Plant-Based Living Without Fish Benefits

Speaker 1 0:00

Hey sister, welcome to the Power on Plants podcast. Are you tired of staring into the fridge wondering what to eat so you can just feel better? Do you want to avoid spending hours in the kitchen making complicated meals in the name of health? Would you love to leave fatigue behind and finally have the energy to do all the things you want to do? Hi, we're Jared and Anita Roussel, christ followers, healthcare professionals, parents of four and big fans of great tasting food.

Speaker 1 0:29

We, too, tried exercising more, eating natural and clean foods, but we still found ourselves struggling with what we thought were changes that come with age or bad genes, and we weren't finding answers the traditional route. So we dug into the research and created our secret nutritional weapon sustainable plant-based living. The truth is, you can eat more whole plant foods and it's not hard. You just need the way. That's realistic and delicious, so you never feel deprived. If you're ready to enjoy your meals, no longer be held back by your health struggles and actively live your life, then you're in the right place. So grab your favorite plant-based cup of happy pop in those earbuds and let's get started. Hey there, sunshine. I am so excited that you're joining us for these episodes, because in 328.

Speaker 1 1:18

Last week we started sharing with you some things that I thought you need to hear, and that's because these are things that Jared hears all the time while he's still currently working with patients and I'm sure it's something we've heard from our patients all along because these are things that we once believed. We see you struggling with them because you don't know that their mindsets and thought processes that can keep you stuck. But once you see it, you can't unsee it. That's the beauty of it, and so, as he's working with his patients, he hears them saying the same things over and over. It's the same thing we hear from our clients at Power On Plants, and one of the things last week that we dealt with is I'm just getting older, or the thought that aging is a disease.

Speaker 1 2:00

If you have not heard the episode, you have to go back right now, after you hear this one, and listen to that one, because in these episodes we're dealing with those things that we believed, that the enemy has gotten us to believe, these lies that we hear in our society and we take them on as our reality, and then we start living in alignment with those things that we've now believed and we find ourselves stuck in disease and low energy and frustration and just thinking these things are normal. And so today we're going to talk about another thing that he hears his patients say on the regular, and we hear our clients ask the same question what about fish? Oh, or they don't even ask the question.

Speaker 2 2:37

No.

Speaker 1 2:38

So how do you hear it?

Speaker 2 2:40

Well, usually I'll talk about a plant-based diet. No, I don't eat meat, oh wait. But what about fish? I eat fish, or is that okay?

Speaker 1 2:48

Right, and what I usually hear is not even a question, it's just. It's the wording oh, I just eat fish, oh, I only eat fish I don't eat beef or chicken. I just eat fish. I don't eat meat, I just eat fish. So it's usually in a statement more than a question. That's kind of how I've heard it. Are you hearing that with your patients too? On the most part, when you think about it?

Speaker 2 3:07

Because I'll talk about plant-based diet and then sometimes they say, oh, I can't do without meat. It's like, well, can't or won't. But they'll say well, I don't eat meat, but I do eat fish, but fish is meat.

Speaker 1 3:19

You have to understand fish is meat.

Speaker 2 3:20

Well, yes, fish is an animal muscle.

Speaker 1 3:24

Which is meat? Is meat yes?

Speaker 2 3:26

Not as it gets popularly defined in what we see. So you hear beef is meat, chicken's chicken and fish is fish. No, they're all animal muscle, right, so they all have the same potential health issues within them, but somehow we see fish as being different, because fish is healthy, it's a great source of protein, it's a great source of omega fats oh, that's one of the biggest. Dha and EPA, and I think that's why a lot of people gravitate towards it.

Speaker 1 3:51

Because you think that's the only way you can get your omega-3s or your fish oils and you can get those easily from a plant-based diet when you know how. But the thing is you're stuck on this one thing, that you think you need this one beneficial nutrient from not thinking about all the other things that are in whole plant foods besides the omega-3, which you can get easily from whole plant foods. So now you're getting all these other beneficial things and then we eat the fish for that one beneficial thing and we're not thinking about all the health detrimental things that can be in there. And particularly, one thing that we want to talk about today is heavy metals, because we, for years, we ate salmon and we ate tuna and things like that, because we knew we believed, we had been led to believe that that these things were healthy.

Understanding Heavy Metals in Fish

Speaker 1 4:39

These are the healthy fish. Air quotes healthy fish, and it's terrible. And we really and truly believed it was what was healthy. And so we were doing what was best for our family, because that's what we want. We wanted to be healthy, we want to feel good, we want our children to feel good. Obviously, as good parents, we want to feed our children what's healthy. We want them to be well, and so we're thinking these things are the healthiest things to eat, when in reality, we're getting all of these things that we don't even know about. But now we do and we're sharing it with you. And the thing is with fish, particularly these larger fish that we've been led to believe are healthier because they've lived longer, because they're deeper swimmers in the ocean floor, because they live longer and they've eaten more fish and more fish and more fish. They are accumulating, over time, heavy metals.

Speaker 2 5:26

Heavy metals, and I think we do hear that message sometimes about the heavy metals, but it gets overshadowed or that information gets discarded, because it's a great source of protein, great source of omega-3s, which, spoiler alert, the fish. They're not making the omega-3s, they're actually getting it either from algae or from other fish that they eat that are getting it from algae. So ultimately it is coming from a plant-based source. But with the heavy metals we hear about it, we're told well, just avoid these fish because they have heavy metal in it, or don't eat too much of it. Don't eat too much of a poison?

Speaker 1 6:01

Oh my goodness. That reminds me of a list I saw recently, and it divided fish into three different categories the ones that you can eat a lot of, and a lot was one to two servings a week. These are the ones that are safe. It said to eat a lot of. One to two servings a week. Just one to two servings is what they saw as a lot.

Speaker 2 6:19

But they still had mercury in them. They still had it, but they said, you can eat it one to two times a week.

Speaker 1 6:24

And probably be relatively safe. Yeah, but we're going to talk about that, don't worry. But then you go to the moderate and it's like one time a week and then the others. It's like eat with caution. So we need to really be thinking what are we putting into our body and what comes along with that thing? Because we get this scare about one thing heavy metals, which we should be thinking about.

Speaker 1 6:42

Heavy metals, but not as a general rule. Once you understand this stuff, you think about it to understand it and once you understand it, you can move on. You're free from that thing because you don't have to worry about it, because you understand how to no longer quite manage it, you learn how to break free from it. And it's amazing and I know this leads to other questions about plant-based things. We're're going to talk about that at the end, but let's just stick with the fish for now. So we're eating the healthy foods, the fish. Meanwhile we're accumulating all these heavy metals into our bodies because once we eat their flesh, which is where the heavy metals are, we get those into our body. But what is the problem with these metals coming into our body in such high quantities?

Speaker 2 7:19

Well, they're toxic to our bodies. Now one of the questions I have is how is it getting in there? Well, obviously it's in the water, so they absorb it through their gills. They get it by eating other fish that then have it in their body. So some of the main metals that we look at when we think of the heavy metals are cadmium, lead and mercury. Now how does it bioaccumulate in fish?

Speaker 2 7:38

Well, there is actually a special protein found in the liver that will bind to both cadmium and lead, Now in small quantities. This is a good thing because it binds to it, it basically sequesters it. It's like it pulls it into a little jail cell that keeps it away from the rest of the body. But as it builds up, then these metals start to spill out of the liver and then can affect the rest of the body. Cadmium, for fish and humans, is toxic to the kidneys.

Speaker 2 8:09

Lead the problem with lead is that it looks anatomically a lot like calcium. So for humans we actually can incorporate it into our bones. Now with lead it's not in the muscle, so much we see it in the liver. But once it gets out and free flowing, then it can be neurotoxic, so it can actually have a detrimental effect to our brain, our ability to think. And then when you look at mercury now, mercury is fat soluble, so you tend to find it in the fats, but it can also bind to proteins that are found in the muscle of the fish. The importance of this is that it's just there. You're not going to be able to get rid of it, so there's no cleaning it out, trimming off the fat.

Speaker 1 8:45

So heavy metal toxicity affects our cellular function and when you think about cellular function and you start linking that to diseases, you're looking at cancer and Alzheimer's and any kind of cell in your body that's affected by heavy metal, which is all the cells could be affected.

Speaker 2 9:01

I read a story of a man who was diagnosed with dementia, but somebody actually thought to just take a little time to look at what is he doing, what's his routine, and they found that he was eating swordfish twice a week. Wow, what we know with swordfish and tuna and some of those bigger sea animals that live longer lives is they not only bioaccumulate but they biomagnify, so they're storing it, eating other fish that have these heavy metals, and because they live longer, we see more and more inside of their tissue, and so it has a high level. Well, this man was eating swordfish twice a week. So once they stop that, within about a month or two, lo and behold, his dementia is starting to get better.

Speaker 1 9:42

Imagine that.

Speaker 2 9:43

Imagine that.

Speaker 1 9:44

And we're not even talking about the other things that are known to be rampant in the fish populations today. I mean, we live in a beach community. We've gone to the docks and watch how they open up fish that you're buying in the store, even if you're buying it fresh from the dock. They're slapping them all down onto the same table, flaying them all, even if you happen to be blessed enough to get a fish that does not have parasites in it, if you're buying it from anywhere but your line, all those fish are getting mixed together. So if one has a parasite it's rubbing in the juice of the other one that had the parasite. I mean, it's just, it's the reality. Go down to a dock near you and watch them fillet the fish and how they fillet them and slap them on that same table and the same juice with all the other fish, and parasites are rampant today.

Speaker 2 10:28

So we're talking about cross contamination. Fish and parasites are rampant today, so we're talking about cross-contamination. So if you had a fish that didn't have it, that fillet is getting potentially cross-contaminated. I mean, like you said, they're on the same surface, same juice, whatever there.

Speaker 1 10:41

The actual parasites themselves.

Speaker 2 10:43

Yes, To then get into the fish that didn't have it now, it does Right.

Speaker 1 10:49

And so even if you're fishing, maybe you're thinking, oh well, that's okay, because I'll live near the beach and I catch my own fish and eat them, it probably improves your odds with the parasites, but it doesn't mean you're not getting them. And not only that. You have to look at again the things that we're talking about, like the heavy metals, and just how muscle eating, muscle and getting the fats and all of those things from the animal proteins as well. How do those things affect our bodies and what do the research studies show? And so you're looking at multiple things. You're not just looking at the heavy metals, but you need to understand. This is one of the reasons we didn't feel good when we're eating fish for our health, One of the reasons. There are many reasons that we don't understand, but now we do, and we've shared at least three or four of them with you here.

Speaker 2 11:33

And sadly the heavy metals are not something that we can just avoid in our water source anymore.

Speaker 1 11:38

Right.

Speaker 2 11:44

I mean. A lot of it comes from man-made pollution, industrial pollution, agricultural runoff, from chemicals used in crops. You have urban runoff, so just pollution that's found within bigger cities, whether it is from at one point in time there was lead in gasoline, so that would run off into the water. But you do also have some natural sources, although I feel like that's probably a much smaller contribution to it. It's like geological weathering, where rain falls on rock and slowly wears it away, so some of those metals found in the rock will make their way into the water. Volcanic activity is one, so you've got the magma from deep in the earth bringing some of these metals up. That's why I say it's probably not a huge source of these types of contaminations, but it is there. But there's really no way to avoid it. It's just in the water and it's just there.

Speaker 1 12:25

And so then you're thinking, well, god, help me then. What's the point? I mean that's kind of what this thought process leads to, and this is not where we want you to land, and we're going to show you how to not land here. Help me then. What's the point? I mean I'm going to get it in everything, so I might as well eat anything and just not worry about it because it's in everything. I mean we're going to talk about plants in the next episode. We're going to you. Don't have to worry.

Speaker 1 12:46

When you're eating plants, there is a difference in how your body handles things. God has built things into the right foods that help you. We're going to talk about that. I want you to join us for the next episode where we continue this conversation, so that you don't have to leave this and go. Well, it's in everything, it's in the runoff and it's in the sprays, it's in the pesticides, and so what's the point? Like our food supply isn't what it used to be and so we can't get what we need.

Speaker 1 13:11

God uses protective measures to help us stay healthy, and he does not want you to fear. He says do not get into fear, do not get into anxiety, but we don't want to eat the major sources of it that we know from studies like the one Jared shared today with the man who ate the swordfish. And it's not just swordfish. But you're eating fish, thinking you're healthy, and your body is accumulating these heavy metals, which we know affect all cells in our body and can lead to various disease processes, none of which we want in our body. We want to live long and we want to live well and we want to feel amazing, and we want you to know that that is possible. There's no fear in this, there's only understanding and wisdom, with your eyes getting opened up, and once you see this stuff, you can't unsee it, and so then you want to know okay, why don't I need to fear? Because God's told me not to fear. Well, there's a reason why he's told me not to fear. Number one, because I can trust him, and number two, because he's made a way for these things to not affect my body in a negative fashion when I'm getting the foods that I was originally created to enjoy.

Plant-Based Health Transformation Journey

Speaker 1 14:16

So, sunshine, leave this on a positive note. Just start eating less of the quote healthy animal products, the fish that you think are so healthy. Try to set those aside. Just give it a try. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain, and don't just lay it aside. You always, always want to replace that thing that you've removed, that was detrimental to your health, with something amazing. And so I know you're probably wondering, okay, so I've also read that heavy metals are in the soil and they're getting into the plants, and they're getting into the plants in the same volume, and sometimes even greater, than in the animals, and if that's the case, then it's more dangerous to eat plants.

Speaker 1 14:56

Right, you have to tune in next week because you need to hear. This episode is going to change everything for you, sunshine. Today, walk in hope, free from anxiety, knowing that your father has provided everything you need for you to walk in wholeness and in health. Now I want you to join us inside our free group, poweronplantscom. Forward slash P-I-E and let us know what has been the most eye-opening to you in these episodes. We can't wait to hear all about it and we look forward to telling you more about plants in next week's episode. Have a great week, thank you.