Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining us from Denver, Colorado is Dr. Michael Crupain. And Michael has a new book out called The Power Five. And that is the Essential Foods for Optimum Health. It's a cookbook. And it's from National Geographic. And for all of these out there that are interested part of the purchase actually goes to NatGeo. It's on the back of the book. And I think I have a lot of listeners that like to support books that ultimately have a charitable cause to them as well. Good day to you, Michael.

Michael Crupain
Good morning.

Greg Voisen
It's great to have you on the show. Finally, I know we've been planning this for a while. So thanks for this and thanks for the book. And also we were just talking before we got on the show for all of my listeners. He also has another two books, which were co-authored. One of them is called What to eat when cookbook and the other is just what to eat when and your co-author on these was. Michael F is it rosin?

Michael Crupain
Dr. Mike Royden. Mike is a good friend and he's the chief wellness officer emeritus now at the Cleveland Clinic.

Greg Voisen
Well, wonderful books and then The Power Five which is just you, I'm gonna let them know. Michael is a board certified preventative medicine physician. He's also co-authored the national bestseller what to eat when which is we were just talking about the what to eat when cookbook. He has a unique career path first training in neurosurgery switch to preventative medicine. He started one of the first farm to table cooking video blogs of the dairy show which I went there it's got a bunch of cows on it served as the Director of Food Safety and Sustainability Center for Consumer Reports and was the medical director for at the Dr. Oz Show, where I went to Emmy Awards, and the chairman's pillar award. He's on the faculty at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health as member of the board of the American College of Preventative Medicine, and is the Executive Vice President of Clinical Services at Sharecare. He is a consistent sous sous student of culinary traditions around the world. He just got back from Italy, and has trained with top chefs in New York and cooked at schools in Europe and Asia. With a mothers and grandmothers from all different colors, cultures, he makes a point of visiting the farm to market in every city goes to and cook every day. He served as frequent expert guests on the national and local media, including Good Morning America, the Today Show, and the Dr. Oz Show. Well, congratulations on all the accolades. Everybody's interested in eating. And I'm going to start this off with everybody's interested in eating. But what's really important and you bring it out is what to eat when and I think this kind of leads in so you wrote these prior these books prior to writing the power of five. And I think people would like to know a little bit about how they're may be connected. And what's important about when we eat, versus and what we were going to get into the what we but if you could start off there, that'd be a good place. Sure.

Michael Crupain
So Thanks. Thanks for that great introduction. And I'm excited to be here and talking to you and your audience. Yeah, so what do you plan is about really about the what of eating so that what you eat, and when you eat it. But we focus more on the when in those first two books, because it's unusual to talk about that. And it turns out that there's a lot of science that supports that when you eat makes a difference. And you can think about when and a bunch of different ways. So the way we thought about it in the book when we first wrote it was about the timing of when you eat in relation to the day. And so it turns out that your body runs on a circadian rhythm. And we all think about the circadian rhythm is something that's involved in sleep, right? Like I'm in Denver. Now I was just in Italy. So I'm super jetlag. My circadian rhythm is all out of whack. Right? And we're all familiar with that. But it turns out that our circadian rhythm does more than just help us regulate our sleep. It regulates everything throughout the body. It's our body's clock, and its job is to get the body ready to do the right thing at the right time. So make us really efficient, right. And so it turns out that our metabolism is also influenced by our circadian rhythm, and our metabolism changes throughout the day. And it's actually primed to eat more early and eat less later in the day. So the body is set up. It's like your metabolisms ready, your digestion is right everything's ready to eat more early in the day and eat less or fat asked overnight, right? Because we're sleeping can't really eat. We haven't yet figured out how to eat while we're sleeping. It's one thing that we've got going for us. I

Greg Voisen
was reading Michael not to interrupt you. It's just so fascinating. I actually had the PDF of that book. And I was reading that, like your liver, and your kidneys and your pancreas and all the organs of the body. They kind of have their own time clock. Is that right? Yeah, I mean, I don't think many people out there think about, hey, well, my pancreas says this. Now, my liver says this. Now, my kidneys say this. I mean, I don't think anybody really thinks about talk about that, because that just was curious to me. Yeah,

Michael Crupain
so that's, so all of our so that's where I sort of our metabolism comes into play and being on the clock, so are different. The central clock is in our brain, and the super charismatic nucleus, and that set by the sun. So the sun is sort of the master controller of our bodies, clocks, but then in each of our different organs, they have their own clock. So the pancreas is a good example. pancreas makes insulin. And based on the clock or the time of day, it's going to be making different amounts of insulin because we again, it's sort of preparing ourselves like we should be eating at a certain time, insulin is important for getting helping with digestion, or getting the sugars from what we eat into our cells to provide energy. And so we're going to make more of it during the time where we should be eating as opposed to the time when we shouldn't be eating. So when we eat out of sync with our circadian rhythm, that's where we start to throw our metabolism and our body out of sync. I'll tell you one other thing about clocks, which I think is really interesting. Our skin also is on our circadian rhythm. And so companies that make skincare products, like lotions and things, they are actually studying the skin circadian rhythms so they can figure out what like when is the ideal time to put on that lotion

Greg Voisen
to help the largest, largest organ in our body. Right? That's right.

Michael Crupain
That's right. Yeah. What's really interesting when you talk about that because our metabolism changing throughout the day, it turns out that a calorie that you eat at one time of the day, is not necessarily the same as when you eat it another time of day. So let me put it a little differently. A calorie is a calorie because a calorie is just something we measure in a lab, we put a piece of food into a machine in a lab, and it burns it up, and it tells us how much energy is in it. But when you put that energy into our body, it changes because it's how much we digest it and what our body is doing at the time that we eat it. So there's a bunch of studies that are really interesting, that show that when if calories eaten in the morning, seemed to count less than calories eaten at night. So there's an interesting study from Spain, where they fed people a low calorie diet, and they fed them that to groups and they fed them 1400 calorie diet a day. And the two groups 187 100 calories in the morning for breakfast, and one eight to 700 calories later in the day. And I found that the the one that ate the bigger meal earlier in the day, lost 20% more weight than the group that ate those calories later in the day. Again, it's because calorie in our body changes based on our circadian rhythms. And

Greg Voisen
does that not does that not in some way seem somewhat logical in that? Well, for a minute, let me think, if I'm burning calories more versus getting ready to go to sleep in the evening, I eat a big meal in the evening. Everybody always just heard this. Not that everybody listens to the recommendations. But you would think if you were because everybody now is talking about intermittent fasting. Right? It's a big craze, a lot of things around fasting when you fast. So I think there's the one and you know, it's the 17 hour one where you literally, you know, you click your clock off you don't anything, eat anything past six o'clock, and you don't eat anything before nine o'clock in the morning. What do you think about that? And then we'll move into this because I want to make the segue into this book. This book is packed full of amazing recipes. Great advice. What's your thought around? That as it relates to circadian rhythms?

Michael Crupain
Yeah, so that's a big part of the what the when and what we recommend. So there's three principles on what to eat when the first is eat with the sun, the sun sets our circadian rhythm or body is set up to eat during the day when the sun is shining and too fast at night, when the sun is gone. This is a historical thing, right? Or get pre historical thing. Once upon a time, we couldn't eat 24 hours a day, we had to eat, good find food and rest when we couldn't. And so we evolved to eat that way. The second principle is eat more early and eat less later or make breakfast and lunch your largest meals of the day and dinner the smallest. So we recommend you get say about 80% of your calories before 2pm And for me I usually when I'm in total control of my life when I'm at home and I can control things. I stopped eating around two or 3pm and I don't eat again until the next morning. But you can you can you know eat dinner but dinner should be the lightest meal of the day and you should try to get that fat testing window, a minimum of 12 hours. So don't eat, you know, there's a 12 hours of light 12 hours of dark if your average to the who the way the world is supposed to work. It's not always that case, right? But, and if you can expand that out to 16 hours, the data suggests that it's even a little bit better. But if you can get at least 12, you're doing really well. Most people eat over a 16 hour window, they're eating basically, from the time they get up until the time they go to bed. So the smaller and smaller, you can make that window and start to bring in a little bit of fasting, the data suggests you could get a lot of benefits from that, including making it easier to lose weight, or sort of rejuvenating refreshing yourselves, and it helped hoping, helping with sleep and longevity. Well,

Greg Voisen
and I don't think it'll look, you're as sluggish. So when you wake up this morning, you know, I got on my spin bike at 530. And, you know, the reality is, is that when you have a diet that is and we're going to talk about that now I don't want to call this diet but the genesis for the power five. My sense is it was inspired by what to eat when and and it's really what to eat now. And these essential foods that you talk about? How did you kind of come up with the idea for the book? And why did you want to put a cookbook together? Because you already have a cookbook for the what to eat when that you wrote. And now you have this separate cookbook? So how did all that come about? Michael?

Michael Crupain
Yeah, so I'll tell you let me so there's one more rule for what to do when we get into the what to eat when cookbook and the last rule is don't stereotype food. Which means that just because in our society, we say like you should eat pastries and sugary cereal for breakfast, doesn't mean that you should do that. And just because we say you should eat, you know, like a big plate of vegetables and fish or meat for dinner doesn't mean that when you have to eat it, because if you're going to eat more early, you're gonna have to ship those foods that you might consider dinner foods up earlier in the day. So you can eat pasta for breakfast, you can eat fish for breakfast and other cultures, you'll find that they beans for breakfast, they fish for breakfast. And so we wrote the what to eat when cookbook to give people, you know, some recipes, so they could stop stereotyping food and have foods they could eat at any time of the day, that adhere to some of the principles of the watch, which are around which is what the power five is really about. It's all about the what. And it's all about the foods that are associated with living longer, healthier lives. And the way it got started, it's you know, it's an interesting thing. It's it's a really passion project. For me, I'm so excited about the power five. And I love this book so much I was reading it again, the unlike on the plane ride to Denver the other day, I just kept thinking about how much I love it. And you know, because I love eating, I'm so passionate about eating, I'm so passionate about cooking. And I'm so passionate about knowing where my food comes from. I want to know everything about where it was grown or raised, I want over the people who who grew my food, I think food is important to sort of immerse yourself in it. I'm also a preventive medicine doctor, right. So I'm passionate about health. I'm passionate about making people healthier. And I sort of have always said my personal mission is to make the world a healthier place. And I've added on to make the world a healthier and more delicious place. When you look at the data of what people are eating, you see that people unfortunately are eating too much of the foods that we would maybe consider unhealthy and don't help support a long healthy life. And don't eat enough of the foods that do the foods associated with longevity. And as a private med Doc, I'm a problem solver. And I always want to dig in deep and figure out like how do I solve this problem like so people aren't eating enough of the good foods? Why is that? And how can we solve that? And and there's a bunch of reasons, right? There's doesn't people don't think these foods taste good. These healthier foods, right? They've maybe been exposed to in their childhood to serve bad preparations. In culinary schools. We don't necessarily teach how to cook the healthier foods that well. There's also so much noise about nutrition out in the world, right? There's like, every day it feels like a new story about this is good for you. This is battery and then it flips. And that's how the media makes it and I've worked in the media, so I know how it works. And

Greg Voisen
so, you know, I think I think that as a society, wherever we get our information just like this podcast, this is a perfect example of somebody who isn't preventative medicine, integrative functional medicine doctors, you can go to so many sources today, where people like yourself, I mean, when you were growing up to become an MD and you first start off neurosurgery. The reality is they weren't teaching you about diet. They weren't teaching any of that in med school. And I think a good percentage of the doctors do not have your kind of perspective. Let's face it. It's still pretty old fashion. When you think about it, the approach, and we've exposed so many people on this show, but if you give the listeners kind of a sneak peek, because I was looking at the book again, the pictures in it are just frickin amazing. I don't know who did the photography, but it's fantastic. But what are these five? The Power Five? Okay, and what are some of these specific foods that you're talking about people can eat at different times to have more optimal health in

Michael Crupain
their life? Okay, so yeah, so let me let me take something you just said and then lead into your, what are the power five? So I think what's really interesting, what you said is, you know, doctors don't know that much about, you know, food nutrition. But But doctors are giving advice. And there's lots of, there's lots of advice that comes from trusted people who we know are giving the right advice about the things you need to eat that are healthy for you. And those are come down to these five foods, right, that we talked about in the power five, it's fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, whole grains, beans, and fish. The problem is, and the reason I wrote this book is even though we tell you that these are the healthy foods, we don't give you enough information on how to make those foods an actual part of your life and want to eat them, and want them to make them taste good to know how to use them. The same thing. I mean, for me, when I think about, oh, I'm gonna cook something with whole grains. I might Google I searched all my cookbooks, and it's hard to find good recipes. And so I spent a lot of time I spent three years writing the power five, and doing the experiments in my kitchen turning into a lab, as we would say in the book. You were

Greg Voisen
having fun. I was having fun. I have a question for you, then. I think certain people listening out there right now, I know me in particular, there's certain nuts I can't eat. Because I'm like, I don't want to say allergic. But they're not good for my digestive system. I have a hard time digesting. I am as close to vegan as possible, pretty close. And I think the enzymes in my system have shifted so much for the number of years that I haven't eaten meat. I haven't eat chicken, I haven't eaten I have eaten fish. So I'm pescatarian. But it's like your system shifts. And I think there's a lot of people out there right now to go. Okay, we need a bunch of nights. Maybe I'm allergic to that, or I have sensitivity in my digestive system to that. How do you address that? Because the book does have, you know, lots of great recipes. What would you advise?

Michael Crupain
Yeah, so I would say that, you know, if you're allergic to something, I would need it. Yeah. Right. And if you're, I'm, I'm at the American College of lifestyle medicine right now. And a lot of people here are vegan. So they wouldn't eat fish. And that's okay. Like, I'm not, I'm not saying in this book, you if you can eat nuts, or you don't want to eat fish, that you should go and eat those things. But this is what the data suggests, when we look at the entire population, right? These are the foods that are associated with longevity, these are associated with not dying from cancer, heart attacks, and diabetes. Those are the foods now, if you've already had a heart attack, I think being a vegan is the best diet. Right? That's what Dean Ornish recommends. I know Dean really well, he's here at the conference with me, that's a great way to go, being a vegan, super healthy. But this this book was written for the entire population. And I want everyone to make it their own. And what I so you, the recipes are meant to be an inspiration. And they're not meant to be sort of a gold standard or a rule, you have to follow it. I do recommend if you're gonna make these things in the book you make you make it the way I suggest once so you learn the technique and, and the proportions and the flavors, and then you take it and you totally make it your own. But it totally meant to be a jumping off point. I have a cousin who is allergic to nuts and found that like once she cut them out of her diet, she feels better. So if you've got something, it's not making you feel good, don't feel that you need to eat it, because it's worse if you're eating a food that's causing a lot of inflammation for your diet than if you're not eating at all.

Greg Voisen
How do you kind of there's a lot of people out listening, who are hearing advice from everywhere. Let's face it, when it comes to diet, nutrition exercise, there's as many books and people out there as are in the world. You though have taken a book and provided somebody with recipes, right? You've given people healthy recipes. So when we want to eat healthy and we want to find nutritious and delicious food, one of the things that always pops up with people is I don't have time, right? They sit they see your your program here and they're like, Hey, wait a second. This is This is crazy. How much time is this going to take me to prepare this particular food? What are some of your favorite recipes from the book? And what are a few that you think that people could default to, which just don't take a lot of time to prepare?

Michael Crupain
Yeah, so I'd say I knew you're gonna ask me about my favorite recipes. And it's so hard to pick my favorites because I really love

Greg Voisen
looking at a bunch of them. You got a bunch of salmon ones in here, and I you know, it's like, and you have one with avocado toast with salmon on the top. And I couldn't remember if it had something else on it, but

Michael Crupain
it has mangoes and a sauce tomato, which is a Mexican dry sauce. So they call it it's an oil based sauce. And it's made with nuts and seeds. So it

Greg Voisen
looks it looks awesome. It's one I'm gonna try. Yeah,

Michael Crupain
it's really good, spicy, crunchy, a lot of flavors. I'd say you know, I love every every recipe in the book is something I eat regularly. But I go obviously, like I tried to eat and season so different times of year I'll eat things differently.

Greg Voisen
Well, I'll talk about PrEP. Because, yeah, if you're talking to a single guy, or a single woman who work, or you're talking about a mother who has a family, and she's trying to cook and organize herself around these, I think people default to what unfortunately, I say this, what is the quickest and simplest?

Michael Crupain
Yeah, so. So I agree. I mean, I'm, I'm a single guy, I love to cook. I work all day. And all night. I'm constantly working. But I make time for food preparation, because I enjoy it. It's a hobby, but I understand that not everyone wants to spend as much time as I do. And the recipes in this book, for the most part are very simple and take very little time. The book again is like it's my passion. It's very much an expression of me. So I'm very again into where my food comes from. I think when you're thinking about what you're going to eat or going shopping or prepping like you want to buy the best food you can. I always I like to go to farmers markets. I like to know where my food comes from. I like to eat and season because when you eat those foods, they're in season that didn't come from very far away. They don't need much to make them delicious. They're very simple. One of my favorite recipes in here is probably the simplest recipe is for a cone cabbage cone cabbage is a cabbage it looks like a comb, but you can use any cabbage. You can't find the cone cabbage but it has a specific flavor that's like the most delicious to me. And all you do is wrap it up in aluminum foil and roast in the oven for for 3045 minutes. You take it out, put some salt and olive oil on it. And it's delicious by itself. Like that. takes no work. One of my other favorite recipes that is in the book is called I call it beans cooked like fish. A Middle Eastern way of preparing fish with in a sort of spicy tomato sauce. But I substitute either Giganti bean or a chickpea into that takes about 30 minutes to cook it not all that much hands on. And it's full of flavor. And it's really hearty and you can make you can make a big batch of it also adds to heat, I put tahini sauce in it. So I get I get beans, nuts and seeds and fruits and vegetables on there. So there's three of the five power five foods in this one dish. And the goal is to get four out of the five every day. And you can make a big batch of that and you can eat it every day. There's another recipe that I just posted an Instagram video for. I call it green beans cooked forever, I think in the book are cooked to death. And basically it says garlic, green beans, a little chili pepper, salt and olive oil, and you put them in a pot, leave them on the stove for an hour or two, you don't have to pay attention to them. And when the end you can make a giant bowl of it and you can they're delicious. Like they take could you cook them so long. They take on this amazing, luxurious, creamy texture without adding any butter cream. And they're really good at room temperature. So it's something you can make way in advance and just pull it out of the fridge whenever you want to eat. And you're done. Like what I like to do is I like to eat a bunch of things from the book like I like on a Sunday when I have more time, I'll cook a whole I'll cook a big meal for my friends and family. So again, I think food should be a communal thing. And then I always make sure that I have a lot of leftovers. And then throughout the week because I don't have time for breakfast and lunch. I'm putting together some of these green beans and some of these beans and a piece of this cabbage and piece of this fish that's cold now it's still delicious. And I've got my meals prepared for most of the week already.

Greg Voisen
Well, if you would kind of address this too, because I know we got a lot of listeners that come from all over the world access to certain items of food like you just said buy what's in season. I love that. Where do you stand on if it's not organic versus It's organic? And also accessibility. I think if you're talking to people in the inner city, who maybe don't have the same amount of money some foods aren't available your recipes look at amazingly delicious. Do you have any thoughts or ideas for people like that that might be listening to the show that are going, Hey, this guy's cookbook is great. But number one, I can't access all of these number two, I can't get organic. Or I can't afford organic. They might even say that right? Yeah, I know. That's kind of a weird question. But it's a true? No, that's

Michael Crupain
a good question. I think it's two part question. Right. So first part about organic. I'm a fan of organic agriculture. I'm a fan of it for a couple reasons. There's probably some slight health benefits to from organic agriculture, maybe the slightly elevated nutrients, but it may not make that big of a difference. Honestly, for your nutrition. It's small, we can't really judge it. But I know it is better for the farmers who are producing that food, because they're not spraying the pesticides. And so they're the ones who are really exposed to it, not us. And I know it's better for the land. So I try to buy organic when it's available. However, it's not in this recipe, what's more important to me is there, you're buying the highest quality produce that you can afford, and doesn't have to be organic. But if if you know the person who's raising it, or growing it, you're gonna get something better. If you can't find that person, you can go to the supermarket and eat what's in season, you're gonna find something that's better.

Greg Voisen
And is it true, Michael, that some of the thicker skinned vegetables and fruits like bananas and avocados, you don't need to be concerned about them being organic?

Michael Crupain
Or lots of? Yeah, well, again, it depends on how you want to decide what concern is. So for your personal health, most of the food you get in the grocery store at a farmers market anywhere have very low levels of pesticide residues. When I was a Consumer Reports, we, we did huge analyses on these. And you can go to Consumer Reports. And you can see which foods have the highest residues and which have the lowest. And it's typically, things like berries have higher levels. And actually green beans have higher levels of pesticide residues and traditionally, you know, changes over time. And other foods, but yeah, it's just the food you peel, then you're not going to get exposed to those residues at all. The food you don't and then you will but again, the residue levels are very low, it's more about the people and the environment than about your own health. So if you if you can't afford organic, I don't think it's the it's a big deal. It's not the end of the world, you got to do what's best for you. Now, I when it comes to affording healthy food or having access to it, that's a big issue. I can't I can't solve the access problem. But I've worked on it a lot in different parts of my life. And I think we need to reframe the cost of food discussion a little bit. And think about what we talked about in the in the power of five cookbook of the concept of nutrient density. Right. So it turns out when you eat the power five foods, these are the most nutrient dense and filling foods you can eat. Right? And sort of by that calculation, they're actually a lot cheaper than the other foods that are the less healthful foods right, so we have a cool analogy in the book about a piece of broccoli as a I can't remember now the the nutrient, and I think it's nice and vitamin I just forgot, it's in broccoli and you need to eat like a piece of broccoli, you know the size of your hand to get a huge quantity of that nutrient. And if you wanted to get it from like a packaged food, you need to eat six suitcases full of that same package, right? So you're getting something really filling by eating vegetables like green leafy vegetables and broccoli, that ends up being not that expensive. Considering the nutritional value and how much fiber is in it and how helpful it makes you feel. You don't necessarily need the calorie bomb from those other highly processed foods that end up being cheaper.

Greg Voisen
Well, I'm sure that there's a lot of listeners out there today that have gravitated towards smoothies. And I want to address this because it's a craze. We all know that. It's more than a craze at this point. It's like literally everywhere. And you know, even me in the morning, I have a green mix that I that I buy that comes from a farm and I put a banana in and then I put in a powder protein, and I blend it up and I'm like, okay, that's what I have for breakfast and I'm thinking, Well, I'm probably doing good. Well, I might be, but maybe I'm not. And there's probably a lot of listeners out there right now that are saying, well, there might be a better choice. Is there a better choice? And I think you address all the foods in here, right? What are your thoughts on just somebody who's slamming down Have a smoothie in the morning, heading out to work. So

Michael Crupain
I think I think depends on what you're putting in your smoothie and how you're making it. If you're putting in sort of Whole Foods and blending them up, I think that's okay. It's not, I'm not a big smoothie guy. I'd rather eat the whole foods themselves. I think there's something again, get back to maybe the timing of eating. When you eat things really fast. You feel differently when you eat them slowly and give your body a chance to sort of absorb digest them, right process them. So smoothie is can be depending again, what you put on a bit of a calorie bomb, right and digestible one. While if you ate those foods, if you ate that banana separately, and you ate that kale separately, feeling you you would be really full, and you would eat it more slowly. And you probably wouldn't have as much. So I think I think a smoothie is a good again, if you don't put too many sugary things in it. Right. It's a good way to get some of those nutrients quickly when you don't have time. But I prefer to eat the whole food.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, I think that's a that's a good point. Now, in your medical writing Korean your writing career, you've encountered numerous I'm gonna say health myths and misconceptions. What are some of the most common misconceptions about food and health? That the power five aim to really correct? Because there is a lot of misconception out there that that that's the hardest part about any of this arena? Is it somebody else always says I have something better, right. And you used to be on Dr. Oz Show, hey, it always have this segment on food and you know it, tell people to do this and do that. And then the other day wasn't that long ago, Oprah endorsed that drug that she's on basically to, and then she got backlash from it. And you know, people look to figures like that they look to Dr. Oz, they look to people like Oprah. And a lot of times they'll just follow their advice blindly. Because they think, Oh, well, it's great. Misconception, misconceptions and the power five, what would you do to aim to correct some of this? Yeah,

Michael Crupain
so let me just say like, we're about to my time on the Dr. Oz Show quickly, you know, I was I was brought in there to try to make things better than before I got there. And I think, I think once I was there, we really did a pretty good job 90% of the time giving the really solid advice, like the what's in the power five. And I think the big misconception is that nutrition advice changes all the time, I think it's not actually true. That's what we believe. Because the media is always looking for something that will shock you or, you know, get you to click something or buy a via book or buy a magazine, or whatever it is to get your attention because it's novel or new. But really, we've known forever about what the foods are, that are the most healthful and healthy for you. And they're the power five, they are the fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, whole grains, beans, and fish. And that was the point of the book is to make it really easy to know, these are the foods that we all agree on are healthy. Now someone will decide oh, today lard is healthy, large, not really healthy. But I mean, you can eat there are two extra chapters in the book that are the food you don't need to eat more of. So the power five or the food you need to eat more, because when we look at the data, even worldwide, people don't eat enough of the power five foods. But we eat enough of the other things like we eat enough meat, we eat enough sugar, we eat enough salt. But I did put two extra chapters in the book on the food, you don't need to eat more, but you're going to eat anyway, which are a meat chapter and a dessert chapter actually. I used to work as a pastry chef. So I'm very passionate about dessert. In the desert chapter, what I try, what I tried to do was make a couple of changes to some really good desserts. One was to bring in whole grain flour instead of white flour to make them a little bit healthier to cut the sugar and about by about 50% but without sacrificing the flavor and texture. And then to use olive oil which is the world's healthiest fat instead of butter. That's what happened that's in the desert chapter. And then in the meat chapter, we have one recipe for different types of meat and and I think that people are going to eat meat. I'm not asking people to not eat meat. It's just we don't need to make meat the center of every meal every single day. You know, meat is part of raising animals is part of a sustainable agriculture system. Animals make manure manure is used as a fertilizer for the production of vegetables. So in a really sustainable system, you need animals so you need to produce some meat. So I've given some recipes and advice on how to find the best meat that you can.

Greg Voisen
What is your overall research show about the power five foods as it relates It's true if you can, maybe you've got a story you can tell about somebody who's experienced significant health benefits from eating the power five, or you know, because like you're a researcher as well, you're, I mean, you're really all wrapped into one a dietitian, you've really got a lot of wealth of knowledge here, when you've seen people shift to the power five, and do it on what to eat when, right so now you combine the power of the two of these. It's really a recipe for a desired outcome, which would be weight loss, changes in your a one see improvements in your overall blood, you know, cholesterol levels, everything. What What, do you have any stories? Or do you have any factual data about that, like, I've

Michael Crupain
got one story about a person, it's an interesting story about a person who is the husband of a nurse who had diabetes, and their diabetes was always very difficult for them to control. They started and they did everything they could. And eventually, they shifted to eating, you know, power five foods and Mediterranean style diet. They were still they were getting better, but they were still struggling with their diabetes and their agency levels. And then they added on the wind part as well. And they suddenly found that their their agency was down to normal. And that's one of and to me, that was an amazing story. It was great to hear. And when we have lots of individuals who I've talked to over the years, who have who've tried when and found that they were able to lose weight, or me personally, when I'm able to eat that way, I sleep so much better. And I and Mike Roizen, whoever the books with he tells ease has so much more energy when he he does that. But you know, I mean there's there's lots of data beyond personal I'm a preventive medicine doc and preventive medicine, Doc's think about how do we treat the population? And what do we look at? What do we look at, for the entire group of people and, and the data is just overwhelming, that when when people eat the power five foods, they reduce the risk of death from heart disease, diabetes, and sometimes cancer?

Greg Voisen
Well, it's an amazing book people ought to we'll put a link to this, we'll put a link to your website as well. It's Dr. Crupain, drcrupain.com. Definitely go there. That website is gorgeous. Now, I'm going out to shop. What is my shopping list need to look like Michael? If I'm gonna get the power five foods. Can I go in any regular grocery store? Albertsons, Vons Whole Foods doesn't matter where it is? And I know I can get these but what should be on that list in particular? And should I clean out my cupboards if I'm going to actually start doing foods this way?

Michael Crupain
Well, I think I think the best thing to do is to look through the book and find the foods that you love. Right? Yeah, I think it's really important then, but also be a little adventurous, right. So I think that's important to try new things. Maybe some things you've had before that maybe you sort of liked or didn't like, but you know, maybe if you prepare them in a different way, I think when you go shopping, obviously, you stick to the outside of the supermarket for the most part, that's where you're gonna find your fruits and vegetables. And sometimes your nuts and seeds will be in bins along more more of the outside. Right, right, your fish will be along this sort of outer part of the supermarket. So definitely put your favorite fruits and vegetables on the list. I think some people were afraid of fruit because they think there's a lot of sugar in fruit. But fruit is actually super low calorie and really high fiber. It's hard to eat too much fruit. It's possible, but it's really hard. Not anyone can pull anything off, but it's but it's, it's really hard to do. And then when you're going into the middle of the grocery store, you don't focus on that maybe the international aisle or usually you'll find your beans, canned beans or dried beans. There's so many different types of beans. I like to order beans on the internet, because I like to try all these different heirloom beans that come in all these crazy colors and sizes. And it really makes eating beans more fun when they're sort of not, you know, different. And then I love pasta. So pasta is a very good place to go. There's so many good whole wheat pastas now. They used to be terrible. I mean, they used to just turn into a gummy mess. But now they make them really well. They're very careful about that. The whole the wheats they use about the production methods that they use, how they dry them. And so they're you

Greg Voisen
were just in Italy, what is it about the wheat and Italy that we just don't seem to be able to get right here. I mean, you know, when you look at the breads in most of the Eastern countries, and you say, oh my god, that bread is so good. You know, I know when I go to Europe and I come back and I see what we have here. I'm like, why is that is the wheat that much better? So

Michael Crupain
there's a bunch of things going on there. Right and I think America is in a bread renaissance right now. I think you can find more and more good bread. Every time I go to a new town there's a new bakery popping up or in my town, there's another new bakery that's making real good bread. And you know, bread is simple. We have a lot of I've got a lot of bread recipes. And look, I spent a lot of time baking over the pandemic like everyone else and experimenting with again with different flowers to figure out how do you combine these whole grain flowers to make the best tasting bread that you can but flour, I I haven't used almond flour in baking bread. But I think but I've used a lot of ancient grains and that's what you find in a lot of European countries like the area I was just in Italy is called kuliah which is the heel of the boot the most the most Eastern southern part of the main land of of Italy. And their primary green crop is durum wheat, and wheat is one of the oldest types of wheat it's a very simple genetically, it has a very easily digestible gluten it's actually the gluten is not very strong in durum wheat and it can be a little hard to work with but I show you how in the power five how to use durum wheat, and how to use whole grain durum wheat. But yeah, they they have a lot more rules in Europe about how they produce their breads and what they can use as additives in this particular part of poea they have a bread called upon it out Tamara, which is considered one of the best brands in the world. And it's like a I think it's a DLP brands like a bread that they've put a sticker on to say this an official pani dal Tamara. And it has to be made a certain way has to be made with a sourdough starter it has to be made with certain percentage of water has to be made with this flour has to be cooked in a certain type of oven. And and so then in Europe, they have more of those traditions around bringing any home we don't have. I didn't bring it home. But I have I have my version. I call it the penny the statute which the town I live in, in upstate New York, where I may I have a whole grain version of the Panadol. Tomorrow that really delicious. Well,

Greg Voisen
it's in the book, I want to let my listeners know the other thing is, you know, I know from my listeners, a lot of fun like to watch you too. So I'm asking you a resources. What are some of the resources that you'd recommend people who want to learn more about eating healthy diet? Want to learn more about the power of five? Do you have? I don't want to say a cooking channel. But if you don't, you should. And if you do, where is it on YouTube? And how can my listeners get to it? So

Michael Crupain
I don't have a thing on YouTube yet, but I am picking up my Instagram game and posting a lot of cooking videos on Instagram. So you can you can find me on Instagram at Dr crew pain. That's my my name. So it's the same as the website you go the website Doctor group pain.com, you can find the Instagram or you can go on Instagram and find and follow me Doctor group and I just posted recently. One of my favorite recipes in the book is for an a pretty healthy version of eggplant parmesan. You know that's typically like a breaded and fried dish that's really heavy and tons of cheese. Mine has no breading as no frying has a light dusting of cheese. But the trick to it is I cut the eggplant really thin. And I stack it up in many, many layers. So it ends up being really tall. And again, it creates this like very luxurious. I appealing mouth feel appealing. Parmesan. Yeah, you would think it mean doesn't sound healthy. But this version is pretty good for you. And it doesn't have very many ingredients. It just eggplant saw the most simple tomato sauce you could ever imagine. A little Parmesan cheese or pecorino cheese and throw

Greg Voisen
this up for my listeners too. There's that. Oh, that's the that's it. Sourdough was fun.

Michael Crupain
Yes, the lasagna bread is is. So that's a traditional Sicilian dish that I that I've taken and figured out how do you make it into a whole wheat version, so it'll be better for you. So a lot of the book again is like is teaching you sort of techniques and how to use ingredients to in in the real world we tell you eat more whole grains, eat more fish eat more beans. It's like what do I do with them? When this that's what the point of the power five is to really help you understand what to do with

Greg Voisen
them. So anything and closing up your interview and letting our listeners know take aways you'd like to leave for the listening audience one and two, anything that you're working on that they should know about. It's you know coming out and if Future I know this book is is releasing very soon. And the reality is you can get it now on Amazon or you can preorder it at least, I would tell you that this book is great. The other two books too, you know, you ought to go do Amazon's package deal and get everything all at once. Because the work that you did prior to this, really, to me seems to be a precursor to you taking this book and then choosing when you're going to eat these great, lovely foods. I was just looking at one with barley and tomatoes in it, which is just looks awesome. I mean, a really nice recipe.

Michael Crupain
Yeah, super simple. Tomatoes are one of my favorite foods. Barley is an ancient grain that we don't eat enough of. Yeah, I don't know, my takeaway is pretty simple. I mean, I think people should, should worry less about what they shouldn't eat and focus more on what they should eat. It's rare for a doctor to tell you to eat more. I'm saying eat more. And eat more of these power five foods, fruits and vegetables

Greg Voisen
at the right time.

Michael Crupain
Don't eat in the middle of the night, eat more early, and eat less later.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, get that pepperoni pizza just right before you go to bed know. What you want to have is, you know, drink more water, get more exercise, eat the power five foods. And really, as you said earlier around heart disease or diabetes. You know, we have so many of these drugs around diabetes. Like you said, your success story was this gentleman basically came off of that. He lost the weight. He used your program. And it was when he was eating that really made that significant difference. And I think for all my listeners, go to the website is Dr. Crew pain. Dr. CRUP ai n.com. There you can find more about this book. You can find more about his predecessor books. There's recipes on there. And at Instagram, he said he's posting so definitely go look him up on Instagram. And check out some of those posts that Michaels put up there around really good foods for you to eat. Thanks so much for being on inside personal growth and sharing. Not only is great recipes, but your stories about what to eat when you know, I think that's really important as well.

Michael Crupain
Thank you