Real Food Summit

Room 1
Joel Salatin

Room 2
Chris Kresser

Room 3
David Getoff

The Historical Truth about Raw Fruit Consumption
Presenter: David Getoff
Website: www.davidgetoff.com
Live Q&A Session: Monday, July 16th on UW Radio

The Extended FREE Viewing Period for this Presentation has ended.

In This Presentation…
* Why some fruits are more harmful now than in the past
* The impact of adult-sized portions of fruit on children
* Juice versus soft drink consumption — what’s better?
* The reduction in fruit’s nutritional value once harvested
* The benefits and drawbacks of the glycemic index
* The meaning of glycemic load
* David’s lists of healthiest and most harmful sweeteners

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Jon Pellington

so much info… great stuff
Joe Gibson

Great start to the Real Food Summit Sean! I’ve learnt so much today, bring on tomorrow!
Thank you so much for putting these together!
Vjam2002

While I am truly sad about agave(feeling totally suckered on that one.) My question when tasting stevia does anyone get a strong intense sweet then followed up by a bitter after taste? Also, if anyone does can they explain why that happens?
Thanks
- Nourish Nutrition
  
  Depends on the brand. I have found the liquid does not have the after taste.Powder does.
  - olivia
    
    you can also… get a stevia plant! the leaves are very sweet but have a slightly bitter/strange taste.
- http://www.healthylivinghowto.com/ Vanessa
  
  I use NuNaturals brand stevia products which are non-bitter. They are also cold water extracted.
Daza1971

Excellent source of information, will be re-educating my peers from this new knowledge.
Julia Pelton

What about grain sweetened? What does that even mean? I have some carob chips that say grain sweetened. Is that good, bad or otherwise?
Kim Brooks

Consider my world rocked. I definitely will make the effort to (1) eat fruit seasonably and (2) really watch how much fruit and fruit products I eat all the time. I really didn’t know agave was so bad! I’ve been using stevia for a while, so I’m happy that is your #1 sweetener, but I also was using agave occasionally and watered down fruit juice when I wanted a break from just plain water.
Robert

David,
Thank you for your talk.
I disagree with the concepts of the GI.
Being in my late 60′s with forty years of an illness free drug free vegetarian diet behind me I think you’re missing something. We eat whole grains rice, oats, nuts, seeds, lots of vegetables, etc. and my weight is within five pounds of my high school graduation weight. I can also do hard physical work all day. I’m just a fluke?
Maybe we should look further into it. People have been living on rice for millenniums all of a sudden we have an overweight world? I see people eating a high protein, low GI diet destroying their organs.
High fructose corn syrup, sure it’s a monster but don’t blame whole foods with a high GI for ill health, blame artifartificials full of sugars, fast food chains and poor nutritional balances.

Robert
- brandislee
  
  Is this going to be the question you pose to all the presenters here? Because I don’t think you’re going to find any pro-vegetarian presenters. Go out and find a (human) civilization that ate, like David said, a totally vegetarian diet for more than five generations. The few that existed ate either dairy or dairy and seafood. Did you miss the last part of his presentation? Sure, it is possible for you to be healthy now on a vegetarian diet (although I am willing to bet you use supplements, and how can you consider your diet healthy if you have to supplement it?). But I don’t see your percieved good health (and I say percieved because we tend to see what we want to see- sure, you may think you’re healthy and not have to take any drugs, but do you have problems focusing, skin issues, anxiety, depression… any number of daily malidies that people tend to write off as normal) as proof that a vegetarian diet MUST be healthy and we just haven’t figured out why yet. I see vegetarian as a stop over- almost everyone I know who follows a real or traditional food diet was, at some point in their life, a vegetarian, but reached a point in their life where they felt like they were missing something or had very specific health problems and moved onto the next step- a real food diet. I, like Chris Kressler, respect vegetarians as people who are obviously thoughtful about what they eat, but I think there is a lack of followthrough in the line of thinking. Very concrete statistics and studies show that it is NOT better for the health and it is NOT better for the environment. Read/listen to some of this stuff with a more open mind, because it is pretty obvious you are not here to hear new ideas on what might be a healthier diet than what you are currently eating, but to argue with every single presenter that they are wrong, there must be something that they are missing, and you are obviously right.
Clt

You know what bothers me about all the “real foodies” – they don’t seem to differentiate between the produce we get at a farm and the produce that is available at the grocery store.
Also, I disagree that people in times past would only have eaten fruit for a max of 12 weeks a year. People back then weren’t so different for us and they certainly would have looked for ways to preserve the fruit. Canning has been around for several hundred years and just because there weren’t dehydrators doesn’t mean that fruit wasn’t dried.
Also, with all this glorification of past cultures, everyone seems to talk only about those who lived off their own land- there were plenty of people who lived in the city who couldn’t acquire honey on their own and would purchase it. So, it may have been pricey, but raw honey is pricey today too and plenty of people afford it.
- Nourish Nutrition
  
  Please consider that transportation was not what it is today and you will see that what was eaten was dependent upon what was growing seasonally where ever a person lived. And yes preservation techniques did exist however, these were labor intensive and thus I would suspect, reserved for treats or special occasions when not eaten fresh in season.
  
  Most of us are highly dependent upon the grocery store because we live in urban or suburban areas. Growing a few vegetables can be done with little space and you can enjoy the freshness and purity of your own produce this way. Supporting local farmers is something I encourage and even in the north (I live in MI) where our growing season is not long I have now found farmers I can at least obtain animal products and dairy and eggs from during the winter months. Other than that I too and stuck with grocery store produce. Just do the best you can with it.
  - Clt
    
    That’s true that produce and other goods were not transported as far. Eating seasonally is definitely what people did in the past. And preservation techniques were and are labor intensive- but that is what happened. From canning, to making cheese, fermenting foods….. To assume that people did not preserve foods is ridiculous. Meat was smoked or salted, pumpkins and squash put in dry storage, potatoes and carrots in a root cellar. Apples, for example, would have been dried, canned and some set in the root cellar to last for quite some time after the season was over. The didn’t last as long as apples do with the refrigeration techniques used by grocery stores today, but kept properly, apples will last a good long time.
    
    Just because it was labor intensive does not mean that it was done in small amounts. Canning is not very different today than it was then, and I spend days putting up tomatoes, salsa, corn, pears… whatever I can and it was not different in the past.
    
    That is what people spent their time doing- procuring food for their family.
- Sara .
  
  Seriously? Did you watch Joel Salatin’s talk about “Real Food Defined”? As the kickoff to this summit I think it emphasizes the point of differentiating farm and supermarket quite nicely.
  
  The difference between my ancestors, who “lived off their own land” and myself is that the products that I can purchase (fruit, honey, other forms of sweeteners) are different in the manner that they’re produced (not by me, and probably not by someone I know) and processed (ditto), and certainly in the way that they’re consumed. Just because I can afford raw honey (as opposed to HFCS or liquid table sugar) doesn’t mean it’s good for me to consume constantly.
  - Clt
    
    I don’t think anyone is suggesting that honey or any other sweetener was ever eaten constantly by anyone. I’m just saying that the availability was similar as it is today. I purchase my raw honey from the person who gets it from the hive, just like I purchase my veggies from the person who grows them. I just think that its really naive to suggest that people of the past were that much different than us or thought that much different than us. A person who lived in the city 200 years ago wouldn’t have gotten their honey from the person who processed it either. They would have gotten it from a general store.
    - sweetpeapaintings
      
      How people lived in cities 200 years ago can hardly be called ‘traditional’ Those people were the first to start eating modern foods, and developing modern diseases. Perhaps, he is talking about isolated groups of people who didn’t live in cities, but still ate traditional diets, or what people were eating 10,000 years ago…still relatively recent in terms of human evolution.
DJ

Excellent presentation! Three things blew my mind: Agave not as good as cracked up to be (don’t use, but have considered it–not now); an apple for a child is more than a serving for them if it is a serving for us!; and realizing that folks long ago did not eat fruit year round! Thanks so much!
http://www.facebook.com/christine.germain.98 Christine Germain

Really interesting!!! I didn’t know yacon syrup, I’ll have to look it up. Great show Sean
- Bb4wa
  
  I sometimes buy it when I have extra money. It’s very expensive. When I can’t afford it, I substitute molasses for it in recipes.
Luis D Marrufo

Any information on Yacon Syrup with respect to folks diagnosed with celiacs?

Thanks!

Luis
brandislee

I’m a little disappointed that you didn’t address maple syrup and grain based syrups like sorghum. I think you’re absolutely right that we just consume WAY too much sugar (even fruit- I’ve had that thought for years and am glad you came along to confirm it, and ask anyone who knows me, I’m kind of fanatic about fruit juice being a gateway drug to soda), but I’m not ready to completely ban sweeteners from our diet either. I think the success of maple syrup and other syrups like sorghum is because they are so strong in flavor that we don’t really want to use much.

And someone else mentioned coconut sugar- I’m curious about it as well. Is it also high in fructose? Should we avoid it?
- Chelsea
  
  Yes, I’m also insanely curious about coconut sugar. Thanks!
Sallyron

Very useful presentation. I can see ways for people following Elaine Gottshell’s SCD to adapt–for example, if you HAVE to use a sweetener (not sure why any are needed, though), then stevia as a plant based, water extracted sweetener might be better than yacon, to avoid the FOS of yacon. I’m a bit confused about honey–is it easy to digest as a simple sugar, or is it a problem due to its natural fructose content?
- Susan
  
  Elaine Gottschall was against using Stevia unless absolutely necessary (from what I can find). http://breakingtheviciouscycle.info/knowledge_base/kb/stevia.htm That was 8 years ago so maybe someone has done more research. If so, I’d love to know about it.
Ivana

David,
Wonderful redux on fructose and the glycemic index (amazing how many health professionals don’t understand the difference between fructose and glucose) and reminder of portion size when it comes to fruit. Dole doesn’t dwell on this. Personally, I prefer real food sweeteners and only occasionally use stevia. Eager to check out the yacon and Luo Han. What do you think about water kefir drinks? Also, any comments on Cargill’s new stevia sweetener – Truvia? Thanks!
- http://www.healthylivinghowto.com/ Vanessa
  
  Dr. Getoff addresses the Truvia question in this podcast
  http://www.askthelowcarbexperts.com/2012/06/18-the-truth-about-sweeteners-dr-david-getoff/ His response is it is basically a heavy hit of GMO erythritol with very little stevia. He recommends avoiding it.
Christine

What about vegetable glycerin (from coconut) as a sweetener in cooking? I would think it would be okay, as it is really a fat rather than a sugar. It is also anti bacterial, anti fungal and anti viral I believe.
http://www.facebook.com/EnviroAsh Ashley White

I know David mentioned honey in the beginning, maybe I missed what he said – is it a safe sweetener to consume (in small portions). Also interested about coconut sweeteners. Any thoughts?
http://twitter.com/OurSmallHours Our Small Hours

Excellent Q&A! Thank you so much for all of the valuable information shared here.
- http://twitter.com/ugwellness Sean Croxton
  
  Thanks!!
Mike & Marie

David, Thank you for your informative audio. We use Stevia, but we wanted also to know any information regarding honey, Sucanat and Grade B maple syrup which are the only other sweeteners in our kitchen. Can you share on these?
Thanks again.
Missmollyanne

Ugh!! Really – we should limit our fruit intake? Garbage! Check out Dr Douglas Graham’s take on this!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=677298362 Umar Jafar

It appears the medosa.com/gilists site is not available.
- ben martinez
  
  That should be: mendosa.com , not medosa.com
Shelli

Can someone tell me what’s the deal with the timing of these free ‘seminars’; can I watch this anytime, or do I have to watch it now/today???
- Leslie
  
  The ones for today will no longer be available after midnight. I believe I read Pacific Time. At 12:01 a.m. the next day’s will be available for 24 hours and so on.
sweetpeapaintings

David, Thank you for your talk. I am a person who doesn’t particularly like fruit, and eat it very rarely. Are there any vitamins/minerals I should be concerned about missing by not having fruit in my diet in even small amounts? I live in Hawaii, and can get fresh, newly picked fruit when I want, but just have no craving for it. (except for Avos, which I love and eat reguarly, and lemons/limes)
Also, I thought that Stevia was only a good sweetener when in its unprocessed/powdered form. You said that some liquid forms are ok, depending on the process used to extract it. Can you elaborate?
Thanks!
Anastasia

My son is 8 years old and can eat fruit all day long. Also my when my husband was young he would climb fruit trees in South America and eat fruit all day long. We don’t have any health issues. I don’t see the wrong in enjoying our fruit from trees and vines that we grow and eating till our tummies are full.
We also are looking into having our own bees and using honey as our only sweetener. Are you against that?
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=677298362 Umar Jafar
  
  As I understood it, Anastasia, the main issue is with a year-round, constant supply of adulterated fruit, both in and out of season. Add to this all the other hidden and known sources of high GI foods most of us ingest and it adds up to a toxic-bomb cocktail.
  
  I personally, don’t have any apparent health issues but I am aware our whole approach to food has gone wrong.
Gayle

Yes! he gives the green light to Xylitol! I LOVE using xylitol
Donna

David, I also want to know about honey. Are there better “brands” of honey than others? Thank you for all the information. This is all new to me – I enjoyed it very much!
Nancy Wilk

Speaking of maple syrup – is grade A or grade B better?
Elena Skok

I understand that when you pair foods with different glycemic ratings the impact will be averaged….so that for example a slice of white bread with honey would be very high but that same bread with butter or cheese would be lower but I was under the impression that glycemic “load” refers to a portion size so that for example even though carrots are high on the glycemic index a serving of them would be quite small so the “load” is not that high….
Whaleback

Wondering it the coco polo chocolate has soy lecithin. Hoping not but the website doesn’t list ingredients.
- Mary
  
  On Coco Polo’s website
  http://ycchocolate.com/Steviapurebarmoreinformation.html
  they show a label with the ingredients: chocolate liquor, non-gmo erythritol, inulin, cocoa butter, non-gmo soy lecithin, vanilla, Reb A (extract of stevia).
  
  So much for a chocolate we can feel good about!
- jackie
  
  hey, look what i found – this looks awesome! raw organic chocolate sweetened with organic yacon and luo han guo!!! this looks better than the cocopolo. http://www.genesischocolate.com/chocolate/
  here are the ingredients: Raw Organic Cacao, Raw Organic Yacon Root, Raw Organic Cocoa Butter, Raw
  Organic Coconut Milk, Luo Han Guo, Raw Bourbon Vanilla Beans.
  - Olivicus
    
    here’s a novel idea… if you are that addicted to chocolate.. get some cacao powder… mixed it with some melted cacao butter, coconut oil, etc, add in sweetener and other desired ingredients.. pour into molds, refrigerate. boom, chocolate, and you know exactly how it was made and what is in it. i am taking a break from chocolate because it is so addictive.
    - jackie
      
      yeah, i’ve tried that but it’s never as good. i have some cacao paste in my fridge right now, and i’m getting some organic grass fed ghee today, so i will try it again with that.
  - Renni_G
    
    I haven’t perfected this recipe, Jackie, but others have and it’s a winner to satisfy my chocolate urge. I’ll check out the sites you recommended.
    
    RAW CHOCOLATE MOUSSE
    
    1 Cup= 2 Servings
    
    ¼ Cup pitted Medjool Dates, soaked (to
    soften)
    
    ¼ Cup pure Maple Syrup
    
    ½ tsp Vanilla Extract
    
    ¾ Cup mashed Avocado (1 ½ Avocados)
    
    ¼ Cup plus 2 TBSP unsweetened Cocoa or Carob
    Powder
    
    ¼ Cup Water
    
    Place the dates, maple syrup and vanilla in a food processor fitted with
    the S Blade and process until smooth.
    
    Add the avocado and cocoa powder and process until creamy.
    
    Add the water and process briefly
    
    Raw Chocolate Mousse will keep for 3 days in a sealed container in the
    refrigerator.
- jackie
  
  another good one is this one, not organic, but made with luo han guo and it also has grass fed chemical free whey in it. it’s by ori hofmekler, and i’ve had it and it’s really good. i buy his whey too – very good quality. http://www.defensenutrition.com/chocowhey-nuggets
Tguge1019

I’m new to the real food world, so obviously not commenting as very
Knowledgeable here. But I was surprised to find that the sugar alcohols
Would be considered acceptable. I thought the idea was to eat foods our
Bodies can recognize & easily digest. Maybe I just don’t understand sugar
Alcohols?? Thanks for interesting info!
http://www.facebook.com/CarrieMom Carrie Harris

What about Whey Low and Coconut/Palm sugar? Thanks!
Jen

Great session! Feeling guilty for all those times I gave my children fruit juice and whole fruit. I wish that I had known this 15 years ago.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=105901560 Chris Cattley

I was really excited to learn about Yacon and Luo Han Guo… I was under the impression that sugar alcohols or those not systemically absorbed are bad for you because they feed the bacteria in your stomach… but I suppose if you keep healthy and keep the levels of good bacteria up they would be okay
Robin Zuberer

This information is so great! I can not tell you how shocked I am right now.
Mary

I thought you might comment on the stevia take-off products put out by Coke (Truvia) and Pepsi (Purevia). Do you have any information on these?
Sarah

Can you please explain why agave is so bad? I’ve heard it’s a better alternative to white sugar, is that true? Thanks
- jackie
  
  sarah, agave is high in fructose, making it almost as bad as high fructose corn syrup. it’s also pretty refined.
http://turkeysong.wordpress.com/ Steven Edholm

This presentation seemed a little out of place here. I was left with the impression that the presenter was vilifying foods which have been eaten throughout the evolutionary history of humans. The argument is made that fruit used to be less sweet and was only available for a short period of time each year. Denise Minger has addressed these issues in what seems a very reasonable treatment of the subject. I urge anyone that has viewed the above video to read her treatment of the subject and some of the (very copious) comments following it for a different and much more information filled point of view. As for low availability of fruit, preservation by drying must be the oldest method of preservation. It is not uncommon for fruits to dry on the plant, so it wouldn’t take a Homo Sapien to put 2 and 2 together. It seems pointless even to argue whether or not people dried fruit for later consumption- who wouldn’t? In more recent history, we have apples dating back hundreds of years with high sugar content. Pears and apples have been bred (probably more proper to say selected) for ages to keep into the spring. There are thousands of varieties that keep into winter and at there must be at least hundreds which keep until spring… and of course people did keep them. Again, who wouldn’t. I think that if the presenter can’t find healthy people eating fruit for more than 12 months of the year and more than an apple a day, he probably is not looking hard enough, or perhaps not at all. It seems extra odd in a real foods presentation to find that the most recommended sugars from our expert are industrially produced products. And what about the bloating from these concentrated alcohol sugars? How natural is it to consume large quantities of those? Certainly less common among our ancestors than eating dried fruit. He suggests that he wants to see people eat a certain way for 5 generations before he will consider its validity, so I guess the experiment is on to find the effects of concentrated yacon syrup and xylitol on a human population. A more reasonable approach would seem to be to utilize common naturally occurring sugars such as fructose and glucose in reasonable forms and quantities rather than patching up a lifestyle choice with the less natural sweeteners. What constitutes a reasonable quantity of fructose and glucose is open to debate, but honestly the presenters recommendations seem unreasonable in the light of consuming real food or somethinng resembling a “natural” diet. I found the presentation in the context of “real food” to be somewhat of a head shaker.
http://turkeysong.wordpress.com/ Steven Edholm

My link to Denise Minger’s article did not come through, but here it is http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/05/31/wild-and-ancient-fruit/
jackie

thank you so much for this! i’m so glad to hear david say that agave nectar is NOT healthy!!! everyone thinks it is and it’s in every organic raw chocolate or energy bar, and i wish people would quit thinking it’s healthy. i never buy those bars that contain agave.
BJML

There’s a new product out there called “Just Like Suger” which lists as its ingredients calcium, Vit. C, flavorings from orange peel and the primary ingredient is chicory root dietary fiber. It really tastes like sugar. Would this be a prebiotic like yacon and Luo Han guo, an FOS? And if so, would it be safe like they are? Thanks.
Z427rat

Wat about coconut sugars?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1176747671 Lenore Ockerberg

How do I download these so I can listen too at a later date?? I got the e-mail with the first download, but I can’t figure out how to download the rest of them. Thanks!
Pingback: Real Food Summit – You can still watch days 1 & 2 | Andrea the Gastronaut
Renni_G

David and Sean,
There are some questions asked below in the comments that I would also like an answer concerning other products that are relevant to this discussion. Could you assist and answer with your opinion(s) on the products listed here? Thanx.

Whey
Low
Coconut sugar/sweeteners
Palm sugar
Honey
Maple syrup
– grade A – grade B – color
Grain sweetener
sorghum
kefir
drinks
Sucanat