Fat. Perhaps the one macronutrient that has the worst reputation but for misinformed reasons! Today’s guest Amanda Meixner is a nutrition expert here to set the record straight on what constitutes “good versus bad” fats, the powerful role lipids play in our overall wellness, and some of the best ways to source them depending on your goals.
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Read the Full Transcript
Joe: [00:06] Thanks for joining me today, Amanda! I’m stoked to have you here on the Cured Collective podcast. Mutual friend, Chase, introduced us, and he seems to introduce me to one interesting person after another. When he told me to look up your profile, I was like, “Whoa!” Somebody that’s well-respected in the nutrition world, and I was stoked to get connected with you, so thanks for joining me.
Amanda: [00:29] I’m excited. I’m excited for this conversation. I tried some of your products; I think they’re great. So, I’m really excited to chat some more.
Joe: [00:38] Yeah. So, most podcasts, I start with, when I have a guest, is I just want to give a little bit of background on them. If somebody goes to Instagram and they search your profile, they’ll see that you’ve build a very big community of people – what did I see – 1.3 million followers right now. There’s a reason why those people are there and there’s a reason why you’re doing what you’re doing. There’s a story behind everything. I wanted to dive into that a little bit and talk about your journey and building the platform that you have, and why wanted to become the educator that you have.
Amanda: [01:17] Yeah! That’s a great question, and it starts, actually, stemming from – I want to say a mistake – but learning from what I consider my failures, or I just didn’t really know enough at the time. Going into my freshman year of high school, I developed an eating disorder, and at the time, I didn’t know – I was wanting to lose some weight. I felt myself gaining weight, like the hips and all that. You go through puberty a little as a female, and I felt like, man, I’m not eating healthy enough, I want to lose some weight. There might have been some emotional stuff going on at the time too, but I felt like… if someone was there to just tell me there’s a healthier way to lose weight or maybe focus on some other things around food, and not like trying to be super skinny, I wouldn’t have gone down that path of developing an eating disorder. That’s where my path kind of started around nutrition was actually being completely down the wrong path. Then, after high school, I made a full recovery, and anyone in that zone, I do recommend professional help to go through some of the emotional stuff you might be going through too. But, after that, and then I went through college and I gained the freshman 15 and I was like, ok, I clearly – I made a full recovery and I’m feeling better about myself, and this time around, when I graduated college, I was like I want to lose weight the healthy way, but I was like, how do I do that? That’s when I really got into the research, understanding proper nutrition to fuel your body. You do want to be in a moderate calorie deficit to lose weight, but the goal is not to eat as little as possible. You need all the macronutrients, you need fats, protein, carbs. Obviously, you can do things like keto and lower your carbs for a period of time, but again, that’s all cyclical. So, after learning a much healthier way to lose weight, like diving into the research, I was like, ok, I did it for myself, but I really want to help to empower other women not to make the same mistake that I did, and also know you can lose weight, that’s fine, but there’s a much healthier way to do it, and the goal isn’t to eat nothing. That’s where my journey started off at, and also was kind of at a time where I was starting work and I got really into meal prep because when you work 9 – I don’t work in an office anymore – but I worked 9-6 in the office. If you don’t make your own food, it also gets really expensive. So, I was like I need to find a way that I can make my own food, but in an office every week. There’s this meal prepping thing, you make all the food on Sunday and you don’t have to worry again until Friday. I started documenting also my meal prep journey on Instagram. So, those are kind of the two things combined that set me off on this foot of really doing more research and sharing all the different methods of healthy way to lose weight and meal prepping with a wide audience.
Joe: [04:21] Yeah, that’s awesome. I think it’s really important to touch on the emotional aspects of the things that you were working through. Thank you for mentioning that, because I think that there’s still not enough conversation around eating disorders, and my fiancée is actually in recovery from one, and the… most of the time, there’s some pain there. And I think that’s what a lot of people just don’t understand, that haven’t experienced it or experienced somebody going through it. Thank you for touching on that, and I feel you on the other part. I did the exact same thing. I dove into the competition world, oh man, it’s been like 6 years, but the biggest thing was like the ease of being the way of you can be so efficient and the way that you just take the guessing game out of everything by meal prepping, that changed everything for me. Then, you know what happened after years of competing? I started looking around and I started seeing the very intense tracking of macros and very strict ways of eating and not having varieties of things. One of the things that just struck a chord with me that you said, was it’s not about eating as little as possible. It’s actually about eating as much as possible, as much as you can, getting all the correct macro and micronutrients, and still being able to be in whatever deficit that might be. If anybody follows you and follows the health and fitness industry on Instagram, everybody’s seen an evolution over the last 5-6 years, and misconceptions, this and that, and I think it’s really important to get back to simplifying things. That’s what I see what you do the most, is like, let’s make it really simple and let’s understand what we’re actually doing here.
Amanda: [06:18] Absolutely, and also, you know the other hard thing too, is I feel like it ping-pongs. It’ll go from one end, like you said, all of a sudden, people won’t care about healthy eating and then they might go too far to the end, like be stuck in the bodybuilding world and not have enough variety like you just said. It’s also like, it’s so hard to find that balance, which is like, everyone wants to get there. I think that’s everchanging for people, but you gotta find that center, and that place where, at the end of the day, you’re eating to hopefully make you feel good.
Joe: [06:50] Yeah, that’s the ultimate goal, is to get through the day at your highest performance, basically, and make sure you’re giving your body what it needs. One of the biggest things that there’s always been misconceptions around in the general public – and I think we’re getting more educated on it – but there’s still some discussion around, these days, as we discussed before the podcast – we’ll dive into here – but the concept of using fats and how fats can be healthy, and just the understanding of what fats actually are and should be in our diet. You have a post today and you listed a bunch of misconceptions, you’re talking about a bunch of sources and how fat can actually be beneficial in the diet. I want to talk about all of that, but what’s one of the first things that you would say is the biggest misconception when people start talking about fat and how it should be in their diet?
Amanda: [07:51] I mean, it literally comes from the name itself. They’re like, “Fat must make you fat. If you’re ingesting fat, it only makes sense that it makes you fat.” Now, like you said, there’s so much with the keto trend and all of the new information coming out that people are understanding more and more that there’s beneficial hormonal effects from it and that adding fats to your diet, you know, they’re more satisfying and filling, so you actually might eat less overall even though you’re incorporating fats, which maybe we call them lipids or something. This is what my fiancé Steven says a lot. We should just call it lipids because everyone hears the word fat and they’re like, “Ehh!” It’s getting better and better. I think the other reason there’s a misconception around there is because fats, for example, are 9 calories per gram vs. protein and carbs, so they’re 4 calories per gram. Again, they’re also more calorie dense. But again, you also don’t need as much to feel full. Also, the body, it really needs the fat, right? Your brain is composed of about 60% fat when you drain it of water, so that’s why you kind of think of fat as brain fuel, so you don’t want to forget about that. Also, fat is needed to absorb certain nutrients, so Vitamin A, E, D, and K. That’s why it’s best when you’re eating a salad and all of that, you don’t want the fat-free dressing, you want like the olive oil, the healthy fats to help you absorb those vitamins and nutrients. Being too low on fat can lead to hormonal problems. If you’re missing your period as a woman, maybe you’re not getting enough calories, you might not be getting enough fats. You might see more of that in the bodybuilding world because they’re trying to get that lean look, but hormonally, you need some. And you need a little bit, like a layer under the skin also helps regulate body temperature, and even around different organs in your body, like the kidney, kind of acts as bubble wrap. I could keep going.
Joe: [09:57] You could probably talk for an hour straight on why we need to, and that’s why we’re doing this podcast. One of the things that I, coming from a bodybuilder background and understanding macros, I always, for the last 5-6 years, understood the caloric breakdown of each macronutrient. It was last week or the week before that, I was just sitting down with some people on my team and I was saying, “Well, there’s 9 calories per gram of fat. There’s 4 per gram of carb and gram of protein,” and just understanding that and thinking that is such a simple thing that I looked over so quickly from just my understanding and being in an extreme end, I guess you should say. That’s the one thing that people should even just start with, you get – a calorie is a unit of energy, so you get basically double the amount of energy from the same measurement or weight of that molecule, basically. I think that that’s really important for people to understand right off the bat when you’re trying to keep yourself satiated for a longer amount of time, is understanding that you’re actually going to be able to – and I think that – and I don’t know all the science, but the breakdown of that in your body is going to take a lot longer than the breakdown of a carb.
Amanda: [11:25] Totally. I mean, it depends on what type of fat it is. MCT oils are super bioavailable, soyou don’t need any bile to break that down, but other types of fat your body will digest more slowly. You need all 3 macronutrients. Don’t write off fats just because it’s more calorie dense.
Joe: [11:47] Have you ever done a keto diet? What do you [inaudible]?
Amanda: [11:55] I don’t… I’ve never needed or wanted to go to that extreme, because low carb – low carb is obviously not keto. I think a lot of people could actually benefit from just going low carb because it’s not quite as extreme, maybe a little more manageable. If you’re super overweight and you have insulin sensitivity problems, actually going higher fat for a period of time can have so many benefits, so I do recommend if you’re overweight to try a low carb diet. I don’t recommend necessarily being on it for the rest of your life by any means, but 12 weeks can do a lot of wonders. I haven’t tried keto, but I’ve heard so many good things. I’ve heard so many hormonal benefits, and I’d actually be curious to hear how you felt on it, because a lot of different experts rave of how good they feel, so I’m curious how you felt on it. Like I said, it’s not for everyone, but I think that’s why there’s so many different diets out there for you to try and play with, and I think that’s one of the best ones, especially if you do it right.
Joe: [12:56] At first, I felt like shit, to be honest.
Amanda: [13:00] Did you get the keto flu, or just the transition?
Joe: [13:02] Just the transition. It was… while in bodybuilding, I had gotten used to having the extremely low energy levels. If I was carb cycling or just doing really low caloric intake, I was like this is the worst feeling ever. Whenever you’re in a caloric deficit, it just doesn’t feel good because you need the calories for the energy.
Amanda: [13:27] [inaudible] I’m sure in bodybuilding, you go pretty low.
Joe: [13:31] Yeah, way too low.
Amanda: [13:33] [inaudible] It’s not for everyone.
Joe: [13:35] It’s not healthy. I was on a podcast yesterday talking about it with somebody, and I was like, I woke up one day and I was posting a picture, and I posted #health, and then I looked at it and was like, oh my god. Then, I was looking around and was like, all these people taking steroids, they’re in crazy caloric deficits – and I’m not saying this as a blanket statement – but for the most part, it’s the truth that that’s happening. You’re really just putting your body through crazy stress that’s unnecessary and you’re adding in other things that really aren’t healthy for you in the long run. I was like, that’s not healthy. There’s something wrong here, and that was about a half a year before I started a podcast of mine that was called Higher Health. Then, that was the catalyst to starting Cured. But, it was just like, there’s this misconception on what healthy really is. That is like everything goes back to that, and that’s why we started Cured, because there’s this misconception around cannabinoids and how they can be healthy, and it’s just one thing after another. But yeah, that was a long tangent, but when I was doing keto , the first couple of weeks – and I’ve actually done it several times – that low, low energy is really difficult, but once I break through and I’m actually in ketosis, I never felt more mentally clear. And I know a lot of people say that.
Amanda: [15:09] No, I’ve heard that a lot. I believe that your body’s fueling off all these fats, turning them into ketones, so it makes sense to me. I’ve never personally felt that. I’m also like, I feel so good on my current regimen. I’m like, hmm, do I need to try keto? [inaudible]
Joe: [15:29] No, don’t try it if you don’t have to.
Amanda: [15:32] Yeah, and it also sounds like you probably benefitted from cycling, you know, you tried different things. There’s a lot of benefit to trying different types of eating and not being stuck. You shouldn’t be stuck to one for your life.
Joe: [15:45] 100%. I think that that’s really important for people to give to themselves. And give each of them enough time before you make a decision, because [inaudible]
Amanda: [15:55] Yeah, that’s the other issue. You can’t do them for 1 week, like oh, I did it. You have to, I mean, I usually like at least 6 weeks, but usually 12 weeks is a better judge of some style of dieting. But it’s interesting, you felt not so great the first 3 weeks.
Joe: [16:13] Yeah, probably like 10-14 days, and that’s pretty consistent every time I’ve switched to ketosis. Some people can get into it a lot quicker than others.
Amanda: [16:24] Yeah, I read that.
Joe: [16:25] I think at that point, just all the weird bodybuilding stuff I was doing to my body was just not happy with me. Actually, I know for a fact.
Amanda: [16:37] When you’re used to a higher amount of carbs too was that, yeah.
Joe: [16:40] So, I tried it and I realized that it’s not for me. So, fats. There’s a bunch of different types of fats. Let’s talk about all of those and how we should look at each of them, and then, we can dive into this… well, saturated fat discussion. So, tell me about all the other ones.
Amanda: [17:02] Yes, obviously there’s unsaturated fats and there’s saturated fats, and then, there’s also – one we’ll just get out of the way – there’s also trans fats, but basically, that’s been completely banned. The FDA, the man-made trans fat, it was supposed to be out of all our food in 2018, or I think they gave companies a 1 year extension, but hopefully you don’t have to worry about that. Usually it’s found in fried foods. So, if you’re avoiding fried foods, it should be completely gone by now, but just so you know a little bit about trans fats.
Joe: [17:31] No trans fats.
Amanda: [17:34] No trans fats! No man-made trans fat. It was banned. It’s not good for you. So, we have unsaturated fats, which we have monosaturated, and we have polysaturated. Obviously, the poly is how there’s the double bond, the double carbon bond. Monosaturated fat, that’s where olive oil, almonds, all that fall into the monosaturated fats. Obviously, there’s so much research around olive oil, the brain benefits. They also have a lot of polyphenols. More and more research comes out about the Mediterranean diet, everyone loves the Mediterranean diet, but a big staple in the Mediterranean diet is olive oil, so I feel like olive oil is one of the least controversial of all the oils. We agree about it, it’s vegan, it’s vegetarian, paleo people love it, everyone loves olive oil. So, that’s when it comes to monosaturated fats. Then, polysaturated fats, so omega-3s fall under that, so those are great. You’ll find those in fatty fish, salmon, mackerel. Those are also good for brain health. Then, the more controversial oils that fall under polysaturated would be like your vegetable oils, your canola oils, your different seed oils. The issues with those are a lot of the ways they’re manufactured. They’re using chemical extractions, there’s been trace elements of the toxic chemical hexane found in canola oil. It’s not like vs. olive oil, where you basically just press olives, like it’s a very simple process. A lot of these cheaper oils is much more complicated to get the fats from soybeans and all these other things. So, that’s one of the biggest issues with them. The other issue with that is something like an olive oil, you’ll more commonly find it in glass bottles, and they’re dark glass bottles; things like canola oils and vegetable oils you’ll find in these plastic clear bottles, and light affects these oils so they become more rancid. You don’t want your oils to become rancid. That’s when you get into the different toxic elements. That’s really the issue with these cheap oils. It’s almost like, I hate to say this, but put your money where your mouth is.
Joe: [20:03] I was just going to say the same thing. Like everything is cheap about it.
Amanda: [20:07] Yeah, everything’s cheap, you know, and all these different issues. Then, what was the one other thing? But I’ll circle back to it. Oh, what’s also going on with them is a lot of them tend to be high in omega-6, and we do need some omega-6, but the issue right now in the modern western diet, among many issues, is that the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio is like 20:1, or 10:1. It’s ridiculously high, and there’s a little bit more research that needs to be done about it, but a lot of different doctors and scientists are hypothesizing that that’s leading to inflammation, is this high ratio. When really, it should be what they think is closer to 4:1 or 1:1. The goal isn’t to have no omega-6, but just our ratio needs to be better, so again, getting more of those omega-3 fatty acids.
Joe: [21:01] Yeah, I was going to ask you about that ratio because I’ve seen a lot of different things over the years. So, what about – how much do you know about hempseed oil – which actually has omega-3 and omega-6.
Amanda: [21:17] You know what? I haven’t heard of hempseed oil as much, but I’m assuming that it has a simpler process as some of the oils. I assume that would be good, but I would have to look into that a little bit more. I guess that’s a newer one. Are you – have you seen it more often?
Joe: [21:32] Yeah, well actually, there’s some multiple things here. One, there’s a lot of confusion in specifically just the CBD industry because from a labeling perspective, a lot of companies, including ourself, we just label it hemp oil because it is a hemp, it’s an oil made from a hemp extract, and it takes away the confusion of CBD and the regulations. Around some of the big marketplaces, like Amazon and those places, they won’t let you sell CBD oil because CBD can come from marijuana or hemp, but if it’s coming from hemp, it lives under the 2018 Farming bill allowing it to be a hemp-derived cannabinoid. So, if you say that it’s hemp oil and it has hemp extract in it, then that’s a CBD oil. Where the confusion comes in is people then think it’s hempseed oil, and hempseed oil does not contain cannabinoids. The cannabinoids are coming from the actual flower of the plant, and the seed doesn’t have those cannabinoids in it, but it is a really good source of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, and there are a lot of companies that use it as the carrier oil. So, there’s a lot of things going on there, but you can see that it actually gets confusing for people, because if I say hemp oil, you type in Cured hemp oil, you’ll see an oil that comes up and it’s hemp-derived CBD oil. Kind of a lot there, but hemp [inaudible]
Amanda: [23:07] You know, that is very interesting, because I see that same issue with other things like, for example, I think sunflower seed butter is great, but sunflower oil is not great.
Joe: [23:18] Exactly.
Amanda: [23:19] But it’s interesting. Is it, in this case, since I haven’t seen as much research on this, would you say hemp oil and hempseed oil are both beneficial?
Joe: [23:29] Yes, and different. That’s actually a really good segue. Cannabinoids, specially CBD, show anti-inflammatory properties. So, a cannabinoid having that property is – that’s a benefit, right? And healthy fats, and getting the correct omega-3 omega-6 ratios actually serves as a great inflammation reduction approach. So, it is like the same thing, but how it’s working is actually in a different way.
Amanda: [24:04] And that checks all my boxes, so I don’t know why that’s not on my list. It needs to be on my list. 2020 – up in the hemp world.
Joe: [24:12] Well, we’ll send you our Cured stuff.
Amanda: [24:17] There ya go.
Joe: [24:18] Yeah, so, I think that that’s really important to understand the breakdown of the different types of fats. Is there any – so, we’re talking about the omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids – but when you look at the different types, so saturated vs. poly or mono, or unsaturated, how do you really go for a breakdown of those in your daily intake?
Amanda: [24:44] I think it comes back to – previously you were talking about how diversity is good – and I like to have a diversity of fats. I’m not trying to have just olive oil or just the monosaturated, or just the saturated fats. I like to use them all. The closer I can get to Mother Nature, how she made the fats, that’s how I view it. When it comes to saturated fats, that’s been a little more controversial with the epidemiological studies showing that, you know, at once, they were like omnivores vs. vegan and vegetarians, like vegans and vegetarians are so much healthier, they have less cardiovascular disease. Yes, we’re comparing the American western diet to a vegan and vegetarian population in which, obviously, those people are going to be a little more conscious. But when you look for other lifestyle factors and you compare maybe more of the organic, healthy omnivores vs. a vegetarian/vegan lifestyle, you see that there is no differences in cardiovascular health and longevity, and that it actually evens out. That’s where that myth is stemming from. There’s more and more researching coming out showing that saturated fat is not correlated to cardiovascular disease. And I guess, again, we need to pay attention to this correlation studies and question how are they getting this data, what kind of lifestyle factors are they are checking for and don’t just blindly believe any correlation study that comes out. The other benefit of incorporating some saturated fats is that they have a higher smoking point when you’re cooking with them.
Joe: [26:28] Ooh, yeah. I wanted to talk about that.
Amanda: [26:30] Yes, so – there’s so many benefits to olive oil, but it starts smoking at like 350 degrees? Which there’s actually been some studies that even if you do cook olive oil, it smokes off, so you’re wasting good olive oil, but it doesn’t become as rancid. Some oils, it’s actually dangerous, so there’s mixed reviews on that. But you don’t want to waste good olive oil cooking it past 350 degrees.
Joe: [26:58] What’s the highest? Is it avocado?
Amanda: [27:01] Avocado’s really high. I’m trying to think – so ghee, which is clarified butter – which is also great because about 60% of the population is lactose intolerant, so ghee’s great because it removes most of the lactose. There’s a trace amount, so if you’re severely allergic, ghee wouldn’t work, but for most people it’ll work because there’s pretty much no lactose. But that one’s great because that has another high heat, I think. I have it written down. I’m not sure, I’m trying to remember the exact numbers of each of those. Ghee is 450 degrees. Avocado oil is really high, 520. Then, the ones that are a little bit lower. So, I think there’s a misconception that you can’t sauté with olive oil. Like, I still do it. You just want to do it on lower heats, like 325 you can still sauté your vegetables. Same with virgin coconut oil, is 350, and then walnut oil is 320.
Joe: [28:03] I’ve never used walnut oil. Hmm.
Amanda: [28:05] There’s so many oils out there!
Joe: [28:10] Same with the butters. I was in Sprouts the other day, and I think I saw a watermelon seed butter or something like that. It was something crazy.
Amanda: [28:19] No way!
Joe: [28:20] That’s super interesting to me.
Amanda: [28:25] [inaudible] those are some great choices. Then, don’t forget grass fed. Grass fed butter is a better choice, and then, the thing when you get grass fed butter vs. the grain cows, grain fed cows tend to have higher omega-6 ratios. You can see this issue just continually coming up, so grass fed butter will have higher levels of omega-3. I’m asking like the butters [inaudible]
Joe: [28:50] Let’s talk about the thing that eats the grass. What about people that are… what about this carnivore diet thing?
Amanda: [29:01] Oh my goodness. Again, I always take things to the extreme. What I’ve seen also, I think a lot of people have – not a lot of people – but some people seeing the benefits have auto-immune disease. Essentially, they go on the carnivore diet and they feel better, but what they’re really doing is an elimination diet and something they removed made them feel better, and they really need to get to the root cause of what vegetable or maybe is causing this gut dysbiosys or other issues, because plants have so many benefits, so many phytonutrients, so many vitamins and minerals. It very much concerns me when you’re cutting out all plants to only eat the – first we’re like no meat, then we’re like all meat.
Joe: [29:51] I mean, you made a really good point earlier when you were talking about vegan vs. the normal western diet. Like of course you’re going to be healthier because you’re comparing to something that’s regarded as extremely unhealthy and we all know that. But, when you’re comparing it to other people that are subscribing to I eat everything in moderation and I understand what my body really needs, I can guarantee that that person’s healthier.
Amanda: [30:14] Absolutely. Then, also, I understand for some people budget is an issue, but trying to allocate more of that budget to the higher quality foods, you know, the grass fed cows is so much better for you, so much better for the cows. It’s so much better for the environment because we get to more of regenerative farming, and because they’re eating the grass, we use their poop, it’s like the whole cycle.
Joe: [30:44] That’s how it’s supposed to work. It’s sustainable.
Amanda: [30:51] What are your favorite fats though? What do you like to use mostly?
Joe: [30:55] I eat avocado like crazy, but I also – it’s interesting because I’ve, for so long, ever since being in bodybuilding, I’ve played with so many different things – but I notice for my body to operate at its best, how I approach every single day is always in the morning, drink a butter coffee or a coffee with the MCT oil and probably some ghee, and then I usually eat pretty almost like keto up until I want to go workout. But my body really, really needs carbohydrates. If I don’t have the carbohydrates whenever I get to the gym or get into a workout, I’m just like running on zero. Especially in the gym where I can’t actually feel like I’m getting full muscle contractions, and I also don’t feel like I’m transporting water to the muscle as well without carbs, which I know is true. What I do is kind of like this higher fat beginning of the day type thing, because when I was bodybuilding and eating high carb, if I would do like the 2 cups of oatmeal in the morning, I would just crash. So, for me, I operate in a lot better mind state when I’m doing higher fat up until midday, then start introducing carbohydrates because I usually work out later in the day, then carbohydrates again after I work out. And I honestly eat whatever I want to. At night, I’ve gotten really good at giving myself that, but when I quit bodybuilding, I definitely had pretty disordered eating for quite some time. Then, what I really didn’t realize was how orthorexic it was, and that’s just the eating the same exact thing every single day. Like, I just didn’t even question it. I feel a lot better now that I’ve been able to give myself the freedom, but honestly, lots of meat, eggs, lots of whole eggs, avocado, and then I love MCT oils, olive oils. I eat a lot of nuts too, but I think that that’s another thing that people need to understand. For the longest time, there was people just always eating nut butter on social media, and talking about the protein from that, and understanding that wasn’t actually a complete protein source. I think that that was a massive misconception too.
Amanda: [33:19] It’s also a protein source that comes with a lot of fat. Not that that’s bad, but again, yes, you’ll get added protein from nut butters, but it’s not a protein source. It’s not a protein heavy meal by any means. Compare that to even a salmon, which is a little fattier, but that has so much more protein per ounce versus a nut butter.
Joe: [33:47] Yeah. I actually, I love salmon too as well. I love healthy, nice fatty fish. One of the things that actually was my least favorite thing when I was doing a really high fat diet or keto diet was, I actually got really oily skin. That was my least favorite thing.
Amanda: [34:06] Yeah, I’ve never been that high fat. It is like taking things to the extremes, which might not be for everyone, but that’s crazy. Also, I mean, just having a normal amount of fat can really help your skin, but it’s interesting that it made it oily.
Joe: [34:24] Yeah.
Amanda: [34:25] Keeping going, sorry.
Joe: [34:26] I was just going to say, I was going to change topics, so go ahead.
Amanda: [34:29] Well, I was going to say something that I thought of when you were going through your diet is the whole eggs. When fat was demonized for a while, everyone went egg whites, and not only, again, we shouldn’t be afraid of the fat. And how much more filling is a whole egg? Oh my god, egg whites on their own are just sad.
Joe: [34:47] Yeah, they’re a little mushy. And the yolk, you said it in your post today.
Amanda: [34:52] Yes, I forgot I posted that one the other day. A lot of the nutrients are found in the yolk. I think like choline, I think a lot of the other vitamins and minerals are in the yolk, so it’s something we’d be missing out on, which also goes into the little bit of the confusion around cholesterol, which was the assumption that – we made this assumption that eating cholesterol would raise your – would hurt your body’s overall cholesterol. But what we found is when you eat dietary cholesterol, your body stops making as much, except for, there is 25% of the population that are hyper-responders. So, aside from that, which is a solid percentage, but aside from the 25%, your body’s going to regulate. And cholesterol is important. It does things in your body. You need cholesterol.
Joe: [35:46] Yeah, the saturated fats and the cholesterol and being precursors to hormones, I don’t honestly notice. When I was on higher fat diets, like my testosterone and my libido were higher, and I didn’t actually recognize it at the time that it was all put together, but that’s what it was, and a lot of people I know that are coming out of the bodybuilding world, that’s the biggest thing, is they need to introduce those to help repair the hormone damage that they’ve actually had.
Amanda: [36:17] Yeah. So, when you were doing bodybuilding, were you pretty low fat?
Joe: [36:21] It was different every time, but for the most part, yes.
Amanda: [36:25] Yeah, that’s crazy.
Joe: [36:28] Those were the days. You learn by mistakes, so it’s all good.
Amanda: [36:36] Well, I mean, it takes – so that’s something that takes a level of discipline. You can’t really take that away from someone, but trying to come back from that and not being too disordered with your eating, like you said.
Joe: [36:51] Yeah, 100%. Another thing that’s super interesting and has been a piece of the education that Cured puts out there, has put out there since the very beginning, is that cannabinoids are actually fat soluble.
Amanda: [37:07] Oh, I didn’t know. So, that makes sense why you put it in there. I know some of the benefits of CBD, but I’m not quite – it’s not my world, it’s not my bread and butter, so I’d like to hear this.
Joe: [37:18] Honestly, the science is still evolving, but cannabinoids are fat soluble. One of the interesting things that people talk about, for example, when we’re talking about THC, or somebody trying to pass a drug test, they’re like, so cannabinoids being fat soluble actually are stored in your fat cells or can be stored in your fat cells of your body. So, depending on the actual fat storage that you, the total fat storage that you have, and how you can actually metabolize that over time, you can have cannabinoids in your system, in your body, for an extended amount of time depending on how much body fat you actually carry, which is extremely interesting. The other piece of that is that’s exactly why, as you were saying, we put all of our CBD cannabinoids – CBD or other cannabinoids – in a carrier oil that is a fat. It’s… and that’s something that’s interesting that a lot of people see, I don’t know if you’ve seen all the CBD waters and stuff out there.
Amanda: [38:30] Oh yeah, there’s so much, and like, I honestly would love asking more questions on CBD because there’s so many others, waters and food, and I’m like, is the amount in these products even that beneficial?
Joe: [38:48] No.
Amanda: [38:49] No. What amount do you need? And that goes back to your point of why you added fats to your product is because something like water, if you’re not eating, if you don’t know what to eat, like eating some almonds with it, your body’s going to absorb even less.
Joe: [39:05] Well, I’m actually going to call BS on a lot of the products that are out there. Most of the people that listen to this podcast are Cured customers, Cured supporters, so they have made a conscious decision to listen to this and understand everything that’s going on out there and understand how we put our products out into this world. There’s actually been multiple, or a lab here, and I’ve heard multiple cases of people getting water and testing the water, and one, there not being any CBD in it at all, or finding that it actually wasn’t soluble in the water so it wasn’t in solution, and it was actually adhering to the plastic container.
Amanda: [39:51] That makes me so angry.
Joe: [39:53] I mean, it’s the most frustrating thing to me, because when we started this company 2 years ago, it was like, we are creating this company to help shift the stigma around cannabinoids, and give people something that can actually benefit their health, and should not be stigmatized like it is. If people can find the benefits from it, and they can actually live a better lifestyle, or recover better, or move around better because they have less inflammation, like that’s really important. We had to put that message out there for a very long time in the beginning just to teach people about it and tell them that they weren’t going to get high, because the high or the euphoria comes from the THC. That’s where we started. It’s like we just had to nail that home.
Amanda: [40:46] That is probably the most confusing for most people. That part, I know.
Joe: [40:51] And the thing was that now, what’s going on is people are putting it in anything and everything. It’s really frustrating because the people that could actually benefit from it, if they’re going and getting one of those products and then they don’t see the benefit from it, then they just write it off as it doesn’t work. So, those people and those companies are giving the industry a really bad name, and it’s actually really unfortunate, and there’s where a lot of the misconceptions are. Even on Amazon, people will go and search it and buy for it, and they see oil, they see hempseed oil, they see no CBD in it, they see 25,000mg, like it’s just so confusing for people that it gets frustrating. That’s why we do this education.
Amanda: [41:39] No, it’s awesome. I guess, so what are your current products that your pair with some of these healthy fats? And I know you just launched one with olive oil, which is awesome. I’m waiting for all the crappy CBDs coming out with canola oil, and I’m like, don’t buy it!
Joe: [41:56] Honestly, you know, at one point, I saw, and I think this was probably a gimmick, and I really hope it was – but I saw CBD infused potato chips. I’m like, ok, that’s the [inaudible]. You literally just put that on there to try and sell a bag of potato chips. So, our tinctures either have hempseed oil, grapeseed oil, or an MCT oil, and then we came out with the olive oil that is really meant to be a finishing oil because, like you said, the vapor point of the oil is actually pretty low, and it’s a high quality oil, so we just recommend people using it as a finishing oil or something to top salads or anything like that. Then, when we first started the company, we came out with CBD infused spices, and we’re actually going to be phasing those out. For those of you listeners on this podcast, you’re getting an inside scoop to that. But what we always recommended was when you were using those, pair them with a healthy fat because the cannabinoids are fat soluble. Then, from your body’s metabolizing it, you’re going to have that actual fat to actually carry it into your system. So, the tinctures, the capsules that we have have the different carrier oils. Like I said, one has the hempseed oil in it, and then, yeah, that’s about it for the fats. I think it’s really important to talk about those and the fact that those are in our products, and then talk about more than just the CBD and the cannabinoids, because every piece of the hemp plant including the oils that we’re talking about, hempseed oils, are beneficial, but we’re just in the middle of this crazy craze right now. It’ll change in the next couple of years, and there’s going to be a lot of companies that go out of business.
Amanda: [43:52] Oh, for sure. 100%. I love that you’re committed to educating your customers and then also making sure they get the best use of their product. You’re not just doing it to be gimmicky, like sell potato chips. You’re really [inaudible], like how can you absorb it and make it work for you and get all the benefits, and not enough companies are doing that.
Joe: [44:19] I’ve seen some pretty ridiculous things over the year, and that’s why one of the things that we’re doing at Cured is also just creating more and more unique products. Those include other adaptogens and herbs and functional mushrooms, and the combination of all of those is really our statement that you need to look at all of the things that are coming from nature because they all have benefits to them, and we need to not write them off just because of beliefs and things that people have had for so long. Even just around the fact that it’s marijuana related. That’s [inaudible]
Amanda: [44:58] I feel like that the hemp industry – sorry to cut you off – but the hemp industry, and like cannabis industry, went through, especially hemp, like hemp has so many uses. I think we’ve even built houses out of it.
Joe: [45:17] Hempcrete is like one of the strongest building materials there is.
Amanda: [45:21] Yeah, so just, the stigmas we create, and we’re like wait, this is, you know, let’s get back to this. I heard a lot of it stemmed from the cotton industry and trying to, I don’t know, this might be too in the weeds, but the cotton industry trying to make sure that hemp doesn’t cut into its profits.
Joe: [45:42] No, it’s true, and it’s actually a piece of what happened way back when, when marijuana and hemp got wrapped into the same kind of category. That was when the same time paper mills were coming online. Hemp was threatening to that because you can – well, the constitution was written on hemp paper.
Amanda: [46:04] Wow, that’s crazy. Full circle.
Joe: [46:07] Well, Amanda, I appreciate you bringing all this education on to our platform. I want to start to wrap things up. Is there anything that you wanted to share with the listeners as far as any of the education that you do out there in this world through social media or anything else that you’ve got going on? Then, also direct people to where they can learn more about you and connect with you further.
Amanda: [46:33] Ok, well, I think there’s one takeaway from this podcast. First of all, make sure you’re getting a variety of fats, closer to Mother Nature, less processing, as you can. I hope you take that away. Where you can find me, you can find me at @meowmeix. It’s M-E-O-W-M-E-I-X. I know, nothing to do with my nutrition content. I like cats and my last name is Meixner, so meowmeix. I also have a website, meowmeix.com, and then, I have an e-book that has a bunch of different healthy snacks in it. If you want to go to 101healthysnacks.com, that’s where you can find my snacking e-book. And yeah, I really had fun coming on, and I can’t wait to use your products more, and I’m excited that you’re even launching products with higher quality oils like olive oil.
Joe: [47:25] Thank you. I appreciate your time here, and we’ll be connecting more here in the future. I’ll have some more products out to you here soon so you can do some more testing and give me some more feedback.
Amanda: [47:35] Oh yeah, I can’t wait!
