundation of protein and fat and this really stabilizes everything. You can cheat on top of protein and not have nearly the negative response that if you don’t have that fat and protein base to lay that food down on, which mitigates how quickly it mitigates the glycemic response of dangerous foods when it’s sitting on top of a foundation of protein. So really making sure you get your base of protein in when you start eating is super important.

Katie: Yeah. And having worn the continuous glucose monitor, I’ve gotten to experiment and see patterns, for instance, when I get enough sleep, that also really contributes to stable blood glucose and poor sleep will mess with your blood sugar really quickly. Getting morning sunlight really helps with a stable glucose response. Getting protein at meals, making sure you’re just nourishing your body in the times that you do eat makes a huge difference. And I also know from wearing the glucose monitor that your wines do not spike blood sugar.

Todd: Absolutely. No impact on blood sugar or ketone levels. If you care if you’re on a ketogenic diet. And we’re known as the keto wine or the low carb wine, and it’s like there’s no impact on blood sugar or ketone levels, which is for me super important. And that’s kind of how this is how Dry Farm Wines became to be. It didn’t even start out as a business. It started out I was trying to find a better way to drink, right, I want to stop drinking. But it wasn’t my drinking was disagreeing with my other nutritional programming. That was kind of how this started. I was just trying to find a healthier way to drink in a way that was more consistent with the values that I put in my nutritional programming. I hate the word diet, so I think of it as nutritional programming, but yeah, so just always so much to talk about.

Katie: Well, and I’ll link to our other episode as well in the show notes that people can. We got to talk a lot in that one, actually, about meditation, which I think as your friend and someone who’s known you for a long time is also probably part of the reason that you are aging backwards, because I think stress is one of the worst epidemics we have in modern society. And you advocate for meditation with your team, you do it daily. And I think that alone, if everybody just takes that one habit from this podcast episode, that alone helps health so much. And it’s one that it took me years to actually firmly integrate it as a habit. And I can say like I’m sure you would echo it’s completely life changing.

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So whether you drink or you don’t drink, if you can integrate meditation and movement and sunlight and sleep, that’s a huge part of the positive part of 80/20. And I know I talk about those principles quite a bit on here, but you also very much walk the walk. And I know often our conversations drift into that territory when we get to hang out in person into all of things and meditation.

Todd: Meditation is look, stress and cortisol is super damaging, particularly to cardiovascular health, I think. And not only that, but mental health. And so many people have struggled, many of us have struggled with this isolation, the pandemic and the uncertainty, the anxiety. And meditation really is the prescription. It’s the medicine for anxiety. So most of us spend too much time with regrets of the past, but more importantly, with anxieties of the future that aren’t going to happen anyway. We just ruminate on them constantly. And so meditation teaches us to slow the mind down and to really get control of our stress level and to just make everything more quiet. The other thing since we talked that I think is super notable. As I’ve gotten busier and my life has become more global as a result of business around the world and we’ve traveled internationally together, I think one thing that I really unlocked is that now, typically, my daily meditations used to be 25 minutes and then five minutes of gratitude. So it was about a 30 minutes practice most days. Now I’m meditating for twelve minutes, and I find that I can get to the same. Now, I don’t know if this is because I’m so long practiced, but you don’t have to like, if you can take five minutes or ten minutes and just be just quiet your mind, you’ll find, I think, therapeutic benefit in a five to ten minute practice. And I find that I can really reach a meditative state in six or seven minutes, and I go for twelve.

And it seems to be a prescription of therapy that has been effective for me, where I used to meditate for much longer periods. And I think that there’s deeper therapy in longer sessions, for sure, but I don’t always have the time to dedicate to that longer practice. And so people are daunted by meditation. Most people just can’t do it. They just say, I can’t. I can’t stop thinking, well, meditation is a practice, and the more we practice, the better you get at it. Nobody’s going to be great in the beginning, and it takes a while. It’s like any kind of other practice. If you look at the 10,000 hours rule, it takes a long time to meditate for 10,000 hours. Right. So it’s a practice, and I encourage people. I think the two advancements in both my reversal of aging and my wellness overall, the two practices that had the biggest impact on me, have been meditation and fasting. And fasting is another form of meditation, right.

The three day fast that my partner said, I just can’t be around you fasting. I’ll just go find something else to do. It’s tedious. It’s harder for particularly moms. I don’t know how you do it, all right? You’re doing cold therapy, you’re doing sauna, you’re doing this, and you got all these kids running around the house, and they’re at a very all your children at a super active age, right? Super active age. You can’t just put them over and let them take a nap. They’re just past that, right. So they’re constantly in need of emotional and intellectual nourishment. And I don’t know how women, particularly mothers, I don’t know how you do it. Like, it’s enough for me to try to do something. I don’t have any children. This place is very quiet. It’s just in such awe of mothers who have all these distractions, but somehow they’re still able to keep their life together and to advance some practices that will enhance their life and the life of their family. And I’m in awe. I’m coming to your house next month. So they’ll be running around crazy and I’ll be like, I don’t know how you do this.

Katie: Well, I think to your point, with meditation, like you said, I think it’s so valuable to think of it as a practice. And it seems like the more you do it, over time, it compounds and eventually you’re able to more often exist in a state where your baseline is peace and joy. And I think that is the real practice of our lifetimes that we continually get to iterate on. And one of the things that meditation makes even easier over time. But I am very excited to see you next month and as always, our time flies by so quickly. But I have one last question for you, which is if there’s a book or number of books that have been profoundly impactful for you personally, and if so, what they are and why.

Todd: Well, I’ll take it down to just two. There are many books I could recommend. I’ve read one fiction book in the last 20 years and that fiction book was written in a self-help narrative. But most of the books I read are nonfiction and are typically around some sort of technique or self-help. And there are many that I could recommend that I think are great depending upon I also think that book recommendations are somewhat personalized depending upon the stage or the station that someone’s in. If they’re 25, it’s different than at 50, right? And so Mastery is a great book for somebody who’s 25 by Robert Greene, which is about apprenticeship and how you should think about growing your craft and beginning a career.

But I think the two books that I universally recommend, one you’ve Heard me before, which is The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, it’s a very short and quick read, or it’s an audio. And the great thing about the audio is that he narrates the audio. And I think The Power of Now is potently important because what he does I’ll tell you what he doesn’t do, but what he does is he really, in a very short format, easy to read. He helps you understand how the mind works and how we expose ourselves to self-induced trauma. And so he really does a great job of helping you understand how the mind works and how self-inflicted trauma, the injury we impose upon ourselves mentally. It’s a quick read and it’s short, and he does a great job of helping you understand why most of what you think is not useful.

Now, what he doesn’t do a great job of, I think is really the prescription for that. And the prescription for that is meditation. And the prescription for that is a strategy to understand the dynamics of what to do next. And for that, I recommend following up with a book that was written in 1912. It’s a manuscript, not really so much a book. It’s called The Master Key System by Charles Haanel. And the reason, the Master Key system, the way it’s written and the way that it presents it’s super interesting. It was also the foundation and has been cited and noted by two other very famous books that came out later. One is called how to Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. He cites Charles Haanel and The Master Key System as an inspiration for his techniques in that book. And the other book is called The Secret, which is somewhat controversial. Need to go down that wormhole. I don’t agree with everything in The Secret, but she does note that Charles Haanel’s work was the foundation for how she began to think about the secret.

So this book, written in 1912, the Master Key System, is you can only get it online. You wouldn’t find it in the store or anything. Of course, everybody buys the books online anyway. In fact, the whole manuscript is a PDF. You don’t even have to buy it. You can go get the PDF online. But it was a 24 week correspondence course that you got through the US mail. This is a course before the Internet had it been an Internet had been some kind of a funnel, right? But it’s a correspondence course that was delivered weekly through the mail, and it’s a 24 week program. So it doesn’t read like a book. It reads like a set of instructions. And so I think it’s particularly useful in this way in that many books. You won’t disagree with this, I’m sure, many books. It seems that the author got paid by the word, right? There’s just too much I need to know, really how to apply this. I don’t need to know every story around it. I need to know how to apply it. And so The Master Key System, because it was this correspondence course, it’s more of a teaching apparatus than it is a book, although it’s published in the form of a book. Or, as I said, you can get the PDF for free online. So, yeah, those are the two books I recommend to everyone at any age. But then there are other books that deal with specific types of specific types of trauma or challenges or information that people want to gain. But that list is long. Those are my top two.

Katie: I love it. Well, as always, Todd, it’s a joy to talk to you. Thank you so much for the time, for being here today, and for all the work you do and for all the natural wines you bring to the US. For all of us. Thank you so much.

Todd: Thank you. I appreciate you having me. I look forward to seeing you soon.

Katie: Likewise. And thanks, as always to all of you for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of The Wellness Mama Podcast.

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

Thanks to Our Sponsors

This podcast is brought to you by LMNT, which is a company that I have had the chance to invest in and have loved since day one. They just released brand new grapefruit flavor on top of all of their other flavors that I absolutely love, including watermelon which is a kid’s favorite in my house, as well as citrus, raspberry, orange, and a couple of ones that I really like, like mango and lemon habanero as well. As you know, summer brings warmth and sunshine, and with it, energizing opportunities to all of us to move and play and be outside. But it also brings a fair amount of sweat. And if you are a regular sauna user like me, you know that sweat is part of it, as well as if you exercise regularly. And this is why optimal hydration is the key with the right fluid to electrolyte balance, because it isn’t just about getting enough water and fluid, but also making sure our electrolytes are dialed in and you feel the difference when you get it right. So when summer brings the heat, LMNT brings the grapefruit salt flavor to help you enjoy that balance all summer long. You can consider grapefruit or any of their flavors, your ultimate summer salt companion. And I love that they combine sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the clinically studied ratios to make sure that you can stay optimally hydrated even if you are saunaing or exercising or just spending time outside in the summer. Find out more about LMNT by going to drinklmnt.com/wellnessmama. And this is a one time flavor so when it’s gone, it’s gone for good. I highly recommend that you try it!

This episode is brought to you by Apollo Neuro. If you haven’t heard of this, I have been experimenting with and they utilize a new touch therapy experience by creating the Apollo wearable device. It was developed by neuroscientists and physicians to help improve sleep, increase energy, improve recovery, and focus through soothing, gentle waves of vibration that mimic the body’s natural ones. The Apollo wearable helps your body relax and reduces feelings of stress, which helps put you in a state that allows you to have more control over how you want to feel. The Apollo wearable will give you more energy to power through your day and to help you sleep better at night, an effect that I have felt personally. And all you have to do is put it on your wrist and feel the soothing vibrations. It’s basically like a remote control for how you want to feel throughout the day, whether it’s more energetic, less stressed, a better mood, or wanting to feel more calm and relaxed and sleepy.
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Katie Wells Avatar

About Katie Wells

Katie Wells, CTNC, MCHC, Founder of Wellness Mama and Co-founder of Wellnesse, has a background in research, journalism, and nutrition. As a mom of six, she turned to research and took health into her own hands to find answers to her health problems. WellnessMama.com is the culmination of her thousands of hours of research and all posts are medically reviewed and verified by the Wellness Mama research team. Katie is also the author of the bestselling books The Wellness Mama Cookbook and The Wellness Mama 5-Step Lifestyle Detox.

Comments

2 responses to “661: Must Listen If You Drink Wine + Conscious Consumption & Longevity With Todd White”

  1. Lynne Avatar
    Lynne

    What about Italian and French wines? Do they have all these chemicals? I can’t drink most California reds without a headache and am fine with European wines. Thx!

  2. Jeff Weidauer Avatar
    Jeff Weidauer

    Dear Katie – my wife has been a follower of yours for at least 10 years, and she is a huge fan. From time to time she will send me one of your podcasts to listen to, and I’ve always found them informative and well- researched. But the most recent episode with Todd White has left me questioning things.

    The entire episode was an ode to drinking and felt like an hour-long commercial not just for Dry Farms Wine, but for a wine-filled life fueled by the wonderfully healthful products only available from there. Mr. White’s numerous references to his love of drinking and how much he drinks (1-2 bottles?) sound like the self-absorbed justifications of a functional alcoholic in deep denial about his illness.

    I’m not a tea-totaler, but my occasional decision to imbibe doesn’t occupy my thoughts every day. Listening to the two of you share your drinking rules and tips about how to avoid feeling bad the next day was like listening to a couple of frat boys looking forward to their next kegger.

    Alcohol is both a toxin and – according to the WHO – a carcinogen. No amount is healthful, despite the many attempts by the alcohol industry (of which Mr. White is a member) to claim otherwise. It has no place in a healthful diet, but like most people I believe in the “all things in moderation” approach. It’s clear that Mr. White does not, and his glorification of drinking along with his level of consumption got to be a little disturbing.

    I wouldn’t have been any more surprised if you’d had Ronald McDonald on to tout the benefits of the Big Mac. To put it simply, this episode was highly disappointing and, in my view, undermines your credibility as a nutrition expert and health coach.

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