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Oil Controversies with Udo Erasmus, MA, BSc, Author

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Empowered Nutrition Podcast, we sit down with Udo Erasmus, a health expert, author, and pioneer in the field of nutrition, particularly healthy oils. Best known for his book Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill, Udo shares his journey and insights on the importance of essential fatty acids and how food choices, like eliminating processed vegetable oils and sugars, can significantly improve energy, digestion, and overall well-being.

Udo emphasizes the power of awareness in nutrition, encouraging listeners to experiment with their diets to better understand how foods affect their bodies. He also discusses the crucial role of digestion, explaining how cooking depletes enzymes and probiotics, and why a plant-based, raw-food approach can optimize digestive health. Udo’s expertise and personal experiences provide a relatable and inspiring approach to holistic nutrition.

Episode Highlights

  • The Impact of Oils on Health: Udo discusses how different oils, particularly processed vegetable oils, affect our bodies. He encourages listeners to experiment by eliminating certain oils from their diet to observe how they feel, emphasizing the importance of awareness in making healthy dietary choices.
  • Omega-3 Alternatives: Udo talks about his journey with oils and introduces his blended oils that provide a balanced approach to nutrition. He also mentions the importance of flax oil as a source of Omega-3 and his personal philosophy on achieving a healthier, more sustainable diet.
  • The Role of Awareness in Health: Udo emphasizes that taking ownership of your health is crucial. The more aware you become of how certain foods affect your body, the better choices you can make, leading to long-lasting improvements in your overall health and energy levels.
  • Personal Experience with Nutrition: Udo shares a heartwarming story about his son learning the consequences of consuming too much sugar, illustrating the power of self-discovery in nutrition. By guiding his son to notice the effects of sugar on his energy levels, Udo highlights the importance of taking ownership of your own health journey.
  • The Digestion Equation: Udo explains how cooking destroys essential enzymes and probiotics found in raw foods, making digestion more challenging for our bodies. He recommends four key components for optimal digestion: raw, plant-based foods, fiber, probiotics, and bitters. These can support your digestive system and maintain a healthy gut microbiome.

Resources Mentioned

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Subtitles:

Hi there and welcome back to the Empowered Nutrition Podcast, Erin here, and I’m thrilled to introduce to you Udo Erasmus, whose pioneering work in health and wellness started over 40 years ago as a prominent voice of the healthy fats and oils movement. Udo raised manufacturing standards of food oils, including flax oil. In 1994, he co-founded the Udo’s Choice supplement brand, a global leader in cutting edge health products, specializing in healthy oils, probiotics, digestive enzymes, and greens. Udo is an accomplished author of several books, including Fats that Heal, fats That Kill with 250,000 copies sold with extensive education in biochemistry and biology and a master’s degree in counseling psychology. Udo has impacted millions of lives by delivering his fresh message on how to achieve perfect health. I intended to talk with Udo about the controversies around oils like Omega six fats, vegetable oils, Omega-3 fats, and we did achieve that. But my surprise in this interview was how much we talked about motivation, behavior, change, what really drives people to focus on their health and nutrition and where that drive comes from and what some of the barriers are. So it was an actual absolute pleasure to speak with Udo. I hope you enjoy the interview as well, and have a great rest of your day.
Hello, Udo Erasmus, welcome to being Part Nutrition podcast. We’re so thankful to have you on the show. How are you?
Yeah, well thank you for having me on. It’s gonna be fun.
I agree. And thank you so much already offline for sharing about your story. You had quite an exceptionally challenging childhood. You were an orphan at some point after World War II and in Poland. Yeah. Yep. And, and we kind of had started getting into how that connected to like just early in life grew up, fat grew up. Maybe something in you that sparked something in you to maybe not grow up more quickly, but focus your passion.
It it got me focused. Yeah. It got me focused on, you know, ’cause kind of like if, if you go through a war, which is a thousand, well, a hundred times worse than the worst imagination you might have of what it’s like to be in a war, it’ll be a hundred times worse than that. Yeah. Because, because then it’s real. It’s not just fantasy then it’s real. Oh my God, the bullets are flying. Oh my God, we gotta go this way. Oh my God, we gotta get off the road. Oh my God, here they come. Oh my god, they, the allies are shooting at us and using us as target practice and we’re just trying to flee and get safe. Right. So, so when you get into situations like that, it’s not a big step to start to say, you know, there must be a better way to live. And then to get focused is how do I make a better life than what I’ve experienced? Right. And there’s something built into human beings. Like when you help people, when you do things that help life, it feels good in your chest. Right. And when you do things that hurt people, it doesn’t feel good in your chest. It actually hurts in your chest.
Yeah.
And we’re built like that. This is like part of human nature, right? Yeah. And so the idea of helping, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s like a, it’s self rewarding ’cause it feels good. And so absolutely. I think that’s why women look after their children and that’s why people like to help. You know, when there aren’t, when they aren’t tied up in their head in some stupidity, right? Because we’re actually built for that life. Caring for life. It’s like caring for life and, and making quality of life better for people. It’s natural to us to do that. It’s a hard and it feels good even if the person you help doesn’t say thank you. You feel the thank you in your heart because you’re doing something that’s right with life.
Absolutely.
So I got there pretty early just because of how bad it was.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean there’s so many ways to try to do that. And I think it doesn’t always play out the way people hope of like, I know I’ll be a doctor and then they end up in healthcare and they don’t feel as helpful as they would’ve hoped. And
Yeah. And then they find out, then they find out it’s just disease management, not healthcare actually. Yeah.
Yeah. So, yeah. And they’re constrained by the system and yeah.
But the impulse for going in, oh my God, I could help so many people. Yeah. I took a year of medicine by the way. I thought Wet gonna learn about health ’cause it’s called healthcare. Right. Find out, we only learn about disease. I talked to the dean, I said, what is health? He said, we don’t know, we’re working on it. And I realized, and then they told us, a doctor should always sound as though he knows what’s going on, even when he doesn’t.
No. And
We call that and we call that lying on the farm. And that was the end of my medical career because I said, I’m not gonna lie to people for a living. And I went into, back into biological sciences, biochemistry and genetics. Because in biological sciences you study normal creatures in normal situations, functioning normally. That’s there’s, that’s kind of like a definition of health. So I realized I’m gonna learn more about health in biology than I’m gonna learn about health in medicine. And so I ended up in genetics and biochemistry and good foundation for studying the physical aspects of health.
Yeah. And, and you’ve worked your way into being quite well known in the space of fats and oils. And how did that end up happening that that became your focus?
Oh, because I got married and we had three kids. My marriage broke up and I was really upset and I wanted to kill something. Oh. So I took a job as a pesticide sprayer. Really. You know, pesticides are only made to kill living things, right? Yeah. So I wanted to kill something. So I took the job, I was really careless and I got poisoned by pesticides after three years of being careless. And then went to the doctor and said, what do you have for pesticide poison poisoning? And she said, nothing. So I said, oh, my health is my res. It really is my responsibility. I’m on my own here. And I had the background in biochemistry, genetics. I went into the research like a Medline, which which is a database for the research. Yeah. And started looking at health. ’cause I didn’t specifically study health.
I studied biology. Yeah. But I had the background, it was good background for doing that. And I was looking at everything that had to do with nutrition and health, nutrition and disease. And there’s water and air. But I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. And I got, I, so I, I was looking at minerals and vitamins and amino acids and all the other essential nutrients. And I got stuck on oils because the information was really contradictory. So I read a study that said Omega six is an essential nutrient. That means you have to have it. You can’t make it from anything else in your body. You have to bring it in from outside. If you don’t get enough long enough, you die. That’s how important these essential nutrients are. But if you bring enough of it back into your diet before you die, then all the problems that come from not getting enough are reversed.
Because life knows how to build a body that works provided you take responsibility at your mouth to make sure all of the essential building blocks land in your body so that life can do its job. So that was the one study and the very next study said, omega six gives you cancer and kills you. And I’m going, my head exploded. My head exploded. Like, wait a minute, I have to eat it so that it can give me cancer and kill me. There’s something wrong with that picture. And because that contradiction, I said, I must be missing something. It can’t be both that it doesn’t, it doesn’t compute. Yeah. There must be something else going on. And that made me look at how oils are made and the fact that they’re super sensitive to damage done by light, oxygen and heat that need the most care of all of our nutrients.
’cause they’re the most sensitive. And we give them the least care. We throw ’em in the frying pan and yes, we turn ’em into smoke. Yes. And so and so then I called the American Oil Chemist Society, that’s the umbrella organization for the oil industry. And I said, I want to talk to a researcher. So they put him on the line and I said to him, well, when you know that your oil is damaged, when you treat it with sodium hydroxide and then phosphoric acid, and then you bleach it and then you heat it, the frying temperature to deodorize it, that’s how oils are made. When do you know that there’s damage to the oil? Why do you do that? So he said to me, well one of the reasons we do that is because we can get rid of half of the pesticides in the oil by heating it to frying temperature for half an hour. And in my head I’m going, wait, there are pesticides in oils. Yeah. I didn’t even know it at the time. I didn’t even know it. Right. Never thought of
It. Yeah. Yeah.
And, and then I was like, and I’m thinking, well, the other half of the pesticides stay in the oil. And so I didn’t say that to him. That was just happened in my head. And,
And now ize oils still with half of pesticides on it. Yeah.
Yeah. So, so I said to him, so why don’t you start with organically grown seeds? Then you don’t have a pesticide problem. So it was a, there was this deafening silence at the other end of the phone.
Then people wouldn’t buy the cheap processed food ’cause it would be cheap.
Right. Yeah. So, and so then he got back at me and he was really angry. He said, I don’t know what your problem is. The oil is 99% good. It’s only 1% damaged. And if you got 99% on an exam, you’d be damn happy, wouldn’t you? Wow. So now I’m back and off and I say, wow, maybe I’m overreacting. It’s only 1%. So then we have, we have a saying in science, when in doubt do the math numbers don’t lie. Right. So I said, okay, if I have a tablespoon of oil that is 1% damaged by the processing that industry does in making it, how many damaged molecules will be in that tablespoon of 1% damaged oil? And I’m, I want you to answer that question because you’ll see why it’s important and your, your audience will, will see why that’s a really an important issue. So how many
A milliliter?
Yeah, it’s, well, 15 milliliters in a tablespoon. 14 grams and it’s 1% damaged. So how many damaged molecules will be in that tablespoon?
Oh molecules.
Yeah. How many damaged molecules
Is it? Millions.
How many? Gimme a number
One. 1 million.
Okay. 1 million has six zeros, right?
Yes.
Okay. Would you like to know what the actual number is? If a tablespoon has 1% damaged?
Yes.
You are 16 zeros too low in your estimate. Dang.
No, that’s not 16. Sorry. You are 13. So it’s 60 quintillion damaged molecules in a tablespoon of oil that is 1% damaged by the processing. That’s before you fry it in your frying bin. 60 quintillion. That’s more than a million damaged molecules for every one of your body’s 60 trillion cells. That’s how much damage is. And the reason why I, I ask for the number is most people give numbers like you did. ’cause we don’t know how small molecules are. Yeah. So we don’t know how many molecules are in a tablespoon ’cause we don’t have the, the science background. There’s a way to do that that you learn if you’re, if you, if you’re in science, right?
Yeah.
So most people underestimate by a million, a billion u usually billion or more times. They underestimate the amount of damage they’re doing to themselves when they’re eating these oil.
Yeah. So, and,
And yours was like, yours was more a trillion, like yours was 6 trillion
Off.
60 trillion times too low. So you’re doing 60 trillion times more damage to yourself using these damaged oils than you think. So then I say to people, okay, listen, you, you’re gonna fly home for the holidays and you’re about to get on the plane and you’ve got your boarding pass and you’re about to board and somebody taps you on the shoulder. And this is the truth teller. Somebody who only always tells you the truth. He says, by the way, did you know that your chance of crashing and dying on your flight home is 60 trillion times higher than you thought it was? Would you get on the airplane?
Yeah.
Yeah. I was in Ireland. I told them I would canoe back to Canada. I would not get on the airplane. So we are underestimating the damage we’re doing to ourselves by enormous numbers. Yeah. And there are more health problems come from damaged oils than any other part of nutrition. And more health benefits come from making the oil change that your body needs to oils made with health in mind than any other part of nutrition. Biggest issue worse than white sugar.
Yeah. I agree with you. And, and in fact it, we, we see at this point in our clinic, 20 to 30 people a day typically. And so we see a lot of patients and I would say typically what they’re coming with, of course, chronic health challenges or they wouldn’t be here. And more often than not, they’re really confused ’cause they’re eating very little sugar, but they’re having oxidized vegetable oils multiple times a day. And they don’t even know it’s a problem. It’s not even on the radar.
Right. And I told you, I told you it’s like, you know, 60 quintillion damaged molecules, 1% damage. If you put them in the frying pan, you probably should need to triple or, or you know, multiply that number by another six times, then you take two or three or four tablespoons a day. So you gotta multiply that in. Then you get plastic in the oil that doesn’t belong in your body and you’ve got pesticides in the oil. And then you do that for 30 years. And by that time you have have put an enormous number of damaged molecules into your body. And wherever they go in your body, they interfere with what is supposed to be going on there. And they never existed in nature. So life never made a way to break ’em down.
What are some of the top health consequences that you think are related to this?
Well, the, the oils are super important for brain function. So if you get the DA them damaged, then you’re gonna interfere with brain function. You’re gonna get more inflammation, you’re gonna get lower your oxidation rate and energy levels. Your, your, your fundamentally inflammation is the, is the commonest thing that happens. And why is that? Because I do
Not have disease risk, cancer risk, dementia risk, metabolic syndrome.
Yeah. All of that. Because, because your immune system creates the inflammation and it lowers circulation to try and isolate. ’cause it’s recognized. There’s something here I need to clean up, but it doesn’t have a way to clean it up. So you get chronic inflammation from that and chronic inflammation, then you get poorer circulation. Poorer circulation, less energy, less oxidation. Then you get more, more cancer and actually more inflammation and higher risk of cancer. And literally everything falls apart
Because, yeah. So there’s like, just at baseline when these oils are oxidized, they become more pro-inflammatory. So you have this like pro-inflammatory source
And it’s not just oxidized. It’s not just oxidized. You create free radicals from light. You get, you get oxidized molecules from oxygen and you get trans fatty acids from heat. And there are all kinds of different damaged molecules. Like you fragment molecules and you ize molecules and you double bond shift molecules and you, you cross link molecules. So there are a lot of different kinds of reactions that take place from that, that life never made a way to break down. They then they pile up in your body and the body’s very slow to get rid of them. So if you’re taking them in faster, then your body can get rid of them. And so you just pile it up, pile it up, pile it up, and eventually you get, you get symptoms that the doctor can diagnose as a disease.
Yeah. I I was gonna tie into that. She I was gonna ask you about that. If you kinda subscribe to that idea that like, okay, these fats are getting incorporated, they’re not just passing through your body, they’re getting incorporated into your cell membranes.
Well, they get more, well they get more stuck in your body because, because they, they don’t belong there. And, and life never made a program to get rid of them. They’re
Not, yeah. So they,
And you’re pi and you’re literally piling them up because every day you’re eating, you know, every day you think you’re getting a million damaged molecules when you’re actually getting 60 quintillion. Right? Yeah. And so then it hap and yeah. And there’s no way, it’s kind of like health is the result of living in line with nature and your nature. And when you get out of line with nature and damaged molecules are out of line with nature, then you’re gonna pay a price.
Right.
It just, it’s, there’s no way around it. Right. And the mandate for creatures that eat from life’s perspective, fresh, whole, raw, organic, so no pesticides local and probably for human beings more plant-based than animal-based. And if it was animal-based, it was wild animals that eat grass and weeds that also get you end up in the meat Yeah. That get you benefits not cattle sitting in there. Feces and urine eating corn.
Yeah.
Right. You get different meat from a wild animal than you get from the, from the feedlot.
Yeah. And if you think about like a traditional diet, they do the, where what fats do they use for cooking, they’ll render the fat from that animal that grew in a natural environment. And that is primarily a saturated fat, which we know is will, can withstand heat without as much damage. Not to mention the fact that it’s not been processed.
Right. Although, although nature’s man, a fresh whole raw, organic, there was no frying going on. Right. But when you fry, you burn food. When you burn the food. And it doesn’t matter if it’s protein or starch or fats and oils. You increase inflammation and you increase the risk of pet, of of cancer with the protein, with the starch and with the, with the fats independent of each other.
Yeah.
When you overheat
Barbecue and like charm meat. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Yeah. So when, you know, and then people sometimes say, oh, I love the taste of burnt meat. No, you don’t. That’s, that’s a, that’s an acquired preference. ’cause if you cra scrape that burnt stuff off and you eat it off a spoon, it’s squeaky in between your teeth and it’s accurate and scratchy and bitter and tastes disgusting. Right. But we’re used to it. We’re used to it because we learned it with mother love. So I say to people, listen, keep the mother love. That’s like a huge gift. Get rid of the bad habit that your mother was bamboozled into using buy an industry that only cared about money.
Yeah. I mean, I think most people on earth have, you know, they grew up on processed food and Yeah. In, in a world where we didn’t have an appreciation of, I almost feel like it’s, at least the knowledge is starting to improve. I feel like the slowly was like in the seventies, eighties, nineties, the processed food was there, but with no awareness.
But since I’m an old guy, I’m 82. Right. Since I, when, when I was a kid, most of our cooking was done in water. Was the industry, the, the oil industry is only like 120, 140 years old.
Yeah.
Right Before that, they had olive oil, which was not made the way, it was not used for frying. It was actually added to food after it was cooked in water to enhance flavors and improve absorption, absorption of oil soluble nutrients. So in, so this is like a new thing, you know, people now say, oh, you shouldn’t use omega sixes and you shouldn’t use seed oils. No. You know, when you eat seeds and nuts that contain omega sixes, they are associated with longevity.
Right.
So what, what is this here? Seeds and nuts are good for longevity, but the oil is poison. No, it’s not the people who, the people who say don’t use those oils and don’t use omega sixes. They have done half of their homework and they haven’t done all their homework because they’re blaming omega sixes and seed oils for what should be blamed on the damage done to them
And the amount that’s supernatural in our diet. Yeah.
Well the other, yeah, the other thing is the other is
No.
Yeah. The other thing is 99% of the population does not get enough omega threes for optimum health. Yeah. We have doubled, or maybe even 10 times our intake of omega six. We have lowered our Omega-3 intake down to one sixth of what people got in 1850. Yes. So the balance between the two is important because they compete, they both have important functions in the body. Yes. So you gotta not damage the oil, you’ve gotta bring in the missing omega threes. You’ve gotta make your omega sixes also with health in mind. And when you do that, then actually the oils are helpful to you. Yeah. And I, I, my fa claim to fame is I developed a method for making oils with health rather than shelf life in mind. And I developed that in, in the
Press. Or how does that, how is it,
What’s that?
Is it that it’s, it’s done without heat? Is that the primary difference?
No. So, so what you have to do, because the oils are damaged by light, oxygen, and heat. And the Omega-3 is five times more sensitive to damage done by light, oxygen heat than the omega six. So both of them need to be protected. So you have to make a system a, a pressing system where no light, no oxygen, and only low temperature get to the oil while it’s being pressed, filtered, settled, filled. And if you do that, you don’t damage the oil. And you gotta start with organic so you don’t have pesticides. Yeah. And you package it in glass so you don’t have plastic in the oil. And we put a box around it so the light doesn’t get even through the dark glass. So like, so we, so you, you have to take an enormous amount of care because these are the most sensitive nutrient molecules.
Right. So I developed that because I understood what the issue was and I’d been poisoned by pesticides. So I needed a real solution, not just whitewash. Right. Yeah. Or greenwash. Right. And so, and because I had the background and I grew up on a farm and I knew how to tinker with things, I basically said, okay, I’m gonna, you could we make, we’re gonna make oils with health in mind. And then if we could bring the omega threes back, and this is I think what, what drove the whole project. Oh my god, 99% of the population doesn’t get enough Omega threes. Yeah. If we can bring them back and get the balance right and bring it back into the population, oh my god, we could help almost everybody. And again, it was like, felt so good in your, in, in my chest. Oh my god. I, I found a purpose. Oh my god, this is worth doing. Right.
It really is. I mean, it is, it can be a night and day difference in people’s health and huge, their Omega-3 levels huge. I’ve never, never had someone come back at a healthy level if they weren’t supplementing. Yeah. Huge. It’s not possible to tie it, but people have no idea what their diet needs to look like. Yeah. In order to achieve a healthy Omega-3 level.
Yeah. And when I was, when I got poisoned, I was 38, I already had arthritis in my knees. Oh. So if I bent my knees and put a little pressure on ’em, they hurt. It wasn’t like, it wasn’t super extreme yet. And my fingers were always sore. Like when I woke up in the morning, all my, all my fingers ached. So then I’d go like this and get circulation going and then it go, would go away. But I had the beginnings of arthritis. I’m 82 now. I have no pain in any of my joints. And the difference was I got poisoned and then I started paying attention and then I made the changes I need to make. And literally you can be pain free and have no inflammation and no chronic illness and be 82 years old.
That’s amazing. So tell me what you recover.
I’m ex, I’m exhibit A for that.
What did you do to recover?
Well, the, I did a lot of things. I, I was never like a totally into junk food because we were poorer and we ate simply. Yeah. So we ate quite a bit of whole foods, lots of vegetables, meat, maybe once a week, you know, because we didn’t have, we lived in a, a house without refrigeration and running water. ’cause my father wanted just, he didn’t like society. He didn’t like big medicine or big business or big government. So he got a, he built, he, he bought some land in the middle of nowhere. We built a house ourselves. And, and he didn’t, we didn’t have indoor plumbing or anything. We have an outhouse. And at 40 below we would go to the outhouse. So we didn’t spend a lot of time in the outhouse at 40 below. But so, so, so we ate pretty simply because we didn’t have refrigeration. So we couldn’t have meat in the house. So my father would go to town once a week, bring home a hunk of meat. So we’d have maybe meat once a week. Other than that, we had a huge garden. We had potatoes, we had a root cellar. So we had stuff for the winter. And so we ate pretty simply.
That changed when I went to university. ’cause then I was in the city and I started eating all the same garbage everybody else was eating. I would, I would drink coffee and I could feel it where it was in my digestive tract. ’cause it was irritating to my digestive tract. That changed when I started taking probiotics. And, you know, and so basically I, when I got poisoned is when I started paying attention. And I headed it in the direction of fresh, old, raw, organic. And I eat mostly plant-based, mostly raw. Not, not fanatic about it, but, you know, cooking takes time and I’m, I always think I have more important things to do, you know, so I just eat, eat, eat pretty simply that way.
And I, I’m active. It’s not, not super active. I, you know, but I have a chin bar in my, one of my door door wells. And I have a mini trampoline and I have a medicine ball and I have have like ankle and hand weights, you know, and then I go for walks and I do gardening jobs and Nice. You know, and get fresh air. So, but fundamentally it’s not that hard. The less, you know, if you think about where does disease come from related to food, the collective term for most of the problems. Processing. Yeah. You know, now there’s a lot of, lot of news about ultra processed foods. 70% of the foods people in North America eat are ultra processed. That means they removed fiber, they removed nutrients, they added, probably added things to ’em that don’t belong in the human body. Like flavor compounds and antioxidants. You know, artificial antioxidants. So lots of chemicals. Then there’s pesticides in the foods and you know, there’s hormones and antibiotics in the meats and you know, and all of it is people are throwing this stuff in because it’s just, it drives an industry. It doesn’t drive health.
Yeah, exactly. You know,
So you’re driving industry at the expense of health. And when you spend money buying this garbage, you are making other people rich. And you’re paying not only with money, but you’re also paying with your health. And I would say to people, you should get really ticked off and you should vote with your wallet and put those people out of business. ’cause that’s the way you can do it. But that means you gotta make choices, organic, fresh, whole plant-based, get to know the people who supply your foods. So you know, they’re not lying to you. You know, you, you need to be working with people who are philosophically aligned with eating in line with nature. Right. I think
This ideal and, but tell me this, if our, our population is primarily like busy working. Women have kids, life is really busy, full, there’s no time. How do you, what do you say to that? They have a really hard time with this. I
Think. Well, you know what, there’s time for what you make time for. You know, when you say what you know, when you say, oh, no time. Well, you’re spending 24 hours doing something and you, and you have priorities. And if your priority is making you sick, maybe you need to change the priority. And you literally have to sit down and look at that.
Yeah.
Because you are in charge of it. You know, it’s like if your doctor doesn’t fix you and your food makes you sick, you’re the one who’s affected. And you need to have a certain kind of sovereignty over the choices that you make. Right. Because, you know, because my choices
Determine my state of being. Right. I’ll give you another example. You know, you say, okay, I’m too busy. Well, I recommend that you spend an hour every day sitting down, shutting off all of your distractions, leaving the world outside for an hour. And you spend that hour bringing your focus into the, into the space your body occupies. Where you will discover a piece that passes all understanding. A love that casts that all fear. And you recognize that your basic nature is peace and unconditional empowering love. And those two are super good for health. Yeah. When you do that stillness practice and you, you take that time for yourself, good for your immune system. Yeah. Immune system is always, always under attack from all kinds of stuff. Yeah. Good for immune system. Good for your mental disposition. If you can get out of your anxiety and your depression thoughts, because that’s all created by thoughts. And come into a place where, wow, life is so beautiful. Oh my god, I am so beautiful. Oh my God, being a human, being alive in a human body is magnificent beyond belief.
Yeah. And then you’re not paying anything for that. Right. You’re not paying anything for that. You already have that built into you. Why don’t you, you know, you have the greatest gift you could possibly ever get is already inside of you waiting to be rediscovered. Yeah. When you were in your mother’s womb, you were in that place ’cause there was no place to go. Yes. So you already, you already know that place. Oh my god. So, so, you know, and then you, you know, hang out with people who encourage and empower you to live a life, to live a life worth living. And you know, there are some people you maybe, you know, the people who always put you down and always criticize you and always think you’re not good enough. You know, and support that in you that thinks you’re not good enough. But you might, you might need to trade some of those people in for people who are more empowering and more helpful and more encouraging than that.
Yeah. I mean, I think probably what you might be alluding to is like, there’s an energy in your world and I wonder for some people it’s, it, it it is so hard for them to imagine changing their diet so significantly. And I wonder if part of it is
Part of,
Is part of their way of dealing with their situation of, of their life.
You know? Yeah. I I could tell you that from experience, when I used to go around and tr travel, like I’ve given thousands of talks. So I’ve been in front of people a lot and I, I, I came to a point where I said, okay, I come here, I give people good information. They don’t put it in practice. And not only don’t they put my stuff in practice, but they come to every health person who comes through their town, they go to all the lectures, they take copious notes and they’re not putting it into practice. Yeah. And said, and so I said like, why is that just, I mean, it applies to me too, right? I know more than I put in practice. What is it that keeps me from putting it into practice? I’m not inspired.
Yeah.
So as important as good information is that you inspire people. Okay? When you are inspired, that frees your energy. And then making changes is not that difficult. But when you’re depressed, oh, everything’s too hard. Oh I don’t know. You know, you know, then when you’d feel like you have no energy, then you’re not gonna make the changes.
’cause it’s too much work. It’s a chore that short live versus if it’s a place of inspiration, it’s like truly heartfelt. It’s more lasting I think.
Yeah. In fact, if you get depressed enough, you may actually destroy your body because life just is not worth living. Right. So how do you get inspired or the inspiration’s already inside of you. The love is already inside of you. The energy that is you, that is your essence. ’cause you are not the body. You know, if I say to you, Hey Aaron, whose body is that? What would you say?
I’d say, it’s my body.
It’s my body. Right. But you know what you just told me. You just told me you’re not the body.
Right.
You’ve just, you’ve just told me you are the owner of the body and the body is your property. So then I say to you, well who then, who the hell are you?
Yeah.
Well, okay. And the truth is, you are actually life. You are energy, you are a fraction of solar energy. That is your individual essence. And that solar energy fraction that you are is in its nature, unconditional, empowering love.
What do you think?
And when you’re in touch with that inspiration is the shine of that energy into the world. Then you’re inspired. Then it’s like, oh yeah, okay, well I, you know what? I love being alive. This is an incredible gift I’ve been given. I didn’t earn it. Right. My parents had sex. I didn’t earn it. That’s how I came, came to be. Right. But here I am and I love this. And so I’m gonna do whatever it takes so I can be around as long as possible. See then it’s not hard to do. Yeah. I really, I, yeah. I’m here for something. Wow. I can help so many. Wow. I can do so many cool things.
What do you think blocks most people from feeling inspired like that?
We don’t, we don’t stop. We don’t stop and sit. We don’t do some stillness practice. We don’t make the time. We’re always busy doing something else. You know? Whereas doing, you know, we’re human beings and we live like human doings. So we’re always do, do, do. We don’t take the time to be, because when we take the time to be in being is where we did rediscover our connection to the magnificence of life. Yeah. And then, and so if you do that first, and by the way, you know, if you listen to the, the teachers of humanity, you know, Buddha or Krishna Christ. Right. What is the deal? He says, kingdom of heaven is within you. Hello within you. Right. Hello kingdom of heavens within you. And then seek first the kingdom didn’t say seek at last. Didn’t say, wait till you’re a hundred. Didn’t say wait till you die. Maybe the church has sometimes say that. But he said, seek first the kingdom. So kingdom of heavens within you seek first the kingdom and then everything else will fall into place. That’s, he says, everything else will be added onto you. Right. So then everything will fall into place. So we’re supposed to do that first, according to the really wise people. How many do people do, you know, in your practice or in your neighborhood or in your country or on this planet who actually do that first?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think it reminds me of nutrition. The sense of like, when you see something that’s universal across the world, like in religions, they, they all recommend a practice of prayer and quietness like what you’re talking about. Yep. That tends to be something that’s very true to human need. Just like you can look at, you can see things that are common. Like every traditional culture has a fasting practice. Every traditional culture is omnivorous. Like that tells you something true about nutrition. Yeah.
And the master themselves all spent time by themselves.
Yeah.
And, and they, and they and they also said, what I have you have, and you can even do more than me because of the help that you’ve gotten from me.
Yeah. And
What is the help? The help is seek first the kingdom Right. And take
Time. And then the organic non GMO cold processed oils that have not come from a factory.
Right. But, but that also came from, you know, I got to a point, I didn’t put it first either, by the way, you know, so kingdom of heavens within me seek first the kingdom. I didn’t get there till I was 30 and I started giving that priority. Yeah. And I got poisoned when I was 38. So I was already doing a practice where I was giving that priority. And if I hadn’t given that priority when I got poisoned by pesticides, I probably would’ve gotten cancer and died.
Yeah.
Right. But I was doing that and, and so I had a place to go that was not affected by the poisoning. Yeah. ’cause the poison affects your body, but the poison doesn’t affect your soul or your spirit.
Right.
It doesn’t affect the love that you are, it doesn’t affect the peace that is the, your universal essence. Those are not affected by any of our dramas and our traumas. Yeah. And so if you have that kind of a place to go to, you can re literally rebuild everything else.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I, I think it’s interesting too, like when you learn about the vagus nerve, that when you’re, when you get to a place of parasympathetic relaxation that stimulates that nerve and it’s actually anti-inflammatory. Like you release anti-inflammatory
Yeah. That’s called rest and digest. Right?
Yeah. And it stimulates motility or like takes the breaks off of motility and lets it to run normally. And so that’s
Yeah. And your vagus nerve is kind of like the master in you telling you sit down and shut up and get quiet and recover rest and digest.
Yeah. Right. What are your hopes for the direction we go? I would say maybe in the, in the United States in terms of our food. I mean, it’s obviously a time where there’s gonna be potentially a lot of change. And so I’m curious like what you’d like to see hap happen.
Okay, well first of all, don’t depend on your government to fix it for you.
Yeah.
Right. Even all of the whole thing. Like, you know what, since you’re in the US I’m in Canada, so I would like to act like I’m the prime minister in my little sphere of influence. So I You are, Hmm.
Yeah.
You are so, okay. And so you live in the us be the president in your sphere of influence. Don’t depend on somebody in Washington DC who doesn’t know what the hell is going on in your trench, but you know what’s going on in your trench and you are in the best position to make the decisions that need to be made in your local, in your locality
Of course. But think
About, and then this, and the more present and the more present you are, the better decisions you’re gonna make. So practice, presence and make the decisions and don’t, don’t expect. And you know what, maybe these are all people, good people. I’m not saying they’re not, they’re bad people. Yeah. And I, I don’t care whether you are Republican or Democrat, I like to be independent, you know, independent, spelled IN dash dependent, dependent on what’s within you, the power that’s within you, the love that’s in you, the peace that’s in you. Be dependent on that and bring that to expression in your sphere of influence.
I’m taking this as my cue to just fully go into my dream of like going full homestead life, get
The goat doing what a home homestead, life
Homestead, get the goats, get the cow, get the huge and just go back in time.
But, but where you could do that and some people can do that, but you can also do that in a, in an apartment living in the, in the city, you can at least grow some, some herbs on your window sill garden. Right. You
Can do a lot with hydroponic.
But in terms of finding your, your power and your love and your, your ability to make decisions for the good of yourself and the people around you, it doesn’t matter where you are. You can do that because that’s an in inside job, you know? And you don’t need goats running around on the outside in order to be in your power inside.
Are you sure?
Just one goat. Yeah. I, I am sure I am 100% sure. Because, because why it’s, why it’s not working in the city is ’cause everybody wants the government to take responsibility. Yeah. You know, people call, call it the nanny state, you know, when I was a kid I depended on my mother, mommy, mommy, gimme that. Mommy gimme mommy, feed me, mommy called me, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy. And there’s a time for that. But then when you grow up, at what point do you say, okay, now I need to stand on my own feet. Now I need to make my own decisions. Yeah. And now I need to try some things to find out how things work and become more self reliant. If you had 350 million people in the US who were all independent, the way I describe it and self-reliant the way I’m talking about it, we a very different country. But you know how many people, everybody wants a handout. Right.
And maybe, or they just don’t, I guess obviously some people do, but I, I think for some people they just are maybe too trusting or used to their environment that they think it’s normal to have coffee cream or in the morning and a biscuit or a pancake or a, you know. Yeah. Like a granola bar.
Well, trust, trust get, trust is two things, you know, trust should be earned.
Yeah.
So, so you know, just because you’re good looking doesn’t mean I can trust you. Right, true. So just because whatever, so trust is earned. So sometimes our trusting, this is just laziness on our part. Right? Yeah. So I’m not doing my homework. I don’t know how my body works. I haven’t figured it out. I haven’t done, you know, I’ve just like drifted around and done this and that and I trust somebody else with my health and I trust somebody else with my money. You know? And then $200 billion got sent to a war in the Ukraine and 0 cents were spent for peace at home. It’s like, wait a minute, you know? And then I don’t say anything about it. And I say, oh yeah, I trust my government to do whatever’s necessary. Really? And how many things have the governments done? And it doesn’t matter if you’re talking the right side or the left side. Right. You know how much, how much corruption comes from you giving the money and them demanding that you give them money and then them not spending the money the way you want them to spend the money.
Yeah.
Right? Yeah. And that’s what happens. We, and we trust experts, not just in, in politics, but in health and in media and in, so we’re, and so we’re getting, you know, how much, how much deception is there in that world and how do you know what is true? Usually it comes from your own learning and your own experience.
I think it has to, when you realize, okay, the agriculture industry with their conflict of interest with the fda, with their conflicts of interest with the politicians and their conflicts and even experts with their conflicts of interest and they’re wanting a parachute out of government into industry. Yeah. It’s all, it’s all a, a nasty baked in cake that leads to where we’re at now with our, with our chronic health epidemic. And so For sure.
Yeah, for sure. But, but instead of, you know, so now we, what we do is we’ve trusted them because we were lazy, so we didn’t do our homework right? Yeah. So now we don’t trust them because with you, we know we’re being deceived. But that’s not the solution either. To not trust them. The solution is to, to begin to trust ourselves, to begin to do the homework, to begin to, you know, if your mother ever gave you bad advice, she only gave you one piece of bad advice. If your mother told you not to play with your food, that was bad advice. Because if you don’t play with your food, how will you know what works and what doesn’t work for you? Yeah. So play with your food, try stuff, see what happens if you eat just, just raw for a day. See what happens if you, if you chain, if you don’t use dirty oil, see, see what happens if for a week you don’t eat anything that’s fried. Because there are people who, whenever they eat fried food, food, they notice that their energy goes way down. Some people notice, not everybody notices. So pay attention. Right. Be alert, be awake, be aware. And the more aware you are, the more you’re gonna learn. And the more you’re gonna learn, the more choices you’re gonna have and the more choices you’re gonna have, the better life you’re gonna make.
Yeah. And I think your point about being inspired is the most important thing. Because like you said, we see that every day where we can give information, that’s the easy part. But for someone to take action on the information they have really does take inspiration.
Yep.
And it’s hard to, to get that You’re confused. Sorry. I feel like much confusing information and around nutrition too. I think that kind of can sometimes draw people of their inspiration and they’re just like, I don’t know what to believe.
Yeah, there is, because you know what you say to your clients that it might not work for some of your clients because people are different in their needs for different reasons, right? Yeah. So you can, so you give the best advice you can. I do that too. Give the best, best advice I can, best information I can as clean as possible. But you, me, as an individual, I have to listen to what they say. Somebody says, oh, keto is the great diet. Oh, carbs is the great diet. So I try it, how does it make me feel? How does it work for me? And I find in different times in my life, different things have done been better for me and it changes what your body needs will change. Right. I wasn’t always fresh, whole, raw, organic, mostly plant-based. That’s where I am now. It’s changed over my lifetime. So I pay attention to what my body tells me. And if I, you know, I had a, my kid, my kid said, Hey dad, will you buy me a slush cat? You know what a slush cat is?
No.
Oh. It was a, it was like a, a little tube that was full of colored water with a lot of sugar in it.
Oh no. It was a,
It was a junk food. He said, will you dad, will you buy me a slush cat? Oh. And so, and I said, so, you know, so I said, you know what, I’m not gonna spend money that I work hard for to buy you something that I know is not good for you. But if you wanna buy one, buy it with your own money. That’s, that’s your choice. That’s good. And one time, and he was using, he was using all kinds of crazy stuff like that, eating junk, you know, that is sold in the corner stores. When he was in school, they’d go to the corner store and they’d buy all this garbage. Right. He comes to my house, he sits down fu all of a sudden fu so tired. And he crashes in a chair and he falls asleep. So when he woke up, I said, so see if that doesn’t happen every time you eat a bunch of sugar.
’cause I saw it. I saw it. He’s like, he he’s very sugar sensitive. Yeah. So a couple months later I didn’t tell him. I just see if you notice, see, I, I get to direct his attention. Yeah. So that he does his own learning. So then he comes back a couple of months later and he says, dad, you’re right. So by this time, I, I have no clo no clue what he’s talking about. What do you my, what are you talking about? Oh, you said, see if I don’t get tired every time he eat a bunch of sugar. So I noticed, yes, that happens every time I’ve eat a bunch of sugar and I’ve decided not to eat so much sugar anymore. So he figured it out himself. And then I didn’t say, see, I told you. So I said, you must be proud of yourself for figuring it out. Right. So he got all the credit, he figured it out, he made the change was pretty easy. All I did was I helped him shift his focus. See? Yeah. Because he wasn’t paying attention to it. He was just eating it habitually.
Well, what you hit on, I think is so true with nutrition is you, you, like you said, you’ve gotta take ownership for yourself. Yeah. And it’s an externally driven thing. It’s just not gonna be lasting. It’s really taking owner like what that, in that story, your son took ownership over his own process of deciding what works for him and Yeah. That’s so on point. It’s just with oils, I feel like no one, if, if, if you haven’t heard about oils, it’s, it’s not so like sugar is more like people know about it. Nobody’s like, I think sugar’s good for me. I think it’s fine. Everybody kind of knows it’s not great for you. Yeah. But I think the thing with oils is like good on you for getting information out. Because I think a lot of people don’t even have it in their mind to even do that experiment of like, well what if I do take vegetable oils out of my processed vegetable oils outta my diet? Yeah. They don’t even think about trying that. ’cause why would they, you know? Right,
Right. But yeah, we’re, we’re pretty asleep to that. So. Right. So that’s been, so that was the first thing. Then when I, after that, after I got that done, I mean we’re still talking about it obviously, but after I fi found a solution to the, the oil issue, I said, okay, what else affects health? And the next thing was, oh yeah. Digestion after oils, it’s the most, most confusing area. So I came to the conclusion by looking at it, when you cook foods, you destroy the enzymes that are present in raw food that do on average 60% of the digestion of the food for you if you chew it properly. Okay. 60%. So if you cook the food, you destroy those enzymes. Now your body has to do more than twice as much work than it was intended for. ’cause the digestive system was made for raw foods.
Oh. Then if you cook your food, you need to replace the enzymes you destroyed so that you get back to how it was in nature. Right. Same with probiotics. Probiotics, cows get probiotics with every blade or grass. They, they chew. Yeah. Right. And they start in their mouth and then they work their way through the whole digestive tract. And that’s where people, and that’s where creatures get their probiotics from. But when you cook the foods, you kill the probiotics on it. So if you’re gonna kill the probiotics, you need to replace those. That was number two. Number three, fiber, fiber feeds the friendly bacteria makes your microbiome work properly. Yeah. Right. Those come from plants. So eat more plant-based. And then number four was bitters, which are herbs that are usually bitter in taste.
People do not
That improve both digestion and liver function. Yeah. And if you do those four things for digestion, then you will deal with most of the issues that mess up your digestive system
U know you’re incredible. I can’t believe how fastest hour went and, and how much we talked about. Oh my time. Yeah. Thank you so much for this. And yeah, I’m sure people would love to hear more about not only your story, but where they can find your oils. Do you mind just sharing a couple resources and we’ll put them in the show notes?
Yeah. Yeah. The, the, the products are on udo choice.com, UDOS choice.com. And I have another website for the other stuff about total health and human nature. That’s like my, my biggest interest now. And that’s at uo erasmus.com. U-D-O-E-R-A-S-M-U s.com. And that’s a work in progress. It’s not, it’s not a very good site, but there’s some good stuff, good stuff on it. But we’re, it’s a work in progress. And I’m on, and I’m I if on Google, I’m on page one. ’cause if you know how to spell my name, there are not many names like that. So I get
You the one in all. Udo Erasmus.
Udo Erasmus. Yeah. And then I do podcasts. So if you go Udo or rasmus slash podcast, you can see other podcasts I’ve done. And I’m on LinkedIn and I’m have a YouTube channel and I’m on Instagram and I’m on, let’s see, what else? Facebook. So I’m not hard to find Yeah. Inspiration. Yeah. So
To go home and have a raw salad with not grilled Omega-3 salmon and then dressing made with your oils and, and with fiber on it.
I, I don’t eat fish anymore because fish is now the dirtiest meat on the planet.
Gotta get that Omega-3 somehow.
Yeah. It’s flax oil.
All right. Well,
Thank you. Flax oil was the first oil that I developed, but I work with a blend now that’s better balanced.
I know. Flax is your, is your jam
Oos oil? Yeah.
You’re, you’re incredible.
So anyway, if you want to talk about total health and how like that whole system works, we could, we can do that. It’d be fun.
Thank you. Yes. Let’s do it round two.
Okay. Round two.
Thank you so much.
All right. Thank you Eric. Pleasure to
Meet you. Take care. Thank
You. Bye-bye.
Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to the Empower Nutrition podcast. We love offering insight to help you optimize your wellness. If you enjoy this episode, feel free to leave us a rating on whichever platform you stream from and consider subscribing. Also, you can learn more about our practice at www do Empower nutrition health. And that link is also in your show notes. Take care and talk to you soon.

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