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330: Heavy Metals: Are You at Risk? The WFPB Solution

Jarrod Roussel Episode 330

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In this eye-opening episode of the Power on Plants podcast, hosts Jarrod and Anita (healthcare professionals and whole food plant-based living experts) share how they help clients heal from low energy, joint pain, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type II diabetes, and autoimmune disease through the power of WFPB living. They expose hidden dangers of heavy metals in "clean" foods like chicken, and discuss heavy metals in plants.

You'll discover:

  • Animal Feed Truths: How feeding animals bone meal and even excrement concentrates heavy metals!
  • Plants: Your Detox Weapon: How fiber, phytates, and antioxidants in whole plant foods naturally detoxify the body
  • Real-Life Proof: Vegetarians and lower heavy metal levels.
  • WFPB Healing: Experience energy and vitality! Say goodbye to low energy and aches and pains.
  • Actionable Steps: Get tips, recipes for healthy eating, meal prep, and vegan meals.
  • Client Success: How Anita and Jarrod help clients find relief using their Signature 5-Step Accelerator framework.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking:

  • Natural health solutions and detoxification.
  • Benefits of whole food, plant-based living (WFPB).
  • Freedom from low energy, aches and pains, and chronic disease!

Join Anita and Jarrod to unlock your Power On Plants!

💃🏻 Ready to learn how to stop falling off the healthy eating wagon for good so your body can finally feel great? Inside Accelerator, we'll take you by the hand & walk you step-by-step through our proven 5-Step WFPB Framework so you can heal naturally to actively live your God-given dreams. Join the Waitlist Here, and be the first to know when the doors open next!

🎁 Not yet a member of our FREE plant-based community, PIE? Once you're on the inside, every single podcast episode becomes searchable for you. 😲 Join the family to gain the plant-based encouragement, real health-changing ideas, and sustainable plant-based inspiration you've been praying for! 💕

🥣 Grab our Cookbook Bundles today to learn the simple way to make whole food plant-based eating quick, enjoyable, and sustainable.

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ANITA:

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.

ANITA:

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. Hello, sunshine, and welcome to Wisdom Nuggets with Jared. What you got for us today, sidekick.

JARROD:

Besides what I said, sidekick.

ANITA:

What you got for us today, sidekick.

JARROD:

Oh, we got all kinds of nuggets of wisdom here.

ANITA:

These are the things that we've discovered over time that we wish someone, anyone, would have told us when we were in our health struggles. It's so frustrating. You're there and you're hearing all these things and none of it makes sense and you don't know why. And you think you're eating the healthier meats and you think you're eating the healthier dairy and you're eating the no hormone added, cage free, free range, you name it, we were doing it and you're just eating fish. You're not eating the other stuff, you're just eating fish. Surely that's healthy.

ANITA:

We'll go back and listen to our last episode. You're not going to want to miss that one or the one before it or the other 300 plus that are waiting for you, because these are filled with practical, actionable steps. You will not believe, even with the clients, that we have working with us. So many of you take the steps of getting on here first and getting results. You don't have to wait till you're inside and we're diving deeper with you and we're showing you how to lay that foundation. Start taking steps now, even if Accelerator is closed. Yes, we want you to come into Accelerator and work closely and personally with us, because we walk you through, step by step, the five step framework for making whole food plant based living simple, enjoyable and sustainable, so that at last and you're excited about it, you enjoy it works with real life. What do you do in all these situations, like if your spouse isn't whole food plant based? What do you do if you want to go out to eat at a restaurant? You want to be a normal person. What do you do if you want to host guests or go over to somebody's house? How do you get your mindset right so you don't believe these lies that are keeping you stuck? We start that here and we continue that inside Accelerator with the training and the course modules. But it's not just a course, it's coaching. We take you by the hand and walk you step by step through this framework, week by week, and the results that we see are amazing.

ANITA:

You know, all these things we've come to believe, the lies about that are due to quote, old age and or just aging. I'm just getting older. I'm not old yet, but I'm just getting older. You know it's due to my age, or it's due to my genes, or it's due to random chance. I mean, these things just happen, right? Well, the truth is no. No, they don't just happen. There's a reason why you're going through these things Again. Go back and definitely, if you're just starting with us or you haven't heard the last two episodes, you need to hear those two along with this one, in no particular order, but you need to hear all three because we're giving those wisdom nuggets of things that Jared is seeing on the regular with his patients, that we're helping our clients break through on the regular as well, that you just don't have to be stuck with.

JARROD:

I want to add something about Accelerator too, because you said course and coaching. Well, actually Accelerator has the three C's course, coaching and community. Community is super important, very, very important, but we have that provided for you all within Accelerator, because that's where you're going to get the most success.

ANITA:

Absolutely, and so what we want you to understand in this episode is another mindset piece that is going to be key for you Once you get these things into place. I told Jared the other day when we learned all this stuff we're just looking at each other going. Can you believe that we believe what we believed?

JARROD:

I mean so long isn't it shocking?

ANITA:

And why was nobody telling us? And so we are the people that are showing up here and we're going look, here's what we know. We've lived it. It doesn't have to be a long, hard process for you. It was for us. Why? Because we had to learn it. We had no one to show us.

ANITA:

You have us, we can show you. Then you have the ability to be in community with each other inside our free group pie at poweronplantscom forward slash P-I-E. You can join us there for free, where every single episode is searchable for you. But then you can come inside Accelerator on top of that and grow and learn and build that solid foundation of those core five steps in the order that we know works best, where you can get accelerated results, where you can quickly, easily simply jump into whole food, plant-based living in the way that it actually sticks, because it's exciting and you'll absolutely love it. But right now, today, you can learn some mindset keys. We're here sharing with you these facts because we want you to start getting set free now. That way, you already have the momentum that you need. You're already getting success and we have people write us all the time about.

ANITA:

I'm listening to the podcast episode and I just implemented those things and I'm getting healed, I'm getting well, my cholesterol has reversed, it's now back to normal, my blood pressure is back to normal. Well, why are these things happening already with these steps we're giving you? It's because this works. It works, it works. We've seen it in our own lives. It is backed up by scripture, it is backed up by the word of God and it is backed up solidly for years by the nutritional research. Ask Dr Gregor if you don't believe it, and that's all I have to say about that. But we've dug into our own research, we've seen it for ourselves and we're here sharing this with you because people aren't telling you this stuff. So you're eating chicken let's just say you're eating chicken and you think, okay, I'm eating the healthier meat because I'm eating the white meat. Well, we've already talked about here a lot of the different things about chicken.

ANITA:

I want you to get inside our free group again at powerimplantscom forward slash PIE. And if you're already there, for goodness sakes, why aren't you using that search function? If you're not clicking on that magnifying glass in the lower right hand corner inside our free group and searching the words for the things you're looking for you are missing out on a major free resource that you have that can start you eating whole plant foods in the way that leads to success, because you could go in there and just type in chicken and you can find everything we've talked about with just chicken, okay. Or you can do that with meat. You you can do that with dairy protein, all these different things you're wondering about. Start doing that.

ANITA:

You will not believe how much you're going to learn with the resource that you have there that will gather it all together for you. We did that intentionally to provide you with this wonderful gift of gold and treasure just waiting for you of all these facts and things that are sitting there that you just don't know yet. Just waiting for you of all these facts and things that are sitting there that you just don't know yet. But once you see it again, it's hard to unsee it, thank God. And then you can move forward because you're freed from those old mindsets and you can replace them with the truth. And so today we're here to bring you some more truth about the things that you probably don't know, and I hate having to tell you some of these things.

ANITA:

Are you a parent or are you a grandparent and sometimes in this world you hate having to share some of the things that you have to share with your kids, but you have to tell them they can't be left in the dark to figure this stuff out on their own, because life is going to be so much harder for them and they're going to get tripped up and they're going to fail. That's why we show up here week after week, because we love you, we care about you, we've been where you are and and we do not want to see you stay stuck and have to have this struggle that we went through when we started on this journey and that we see so many other people go through as well. It's just not necessary. The food can be simple, delicious, easy, tastes, great, but you've got to understand what those things you're eating actually have in them. The things that you're eating that you think are healthy, like chicken. We think the chicken's healthy.

ANITA:

Okay, so we've talked about the other things. Get inside pie, see what all is going on with chicken. We're just going to talk about one thing here that blew our minds when we saw it. Okay, so we're talking about heavy metals. That's what we've been dealing with on the past episode as well, so again you'll want to go back and listen to that.

JARROD:

So we're talking about the heavy metals in meat, in chicken and in fish as well, we talk about that, we hear about a lot in fish, just because the fish are swimming in waters that have things like lead and mercury in it, but we don't really think about it with chicken and other land animals Right, they're not swimming in that water.

ANITA:

So where are they getting the toxic heavy metals? Where's that coming from? And what we know from the research is a large majority of that is coming because they are eating the bone meal of other animals, and when those animals like the cows and different things that they're making the feed from, they're putting bone meal from animals in feed. So they're feeding animals back to the chickens in large quantities and so you're grinding up the bone meal of animals that already have heavy metals in them and you're feeding those heavy metals back to the chickens through the bone meal of animals that already have heavy metals in them and you're feeding those heavy metals back to the chickens through the bone meal of the animals.

JARROD:

And last I checked I don't think chickens are carnivores. I think they're eating plants and bugs and seeds and things like that.

ANITA:

I mean, I've seen chicken.

JARROD:

Right, they'll chase down broccoli when you throw it in their chicken pens.

ANITA:

What were all animals originally created to eat? We're not animals. We were created to eat the same thing. They were created to eat plants.

JARROD:

Originally in the garden it was plants.

ANITA:

Right. And so here we have that we're feeding them other animals, which today they don't even eat other animals, is what Jared's saying, but we're feeding it back to them in highly concentrated amounts. They're getting those heavy metals that are coming from the ground up animal parts, which are the organ meat and the bone meal from those animals. So because you have all that left over when you're slaughtering animals to eat their flesh, so now you have the bones.

JARROD:

You have the organs.

ANITA:

What are you going to do with that? Well, you're going to grind it up, if you're like today's society, and you're going to feed it to your chickens.

JARROD:

Well, you get millions of tons of this leftover stuff from processing animals for meat, and so, instead of, I guess, incinerating it, discarding it, they decided to recycle it to feed it back to the animals, and the significance of that is you can see concentrations of things like lead and cadmium that build up in the bone. So now you have animals that may be picking up some of these minerals environmentally, but then now you're feeding the bone meal back to the animal, so then you're concentrating it, I mean, you're magnifying the amount that's in there, because you're giving it a source of something that they would not normally get Chickens. They don't eat other animals, they eat bugs and they eat plants.

ANITA:

And what we know is that God probably created the chicken's bodies to be able to get rid of some of these things, these toxic things that they weren't meant to have right, and so then they're pooping out some of it, and we know that that's true. So, through the Digestor Tract, these things are discarded, in the end products of the poop. So then, what are people then doing with all the animal poop?

JARROD:

Sadly, some of that is also being recycled into animal feed.

ANITA:

A huge amount of it. For over 40 years this has been going on. I'm not kidding you. They are recycling the poop and feeding it back to the animals.

JARROD:

So what you see as your food is eating excrement.

ANITA:

And other animals it wasn't meant to have. On top of that, it's also a high source of these heavy metals that we know cause sickness. That can cause cancer, that can cause Alzheimer's, that can cause a lot of these different diseases that these heavy metals have been linked with when we have toxic amounts in our system.

JARROD:

So if we are what we eat and our food source is eating excrement and other animals when they are not carnivores, then it's no wonder that we're in the shape that we're in.

ANITA:

Absolutely, and we're just scratching the surface here. This is one little thing that we're talking about heavy metals and then we start talking about the saturated fats and the animal proteins and all the other things.

JARROD:

Right, arachidonic acid and all these other pro-inflammatory mediators.

ANITA:

And those are other words Jared's thrown out that you can search inside pie, because we've talked about these things before. So if you're new, you don't feel like I have no clue what they're talking about right now. Just get inside Pine Search. It'll pull up the exact episodes where we've said those words, not just the titles, the exact place, and you can press play and it'll start right there where we were talking about that exact thing that you need to know about. But here's the thing If these toxic things are in the soil, we polluted the land as people it's in the soil. What about the plants? Isn't it getting into the plants that are grown in the soil? The answer is yes, it's getting into the plants. Don't freak out Sadly.

JARROD:

yes.

ANITA:

But don't freak out, because your creator loves you so much, he has put pre-provision into those plants. What we see from nutritional research is that people who are just vegetarians we're not even talking about vegans in vegetarian studies, where they study people over the course of years where they're getting just as high of levels of the heavy metals in their diet over the course of time, even through plants what we know is those vegetarians levels sometimes oh, and get this sometimes they're even eating higher levels of heavy metals things like lead so, oh well, then we shouldn't eat plants?

ANITA:

no, that's not true, and this is why because, as they followed those course participants over the years, what they saw is, even within a couple of months, the heavy metal levels of the vegetarians start dropping and dropping and dropping until it bottoms out and plateaus out at a level that is significantly lower than the people that are eating animal foods.

JARROD:

Just a mixed diet of everything, including animals.

ANITA:

And including some vegetables, and so you're looking at these long-term studies that it drops Again when you look at these long-term studies and you take vegetarians over the course of time they're eating mostly plants, vegans it would probably even be a greater decrease.

JARROD:

I'd love to see that I would think so.

ANITA:

But because of what we're about to share with you, and you'll see why we're saying that that would probably be the case. I would pretty much bank on it. But here's the thing you have vegetarians. They're eating no meat, right, they're still eating some animal products, but you see this massive drop, even when they're getting as high or higher levels of the heavy metals in what they're eating Over time, you see it drop, drop, drop, drop, drop and then it plateaus low. But then at the end of the studies, the participants went back on their regular standard diets. And what do we see? We see that after several years they would have them come back in and test again and their heavy metal levels in their hair. They were actually testing hair samples In this one study. They were actually testing their hair samples At the end of the study, after they had gone back on a regular diet, when they retested the participants, they found that their levels were back just as high as they were originally, or even higher because they were now eating those animal products.

ANITA:

So what is it about plants? Clearly it's something in the plants. Imagine that Something in the plants. I guarantee you, even though Jared and I know of some of the things that it is absolutely linked with. There are tons of other things in plants that we have not discovered yet as a society that are helping these levels to be lower in people who eat whole plant foods. One thing we know of is that there's fiber. Animal products have how much fiber?

JARROD:

Have absolutely no fiber.

ANITA:

Zero fiber. You heard it here first. Hopefully you already knew that if you've been listening here for a while. Animal products have zero fiber. Fiber is absolutely necessary for gut health, and you know what gut health is linked to A whole lot of other things, and that's just scratching the surface on all that fiber can do for you. Get inside pie, search fiber, you'll see what I'm talking about. But you have fiber in these whole plant foods and what we know about fiber is it keeps things moving through your system. The heavy metals bind to fiber, so fiber is only found in plant foods. So as you eat a lot of plants, even if they have the heavy metals, the metals bind to the fiber and they transport out of your body with the fiber, as the fiber leaves your body because it doesn't get absorbed.

JARROD:

And they transport faster, so they're not sitting in the gut for a prolonged period of time.

ANITA:

So now you have heavy metals bound to fiber, moving out of your body and able to be absorbed. So you're eating higher levels, but with it bound, it's going to transport out of your body. It won't absorb into your system. Imagine that fiber is put into these foods naturally for you to keep you well. Next we have phytates. Oh, but those are the big, big boogeyman. Right, there's a doctor out there that teaches. Oh, be, careful with beans and phytates. Oh, that's scary.

JARROD:

They're the anti-nutrients. You don't want those, but it turns out that they do bind to cadmium, lead, other heavy metals. Now the big.

ANITA:

So Jared was joking when he said you don't want those because that's?

JARROD:

what that doctor says Okay, but he's wrong. That's what that doctor says.

ANITA:

He's wrong, because these are beneficial nutrients.

JARROD:

But the big controversy with it is is that it binds to other minerals, such as calcium etc. Which it does, but that's not the complete picture, because plant foods are naturally rich in the minerals. So if you have a smaller amount of phytates, if it binds to some of those minerals, it's fine, because you're getting a ton of it in your food. But those same phytates then help to bind to these heavy metals so that they never get absorbed. So the key here it's not what you eat, it's what you absorb, and what's in plants helps to prevent us from absorbing a lot of these heavy metals that are present there.

ANITA:

Yes.

JARROD:

Which, ideally, I'd love to be able to have a food source that has none in it, but with just our modern farming practices and all the chemicals that have been put in the environment, they're just there.

ANITA:

But the key takeaway is, if you're eating plants, stop worrying about it, like if you know one source is better than another for some reason. Like there's a study done on your cacao powder or whatever, and you know it has less lead and cadmium, by all means buy it. I was buying a cacao that was grown in an area that was known to have lower lead and cadmium. Sadly, I can't find a source of it from that area anymore. Am I freaking out about it? No, I'm not. Why? Because I know that plants were created to help us deal with these things, so that our bodies don't absorb them. Isn't that awesome?

ANITA:

Think about how amazing the foods are that God originally planned for us to eat, all the things that they help us fight. That's why you don't have to go around saying, oh, all this stuff is in our food, oh, we're just going to die. Oh, we're so scared I mean, we can't even eat plants. What can we eat? We can't eat anything. We're not going to get the nutrients we need. It's just not true. Okay, maybe things aren't as ideal as they used to be for things to grow. Eat lots of whole plant foods, because even when you're getting some of those things that are bad for you. God's created those foods to help bind the things that are bad for you and to do other things to them that we don't even know yet, and it's helping those things to exit your body, or your body not to absorb them, or the 20 million other ways and things that he's put into them to help your body to thrive.

JARROD:

And the plants actually can reduce the amount of the. Of 100% of the heavy metals that make it into your gut, the plants can bind to 90% of those. That way you just eliminate it and never absorb it in the first place.

ANITA:

And then you have the antioxidants.

JARROD:

Well, part of the toxicity with some of the heavy metals is that they can create oxidative damage, where they will pull an electron away from some of these other molecules which then can damage them. Well, antioxidants have a free electron that they can donate safely to those molecules, so it undoes that oxidative damage. So, with plants being very rich in antioxidants, that is another protection against the effects of those metals when they make it into your body.

ANITA:

So these are just three of the reasons that we know that when you eat whole plant foods, that you are going to feel better, that you're not going to have those toxic effects of the heavy metals, and you don't have to go through life worried about these things and freaking out about it. Just eat more whole plant foods. This is the takeaway. Eat more whole plant foods, stop worrying about it, let the stress and anxiety go about your health, and start eating more whole plant foods. This is the foundation. You want to start finding your new favorites and get them into your life on a regular basis. Why don't you have to worry about it? Because God has put into these amazing foods that you were originally created to eat, according to Genesis 129, all of these things, many of which we don't even know yet. We've only scratched the surface here with fiber and phytates and antioxidants, which actually help us to have significantly lower levels of heavy metals in our bodies than people who eat animal based products. This is exciting. Does this light you up? It should? We have something amazing, this treasure trove of God-given foods that can make all the difference in our life and our health? This is why, as you eat more and more whole plant foods and learn how to have them in the way that's simple, enjoyable and delicious. You start feeling better, you start gaining energy. You start losing weight. Naturally, the pounds come off without even having to diet. You can reverse things like type two diabetes and high blood pressure, high cholesterol, autoimmune disease, skin disorders, joint pain, exhaustion, and the list goes on and on. These are the healing foods. So your takeaway today is let the anxiety go and realize that you don't have to worry about heavy metals if you just go all in with whole plant foods. Sunshine, we look forward to meeting you inside pie, to getting these awesome recipes into your hands.

ANITA:

If you don't know what to eat and you're just getting started, or maybe you've been eating whole food plant based for a while, or, like many of our clients before they found us, us, you had been vegan or you had tried whole food plant-based in the past and you just couldn't stick with it because you didn't have the right recipes. You didn't have meals that actually excited you. You didn't have ways to eat your old favorites that actually tasted good. Sure, you tried healthy brownies, but they were dry and disgusting. Well, we have the cure-all.

ANITA:

That and that is found at poweronplantscom forward slash cookbook, where you can grab both of our cookbooks in a bundle, along with a ton of other incredible bonuses that are going to skyrocket you to plant, that are going to get you started on a plant-based journey that is going to bring you joy. And when you find joy, you don't feel deprived. And when you don't feel deprived, you feel excited. And when you don't feel deprived, you feel excited. And when you feel excited about something you can stick with it, because you're not having to force yourself because you don't feel deprived.

ANITA:

I mean, it's like this beautiful cycle that goes on and on. Right, we say that every time we have a bowl of something, we look at each other. Oh yeah, we feel so deprived. It's sarcastic, but it's like we hear it all the time. This is about so much more than just salads, and really it's about so much more than just the food. It's about letting the anxiety go and stepping into all that.

ANITA:

God has created you to be Sunshine. He has so much in store for you that he wants to do through your life. But you cannot do it if you don't feel good, if you can't think clearly and you're constantly online searching to discover what health struggle you might have or going from doctor to doctor to get it named, so you can figure out what it is, so you can try to reverse it, start eating more whole plant foods. You're not going to believe how this is going to change your life. We cannot wait to get to know you inside pie to help you further on this journey. Great things are ahead for you and we are so here for it. You are loved, you are prayed for and we will see you again very soon. Thank you.

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