Podcast Episode 5 – A Conversation with the Younger Generation

Shonda (00:00): Hi, it's Shonda. And today I get to interview a young gentleman that I'm really excited about having on the show today, who inspired me to begin this podcast by giving me the exact microphone we're using today as a gift on my 50th birthday, we're here.

Podcast Intro (with music) (00:00): Hi and hello. Welcome to the real food and drinks, lifestyle podcast. We're building a community to talk about nutrition, lifestyle choices, and just feeling better. This is Shonda and this is Patryce. Let's just be real.

Podcast Intro (with music) - continued (00:00): [Music continues] Here's our disclaimer. We do not professionally practice in any of the various subjects that we discuss. We are only sharing our personal experiences with you to a healthier lifestyle. Please do your own research before taking part in any of these practices.

Shonda (00:23):We finally made it. Steven, thank you for being my guest today. Hello. Hi. So, uh, introduce yourself.

Steven (00:30): Uh, my name is Steven Hector. I am 23 years old. My current occupation is a vehicle service technician. I live in college station right now.

Shonda (00:40): Okay. Everyone. Steven's my son. So I guess, uh, for all our guests, we'd like to ask, what's your definition of real food?

Steven (00:52): My definition of real food. Um, so real food. What I think humans should be consuming in general is naturally, you know, food that you can easily obtain, or you could obtain, you know, yourself depending on whether it's going to be grains or whether it's going to be, you know, vegetables, whether it's gonna be fruits, whether it's going to be, you know, animal products, you know, like by hunting or by gathering or by, you know, doing several of those, you know, what we used to do, how to get food. Um, I think that's like what real food is and, you know, just the way that you prepare it. Um, real food is for lack of a better term, you know, unprocessed or, you know, food that hasn't been altered or, you know, in any way,

Shonda (01:41): I must say that as Steven's mom, I was quite impressed with what he had collected over the years as I was learning what real food is, because I had to learn myself. I had to define that for myself. And that is where, um, the term real food and drinks came from. It was just like a philosophy I adopted or practice that I had to adopt when choosing the food that I would eat. And along the way, I just discovered that in order to get real food in a way that was the most natural I had to shop mostly in the produce section. Now over the years, uh, this all began about 10 years ago. And over the years I have come to the conclusion that for me, living a whole food plant based lifestyle is what's best for me. It's what energizes me. And I know that I'm getting those vital nutrients from food and not filling up on fat or lots of protein from eating animal foods.

Shonda (02:55): My body just responded so quickly to a whole food plant based lifestyle. And that's what I have finally adopted. And that is why if you visit real food and drinks.com, you will find that there are no longer any more recipes that contain meat. Because I feel like at this point, I don't have to convince you to create a meal around eating meat. If you still desire to eat meat, you can put your meat to the side. In addition to all the plant based recipes that are on the website, because the plant based recipes are, what's going to give you the missing nutrients that you may or likely to be missing from your diet. So I just want it to flood the website with whole food plant based, eating in order to inspire you. I have created a resource page. I'm not a practicing nutritionist. I'm just a real food coach.

Shonda (03:56): I want to coach you on how to eat real food. But on that resource page, there are links to doctors and research institutions where you can go and find the evidence of including more plant based foods in your diet in order to heal your body. So I encourage you to go to the real food and drinks website and start taking a look around and learning. And I do some videos every now and then too. There'll be posted at the website and I just want to encourage you to really, truly learn more about real food and what we can do to help our bodies heal and thrive and just be full of energy and life. Um, and one last thing I want to add here is that, uh, if you do choose to eat animal products, I hope that you will look a little deeper into where those animal products are coming from.

Shonda (05:03): You know, if you're not like my son said, if you're not hunting yourself or raising your own animals, let's say that if you're not raising your own animals and you don't know what those animals are eating, I encourage you to go look at farmer's markets and, um, try to find a farmer that's raising animal products in a way that, um, is best for your body. So that would be grass fed, pasture raised animals. So let's get back to the conversation. So now that you have this knowledge, how often do you apply this knowledge to your lifestyle?

Steven (05:45): It's been varying, you know, since I've moved out, I'm working full time. A lot of people don't have time to prepare themselves real food. And, you know, people, you know, including me, you know, when I lived, you know, work or live outside of the house, I purchased a lot of like, you know, fast food things that have been altered and stuff. And it has, you know, reduced my health slightly. I mean, I eat tons enough junk food to make myself obese or make myself sick, you know, but my, you know, my metabolism, I guess, is high enough to, you know, burn all these calories or, you know, process this food. But you know, I'm not, it's not nutrition, it's just calories and I'm taking it at this point. Um, you know, real food will fill you up, you know, both satisfy the caloric, you know, want that your body needs, but also will help you build, you know, other parts of your body.

Shonda (06:35): Okay. Since Steven seemed to be on a roll meaning that he was saying things that I would normally say, so I'm just going to let him keep talking. Although I wasn't too happy to hear that my son's diet is poor and he knows it let's continue with the conversation.

Steven (06:56): So taking the upbeat you considered underweight. Um, but I still use these same guidelines and the things that I do try to consume if I do consume a lot of these fast foods, I'll try to make sure, I at least have it balanced out to where I have at least some type of vegetable or at least some type of, you know, fruit on the side or whatever, even though that's not ideal, you ideally want to be filling most of your diet up with like the real foods and then those junk foods and stuff like that can just be a snack and needs to be like very small portion, kind of like a treat it just as long as you can consume mostly real food. You know, even though the goal is eating only real food, if you can, that that balance needs to be very biased towards real food. Um, cause if you think about it like this, it goes back to the old saying, saying that, you know, you are what you eat and your body literally is having to replace itself with whatever you consume, anything that you consume as far as like, you know, right now he could, I could probably be based on made a whole bunch of bread and chicken nuggets.

Shonda (07:57): Oh my goodness. I hope not. But in reality, that is the truth. Um, that we have a lot of people who are eating fast foods. It's very popular in the young adults. And probably, um, more than that older adults too, because of convenience, like we talked about earlier, my son also mentioned about eating balanced with real food and yes, the goal is to eat more real food. We all have to start somewhere. We all have to start implementing the idea that we need to eat more real food than the other stuff. You know, that we're eating that we know that's not good for us, but sometimes it does come to a point when we, especially as we get older, you know, right now my son's younger. So he has a little bit more flexibility and, and most young adults do. And some don't because we still are hearing that, you know, young adults are getting diagnosed with diabetes and high blood pressure and, you know, things like that. So it really is an individual thing, but the real goal and the real hope of mine is that young people were realized that they could start building a better, healthier life for themselves now, and that they won't have to run into a brick wall like I did at the age of 30, after the birth of my third child. I hope this is encouraging to you who are listening right now. And let's get back to the conversation

Steven (09:41): Again, like your body is using several different types of ways to synthesize these proteins and all the other carbohydrates and things that we need, you know, to build our bodies. Um, but we struggle a lot when you eat junk food,

Shonda (09:56): You know, just today I was listening to, um, the food revolution, you know, I was reminded, you know, like the body's constantly trying to replace, you know, its cells. And they said, stomach cells, you know, get replaced like every five days, the skin, every seven days, your red blood cells, four months liver, five months, you know, and then there's some other things in between their bones are 10 years, you know, with the brain

Steven (10:24): Brain is I think it's seven years brain. Your neurons will last about seven years before they're replaced. And all of that has to come into factor. Like, I mean your teeth and bones, stuff like that. If you like, you know, one thing that we try to strive to get out of our diet, even though that's probably a part of something that we should eat is some of the dirt. And some of the things that we get from just eating, not very sanitized food, but, um, I guess you could say, you know, still clean, like we'd cleaned it, but you still get some of those trace minerals and stuff. And a lot of those things you can't get out of such some of the sterile food we right.

Shonda (11:01): Yeah. I agree. Totally. And that's why one of the things, uh, I know vitam, I was just doing research on vitamin K-2 today because you're supposed to take that with your vitamin D, which is from the sun and vitamin K-2, um, can be obtained through fermented foods. And, you know, I used to ferment a lot of foods now I need to get back to fermented foods. I have my favorite recipe that is really delicious. Even people who haven't had sauerkraut before, it's I call it sauerkraut, cause it's mostly cabbage, but they really liked this one, you know? Cause it's a little sweet, you know, the one with the pineapple and the purple cabbage, cilantro... Yeah. So I'm, I'm about to make a batch of that, but it is true that dirt is good for you. Um, yes it is. I mean, we're talking about clean dirt, you know, there is a such thing as clean dirt,

Steven (11:56): The minerals in it, the sediment and stuff.

Shonda (11:59): Well, you know, I, I, you know, I eat my dirt, my dirt, my Terramin clay. I do, uh, ingest clay. It's a cleaner clay and it's by Terramin. So I do that too, but I'm still reminded about when you go out into the garden and garden, you know, you, don't only just get, uh, microbes from things that you eat, but from things that you breathe, you know, you breathe those microbes in the dirt when you're, you know, stirring the dirt and, and, you know, mixing it up or watering it or planting new plants and seeds and things like that. And I recall, uh, Mama Mil, she tells me this story about how her younger, I think it was her younger brother was sickly child. The doctor told, told the, parent put the child outside and let him play in the dirt. And so there's a lot to say for, you know, fresh air.

Shonda (12:52): That's what it's all about. Fresh air, fresh dirt. Personally. I recall feeling super healthy for one time when I actually tended a garden that we had in our backyard. And this is something that I intend to do again, this fall, it had to be being out in the dirt, touching the dirt, breathing the dirt, eating the fresh foods directly from the garden. And I cannot help, but to interject right here about grounding and earthing, grounding, and earthing is something that I've come to realize that was missing in my life. And I guess I was getting it when I was gardening, but recently I've been reintroduced to it. And I want to encourage you if you haven't seen that on the website yet about grounding and earthing, there is an article there and it's just all about the lifestyle. So go check it out. Let's get back to the conversation. Yeah. So that, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about real food and drinks lifestyle. So we're not just talking about food. Food is a big part of it, but we also want to talk about the lifestyle, all the other things we need to do in addition to being concerned about what we're eating. Okay. So is there anything else you want to, uh, let our community know or anything else on your mind?

Steven (14:25): I mean, this it's just real important. You all, to really understand like it, you can feel much better, you know, consuming the correct amount of foods or the correct foods. Um, because food is not supposed to make you feel bad, like after you eat it, you know what I mean? You're not people get tired and sleepy and stuff like that, which, you know, some of us like to be able to get full and just go to bed, you know, like, so that's how some people like to live, you know, their lives and stuff, but you know, you're just supposed to be fuel. It's supposed to fuel and it's supposed to keep you alive and keep going.

Shonda (14:54): So this has been good. And I was just gonna jokingly ask Steven, uh, did you give me this microphone so that I would have other people to talk to and not keep drilling it down all of you?

Steven (15:07): Kind of that too. I mean, like it, it's something that needs to be talked about in general. There's a lot of people that are coming up, you know, like you that have something real to say, and a lot of popular media and stuff won't cover it because it's not, it's not necessarily a profitable or it's not a popular opinion, you know? And like it takes bravery to expose them to the truth sometimes. And like, that's kind of why I got you. This microphone is so that the truth can be unleashed and told to people, um, or at least what we think is true, you know, um, you know, sharing our, sharing our truth. And that's the only thing that you can really vouch for in life. You can't, you know, you can say all the things you find on like other, you know, like on media or like, you know, you know, Wikipedia or anything like that, you can only, you can only 100% vouch for your personal experiences. That's about it. Um, like everything else.

Shonda (16:00): Yeah. And that's what we're here for. We're here to explore other things and other ideas from other people and allow them to share their experiences too, and to just share our experiences and what has worked for us and, you know, and to just keep looking and keep learning.

Steven (16:17): Yeah. More than the more people that you interview and the more people that would like to come on here and share their story, you know, but on both ways people need to, you know, would like to step up and like, you know, say what their opinion is. And like you'd be able to interview them and talk to them about like, why they feel this way or what the evidence supporting, why they decided to eat or live their life a certain way. And that's, what's important is that we have the long discussion about it and not just making sides and, um, you know, causing conflict. Like, let's talk about it. Let's, you know, let's get the facts out there.

Shonda (16:51): Yeah. I agree. So, yeah, that's been really good. I want to thank you for coming on the show today. The Real Food and Drinks Lifestyle podcast show, and thanks for your inspiration and getting this started. I just say thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

Steven (17:11): I had to be on here. Maybe I'll come back another time and I'll be, you know, eating real food.

Shonda (17:15): Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll see what we can do about that. So thanks for joining us today. So there we have it, I really was excited that we finally had the opportunity to just sit down and, and have a discussion. And I think he recognizes something more than I did is that we really do need to sit down and have real conversations about real food. Um, so I'm willing to do that with anyone who would like to have a conversation about it. I'm always, always ready to have a conversation about real food and discuss ways that we can help one another adopt a healthier lifestyle. So I'm looking forward to the future of this podcast. And once again, I want to send a shout out to Steven, Steven, thank you so much. And I will see you all soon.

Shonda (18:17): Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy today's podcast. Remember you can catch show notes and additional details at realfoodanddrinks.com under the podcast menu. Also, subscribe to our podcast if you aren't already a member of our community. And if listening through Anchor, please send us a message of topics you would like to hear us have conversations about until next time. Let's just be real.