Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: I like to break it down and say, okay, what's something that you can change today that you could stick with for the rest of your life? And sometimes it's something simple, like, you know, I think I could swap out my butter for olive oil at one or two meals, or I could add a vegetable to my lunch. You know, so you start building upon those little goals, and over time, you are building these really positive patterns again. It's about progress, not perfection. Patterns, not perfection. It's about just making these lifestyle changes.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Welcome to the Age of Aging, a show about living well with an aging brain. Produced by the Penn Memory center in the Michael Nadoff Communications Hub. I'm Terence Casey.
[00:00:59] Speaker C: And I'm Jake Johnson.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Hey, Jake. Happy New Year. And happy new season of the Age of Aging.
[00:01:05] Speaker C: Yeah, happy New Year. Great to see you.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: We're recording this in late January, and like everybody else, I spend this month thinking a lot about New Year's resolutions.
And I don't think that was as clearly on display as the first time that I went to the YMCA earlier this month, and it took me like 15 minutes to find a place to park. Do you do resolutions? Where's your head at with that?
[00:01:30] Speaker C: You know, I usually don't do resolutions, but I have found myself this year thinking about some things I'd like to change. One of them was to look at my phone less because I really hate how much I look at my phone. And then the other one that is maybe more in line with this episode is that I really want to figure out a good lunch for. For myself to eat.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: I just.
[00:01:54] Speaker C: I always struggle with it. Something that makes me feel satisfied but doesn't make me feel terrible after. So, yeah, that was one of my New Year's resolutions. What about you?
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Yeah, last year I made a New Year's resolution to change some of my exercise habits and take on more of a weightlifting routine in addition to the running that I'd been doing. And I. I feel pretty good about that. It took me a while to get into a good rhythm with it and find a system that works for me, but it's really part of my daily routine now. So this year I thought it would be an opportunity to reevaluate my diet because I had read constantly, you can't outwork a bad diet with a good workout. And this was in part Inspired by the 2025 results of the US Pointer Study. Now, food was only part of that study. The full study showed the brain health benefits of things that we've been talking about for years.
Both on this show and out in the community, the importance of a Mediterranean style diet and regular exercise and cognitively challenging activities and social engagement.
So simultaneously, I was looking on a personal level of trying to improve my own diet choices, But I figured we should probably get to the bottom of what exactly is the mind diet? And importantly, how can people and our listeners build it into their own daily life?
So for this episode, I wanted to talk to two different people who could help me navigate the science of the mind diet and then importantly, how we can overcome the hurdles and the stigma of the mind diet.
The first person is very well known to listeners of this show. That's Dr. Jason Karlowish, our friend and colleague, the executive producer of the Age of Aging, and the co director of the Penn Memory Center. We'll get to him in a minute. The voice after that will be new to the show but very familiar to me personally.
I recruited my little sister, Trish St. Leger. She's a registered and licensed dietitian and nutritionist and has worked in private practice for years, focusing on the total lifespan from prenatal nutrition to senior living.
So she's seen me in my frozen taquitos for dinner days, in my college Taco Bell days, and she has the unique challenge of trying to figure out how to, as a father of three, I can implement these healthy brain diet changes into my life.
[00:04:18] Speaker D: That's great.
[00:04:19] Speaker C: I'm excited to hear about it. I'm sure Trish has a lot of reflections on you and your childhood.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Yeah, there's some good stories from Trish, particularly how the on campus slaughterhouse at Penn State changed her own dietary practice and career trajectory.
And also a nice story about her first documented experience with a can of aerosol cheese.
But first, let's go to Jason.
All right. Thanks for joining me today, Jason.
[00:04:56] Speaker D: Thank you, Jerry, for having me. It's great to be here once again with you.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: Now, I know we've talked a lot about it in the office and you weren't an investigator on this pointer study, but you've been reading a lot about it. You've been following this study closely. Could you tell me a little bit more about the sort of the significance of this research?
[00:05:13] Speaker D: Sure, yeah. Poynter enrolled a group of adults, Americans, who were cognitively unimpaired, but based on a variety of habits and or diseases, were considered to be at risk of developing cognitive impairment, namely at risk of developing dementia. The risk factors were ones that are well known.
Illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and habits such as not engaging in A regular exercise habit, not having a diet that was considered brain healthy. They weren't necessarily required to not eat well. But the intervention was going to address all these issues. So essentially a group of individuals, in summary at risk to develop dementia, not currently with experiencing dementia or cognitive impairment. And can this intervention that alters lifestyle change the trajectory of cognitive decline? A really important point of the Pointer study, which is a design choice, it's not a problem whatsoever. It was not designed to detect the prevention of the onset of dementia, but rather to measure effect on cognition over about, don't quote me on the amount of time but say 24 months or so that evades me right now.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: How long.
[00:06:19] Speaker D: But to detect the effect of this intervention on the change in cognition over time, to do a study that would measure the reducing the risk of developing dementia is feasible, but it is a resource intensive study in terms of the amount of subjects you would need participants and the length of time that you would have to follow them. You're talking about many more subjects in much more time. So the study I think had to make some choices around resources. Poynter results were released in July of 2025.
Stands as a really key event in helping to support the benefit of lifestyle interventions on in this case improving cognitive ability. Albeit the effect was modest. But it was there and I don't think anyone would dispute the value of these interventions anyway, so let's talk. And the intervention that caught my eye as still is diet.
Why diet? And I let me lay out what I've been thinking. We chatted about this. You could choose not to exercise. You gotta move around. But you could choose to not exercise. You can choose to not engage in cognitively engaging activities a little hard. You can use your mind as little as you possibly want, let AI do everything and otherwise watch dumb dramas or etc. You can choose not to adjust your lifestyle with respect to managing illnesses like diabetes, hypertension, etc. Which is another one of their interventions.
You can choose not to be sociable, not go out. But the one thing you can't not do is you can't not eat if you don't eat. The Irish hunger strikers taught us this in the 1970s and 80s, namely you. If all you take in is water, you will live for about a biblical 40 days and 40 nights and then you will die of starvation. So you gotta eat to live. Yeah, and that's why I became interested in the diet angle here. Because. Because if it's something you have to do, then the question is how to do it. Well, because you're going to do it anyway. So how can we do it?
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Well, I grew up in the era of the food pyramid and then the healthy plate. Now we're talking about the MIND Diet. We've heard people talk about the Mediterranean diet as well. They're all variations on a theme here. But could you break down practically what does this look like on a dinner plate or a packed lunch at work?
[00:08:35] Speaker D: So what? First of all, mind diet's a clever play on words. It is actually spelled M I N D and it stands for the Mediterranean diet combined with the DASH diet. So what's the DASH diet? The DASH diet is developed through clinical research as a dietary approach to stop hypertension, hence the name dash. And it emphasizes salt intake and other foods impact on hypertension. So the MIND Diet came to be based on the results of that study as well as research looking at the effect of what's known as the Mediterranean diet on brain health. And so folks were who were in the intervention arm were educated about the MIND Diet in a very rigorous design, had a dietary interventionist and monitoring system in place in an effort to encourage them to adopt this diet and monitor how well they were adhering to it.
The core theme of the diet is reduction in the amount of what are known as saturated fats that you eat as to be juxtaposed to unsaturated fat. So maybe we should talk a bit about what's the difference between saturated and unsaturated fat. Not all fat is bad. Or maybe one way to put it is not all fats are created equal when it comes to your health and well being.
So saturated fats considered unhealthy because they raise low density lipoprotein levels. And LDL is popularly known in a culture as the bad cholesterol. Higher levels lead to coronary artery plaques and plaques elsewhere in arteries, causing strokes and heart attacks. In contrast, unsaturated fats have a tendency to lower LDL levels or at least not raise LDL levels. One way to understand the difference between saturated and unsaturated fat. Saturated fats at room temperature, solid. Think of some marbled beef. In contrast, unsaturated fats at room temperature, generally liquid. Think of vegetable oils and seed oils, olive oil.
And now we're getting into the chemistry. Very simply, saturated fats, the carbons in the fat are single chain bonded and single chain bonds allow a lot of hydrogens and all that leads to a very straight molecule which can stack up tightly. Hence at room temperature, solid. In contrast, unsaturated double Bonds not single between the carbons. Hydrogen, therefore not as bound, therefore a little more of a clunky molecule, hence liquid form. All right, you got the practical aspects all the way down to the chemistry. Welcome to the age of aging.
Right down to the science. Anyway, Mind diet's goal is to limit the amount of saturated fats. And the keys there really are a diet that's heavy in unsaturated fats, so olive oils and related oils, whole grains, a limit in the amount of dairy based fats like butter or cream, and sources of animal fat from fish and poultry to be juxtaposed from red meat such as beef and such like that. The diet does not exclude red meat, but basically it recommends less than or equal to three servings of red meat a week, whereas one to two servings per week at least of fish and poultry for a juxtaposition there. But again, vegetables, nuts, fruits, berries are all featured in this diet along with those other sources of protein that I mentioned on the website. I think we'll pro, we'll have put up there what the details of the mind diet are.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: Great. And since we're talking chemistry and the science here of food, I think it would be foolish not to talk about the GLP1s and as a drug instead of a drug.
[00:12:06] Speaker D: Yeah, never mind what you eat, just take a pill or an injection.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: So you can imagine two different perspectives when you're talking about. We'll just, we'll talk about Ozempic. Even though that's a brand name. We talk about the GLP1 since the class of the drug. But I think in general people talk about, think about it as a zempic. So there you could look at this as either great, everybody's going to get this drug. Some outrageous growing percentage of Americans are on it already.
And so if you don't care about your food choices because you don't have that feeling of hunger, it's very easy to embrace a new diet style. The flip side is perhaps people just aren't thinking about their food and are just eating less, fewer calories, not necessarily worried about, because as we talked about earlier, they're on a diet rather than focused on healthy diet choices. Where's your head at with this in terms of those two perspectives on how Ozempic changes our relationship with food?
[00:13:04] Speaker D: My head and my stomach are at the following. There's a real role for these weight loss drugs for health and well being. There are individuals who because of weight have real morbidities, namely sleep apnea, which is at night. They Cut off their breathing and go hypoxic, low blood oxygen, which over time leads to a spectacular heart failure as well as impairs cognition. And then the second common problem is musculoskeletal injury and repetitious injury, causing the inability to get around, leading even to joint replacements. So there's a real role for some individuals to take off pounds that are causing those kinds of problems. And for those individuals, these drugs really have been, quite frankly, health savers even for some probably lifesavers. Having said that, I think what you bring up though is the drugs are a means, but not the end to what the other problem is. What are you eating in terms of health?
The GLP1s, which is an abbreviation for glucagon. Like peptide drugs, GLP1s have been shown in individuals at higher risk of cardiovascular disease mortality to reduce that risk. So they have been shown also to be very effective to reduce the risk of having cardiovascular events in individuals who are at high risk. So you're really seeing a role for these drugs to maintain health and well being. But what we've been gesturing to here is you still have to eat. And the question is, what are you eating? So if all the GLP one does is by driving down appetite and otherwise an elegant hormonal, both centrally and peripherally in your nervous system manipulation of your appetite, such as you lose weight, that's good. But if you're still eating foods that raise risk of cardiovascular and now CNS based harms, then you're really not solving the problem. You're only getting partly there. And I think that's where the emphasis on the mind diet becomes, I think very relevant because it's all very well to lose the weight with the drug and the mind. Diet is not a diet to lose weight. It is not a diet to lose weight. It is a diet to maintain a healthy heart and brain. So there's a role for GLP1s. In summary, for individuals at high risk of cardiovascular disease, in whom weight is a problem, but it is not the solution to what the food is that you need to put into your body to keep your heart and brain healthy.
[00:15:18] Speaker B: What would you, how would you handle it in your clinic?
[00:15:21] Speaker D: Well, you know, my clinic, I don't treat the cardiovascular disease, obesity, et cetera. So as a dementia specialist, I don't see a role for GLP1s because the evoke studies which recently wrapped up and represented at ctad and Dave Volk and I spoke about that a couple episodes ago, the evoke studies failed to show very well designed two well designed clinical trials that taking semaglutide, the generic form of what is also branded as Ozempic, had an effect on the rate of progression in individuals who have Alzheimer's disease. Biomarker defined Alzheimer's disease. So there is no role for these drugs for the treatment of persons with Alzheimer's.
But in individuals at high risk for cardiovascular disease, where one of the risks of cardiovascular disease is the brain, if they meet the criteria for GLP1s to address that problem, there clearly is a role and I do think the door hasn't closed on the role of GLP1s in terms of what they might do to reduce your risk of developing dementia. All cause that's another study that needs to be done. Whether that will be done is to be determined. So there's my take.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: And I think the other big headline recently when it's come to American and food has been the political interjection and mostly with Robert Kennedy's quote upside down food pyramid. There is an emphasis on protein and saturated fats over the traditional guidelines we mentioned earlier. The food pyramid and the healthy plate icons that were so prevalent for decades. Those get a lot of attention. I think there's a bigger platform for Kennedy rather than for the pointer study. But how should our listeners weigh hearing these two and. And are they in opposition with each other or do they work in conjunction with each other?
[00:17:07] Speaker D: If you wanted to have a healthy heart and a healthy brain, I think the mind diet has data to support it.
The recommendations from Secretary Kennedy about what people should eat were not tailored towards keeping America's brain and heart healthy. I guess he had other agendas there. I'm sticking with the mind diet. I certainly eat red meat, but I think there's a logic there about keeping the amount of red meat and related saturated fats at the lower end of weekly consumption, which is which are laid out in the mind diet.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: Great. I think it's clear we talk about within the age of aging and within the Penn Memory Center Clinic, a focus on large scale randomized clinical trials rather than press releases and podiums.
[00:17:51] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: And I think we from that we can move on. I do think that it's important to point out that you are not just a geriatrician, neurologist, a dementia specialist, but you are a human being with a home kitchen and we have a glass of wine with dinner. So when you go home and you're in your kitchen, how do you integrate the results of the pointer study into your daily life?
[00:18:17] Speaker D: Well, I should point out by the way, the mind diet did not make recommendations regarding the consumption of wine or alcohol in general. And we are seeing a sort of revisiting of the role of what is the role of alcohol in maintaining our body's health. We're in a period now where we have radically revised prior thoughts that alcohol at some lower level, particularly wine, was healthy. I guess I'm still stuck in the 90s on the matter of the health benefits of wine. Mainly I enjoy my, my Merlot. I try to practice what I prescribe. My snack food of choice is almonds or dried fruit or an apple. I do enjoy dairy, particularly cheese, but I do limit my take of butter outside of cooking and vegetables. Grains such as steel cut oats, farro vegetables like kale and brussels sprouts are featured in our meals. I'm one of those folks that when I get a hamburger, I swap out the french fries for a salad, for example.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: Every now and then I'm like, oh.
[00:19:14] Speaker D: And I'm always happy I got the salad because it is quite flavorful, et cetera, particularly a kale salad.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: So that's my habit for diet.
[00:19:21] Speaker D: And I think the challenge that I think people face is how to go out and get that diet, how to go out and buy that food, et cetera.
Yeah.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: And that is actually a nice segue because we'll be in our next segment, we'll be talking to a dietitian, one with whom I have relied on for professional and personal advice going back to our college days. And I. She knows my positive and shameful food choice history quite well.
[00:19:47] Speaker D: So you're going shopping with your sister?
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I've turned to my sister for advice here. I think going into 2026, it's time for, for my own food choices to undergo evaluation. I can reject these Girl Scout cookies that are piling up in the corner. And yes, my, my sister will be providing some personal recommendations about how I can integrate the my own diet, not just for myself, but in a way that is family friendly and kid appropriate.
[00:20:12] Speaker D: I know you're thinking, I'll eat those.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: What are they, pecan or no, peanut.
[00:20:15] Speaker D: Butter Sandies or whatever they are Pe.
[00:20:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I know you're thinking, I'm going.
[00:20:18] Speaker D: To eat those peanut butter ones because they've got peanut butter, which is healthy. It doesn't solve the problem.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: Trust me. All right. That's a shame.
Hey, Trish, how you doing?
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Hey, Terry. I'm good. How are you doing?
[00:20:36] Speaker B: Much better and I'm excited. I'm glad that you were willing to help out as we're trying to figure out how best to actually integrate the Mind Diet in real life before we get into it too much, is that, do you refer to the Mind Diet? How have you used this in your practice?
[00:20:52] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So I definitely recommend the Mind Diet. It's a combination of, of the Mediterranean and dash diet. And those two diets have been well researched for many years. And so there's a lot of evidence to support its use in pretty much everyone.
Everyone can benefit from this kind of diet because it, it focuses on whole foods, really nutrient, nutrient dense foods. And it's been shown to help reduce risk of many chronic diseases, so including improving cognition and brain health as well.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: So one of the things we talk about constantly, both on this show and when 19 is out in the community in Philadelphia and elsewhere is what's good for the heart is good for the brain. And I think ultimately that's what a lot of this boils down to.
Were there any moments from let's say our childhood or let's say high school, college that you look back on and sort of cringe that there's actually a.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Photo in our parents house still hanging up on one of the cabinets and it's three or four year old Trish with the bowl cut, very early 90s, drinking a can of diet Coke and right next to me is a can of cheese.
But I think it's a good reminder that nutrition culture has changed and most of us didn't grow up in perfect eating environments. And that's okay. I'm kind of like an anti perfectionist now when it comes to eating. You know, I realize that we're all human and one thing that I say ad nauseam is it's about patterns, not perfection. I started off as a food science major and there was one day that we had to go to the meat lab and they told us that we had to wear specific shoes, closed toed shoes. And I was like, what kind of lab is this? Oh, it was actually a slaughterhouse which freaked me out. And I became a vegetarian, but what they call a beige vegetarian. I was pretty much just eating buttered noodles and wondering why I wasn't feeling great. So I took a gen ed nutrition class and it changed the trajectory of my life. I fell in love with the idea about how nutrition was about being proactive as opposed to being reactive. There's a lot that we can do today, no matter how old we are, to help impact our future selves. It's again, it's not about having the perfect diet. It's about creating tiny habits that allow you to improve your whole lifestyle.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: How do you personally go through and grocery shop in a way that you are either preparing for seven days of meals and having everything that you need or having what you need so that you can make the meals that inspire you in a given day?
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Yeah, so I do like to plan out my meals, at least my dinners for the week, you know, just so that I can make sure that I have the basic ingredients that we need, you know. But I also do shop and get my usual staples too at the same time, you know.
Yeah, yeah. So, well, in my household, you know, I have a toddler, I have a more adventurous 11 month old who will really eat anything. And then my husband and I are what I consider flexitarian. You know, we eat lots of fish and some poultry.
So some of the staples that I like to keep on hand are canned beans, low sodium canned beans.
I like to have dried lentils, I like to have lentil based products. Like I usually will have some kind of either chickpea pasta or lentil pasta on hand as well for a quick, easy meal.
And I do stock up on a lot of frozen options again for quick and easy meals for my hangry toddler at times.
And, and those items would be like frozen green beans, frozen carrots, you know, I like to stock up on frozen seafood just so that I have those things on hand. But I usually will plan out my dinners for the week and put them on our shared Google calendar so that, you know, there's a nice reminder of this is what I plan. So I got my groceries, I have everything I need. That also helps me with accountability. It helps me, you know, say I have these ingredients in my pantry, I have these ingredients that I intentionally bought at the grocery store and it will make it less likely that I'll say let's just get ubereats or let's just order takeout or whatever it may be.
So that does like having a plan really does help with staying on track and making sure that we're eating very nutrient dense meals most of the time.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: So that's really helpful because I'm thinking about what we currently have upstairs and I, I, I don't think that we're eating bad meals necessarily, but they're not aligned with the mind diet. And you're talking about having, was it lentil pasta?
[00:26:01] Speaker A: It said, yeah, lentil pasta, because that's a nice staple to have on hand. You know, it lasts a while and it's a quick, easy meal.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: Yeah. So we, we, we shop at BJ's and we get the box that has seven pasta in it. And at any given moment we have at least, you know, six boxes of pasta, all referred to as regular pasta in our house.
And instead of the chickpeas and lentils and beans, I think we have, we have a lot of rice and then some grains like quinoa upstairs. Trying to see what else we would have, but a lot of like white rice, brown rice, some Mexican rice, so on. So I think we have some of these where it's not, it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it sounds like a main, a main item that's different is having a lot more dried beans on hand. What would you do with beans in general?
[00:26:53] Speaker A: Well, like you said, we're recording in the dead of winter and I usually will make, I mean, this time of year, at least one type of soup that's very bean and legume heavy.
So that's one thing I like to have on hand. We also love Mexican inspired meals.
And like I said, we're flexitarian. So we eat a lot of plant based meals as well. But we might throw in some shrimp in our tacos, but we'll make sure that we have lots of black beans to throw in there as well. You know that that is a big part of the Mediterranean the mind diet. And it helps get a lot of fiber in your diet. Generally speaking, most people, we want to get around 25 to 35 grams give or take of fiber each day, and most Americans get much less than that. But a serving of beans can be anywhere between 7 to 9 grams of fiber per half cup, you know, so it really gives you a lot of nutrition bang for your buck. And like I said, it's convenient, it's quick and easy to have on hand. It has a long shelf life. So it's a nice staple to have on hand.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: Okay. So that helps with some of the basics of things that you would want to have. And you talked about your meal planning and so, you know, any additional ingredients you have. But one of the things, the strategies that I've heard of going into the grocery store is, and I think you're actually the one to have told me this a lifetime ago, was just to start by circling the store rather than going up and down the aisles. Does that still stand true? Do you make adjustments to that at all?
[00:28:27] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's something I like to recommend to my patients is, you know, when you first walk in the grocery store, most of the time you walk into the produce section and that's a good place to start. That's part of what the mind diet is, is getting lots of fresh produce, those leafy green vegetables, you know, getting those berries, getting a wide variety of colorful vegetables. So you get a wide variety of antioxidants. But there's something to be said about. There are some things in the middle aisles that can be helpful, like those dried be like whole wheat pasta or whole wheat bread, you know. So there are some things that you can get in the middle aisles. Oats, that's another staple that is in the middle aisle. So yes, you're right, it is good to shop the perimeter because that's where we're going to get our fresh produce. That's where we're going to get fresh seafood, poultry, that kind of thing. Even the frozen section usually is on the perimeter. But don't forget about the middle aisles that have things like whole grain oats, dried beans or low sodium canned beans, olive oil, avocado oil. There's some good stuff in there as well. We just want to try to limit the more processed packaged foods that are filling the middle aisles as well.
[00:29:41] Speaker B: Now, one of the things that we hear when we go out in the community sometimes and we talk about diet and people say I can't afford to eat fancy foods or I can't afford to eat healthy foods and it's cheaper to get these, to get the Kraft Mac and cheese or so it sounds like some of the things you're describing though, we're talking pretty low cost, right?
[00:30:01] Speaker A: Pretty low cost. I mean, like I said, the, the plant based diet can be very affordable. When you look at the cost of things like oats and beans and lentils and that kind of thing, what costs more is when we get things that are more convenient, more packaged, more processed. You know, it can be expensive if we're getting very fresh, organic, out of season foods, produce, I should say. But the frozen stuff is just as good as the fresh stuff. And you can get a bag of green beans, carrots for 99 cents. And those are important staples to keep on hand and they can be pretty quick and easy to prepare.
[00:30:45] Speaker B: I think one of the things that is true of me as much as anybody else is I can be really dedicated to trying something new for days, maybe not weeks, maybe not months. And when we talk about taking on the mind eye, we're talking about a diet for life. This isn't the Atkins diet or something you're trying out for, you know, a month and a half just to drop 20 pounds or whatnot. This is supposed to be lifelong dietary changes. So how do you keep people motivated? How do you keep them on track? Tardy, do you, do you recommend more variety in day to day with their menu or is it actually better to have consistency and sort of build meals around those staples that you mentioned?
[00:31:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean there's a couple of good points.
One thing that I tell my patients all the time is short term diets yield short term results.
So like you mentioned the Atkins diet, you know, these, you know, fad diet that you can lose a lot of weight, but when you have this all or nothing mentality, usually there's an end date, you go back to old habits, you don't actually have any behavioral changes and you have this yo yo cycle of having some healthy months in the year and then going back to old habits.
So consistency is definitely what I like to recommend to my patients. Again, it's all about patterns. It's not about perfection.
So it's about focusing on little habits that you can do consistently every day and just building upon that. You know, whenever I meet with a patient, we talk about long term goals, but then I like to break it down and say, okay, what's something that you can change today that you could stick with for the rest of your life? And sometimes it's something simple like, you know, I think I could swap out my butter for olive oil at one or two meals or I could add a vegetable to my lunch. You know, so you start building upon those little goals and over time you are building these really positive patterns again. It's about progress, not perfection. Patterns, not perfection.
It's about just making these lifestyle changes.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: So I figured I could go through a typical day, we could go through a couple of menu items and then what I'm thinking is between now and when we actually release this episode, I'm going to try put together a couple of these or maybe meal prep a couple of lunches or something based on that and we'll see how it goes. Are you up for that?
[00:33:21] Speaker A: Sounds like a good plan. Absolutely. Let's do it.
[00:33:24] Speaker B: All right. So typical day, we'll say a weekday.
There's just a lot more structure in there. My alarm goes off at about 5:30, so I'll usually hit the snooze button once, much to the grin of my life. And then I'll be downstairs. I'll get a workout in around 6 o'.
[00:33:40] Speaker D: Clock.
[00:33:41] Speaker B: 6 o' clock to 7, I get back upstairs. The rest of the house is up and stirring at this point. Make a quick breakfast for My wife, I try to start packing lunches for the kids.
They will. They come down as they're getting ready for the day.
We'll take requests for breakfast, a lot of requests for homemade, frozen, homemade waffles. And got a waffle iron for Christmas. This has been very exciting.
That's the breakfast du jour. And we'll pack lunches. Maybe they'll take buy lunch at school if it's interesting enough. And then I go to work. My wife and the kids get home earlier than I do, so she'll start on dinner. They may have a snack, usually something they can just grab themselves from the shelf.
And I'll come home for dinner.
We'll sometimes have some kind of sweet treat at the end of dinner.
And sometimes the kids will want to know, how much dinner do I have to eat so that I can get dessert? I know that's a favorite of yours.
And then there's not a lot of late night eating.
But we'll do after dinner. We may have a cocktail or a bourbon or something together.
And I think that's sort of a typical, typical night. So what would you, what would you recommend as we go through a day like that?
[00:34:59] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I think you have some good habits already, you know, and again, I'm going to throw out a few little swaps for you.
What I always recommend is don't get overwhelmed by these. Maybe just pick one or two that feel easy and again, are something that you could do consistently this week or this month, you know, until it feels natural. And it's a new habit for you. So starting in the morning, love that you're working out. That's great. And then afterwards, we want to think of it as a nice recovery meal. You want to get in some good complex carbs with some fiber in there and some protein. That's going to be the ideal kind of foundation for a breakfast.
It sounds like the morning can be a little hectic with three kids, but what you could do is you could prep things ahead of time, like maybe do an egg bake with some leafy greens in there, some spinach in there or something like that. And you could have that on whole grain toast or with your waffles that you guys love. You know, when you're prepping the batter, a simple change that I like to recommend is throw in some milled flax seeds that will add in some omega 3s, extra fiber, and the kids won't even taste it. You know, traditional oatmeal is great, but again, you can use oat in different ways. I like to make oat based pancakes where I'll throw just regular oats in the blender, kind of pulverize it, and then add in the other ingredients to make waffles or pancakes with that. And again, it adds in a lot of extra fiber, especially when you compare it to what most people use, which is, you know, regular. They're all purpose flour.
[00:36:34] Speaker B: All right, so let's talk lunch. On a day that I'm in the office, you know, I certainly don't mind packing a lunch. I'm used to that. And the only rule that I will have with this is I do not want to be the guy who comes in and microwaves yesterday's salmon in the office.
[00:36:49] Speaker A: Totally understand that.
[00:36:50] Speaker B: With that as the only rule, what do you recommend?
[00:36:53] Speaker A: Yeah, so I'm a big fan of cook once and eat twice. So that can make lunch planning very easy. But some people like to do like a weekly meal prep on Sunday and that's totally fine too. A good equation to kind of follow or formula to follow is make sure that you have some kind of whole grain or high fiber carbohydrate, get some protein in there and then all the vegetables that you want. And maybe for a little bit of fat, add in some olive oil or avocados or nuts or seeds or something like that. One thing that I like to prep that's very preppable is having a green as a base. I call it a my power bowl. You know, so usually we'll do quinoa or farro or brown rice or a mixture of them. Have that be the carbohydrate base. We'll add in a protein, which could be maybe just a little bit of grilled chicken.
It could be a plant based protein. Those lentils, it could be some tofu as well. Edamame, it could be, you know, maybe shrimp. If you're not heating it up, that won't stink as much as the salmon, but, you know, have the protein added in. Then again, for the vegetables, this can really vary. It could be frozen vegetables, you can throw it over a fresh bed of lettuce. You know, you could add in last night's leftover roasted veggies. And again for healthy fat, maybe throw some pumpkin seeds on top, maybe drizzle a little olive oil. But basically you just want to follow that formula. Some kind of carbohydrate, whole grain, high fiber, add in some protein and then load it up with all the veggies you can.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: That's great. I want to move on to some Snack options. But before we do, one thing that I haven't heard you talking about much at all is dairy. In, in the mess.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: Dairy's absolutely fine. We just want to try to focus on more of the low fat dairy. That saturated fat, you know, is, is what we want to try to limit in the diet. But if we're choosing a low fat Greek yogurt or low fat cottage cheese, that can add a lot of nutrients into your diet, including some protein, it can add in a lot of calcium, you know, maybe some phosphorus, vitamin D, you get a lot of nutrients from it. So it's absolutely fine to have. The one thing that I would say isn't really aligned with the Mind diet is cheese, which again it pains me to say, but we just want to try to limit it maybe just to a couple times a week if we can.
[00:39:18] Speaker B: All right, so let's move on then to snacks and let's, let's plan it around being in the office a little bit. So, you know, it sounds like some of the ingredients could fit in as snacks as well. You talk pumpkin seeds. So on what, what would you recommend? And working off the assumption that the snacks are something that we're having and the seven minutes we have between zoom calls on a work day.
[00:39:40] Speaker A: Yeah, you need quick and easy options.
So again, this is where the dairy can come in. I love to pack something that's pre portioned. You just throw in your lunch bag. So the single serve cottage cheese or Greek yogurt, that's a great way to add in some protein. I always think the best type of snack has at least some kind of protein in it and then has some fiber in it as well. So if I'm packing, you know, the Greek yogurt, maybe I pack in some berries with it, have that as a quick, easy snack, or maybe I grab something simple like a piece of hand fruit, like an apple or you know, Clementine's or something like that. If I'm packing an apple, I'm always packing these little single serve pouches of natural peanut butter or almond butter. And that's a nice combination because between the healthy fats, the protein and the fiber, you're going to feel pretty full from the snack. So it's going to hold you over throughout the next meeting or two meetings, through the rest of the workday.
We want a snack that has that satiety factor, has the fiber or the healthy fats, the protein also things and aligned with the Mind diet nuts, you know, or seeds, those are great, like a little trail mix that you can pack. Another option would be like popcorn, like air pop popcorn. And that's a great option because it's high fiber, it's a whole grain. You could pair it with some nuts and it's a great, really satisfying snack.
[00:41:06] Speaker B: What kind of dinners could we talk about that are not just something that I'm, I'm willing to eat, but something that you think that my vegetable averse eldest and my ever changing taste youngest will eat as well?
[00:41:23] Speaker A: The formula is to build a nice nutritious meal. We want to try to get the protein, we want to try to get lots of non starchy vegetables and we want some kind of starch in there. That starch could be grains, like we talked about earlier. It could be those beans. Beans or legumes. It could also be things like roasted potatoes. Especially if you're eating the skin, you get a lot of fiber from that, you get a lot of potassium from it as well. So that's a little bit more kid friendly. But basically we want to try to follow that formula. And if we're trying to make it more aligned with the mind diet, the proteins could be the fish, the chicken, maybe some turkey. Occasionally having lean pork or red meat is fine. Again, we're talking about patterns. So if we're having that every night, then yeah, that's not really aligned with the mind diet. But if it's something that you're just having occasionally because you know you like it or the kids like it, that's totally fine.
[00:42:18] Speaker B: What are some, some ways to sort of satisfy a sweet tooth that wouldn't totally derail a day of mind diet.
[00:42:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, you know, it's important to realize that there are no bad foods, there's just bad portions.
So they have a box of girl Scout cookies laying on the counter. Hypothetically. Right.
So you take a look at the nutrition label there. Most of the cookies, I believe the serving size is too. That can be difficult if you have a whole box laying there. So what I recommend is take out two cookies and then put the box away on the top of the pantry.
Sit down, have a mindful moment where you're enjoying your cookie fully. What gets people in trouble is the distracted eating. You know, sitting down in front of the TV and eating the cookie mindlessly. By the time you finish that two cookie serving, you think, oh, I didn't really fully enjoy that. You know, what's going on? I'm going to go grab some more cookies. But if we sit down and let it be cookie time, the two cookie serving is a Little bit more satisfying. That way you enjoy a little bit more. And that's what's important, you know. And it's okay to have that a few times a week. And maybe the other times a week we try to have something that satisfies the sweet tooth, but maybe is a little bit more nutrient dense. So one thing that I like to have on hand is I like to do like a vanilla Greek yogurt. I throw some berries on top and then I throw some dark chocolate chips in there and like a little dollop of whipped cream and it seems a little more indulgent. But then when I look at the base of this dessert, quote unquote, it's very nutrient dense and it is pretty aligned with the mind diet still.
[00:44:03] Speaker B: Well, that's great. We'll see if we can get our kids to try those out. Now we went through sort of the ideal weekday evening, but often what actually happens is we have girl Scouts and piano lessons and basketball and soccer and what everything else. And we have the days where we're driving and say, you know what, we just, we're not even going to be home.
Let's just hit up the pizza place or let's make a stop at McDonald's or Wawa or something. How do you navigate those sort of derailment from routine?
[00:44:42] Speaker A: Well, I always like to keep like in case of emergency snacks in my purse. So when we're running around, if one of the kids says I'm hungry but I have dinner planned in that situation, I'll say, oh, you know what I have, you know, single serve bag of popcorn, you know, do we want to have this, you know, or maybe a kind bar or some trail mix or something like that just to kind of hold you over till when you get home and have the meal. Now on the other hand, if you're not going to get home till 9pm and you have to eat on the road, I like to still follow that template as best as you can. I know some places it's going to be difficult, but that template of let's have some kind of protein, let's have some kind of vegetable and some kind of carbohydrate, ideally with some fiber in it. So depending on where you're going, that might look a little bit different. You know, especially with the fast food options, there are some places that will have a baked potato instead of French fries, or maybe you can get a side of chili to get those legumes and get some beans in there. But again, it's all about your pattern. You Know, am I going out and having fast food every day? Then that's not going to align with the mind diet. But if it's something that you're doing on occasion because you're running around, it's a busy night and you're not going to get home till 9, 9:30, then, yeah, enjoy it. You know, again, try to eat it mindfully like we talked about with the cookies and, you know, move on.
[00:46:08] Speaker B: Now, this was all inspired by the, the pointer study, the results which came out last year. And we heard from Dr. Jason Carlos earlier in their episode, and one of the things he pointed out was that what we didn't talk about was the role of alcohol in all of this. And he even said, he goes, yes, you know, perhaps in the future we'll look back and say even what we thought was an appropriate amount was too much, but at some point you have to give yourself some grace. And, and for him, that, that looked like, you know, a glass of red wine with or after dinner. And for me, it might be a glass of wine or a glass of bourbon or something. What do you tell your patients when it comes to the role of alcohol and sort of the, the day to day, the week to week?
[00:46:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I kind of meet them where they're at, you know, so if someone doesn't really drink that often, but they read that red wine is good for them and they say, should I start drinking? I'd say, no, don't start drinking. Enjoy. Enjoy those antioxidants from your fresh fruits and vegetables. But if someone says, I like to have a bourbon a few times a week, that's fine. I mean, maybe we can swap it out for that red wine a couple times just to get a little bit more nutritional value. But generally speaking, it's one of those things that we just want to try to limit as much as we can. It's similar to the cookie situation. So allow yourself to fully enjoy it. You know, let it be bourbon time. Watch the portions. That's a big one. And when you do have it, just try to enjoy it fully and kind of move on from there.
[00:47:44] Speaker B: All right, so this is helpful. I think I have a couple of strategies that we can try take forward. I think the probably easiest one to try right out of the gate will be some of the, the egg cups. What did you call them?
[00:47:56] Speaker A: They'd be egg bites.
[00:47:57] Speaker B: Trying, trying to set that up night before, a couple nights before.
That'll. That might make my mornings a little bit more simple and maybe even.
Yeah. All right. My daughter's not around, so I can say yes. Maybe even sneak some more vegetables into their breakfasts.
All right, well, thank you so much, Trish. This is helpful.
[00:48:17] Speaker A: Of course, of course.
[00:48:18] Speaker B: All right. And I will keep you posted, and I may be asking for some recipes as we're going through some of these tactics moving forward.
[00:48:26] Speaker A: All right, well, I think you're off to a good start.
[00:48:28] Speaker B: Appreciate it. All right, Nitrish.
[00:48:30] Speaker A: All right. All right, take care.
[00:48:39] Speaker C: Terrence, you ended your discussion with Trish there talking about maybe implementing the. The egg bake in the morning. Have you given it a shot yet?
[00:48:49] Speaker B: All right, you got me. I haven't yet. And I think this really gets to exactly the concern this morning. I thought, oh, this would be a great time to kick it off. And then one thing and then the other got in the way. So the mornings are tough. They're chaotic. There's a lot going on. We're trying to get everybody out the door, get ready for work, myself, my kids, so on and so on. So here's what I'm gonna do, and you can hold me accountable for this. Between now, the recording of this episode and the release of the episode, I'm going to look to do this in the evening after the kids go to bed. It's quiet time. I'm going to make these egg bakes. We're going to see how my kids like it and then try to have them available in the fridge or the freezer for the rest of the week.
[00:49:30] Speaker C: Do you think this will be pre or post glass suburban?
[00:49:35] Speaker B: Maybe the same time. You know, Trish talked about not depriving yourself of rewards, and food shouldn't make you miserable. So maybe I'll tie these things together. Like, I. I can't pour that glass of bourbon until I've at least started the process of making the egg bake.
So that's the plan. We'll see how well we can stick to it.
[00:49:54] Speaker C: That was one of my favorite parts of the info that she gave, was to enjoy the things that you like, even if they're not healthy. Have them occasionally, but while you have them, eat them mindfully and really enjoy them. Because I think that is so true. You don't want this to just be about depriving yourself of. Of things that you love. Was there anything that surprised you about some of her recommendations?
[00:50:20] Speaker B: One thing that surprised me was when Trish said, frozen is just as good as fresh. And she. She caught herself and was like, all right, it may not taste as good as fresh, but in terms of the nutritional value, and the benefit of the accessibility of frozen vegetables, like, you can't beat a bag of frozen broccoli for a dollar or two. And I think my main takeaway is just to make sure that our freezer is constantly full of those frozen vegetables. The mind diet does not need to be an expensive diet. It could be.
Trish confirmed that if you want to spend all your money on fancy, fresh fish, yeah, sure, it can add up. But you can get these frozen foods relatively inexpensively, and they're easy to make and they're easy to keep in your home. That's a great takeaway.
[00:51:05] Speaker C: I liked what you said also about finding things that work for you and making them a habit. Something that I really like is salmon, and my girlfriend really likes salmon as well. And, you know, I've read up it has a lot of healthy fats. It's good for your brain for that reason.
And so we try and have it twice a week when we go shopping and just lean into the fact that we enjoy it so much. But that has been really helpful just trying to figure out, like, what things do I enjoy eating? That kind of overlap with being healthy. But how hard is it going to be for you to switch out the red meat for poultry and beans?
[00:51:43] Speaker B: It's actually been easier than I thought so far. I think one of the easiest adjustments has been replacing ground beef with ground turkey. It's not a complete win with my kids, but it's been very easy for me personally to make that swap. I treat it almost exactly the same, and one thing that I had to accept was that I don't always have to eat the same foods or the same meals in the same way that my kids do.
On a couple of occasions, we'll have chicken and pasta, and I'll lean heavily on the chicken and the vegetables and have a very small serving of pasta, whereas the kids may have a heaping bowl of pasta with some chicken on it. And I rethink how I approach those plates to focus more on the lean proteins and leafy greens.
[00:52:26] Speaker C: All right, this is a great one. Terence, thanks so much for doing these interviews and all the reporting on this one.
[00:52:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. And, you know, maybe we'll check in at the end of the year and see how our New Year's resolutions had turned out.
[00:52:38] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, that'll be fun. I'm definitely. I don't think I'm. I'm making the screen time one. It's already off to a bad start, unfortunately.
[00:52:47] Speaker B: Oh, boy. All right, well, good luck with that. Jake.
[00:52:53] Speaker C: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Age of Aging. The show is made possible by generous support from the Michael Nadoff Community Communications Hub Fund.
The Age of Aging is produced by the Penn Memory Center.
Our team includes Daliel Said, Terrence Casey, Jason Karlewish, and myself, Jake Johnson.
Contributors include Emily Largent and Allison Lynn. Special thanks this episode to Terence Casey, Dr. Jason Karlwish, and Trish St. Leger.
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing to the podcast, leaving a review or giving us a like. These types of things really help others find the show, and if you know someone who might be interested in these conversations, share this episode with them.
We also love hearing from our listeners.
[00:53:38] Speaker D: If you'd like to reach out, our.
[00:53:39] Speaker C: Contact information is in the show.
[00:53:41] Speaker B: Notes.
