What’s up everyone and welcome to the fit to fat, to fit experience podcast. I’m your host, drew Manning. And I’m glad you guys joined me today because I have a very unique guest, a very controversial topic. Actually, we’re going to dive into, um, the food industry. You guys, um, let me tell you guys a little bit about the guest. Uh, Jeff’s Phillips first. So first of all, Jeff Scott Phillips, he’s an author professional speaker and entrepreneur. He wrote this book called the big fat food fraud. Okay. Um, and, uh, let me tell you a little about, a little bit, a little bit of his background. Before we jump into the episode at the age of 22, he founded his first company called break the cycle on which he conducted nutrition workshops. Uh, he also founded fit food, which is a food delivery company that sold healthy meals and weight loss programs.
He then co founded a food manufacturing, business producing and private labeling meals for other companies. And then that’s where his book, the big fat food fraud comes in. So basically the what’s so unique about him. You guys is, is he’s played both roles. He’s been in the food industry. He seen what they do to cut corners, to make a profit, to sell food as health food. That’s not health food, he’s been on that side of it. Um, and even I even asked him about that, like, what was your justification being in that position, you know, to keep you going down this path, knowing that what you were doing was wrong. So he kind of dives into that and he kind of dives into what kinda, um, what was the turning point for him? What led him out of that to write this book, uh, basically kinda throwing himself under the bus and a lot of other food companies of what they do to, um, to us as consumers, you guys, um, we dive into nutritional labels.
Um, we dive into, um, the USDA, the FDA, um, and some of these things might come across as conspiracy theory. You guys, but honestly, this is truth. This is fact, this is the way it is. Um, we know we dive into foods such as salmon and avocado, which, which are, or we know as healthy, but according to the U S da, they have to meet certain requirements as far as total grams of fat per uh, for per total grams of, of, of, or the total grams of the food, right. Of the food that’s packaged. So he talks about things that they do, where they bump up the car carbs. So they’ll add in pasta or sugar or rice or whatever it takes so that they can get that label of healthy food. You guys, so it’s super interesting. You’re not going to want to miss this episode.
Your eyes will be opened, um, and knowledge is power. So take it, you know, for, for what it is. And, uh, hopefully you will learn something. Cause I know I for sure did, before we dive into the episode though, you guys let’s give a shout out to our show sponsors, uh, once again, got to give it a shout out to every well.com they are doing so much good for people’s health and making health more convenient, um, testing your blood markers, uh, from home, which is so convenient instead of going into a, and having a doctor draw your or nurse, draw your blood and waiting for the results, and then not understanding what the results mean. Having to have a doctorate, interpret them, everything well does such a good job of making these, these tests available to you. You order them online, they send them to your door.
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Uh, on top of that, you guys do so much, uh, other than protein bars, right? They have protein chips, they have protein powders. Um, they also, they also, uh, are in the Quito movement. So they are creating foods that are keto friendly, so high in fat, moderate protein, low carb approach. And these are delicious tasting food as well. So chocolate bars, uh, fudge peanut butter cups, um, uh, frozen meals that are actually Kito friendly. Uh, Cheez-Its these cheese type of crackers. They’re amazing. Go check them out@questionattrition.com or if you want to check out the key to line of products, go to quest, quito.com. Um, and let’s go hang out now with Jeff Scott Phillips.
What’s up, Jeff, how are you doing today, man? I’m doing pretty good. Doing pretty good. Excited to be here. Yeah, man. Welcome to the fit. Perfect fit experience podcast, man. So are you coming to us from either of, in Virginia? Yep. I’m still I’m in Roanoke, Virginia. The star city. Yeah, man. So I, um, I have some connections out there, so I, I kinda grew up a little bit in Fairfax County, Northern Virginia, uh, but Roanoke. Um, I went to a small college, not in Roanoke, but it’s in, um, it’s called Buena Vista, which is near, um, Oh, shoot. What’s that other city right next to it. Um, not Lynchburg. How far are you from Lynn?
I was going to I’m about an hour, hour and a half minutes per minute.
That’s right. Okay. Yeah. So anyways, uh, yeah, I’ve lived out there and the, and Virginia and I’ve been thrown off before. Beautiful, beautiful area.
Yeah, it is. Um, it’s a, it’s an artsy place, as you know, we’ve got our claim to fame, I guess that giant starts like a hundred foot tall star on top of the mountain overlooking the city. It’s pretty cool.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s beautiful out there, man. So, um, okay. So here’s what I want to do. I know that I have so much to get to today and I’m super excited about today’s podcast. Cause you have so much information to deliver. I do want to kinda, you know, keep under 60 minutes. Otherwise my podcast editing people, they get mad at me. So, but anyways, um, what I want to do is first of all, introduce you to my audience and then kind of talk about your background a little bit and how that led into fit food. And then we’ll start, we’ll start there. Cause there’s a lot of stuff obviously that we could get to. Let’s just introduce who you are and how your story led you to fit food and then we’ll get started if that’s okay.
Sure, sure. Yeah, that sounds good. So I get, well, I guess from my background, how I got into all of this was I started off in personal training and I was running a gym and I became the head trainer and then opened up my own. And I was just realizing as I think somebody fitness experts do that. My clients, a lot of them, a lot of them we’re seeing great success, but a lot of them weren’t a lot of them weren’t listening or didn’t have the time to make their own food. You know, whatever the various reasons are. And uh, one day I said, you know what to hell with it. I’m just going to make your food for him, started the excuses, I’m going to do it all. So you just, all you got to do is heat it and eat it. And I started doing that.
I was in my condo kitchen, tiny little condo kitchen at the time. And I was making everyone’s food every Sunday for the entire week and giving it back to them. And after a week, all the clients that I’d given the food to them lost, they came back to me and told me they lost seven pounds. I accidentally put them into ketosis. I didn’t even know it at the time when I was doing it. And um, so it was like, wow, this is pretty cool. So they told all their friends and family and more people started coming, getting on the food and seeing great success. And you know, before I knew it, I was like, well, this is actually a legitimate business idea. And so next thing I knew it was in the food business and grew from there. And you know, I really, would’ve never tried to be in food business, but as it kept getting bigger accidentally, I got to the point where I, I was like, man, we’re shipping all over the country. Now we better get serious about this. So I took on investors once we did that actually became a, I say, I’m breezing over this. Like it happened overnight. It didn’t, but eventually became a food manufacturer where we were producing food for other companies, brands, other health food companies. And I guess that is kind of where we get into the story where I started learning about all the corruption in the industry and all that. Yeah.
Yeah. So, okay. Let’s back up a little bit, cause I can totally relate to this. Um, you know, I started out as a personal trainer in 2009 and yeah, I struggled with people not following the meal plans. It was like here, just do this. It’s so simple. I do it. Why doesn’t it work for you? And then taking it one step further to make it more convenient? Cause that’s the thing is, is, is we’re a society of convenience and so we want things to be convenient for us. And so you kind of took the extra initiative to get your clients, okay, I’m going to deliver the food to you. And all you have to do is heat it and eat it. That makes so much sense. Um, and uh, I really didn’t feel like you started out, you know, kind of innocent, like you really wanted to help people.
And this was one of the things you did, but then as you grew bigger, you brought on investors. That’s where your eyes were kind of open to this kind of a dark world that existed and you didn’t really realize it until you were thrown into it. And so I remember, you know, one of the stories in your books, um, which we’ll get into a little bit, but uh, the, the story of, of when the food inspectors coming and you guys, you guys have like 30 minutes to get the place, you know, clean and, and all this stuff that you have to do. Um, but anyways, that let’s get that. Let’s get to that a little bit later. So you started fit food, um, which was like a meal prep company, but then you started, you know, um, making food for other companies that kind of, um, that were, uh, for example, in stores, right?
Some of them were in stores. Some of them were direct ships companies almost like, um, same as nutritious, not Nutrisystem, but it’s very similar type, you know, just where people order online. And then we would, so the company we were making it for would never have anything to do with the food. We would get the orders, we’d put their packaging on it and we would drop ship it directly to the customer’s houses. So that was, that was actually the main one main business model. But yeah, I mean all, all different types anywhere you see health food, you know, I could have been coming from us.
Okay. So let’s talk about what was your first experience and to like, you were surprised like, Whoa, you guys really do this. Like, what was your first thing that you were kind of taken aback by?
Uh, well, I mean, depending on probably what you were talking about with the first the health inspection, that’s a very, it was a really small example. It really wasn’t the food industry corrupts and stuff. But when we were trying to pass that health inspection, uh, I was a Virgin in the bids. I had no idea what the hell I was doing. And the kitchen was horrible. We were probably breaking every health code law in existence. Um, and so we ended up, uh, the person I was renting the space from actually ended up kind of making me, help him bribe the health inspector. And that was when I was like, Oh, this is, so this is normal and I’m not, not that it is normal, but it became that way for us at least. And I was like, geez, this is, this is how we’re going to operate from now on. We’re just going to, we’re going to bribe people to keep doing business. And I was like, Holy shit, we’re, we’re into things now.
So what was your justification going through your head at the time when, when these things started to happen, obviously I’m sure you had a moral compass where you’re like, this doesn’t feel right, but I feel like at the end of the day, I’m justifying it by X, Y, and Z. Like what were those justifications for you at the time?
Yeah. Well, first with that one, of course I didn’t, I didn’t like the feel of it. I thought, okay, this, this feels wrong. I was also very terrified cause that happened early on, I was brand new. I didn’t want to lose the business and the person that was running the space from made it clear that, Hey, if we don’t do this, I mean, you’re out, you got nowhere to make your food. And we had, at that point in time, you know, maybe a couple thousand customers that we were making food for. And so it was more one of those situations. I don’t want to do this, but I’m more afraid of losing everything. Now on top of that, um, the health inspectors wife was, um, you know, I was also ended up having to pay her in sexual favor. I partly enjoyed the bribing, which that goes, we go into that in the book, but as it, as it goes on and as we started to get more deep into it where we started messing with and we can get into the details, but with food labels and packaging and the government agencies, the USDA, that is when it was, you know, clearly I felt I really fought it.
I didn’t want to do those things, but you’re pretty much forced from the government side, from the investor side. Um, I really, I wasn’t in charge anymore. My name was at the top of the org chart, but I was not the boss.
Interesting. So you were kind of just in a way, just like a puppet, like being played by the system. Like you gotta play the game. Right?
Pretty much. I mean, I was the, I was the face that everyone could point a finger to and blame and not take responsibility. I mean, I was doing the things, but yeah, I mean, I really was just being forced like, Hey, if you don’t do this, you know, you’re out or we’ll pull all the money and what choice did I have is kind of how I justified it to myself anyway.
Exactly. So, so your book’s called big fat food fraud, right? In case people are, you know, we’ll definitely put a link to that in the show notes, because I know that once we get into this, people are going to be so intrigued by this, this kind of stuff, because it’s a world that a lot of people don’t know exists. And I knew some of these things, but you bring it to light so profoundly because you lived it, you were there doing all these things. And then now here you are kind of, I don’t know what the right word is. Just kind of exposing it. Right. You’re, you’re finally exposing it for what it is for what you were, you know, contributing to and you, but you, like you said, you own it, you, you know, put you you’re, you you’re responsible for it. So, um, let’s talk about the first thing I want to get into is, is, um, equitizing and this phrase that you use, can you explain what that is?
Yeah. So advertising, I mean, that’s a term, I don’t think that’s in the dictionary, but yeah, what we it’s basically, it’s just advertising disguised as education. And of course I had no, I, I, when I was in the personal training world and be a nutritionist early on, I, I used to fall for this stuff. I used to take it and turn around to my clients and regurgitate it. And how, how would you know any better? How would I have known? But once we were in it, the food company, us and others that were our competitors, we were taking, for example, like, I mean, I’ll just give you one. Cause I have a funny one that came from the, when I was trying to teach the editor of the book about this. So antioxidants, we would take something like that, which of course do have health benefits.
And we would create a bunch of material that looked just like it was education, like scientific education. And we would send it to medical trade journals. We would create press releases. We would send it to the news outlets and magazines. And uh, so then people start reading and hearing and seeing all the stuff that you need. Antioxidants. They’re good for this. They’re good for that. All the while what we’re doing is just priming them to recognize those words so that when we put it on a food, that’s not good for them that now they think it is. And that, and the reason I use antioxidants. So when I was trying to, I was, I handed in a copy of the book to the editor and she wasn’t getting it. She was, she, I guess she was so, so trained to know that that word is good for you.
Probably by people like me, that she was arguing with me. She said, no, but antioxidants are good. And I was like, I understand I get it. But I’m telling you, we’re training you for that. So we can sell you foods that are, since we CA we went back and forth numerous times, she didn’t like that in the book. And so I gave her finally, I gave her the example. I said, look, antioxidants, it’s good to get them from say, they’re in everything. That’s plants, right? Anything that comes out of the ground there, it’s great to get them from broccoli or kale. It’s a little less good. I would imagine to get them from cocaine. And she, that, that clicked for her. Then she got the message what I was saying.
Yeah. So what are some examples of some foods that are, that have these labels, like antioxidants, for example, that aren’t good for you, but people are buying, thinking, eating antioxidants.
Oh, I mean, it can come in anything and it’s not just Antioch. So I was just one example, but you know, any, not any in all, but a lot of products that, you know, for example, sit on the sh like coconut water, I think is a great example. There’s 50 different coconut waters. And I can’t speak for all of them, but I know a lot of them are just sugar water. And if you say stuff like that, now, people now they’re having an argument about, well, which one has more antioxidants or which one has omegas or whatever. Low-calorie whatever. It may be. Um, another example. So by teaching people that, Oh, you gotta eat grass fed. I think we’d all like our food to come from animals that were treated nicely. But I was walking into the store just the other week and I saw a free range, grass fed hot dogs. I mean, come on it kind of piece the purpose.
Yeah. Okay. So that’s the end. So antioxidants is one example. What about, let’s talk about gluten-free yes. Or cause that’s a big one, right?
Yeah. Gluten was probably one of the biggest, I mean, when that I hate to call it a fad because I know people do have allergies to it. And, uh, and some people are just sensitive who don’t have allergies. But, um, the reason I call it a fad still is because the, we, the food industry took that and we gave it legs so quickly. Once we learned there was a market for it, like, Hey, some people actually have to eat this way. We started pumping it out there. We start. I mean, anything you name it, you got IBS. Maybe that’s because of gluten and who hasn’t had IVF at some point, do you have anything we could think of? You got low back pain, probably gluten, if you’ve ever had erectile dysfunction, that’s cause you’re eating too much gluten, um, you name it and we would, and by the way, if you Google that, that’s a thing.
People think that comes from gluten. And so we’ll put all this marketing out there, you got to eat gluten free, you got to gluten free everyone for whatever. You’ve got it. And we’re making this food now that’s gluten free. We weren’t in 2008 and 2010. Everyone is. And from then on. And a lot of it’s just not healthy for people, but we’re teaching them that. Don’t worry about what it is. Just check to see if there’s gluten on the label and it distracts them. It makes people forget it. All of a sudden you wouldn’t have been eating cookies or chips and crackers and stuff. If you’re trying to lose weight to be healthy, but now they forget they’re eating those things. They’re just looking for gluten on the label. They’re eating so much more cookies and chips and stuff,
Which is so true because, and this is the reason I did. I did my own gluten-free experiment a couple of years back. And I remember the root thing that triggered it for me was when it became mainstream were on. I think Jimmy Kimmel did some kind of spoof where he went around asking random people, you know, what’s gluten. And they’re like, Oh, it’s you know, this or that. Like, they didn’t know what it was. They just knew it was bad. Right? And that’s a sign of how trained we are to a fall prey to these marketing techniques. But people don’t know why or what it is. And then I’m like, you know what? I need to do this gluten-free experiment where for two months I ate all these gluten free products. Right. And ended up getting 20 pounds and doubled my body fat percentage and all my health markers, you know, we’re, we’re in the red, even though I was eating 100% gluten-free and so I was eating gluten free pasta, gluten free bread.
I mean, nowadays there’s so many products in the gluten free section that it’s pretty much, you can have anything you want. Now I understand that some people that have celiac disease, for example, that can’t have birthday cake, it sucks for them. And so yes, that’s make, okay. It may be a gluten free alternative that so they can enjoy a cupcake again, but it’s, but now people are looking at it, like we’ve been trained that okay, gluten-free equals healthy. So I better buy this instead of the, the non gluten free option, because I don’t want to get sick. Um, and so I totally see.
Yeah, absolutely. And here’s the really, I mean, again, I don’t know, there, there are a lot of companies who do this relearn, well, I don’t want to call it names, but we learned it from another, a big, big company out there. And, uh, but this is the shitty thing. So we’re selling a lot of the times gluten free products and most of them, or at least a lot of more actually gluten free. I can go into why we did it if you want to at some point. But, um, but how we got around making people sick is, and you can test this with almost any company where you’re trying to order gluten, gluten free food, tell you, test them. They’ll all do the same thing. And for the same reason, if you call them and say, I have celiac disease, they’ll do their best to talk you out of ordering. They’ll say they’ll make up some excuse. Well, we can’t guarantee that it wasn’t cross-contaminated with something else. No. The reason is usually it’s still got gluten and they didn’t do anything to change it. They’re just marketing to all the people who don’t actually have celiac, but think they need to eat gluten free.
Hmm. Interesting. Yeah.
I mean, it’s crazy, man. And we can get into it too, but like with the way the regulations work, the USDA FDA, we didn’t, we were, we weren’t even breaking the law by playing that little game. Like we were allowed to do it. And sometimes we were encouraged to do things like that. So that’s why I say the gluten free thing was, it was just a huge, the food industry turned it into such a scam.
Okay. And I can totally see that. Let’s talk about how, how quote unquote healthy food is actually, you know, can be just as bad for you as junk food and the way food companies disguise that or get around it. For example, you mentioned the same thing.
Yeah. The salmon thing, everyone loves us well or hates that story, I guess. Um, so the part of the reason I say that, by the way, I tell people that health food is worse than junk food. A lot of the times, because no one eats junk food, you know, you don’t need a candy bar or giant pizza or whatever it is thinking that this is going to help you. But when you’re eating junk food or health food, that’s just as bad. But you’re thinking, Hey, this is going to, you know, if I keep eating this way, I’ll lose weight. Well, it’s, it’s much worse because you probably remember the Snackwells thing when everyone thought, well, low fat the way to go. So I can eat twice as many Snackwells that’s it, you know, everyone gained so much weight when they did that. So the salmon story was, I was still kind of a baby, but we were, we were shipping food all over the place.
We were in a big industrial warehouse, manufacturing kitchen. We’re working with the USDA and we’ve been doing this for months. We’ve been making the salmon. It was like a frozen dinner with kinda like a lean cuisine. And, but you know, it was healthy. It was a paleo meal at the time, there was nothing. It was, it was good quality food. And out of the blue, at one point, the USDA, uh, our, we had an onsite agent who was in there every day, but do USDA, a lot of people don’t realize this. They do not inspect you in real time. What, what happens is you document what you do every day. You keep a log. A lot of companies keep two of what they, one what they actually did. And then one what they want the USDA to see. And they check you in retrospect, they just go and look back.
So anyway, this is why months later after we were making the food, the USDA saw it in the log said, Hey, uh, you know what? Salmon has too much fat. This isn’t a low fat or a healthy or a lean meal. Uh, you got to change that. And I was like, what do you want me to do? It’s just salmon. I can’t change anything about salmon. And he’s like, well, here’s what you do. You just take the package, you put sugar into it. Uh, either bread or pasta or both or something, dessert, something. And that solves the problem. I asked the guy, I was like, could you put the hell? Do you mean that it solves the problem? I was just pumping sugar into our food. The reason is for low fat or healthy foods, but it’s not about how much fats in it. It’s about the ratio of fat to total grams of food in the package. So if you put a bunch of pasta, almost any, a frozen dinner, you see, right. They always have something like bread or pasta. Uh, what that does is it ups the total grams of food, but they don’t have fat. It’s just sugar. So all of a sudden it evens out the ratio. Now you’ve got a healthy, lean, low fat food. Uh, and we, and we weren’t, this isn’t something we wanted to, I’m not, I pitched a fit. I fought, I yelled then made us the USDA made us do this. Yeah.
This reminds me of a video. I shared maybe about like four or five months ago that showed just how backwards our system is. When we’re telling people, foods like salmon and avocado are considered quote, unquote unhealthy. But these pop tarts and sugary cereals are low in fat. And that, and there can be deemed healthier lean because the, what you’re saying, the ratio of, of, of total fat grams to the total grams of the meal fits in this, this, um, this ratio that needs to be approved. And so it’s, it’s mind blowing, how is this, how are we at this at, in 2016 to where we’re tricking in a way, tricking people to thinking this is what’s healthy. Like how, how is this? It seems so black and white. Why does this happen? So what’s your, what, what’s your, is it just the fact that these food companies own the politicians that make these laws or what’s the
No reasoning behind it? As far as I can tell? Yes. That’s exactly what it is. I mean, the guy, the, the guy, of course he was a, he was a low level guy. He was just doing his job, our USDA agent, but at least he would relate to me all the time. He’s like, well, this guys, this gets handed down from a guy who handed it down and essentially such and such food company. And they’re usually not food companies. It’s the investors companies who own them, um, or trade or trade commodities for them. Yeah. They fund the politicians who, who make these laws in the book. I talked just a brief, tiny little bit about, um, how Monsanto essentially took over the FDA. They, they kind of, they used Goldman Sachs and a couple other people like bill Gates, his organization, and others to fund the Obama campaign. And don’t get me, don’t confuse me. I’m not bashing the Obama campaign. I’m just pointing out how it happened, but they funded them. And so when, once he was in, he didn’t have a choice, but to point, Michael Taylor, as deputy commissioner of the FDA, Michael Taylor was previously the vice president of Monsanto. So they just bought their way into controlling the FDA. Great. Wow.
That is crazy. And this is the thing it’s like, I don’t want this to be a conspiracy theory type of episode, but the same time, the truth is the truth. And we want people to, to understand and have this knowledge. Cause here’s the thing. My audience is more of your, your average person right there. We’re not extremists or purists. We’re just trying to be more educated. The more educated we are, the more knowledge we have, the more aware we are. And then, you know, we can take the power back into our own hands. And so that’s why I wanted to have you on to get this across to people to understand that this isn’t just some made up stuff. This isn’t just some, you know, like conspiracy theory, this really is the way it is. And it sucks because it seems so black and white, like, well, we all know salmon and avocado are healthy, but yeah, pop tarts and sugary cereal are being considered healthy items, you know, that we should eat. Um, it just, I think, I hope my hope is that we’re starting to change. We’re starting to realize this. And so with your book and with what you’re doing, do you feel like people are starting to be more and more educated and do you see it shifting anytime soon?
Yeah, I think so. I think there’s a couple key things that need to happen. I mean, one is when you say educated now, I think when we’re educated too much by the industry, obviously we can get, we start making less intelligent decisions, but if you’re educated in the sense, know that where all this information is coming from and then stop paying attention to it. Maybe. Uh, yeah, I do. I think people already, I think people suspect a lot of this stuff, a big part of the reason I wanted to do the book was to show them, Hey, it’s the food industry is not always the big, bad monster or the people in it understand how the system works. If you make smarter choices, if you’re not buying this fad stuff with the buzzwords, then we don’t, we aren’t forced to make it. I didn’t want to make a lot of that stuff with extra sugar and all these buzz words that don’t actually mean anything all over it. But when the people believe that’s what they need work, we don’t have much of a choice. Cause the second our competitor does it really to go out of business or we got a copy of them.
Yeah. So this kind of leads me to my next question is what was your exit strategy or how did you go from that to owning fit food and playing the game to all of a sudden writing this book? What was the turning point for you that said, okay, I’m done. I gotta, you know, I gotta change this.
Yeah. Well, I don’t want to give away the whole thing, but there’s, there are a lot of, you know, there, there are ups and downs in the book. Um, and you know, there was a, a collapsed and then I had to rebuild. And, but, um, some, probably the biggest thing for me was after a while, I wasn’t realizing what I was doing everyday. I was aware of it, but you don’t pay attention to your daily routine after a while. And I didn’t enjoy it. But what really got me was when we started here, when I started hearing back from old customers and friends and family members originally on the food, we had people reversing their type two diabetes, lowering their blood pressure. We had a guy that lost 150 pounds. My mother lost 50 pounds. And yeah. And when, when I started hearing from these people and saying they were going back into having those problems, that’s when it was, I was like, I have to get out, I have to stop this.
I have to tell everyone what’s going on. And the book, honestly, the book was my outlet. I was worried because I didn’t know what to do. This was my business. It was my life. Um, it was my only source of income at the time. And it was, uh, it was, I was kind of panicked for a while. Like, I don’t know how to not do this anymore. If, if you’re in it at that level, I, I didn’t have a choice, but to sell food that way. So that was kind of, that was the decision. And then I said, all right, well, I’m just going to, the book will be my platform. I’m just going to, I’m going to go bold with it and tell everybody,
Okay. Which is awesome. And I commend you for that. And I definitely highly recommend everybody to go check out Howe’s book, Jeff’s book, uh, the big fat food fraud. It is it’s eye opening. It really is man. Um, okay. The next thing I want to get into is, uh, you know, working with investors and industry influencers and how that played a role in this as well.
Yeah. So I think this is, was a shocking thing to me. It was certainly shocking to me when I first stepped into it. Um, we, I was searching for investors too, you know, so I could get infrastructure and obviously fund a lot of things. And, uh, I, it just so happened that the ones that I took on were very deeply political there, they have very deep ties into the fitness industry and they worked with a lot of people who I know you would know. Um, yeah, like there was a very, the, so the first convention I went to, these guys held what was called a mastermind meeting. And there was a lot of, there were a lot of big name, people that I known from like TV and all sorts of places. Uh, and these investor guys kind of ran this room. It wasn’t some sort of clan to Stein thing where everyone was in on it, but they were listening to these guys as authority figures.
And they were sitting here dictating what the upcoming trends in the fitness and nutrition industries were to be. And I mean, they were just telling people like, Hey, I’m, you know, just for random example, like bootcamps out, we’re not going to talk about bootcamps anymore. We’re going to talk about nutrition in particular, you know, people counting calories and we’re going to sell low calorie meals, something like that. And so they would, and a lot of the influencers, influencers in the room were people who, uh, editors at large magazine, they were, um, they were the professors at some of the universities that taught, um, nutrition, um, courses for people who graduated from college, uh, getting these degrees. And they’re, they’re teaching these people like, Hey, these are the things we’re going to be saying now. And so they’re also the same time. These, my investors were controlling a lot of the products that, that people are buying on the market.
So they were just controlling the whole system. They were saying, all right, this is the message that everyone’s going to see from now on and over here, we’re creating this food that just so happens to match it. And so it was interesting because the second I took on investors, they made it very obvious. I was not the top guy anymore. I base tricked my power. They put all their own people and it fired my people and put their people in place. Um, and they just, we would have phone calls, daily phone calls, where they would sometimes they would pretend to listen to me. And then towards the end of the cost of all right, we’re not doing any of that guys. This is what we’re doing.
I bet that feels great.
Oh, it made me feel like a million bucks. Let me tell you. Yeah, it was a, it was not my favorite experience. And then also there that’s when they started saying like, Hey, uh, you know what? We noticed that we’re spending a little bit too much money on these ingredients over here. Let’s go ahead and switch to these cheaper ingredients. Cause we’ll get a better, our margins are better. And that’s when I would start fighting with them and say, Hey, uh, you know, we, if we degrade our products that way, we’re going to lose all these people and they’d come back and say, well, we’re absolutely changing the ingredients that conversation’s over. Um, but to your point, let’s just not list these on the label then and be like, well, I don’t think we can do that. And it said, no, we’re going to do it. And it was like,
Okay, what are some of these ingredients that don’t have to be labeled then? And how did they get around that? How do people do that?
Well here. So there’s two parts to that. So on, on the one hand, uh, all right, hold on. All right. So let me give you this one first. This is the easier thing to explain. So when we were working with the USDA, the USPA, the FDA won’t work together. They refuse to, in fact, there’s a funny little, um, dialogue in the book where I literally share the conversations I had. I was trying to, the USDA, pushed me to the FDA who pushed me to the FTC who pushed me to the consumer product safety commission. And I was, I was like, someone, please just tell me what to do. And they’re like, Nope, we don’t want to work with you. Uh, and it was so frustrating. So my, the whole reason I bring this up is because the USDA doesn’t regulate seafood or veggies, or, um, there’s many other things. So anything that wasn’t regulated by them, but that was regulated by the FDA. We didn’t have to list anything we could do. They literally told us, yeah, you can list that your tuna cakes don’t have any tune in. And if you want, we don’t care.
It was my gosh. It was crazy. I was like, are you serious? They’re like, yeah, we’re not going to worry you’re with the USDA. And we don’t, they don’t regulate seafood, but we don’t want to work with you at all. So who gives a crap? And it was just unbelievable how little they kick. I have an email from the FDA saying, unless we start hearing your foods and making consumer sick, you’ll never hear from us looking really, really it’s crazy. It’s crazy.
It is. It is crazy. And that’s, that’s what I wanted to have you on was to get this part of, uh, get this part out there in the open so that people realize that this stuff isn’t just made up, it really is true. And here you are, have firsthand experience with this. And, and I mean, in a way it’s scary. Like I honestly, like, I don’t want this whole episode to be about, um, just how ridiculous it is. Cause I don’t want people leaving this, this podcast episode super stressed, like, okay, well, what do I do now? I can’t trust anybody. Um, and I’ll let you talk to that. I’ll let you talk to that too. What, where did we go from here? Like, okay. The let’s say all the stuff you’re saying is true. What do we do now? I can’t trust the stuff I’m buying from the store. How do I put the power back into my own hands and, and, and protect me and my family with the food that we’re eating. How do I know what’s right. And what’s wrong.
It’s actually really easy. And by the way, if you want, I’ve got a couple other things in a second. I’ll tell you from working with the USDA, how we manipulated the labels in case anyone wants to know. But, but yeah, before I forget, um, it really is easy to get around that. Uh, the salmon example is a perfect one. We couldn’t do anything to affect salmon. You don’t need a food label if you’re getting ready to eat salmon or kale, or, you know, whatever, normal food like whole food. Um, we can’t do it. Those things aren’t sexy. What the food industry specializes in is either packaging, numerous foods, which is how we split stuff in. You wouldn’t eat normally like a bunch of bread or sugar, um, or just making a completely new products. Um, you know, that aren’t food that we’re processing in a, uh, place and just putting synthesize things together. But the point is, if you’re eating something that doesn’t require a label, whether it’s got one or not, you don’t need to pay it. It doesn’t matter if we’re lying on eggs, it’s you don’t need to read the label on eggs. Do you? I mean, you know, they’re oatmeal, oatmeal is oatmeal. Yeah. It’s got a label, but do you really need to read it now when you’re buying specialty oatmeal with all this flavoring in it and all that? Well, that’s a different story and that’s when we’re probably lying to you about what’s in there.
Yeah. So you’re basically, you’re saying stay away from process things that require, you know, a food label with a ton of ingredients. If it’s in its raw form, you know, like most, most vegetables and fruits and produce and meat, for the most part, you don’t need to be worried about it. But if you’re out there buying pop tarts and chips and cookies and crackers and soda, that’s when you’re probably going to be getting yourself in trouble with what you’re eating.
Right. Exactly. And I know that’s not a new message to people, but, um, but the reasoning might be new because it’s, whatever you think you’re learning on that label. Um, I’m telling people, and I can’t speak for every company out there, but the laws are so loose. The regulation is so lethargic. There’s not a good chance. You’re reading facts. I tell, I tell people all the time people ask me, well, what do I read for foreign labels? I say, look, food labels are like the pickup lines guys use at a bar. They’re, they’re misleading. They’re grossly exaggerated. And if you fall for them, you’re going to get fucked. So don’t read, or don’t put too much stock into your food label.
Oh my gosh. That is a great analogy. Um, I, that sounds like some, I need a tweet. So, uh, for sure, man. Okay. So what else you said you had some other examples of things that USDA does, what labels? Yeah.
There’s, there’s plenty more in the book. I’ll give you a couple of quick. Uh, what I think are some juicy ones though. Um, so working with the USDA, we actually did have to pull a Quincy toilet and the USDA they regulate, you know, like beef and chicken and pork. And for the most part, that’s about it. Now, the FDA, if you, if you’ve got chicken that lays an egg, the FDA regulates the egg. But if you take the egg out of the shell, the USDA regulates that again. That’s, that’s the only weird one. Anyway, those are the only three things they regulate. So, um, we have, here’s some of the loopholes we had to use, right? If we’re making a meal that we’ve know has a bunch of sugar or preservatives like MSG and things like that in there. And we don’t want to list that stuff.
Cause we know it flips, it flips people out. People don’t want to see high fructose corn syrup. So we want to, uh, the investors said, we know we need to hide this now. So the one rule it’s a loophole we could use is called discrete ingredients. And you can look it up. I mean, this is right there on their website. It’s not even hidden, but we’re legally allowed to use. So for example, we could list the food as the ingredient. Like we could say sauce, or we could say cheese or something like, or juice, and we don’t then have to list necessarily within the sauce or cheese or juice. Of course. I mean, there’s tons of stuff in sauces and juices, there’s sugar and all kinds, but we didn’t have to list it always. And so that you can get away with that. Here’s one word that’s used sometimes. So MSG people don’t like that it’s in soy protein. So we could just list soy or sometimes whey protein even. And we’re it MSG when we do that and we’re legally allowed to do it.
Wow. No, that’s definitely some juicy stuff that people don’t realize. Right. So I think this stuff is great for, for every, you know, every person listening to, to understand. And when they go out and buy foods, they have to be knowledgeable of these things. And so I’m glad that you’re talking about this stuff and I really do hope people will go and buy your book seriously because they’re going to learn so much their eyes going to be opened. And, uh, you know, the power will be back in their hands if they, if they really apply to what you’re, what you’re telling people. And so I’m really grateful to you, Jeff, that you really, you know, expose this because otherwise it’s hard for people to know, like it’s hard for people to, just to go off of. Okay, well, I see this commercial, you know, and so, or this looks good. Like I heard about antioxidants or heard gluten-free is better for you, so I should probably buy this. So
Absolutely. Yeah. People do. People need to know. I mean, I used to eat this food until I started until I was the one making it, if it’s seeing what we were doing. Okay.
Exactly. So one question that I had that I, I’m not sure if you have the answer to, but I want to talk about, for example, like whole foods, um, you know, these stores that, uh, people trust them, they’re like, okay, well I’m buying this from whole foods. And so I feel like there’s, is it the same thing in that industry, these, these, um, health food stores? Or is this just when they go to like, you know, other things?
Yeah. Well, so I’m not, I’m not bashing whole foods, although they’ve, they’ve been caught doing some questionable things, but, um, but I’m not bashing them, but no, it’s, it’s interesting. Cause there, a lot of the times they’re forcing companies like us to do the stuff we’re doing. And what I mean by that is they need a product to have a certain margin if it’s worth their while to sell it. But it also has to be, so it’s gotta be cheap enough, but we have to have, we have to be able to pay for it, to sit on a certain shelf, like an eye level shelf, for example. And if you can’t meet certain standards, then it doesn’t go. So they may not be doing it on purpose, but they put us in a week, your place now they have higher margins than like a Walmart, but the same thing happens.
Also another thing that happens with these stores, like the whole foods and uh, any of them, we were co-packing, uh, or private labeling, same thing for other companies. So we had some foods in the stores that the whole foods didn’t even necessarily know where it was coming from or, or Publix, I think was one that we were in. And we were producing for a guy, the guy wasn’t his products when ours were, but it was his brand name and they didn’t even know where it was coming from. So it’s not that the store is doing it. It’s just, they don’t always know. They don’t always know. Yeah,
I get that. So, um, the next thing I want to talk to you about is, you know, using technology like Google or infusion soft and how they, um, you know, kind of guide consumer’s eating decisions, what, what do you mean? Give us some examples of that?
Yeah, so that was one of our, um, we, we targeted a lot of influencers with infusion soft. That’s a, it’s a popular, you know, obviously internet marketing program in itself is not a bad thing. It can be a very good thing, but we would use infusion soft to track people’s search patterns on Google and social media and send them stuff that we knew that either wanted to hear, or we would just purposefully send, you know, subliminal advertising so that they would start to recognize things. Um, to give you an example of personal trainers, we would, instead of just teaching the consumer, like, Hey, uh, you need to eat low calorie. We would, we would target their trainer because we knew where you could tell where people are based on their IP address and whatnot. Um, and we would send it to their doctor and their dietician and their trainer and say, Hey, low calorie, low calorie, low calorie, go tell all your patients and your clients this.
And we can very specifically target individuals by where the things that they like on social media or the things that they’re looking up on Google or YouTube, and we can talk and then track their, uh, their health professionals. And that’s how, that’s how we were getting to people, frankly. Um, just by, you know, it’s not like we were targeting a specific person, we knew, but people in general, you just see where the patterns go. The software, you know, kind of creates an amalgam of this. And we create the content that we want to go in front of them. If they’re online, looking up an article half the time we wrote those articles and handed them to the influencers. The other half of the time, we’re just putting up the ads all around those articles. And we all have the websites with this kind of stuff on there. Um, but we were the ones trying to influence those to just kind of influence those spots. So the people, uh, were just seeing the message. They were, again, it goes back to the edge plasmids they were advertisements for our food. We were riding them in, sitting in the Mt. Using this software. So the people thought they were learning about nutrition or weight loss or whatever.
Yeah. So what are, so my next question is what are some current trends that are pretty popular now, but that are actually true. Like they’re actually real, uh, not influenced by food companies that you see kind of coming out and, and being in the open now. And for example, the one thing that comes to my mind is, is fat now, right? Like high fat foods, you know, is that kind of something that is being influenced by, uh, food companies? Or is that real science that is actually showing, look fat’s not the enemy.
Yeah. Well that was actually the first one I was going to mention because yeah, the, that it just got busted. What was it a month ago? The sugar industry, uh, they pointed out, well, the back of the, since the sixties they’ve been paying, they were paying those scientists to lie and say, no, it was fat, not sugar. And so, um, yeah, that is one that, but here’s the thing. Yes. That is a real, I guess not fad, but that’s a real trendy thing right now that people are, it’s true and it, those fats are good and they’re fun to eat. And, but, uh, it’s just going to start happening now, the food industry is going to take so much advantage of this, or they’re going to turn it into a horrible thing and they’re going to sell you, sell people. They’re going to try your listeners.
Aren’t going to fall for it now, but you know, yeah, they’re going to turn it in. They’re going to try to turn it into a bad thing or they’re just going to sell products based on that science, but that’s a good one. I mean, almost all of them as soon as they almost all of them, but a lot of them, the gluten one being a very prominent one. It’s not that they’re any of them are necessarily false. Um, it’s just what the food industry does with on paleo. I mean, we all like to technically eat paleo, um, it’s the paleo cookies and stuff, but right. Sometimes that we have to watch out for.
Yeah, no, and I, I guess, yeah, the way you said it was, it was right. Like these things aren’t false, but the food, the food industries know how to take advantage of these trends and turn them into profits. Um, but sometimes by, by creating, you know, less quality products that are gonna harm people’s health, um, but they know how to do that and they know how to make money off of it. So, um, no, the reason I ask that is cause co okay. Cause here I am an influencer in the industry and yeah. I mean, honestly we go off of what is, what knowledge is available to us at the time. Like if I lived back in the sixties and seventies, I, my, I might’ve looked at the science and said, okay, well fat’s the enemy. So we’ve got to go for that. So this is what I’m telling people. And so here I am an influencer thinking, okay, well, how can I as an influencer, you know, pass on the right stuff to my audience without being influenced. But, um, well here, because I, cause I, okay, go ahead. You go ahead.
Sorry. No, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Um, I was just going to give you an example. Um, I think I talk about this in the book, but we use what’s called cleaning up the ingredients, right. And this was a tactic we use. So we’ll follow sometimes we’re not the initiators. I matter of fact, half the time, at least we’re not, but we’ll follow influencers. We’ll like people like you. So things that you’re talking about that are genuinely good things, the food babe is big on calling out companies and getting them to take some out of their products, right. Um, like food dyes or, and stuff like that. And, and what, what the food companies would do. I mean, it’s, it’s, if you’re not careful in how you portray the messages, all you do do a great job, but if you just say, Hey, anything with this stuff is bad.
A red dye, it’s got to come out of your food and then you take it out. All that does is teach the consumers that L it’s okay to eat this candy again, because it doesn’t have red dye or it doesn’t have BMOs. Um, you send it back to you in a candy. So I think the way to get around it is like, you know, if we’re talking about micronutrients, if we’re talking about antioxidants or, um, things like that, whatever it might be, you know, we got to emphasize to people, but just because things don’t have this or don’t list, this doesn’t mean that it’s good. You’ll never kale. Doesn’t advertise that it, you know, low calorie or that it’s low fat. It is those things, but it doesn’t advertise it. Um, but on the other hand, if a sugary, like a marathon bar advertises that it has antioxidants well, it’s, it’s still a Snickers bar.
Yeah. That’s a true man. Yeah. That’s, that’s great. That’s great. Um, that’s great advice right there. Cause I, I D I definitely see that. And so I guess what, uh, I was trying to get to is, um, you know, uh, as an influencer, I, you know, I do try and really put in the time and effort into researching and finding out what, what is true for me. And what’s optimal for me and what’s optimal for you, and it might be different for me versus you. And so it’s, it’s about taking control of your own health and finding out and putting in the effort to find out what’s optimal for you. Because if you’re just listening to someone like me, or if you’re just listening to a different influencer, that’s telling you something different, then you’re just going to go with the wind, kind of whoever’s, you know, convinces you with their words of what’s best for you, but you have to really take control of your own health and kind of become your own self experimenter with your health, get your blood work done on a regular basis to find out what is optimal for you.
But I think all of us, no matter if you’re vegan or paleo or keto agree that less processed food is ultimately better. And so that’s, that’s one thing that I try and push as is here’s the things that we agree on, stay away from processed foods, and that then you’ll be so much healthier, but
Right. I mean, that’s what I tell people about from the food industry point of view, like festivals aren’t sexy, right? We can’t that’s, and they don’t have the best margins. If you read those, we don’t like you, what we want to sell you as news things, process things, fake stuff. Uh, so yeah, you kind of get around us if you teach people not to do that and the way you do it, the way you’ve done it is such a, um, because a lot of people, I know so many people who are just fit and they can eat whatever they want and they, but they look fit and they can tell people this or that. And it may not work for everyone like you’re saying, but you went out of the way to put on the weight and then move it back. So people have a pretty solid idea of like, Hey, he actually walked in my shoes and then went back. Uh, he’s probably got a pretty good blueprint for solving this.
Yeah, no, thank you. And I appreciate that. Cause here’s the thing, as I tell people all the time, like I actually ate a low fat diet for the most part. When I gained 75 pounds, you know, I ate a lot of cinnamon toast crunch and mountain Dew and chips, cookies, and crackers that were all low fat processed foods, but it ended up gaining 75 pounds. You know, I didn’t do the Morgan Spurlock thing where I ate McDonald’s or fast food, three times a day. I fast food maybe once or twice a week, but it was these other foods like Pringles and, uh, you know, uh, top ramen and macaroni and cheese. And all these foods that are pitched to us is sometimes somewhat healthy. Like, Hey, this is four or five with vitamin a and vitamin D or a good source of calcium, you know, in big print.
Um, and so, yeah, I think people people’s eyes were opened by seeing me do the opposite of what you’re supposed to do, but then they’re like, Oh my gosh, I’m eating those foods too. And look what it did to Drew’s body. You know? So, so in a way, I’m glad I did it, to be honest with you, even though I wouldn’t recommend everybody doing that. Cause it was not the healthiest thing, but it really did open up my eyes to just here’s. The other thing that maybe we can get into is just how powerful of an emotional connection to there is with food and how this food really does. Cause, and in a way in addiction to these types of foods, I really did sense that when I went through this, even though it was only for six months, when I tried to get off of those foods, it was like getting off of a drug. I went through withdrawal symptoms. I felt like hell, and these foods are designed to do that. Am I right?
Absolutely. They are towards the end of the book. I give an example of someone. I know I refer to it as like the nutrition version of Stockholm syndrome. If you catch people when they’re younger, I mean, anytime, ideally, but the food industry tries to catch them in they’re young, you’re buying that stuff, changes your biochemistry. I mean, you become dependent on it on a physical, mental, emotional level. Um, just like any other drug. And I mean, you try taking someone’s coffee away after they’ve been drinking it since they were 20, sorry, they’re gonna fight you all day every day for their morning caffeine. Um, or whatever it might be. And it’s the same thing with that stuff. So when people get that adapt, uh, you know, just used to addicted to sugar or whatever might be processed food, they can’t come off that stuff. They need it, they clean to it.
And um, plus on the back end then when these companies own the health food companies, uh, I don’t want to name names necessarily, but well here, this is a public ones. I ended it all Hines who makes, you know, bagel bites and all that stuff. They own weight Watchers. So, or excuse me, I think they own Jenny Craig, but, but all of those companies are owned by, uh, by a company like that. Right. All of the big ones are. And so, um, so by the time you, your body changes your metabolism, metabolism slows down as you age a little bit. And now all of a sudden you’ve been eating these kitty cereals and pop tarts and stuff. Uh, you were thin before and now it’s starting to affect you. And so when you go to the weight loss food, it’s the same food made by the same companies. It’s just, it’s telling you it’s better. And it’s the same thing because they know they’ve got you addicted to it.
Yeah, man, this is, this is some great stuff. Okay. So where, where are you at now? What, what are you doing now, now that you, I mean, obviously you have the book you’re probably doing speaking tours and things like that. What else are you doing? Uh, beyond that? Cause I’m assuming you let go of your, your company or walked away from it. Right. Or do you want to talk about that?
Yeah. Yeah, I did. I absolutely did. Uh, there was no way I was going to be able to be a part of it. I didn’t to don’t get me wrong. I didn’t want to be a part of it anymore. I wanted to be out of it is what I’m saying, but, um, but we also knew like, Hey, if you’re saying all this stuff, no one would buy the food anyway. So yeah. Uh, yeah, I got rid of that. Um, I sold the company before, before we finished up with a book early on during the writing of the book actually. Um, so I got out of that now. The book only came out, I think two and a half weeks ago, uh, was the launch. So now I’m spending my time traveling around talking, promoting, um, you know, coming on awesome podcast. And I’m already a fan of like this one and I’m so thankful I get to talk on and uh, just spreading the message, man.
Yeah, man. And that’s, and that’s great. So, so what is, what is your daily food intake look like? Can I ask you personally? Okay. What’s your what’s typical breakfast for you and what type of food do you consume? I’m curious. So my I’m sure my followers are as well.
Yeah, sure. Well actually it’s pretty boring. Um, I mean eggs are almost always my breakfast. Um, I’m a little weird. I’ll do eggs and broccoli. I, I don’t know why I like that for breakfast, but I’ve gotten used to it. Um, you know, throughout the day, Allie, either again, some other kinds of meat, chicken, usually sometimes beef, um, seafood at dinner, usually greens at lunch and, uh, breakfast, sometimes dinner sometimes I’ll just have like sweet potato stuff. Like very boy, almost like a bodybuilder type of a diet. Very boring. Yeah.
And do you, are you, do you have a family? You have kids or
No, no, actually, uh, I’m a bachelor, so I it’s pretty easy for me to do that. I can’t, you know, I can’t talk a high and mighty, I don’t know what it’s like to have kids, so I’ve got it easy right now.
No, I’m just curious because I didn’t know. And if you did, if you did have kids and things like, cause I’m a dad of two single dad of two, um, you know, and it is hard finding that balance cause they go to school and their kid, their friends have candy and stuff like that or they go to grandma’s house and you know, she gives them McDonald’s it’s like, okay, well how do I not freak out and try and you know, raise them in this bubble so that they don’t know how to handle this unhealthy food. You know? I feel like if I protect them too much from it, then it’s going to, it could go backwards. So I’m trying to learn that.
Yeah, no, I don’t, I don’t have that answer. I don’t have it. I’m curious. What do you tell them right now? Or what what’s the plan, I guess when it comes up?
Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, I, I do, I, here’s the thing I try and say, when they’re with me, I can control what they eat and when they’re not with me, I can’t control what they’re going to eat and I don’t freak out. But my, my whole thing is if I teach them the reason of, of why, why we eat these foods and explain to them, and they were part of the food making process so that I take them grocery shopping with me. I let them pick up their vegetables. I have them cook with me and I help. I have them help the food with me when they were a part of that process. Instead of just saying, Hey, eat your broccoli or else they’re a part of that process. Now I do, I am okay with like, for example, we do pizza night, uh, Sunday night, as long as they let me watch football.
Um, but you know, I can control what kind of pizza we have. Yeah. And sometimes if I’m lazy, I’ll go grab Domino’s. But other times I’m like, okay, let’s make it ourselves. Or, you know, w we’ll go, you know, w we’ll make it healthier, but I do try. Yeah. I feel like if I try and protect them too much, uh, and to try and be too strict in today’s society, unless, unless I keep them with me a hundred percent of the time they’re going to be exposed to it, they’re going to eat it. And it’s just teaching them what to do with it when they do eat it. And, you know, I don’t want it to create this process of, okay, now you should feel guilty for eating that, right. Especially there are two, two little girls, right? Two girls. And so I think girls are, you know, it’s different for little girls. They’re more sensitive. And, uh, anyways, I, I’m scared to be honest with you when they become teenagers and hormones kick in. So I’m just doing the best I can.
Absolutely. No, I think it was a, I think Anthony Bourdain, when someone asked him how he’s going to teach his or how he teaches this guy, I think he said, well, I just tell my children that Ronald McDonald, kidnaps little children, see, there you go. Just scare tactics. Right. That’s, that’s one way of doing it.
I’ve lied before to them and I’m okay with it. Like, I’ve lied like, Oh, it’s close today. Or, Oh, you know, there’s no more candy left or, you know, anyways. Um, yeah, yeah, no, I was just, I was just curious about that to see, to see where you were at, but it is easier when you do, when you are a bachelor. Like, okay, I’m just, this is it. If it was just when it’s just me, when I’m by myself, when I don’t have them, when they’re with their mom, I do eat just simple, boring foods. Right. It’s just, it’s simple for me. Okay. So you don’t subscribe to 100% of the paleo or KIDO. Um, do you have a nutritional philosophy
For the most? Well, yeah, like I was saying what I’ve done almost the entire time since I’ve been in the fitness world has followed the, uh, bodybuilders type of diet. Um, I did it for aesthetic reasons at first. Right. Cause they clearly have it that like, I mean, you’re, I assume you’re pretty much like a bodybuilder, right? I mean, you probably train a lot that way. You’ve seem to eat that way. Um, maybe not like you’re doing a sh go, but um, very, you know, whole foods. I see lots of protein. Some people prefer to eat a lot less greens mostly when it comes to vegetables. Um, yeah, not a hundred percent necessarily paleo, but for the most part, it is, um, just, just by eating natural whole foods, I think. Yeah.
Okay. So, okay. Before we go, cause we’re running out of time here. Do you allow yourself to have a quote unquote cheat meal? Or if you do, what are those things that you indulge in that you’re like, Oh, I know this is bad, but I’m going to eat it anyways.
Absolutely. I do. Oh my goodness. Uh, I think it’s unhealthy to not have a cheat meal ever. Um, yeah, pizza, probably my number one. That’s pizza’s my favorite. And then, um, uh, if I’m going to have pizza, I’m probably gonna have like a margarita or something with it. So yes.
Sounds delicious, man. Yeah, no, well, here’s the thing. I, I, Jeff, I really, really appreciate you coming on, man. Um, and I’ll have to have you on again in the future. I would love to, cause there’s so much more that I did want to talk about that we didn’t get to today, but I think this was a great first start and I think people are really gonna love this. And I really do hope people are going to go check out your book, which by the way, we will put in the, the show notes, um, tell us as well where people can get ahold of you, a social media website, all of that.
Sure. Yeah. Uh, the website is big fat food fraud.com. So there’s a lot of information on there. Facebook is probably my number one where I’m most active. Uh, I just recently got on to Twitter not long ago. I’m a baby on Twitter. So matter of fact, if you want to go there, go there. I’m posting on there regularly. Um, I’m exposed to every time I see something that I know the food industry, like I’ve done this, I see what they’re doing, how they’re lying, I call it out. So if you want to see me do that Facebook, but mostly Twitter is where I’m doing that. And it’s just, what is your, what’s your handle? It just add Jeff Scott Phillips and Scott with one T Phillips with one L.
Okay. That’s good to know. Yeah. Scott with one T Phillips with one L and same thing on Facebook.
Yeah, both of the same. Yep. Just Jeff Scott Phillips.
Okay. And do you have a website as well? Or
It’s just the big fat food fraud.com website. That is my personal one too.
Okay, cool. Just making sure there was nothing else. I want to make sure we get it all out there so people can get in touch with you and go check this book out. Um, I’m excited to see you, man. I’m excited to see, uh, all these things that, uh, that, that you’re going to be talking about and I’ll be following you on social media for sure. When next step we got to get you on Instagram and Snapchat. So Exactly. We’ll get you there. All right, Jeff, I appreciate, I appreciate it, man.
Yeah. Thanks for having me on the show, man. This was awesome.
It was my pleasure, man. Have a good day. We’ll talk to him.
All right. Talk soon.
All right. You guys thank you so much for listening in to today’s episode. I hope you enjoyed it and learn something from Jeff Scott Phillips. I know I did for sure. And hopefully we all take, uh, all of this and apply it to our lives, to, you know, eat healthier food, real food, unprocessed food. And that’s how we can take the power back and take control of our health. Um, so please be in touch. Let me know what you found of this episode. Please share this podcast with those who you think would enjoy it. And we hope that you guys will tune it back in next week for another great episode. Before I leave, though, you guys go to fit to fat, to fit.com, sign up for the newsletter. If you haven’t yet to stay in the know on what’s going on. I put all my discounts on promos, um, announcements, big announcements in there, um, as well of things to come.
So there’s a lot of big things coming. So stay in the know, uh, sometimes on social media, you might miss a tweet or you might not see my posts. So, uh, sign up for the newsletter is a great way to stay in touch. Just go to fit to fat, to fit.com and scroll down and enter in your email to stay in touch. Also reach out to me on social media. If you have questions, comments, concerns about episodes. Let me know, and I will change things for you guys. If you want me to change them. I appreciate you guys, and I hope you guys will tune back in next week for another great episode here on the fit to fat fit experience podcast.
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