KC Craichy talks with Dr. Leonard Smith about the body’s amazing intelligence about food. Dr. Smith points out the importance of eating foods the body recognizes as food and can use to meet your nutritional needs.

KC: Welcome to Living Fuel TV. I’m KC Craichy with special guest, Leonard Smith, MD. Welcome, Leonard.

Dr. Smith: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

KC: Leonard is a dear friend, and you’ve probably seen him on the cover of some books, and on TV, and radio, and maybe on the Internet, I don’t know. Leonard, you get around pretty well. Again, I say, you’re just a wealth of information, and it’s exciting to do this little series with you where we’re talking about various subjects and bringing in science and concepts that most of you have not heard of. Most people anywhere have not heard of some of this stuff. It’s really, really cool. Today we’re going to be talking about going organic in foods and fresh, and you know how when we manufacture stuff, we harvest it at the peak, right when it’s ripe, freeze dry it, and then put it in a can so it can deliver peak-level nutrients.

Dr. Smith: Exactly.

KC: When people are buying even organic foods, it’s almost 14 days from the time they pick it, and the pick it before it’s ripe, so by the time it gets to the store, there’s degradation in the nutrient levels. Now, it’s really important. But the thing I really want to talk about is the intelligence of the body of food. The people eating all these dead foods, and packaged foods, and things that are not freeze-dried. They’re like in the middle of the store, you buy them in the boxes and in the packages.

Dr. Smith: Right. Right.

KC: We’ve talked about how resveratrol actually provokes a positive genetic expression. It’s not just an antioxidant. Well, I’ve read recently, Vitamin D has similar functions, as does Omega-3, EPA and DHA. So we’re finding that there’s an intelligence between food. Another one I’ll bring up is hard-boiled eggs, you know, CCKs. Is it an enzyme or a hormone, cholecystokinin?

Dr. Smith: Right.

KC: When you eat a hard-boiled egg, you can only eat maybe, two or three, unless something is broken down in your body because your body sends a signal to the brain via these CCKs, and lecithin, I guess, and telling the body, “You can’t eat anymore. It will make you throw up if you actually continue to try to eat it.” But if you scramble the eggs, you can eat a dozen of them. So something is turned off on this coding mechanism. What’s your thoughts on this?

Dr. Smith: Well, I do know that I can give you, at least, part of the physiology. I don’t profess to know everything about anything, frankly. But when fat hits the duodenum, the duodenal lining is what’s releasing the CCK. When it gets in the blood, it goes to the lateral thalamic nuclei of the brain, and that’s the area of satiety. So that’s why, typically when people eat a meal with fat in it, and it’s good to have some fat in a meal, because it does help create satiety.

KC: Well, so does protein and fiber the same way, doesn’t it?

Dr. Smith: Yeah, to some degree, but I think fat may be the most in terms of that. As opposed to just eating a salad, which I’m big on eating salads, but I usually put olive oil and I might put some egg on it or something. The whole idea of eating just plant food, you can do it, but you may still be hungry. Although there’s enough fiber in there, that does help you. The fat is the connection to the CCK. Now why scrambled eggs allow you to eat more, I don’t really know about that. You would think that there would still be the same fat in there. Maybe, it’s spread out in a different way, or I don’t know.

KC: I just find that fascinating. You make a hard-boiled egg, a soft-boiled egg, a poached egg, or an over-easy egg, and you’re limited on how many you can eat. But once you scramble it, or make quiche, or whatever, you can just eat it until the cows come home. Interestingly, carbohydrates, as you know, don’t have a signaling device like that. Protein does, fat does, but when you eat carbohydrates, your brain doesn’t know until you’ve digested it in the portal vein in the bloodstream and it goes to the brain. Then the brain is like, “OK. That’s enough,” and by that time, you’ve over eaten. That’s why they say stop 20 minutes before. Right?

Dr. Smith: The problem with the carbohydrates is if you eat too much, and if they’re too simple, and they get absorbed too quickly, you put out more insulin. Your insulin is going to say around for four or five hours. Two, three hours, maybe four hours after eating a predominantly carbohydrate meal, you could actually have your insulin still circulating, so your blood sugar drops. For some people, a drop in the blood sugar means I’m going to kill to get some more carbohydrates. I used to tell people that all the time. You need to eat a balanced meal, not too much but enough fat and enough protein, along with the carbohydrates, so it’s not fluctuating, bouncing blood sugars. That’s what, I think, causes people to really get addicted to carbohydrates.

KC: You know, essentially, that starts at breakfast, doesn’t it?

Dr. Smith: It does.

KC: People have a grain-based breakfast, with some juice, or stuff like that, and then they crash at 10:00 and they’ve got to have insulin levels pushing it down and they’ve got to have some more carbohydrates.

Dr. Smith: Exactly.

KC: It’s funny. I always say that people always think that breakfast foods have to be pancakes, or waffles, or cereal, or something in that category, but the truth is, lunch foods and dinner foods, a salad with protein would be terrific for breakfast.

Leonard: That’s what I eat, usually.

KC: Or Living Fuel, right? Which is a salad, drinking a salad with protein and so on.

Dr. Smith: Well, that’s what we do. We actually take a bunch of vegetables and blend them up and add the Fuel to it, and have it as a green smoothie, while I’m eating my salad. That’s exactly what I eat.

KC: That sets you up for not being hungry until noon, or until lunch or when it’s time.

Dr. Smith: Right. Everybody’s different. I don’t seem to get that hungry. I actually do fine on two meals a day. I may snack a little in between. There are a lot of individual variations in that.

KC: That’s a very interesting point you brought up, because I believe, personally, that snacking is what’s keeping a lot of people from losing weight. If we talk about insulin being around for three hours?

Dr. Smith: Right. It depends on what they’re snacking on, too.

KC: True.

Dr. Smith: Is it a Snickers or is it a head of broccoli?

KC: Good point.

Dr. Smith: With a little olive oil in it, maybe.

KC: Three hours, let’s say three hours, that’s what I call the fully fed state. You’re operating on what you ate. You’re feeling good, you’re getting blood sugar, all that sort of thing. But from the three hour to the next meal, that’s what I call maximum metabolic mode. Now your body’s having to do what it’s designed to do and fueling the body from stores.

Dr. Smith: Right.

KC: You know, releasing triglycerides. People have fatty livers because they eat all the time, and they never release anything to make the body work. What do you think about that?

Dr. Smith: Well, I think that, basically, it’s not just what you eat, it’s also what you do. Let’s look back 50 to 100 years ago on the farm. People eat a hearty breakfast, but then they’re out there, maybe they ate in the morning and they’re really toiling in the field, or pulling the plow, or doing something, for four, five, six hours. They’re entitled to a bigger lunch. If we’re just sitting around, playing on the computer, or reading a magazine, or in some meeting or whatever, I really think, and science will back me on this, the single, number one, age management technology is?

KC: Portion size.

Dr. Smith: Exactly. Eat 30% less food than you think you need to eat.

KC: We talked about that.

Dr. Smith: Of course, your Fuel and that whole concept works very well into that.

KC: Cut the calories, lower the sugar and glycemic response, increase the broad-spectrum antioxidants, and the healthy fats.

Dr. Smith: Exactly.

KC: It’s a powerful concept. It’s really the thing that the literature just doesn’t deny. There’s like 3,000 studies around that subject that would say it. If you look back 10 years, the caloric intake has increased 25%, on average, in America. So, if the literature says you cut back 30% or 20%, or 40%, and people are up 25%, that just can spell nothing but bad.

Dr. Smith: I remember you probably, at least, four or five years ago, in one of the books that you wrote, too. I read so many articles where they put people on caloric restricted diets, but they miss the other half: Optimum nutrition. That whole CRON, caloric restriction, optimum nutrition, will give the best result. Caloric restriction without optimum nutrition is a disaster. That will actually cause people to slow down their thyroid and their metabolism. That’s how they get in the yo-yo diet thing. “Oh, I really cut my calories, and I did well for a while, and all of a sudden, I gained all the weight back.”

KC: Fascinating stuff, fascinating stuff. Thank you again, Leonard.

Dr. Smith: Oh, you’re very welcome.

KC: Well, we hope you’ve enjoyed it. We wish you super health.

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