HSN Episode #21: Back to Basics
Michelle Fox: It is the end of January, and yet the first month of the year, 2023, and we are going back to basics. So I thought it would be really fun to share this episode with you. It's a replay of a Facebook Live I did towards the beginning of my career with culinary Nutrition, and it just tickles me because everything I say, is absolutely still applicable to my beliefs that I talk about today, almost two years later.
And at the same time, it makes me giggle because I, I, you can just hear my enthusiasm and so I hope you too, feel that enthusiasm too. Jump back in. I know a lot of us have been kind of, shoving off the idea of New Year, new me, and that is perfectly fine. However, if I could just be that voice in your ear to remind you to come back to the basics as in, let's get more veggies in. Let's get more water in. Let's just bring. A lot more awareness around our nutrition. I promise you it's going to set you up for a more successful remainder of the year. So as you listen to this replay, yes, pay attention to some of the knowledge that I drop, but also I do mention a lot of. events that happened in the past, and those events actually are all on my YouTube page.
You can find me on YouTube @michellefoxlove, and while you're there, I'd be honored for a subscribe. Hit super simple. Just hit that subscribe button and then that will help other people find this show, because this podcast is also aired weekly on YouTube, but it. More important, help us to build healthier communities one person at a time.
Alright, hope you love this episode. I'll talk to you soon.
INTRO: Welcome to Healthy Sexy Nutrition with me, Michelle Fox, Culinary nutritionist, health coach, and your host For this podcast, I teach busy professionals how to get more nutrition in their bodies. And how to have more fun in their home kitchens. If you struggle with consistency or sometimes forget to make your needs a priority or you avoid planning your meals, you, my friend, are in the right place.
Join me each week for inspiration to increase your energy, discover new recipes, manage your hormonal woes, and so much more. You are a busy professional, but that does not mean your nutrition should suffer. You deserve to live in a body and have a life that you love.
So let's dig in.
MICHELLE: Hello, I'm Michelle Fox, culinary nutritionist and welcome to my kitchen. I'm so happy you showed up this evening, whether it's live or for the replay, cuz we're gonna get into it. I can tell you I. Having questions pour in, whether it's face-to-face meetings, what is that?
The kids call it IRL now, or I'm getting the DMs or, just random conversations are coming up and I'm like, what? You didn't know that? And then I'm like, oh yeah, I guess I didn't really know that before I went to school for culinary nutrition. So here we are, but first, I mean, can I get a what, what it looks like. It might be showing up backwards on the video, but my buns are gluten free. Ah, is this not the cutest t-shirt ever? I found it on Etsy, and of course it went right into the cart.
So this evening, is the Ask Me Anything because as I said, the questions have come up in real life in the inbox. And then, of course tonight if you all live, have questions, I would love to be a great resource to help you get those answers that you're looking for, but first to begin, we are gonna jump into some of the questions that have been coming my way. Look at me all professional. I wrote them down so that we'd be prepared. And see this is a thing about, getting a little bit older, even though yes, I'm eating healthy. And yes, believe it or not, my eyesight's better this year than it was last year. I still, I can't see very far away, but then when I have my glasses, I can't read this way. So we might be doing a little glass hoffen today.
All right, first question. Does kimchi have vitamin K? For those of you all who were with me while we were hands deep into the cabbage, massaging it for the 10 minutes, that actually went by really fast.
My guest, Andy Richardson asked, does kimchi, oh no, he didn't even ask. He's like, “I think kimchi has vitamin K.” I'm like, “I don't really think so. I didn't read that.” I'm like, “I know for sure it has vitamin C, which is awesome for our immune system and it's awesome for allergy season.” But I'm like, eh, I'll get back to you. So Andy, when you watch this, if you're here, you were absolutely correct. Kimchi is chock full of vitamin K and the vitamin K. Actually, let me ask you all, do I have anybody in our community that knows why we want to ingest foods with vitamin K? I'm actually gonna take a sip of water while you think about that and you know, feel free to cheat and Google if you want. Just gimme one reason why we want to make sure that we have vitamin K in our diets.
All right. That might have been a tough one. Sorry. I'll work on it. I'll throw some more softballs as we go. But the reason why we want vitamin K in our diets is because it supports our bone health. So foods like cabb. Foods like Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, all the foods in the cruciferous family, they have that vitamin K that's going to make us stronger. So get it in.
All right. And Beatrice is saying it helps to the heal wounds. Yes, ma'am. It does help to heal wounds. Nicely done. Beatrice gets a gold star tonight. Nicely done. And then it looks like the diva. “I need some new cookware. What is the best time to get, I have some cast iron pieces, but I'm leaning towards hex clad?”
Oh, that's a great question. And actually hold that cuz I do wanna answer that cause I do have some very strong opinions about cookware. So do you have like 10, 15 more minutes to stick around? Cuz I wanna make sure to get through all of these and then Yes, I promise. Although even if you can't stick around, you can always watch the replay. So you have my word. I will talk about cookware. Awesome question. Thank you. So kimchi, vitamin K. Yes. Thank you. Andy Richardson. we'll take that one as done. Mark that as done. Okay.
“Why do you use glass jars? sign df. All right. So I pulled these out just as examples cuz, Oliver, my bonus son, and I just literally cleaned out the dishwasher just now, let me hold onto those just for a minute, so I can use these as an example. These are ball jars, but we recycle, our old pickle jars our old olive jars, the jars that, the tomato sauce, the spaghetti sauce comes in, we recycle. Because we use them to store all of our veggies. And the reason why we want to store our vegetables and leftover food and you know, soups and you know, if you're gonna make a smoothie the night before and you wanna put all the ingredients in for the next morning, you always, always want to use glass if possible, because the plastic can often leak chemicals in our food and we don't know where these chemicals are coming from or what they're doing. Oftentimes the chemicals from plastic that are getting into our digestive tract are coming in as what we call xeno estrogens. And so those come in wiring. Our brains, our brains are thinking it's the regular estrogen, but it's like an invader gets in there as an attacker, and then all sorts of bad things happen.
So, Anytime you can. Oh, and especially in children. So anytime you can put children's food, especially you Diva with that gorgeous baby boy you have, if you can store it in glass, that's so much more preferred than the plastic, cuz we don't want those chemicals seeping into the food affecting our baby's brains or our brains for that matter. So, thank you. Check.
What is arrowroot? Oh, Andiva says she'll be here for a minute, so, yay. Thank you. What is arrowroot signed rp? So I was doing a workshop for a AARP the other night, and it was this delicious, my recipe for crispy gluten-free orange sesame chicken and instead of corn starch or really bad and gross wheat flour. , I used arrowroot flour to make the chicken really crispy and delicious. And it takes, tastes a lot like Chinese takeout food. and I gave them options because remember, I always meet people where they are, but also remember that corn can often be a huge inflammatory ingredient.
Most people, I'm not even gonna say, a few of us. It's inflammatory for most of us. Just like the dairy. Just like the wheat. So anytime we can use a plant-based option, two thumbs up. so he had asked, uh, the gentleman in the class had asked, well, “what is it and where is it from?” And I started going on and on about how it's this root. And then they dry it and then they ground it, and then they. It and I felt really good, but then I pause, I'm like, I think that sounds right, but maybe not. And all of a sudden somebody, , like put it, they Googled it and put the technical term in it and it kind of threw me off. So I printed my own. So just so you know, I was right and you are right too because I think you were trying to tell me that it was Marta a. Which is the Latin name for arrowroot. So arrowroot, actually, it does come, it looks kind of like, um, like a white sweet potato and it grows in the ground and they take the bottom part. and that's what they dry and ground down.
And it's like a white powder, like a flower. So anytime you're trying to crisp something up, like in this case it was chicken or you can even do baking. I've made some really delicious, oh, I have a great blueberry muffin recipe that I used arrowroot flour in. Uh, you definitely wanna try to use the plant-based ingredients over anything else.
And, you know, I'll admit I do use the gluten-free flours that can be made out of brown rice or quinoa or other grains, which, you know, it's fine. But the plant-based, the arrowroot flour is definitely gonna be your best. So that's that. Oh, and it's also high in protein. And that's all I wanna talk about with arrowroot flour right now. But look it up. Try it. It's in all the regular grocery stores. You don't have to go to any fancy health food store to find it. I found my bag at King Supers. I don't know if it's at Costco yet. I don't think I've seen it there, but that is arrowroot.
All right, let me check to make sure I'm not missing anything. All right, great. Okay, next question. “Michelle, how did you get so smart?” MF. I got you. Okay. How to keep this light? Mf. Michelle Fox, that girl. Yeah. Okay. Whatever. Moving on. All right. This one was a real one. she. We eat Impossible Burger in place of beef.
That's good. Right? And I was like, Ugh, this is l w. Um, so it kind of broke my heart because she was really excited to, share with me that she was doing better and, and being healthier for her family. And again, I meet everybody where they are. I will say, if you look at the ingredients on the Impossible Burger label, I think the first ingredient is, and we really don't want soy in our body unless it's of the purest, most organic form. And even then, probably only I'd say post-menopausal women can really digest, , soy properly. So you wanna avoid that. [00:13:00] But then also there's like three or four other ingredients, , aka chemicals that I can't even pronounce. And so I am a huge fan of whole. Plant-based eating so impossible. Burger. Of course, if you're going to eat it, I won't judge you, but don't invite me over to share it with you. How about that? Fair?
All right, moving on. Let's see what else we've got. Oh, this was a big one, I promised to get back to the community I think about a month ago. I don't even remember which show we. But the question is, is Himalayan pink salt as healthy as sea salt? Signed rk? So a couple things ark. The Himalayan pink salt is mined from the mountains in Pakistan and so there are some political issues there, so when I started doing more research, oh yeah, cuz another side. Another friend came to me and said, you really shouldn't be promoting Himalaya Pink Salt because they have bad practices, with their, for all intents and purposes, their employees, mining the salts. So I said, let me do some research because I love Himalayan Pink Salt because it is loaded with minerals. , the pH of the sea salt and the Himalayan pink salt is very similar to our own blood that we. And so it's not gonna spike our blood pressure and it's just really delicious. So after doing my research, I realized what I will start saying moving forward is that with Himalayan pink salt, it's, as with everything else, you wanna be really clear on where you're sourcing your food, and then only you have to live with that.
So, I personally choose to get organic eggs, organic meats, organic. And so I feel confident and comfortable that the animals that I am eating have been treated humanely. Um, other people have different opinions, and it's a case by case situation. Everybody's bodies are different. Everybody's political beliefs are different. So I would say do your research, uh, and if you are concerned about any, I guess, harmful treatment of people in the process of getting your Himalayan pink salt. Don't buy that company. Buy from another company where you know they are treating their people fairly and you have my word. I'm putting my hand up. Wait, is it the left hand or the right hand? That makes it honest. I'll put up both hands, and a little raise the roof, you have my word. The next bag of Himayan Pink salt. I will be researching that company to make sure I am very clear on where that salt is coming from and how they treat their employees. So I think that was a lot of, a lot. But hopefully that answered both AK and my other friend who was trying to be very kind and trying to steer me in the right direction.
Okay, the very last question, this one is just almost made me cry cuz it was so dear to my heart and I totally got where she was coming from. This was from, from my friend initials tr I'm not, have you noticed I'm not calling anybody out?
I'm, I'm getting better in my old age, trying to keep people's confidentiality. Actually I think I've always been good at that, but hopefully I'm getting better at all. All of it. All of it. so her question was, Michelle, do you ever slip up? And why? That got my heart is because the answer is yes, I am human.
But the other answer also is no, because I am human and I am an empowered human. So as I was talking to Paul Simmons today on his live Facebook Live, you should go check it out. We had a lot of fun and we made, my pistachio dream smoothie and it was awesome. So check him out. Paul Simmons got his page, Facebook, and I think I have a link on my page.
But with that said, these, the subject of Oreos and I will admit to you the people in my circle, I tried those, uh, gluten-free, uh, Oreos. The Oreo brand makes gluten-free version now, and I got sucked into what I call health washing. You know, whenever a big company slaps on the label of gluten-free, it's like, ugh, there's something I can eat. Like I totally revert back to like 10 years ago when there was hardly anything to eat. I'm like, oh, I can eat it. But sure enough, I had three of. , they were delicious, but my stomach just really hurt. And when I looked at the ingredients, I think the second ingredient was corn syrup. So again, we talked about the corn, it's inflammatory, so that was inflaming me.
There's still a ton of other sugars in it, so we don't need those sugars in our body cuz those are also inflammatory. Probably another reason why I had the tummy ache. So yeah, so the big picture is I am going to work my hardest that anybody I come into contact with is not gonna be looking at food as good or bad. I want you to look at food as I'm empowered to make this choice. So, you know, today I chose to make this delicious green smoothie and it was good. And you see all this energy I have tonight. I made a decision that worked for me today. When we get done with this, , there's a, well, actually I'm gonna have, , leftovers from Steve Cakes.
He made this delicious chicken and veggie, so I'll have that. but the point is, before I like just name off everything I eat, is it, if I choose to have something that's slightly off my Whole Foods plan or slightly off my healthy choices, I'm going into it knowing what it's going to do to my. So I don't beat myself up.
It's like, yeah, I wanted a little taste of that, but then the next meal I'm gonna get right back on the wagon. but even that terminology I don't necessarily like, cause that still kind of plays into the diet culture and I am so not into the diet culture. I'm into the feeling good in our body, getting the nutrition in our mouths in our body.
That is what I'm all about. So t r I adore you and I want you to keep. the way you need to eat for your individual lifestyle and your body. I just hope I can encourage you to keep making really, really good choices to get stuff into your body and into your baby's mouth. All right, so, and actually before I go into any, new questions, so think of some more questions if you have some for me.
Marlina, back to your question about the cookware. So, yes. back to the toxins we were talking about. You know, glass versus plastic, the cookware, that heat, especially with a lot of the non-stick, pots and pans, that heat is actually melting some of that plastic and getting those chemicals into your food. So if at all possible for anybody who's listening, if you have that non-stick cookware in your cabinets if you can afford to replace it. And I know sometimes it has to be piece by piece. , with just full either, , cast iron actually can be really good. , or let's see it up. I'll just show you what we have in our kitchen.
The, so this is my walk. This is one of my best friends besides my blender. Oh, my husband. This one's probably my best friend because I just love the size. And let's see, it's, it says copper core, but it's all metal. So I know that there's not gonna be any chemical leakage in our food. So that's what I cook with. And all of our skillets are of the same cookware, but I'm just gonna double check your comment to make sure I answered your question.
Okay. So, yeah, so cast iron is okay, but you said, but you're leaning towards the hex clad, so I'm not familiar with hex clad, but that's kind of sounding like the non-stick. So, I guess now I'm going to empower you, diva to do some research and just see what that hex clad is made out of and see how solid those surfaces are, because I do not want you poisoning anybody in your family. Hope that helps.
Okay. I saw as I was scrolling up that Jill's like, wait, why don't we want. Awesome question. So soy is an inflammatory. and it's because of the way that it's typically harvested similar to corn. you know, corn 50 years ago was fine and that's probably why if, uh, you talked to your grandparents today and said, no, no more corn, they'd be like, what are you talking about?
It's what we grew up on. You know, the corn, the potatoe. Well, yeah, but even 50 years ago, the soil that was used was healthy and it had the nutrients, but the way it's like mass produced and mass harvested right now, the soil just hasn't had a, a chance to catch up. So soy and the corn, , both very similar that way, they just don't have the nutrients in them. They might have similar textures and because of different. Chemicals that people are placing back in the soil, they might even taste good, but the original structure of the soy is not the same. We eat the soy, let's say. It's not organic.
We don't know where it's coming from. , it's affecting our brains in ways that we're not even aware of sometimes. , if you do still have the soy milk or if you're eating some tofu, just check in with yourself, like see how you feel even five, 10 minutes later. And feel free to, you know, DM me and let me know even if you don't feel anything.
I, I'm actually sincerely curious cause I can tell you when I have soy, usually in it for tensely like, I don't know that it's in my deal or in my meal. , my energy just feels like, ugh. Like I just feel a little more in. That is my opinion about soy. All right, so there's that. All right, let's see. So Jill says, thank you my friend. I'm switching to chocolate milk right now, even though I hate milk. Ah, well I . I'm so glad you brought that up. Jill. Thanks for bringing up the chocolate milk because I am really hoping and praying, you're not saying that's chocolate dairy milk because that's probably the bigger inflammatory. So if you had to choose between soy or dairy milk, I actually would choose the soy even with all of the chemicals in the soy, but you've got the unnatural hormones in the milk. Um, and there is of course the organic dairy. So if you're getting organic milk, that's slightly better up the scale. But we have been told a lie for so many years because dairy milk is not building up our bones, it's actually eating away at our bones, you grab the spinach, you grab the almonds, you grab these whole foods from nature that already have the calcium in them, and our body's recognizes whole natural foods. The cows milk, I always say, is for baby cows. So again, that is from the research that I have done, that is from the school that I have gone to. That is also my personal experience and opinion, but I will not judge. I just won't drink it when you have me over to your house for dinner. How about that? All right, let's see.
And Paul says, and it looked delicious. Oh, that milk is really good. Yeah. My kiddos actually eat it, or excuse me, drink it. And Angel, the 14 year old, she loves to make it now. So score, because in the beginning of course, they're like, eh, we get real milk at our other parents. I'm like, well, good for you at this. We're drinking almond milk, but I also make cashew milk, which is a little bit sweeter and I love it. And then also Brazil nut milk. That's like a little bit of a, a royal treat cuz Brazil nuts are a little bit more expensive, but they're so good for us, so great at supporting our brains. And they also relax our nervous system.
So some hip tips there. Let's see. And so Beatrice said something about aluminum. So Beatrice, hopefully you're saying you have aluminum or that you don't use aluminum on your pots and pan. If you could clarify, I'd love to help and while you are saying that or typing it, I will go ahead and just jump ahead and let you know. We don't wanna be anywhere near aluminum, whether it's the aluminum foil, aluminum cans, cuz there's a really strong link, , from aluminum to Alzheimer's and some other brain diseases. So if you do have those aluminum pots and pans in your kitchen, again, no judgment here, but if you can slowly replace them, pop by pot, I think you'll notice a difference in your and your body will thank you for it. All right.
Okay, well I think that's it. I'm gonna put my glasses on just in case there's anything I missed on this screen. Oh, so Berice is saying that aluminum is what the hex cla is. No, I have good old cast iron. Yes. Beatrice is on a roll. I love it. I absolutely love it. Nicely done. Thank you for that clarification.
All right, well, do we have any more questions before we move on with our evening? For those of us here in Colorado, it's nice and warm and sunny. My family's over at the Cherry Creek Dam right now. I think I'm gonna head over there and see if I can stay out of the water. Let's see. Oh, Steve Black, pop right back in. He says, what are some great summer snack ideas for kids? Ah, it's almost like I planted that question, but I didn't, which is really good partners, but awesome question. So two things with that. One, you all have to mark your calendars. June 15th. I. Over the moon. Excited. I'm joining a panel with my role model, Megan Toner, she is the founder of the Academy of Culinary Nutrition School. That's where I got my certification from. Uh, and she has invited me to join her to talk about exactly that, how to get more nutrition into picky eaters and even some older picky eaters. And so that ties right into your question, Steve Black. Thank you for asking. Snacks for children. Wow. So a couple things. One, we definitely want to be examples. Let me just take my glasses off for this. I can get comfortable. we wanna be examples. So as Jill was teasing me about all the lemons and limes behind me. yes. I actually truly do always have fruits and vegetables in our kitchen.
We always have nuts that the kids can just grab on the go. When I do grocery shopping, it either immediately. Usually when I have time, but if not grocery shopping before I go to bed that night, I am chopping and dicing the veggies so that we can all just grab and go. So the meal prep is really key in , just in being prepared and so that you're not waiting till the last minute and there's that.
What's for dinner tonight? It's like, well, one, we already ate meal plans, so look at the board where it's written down, , and two, if you're really. Grab the cut cauliflower that I cut for you. Um, pickles. I often put out pickles or olives while I'm here, you know, chopping things up and everybody's hungry, waiting for dinner so they can snack on the pickles, the olives.
What are some other good snacks that my kiddos like? , of course any of the fruits, like the grapes, the watermelon. We just got a new pineapple. So as soon as that gets ripe, we'll chop that up and that'll be a perfect snack. , and with the fruits though, I'll just warn you, you just wanna kind of put out enough that they can grab, but not enough that they're gonna stuff themselves because again, there's gonna be that high sugar content.
So a little bit of fruit. Awesome. A lot of fruit, not so great. Let's see. Another, well, I shared with you that Angel is making. almond milk now, sometimes begrudgingly, sometimes excitedly , but she is, you know, she's come around as with the other two. So it's like, if it's here, that's what they're gonna eat. also, with that said, I will say everybody's bodies are different. I will say that a million times. , but children in particular, they actually can process junk food a lot easier than. , slightly older bodies. So I really don't worry too much about what they're doing. I will say we monitor the sugar, of course, but they're kids. There's only so much you can monitor. So I hope that helps. And Steve, thank you also for that question because I do wanna give that more thought and perhaps you just gave me a good idea for a blog post where I can give concrete examples of some delicious snacks for children. So thank you. All right.
I saw some more movement. Let's see. So Jill says, how do you feel about frozen grapes to bring to the pool? Do they lose their nutrients if they're frozen? They don't. So that's awesome, I just got goosebumps cause I think maybe you and I, when we were kids, I think we did something with frozen grapes.
Like I just remember that was like all the rage, like you can really freeze grapes and they're delicious and they taste like this. Uh, Mini, these are mini popsicles . So no, I think that's an excellent snack too. Cute kids hydrated, and it's delicious and it's nutritious. So no, any nutrients that it might lose, it's gonna be very nominal and we want their bellies full with that fruit instead of that sugar and the candy. So, good job, mom. Nicely done. Let's see. . I'll put my glasses back on
All right, well thank you so much for joining me this evening. We did things a little different, tried with a check, didn't quite work. Tried with a casual t-shirt that worked cause I'm feeling cute you all had amazing questions and keep 'em coming like I am here to serve. I am sincere. Sincerely, sincerely, passionate about helping everybody feel empowered just to make healthy choices and make the best decisions for their own bodies, because the healthier that you are, the healthier our community will be.
So send me the DMs in real life. Of course, feel free to ask me questions, reply to my emails. In fact, if you're not on my email list, go to michellefox.com, sign up for my email list. I send them every week, there's always either a fun story or a great new recipe or all the above. So join me there, and then come see me on June 15th for the Culinary Nutrition Workshop.
And June 23rd, we're gonna learn how to make the nut milk. And that's it. All right, all my love. I'll see you on the other side.
Thanks so much for listening to Healthy Sexy Nutrition. Have you been driving, doing laundry or walking around the neighborhood? Sweet. I've got show notes for you at michellefox.com/podcast. Click over there when you are ready. I will let you know that on the page you will find resources to support what you just learned on today's show.
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Big love from your favorite culinary nutritionist and health coach. And until next week, keep showing up for yourself and know that you and your health matter. You deserve to live in a body and have a life that you love.
