The Kick Sugar Coach Podcast
The Kick Sugar Coach Podcast
Wolfram Alderson: Exposing the Hidden Sugars in Our Food Supply
Unlock the secrets that food manufacturers don't want you to know as we sit down with Wolfram Alderson, an authority on hidden sugars and metabolic health. In a riveting conversation, Wolfram takes us through his trailblazing efforts from pushing for California's farmers market legislation to his current battle against the hidden dangers lurking in our food. With a wealth of experience, he expertly peels back the layers of complexity surrounding food data, revealing how consumers and policymakers can become savvy about the covert sugars in our everyday meals. This episode promises to arm you with the knowledge to make healthier choices and advocate for transparency in the food industry.
Are you puzzled by the paradox of gaining weight from non-caloric sweeteners or curious about the metabolic benefits of alternative sweeteners like allulose? This episode tackles these questions head-on, diving into the challenges food companies face in reducing sugar while satisfying our collective sweet tooth. Discover how names like "maltodextrin" and "evaporated cane juice" mask the true sugar content in products, and learn how resources like the Added Sugar Repository can help unveil these hidden additives. We discuss the tactics food manufacturers use to incorporate sugar, exploring its functional benefits and the seductive allure that keeps consumers coming back for more.
Finally, we explore the transformative potential of viewing food as a form of medicine and the shifts within the industry towards healthier offerings. Wolfram shares his insights into the Metabolic Matrix and its role in catalyzing positive changes in nutrition. We also touch on the interplay between health, love, and societal change, drawing from Wolfram's upcoming book on unconditional love. By the end of this episode, you'll be inspired to join us in reimagining a future where informed food choices lay the foundation for health and well-being. Join the movement towards a world where food not only satisfies our hunger but also nourishes our bodies and souls.
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Okay, welcome everybody to the KickSugar Summit. I'm here today with Wolfram Anderson, whose bio is so impressive and so long and spent so many decades that it's almost overwhelming to me to even know what highlights to hit up. But let me just summarize it this way that Wolfram has been involved in food system change. It this way that Wolfram has been involved in food system change, passionate about health and human health and the role that food plays in keeping us healthy and able to connect and have quality connections and relationships and lives, and also the role that processed junk foods play in tearing us down and tearing us apart. And he has two degrees.
FLORENCE:He is executive manager of human and environmental health at the Kuwait Danish Dairy Company, which is the major distributor of food and beverages in the Middle Eastern country, part of the world. He supports a team of scientists committed to accelerating paradigm shifts to tackle the rising rates of non-communicable diseases around the world. He is the CEO of the Hypoglycemia Support Foundation, as well as the Robert Lustig Research Foundation, and he's the founding board chair of the Institute for Love and Time. And it really just goes on. We are in the midst of someone whose passion for this topic isn't new. It's literally, literally decades long. It started in his teens. Welcome, wolfram.
WOLFRAM:Thank you, just one minor correction is Alderson, not Anderson, but a very common mistake. It's easy to confuse the two. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Florence. It's a delight to be here and I really appreciate the work you're doing to educate people about sugar and much more. Thank you.
FLORENCE:So all those processed refined carbohydrates that are everywhere and in everything and have hooked us into very difficult relationships with them. Well, this all started for you when you were literally in your teens and they had passed legislation in California saying that it was illegal to pop up farmers markets in communities, farmers markets and communities, and you took to the streets. I guess I don't know literally if you took to the streets, but you took this in your own hands and pushed for legislation that permitted farmers markets, especially in communities that we now know as food deserts, where they had literally no access to quality foods. What inspired you to do that at such a young age?
WOLFRAM:Well, I owe it to my mother, who cultivated a sense of social conscience and environmental conscience into my brother and sister and myself. We participated in the first Earth Day and I got involved in my social change career at an event that my mother invited me to. So there were that was, you know, when I was still a teenager, and that just led me down a path ultimately to my first full time job in social service, which was for the Interfaith Hunger Coalition in Los Angeles, organizing the very first certified farmers markets in California, which were all in low income areas, or you know what we call food deserts. Today they're more like food swamps than food deserts. There may be food there, but it's not really healthy food, and so these, of course, are still big problems.
WOLFRAM:But I was just lucky to be there at Ground Zero and work with and for some amazing leaders in the food system change space. We received funding under President Carter, who actually provided a hefty range of funding for programs in the food system change space. So I got to go around the country and visit programs and look at models, not only for farmers markets, but part two of that project was urban agriculture, developing urban farms in the inner city. So it was just very lucky and I caught the fire of food system change and I've done many other things in my social change career, but I keep coming back to home base, if you will, which is the food system change movement and now what I call metabolic health and nutrition, to be more specific.
FLORENCE:Incredible and you were like 19 years old while you were doing all this work.
WOLFRAM:Yes, 19 years old, back in 1978, when I first entered the field and just, I'm a glutton for punishment.
WOLFRAM:I just love the work and it is challenging work and I think it's multi-generational work. I'm not going to, you know, try to paint a pretty picture. We're still in many ways, in the dark ages, for example, when it comes to food data. You know the information about our food is still very much, uh, in the dark and that. So I co-founded a company called perfect, a food data science company, and we've been in stealth mode probably the world's longest stealth mode for any company uh to develop a whole new platform of data food data tools that consumers as well as industry and government can use to get insights into food, not just look at the data, but really develop a sense of knowledge, you know, to be able to use the data in a very helpful way, and so I can talk more about that. But essentially, you know this is the next big thing I think in the world of food system change is being able to capture some of the data out there. That's still very much in the dark.
FLORENCE:Like what, like like. When I think, when I'm hearing you talk, my brain is saying, well, what more is there to know? We know multi, we know that the macros, we know the micros, we have all these essential nutrients we like, like. What more is there to know about food?
WOLFRAM:Well, let's start with sugar. How many kinds of sugar are there? Tell me 78. 78. Dr Lustig wrote a book called 56 Names of Sugar. That's a nice start, but in the seven years that I've been working for Perfect, we've identified 262 names for added sugar that are currently in the food supply, but actually 600 names for sugar that are floating around in the food supply that aren't necessarily identified as added sugars on the label. So there are literally hundreds of added sugars in the food supply.
WOLFRAM:How can any normal human being, when they're going shopping, be able to identify all of those sugars? It's practically impossible, unless you have, you know, you might be a genius and have a photographic memory and you've had access to the database of sugars that we've built, but otherwise almost impossible. I can't tell you how many times and I'm sure many of your viewers have purchased a product they look for added sugar on the label. But then you get home and you realize, oh gosh, there's sugar in here in some form or another. Organic evaporated cane juice almost sounds like a health food tonic, you know, but it's. You know glucose and fructose. Just, you know, just like so many other forms of sugar Agave syrup, everybody sort of has their favorite sugar that they feel is like hands off, you know, like honey, bees made it, so it must be okay or agave it comes from a cactus, but the actual chemical structure of these sugars is pretty much the same. So we had to create, actually a sugar matrix. We had to create a vessel to capture all this information in. We call that the sugar matrix. Developed that with Dr Lustig and Dr Andreas Kornstadt, who's my co-founder at Perfect, and so the point is that's just one element in the food supply and when you apply a no added sugar filter using our perfect technology, you eliminate 74% of all foods and products on the shelf.
WOLFRAM:So how are you able to do that? If you go on to Amazon or to any supermarket, they're putting sugar into things where you normally wouldn't be looking Meat vegetables, nuts. They're putting sugar into things where you normally wouldn't be looking meat vegetables, nuts. They're putting sugar on sugar, so you get sugar on raisins, you know. The list goes on. So that's just one of 10,000 added ingredients in our food supply. You can find them on the generally regarded as safe quote, unquote, or everything added to food ephos. These are lists of you know, additives that are put into our foods and actually finding out information about what.
WOLFRAM:Not just knowing the names of these ingredients that are added to our food, but what are the metabolic impacts? You know, just seeing added sugar on the label tells you, well, there's added sugar there, but what is the metabolic impact? There are actually some sugars that your body does not metabolize, like allulose, which is a rare sugar which is now emerging as a leading alternative to sugar, and allulose isn't metabolized by the body, but it has some special qualities it actually lowers and stabilizes your blood sugar over a period of time. It pulls the excess glucose out of your blood sugar. So there's sugars like that that are coming around the corner that may actually be good for us in a sense. So, again, how are you going to know the difference between these sugars and the sugars that are actually causing us harm?
WOLFRAM:It's almost impossible to know, and you know I don't want to say it's a conspiracy, but it certainly has been advantageous to the processed food industry that this data is not easy to access and understand, and so that's what Perfect is dedicated to is just making those kinds of complex decisions where there's a lot of information that you need to know in order to buy a given product. How do you do that without using big data and so? And then you turn to tools like the USDA branded food database. You know we were the only country in the world the US that has a national food database. Country in the world the US that has a national food database. But we've discovered by ingesting all of that data that a good percentage of it is wrong. Many products don't declare that they have added sugar or there are mistakes in the data. So, even though I think we should feel proud of the fact that the US has the most sophisticated national food database, not everyone is paying attention to how good that data is and how useful it is to us.
FLORENCE:Incredible. So really, what you're looking at that is not the constituents of an apple. You're looking at processed products and what's actually in the packaged products.
WOLFRAM:That's right. I mean processed foods are, you know, especially ultra-processed foods, and these ultra-processed foods is a term that comes from a food classification system called NOVA, which was developed by Professor Carlos Montiero and folks at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, been adopted by the World Health Organization, the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, been adopted by the World Health Organization. But we know that these ultra-processed foods, especially as a group, are very problematic when it comes to metabolic health, and so we need these tools to help us understand not only what's on the nutrition facts label and if you hold up a typical product like this one here, the ingredients are very small and hard to read. If you're in a supermarket and you're making a decision because you have to buy something to feed your family in the next half an hour and you're coming home from work, or even when you're online, it's just very hard to process all this information. So we need to know not only the ingredients and what's in the products, but ultimately what their metabolic impact might be.
FLORENCE:And to play devil's advocate here. Why can't we just eat whole foods raw from? Why do we need to even worry about packaging and labels and ingredients?
WOLFRAM:Well, that's true, and if you can just eat whole foods, that's a wonderful strategy. Of course, when I mentioned, when we apply these filters, we filter out 74% of the food supply. What do you think's left? It's mostly whole foods, but there are many processed foods that have value to society A bowl of ice cream at a birthday party, or a slice of bread which is a processed food, etc. There's many forms of processed foods which has just become part of modern life, and while we might just want to say I wish processed foods will go away tomorrow, it isn't going to happen and they're very much a part of the global diet. And I'm in a country I live in Kuwait now and there are actually laws requiring foods to have to be shelf stable for nine months, that we have extreme temperatures up to 120 degrees here and so you know foods can spoil just from the getting going from the cooled truck to into the market in those matter of minutes, just because of the extreme temperatures. So there are some real values to foods that have a shelf life, which are preserved, which are prepared so that you can reach into your cupboard and have something to put that delicious cheese onto or whatever. So, yes, you're right. I mean, whole foods absolutely are the best strategy, but processed foods are here to stay. They're just not going to go away overnight.
WOLFRAM:So is there a methodology that we could apply to transforming processed food to be metabolically supportive instead of metabolically deranging? And the answer that we've come up with is yes, and that's called the metabolic matrix, which is a science-based methodology. We just published a major paper in Frontiers of Nutrition it's all on metabolicmatrixinfo, and it basically provides the methodology for the food industry to transform portfolios to be metabolically supportive. And that's why I'm here in Kuwait working with KDD, because it's the only company in the world right now which is not only willing to admit there's a problem, but come up with a methodical, science-based solution for transforming the portfolio, not just coming up with new recipes, because that's sort of easy.
WOLFRAM:Take the sugar out. I say easy, but when you take the sugar out, people actually don't generally, generally, want the product without any sugar. We've become accustomed to sweet, so what do you replace that sugar with? And so the metabolic matrix, you know, addresses that, and we've done quite a bit of research on which of the sweeteners have the least metabolic harm, and some of which I already mentioned allulose, which has actually some metabolic benefit. Right of which I already mentioned allulose, which has actually some metabolic benefit.
FLORENCE:Right Although I will say with allulose is that for those of us who fall on the sugar addiction spectrum, where even the tiniest bit of added sweetness, concentrated sweetness, can set off trick, trigger cravings and we just don't get the freedom and the peace that we're looking for when we break up with the other forms of sugar. So just heads up on that. Maybe some people can get away with a little and maybe benefit from it.
WOLFRAM:The research does show that even if there's no calories in a sweetener, your endocrine system may still read that as a sugar bolus and therefore act as if it is sugar, and so that's absolutely true. And there's no substance in our food supply that gets a free pass, and we're constantly having to look and reevaluate these ingredients and see what their effects are. And the research on sweeteners is still very young in the field. There is quite a body of research that's looking at some of the older school sweeteners which you know been around for a while. There's more research on them that they have negative metabolic impacts on the gut and on the endocrine system. We still gain calories from non-caloric sweeteners. Doesn't make sense. If there's no calories, we still gain weight. So you know there's some really interesting dynamics going on there, and so that research is is ongoing.
FLORENCE:Unfolding. With respect to additives in products. I had heard somewhere along the line that manufacturers can call sugar natural flavors. Is that true?
WOLFRAM:call sugar natural flavors. Is that true? Well, what is true, yes, is that various forms of sugars hide inside of other ingredients and they may have very complicated names. So, when you look at dextrose, and there's various forms of dextrose, there's actually some forms of dextrose which are like polydextrose, which actually are fiber. But again, depending on your metabolic system, the way in which you metabolize those substances, If you're like me, I'm diagnosed type two, so I'm very sensitive to even some of these sugars, forms of sugar, including all carbohydrates which metabolize as sugar in my body, and so many of us have sensitivities. Now, just because you know we've grown up in this food system that's filled with ingredients which have essentially fostered an obesogenic, you know, a pandemic of metabolic diseases, and so we're, many of us are still very sensitive to even some of these perhaps less least harmful sweeteners or sugars.
FLORENCE:Totally, totally 200,. Is there a place where we could have a look at that list of those 200 plus sweeteners?
WOLFRAM:Yes, so on the Robert H Lustig website, as well as the Hypoglycemia Support Foundation website, there's something called the Added Sugar Repository, and we provide a list of 262 sugars there, and later this year, perfect will be opening up a platform free to the public where you can apply filters on both added sugars as well as sweeteners that were developed in collaboration with Dr Robert Lustig. So we've engaged the leading scientists in the world to help develop some of these filters and apply them, but right now you can find the list of 262 sugars on both the Robert H Lustig as well as the Hypoglycemia Support Foundation website.
FLORENCE:Amazing. I'm really intrigued by that because I would have thought that I was more or less familiar with all of them, but I'm going to find 200 plus that. I'm really intrigued by that because I would have thought that I was more or less familiar with all of them, but I'm going to find 200 plus that I'm not.
WOLFRAM:You'd almost have to be superhuman. I mean, I couldn't recite the whole list. That's why we had to create a list, because if you're going to create a filter to filter out added sugar, the first thing you need is a list, and we thought we could just go to a local university or. But the way most scientists work is they focus on one or a very small set of sugars. Dr Lustig has done quite a bit of research on fructose, but fructose is a molecule that's found within many other types of sugars and he when he wrote 56 names of sugar, that was his best take on how many sugars there were at the time.
FLORENCE:Incredible, incredible. And do you think that companies are using these other very obscure ones that we've never even heard of or didn't even know existed to try and hide sugars in food so that we don't detect it? Because we're getting smart and savvy? Or is it just they're more concentrated, they're cheaper, like why is there so many different forms of added sugar now?
WOLFRAM:Well, I mean sugar sells. Let's start there. Sugar sells, but also sugar has some very interesting characteristics in terms of food. It's a preservative, it's a stabilizer, it's an emulsifier. It has many qualities which make processed food easier. It has many qualities which make processed food easier and it's become so ubiquitous that it's found not only on the ingredient list on the food label, but within ingredients. It can be found there and it's also being found now in processing, which is kind of interesting.
WOLFRAM:I won't name the company, but there is a company that made oat milk and they claimed no added sugar, but what they had been doing is malting the oats to make the sugar pop out of the matrix of the carbohydrate in the oats and increase the sweetness. So they had seriously increased the amount of sugar in the product, not by adding it but by processing a carbohydrate, and of course, many sugars are actually derived from carbohydrates to begin with. So they just simply added a processing step and added a significant amount of sweetness to the product, which gave them an advantage to other companies that were selling oat milk, which is not very sweet and, for many, not very palatable without some level of sweetness, and so this processing is a part of that hidden, that black box of the food supply, that there's a lot going on behind the scenes that many people aren't familiar with and that do affect the sugar levels as well as other factors. For example, you've probably heard of carrageenan, which is a popular ingredient. You might find it in nut-based milks.
WOLFRAM:Totally Start off as Irish moss, a very innocuous sounding ingredient. You know it doesn't. Hey, that sounds good. It's just a plant-based solution. But during the processing of carrageenan under high temperatures and pressures, things happen to that substance that break it down and make it harmful. And so ingredients start off perhaps healthy but along the way through processing end up being harmful to our metabolic health end up being harmful to our metabolic health.
FLORENCE:Oh my gosh, that's absolutely fascinating. I also heard that manufacturing companies, if they buy ingredients that have added sugars in them and they're just buying that substance to put it in their product, they don't actually have to list what people downstream had put into their products. Is that true? What people downstream had put into their products Is?
WOLFRAM:that true? Yes, I mean when many companies buy ingredients from ingredient suppliers and those ingredients will come with a specification sheet, and the specification sheet often will for many ingredients. There's some sugars included in that ingredient, again, because it's a stabilizer, an emulsifier, you know it just. Sugar has some very interesting crystalline qualities. Anybody who has had ice cream understands that there's something special about ice cream. Yes, it's got fat, you know cream in it and maybe some other flavors, but that sugar is what suspends it all in a magical treat that, you know, most of us have imbibed in. So you know it's just. But these ingredients are often hidden in, these components of ingredients are hidden much further back in the supply chain.
FLORENCE:If, if you will, and they don't make it necessarily onto the label right, they don't make it onto the label. It looks like well, we didn't add any sugar, not on our. In our factory we bought ingredients that have added sugars, but we don't have to declare them yeah, which is pretty deceptive.
FLORENCE:Um, for people who are trying to be savvy, and I have to tell you, I've had about two or three waves of gratitude. My body's like, oh, thank God, I'm going to have to read those. I truly only eat whole foods. I cannot think of a product that I eat that has a label right Like it's just so simple the way I eat, and I'm just thinking, oh, thank God, I don't have to navigate or wonder or be a part of this whole culture malfunction where mouth culture malfunction, where there's all this deception and complication and anyway. So for anyone who's kind of feeling like I am, it's perfectly okay, just eat whole foods. It's there's. There's a world of wonderful flavors that we will fall in love with when we get unhooked from all the process stuff. So talk to us a little bit more about the metabolic matrix. What do you mean by that?
WOLFRAM:So the metabolic matrix is a framework that was developed here in Kuwait with KDD and a team of scientists, including Dr Robert Lustig, who donated a year of his time along with four other scientists a year of his time along with four other scientists Dr Tim Harlan, who had an Emmy as a chef before he became an MD and now runs the most amazing culinary medicine program in the US. Dr Rachel Gao, who is a neuropsychologist and specialist in fats and also in children's brain health. And Dr Andreas Kornstadt, who's a food data scientist, PhD in computer informatics. And myself, and we basically came up with 39, just for this particular application, 39 evidence-based criteria that could be used as a tool to transform food and beverage portfolios to be metabolically healthy. So these criteria, you know you start at the top with harm reduction, such as getting the sugar out, but, like I said, people won't buy ice cream with no sweetener in it, so you have to have solutions every step of the way for the ingredients you take out or change. You need a healthy ingredient or ingredient that causes less harm to put in its place. And so this is a matrix of criteria, and this idea of criteria being applied to food is sort of a new thing from the technology perspective how do you apply these complex sets of criteria? And so that's detailed very much in the Frontiers of Nutrition paper, and the reason that we're sharing it with the world is because we don't believe that any one company can solve this problem alone. And so I participate in a number of global forums, including the World Economic Forum and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and a number of other forums, and sharing this information because you consumer to industry, to government, to academia, et cetera.
WOLFRAM:And so the tools that are provided within the metabolic matrix, including the technology that supports it, provided by Perfect, accomplishes that goal and it's transparent. It's not some proprietary solution. For example, the Nestle Corporation a couple of years ago, they had an expose in the Financial Times where internal memo was leaked and they were talking about how more than half their portfolio wasn't healthy. A couple of years later, just in the last few months, they released essentially an evaluation by the I think it's called Healthy Star or Health Star rating showing that less than half of their portfolio was healthy, and they touted a new level of transparency, and that's very good. I support that and I think it's a good step forward for companies like Nestle to do that, but what we need is a transparent system that transforms the portfolio, and so we need to see the evidence-based tools that are being applied to fix the problem.
WOLFRAM:Not just that there's a problem, and so that's what the metabolic matrix is about, and it applies the same criteria that can be used via the Perfect platform to cut out added sugars. For the hypoglycemia support foundation, we created a very complex filter, because people with hypoglycemia or low blood sugar are very sensitive to many ingredients not just sugars, but processed carbohydrates in general, and so how do you screen those substances out of the food supply? It's very hard, because some products will just say corn on the label, but is it corn flour? Is it puffed corn? You know what kind?
FLORENCE:of corn, is it.
WOLFRAM:Yeah, corn starch and of course, those you know, all carbohydrates will spike your glucose to some extent. But obviously the more you process those starches into powders etc. Uh, the much more of a glucose spike you'll get in your blood sugar. And of course, when that's going on all day long, you start to develop these chronic conditions reactive hypoglycemia and so on which are really precursors for type 2 diabetes and other metabolic diseases. Which is why the work of the Hypoglycemia Support Foundation, which is over 40 years old and started by a woman, roberta Ruggiero, who you know went through her own travails to discover, after, you know, a lot of drugs and mistaken medical procedures, that she had low blood sugar and she just needed to change her diet. So it's a great indicator. But the point is that you know it would be wonderful if it was just added sugar we have to worry about, but there's so many forms of processed carbohydrates in the diet now too, we have to watch those. And again, if we focus on whole foods, that's great. But If we focus on whole foods, that's great. But who doesn't like a cracker or a slice of bread or these carbohydrates? Just get in front of us at work, whether you're going out to dinner, when you're at a family gathering, et cetera. These processed carbohydrates are everywhere, and so we need tools to be able to filter through those, and the metabolic matrix provides a methodology for doing that.
WOLFRAM:Right now, it's a very sophisticated, well-constructed hypothesis, and so we're setting out to prove that hypothesis. First, you publish a methods paper, like we did in Frontiers of Nutrition, but we're also conducting a clinical trial here in Kuwait on a no added sugar ice cream. Does it in fact, not spike your blood glucose like a regular ice cream does? And you know, if you're fortunate, you've been able to give up ice cream in your life, that's wonderful too. But you know, a lot of people still include those indulgent foods, at least on occasion. And if you do want to have some ice cream, wouldn't it be great if it didn't cause a spike in your blood sugar or contribute to your, you know, whatever metabolic condition you might be struggling with?
FLORENCE:That's incredible, it's almost mind-blowing to me. Actually, the metabolic matrix, to summarize it is actually your scientific best effort to support these major food engineering giant companies to reformulate their product line with the metabolic health of humans in mind, and we know that some of these companies have attempted this, and we know that some of these companies have attempted this. I remember when the female leader of the Pepsi-Cola company came in, she actually tried to do this and they rolled out some healthier products. But really the pushback was are people buying it? Are we making money? Right, the pressure from shareholders was very nice You've got a bleeding heart for people's health, but really we're a corporation here to make profit and if it's not making profit, we need to let the product go.
FLORENCE:But if all of these companies were being invited at the same time to say this can't feel good to you either, you need to go to bed at night. You see, we know what these ultra processed packaged foods are doing to humans now across the world. The data is undeniable and you must care enough. You have to care enough as a company to figure out how can we not throw the baby out with the bathwater, how can we keep some of these packaged products in the marketplace for purchasing, being realistic about the fact that that demand for those products are not going to just drop off overnight. But how can we make them more metabolically safe for people to consume so that the rising rates of diabetes and depression and hypoglycemia and cancer and anxiety and heart disease and all of those things that are linked, all of those conditions that are linked to our overconsumption of these processed carbohydrates, can start to maybe drop down and you can be a part of the solution and you've made it possible for them scientifically to figure. It's like you've carved a path forward for them.
WOLFRAM:Exactly. I mean Dr Lustig say you know, why don't you show the processed food industry how to change? And I think early on the thinking was well, that's not our job. We can tell you what's wrong. You guys fix it. It's your problem, right, right, but that didn't happen. Again, it would be nice if that had happened. It's never going to happen. Yeah, it didn't really happen.
WOLFRAM:And what happened was you used the term reformulation. What we're doing is reengineering. What's the difference? Reformulation is essentially new recipes. You make an ice cream without sugar. That's good, but what was your methodology? What was the criteria? What was the science behind it? That's what reengineering is. And so you can replicate that exercise. You can share that information with other companies. Normally, companies say, well, that's what re-engineering is, and so you can replicate that exercise. You can share that information with other companies. Normally, companies say, well, that's our proprietary approach to making ice cream or whatever. We're not going to share that. And so reformulation is behind the scenes. They change the recipes, but they don't tell you how and when or what. They're just recipes and recipes.
WOLFRAM:Again, I love recipes. I'm a cook myself. I love coming up with new recipes. But the difference is do you write it down? Do you quantify it? Are you able to share it? You know that probably your grandmother, your mother, made a recipe and they give you the recipe, but how come it's never quite the same as the way they made it? Well, maybe they had their own little conspiracies and they want you to keep coming back to mom or grandma for that recipe. And you know, it's probably the same in the food industry. Methodology, a systematic approach, a big data approach to solving this, versus just individual one-offs. These are scalable and replicable approaches. That's the difference, that's the shift.
FLORENCE:You know what? We should literally have annual awards. We have Academy Awards, We've got Nobel Peace Prize Award. We should have awards for people that are doing gobsmacking innovative work in the space of trying to turn this global health crisis that's just ever escalating around, and you literally should have a Nobel Prize for that. Because when you think about what you're doing is you're basically saying, okay, we're going to do all the damn work for you Pepsi and Nestle and Coca-Cola and all whatever Nabisco, all those companies we're going to, we're going to carve a path forward, all of us together. You're still going to be able to make these products, You're still going to be able to make profit and people will still have the convenience of packaged products that are easy to make, affordable, shelf stable, interesting and flavorful and right. So we're trying to find how do we find a way forward that doesn't we don't get all ourselves killed. Well, everyone can still play a role in the solution. It's it's really genius role in the solution.
WOLFRAM:It's really genius. Well, fortunately, you know, for me it's always been about being part of a movement. The Metabolic Matrix was developed in conjunction with a team of scientists. I started my career as a part of the food system change movement. We are shifting in the last 10 years from what they call better for you products, which was again more about reformulation and marketing and all kinds of things. Better For you wasn't always better for you, but now we're shifting to something called food as medicine.
WOLFRAM:Now we're getting serious because the American Heart Association, the Rockefeller Foundation and a number of others folks at UC Davis, many parts of the country and part of the world are focused on this idea that we can apply the same science and methodology of medicine to food and not let's go beyond harm reduction. We need to do the harm reduction, we need to get the harmful elements out of our food supply, but we can actually engineer foods which are medicine, which can transform our health. So I work with Dr Stephanie Peabody. She's a neuroscientist who teaches at Harvard and is based in South Florida, and she's working with some local folks that are trying to make a healthier broccoli. So you can start even at the level of whole foods. Because, you know, many of our whole foods today are hybrids that have been developed over decades and centuries and there's lots of research to show that the micronutrient levels of even whole foods has gone down and down and down, because we're breeding for other characteristics, not for nutrition, not for metabolic health.
WOLFRAM:But how long does that broccoli stay fresh? How long does the tomato's skin break when it's packaged? So that was a huge shift in tomatoes. Who doesn't remember, if you're old enough, the tomatoes that came from your garden and had a thin skin? They rotted fast, but boy were they delicious. And then they got the tomatoes you get in the supermarket today, which have a thick skin. They're harvested way before they're ripe for a variety of reasons. I mean, they got to get to the shelf, but we bred out a lot of the flavor and also the nutrients, and so the same methodology food is medicine is just at the beginning, but is really exploding right now in so many different ways. So I think we're going to see a decade from now, two decades from now, that the pharma will be spelled with F-A-R-M-A, ph yeah, instead of PH, because we're going to see the food emerging as our source of health versus a source of disease, and that's that's a whole movement and I'm just really proud and delighted to be a part of it.
FLORENCE:Wow, wow, wow. Yeah, this, I mean this. In my little world, I work with people who identify as being, you know, sugar addicted or you know refined carbohydrate addicted to me addicted, or you know refined carbohydrate addicted to me all refined carbohydrates or sugar, they're the same, whether it's ground wheat or fructose taken from fruit and turned into juice, or if it's like white sugar, like it's all.
FLORENCE:It's just sugar in the body.
FLORENCE:So to me it's all we're really talking about processed, ultra processed carbohydrates that are turned into concentrated sweet, sweetened or powdered glucose, like toast and whatever, and it's a very you're right.
FLORENCE:I mean I hate to admit it, but you're probably right. There's very a small percentage of people that are ready to say I'm just going to be a whole food woman, I'm going to be a whole food man, I'm just not going to eat packaged foods or like massively minimize them, and that's probably a small percentage of people have the bandwidth or the interest in doing that. But there are millions and millions of people who do want to eat better and are looking for the kind of path forward that you're co-creating with scientists and food giants. And so it's really incredible and I think you're right the 20 years from now, the whole generation coming up that are, you know, diabetic in their, in their elementary school. I mean, we literally had a child die, not die, sorry, have a heart attack in elementary school in Canada. Like those are more and more stories of young, young children being impacted, so much younger than older generations, and they're waking up and they going to, they're going to want these sort of solutions in place.
WOLFRAM:Yeah, I mean this will seem at some day where we're at now. It will be seen like the dark ages to people in the future, because in the future they'll just say of course food is is medicine and prevention the. You know, prevention is in part of the cure, it is the cure and prevention isn't part of the cure. It is the cure. And the only medicine for your mitochondria is food. There are no drugs that will fix your mitochondria from dysfunctioning, and so you've got to fix that at a cellular level, and it won't come from a drug or a medical procedure, it's going to come from your food and I'll be the first to take the drug or the medical procedure if I need it. I'm not anti-medicine at all, it's just that so many of our conditions could be avoided if we just get the food right. And for me, you know, being diagnosed with type two, I grew up in an obesogenic, you know, ultra processed food environment. It may be too late for me to reverse type two diabetes, but it's not too less too late to to at least find some form of status quo, because we have we have an interesting convergence right now that prevents and presents another level of challenge.
WOLFRAM:You know, in the last two decades we reached a threshold in history where non communicable diseases became the leading cause of death versus communicable diseases. That happened in the last two decades. But what's happened now is we have these pandemics of communicable diseases. You know these plagues, whatever you want to call them, and we're finding that there's a tremendous intersection between these communicable diseases which are reprogramming our cells. You know COVID-19, you know attacking your proteins and there's been a lot of research showing that not only were people with metabolic disease at the highest risk to die from COVID, but there was also a lot of triggering in our cellular matrix by the COVID mechanism, which triggered either new diagnosis of metabolic disease, type 2 diabetes especially, or triggered a whole other level of metabolic dysregulation in our bodies. And we don't fully understand the relationship yet.
WOLFRAM:But Dr Lustig has talked about the eight subcellular pathways to metabolic disease and that's really where the story is in terms of the science, that it's not just your liver that's being attacked or other major organs, but it really at the cellular level. These foods and these organisms are now converging and you know this state of inflammation, for example, is right at the core of it. Covid-19 is all about inflammation and so are these metabolic diseases, and so it's really a tsunami of inflammation that's hitting us and an interaction of communicable diseases and non-communicable diseases. So we need foods that are helping us to be immune to those conditions, but also help us survive those conditions, because we may not figure out how to prevent you from catching a disease, but we can help your immune system fight it off and survive it, and so there's some pretty good evidence that paying attention to your metabolic health is probably one of the best things you can do to do that.
FLORENCE:Right, right. And while you're sorting out the food giants and the packaged products in our stores, the 74% that have added sugars in there of some form one of 268 forms of sugar somewhere in the process, you know we can, we can eat whole foods. While they, they make those improvements and I know that for me. I got COVID in. I went to Mexico at Christmas and early January. I have not been the same and I'm a whole food woman and I'm active and I think I'm in actually perfect health. Like there's no, no, no, all my, everything's good, right and I feel good, but I have not been the same since and I remember thinking that's so weird. Like you know, I'm metabolically really healthy, but it really it's. I'm still three, four months later. My lungs aren't the same, my energy's not the same. There was some sort of a metabolic hit.
WOLFRAM:Yes, it's the subcellular reprogramming of our cells and there's a lot of evidence. That's what COVID does and I got COVID probably several times, but I also got COVID in Mexico over Christmas.
FLORENCE:No way.
WOLFRAM:It was two Christmases ago, okay. Saddest Christmas I? No way that is Christmas. It was two Christmases ago, okay, that is Christmas I ever had. I went to visit my family in Southern Mexico and got COVID and instead of, you know, spending Christmas and New Year's with them, I was quarantined in my hotel room.
WOLFRAM:So, not fun, but then, like you said, it really upsets the apple cart, the apple cart being your metabolic system.
WOLFRAM:And, like I said, there's studies are just beginning to come down with the long COVID and many other sort of not just the effects of COVID, by the way, but also the vaccines and I'm pro vaccine.
WOLFRAM:You know I grew up with vaccines and to me they prevented me from getting some major diseases. But you know, we, the pharmaceutical industry, had to come up with solutions very fast and we didn't have longitudinal data to show what some of the vaccines do. And so there has been some serious after effects of the vaccines as well. And that isn't an anti-vaccine message, it's just simply we need to better understand the interactions of these organisms with our metabolic health, but also the drugs that we use to help us survive them. And so, again, there's Dr Keith Berkowitz has started a national organization with a group of doctors to look at some of these long COVID cases and to understand what's going on there. And so we're still learning a lot, but we know no matter what, our metabolic health is sort of primary to preventing, surviving and Recovering from yes, preventing surviving and recovering from yes, recovering from right, right.
FLORENCE:So the bottom line is this is that added sugars of all forms are extremely detrimental to our metabolic health and our metabolic health when that gets dysregulated, damaged, compromised, can lead to all. They're linked to all of the modern non-communicable diseases. You name it, it's linked. So if we just get back down to the basics, we need to protect our metabolism, our metabolic health, and we do that by eating whole foods, avoid the processed, packaged foods.
FLORENCE:But know that men like Wolfram and scientists from around the world are working towards a solution and hopefully, company by company, we'll see what he's doing and say I want to be a part of that and that in the future, our future generations will have access to convenient foods and packaged foods that are protective, if not supportive and enriching of human health. That is a beautiful vision and thank you so much for all your hard work. I can't believe there's not like five of you, all the hats that you wear and all the work that you do on all that you're accomplishing. I'm sure you will die a man going. I just packed five lifetimes into my days.
WOLFRAM:Yeah, I feel blessed and I have no fear of death whenever it's time for me to go. I've been very blessed to be able to do this work. It hasn't been easy, but it's all of our work. It's the work we have to do together to evolve as a species, and I'm just delighted to be part of it. I think if anybody, if you look into anything, I do visit metabolicmatrixinfo my bio's there so if you want to learn about my other work, you can find all my other links. But I think the Metabolic Matrix is sort of the one gift to humanity. That I feel is one of my greatest contributions to be part of this team that developed it and then to be here in Kuwait and apply it in a very real world setting. So please check that out. There's a lot of really good information on the site and links to other projects that I'm involved in.
FLORENCE:Thank you and we will absolutely post that link and I just wanted to to end our interview by giving you an opportunity. You were, you were about to publish a book. I think it's later, later in the fall, so actually kind of when the summit's going to air, and if there's one way that we can thank you. So anyone who's listening to this interview and is deeply grateful for the work this man is doing on behalf of all humanity, especially future generations, join me in making a point of writing this down so you track down his book and support him. So tell us about the book and the name of the book and where we'll be able to find it.
WOLFRAM:The name of the book is Radiate Perpetual Love. It essentially provides 108 radiances, which are essentially 108 revelations, quotes and reflections on unconditional love. And why the unconditional love connection? Well, I've been in social change work for four decades and the underlying common denominator of all my work has been something I call the love deficit. And so, when it comes to health, one of the hard realities is that, yes, there are, let's say, some bad actors out there who are making products that are bad for our health or doing things that are bad for our health, but there's often an interesting cognitive disconnect in many of us, where we know we shouldn't eat something or drink something or smoke something, but we do, and there is this cognitive disconnect.
WOLFRAM:There's a lot of studies that show that most people are aware they shouldn't consume added sugar, but they do anyway. Most people are aware they shouldn't consume added sugar, but they do anyway. Why is that? And I believe that one answer is to get to the depth of it is the love of ourself as well as the love of others around us, and this unconditional love, and I think that has a lot to do with it. So I've written a book about it and providing references over the centuries to unconditional love, as well as modern references and then my own reflections coming from this body of work I've done, and it's also illustrated with over 100 prints of my own to add a little color, a flavor to the book. So I'm happy to share that. My personal website, wolframaldersoncom, will feature that as well as my other artwork.
FLORENCE:Okay, I'm going to get your website on when we air your interview as well, because of course, you've got time, wolfram, to take photos. Right, like, where does the photography fit in your day?
WOLFRAM:These are print. These are actually art prints linocut prints a technique that I learned in Mexico, actually, and brought it with me. I have my screen on blurring the background, but I'm actually in my art studio here in Kuwait and I have a brand new printing press behind me, so it's just one of the ways in which I have fun and where I've kept myself going in these challenging areas of work is through artistic expression and, of course, reading and participating. You know, supporting myself by being around people who love me and who love the work I do, and I think that kind of unconditional love is so important to sustain us in so many different ways.
FLORENCE:So oh my gosh, I cannot believe you're an artist on top of it all. But that makes sense, that that's kept you going right. That art therapy, for sure it's a real thing.
WOLFRAM:The gift that artists have is we can envision a different future, even though it might seem crazy or insane or impossible. And that's what artists do, is they imagine impossible futures. And so it's actually been quite an asset in my career and social change, because a lot of people look at our situation, the human situation, the human condition, and say it's hopeless. You know what? Give up, just have here, have a bowl of ice cream and chillax, you know. But no, I'll never give up. And I've been blessed because I've been around people who again are able to express that unconditional love in a lot of different ways, and I hope to dish some of that out to you all in my book.
FLORENCE:Oh my gosh, I can hardly wait, and I just want to end by linking this back. So this is my jam. I'm really interested in trauma, early childhood adversity, how that impacts our food choices, our relationship to our bodies and also how it can predispose us to something like sugar or food addiction. And at the heart of trauma is often an insecure attachment, a rupture in that love bond. And that rupture in a love bond can perpetuate all through our lives till we can consciously see it. Ah, there's been a neurodevelopmental injury here because there was an insecure attachment for whatever reason.
FLORENCE:It's very, very common and it's very easy to not be as nurtured as we need. Because women are working, our society's like really kind of falling apart in some ways. Moms are stressed, families are stressed, we're stressed because of the food we put in our bodies, that, even if everything out there is good when we're eating these processed foods, that creates internal stress. That can create a lack of an ability to be in our social engagement system, right To be in that that human mammalian I want can bond. And so all of this ties like it's all tied, like it really is, wolfram, and you're the only person I've ever interviewed that has talked about food and love in the way you have. So, wow, what a, what a, what a gem of a man you are. Thank you again.
WOLFRAM:Well, thank my mother. She taught me the idea that there's love in food and the way we serve it, the way we prepare it, the way we share it, and it's just to me inseparable, so it just all fits hand in hand.
FLORENCE:Really does, thank you, thank you, thanks everybody for tuning in today.
