Dietitian Reaction: Netflix’s Hack Your Health (with my husband Vincent)

Join me and my husband Vinnie as we react to the Netflix documentary "Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut." We're dissecting the pros and cons of this 'life-changing' documentary (as my husband called it).

From the intriguing insights and studies to the eyebrow-raising moments where Vinnie thought a warning should be displayed (or the rating changed to 'R'), we're dishing out our honest opinions.

Whether you're a health enthusiast or looking to learn more about your gut, and want to know if 'Hack Your Health' is worth your time, tune in as we reveal our honest and unfiltered thoughts to each other on this episode from the perspective of a registered dietitian + my husband (representing the average Joe).

Resources mentioned:
Our previous episode about the "You Are What Eat" Netflix documentary

Share your thoughts with me! michelle@yatesnutrition.com

TOPICS COVERED 👇
Initial thoughts on the documentary (03:01)
Pros (09:49)
Adding not taking away food (09:50)
Lack of shaming (13:31)
Competitive eater's loss of hunger and fullness signals (16:49)
Reawakening the senses (17:44)
Cons (19:56)
Fecal transplant (20:01)
Tim Spector's role (22:50)
Mixed messages and misleading implications (29:07)
Unclear microbiome mapping (31:47)
Misleading information about stool testing (00:34:05)
Subtle promotion of at-home stool tests (00:36:18)
Our rating of the documentary (00:37:25)
Would we try the smoothie (00:39:23)
Romanticizing fruits and vegetables (00:40:49)

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Transcript

Michelle (00:00:02) - Ma. Ma ma ma.

Vincent (00:00:11) - Welcome to Nourished and Free the podcast. Today I am your host and for the rest of the time, I will be your host. Going forward. This is now my show. I, I am quickly becoming the talk of the town here. I hear that there's been a lot of demands, a lot of comments.

Michelle (00:00:37) - Not that many.

Vincent (00:00:39) - Requesting my presence. Well. Rest assured I am here and I am here to stay. Welcome my co-host, Michele. Okay. We're done.

Michelle (00:00:52) - Welcome back to the show. My name is Michelle Yates and I am the host of this podcast.

Vincent (00:01:00) - Yes she is.

Michelle (00:01:01) - This is the podcast where we like to have conversations around how to simplify your health and nutrition and be free from a toxic and stressful relationship with food. And sometimes, in order to do that, we need to discuss some hot topics and some popular documentaries. And today, that's what we're doing. We're discussing Netflix's latest documentary called Hack Your Health The Secrets of Your Gut, which just came out two days ago.

Michelle (00:01:27) - I'm really proud of us and how timely we've been on this. Yeah, because with the other documentary that we reviewed, which was You Are What You Eat, we were kind of late to the game on that one, but we're timely and this episode is going to come out on May 7th, so whatever.

Vincent (00:01:40) - Anyway, whatever. Deal with it.

Michelle (00:01:47) - so I brought on my delicious husband. And because he is a joy to have on and talk through things just to give it perspective on, like, here's what somebody thinks about this who is not a professional in the field. And he's just also a lot of fun to to hang out with. So I know you guys will enjoy him.

Vincent (00:02:08) - I'm happy to be here.

Michelle (00:02:09) - He was slightly requested to come back because of our last episode, and if you haven't listened to that, I'll put a link to the show notes we reviewed the four part series on You Are What You Eat, which is a Netflix documentary around the topic of veganism, and this documentary is quite a different vibe, so I'm excited to get into it, and we'll try to make this a quicker one than the last episode was, because again, that was a four part series, so we had a lot of ground to cover, but this one was only an hour and 20 minutes, a delightful surprise and relief.

Michelle (00:02:40) - if you haven't already, be sure you subscribe to this show and leave a rating and review. It is so, so helpful to support the show and and boost us up in those charts, especially if you want to spread the word on how to live nourished and free and be free from all of the crazy diet wellness crap out there. So anyway, let's get into it.

Vincent (00:03:00) - So let's get into it.

Michelle (00:03:01) - Let me give you a quick overview of this documentary and essentially some of the key themes that we saw throughout it. And and just give you the if you haven't seen it, I want you to have an understanding of kind of what it's all about. So essentially, there are a few different experts brought in to discuss the gut and the specifically the gut microbiome. And they're discussing mostly how this is a new and developing field of research. And we're learning a lot about the microbiome lately and how it potentially has links to a lot of things like different diseases and, even mood disorders and neurological disorders and that was tossed out a little bit.

Michelle (00:03:44) - And then. Kind of the take home message is how increasing your fruits and vegetables intake can be extremely helpful for the gut microbiome and and help you with basically feeling better in a variety of ways. So. Why don't you give me kind of your initial thoughts after watching this? You know, we've sat with it for about a day and a half now. We were going to record this last night, but the power went out, so that's fun. Midwest storms. now that you've sat with it, what is kind of your, like, initial if somebody were to ask you, like, did you like this, what would you say?

Vincent (00:04:22) - I did.

Michelle (00:04:23) - You did?

Vincent (00:04:24) - Yeah, I would say I did like it. Overall, it was a great, documentary. I think it was encouraging. I think it was down to earth. It was simple as well. And I at the end of it, I didn't feel tricked or bamboozled into.

Michelle (00:04:44) - She will remember from the last one.

Vincent (00:04:45) - You did. Yeah, which I did, I definitely did.

Vincent (00:04:48) - no, there was nothing was being sold. There was no agenda being pushed. Yeah, it was all about your gut. And there's there's nothing to sell there. I mean, you know. Yeah, maybe, maybe maybe there maybe me.

Michelle (00:05:02) - I have some thoughts on that. But I do agree. Overall, it wasn't like it didn't feel like a money grab.

Vincent (00:05:11) - No definitely not. And it I felt encouraged and I didn't feel like it was yeah. I didn't really feel like I needed to. Well, yeah. I mean, I said that this was life changing and not in a big sense of of it being a complete lifestyle change or, you know, food is now my religion, but I've, you know, eaten more vegetables in the last two days than I probably have this last month, which is not good. Wow. That's not that's not great. That's okay. It's all right. It's all right, though.

Michelle (00:05:42) - Don't go down the guilt and shame cycle I won't. Don't go down that spiral.

Vincent (00:05:46) - Thanks. I won't appreciate that. That was very serious. I really felt like you saw me there. I see you, yeah. No, no, no guilt or shame cycle. But I didn't feel like that was even really a major change. Yeah, to just eat a few more fruits and a few more vegetables with my meals. Right. And so, Overall good. Yeah. Liked it. I would recommend.

Michelle (00:06:13) - Okay. Yeah. And my initial kind of like, walk away thoughts on this is I didn't hate it. I expected to hate it, but I didn't. And I know a lot of colleagues that are expecting to hate it as well. And I really want them to watch it and let me know what they think, too. There's some things that I want to discuss, and we're going to go through pros and cons of this documentary. And so you'll definitely hear some cons and things that I think could have been done better or just left out completely. But overall, and I think Vinny described this really well, the net effect of it seems to be positive and encouraging people to just eat more fruits and vegetables, but not in a shaming way or a demonizing way.

Michelle (00:06:57) - Or like you need to go fully vegan way. Yeah, it was just like, hey, here's some information on how your body works and what supports it, and I am a fan of that. Personally, I think just going back to the purpose of this show, how to live nourished and free, it involves a lot of different, layers, and a part of that is just education on how your body works and being realistic about what's helpful for it. And I think that this did a good job of that.

Vincent (00:07:27) - Yeah, definitely. It also spoke to me pretty specifically because there's a few people, a part of the, you call it case study that maybe suffer from some of the things that I do as far as like some chronic, unexplainable stomach pains. And so, it seemed like and there's been a lot of unknowns to that for me specifically. So, to hear them actually call that out and maybe offer a few more like a few suggestions, which, to be fair, it's nothing that you probably haven't told me before, so I'll give you credit there.

Michelle (00:08:02) - fine. I knew that somebody else would need to say in order for it to land. Yeah, yeah. I am your wife. You are?

Vincent (00:08:07) - Yeah, you are my wife. But, you know, I do respect your opinion a lot. Well, so. And I do want to listen to you, especially when it comes to the area of food and nutrition.

Michelle (00:08:16) - So it's okay if you don't I get it.

Vincent (00:08:17) - Okay. Cool. Good. I'm glad you don't hold a grudge.

Michelle (00:08:21) - Maybe a little one. Okay, okay, okay.

Vincent (00:08:25) - I'm trying to make up for what I've done here. I'm sorry. That's what I'm trying to say. besides that point. Yeah, that was helpful for me. And there was a few times during it, I was like, man, is this what's wrong with me? Like, is it my just not taking care of my gut, like the way that I, you know, should be? And am I not giving it the respect that it deserves? And I had a.

Michelle (00:08:46) - Feeling you were saying, well, not a feeling. I was just wondering if you were thinking that. And for anybody who didn't listen to the last episode, when we do this, we don't discuss it at all until we sit down and do the podcast episode. So we try to like, stay. The whole time. And I'm just kind of like guessing what he's thinking over there. And I was wondering if that was a little bit of what was going on in that head of yours.

Vincent (00:09:07) - Yeah, definitely. So that was that was good. That was helpful and encouraging. And yeah, I just kind of walked away overall with a very positive experience and a better outlook, I think, on, what I can, what I can add to my diet and not take away, which I think there's maybe some things that we can talk about there that.

Michelle (00:09:29) - Well, I think that's a great segue into kind of our section of the podcast where we're going to discuss the pros of this, and I think that's maybe pro number one is that overall, you're left with this encouraging message of, hey, let's add to your diet instead of taking away.

Michelle (00:09:49) - Now, there were people that I will discuss in a little bit that had the opposite message, and I just don't know why they were included at all in this documentary. But overall, yeah, I think that was the take home message. Like, hey, let's just add some more fruits and veggies. But there was an expert that talked about like, your ABCs, Always Be counting. And she was like, I don't mean calories. I mean always be counting how many fruits and vegetables you had throughout the whole week. Try to shoot for 20 to 30. And I thought that was like a really great take home message of focus on variety. Focus on getting more in. It didn't say they didn't say anything about like, don't enjoy other foods in your life. Don't enjoy meats or dairy or whatever. Yeah, yeah.

Vincent (00:10:30) - I think one of the quote, yeah, one of the quotes that I have here, I don't remember who said it, but they were like, vegan or not vegan, it doesn't matter as long as there's like a diverse sense of plants like in your diet.

Vincent (00:10:42) - Like, yes, get some diversity, which is.

Michelle (00:10:44) - Like what registered dietitians say all the time. Like just get variety. And you're right, we're not saying that to be lazy or to be annoying or to push agendas. We're saying that because it's literally shown to benefit your health, to have a variety of nutrients in your diet, especially a variety of fruits and veggies too. So I thought that was really great. you also discussed or kind of touched on the simplicity of this documentary, which I feel like is another. Yeah, Pro.

Vincent (00:11:10) - Yeah, I probably could have listened to, Julia probably talked for the entire hour and 20 minutes about my digestive system. Yeah, she's.

Michelle (00:11:20) - A doctor that has this adorable German accent.

Vincent (00:11:22) - Yeah, with the illustration with the yarn. Fuzzy, like, stop motion, like illustrations going on. I could have watched that probably the entire time. So I actually just love that. It was like, yeah, maybe that's geared more like for kids, but, like, it doesn't have to be for kids like it was.

Michelle (00:11:41) - I mean, visuals are good for any age now, 100%.

Vincent (00:11:43) - And so it was kind of in that realm of like, I would probably see this in a kid's show, but that doesn't really matter because this needs to be it needs to be that simple. It does not need to be complex, and I don't. Nothing needs to be tricky here or confusing or over my head, right? In order to get me to eat more fruits and vegetables. Yes.

Michelle (00:12:04) - So it's kind of like the magic school bus. Like when you watch that show. It's low key, super educational and incredibly. Yeah, and it's a kid show. But because of the visuals and everything, it takes these really complicated scientific concepts and boils them down into easy to understand, digestible, no pun intended, like lessons. And you can walk away being like, I feel like I understand that a little bit better. So yeah, for anybody who hasn't seen it, they have these adorable little creatures that represent bacteria and the immune system and T cells and all this stuff.

Michelle (00:12:37) - And it's, they're like some of them are made out of yarn, some are made out of wool. It's just fuzz. Yeah. So cute is adorable. I loved it. I was all over it. So, yeah, I think they did a really good job of taking complicated subjects and making them something that the general population can understand and feel like. Okay, I actually kind of get that we touched on this, but I also feel like they did a good job of not being shaming towards anything, really. And again, there's an exception to this that I'll get to, but overall, I feel like you walked away from we can walk away from that feeling more encouraged and like. Okay. I feel like I want to take some action on this, but I'm not doing that out of fear, right? I didn't get that sense of like, oh, I'm afraid to never eat a fruit or vegetable again. Well, I don't know, maybe in some way, but it's nothing like the last documentary we watched.

Michelle (00:13:31) - It was all like, fear mongering.

Vincent (00:13:33) - Yeah. Definitely not. Yeah, nothing like that. There was a moment with, And we'll I'm sure we'll talk about him next, but Tim Spector, Tim Spector, Spector, Tim Spector.

Michelle (00:13:45) - Keep saying his name, please.

Vincent (00:13:46) - Yeah, I will. So Tim Spector, yeah, there was a moment. He's he's going through the supermarket and he's talking about, you know, reading labels. And there was a and yeah, there was a moment there that I felt like I needed to start doing that. I needed to be more mindful of the ingredients within the maybe processed foods that I was buying. And that gave me a little bit of a sense of like, oh, I need to stop. Like I need to stop grabbing my favorite cereal or my favorite Pop tarts. When I go to the store. I need to like, stop that. And, I have quickly gotten over that because my love for those go way too deep. but I don't I don't want to live on that side of the of the line of the extreme line of this becoming a new, you know, a religion.

Vincent (00:14:36) - I want, to still enjoy those foods. And like I said before, I want to add things to my my grocery cart, not take them away. Yeah. So.

Michelle (00:14:47) - Yeah. And that really is. Like when I just think about what I know about nutrition and health and like the more research that comes out about what's a healthy diet, it really is, I think more about what you can add. Like even when you think about the link, the somewhat link strong link that is still quite relatively small between processed meats and cancer. It's. And like the the risk decreases if you just have fruits and vegetables as well in your diet. So I think that it's that concept so perfectly of adding to your grocery cart instead of taking away is shown in the research to. And again, this is like what registered dietitians and nutrition PhDs say all the time is just increase your variety. That's how that's how the magic happens. Oh, for anybody watching on YouTube, we have a little guest. This is Harvey, our cat, and he's up on the chair joining us.

Michelle (00:15:45) - Hey, buddy.

Vincent (00:15:47) - Does that shift our focus from pros to cons?

Michelle (00:15:50) - Well, I did want to mention Kobe as well as a pro. So they had four different people that they kind of, were supposed to just represent different situations that people find themselves in and how their gut health may be impacted, or how increasing fruits and vegetables may help or whatever. And there was one individual that they highlighted who is Kobe. And Vinnie has seen him on MTV before, right?

Vincent (00:16:15) - Yeah, daytime, MTV, probably ESPN. I'm trying to remember I might be mixing up my sweet 16 and the hot dog eating competitions to watch as a kids. What channel those were both on.

Michelle (00:16:28) - So Kobe is a competitive eater? Yes. And so they show tons of clips of him eating like hundreds of hot dogs, basically in a competition. And I think that they, I just kind of liked his story and how for my like, professional experience, I feel like they did a good job of helping him through what he was going through.

Michelle (00:16:49) - And so what he was going through is that he felt like he didn't have hunger or fullness anymore. He didn't feel those things. And he even talked about how it was like hard for him almost to watch other people eat because he felt like he was missing out on feeling that at this point, and he is worried that he damaged his body through all of the competitive eating that he's done. You know, as they go through the documentary, they're talking about maybe different reasons for that. And of course, I'm sitting there and I'm like, well, this is what I tell my clients all the time. Like, if you ignore your hunger and fullness, those signals stop sending. Like your body just doesn't send them anymore. It's not that they stop existing, they just stop being sent and or they're more difficult to notice. And of course, in a competitive eating situation, you don't care if you're hungry or full, you've got like a goal that you're trying to accomplish. And so for him, I was just kind of sitting there like, well, duh.

Michelle (00:17:44) - And I kind of just wanted to be like, I want to help you. But at the same time, I think they did a good job of helping him through it. And eventually they show him on a zoom call with some of the experts, and they recommend to him that he should increase his senses like sight and smell and texture and all of that. And so they encouraged him to do that. And I think that's a really good advice, because when you are so used to ignoring your hunger and fullness, your, your skill or that tool of awareness goes away in awareness and consciousness of how you're feeling is important in order to even react to how you're feeling, like you can't react to something that you haven't even noticed. And so awakening the senses is a really great step. One in order to help somebody get to a place where they now notice that, And then he also had decided that he was going to retire from his his career of overeating, which is a good step as well, because, yeah, I mean, it's just going to continue.

Michelle (00:18:42) - He's going to continue to have that problem if he eats 100 hotdogs in one sitting. So yeah, I thought that was great. Any other thoughts on Kobe?

Vincent (00:18:49) - No, not really. I definitely resonated with his story a little bit and have definitely ignored feelings of hunger and feelings of fullness. So to kind of get some perspective on that was definitely helpful. And yeah, you could definitely see the kind of the pain and sadness in his face when he spoke about these things and so definitely felt for him. And, but it seemed like he might be on the, on the right track after that.

Michelle (00:19:16) - I think he was a good representation too, because there's a lot of women that I talked to, that experience that as well, for different reasons. I don't think I've ever talked to a professional competitive eater, but but for women that have a history of chronic dieting and yo yo dieting, they certainly do ignore their hunger and fullness signals. And then it gets to a point where they just don't even feel it anymore.

Michelle (00:19:36) - And that can be really sad. Or it can be really scary where it's like this basic human thing doesn't seem to be working. Does that mean I'm broken? And it doesn't? It's just it's something you need to retrain and reawaken. So yeah, I thought that was great. Let's get into to the cons and.

Vincent (00:19:56) - Let's talk about some some crap. Let's talk about crap. Let's talk about poop.

Michelle (00:20:01) - Yeah.

Vincent (00:20:02) - Because that was messed up.

Michelle (00:20:04) - Okay. I feel like you should do that mess.

Vincent (00:20:07) - That was messed up.

Michelle (00:20:09) - please explain to the listener I.

Vincent (00:20:10) - Don't know what rating was on this documentary, but I thought. I thought it was PG. I thought it was PG. You could put an R rating on this documentary right now. for for like a ten second scene. 10s.

Michelle (00:20:27) - It's a loophole for sure.

Vincent (00:20:28) - Brings it to the R rating. no, they're talking about, what are the what are they talking about? Fecal.

Michelle (00:20:34) - They're talking about fecal transplants. And there is a person that's doing an at home fecal transplant.

Michelle (00:20:41) - Yeah, with her brother's feces.

Vincent (00:20:46) - It was her boyfriend's.

Michelle (00:20:47) - I think she switched back to the brother. Oh, she's boyfriend's feces. Made her depressed.

Vincent (00:20:52) - Yeah, it would make me depressed, too. yeah, just out of nowhere. That's a problem. It just came out of nowhere. And all of a sudden, there's this scene where, like, they take a frozen piece of poop out of the freezer, and they they, they just toss it into a blender, and it's just like, right there. Like, you just see it there. And I was just like, whoa, whoa, hey hey, hey.

Michelle (00:21:14) - Can you five on the Bristol stool chart? Can you show that later.

Vincent (00:21:18) - Yeah I yeah.

Michelle (00:21:20) - I and then they blend it they add don't they. Add water to it or something. Yep. They got it. And then they put it in like a Tupperware container a glass one. And they like start putting they put a pipette in there. Yeah.

Vincent (00:21:31) - It's just all there.

Vincent (00:21:32) - It's just like.

Michelle (00:21:33) - It's just right there.

Vincent (00:21:34) - Yeah. I think if there was maybe some some warning, some disclosure.

Michelle (00:21:38) - About that, that's what I'm saying. It's a loophole. There's nothing inherently like inappropriate about that. It's just quite shocking.

Vincent (00:21:44) - Yeah. Oh you can say it's.

Michelle (00:21:48) - It's very personal.

Vincent (00:21:49) - It's incredibly personal. Yeah. And it was just shocking and came out of nowhere. And I would like my money back. I want my money back.

Michelle (00:21:56) - On that experience.

Vincent (00:21:58) - Well I want my Netflix to I want to be reimbursed.

Michelle (00:22:01) - For a month.

Vincent (00:22:02) - Yeah. On that one. yeah. Yeah. That was, that was one of the cons for me was really just seeing that. Not the fecal transplant thing. Whatever. you know, if that's helping people. Great. I love that for them.

Michelle (00:22:14) - Well, it's it's still a it's a lot more TBD.

Vincent (00:22:19) - TBD, TBD on the fecal transplants. Yeah, but I did not need to see that log. Get tossed into that blender like it was just a frozen banana.

Vincent (00:22:31) - Like it. Like. Yeah. Like they were just.

Michelle (00:22:33) - Yeah. Confidently blending it up and putting it into capsules. I did get nauseous thinking about swallowing one of those capsules.

Vincent (00:22:43) - I'm getting nauseous now just thinking about it.

Michelle (00:22:46) - Okay, let's move on. Yeah, let's move on.

Vincent (00:22:48) - That rant over.

Michelle (00:22:50) - Okay. Let's circle back to Tim Spector. Tim brought him up a couple times. So this was like the probably the number one thing that I was annoyed about from this documentary and that I think a lot of people in my field were expecting to completely ruin the documentary when they just, like, knew that Tim Spector was going to be on it, Inspector. But they didn't. They didn't bring him up too much. Like we mentioned. He did a little walk through in the grocery store, which is just like classic fear mongering, classic Tim Spector. And, anyway, the problem with him was that he just like anything that he said was either fear mongering or. It was a huge overstatement or it was just plain false.

Michelle (00:23:37) - Wasn't he the one that said that Parkinson's and Alzheimer's is because of the gut microbiome?

Vincent (00:23:42) - Yeah, probably the gut. I don't know for sure, but let's go with it. Let's put.

Michelle (00:23:46) - Him and I think.

Vincent (00:23:47) - On him.

Michelle (00:23:48) - It was him. And I think I know that you're acting like you know so much that.

Vincent (00:23:52) - I know a lot about Tim Spector. Okay. Let me tell you. Let me tell you something here. No. Continue, please.

Michelle (00:23:59) - Anyway, I think there was 1 or 2 guys, and I'm pretty sure Tim was one of them that made this, like statement about how Alzheimer's and Parkinson's is due to the gut. And there are a lot of experts unhappy with that. I'm not an expert in those conditions, so I will let the other experts speak for themselves on that. But he did do a lot of demonization around, like ultra processed foods. And just the thing with like, him going through the grocery store was so unnecessary, picking up a thing that it was a bar that actually included some really amazing, I can't remember what it was.

Michelle (00:24:35) - I think it was like figs or dates or oats or something, like clearly giving somebody a great amount of fiber, which was like the whole point of the documentary is to get more fiber. Yeah.

Vincent (00:24:44) - And he you're forgetting that he, he picks up the bar and he actually talks about how it's such a good example. Yeah. He's like, this is actually a good one and talks about these 3 or 4 main ingredients. And then someone like off camera is like that actually has a ton of sugar in it. And he's like flips it over and he's like, oh yeah, this has 30% sugar.

Michelle (00:25:03) - Which disqualified immediately. What an idiot. Like he's you can't look at a label and say that has 30% of anything. That's not how nutrition labels work. What he did was he read the label label and he probably saw the daily values of 30%, which means that that product has 30% of the daily amount of recommended sugar in it. And so he saw the daily value of 30% and said this has 30% sugar.

Michelle (00:25:36) - So just like discredit immediately, I don't really care anything else this guy has to say about nutrition if he doesn't even know how to read a nutrition label. Yeah. And when I watched this, I didn't know who he was at all. It wasn't until after I watched the documentary that I started to research him a little bit more, and I heard, like, I was talking with some friends about him, and I go to his Instagram, which has like 600,000 followers, of course. And one of the first things I see is a video talking about how he's given up dairy, because for so long he thought he just believed all the experts. That said, dairy prevents osteoporosis, but he has now come to realize that it does the opposite. So this guy. Is an idiot.

Vincent (00:26:20) - Classic Tim Spector just.

Michelle (00:26:23) - And I don't know why he's on this documentary he had and none of the things that he said were helpful. But I also don't feel like he had a lot of airtime. So I'm not that mad about it, because it wasn't like he was running the show necessarily.

Michelle (00:26:35) - And I don't know, I think everything else that was said kind of just like it. It helped to soften the blow on the Tim Spector appearances. Yeah. but that's another con for me is just kind of some of the mixed messages that happened as a result of, like, him being in the documentary and some of the things that they said, especially with the gal who was a pastry chef and has a history of anorexia. And then she goes on to say how she feels like she has orthorexia now because she's hyper fixated on food ingredients and eats basically whatever the internet tells her to, which is now just like fruits and veggies. And she drinks a lot of supplements, takes a lot of supplements, I mean, and all the things and. I feel like they could have done a better job of just caring for the eating disorder side of things in this documentary, because there are so many individuals who will watch this that probably also have an eating disorder and. She wasn't glamorizing it by any means.

Michelle (00:27:37) - But they did have this meeting with her, with the experts, and they were like, they did some tests on her and they were like, your health is an amazing place, in an amazing place. You're so healthy. And then she had to advocate for herself and be like, well, actually, I have a really restrictive relationship with food. And I did think from there they handled it well in that they were like, well, you don't need to restrict everything. We actually want you to have a big variety of foods and food groups and everything. So that was good. And then you started to see her kind of heal her relationship with food by including potato chips again and like, slowly but surely reintroduce foods that she is having a gut reaction to because her body isn't very used to it anymore. And so they tell her to microdose and then increase the dosing and increase the tolerance, which I think is good advice. And she was that was like really encouraging to see her kind of overcoming that.

Michelle (00:28:34) - But yeah, but. There's that I think was handled well. And then you have to inspector saying like there's ultra processed foods that are super bad for you and then you show her eating chips. So it's just kind of mixed messaging of like. Why is he in this at all? Why is any of the things that he said included in this? Because it's like going against what you're later encouraging this woman to do that wants to heal her relationship with food? You know what I mean?

Vincent (00:29:02) - I know exactly what you mean.

Michelle (00:29:07) - Yeah. Do you have any extra thoughts on that? That might have just been something I picked up on because of my field of expertise.

Vincent (00:29:13) - Yeah, I didn't really pick up on it, per se. Yeah, but it makes a lot of sense, and I can totally see it now. I don't really have anything to add to it.

Michelle (00:29:23) - Yeah, but, I mean, proportionately, that was not a big deal. It was just something that kind of annoyed me. Yeah.

Vincent (00:29:30) - I wouldn't knock the documentary for that. Yeah.

Michelle (00:29:33) - And then I also think there is some mixed messaging to about the single mom who was struggling with her weight. I could have explained a lot of the things that she was going through and they never did. Instead, they just kind of blamed it on her gut, which I think is misleading. Like a woman struggling with her weight is not because of her gut microbiome. so it's just like, yeah, if you're yo yo dieting, doing these super restrictive diets, losing a bunch of weight and then you can't sustain it, and then you gain all the way back like that's because you did something you couldn't sustain. It has nothing to do with your gut is your gut may be negatively impacted by your diet quality? Sure. Is your diet quality maybe a part of the reason you're struggling with your weight? Sure. But the gut is not the reason you're struggling with your weight. And that was like how they made it. They didn't explicitly say that, but it was like implied at some parts.

Michelle (00:30:21) - But to the credit of the documentary, I still think the take home message was good and that they were encouraging her to increase her diet quality, like the, the intervention of increasing fruits and vegetables and diet variety was the same, regardless of all the fluff that they said in between. And I don't know, they just could have done without all the fluff in between. Yeah, like it's the same result either way.

Vincent (00:30:47) - Yeah, I agree, I think the only person that really got probably clear answers was was Kobayashi. Or they spoke to clear answers like to his.

Michelle (00:30:57) - Oh yeah, because it's like a brain map on him and stuff, right.

Vincent (00:30:59) - Yeah, exactly. But yeah, they didn't really, you know, bring home the other patient's points and, you know, like they just kind of left it a little.

Michelle (00:31:10) - I think the pastry chef had some good like resolution and what she was struggling with.

Vincent (00:31:14) - Yeah you're right I think you're right there.

Michelle (00:31:16) - But I agree like the doctoral student in Kimmy.

Michelle (00:31:19) - Yeah. Which Kimmy was a vibe. Anybody who watches this, I want to hear what you think about Kimmy. She's like, yeah, an entrepreneur, which I still am. Dying to know what her business endeavors are because you don't ever say. But you see, like, these clips of her on a motorcycle and she's, like, dressed to the nines, like, incredible. She's a vibe. Incredible.

Vincent (00:31:41) - Yeah. I would love to be friends with her, that's for sure. Yeah.

Michelle (00:31:44) - Any other cons that you want to discuss?

Vincent (00:31:47) - There was a there was. I have no idea. The best way to put. There's a dot graph graph. There's a dot graph. There's this map graph with dots on.

Michelle (00:31:58) - I think a map is a good way to describe it. I don't know the technical term. I don't know what.

Vincent (00:32:02) - I don't know what it was mapping. I don't know what it was graphing. I don't it was something about their microbiome where they, you know, their microbiome was a dot and it was I don't know what it meant if it was up here, if it was down here or I think it was kind of basing it off of the civilization, like, this is this is where we see a lot of.

Vincent (00:32:20) - Yeah, they're.

Michelle (00:32:21) - Talking about the different like colonies of bacteria, like, yeah, different species of bacteria represented one dot. Yeah.

Vincent (00:32:28) - I just, I just kind of. Yeah.

Michelle (00:32:31) - Yeah. Or maybe color. Maybe it was the color.

Vincent (00:32:33) - No, I think it was destination. I think it was, it was colored for some reason. I don't know why. anyways, I don't know if it's a con or if I'm just an idiot and I just can't follow that kind of stuff.

Michelle (00:32:44) - But I think it was interesting. They could have done a better job of explaining it, though.

Vincent (00:32:48) - Yeah, I think by the third time I saw it, I was like, what? What is this? What are we even looking at here?

Michelle (00:32:53) - I did love the way that the guy.

Vincent (00:32:55) - What does this mean?

Michelle (00:32:56) - Waving his hand over.

Vincent (00:32:57) - Yeah, that was good.

Michelle (00:32:59) - It was good. Like that's not doing anything. It was. It was very spiritual, very, very strange.

Vincent (00:33:06) - Very apple like.

Vincent (00:33:08) - It was.

Michelle (00:33:08) - Good. Okay, good. So my last kind of critique on this, and if you have any others will circle back to it as well, is the at home stool testing that is like subtly promoted in this. And we mentioned this in the beginning. We didn't feel like there was a whole lot of things being pushed or really anything being pushed, but if I had to pick one, I would say it's probably the at home stool. Testing was maybe a subtle incentive here with making this documentary and potentially, I don't know, this documentary just came out two days ago. I haven't seen any articles really on it. Maybe that's who funded this thing. I don't know, I'd be interested to see, but if I had to guess if there's anybody financially profiting. From this documentary besides Netflix. It's probably the people that are doing these at home stool tests, because they do bring it up and they talk about how you can test your stool and then send it into a lab and get all of this information on your gut bacteria and learn all these things about yourself.

Michelle (00:34:05) - So the thing with stool testing is that this was really misleading. And I have talked to my friend, Doctor Andrea Lev, who's been on the podcast twice now and is an immunologist and microbiologist. And then I've also heard my friend Doctor Adrian Chavez talk about this, who's also been on the podcast and is a nutrition PhD, and he's really specialized in gut health. And these stool tests are. Not super helpful because for one thing, the the bacteria that is detected through the stool isn't necessarily representative of the bacteria in your whole gut, because there's some bacteria that will stick to the walls of your intestines better and they won't show up in the stool. And also, it's just like one point in time. And the gut microbiome is so diverse, it changes constantly depending on what you ate. For example, like they talk about and and your stress levels and just even probably time of the year, time of the month. So it's not super helpful to test your stool and then make all of these conclusions based on those results, because those results can be misleading and and missing a lot of information.

Michelle (00:35:14) - And the other point I want to make about that too is that. When you go to the doctor and you get your blood tested for like iron levels, let's say the reference ranges that they use to make sure if your iron levels are within a healthy range or not is based on data we have of millions, if not billions of people showing like, okay, here's in general what the healthy range is for this level or this particular measurement that we want to get, which is iron. so that's how they develop these, these ranges with the gut microbiome. We don't have that information yet. It's still such a new field of study or of research that we don't know what healthy ranges of what bacterias are. So again, like these test results are just kind of insignificant because we don't really know, like does that mean healthy or not. Is that normal or not. We don't know yet. And again, like there's a lot of bacteria that's probably not showing up in the test. So it's just like and it can be helpful for detecting like C diff, you know, which is an infection that we need to fix.

Michelle (00:36:18) - But anyway, so I wish they would have not included that because these are not FDA approved tests. They're not helpful. They if anything can just increase health anxiety, which is not going to help you live more nourished and free. If you have more anxiety around your health, especially for no reason. So that was my like, my ick with this documentary. It was just the, The subtle promotions of these at home stool tests, but it was subtle. I don't feel like they were pushing it necessarily. They weren't pushing any specific brand. So again, like, I'm still wondering who funded it. Like, what is there has to be an agenda here, right? Right? It's documentary on Netflix, but I still can't figure it out.

Vincent (00:37:05) - I don't I don't think so I. Yeah. No, I don't know.

Michelle (00:37:09) - It's obviously going to profit the authors who were featured and probably Tim Spector.

Vincent (00:37:13) - But don't get me started on Spector. The beef.

Michelle (00:37:18) - Imaginary beef.

Vincent (00:37:19) - Would you would you be able to rank this and give it a rating that don't rank it?

Michelle (00:37:25) - We haven't really watched that.

Vincent (00:37:26) - Any other scene? One other I think I know where we would rank it, but what would you rate it out of ten?

Michelle (00:37:33) - What is ten represent like what is? Give me the best documentary ever. Best documentary ever.

Vincent (00:37:39) - Like zero is worst documentary ever.

Michelle (00:37:41) - Not including like animal documentaries and all kinds of others. It's just like, you know.

Vincent (00:37:47) - What I mean?

Michelle (00:37:48) - Like, this is great.

Vincent (00:37:49) - Okay, nutrition.

Michelle (00:37:50) - I'm gonna say. Six. So slightly on the positive, but I still don't think it's necessary to watch. But slightly on the positive, because I do like the net effect that it has for people, which is to increase fruits and vegetables.

Vincent (00:38:08) - Okay.

Michelle (00:38:09) - What would you say?

Vincent (00:38:10) - I think six is low. I'll be honest. I'm a.

Michelle (00:38:13) - Nutrition professional, so I have my beef with some of the things.

Vincent (00:38:17) - That makes sense. That makes perfect sense. I'm hard to please. Yeah, I get it. Yeah. I'm not. So what's your rating? I give it an eight.

Vincent (00:38:24) - Okay. Yeah, yeah, I give it an eight.

Michelle (00:38:27) - What would have made it a ten for you.

Vincent (00:38:29) - I don't know.

Michelle (00:38:34) - I'm hard to please. You just don't even know what.

Vincent (00:38:37) - Because it's not. Well, I mean, I gotta leave some room for the best documentary ever to come out, and, you know, it wasn't the best documentary ever. Yeah. You know, and not for reasons that are probably, you know, don't make it the best documentary ever for you, but more of like, yeah, I was bored at times and I was like, I'm looking at it from more of an entertainment perspective, I guess. Yeah. So for me it was an eight. I really enjoyed it. I would recommend I left with a positive experience. Yeah, I've got a couple of life changing, practical things I can implement. Yeah, that are very easy and not, nothing is inconveniencing my life, you know, from this documentary. And overall it's a positive experience. So I would recommend would.

Michelle (00:39:23) - You drink the smoothie that they made? In the documentary they made a smoothie with was it.

Vincent (00:39:30) - 30, 30 different.

Michelle (00:39:32) - 30 somewhere, 30 to 50 different fruits and vegetables, 30 different. They blend it all together and made a smoothie.

Vincent (00:39:37) - Yeah. No. You wouldn't know, I wouldn't. I mean, I'll try.

Michelle (00:39:41) - Surprise me. You hate when I add spinach.

Vincent (00:39:42) - I mean, I would try it, I would try it. Yeah. Yeah. I don't have a lot of thoughts on that. Just, just.

Michelle (00:39:52) - I would do.

Vincent (00:39:53) - It. Yeah, I would try I would try it, but if it was, I don't know what the task was.

Michelle (00:39:57) - It's kind of a why not to me. You know, like why not get all of this extra all these extra vitamins and minerals and antioxidants, you know.

Vincent (00:40:04) - Fiber like a cell. Why not? But I think it didn't. I don't think it tasted good. So like, if there was a version of that that.

Michelle (00:40:10) - Was maybe just add honey to it or.

Vincent (00:40:12) - Something. I don't know if you could add anything else to make that better. If it was 15 different fruits and vegetables, I would cut it down. If it was half of the, you know, fruits and vegetables that they had. And it was it was ones that made sense, not like potatoes. Who's putting potatoes?

Michelle (00:40:25) - But I feel like those are pretty benign in flavor. Like maybe I don't know that you would really taste those, the Brussels sprouts you would taste and like if you did broccoli you. Yeah. Take it out. Yeah.

Vincent (00:40:38) - No I wouldn't I wouldn't do it.

Michelle (00:40:40) - So I shouldn't start making that.

Vincent (00:40:42) - Please don't.

Michelle (00:40:42) - And I shouldn't bring it to you in the morning.

Vincent (00:40:44) - But let's give us some more figs in this house I love. Yeah, let's get some more figs.

Michelle (00:40:49) - Yes. Actually, we're going to wrap this up here, but I have one more note. One more note I want to make is that I think they did a good job of romanticizing. And this is the same note I had in the last documentary they had.

Michelle (00:41:00) - They did a good job of romanticizing fruits and vegetables and making them more appealing and making you want to eat them.

Vincent (00:41:06) - Yeah. Yeah, baby.

Michelle (00:41:09) - And then.

Vincent (00:41:10) - Really seducing you with some vegetables.

Michelle (00:41:14) - And then giving you.

Vincent (00:41:16) - Vegetables is sexy again.

Michelle (00:41:18) - And then giving you.

Michelle (00:41:19) - Compelling reasons to want to eat them from a scientific perspective as well, and from a health benefit perspective. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'm excited to hear your thoughts on it. If you end up watching it, please let me know. You can shoot me an email, which is Michelle. Two L's on that by the way at Yates nutrition.com. Or you can reach out to me on Instagram and let me know your thoughts. If you listen to this episode, please share it to your socials and and tag me because I'd love to know if you're listening. And don't forget to share it with a friend who you think will enjoy it. Any last thoughts?

Vincent (00:41:55) - No thanks for having me.

Michelle (00:41:56) - Thanks for coming, baby.

Vincent (00:41:57) - Yeah, of course it was fun.

Michelle (00:41:59) - All right, so next time.