#273: Dr. Kristi Funk and Chrissy Roth- Breast Cancer Prevention on a Plate
This week, we head into the kitchen for a flavorful cooking session with breast surgeon, Dr. Kristi Funk and physical therapist, Chrissy Roth!
In addition to whipping up creamy tofu ricotta and veggie-packed lasagna, Dr. Funk and Chrissy share eye-opening insights on diet and cancer risk—explaining the powerful role soy and other plant-based foods can play in disease prevention and healing.
They also celebrate the joy of cooking together, and how shared meals foster connection and encourage positive dietary changes with friends and loved ones.
From broth-sautéing techniques to sneaking extra veggies into meals, Chrissy and Kristi share tips to fight cancer with flavor!
Episode Highlights
4:05 Cooking with Chrissy Roth and Dr. Kristi Funk
8:25 The Cooking Journey and a Friendship Begins
12:55 Tofu, Soy, and Busting Through Old Health Myths
19:50 Preparing the Lasagna
23:00 The Rock-Star Herbs, Spices, and Ingredients that Pack a Healthy Punch!
34:00 Sharing Breast Cancer Awareness
42:55 The Celery Salad Story
49:05 Empowering Patients to Make Good Health Choices
1:05:15 Alcohol and Health Risks
1:19:45 Gratitude Reflections
Episode Resources
Get the lasagna recipe HERE
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Full Transcription via AI Transcription Service
I'm Rip Esselstyn, and you're listening to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast.
Introduction to PLANTSTRONG Podcast
[0:05] Do you happen to be hungry right now? I sure hope so, because you are in for a fun one today. We're going to head into the kitchen with Dr. Kristi Funk and Chrissy Roth to make some tasty tofu ricotta and a luscious lasagna right after these words from PLANTSTRONG.
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[1:19] Don't wait. This offer is only going to be available through Monday, November 4th at midnight or until we run out. You can use the code secret, S-E-C-R-E-T, secret, and then go to planstrong.com. And again, get 20% off your six pack of peanut curry secret sauce and elevate your meals today. I have been knee-deep in the plant-based world for well over two decades, and I love how the plant-based base is full of so many amazing people with energy, a zest for life, and a treasure trove of knowledge that you just can't resist.
[2:06] Dr. Kristi Funk and Chrissy Roth are two of these gems, and I have a special treat for you during this Breast Cancer Awareness Month. As many of you know, Dr. Kristi Funk is a well-known breast cancer and plant-based advocate in the LA area. She and Chrissy Roth, who is a physical therapist, a cycling instructor, and a fellow plant-based advocate they get together and cook frequently on dr funk's pink lotus power up youtube channel which i'll be sure to link to in today's show notes they came together a few months ago for our annual plant stock celebration and spent over an hour with me cooking tofu ricotta a gorgeous lasagna and a super simple veggie salad.
[2:59] I also got to ask them questions about their lives, their work, and to bring the good news about plants to as many people as possible. And because we are highlighting Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I wanted to share this interview because Dr. Funk answers so many questions that I had about risk factors, the causes of cancer, and lifestyle interventions that we can employ to ensure many years of healthy living. It's a really fun and delicious demo, but it's also super informative. So I wanted you to hear it and also potentially watch it. Now, because they're cooking throughout this episode, you're going to hear some background noise and descriptions of what they're doing. I would highly encourage you to watch the episode. I'll drop the YouTube link and the recipes in the show notes of today's episode, but I just know you're going to gobble it up.
Cooking with Chrissy and Dr. Kristi
[4:05] Chrissy Roth and Dr. Kristi Funk, welcome to Plant-Stock 2024. So fantastic to have you guys be part of this year's Brockstar lineup. And, you know, you guys, you guys are impressive on a number of levels. But firstly, let me say, it is like... What is it? 7.15 a.m. in California right now? Yeah, it's a little rough. I'm not going to lie.
[4:35] It's a coffee. We don't have a pile of mushrooms in front of us usually. We have our PCRM mushroom coffee, eat more plants. And then my favorite mug of all time, it says we are not ingredients. And it has these four little animals. Ethan, when he was six, bought me this with his own money for Christmas. Oh, that's so sweet. And for those that don't know who Ethan is, that's one of your sons. That's one of my triplet sons who are now 15. Wow. Wow. I like that. She always goes big. She's like, I'm not going to have one baby. I think I'll have three. This is just how she rolls. I just don't have time for three babies. I'm efficient.
[5:14] Well, for those that don't know Chrissy and Dr. Kristi, I want you to know that looking in the black with the cutoff sleeves, you've got, what do you call that shirt you're wearing, Chrissy? Okay. Yeah. So that's Chrissy on the left, and that's Dr. Chrissy on the right. For those that don't know, Chrissy Roth has been on the PLANTSTRONG podcast twice. The first time was episode number four. We were just getting started. we came out to your house and you and your husband JD for those that don't know your husband was the kind of the what the founder and the creator of The Biggest Loser he was yeah right transformational television shows yeah yeah yeah and you were the one to get him to transform along with your family to whole food plant-based right absolutely yep that's exactly right and that was about I don't know 14 or 15 years ago it's been it's been a long time now yeah yeah you guys are like, your old guard now in the movement we are for sure and then you were also on episode 124, which I think you guys appeared in one of the Plant-Stock episodes.
Meet the Guests
[6:33] And that may have been a replay of that. And then of course, we've got Dr.
[6:39] Kristi Funk, Christy and Chrissy. Wow. It's so close. It's incredible. People often think we're sisters. I'm like, yes, our mom couldn't think of a different name.
[6:48] Variations. Christine. Christine. Chrissy and Kristi. And that will never be confusing. Doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor. But yeah. Dr. Kristi, you have appeared three times. You were episode number 65, episode 114, and then 172. And for those that haven't had the privilege of listening to any of those, Dr. Kristi is the author of Breast the Owner's Manual, and it is absolutely brilliant and so wonderful. Yeah and now you guys and then you guys how did you guys like hook up and become friends.
[7:33] So we i was teaching this spin event i i taught spin forever and i was teaching this spin event like 400 bikes on the manhattan beach pier and or down by the manhattan beach pier i was one of the lead instructors and she was a doctor to one of my really good friends she was her surgeon um she did her breast uh mastectomy and she's like you know you need to meet my friend Kristi and and you know maybe she can ride with you because i needed like a you know a cool uh rider to ride with me and she rode with me and then like i think we were like we should get together next weekend with our families and we got together we played football on the beach and we just like and that was it like it was like fast friends yeah fast friends yeah that was 10 years yeah about 10 years ago. Wow. And then when did you decide to launch your Cooking Live with Chrissy and Dr. Kristi? We started that about 18 months ago. So it's called Cook Live with Chrissy and
The Cooking Journey Begins
[8:26] Dr. Kristi. And we just...
[8:28] Do a very similar setup to this but we have five cameras going on it's really kind of a fun show that my husband uh creates behind the scenes and our focus is obviously entirely plant-based but then to spotlight ingredients and dig a little deeper into studies and research and why why mushrooms why is it okay to eat soy why whole grains you know so we talk a little bit about that we'll debunk myths and that's our questions it's live so we you know we're taking questions from people and it's pretty fun well and we always have fun together so it's a good excuse.
[9:08] Just a little a little behind the scenes so we were getting everything set up uh this morning and all of a sudden we noticed a ladder in the background so these two are out there moving this ladder uh having an absolute ball jd like jd and our our biggest fights i've ever had with my husband was moving things he's like can you help me move this table and yeah i'm gonna work out and stuff but like i'll go to lift the table and i'm like barely hanging on to it this was a ladder like from here to heaven it was very long and she was not understanding that we needed counterbalance And she's like, oh, maybe if you move a little to the right, it's just a fall. The ladder's about to fall on her head. I had a little vision of it crashing through this floor to ceiling. No.
[9:55] Yeah. So did the tensions get high during that process? No, no. Always peace and love. Oh, good. We love that. Um, well, you, you guys, so I've invited you to be part of our Brockstar chef lineup and you're going to be cooking some recipes for us today. What are those recipes?
[10:20] Um, we are going to make, I make this, I've been making this lasagna for years and years. I kind of just came up with this tofu ricotta recipe that, um, I, I love and I'll, I make it all the time. So we're going to make like a tofu ricotta first, which is going to go in the lasagna, but we'll kind of show it to you because you can use it and you make it too. I mean, I do. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, you can use it on, in like stuffed shells. You can use it on a cracker with some tomatoes, you know, it's like ricotta cheese. It's delicious. It's very satisfying and it's so healthy because it's like tofu, nutritional yeast, lemon juice. But when you blend it all together and especially when you bake it, it takes on that consistency of baked ricotta. It's so good. So good.
[11:04] One of the things I love about the lasagna, though, is the marinara sauce. Today we're sauteing and putting the veggies in. But you should know that this is like the most masterful of all recipes to hide as many veggies as you want in blended, pureed form. Children, adults that grew up as picky children and never lost the pickiness. They all have no idea. There was actually a study looking at like hidden vegetable techniques and people consumed 4.5 more vegetables using the hidden technique and reported out no difference in like how much they found the food delightful and delicious. So there was no suffering in taste because of the veggies. And over the course of the next month, they ate about 400 fewer calories per day when they were eating hidden veggies. Because they're getting all that fiber. They don't even know it. Yeah. So it's something.
[12:00] And it's almost like it's almost like the smoothie trick where you put the vegetables in the smoothie. Right. But this time you're doing it in the lasagnas.
[12:10] Exactly. In the sauce. So one time I got a little overzealous and I put so much zucchini that the sauce was basically a brown color. The red and the green just made like this muddy brown and it did not fool Justin. He was like, what is wrong with this sauce? I know. I've been accused of doing that a lot. Like you try to help, like make something a little healthier. Like I used to make this banana bread and it started with like just a very typical recipe for banana bread. Yeah. And then I started cutting down the sugar, adding some, you know, applesauce. Then I started adding flax. And I was like, I get to get flax into my family, you know? So I'm like flax, flax, flax. And then this thing, slowly it turned into a brick. So I'm like, here's the banana bread. And I see everybody just kind of turn around and walk away. I'm like, what are you doing? So you do have, yes, you want to add healthy food, but you also, it also has to be palatable.
Tofu and Health Myths
[12:57] Let me just start by saying, so.
[13:03] Tofu you're you guys you're using tofu yes you know Chrissy Dr. Kristi what do you say to all the women out there all the men out there that are afraid of soy and tofu because of the, estrogen can i give you my one-liner and then you'll give the science yeah okay so my one-liner is you should be way more afraid to not eat tofu than eat tofu oh that's that that is intriguing it is and she'll tell you why what what does she mean well so you're right so we've got these phytoestrogens plant-based estrogens predominantly genistein and dadezine that are found in tofu but also all soy products so soybeans edamame miso natto did i say tempeh and soy milk right this is a typical soy milk and tofu are the main ways we consume it and here's the deal i you say what do we say i say i'm so sorry because.
[13:59] For 18 years i was an anti-tofu person whoopsies i as a doctor all i knew was that these phytoestrogens existed so do you may not know that 80 percent of all breast cancer is fed and fueled by estrogen so i was like how discriminating do you think this receptor is it doesn't care if it came from your own ovary or your fat cells which make estrogen or horse urine which is what we get our drug prem pro from what we don't really use anymore but anyway the point is yeah he cares oh that's just genicine come on in girl like no it just is gonna make that cancer grow well it did in mice so i will say there was that they used to graft i'm against animal experimentation but this happened so learn from it the mice were grafted with breast cancers fed soy and uniformly the tumors grew so everyone was like that was all i needed to tell women how much do you love soy lady like it's out do almond milk so what the science started to show was ah we have two receptors for estrogen in our bodies alpha is on the cancer beta with 1600 percent more affinity is hit by the phytoestrogens and soy and activated beta does a few amazing things, one of which is to.
[15:17] Down. So it actually becomes anti-breast cancer. It's an anti-estrogen in the way we think about bad estrogen on cancers. So in point of fact, all of the human studies have shown on average a 32% drop in breast cancer, occurrence, recurrence, and death for high versus low consumers. There's never been a single human study in soy that showed a detriment, an increase in breast cancer and almost every single one is high like 25 to 60 percent drop i've rarely seen anything that's like just a 10 drop but everything is a drop so we were wrong about the receptors we're wrong about all products and so i just make sure it's organic and at the very least non-gmo, gmo soy is so dumped on with glyphosate that glyphosate potentiates breast cancer in its own.
[16:09] Never um non-gmo and what about in men no i'm sorry never not you know what i mean yeah, and never do uh so also a lot of men and i know it's like rampant on the internet again these you know these man boobs yeah the influencers are saying oh right yeah i can't eat soy because of the man boobs so so that's not true to spell that as well yeah dr missina who's a fabulous soy researcher did a huge meta-analysis that came out in 2020 that looked at 417 all human studies and soy. It wasn't just focused on breast cancer, it was all of it. Ovulation in women, semen levels in men, little man boobs, which people like me call gynecomastia. Then it also looked at endocrine disruption. People say they have thyroid problems, can't have soy. And what they concluded with this 417 powered study was that there's absolutely no endocrine disruption with the consumption of salt. Isn't that something else? So it actually can regulate the hormonally active compounds in our bodies. And Kristi, how do you dream about these numbers and stats and studies? How do you like recite them like that? I mean, do you practice them when you're on your spin bike? I mean, that's just remarkable. I think about the studies a lot. I may dream about them. It could be true.
[17:39] I lecture a lot. I lecture a lot. And some of these are just factoids that have become. She can also read something and then spit the stats out like two days later.
[17:49] Did you major in mathematics or something? No, that was my lowest grade of all time at Stanford was in economics. Not that that's math, but it's like, you know, I did not understand. And my husband said that 30 years later, I still do not understand.
[18:07] Well, it's certainly impressive. Hey, so, Chrissy. We do. We're going to do it all day. Let's talk and cook, yeah. I know. Chrissy, what were you slicing there? Was that like. Oh, it's zucchini. Yeah, I was like talking and slicing. It's just zucchini. yeah is that going into what's that going into it's going into the lasagna we've been pressing tofu without you knowing it yes yeah and we're going to throw that in the food processor and we're going to make our yummy tofu ricotta so you've been pressing tofu why why even pressing tofu why don't you get like a super extra firm high protein tofu that's like a brick when you send your son to the store and you ask him to get that one sometimes they come home with a different one but normally we get the super firm organic one from trader joe's that is a brick love that yeah but sometimes your son comes home and he's you know what i'm not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth send my son out shopping and he says yeah i'll do it for you and he came back without zucchini i might add yes that was me oh with you that was me um do we want two blocks we probably do okay yeah okay so well no did you say are you gonna wear gloves is that what he said? No, no, no. Yeah, let's do it. I'm going on a three-week RV trip in three days. Are you taking this with me? I'm taking this with me. Okay, yeah, but lasagna is getting frozen and then going on an RV trip. Lasagna travels.
[19:37] Traveling lasagna.
[19:40] We're just going to squeeze this one out. Sorry, sorry, Rip. What are you saying? No, I was going to say that it looks like a lot of those products that you've purchased there are from Trader Joe's.
Preparing the Lasagna
[19:51] Yeah, we're Trader Joe's fans. Yeah, I would say that we give a lot of things at Trader Joe's. Yeah. All right. So what's the first thing we're going to be creating? Okay. We're going to make the ricotta, but before we create it, you're going to take your whole wheat lasagna noodles and put hot water over them and then just ignore them until it's time to assemble. What am I? I'm just softening up the wheat because I will never boil them. That's a waste of time and they stick together and I can't figure it out. And then I found out you don't need to ever boil lasagna. It usually says no boil noodle. You don't need those. Any whole grain lasagna noodle that you're using does not need to be boiled. So I may have just transformed your life. You're welcome. The funny thing is you probably don't even have to soak it, but it's safer to soak it because sometimes they end up a little, like, chewy. You don't want that. And the vegetables, too. You can put the vegetables straight in there, but they're much better if you brought saute them first so we're going to do that.
[20:52] Yeah no i know they're too hard you have to you have to do it for too long it depends what veggies you can do well you can do it if you grate the veggies okay but you don't want to do it with planks of veggies so all right well let's go ahead and make this, Kristi, Kristi i do need to let you know that um in the my raise the roof lasagna that was in the engine to cookbook from 2009 i i use the same technique where you just let it cook in the sauce yes yes it is such a smart move um so who's the who's who is is one of you the better cook or you both can oh we're both talented but she's better but she's really i mean you've come along so much your mastectomies are in my mastectomies.
[21:47] They're really messy. No, I do not do that. I am a physical therapist, so I know a little more about science in the body than the average person, I would say. Definitely. But, yeah, I'm not going to be doing surgery anytime soon. All right. Talk to me. Talk to me, Chrissy. You're making some moves here, and I don't know what you're doing. Okay. So I'm putting the – and you guys have the recipe, right? The recipe. We do. Absolutely. Okay. So I'm putting, um, a table, two blocks of tofu. I put a half a cup of nutritional yeast and I'm putting in a tablespoon of lemon juice, um, some garlic powder. Let's, let's get into this. And yeah, let's get into it. Let's just roll up our sleeves. There you go. And some salt. And Kristi uses the salt that is, um, it's like potassium. No salt salt. It's potassium chloride salt. So it's not there's no sodium and i know you're not a salt hammer so sticking with the potassium chloride but i'm right i'm fascinated with this no salt salt so what is it a brand or what can you tell me about it oh yes here you take uh let me put the camera down because i and let me show it to you and i had five different brands and i did taste tests i had more i did five different potassium chlorides. I think it's just the same.
[23:16] Okay, I'm just putting a piece of basil and oregano in here, just so you don't miss that. So it's called Morton's Salt Substitute, and does it taste just like, does it have the same effect as salt? It has the same effect as salt. You just use the same amount, so if the recipe calls for half a teaspoon, that's what you use. In the beginning, you'll notice it's not quite as salty, but then your taste buds adjust, and within two weeks, my husband, who put salt on way too much of everything, just only uses this and doesn't miss real salt at all. And instead it's potassium chloride, you said? Yes. Wow. Instead of sodium chloride. So you're missing out on the sodium, which is the thing that causes hypertension and endothelial damage, as your dad would wax on about. So, yes. Okay. So this is our tofu ricotta, which took me all of two seconds to make. And it has like a nutty cheesy flavor from the nooch and it has the salt and it has the herbs and you can put fresh herbs but i we did dried herbs and this can go on a cracker with some roasted tomatoes it i love stuffing it in shells like making stuffed shells um anything that calls for ricotta this is your uh this is your go-to see how fast that was yeah i want to try it.
[24:38] And how much lemon juice was in there? I put a tablespoon and then you taste it and you can always add more. Nutritional yeast is interesting. It actually has quite a bit of fiber, three grams of fiber per tablespoon. It obviously is a source of B12 for us plant-based folk, but I just always supplement. I'm not going to leave it to the chance of enough nutritional yeast in a given day. So always take your B12, but there is B12 in there.
[25:05] I will too say, if I make this to go on crackers, i usually sneak in a tablespoon or two i'll only use one block we're making a huge lasagna but i'll sneak in a tablespoon or two of um hummus if i'm doing it um you know eating it raw versus cooking it in something you can also put it and cook it the tahini and hummus makes it like a richer yeah it makes it a little more mommy yeah but um yeah i usually do it without but you can you can try it you can play around and add some hummus and see if you like it better and don't blend it too much you don't want it liquefied you just want it pulsed so it's you know like ricotta consistency not do you have a uh do you have a food processor of choice that you guys have in your kitchens oh we do um this cuisinart yeah cuisinart i believe i think i have a cuisinart as well yeah but there's so many different levels of food processing so many different attachments so you want to figure out like am i just using it like this all the time where i'm just pulsing things in there or am i going to use it to uh do vegetables you know slice um because it's great they usually have like an upper attachment where you can grate things and you can slice things and it's really easy if you're doing a lot so it just depends who's for those that that have not followed you guys on cook live with chrissy and dr chrissy whose kitchen are we in right now this is my kitchen there's my kids on the fridge.
[26:32] Dr. Christie, two years ago, when you were part of Plant-Stock, you had just appeared on the Rachel Ray show with your like four point plan. And you had a food of the year back then. And I don't know if you remember what it was.
[26:52] It was absolutely mushrooms and you specifically said that your your mushroom of choice at the time was the white button because of its capacity the lower estrogen levels right go ahead the winner so what it is is it's an aromatase inhibitor aromatase is an enzyme that sits around in your fat cells and all day long it's like give me some of that adrenal gland juice which it gets in the form of androstenedione and testosterone, turns it into estrogen and, And now, voila, you're fueling cancer. So it turns out that as an aromatase inhibitor, high versus low mushroom consumers have in different studies between like a 25% and 65% drop in breast cancer. There was this one particular study in Asian women who eat more white mushrooms and drink more green tea. So they had a 65% drop for eating the equivalent of a half of a white button mushroom a day, like the size of the tip of your thumb a day, 65% drops. When they had three cups of green tea a day to boot in addition to mushrooms, it was like an 87% drop. So. Wow. Three mushrooms. Chroom it up.
[28:09] Chroom it up. So if that was, I mean, that was two years ago. Do you have a food of the year in 2024?
[28:18] Ooh, gosh, this is putting me on the spot. What would it be? Gosh, I feel like I have, like, experimented with some new foods. What have we done lately? Okay, I can toss out some food. I will think about it. Let us smell that one over. So I remember several years ago we talked about some things. I still like to know if you're still hot on them. So, for example, we talked about cinnamon that you were like. Okay, cinnamon. Anti-inflammatory spice. I put it every single day into a steel cut oats or my famous smoothie.
[28:50] Yep. Oh, and then I heard you earlier, Chrissy mentioned flax seeds. You guys still a fan of the flax seeds? Yeah. Yeah. One to two tablespoons a day. Flax seeds have the most awesome anti-carcinogenic powers and their main superpower is that it slows down the division rate of the cancer. So the rate at which it divides is called the ki 67 it's the proliferation index right so it's a percentage between zero and 100 the faster the sucker the worse it's going to be in terms of outcome and prognosis but i will also add that you may want to start slow with the flax maybe a teaspoon in your smoothie because um my son i i started putting flax in their smoothies i didn't tell them like there's flax in your smoothie and let's just say in high school my son was having some issues at school spending yeah yeah and he wanted to and i said oh i just started putting flax in your smoothies and he was like very upset with me um so go easy start start easy and then you know keep adding a little bit at a time i think that's true of a lot of things you know you don't want to like go crazy the first time with something that uh could it's going to change your gut. That could make you unpopular with the ladies. Exactly.
[30:02] Now, you guys are slicing and dicing, and we can't see what you're doing.
Exploring Food Choices
[30:10] We were just going to show you. Normally, I would heat this. There's broth in here. Normally, I would heat it up first, but in the interest of time, we're just throwing this in this pan, and I'm going to broth saute it. How do you broth saute it? You put a little broth in the pan, you get a sizzling, and then you add the veggies to it. And with zucchini, you know, I'm going to toss it around a little bit, but it does, it ends up caramelizing. You don't want to put a ton of broth in there and simmer them because then you're simmering versus sauteing. We want them, I like them to come out as if I was using oil. Okay. So, so that they're kind of caramelized and brings out the flavor profile of the vegetables a lot more. So in the perfect world, this would be simmering already. And then I would add the zucchini, probably a little less than this. And I, you know, but again, in the interest of time, and it's, it's still going to taste good. It's going to, you're going to eat the lasagnas.
[30:59] And I put so much zucchini in there. Chrissy, Chrissy, is that a caraway pan? It is a caraway pan. These are my pans. Oh yes, that's right. And yeah, so this is pink. I also have a green set that I took camping. Bad idea. Yeah. I took them camping and I destroyed my green set. Yeah. You know what I have found is that some of these amazing pans, they don't do well at high heat. They like medium or unless. I found that out the expensive way. I'm destroying my green caraway, which I still take camping. Non-stick pans are rough. You can be really rough on them. And we are rough. I'm rough on my pants. My husband, Jamie's really rough on them. He's always like, I see him with a fork. I'm like, you can't use a fork on that. So yeah, you have to be, either get really good ones or be prepared to change them out here and there. Or cases that aren't nonstick, like your good old Calflon, not Calflon. Ah, it'll pop in my head.
[32:03] The PTFE? Yeah, no, just like your basic pan that is not nonstick, yeah. And then you'll have to. Versus coated, like, because the coated ones, I feel like the coating is, like, kind of. Fragile, yeah. Yeah, or you could go really good and get, like, La Creuset, which are. Right. The OG pans that are amazing. Yes. We're going to have this going. We won't stand by it the whole time, but, again, in the interest of time. So but when you brought saute, you're going to add a little at a time, toss it in the broth as it's simmering and it'll cook down and you just add a little broth at a time. So it's like kind of the pan's almost drying out and then you're adding a little more broth. And I know, you know, what are the yes, but but this is great. It's always great to kind of, you know, revisit all this. What are the different vegetables that you're going to have inside this lasagna? We're going to have zucchini. And we have our white buttons and spinach because we love cruciferous that whole kingdom is a must have at every meal and you know spinach cooks down you you can start with the enormous thing of spinach and then you're like what happens i always wonder how restaurants like how do they have enough how do they have enough spinach because they give you like a good serving of spinach and i'm like oh my gosh i know where that started you know i would think the whole kitchen spilled his spinach.
[33:22] Dr. Kristi, I have to ask you this question because I find it so fascinating. If you could rattle off for us, tell me what percent of breast cancer risk is genetic? What's the average age that women get breast cancer? Give me these stats because I can't tell you how many women or friends I've talked to just in the last three years where, oh yeah, my wife just had breast cancer. My sister just had breast cancer.
Breast Cancer Awareness
[33:52] I'm absolutely stunned and amazed how ubiquitous it seems to be. It's so ubiquitous. So in 2020, breast surpassed lung as the number one cancer on planet earth. So that's why it feels so ubiquitous. You would think that by 2024, we would be smarter, bigger, faster, taller, stronger, you know, like less cancer, we would learn and improve, but in fact, the numbers are rising year after year, and a recent meta-analysis of looking from 2010 to 2020 in all of the cancer databases in the U.S. Showed an alarming year after year rise in cancers in people under 50.
[34:37] I think the number one rapid rise was in gallbladder cancer, but in breasts specifically, since that's where my focus went. It was a 1% per year rise year after year in women under 50, which I don't know how you digest these stats because you don't maybe probably focus on them. But that's like unprecedented. That is a rapid train toward destruction. It is awful. So in terms of the numbers that you were asking me, the median age of breast cancer in the U.S., so half at and above and half below, 62 is where our cancer falls. So 50% of all cancers happen in 62 up and 50% happen under the age of 62.
[35:22] And in terms of round numbers, we have almost 300,000 invasive cancers happening in the U.S. This year. That is in addition to about 60,000 in situ, stage zero breast cancers. So in total, we're looking at almost 350,000 breast cancers that we have to deal with this year in some capacity, which usually translates into surgery for sure. But then what kind of surgery? Lumpectomy, mastectomy. We do a lot of over-treatment in my opinion, but still, if you're the woman diagnosed, it's alarming, it's frightening. And sometimes we get really extreme with what we suggest to do, right? So there's surgery, radiation, chemo, anti-estrogen pills, which wreak havoc with everywhere you have estrogen receptors. So, yeah, we'd like to block the ones on cancer, but it blocks it everywhere. So, hello, hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, vaginal dryness, mood swings, itchy skin, thinning hair, divorce. No, divorce isn't actually a direct consequence of the pills, but it's indirect, right? Like people can't feel like not themselves. They get a lot of brain fog. And that's not to mention the other things that then happen with the lack of estrogen to the heart, to the brain, to your bones. It's a horrible thing. So, yeah, those are the numbers. When your best question so far today was what percentage of this is genetic? And here the answer may surprise some people. It's only 5 to 10 percent.
[36:51] Wow. About eight as an average, eight percent of all women diagnosed with breast cancer who then test for a gene mutation such as BRCA, CHECK2, PALB2, eight percent will in fact have inherited a gene mutation from either mom or dad, which means conversely, 90 to 95 percent of all women diagnosed with breast cancer can't blame their parents, can't blame their genetics. And you really don't want to blame fate, although I have to say every once in a while when I have my 27-year-old with a breast cancer who hasn't even lived long enough, badly enough to explain the genetic mutations arriving where we are right now, like that does seem to be inexplicable. But those may be the sensational stories, and they're tragic. I'm not dismissing them. I'm just saying quantity-wise, they are a very, very few percent, right? So we've got under 5%, really inexplicable. Maybe 5% to 10% over here, genetic inherited mutations predispose you. But as we like to say, genes load the gun, but diet and lifestyle pull the trigger.
[37:59] A little bit less true, I want to say, with some of these gene mutations. In other words, they're so wicked. They just don't allow your DNA that gets mutated to get fixed very readily, no matter what you are eating or not eating doing or not doing thinking or not thinking it the power in kale just can't undo it right yeah so here we have though we're gonna put the mushrooms in let's go let's let's walk and talk yeah let's walk and talk okay so here's so okay you see the um broth is sizzling okay that's that's how you brought saute there's just a tiny bit in there it's like just sliding in the bottom of the pan now i'm putting my mushrooms in and i'm just going to kind of stand here and toss them around right? You can see the zucchini is already doing its thing. It's starting to.
[38:45] Over here you can see so so Kristi how important is it is it to kind of saute the zucchini would that not saute itself in the no we both tried it and it was a big fail for both of us uh it was just hard you know when you're biting into lasagna you want it to be like nice and you want that mouthfeel it's like kind of like soft and it's squishy and it's not, you don't want to be biting into something in lasagna that you have to chew on forever. And we both experience that. If you grate it, it's a different story. I've grated it before and it was fine. But if you're doing planks, which I prefer, because I like in the lasagna, you can see it. You serve it to someone. They can see the nice soft zucchini.
[39:35] And in which case, yes, I definitely recommend sauteing it first. And now i have the mushrooms and you can see that the it's cooking off the the broth is cooking off and these guys are gonna we'll we'll revisit them you don't have to i mean you can, saute them the whole time mushrooms also lose a lot of their own liquid um so they kind of sweat it out a little bit so you don't have to add a lot of broth to mushrooms but well let me let me ask you this i'm getting ahead of myself but do you have a whole layer of the ricotta in there or do you just put in clumps on the top how do you i do layer so you'll see but we layer sauce on the pan first uh on the lasagna pan oh we're gonna use that pan okay got you so we do sauce and then you do then i do a layer of the ricotta then i do a layer of the vegetables.
[40:27] And then more sauce and a noodle and then i layer it again because i like spreading ricotta on the noodles because it spreads easier because you have a hard surface right surface yeah and you can do clumps um but it i i don't know that's just the way i do it everybody you know you can experiment and and play around but i like i like every bite to have that tofu ricotta because it's so good i don't want to have to be searching the clumps on top are decorative yeah those are decorative yeah i finished okay okay got it yep all right now so what's the game plan now are we are we waiting for this stuff to cook we are so we're making celery salad yeah we're gonna make a celery salad and rip why don't you tell the celery salad story well okay okay so when i went over to uh Chrissyand JD Roth's house to interview them for episode number four of the PLANTSTRONG podcast in 2019, Imight add Chrissy was like oh let me let me um make you guys dinner and so she made dinner for me and the whole crew. I think I had.
[41:33] Four people with me and she made the most incredible dinner i remember a lentil soup that was to die for and then the thing and then i think you had another dish or two but the thing that was most remarkable in its simplicity and its flavor profile and taste was a celery salad i'm like, you gotta be kidding me. A celery salad.
[41:59] And everybody was wiped out impressed by it. Is that, is that the story that you remember?
[42:06] Yeah, that is, that is. And the funny thing about that is the funny thing about that salad was I had never made that before. And JD said, Oh, Rip's coming over with one of his producers. And then you guys all walked in and it wasn't just, you know, there were like a bunch of you. And luckily I had made a huge pot of lentil soup. So I was like, okay, but I can't just serve that. There's not going to be enough for everybody to have seconds of the soup. So I need to make something else. I started running through my kitchen. I'm like, okay, I have celery. I have lemons. I have smoked almonds. And I have dates. All right, that'll be good because you have the smoky and the sweet and the celery. And I'm like, so I made it. And I tasted it. I was like, oh, it's pretty good. And then luckily you loved it. So I was so happy. And we were able to feed everybody, which made me really happy because that's like, That's one of my worst nightmares is like not having enough food for people,
The Celery Salad Story
[42:53] hungry people, right? You guys are working hard. You're traveling around. I was like, so anyway, it worked out fine, but I was definitely sweating it a little bit. So as you can see, Chrissy is chopping the celery and she's cutting it into pretty small bite-sized pieces. So you're not like chomping on celery incessantly. And then we have some smoked almonds, which add a lot of that smoky flavor. And I like to really chop them fine, even to like where there's a little powder, because you use as many nuts. And I know... Do you buy the almonds smoked or do you smoke them yourself? How does that work? Yeah, you buy them smoked. They have them at Trader Joe's. They have them at Whole Foods.
[43:33] And, you know, there's nothing but smoky flavor and a little salt. And we don't add a lot of salt to the salad. So we'll take it in the almonds. And then what do you do with your dates? How do you cut those up? Those also, I cut them really small. I half them and then like little slices. These are pitted. Yeah. Why don't you show? And then when you're cutting them up, I'm sure it hangs onto the knife and you got to get all. Yeah. Okay. So it's just here. I do that. And then, and you know, you always have to double check your dates, even if they're pitted. Occasionally there's some pits in there and that's the last thing you want to serve to someone and have them break their teeth at your dinner.
[44:08] So there's also sometime that little end cap on the dates. That's really tough. Like you can't chew it. And that ends up, if that ends up in a food processor, it's a really big hassle because you know, if it ends up in a blender, cause then you're, you're drinking a smoothie and you keep getting all these little pits and it's it's not fun so do do be do take care when if you're a new new to dates uh take care when you're you're uh chopping them to make sure that all the pits are out so should we check that again is it is it looking different looking good okay it's looking good all right so they're really they're like they're getting they're so they're very juicy mushrooms so there's a lot of okay yeah so you can see how we've got a lot of moisture happening coming out of these shrooms these anti-cancer mushrooms um and then i just added a little bit more broth to the zucchini because it was starting to stick to the bottom of the pan, i like that i like it to get like a little sticky that's that's the sweet spot there you know hey dr christie yeah i want to ask you what are the three big priorities in your life.
[45:19] God. Yep. Family. Yeah. And killing cancer. Kicking cancer's ass. Yeah. All right. All right. So, so, yeah, we're getting over here. So I'm chopping the celery. My, my patient has this family that's made knives in germany forever i think um and this she gave me uh two knives from their set it's called messermeister oh yeah messermeister from germany this is the um oliva elite and this knife can cut let me tell you i love it nice, the other knife i think it's good to have at least one good knife like splurge and get one amazing knife at least uh yeah and about this size or even a little smaller than this is the one that i would pick my friend just gave me a knife and i'm like in love with this knife and i'm just so hoping i don't chop my finger off with it because it's so sharp and also sharpen your knives keep them sharp it's not fun cutting veggies or anything else with a dull knife So, Chrissy and Dr. Kristi, I have a question for you both. We're back. Yes.
[46:41] So, Dr. Kristi. Yes. When you see a patient and you say, listen, probably one of the best things that you can do to kind of. Kick cancer's ass is whole food plant-based what your how do they respond they look at you like you got to be crazy or do you kind of because you are whole food plant-based does that give, does that give you a little bit more like confidence in sharing the message and them embracing it and chrissy what do your friends and family think about what you and jd and family are Dylan. Yeah. Um, you want to answer first or you want me to answer? Okay. This is going really well over here. I'm shutting it off because we're done with the mushrooms.
[47:31] Okay. So, I mean, for me, it's, well, it's easier now, right? Rip, you know that than 14 years ago, because there's a lot more awareness. There's a lot more products. There's a lot more food out there. That's whole food, plant-based. Uh, cause even 14 years ago, you kind of had to make your own way, right? You had to make your own food. You could never go out to dinner and find something that was whole food plant-based without someone like deconstructing a dinner and taking everything out of it and having like kind of a flavorless situation. Found a pit. Am I pit at all? See, she found a pit. Case in point.
[48:03] So I think it's gotten easier. I think there's more awareness. I think more people are kind of cluing into, well, they're cluing. It's interesting. I think more people are cluing into that they need to eat better, but they're not doing it. It's that doing it part that people have the hardest time getting to well you know i think we all hear it um those of us steeped in the plant-based eating you'll go out with a friend and they'll say i really well yeah we heard that we heard that a lot we heard that last night um so then we eat and it's like i only eat wild caught salmon i only have pasture raised grass-fed regenerative beef regenerative is the big you know that's the big catch. It's regenerative beef. So it's, it's good. It's fine. Um, no, so, so from my perspective, it's really exciting. So the way I approach it is zero shame or blame game. This is exciting because guess what? You probably didn't realize that every single time you lift fork to mouth, you're either chewing and swallowing down something that is pro-cancer or anti-cancer.
Empowering Patients
[49:05] And don't you want to be anti-cancer? Yes, doctor, I do, right? So it's a really fun exchange because I'm like, look, here's the deal.
[49:14] I was writing this book. It needed to be bulletproof. I went into the nutritional science as an MD for the first time in my entire life, like 18 years into my practice. And lo and behold, I was absolutely rocked and shocked by how solid the evidence was that not only is consuming animal food detrimental to your health, but what you sub instead, fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains.
[49:45] Is so healthful it's building health it's destroying plaque it's destroying cancer cells it's settling down that oxidative stress so i explained that it all comes down to a battle of inflammation inside of you the single most important anti-inflammatory diet that you could possibly follow is not vegan it's whole food plant-based right that's right so i get them excited. Oreos are vegan. About the power that they hold at the end of their fork, because so far until they came into my office and often I'm a third, fourth opinion for these people and their minds are blown when their eyes are open wide, because they're like, wow, you're the first person who said I could do anything. In addition to, I'm not always saying instead of, but you know, usually it's okay. Surgery, radiation, take this pill every day and you'll be good, honey. Just do things as you always were. You'll be good. Really? There's a lot you can do. And they feel empowered by that. Now, I get them excited. They leave. They come back six months later.
[50:54] I would say 10% are full-on plant-based. They super embraced it, got it, understood it, used the resources I shared with them, which would be a plant-based nutritionists that they can meet with one-on-one a bajillion uh recipe sites online to jump start their minds um apps that help them and psychologists they can see so i'm like really try my best to help them it's you know outside my bandwidth to hold their hand through how to actually change their kitchen i know and then in that to that fact too i think if you if you're able and she can't do this but if you're able to cook for people and make them food and let them see how good the food is. I had, uh, maybe like five years ago, I had a birthday party and I made this lasagna at my party for like 15 people. And they were all kind of making fun of me, you know, like, where are we going to go eat after this? You know, yeah, they're like tofu ricotta. And like one of my friends is super Italian. She's like tofu ricotta. Nope. And anyway, people were like, I'm so glad I made, I made two big ones. They were gone. They were like licking their plates. So they loved it. And so that would, that they're like, okay. All right. We're in. What else can we do? We do a celery sale and I always cook for my friends.
[52:16] Yeah. I always cook for my friends and they, They always I love it because every time I get together with my friends and I cook, they'll send me pictures like the next day. Oh, my God, look what I got called to eat. Look what I got my husband to eat. Like he ate all of it. He wants it again. And he's now he's eating this every morning instead. And it's just it's it's nice. And it feels really good to have an influence on people and be able to change people's diets. And if you don't have a Chrissy in your life to cater for you, there are some really excellent home delivery options. And I do advise people who are completely new, my patients who are now overwhelmed because they're actually navigating through the thick of cancer and they're supposed to cook in this entirely brand new way. I say, you know what? Why don't you splurge? Even if it's just three days a week, take the meal prep out of your to do list and get these meals delivered. It also jumpstarts your imagination of like, oh, I never thought about chemo. I just never thought about chemo before. And look, it's in this meal and it's so delicious with how they prepared it. So it helps you understand what you can do at home. And there's also some great sauces that maybe like some people make and sell.
[53:25] PLANTSTRONG. Yeah, that's a great place to start. I always send people over to the website and, you know, check these things out. Because I think the sauces make a big difference, especially because like a lot of what we eat are bowls. So you don't want to have like the same thing on your bowl every single day. Like I do this awesome tahini sauce, but like even I get sick of it. So I want something else. so to do like a curry or something like that it mixes it up and it's nice chrissy you just uh put a sauce into the pan we're like talk we're way more talk than cook here um all right so here we have the pan the lasagna noodles are soaked so i'm gonna start putting them in the pan and i want them in this one has to go that way and i always have to cut yeah um so we're gonna put them in on top of the sauce. And yeah, let's just go ahead and like the veggies are done. I threw, I threw spinach in there behind the scenes. You didn't see me do it, but I did it. So, cause the spinach just needs to wilt, right? You don't need to go, uh... Wait, wait, let me ask you, so I'm clear, you soaked those noodles in water and then you took them out of the water and now they're on the cutting board? Yep, yep, now they're in the lasagna pan. And they've been soaked. I'm okay! Oh, it was just the tofu press. Is everything okay?
[54:43] No veggies were harmed in the making of this. It was just the tofu press. Okay, so now we are going to start. Okay, thank you.
[54:54] All right so here we are with the oh see this yeah oh yeah now you're speaking my language yeah and i'm so it's nice and spreadable and like i said the noodle trick you put the noodle down and you can spread it on the noodles uh so good and we did a lot because like i said i want some in every bite and then we're gonna add we're gonna start stacking the veggies okay so we're gonna do the nice and again ideally this would have been done a little separate because we did a lot of zucchini but honestly with zucchini it's okay it's okay that they're can you move out can you move out of the way the lemon juice and some of the other stuff that's right yeah yeah yeah, And the mug that we are, whatever, not ingredients. There you go. Yep. Okay. Is this better? Oh, I love it. Yes. Right. Here. There. Okay. Great. So now we have the, we're going to keep putting on our zucchini. Stack them. Okay. We just use fingers. Yeah. Fingers are fine. I think. Oh, yes. I'm going to burn you. Don't burn your fingers. She has to go do surgery with burnt fingers. Don't burn your fingers. Yeah. Yeah. You have to go do surgery this morning. What time?
[56:15] Well, the patient already knows this, but it already started. So this is a joint surgery with my amazingly talented plastic surgeon who's doing something called a deep flap, D-I-E-P, which takes eight hours. So we operate side by side. So it's when you take the whole lower abdomen as a huge paddle of skin and fat. You get rid of the skin and you just tuck the fat underneath the mastectomy here. But that whole flap harvesting takes about eight hours. So, well, the harvesting takes about four hours and putting it back together again. Wait, wait. So I understand. She's under general anesthesia. She's having her semi-operated on right now. And then I'm going to swoop on in and do the mastectomies as soon as we're done making lasagna. Priorities. Well, I'm a little confused. So are you taking some of this abdominal fat and then turning it into breast tissue? Or did I miss that?
[57:12] You didn't miss it. So what we're doing, it's not becoming breast tissue on a cellular level. It is all of the abdominal fat taken together as one piece with its blood supply. So you're going to pick it up like it's actually removed, you know, you know, and then you because sometimes there's another thing called a tram flap where you tunnel it. This one comes out and you get the little artery and vein that are sticking out. And then you go under where the breast used to be and you shape it into a mound, the shape of a breast. And then those two vessels get hooked up with microvascular techniques. So they wear these loops and magnify everything. It's very delicate surgery. You actually have to break through the cartilage of the rib to access the artery and vein that are there. And you sew them in.
[58:02] And now all of a sudden this fat has a permanent, robust blood flow. People may be dealing with liposuction. We sometimes liposuction fat from an unwanted area, love handles, what have you. Liquefy it, put it in a syringe, and then just layer it into like the top of a mastectomy to create a little more fullness and slope. That's tricky because half the fat disappears. It didn't go in there with a blood supply, so it dies, and then it liquefies in your lymphatics, take it away. So this FLAT procedure is very different and a much bigger deal in terms of recovery. It comes with the blood supply, and it all survives, and it's fabulous and soft and mobile and very breast-like. I mean, honestly, sometimes I'll go in to see people four or five years after having had this done, and I look, and for a split second, I'm like, I double-check my note. I'm like, did she have a mastectomy yet? yeah nice so now how long has that that uh procedure technology been around oh the deep flap's been around for 20 years.
[59:07] Here we are i'm layering well she was talking about the deep flap, i did another uh so i did all the veggies i poured sauce on it i added another layer of noodles another layer of the tofu ricotta oh gosh i'm going to put more veggies here I'm layering and then I always put sauce before I put another noodle.
[59:32] Did you throw that spinach in with the mushrooms? Yes, I threw it in with the mushrooms when they were cooking. I threw it in at the end of throwing them in. I've never cooked my spinach. Yeah, I throw it in. I throw it in. I just throw it in raw. You can, but I found like some of the leaves end up being like not cooked. So I just throw it in right at the end of the spinach. So it just wilts. Now, I find when I make lasagnas, I tend to err on being a little aggressive or liberal with my sauce. Heck yeah, I do the same. And it's still, where does it go? It's still kind of on the, not dry, but I feel like I need more when I serve it. I top it with sauce, always, yeah. What kind of a sauce do you have there? We just try to find a low oil, or we try to find no oil. Okay, got it, organic.
[1:00:24] And I know Trader Joe's has a no oil, but at the supermarket, again, my son did the shopping. He called me and he was in panic. He was like, I can't find anything with no oil. I was like, you know, time to go to Trader Joe's. So we found one with the lowest possible oil in it. You know, some of my lasagna recipes, I have like five of them because I'm obsessed. But there's my most labor intensive one. But I feel like if you have, honestly, when these people put on the recipes, like it takes one hour. Like it's okay okay the prep on this not gonna lie it's like a 90 minute prep it takes forever but i love it it's so good and so what i do with the sauce is um i put in red lentils because those like disappear and you add a big punch of protein to it and then i do the disappearing vegetables because you know kids um and then it really is just such a labor-intensive thing to saute say multiple vegetables, but I love it. Like the Northern Merrier. It's worth it. Yeah. And this last, you can, I always make it and I'll freeze a bunch of it. And then I'll, you know, have it. I'll have it for a few days and then I'll have it a week later. I pull it back out and now we're going to talk. Do you need more sauce? I need, I need more sauce and then I need the noodles. Okay. And then we're done. How long, how long will that last in your household?
[1:01:50] In her, in my household, it would last a long time. But in her household, she's has three growing boys. How long would this lasagna last? Would it last three days no it would last the duration of dinner.
[1:02:06] That's what I'm saying about her household versus my household they are teen agers okay so here we're at the tippy top this was deep enough to do three layers hey look who just peeked in to say hi hi hi hi beautiful, hey so I knew your voice from like 50 yards away I'm like he's talking to Kristi Funk, and Chrissy Roth. Oh my gosh. Hi.
[1:02:34] It is. How are you? We heard you were there running football lanes in the backyard for exercise. Come down so they can see you. Oh, hi. There's no better place to be in the summer than here. We concur. We got a little quick tour before this. Oh, now what are you guys making? Oh, boy. Awesome. Okay. They're making, they started with a tofu ricotta, and then they're folding that into an insane zucchini squash lasagna. And then after this, Chrissy is going to assemble her patented celery. Patented, yes.
[1:03:26] Chopped up in a salad yes with with dates with smoked almonds and what am i missing we're good dates smoked almonds lemon and um that's it that's it that's all you need just saying those words it's like every flavor in my mouth i'm having a little, okay yeah so you see how pretty it is it's going to go it's going to get covered for 40 40 minutes and then uncovered for the rest of the duration of it and sometimes it's an hour sometimes you just have to keep checking it i'll just kind of keep checking the noodles and kind of i'll feel the top noodle and go oh not ready yet it's not who's that handsome boy or girl behind you that's my beautiful sedona hey.
[1:04:16] Hi hi oh you're shy aren't you i feel like i'd like even more sauce on this but okay i have more sauce yeah one of you i think it'll be better okay let me yeah and this is what you have to do you go i need more sauce so i said have three jars because you're going to use at least two jars then you're probably going to add a little bit more which we're about to do and then you're going to want more on top of it so of course all that like it means like woohoo what a hit this one isn't weird one different oh yeah whatever we got going on all right so we're gonna just put a little more because if i can if i can see the noodle through it like a lot and i'm i don't want any of the noodles showing because it's not gonna really cook you know i know we didn't have to assess because we don't have enough that sauce and moisture we have a cousin who's nearby and he said oh my god you guys i just made lasagna and it's like eating sand. And we're like, are you gonna eat it? He's like, absolutely. I spend so much time making it, I have to eat it.
Alcohol and Health Risks
[1:05:11] But if you don't have enough sauce, you don't, that's something you need to address. It's a problem. It's a problem, yeah. You need to have enough sauce. So we have a little magic of television happening right now. Kristi is grabbing. What's happening? Oh, look. Is it hot? No, I just put it in.
[1:05:33] Okay. All right. So this is my mini lasagna. I wanted a finished one because we're not going to be on for another two hours as much as we'd love to hang out with you. This is the finished and I made it in a glass. I made it in a bread pan so you can see and we'll cut it and you can see what's going on there. Oh, that's gorgeous. It's so yum. And I put, we put a little of the ricotta on the top and this is on the colder side. If it was warmer, it would look a little more bubbly yeah so we're gonna cover this we're gonna cover that.
[1:06:09] And then we're gonna assemble our celery salad that maybe we will put this on a pan and i like to top this with a couple pieces of basil when i serve it you know so you're serving it looks really pretty nice yeah well i put basil shreds all throughout my lasagna too if i have basil growing in my garden i'll just shred some and put it throughout the lasagna but you know you can and you don't have to. When you say basil shreds, do you mean like a cut up in shreds? Yeah, I just take the basil and I just make it into little strips. I feel so sad, Sheffy Sheffy, now because someone just gave me in the mail a pair of scissors. It looks like it's like a parking lot of scissors all in one. It's for cutting basil into equal strips. Stop it. It's so upset when they're different thicknesses. That's awesome. That's so cool. I like that. I know. I didn't even know what to do with it. Now I do know what to do with it. Okay. Yeah, there you go. You can put it on top of your lasagna. Okay. Or anything. Pasta. That sounds so good. All right. So what have we got left? We just got the celery salad, right? Yeah, we got the celery salad. That's it.
[1:07:16] Here it is. Here's our nuts. And I'm about to chop them. I usually use a chopper for this because, like I said, I like to chop them really fine and have them all really, really like almost powdery to get the flavor over every piece of celery. I did. It's a semi-timer for the lasagna. To 45 seconds. Oh, that would be great. That would be a lot like your neighbors was on you, it sounds like. Chrissy and Kristi, what's your philosophy on alcohol? You guys imbibe or not? Nope. Nope. I don't drink alcohol as of January 1st, 2024. I stopped. Yeah. And I don't, it makes me feel terrible. It's never made me feel good. I don't drink. I love not drinking. I love coming up with fun mocktails, hibiscus. You do like some hibiscus tea, which Chrissy gave me this enormous bag of tea packs for my birthday. And so I have a lot of hibiscus tea. And I'll do that with maybe a little ginger and monk fruit and lime. And it's just as good. But my thing and our thing is you have to put it in a fancy glass. That's my requirement. It has to be in like whatever glass someone's drinking a drink out of or a glass of wine glass. That's what I drink it out of. Pain glass for bubbly. It just makes me happier than like some boring old mug or glass. I've seen you guys make some of those on your live show.
[1:08:42] Yeah so what is the is is the data just so compelling to that okay so more than cancer with the numbers Kristi yeah so we know that alcohol predisposes to cancer through creating acetaldehyde which is a horrible um carcinogen so especially cancers of the mouth stomach colon breast exactly anywhere that alcohol actually touches is especially caustic but the data on breast is as follows so a drink a day what's a drink so 12 ounces of beer equals five ounces of wine equals 1.5 ounces of hard liquor a drink a day increases breast cancer by seven percent in pre-menopausal women by 13 percent in post-menopausal women so about an average of 10% increase in breast cancer for one drink a day. Then all of a sudden, two drinks a day, 30% increase. And 10% for every drink thereafter.
[1:09:46] The main mechanisms seem to be the acetaldehyde and also the turning off of a magical enzyme called MTHFR, methyl tetrahydrofolate reductase, which turns folate from your leafy greens and folic acid in your vitamins into the magic methylfolate. Methylfolate's like a little DNA babysitter. So it's just sitting there. And whenever a mistake is made, it's like whoosh and swoops in and either fixes it or throws it out. When you drink and hit your enzyme, which sounds like a bad word, right? MTHFR. So that MTHFR gets turned off. 30 to 50% of people already have a sub-functional MTHFR genetically. So just from birth. So then it's a double whammy and you're not making the babysitter. And so your DNA is free to mutate and propagate and proliferate.
[1:10:38] But alcohol just doesn't stop there, does it? No, it's an actual direct neurotoxin. So all that neuroplasticity that we like to think about, our brains laying down new neuronal pathways, learning new tricks as we age, staying sharp like your father. It is a direct toxin to all of this youthfulness inside your brain. Oh, but we're not done.
[1:11:04] Then it goes down to your gut. and I don't know why it knows this. I'm, I'm sorry to my drinkers out there. I do. I feel for you as a former love to imbibe, especially my red wine. This is what's happening. It's going down there to your hard earned, gorgeous microbiome with your plant-based eating and destroying only the good bacteria, leaving you with the crappy bacteria. So when we say good bacteria, that means these are the ones that are taking all of your food and turning it into the happy neurotransmitters, increasing dopamine, increasing the protective layer of your colon itself, right? So you don't get bacteria translocating there and creating inflammation of the colon, IBS and eventually cancers with that chronic inflammation and short chain fatty acids or just all of this goodness is getting destroyed by the alcohol because it's destroying the bacteria that create the goodness. And finally, don't stop there. many people drink just to take a load off. Like it was a really long, hard day. Just stop making the lasagna. Isn't that good enough? Like, don't tell me I can't make it with my glass of bread. Right. Um, well, I'm telling you that, that, that you're looking for that, ha.
[1:12:19] Ramps up your cortisol, not for a minute, not for an hour, but all throughout the next 24 hours. So now all of a sudden it's tomorrow night and you thought you needed that drink last night. You are even more amped up because you just elevated cortisol for the last 24 hours. Isn't that something?
[1:12:39] I've talked to more people that are wearing their, you know, their special little rings or their Apple watches. and they've discovered that once they have that glass of alcohol, totally disrupts their sleep. Their elevated resting heart rate goes up, you know, 15 beats per minute. It's wild. Yeah, it is wild. Jenks, I am. Yeah. One, two, three. She can't tell. Basically, a choice to drink is a choice not to sleep well tonight. Right. Isn't that something? Yeah. We're going to show you. Yeah. So you've been hard at work what have you been doing the whole time these almonds need to be chopped fine like they're dusty oh my gosh it's like gold dust it is it's gold dust okay so we again in the interest of time because we didn't pre-chop we would have a lot more celery in here and we're going to add it later but we're going to just do it quick so you guys can see it I'm not going to add all these nuts now because it's too much for the amount of celery, yeah no I know that's why we'll do it so.
[1:13:44] We have our dates and our and we need lemon juice fresh squeezed lemon and then just some fresh squeezed lemon juice.
[1:13:52] I just kind of eyeball things. With this salad, I mean, come on. The first time I made it, I was definitely just eyeballing it and it came out fine. You can just, you know, if you love smoked almonds, add a little more. If you're not that into them, just add a little. This salad is nailing your tongue to the wall. It's got the smoky, the sweet. Yes. Celery. It's like your tongue is just going to be so distracted. You're like, oh. That's exactly right. That's what it does. Yes. Now, Chrissy, I know people are going to ask, what if you substituted walnuts for almonds? Have you tried that?
[1:14:29] And I'm a huge walnut fan. Walnuts are my favorite. I don't, I don't, yeah, you know, maybe they would work. Honestly, I love walnuts and celery together. So I don't know. Try it. That's what I would say. But I do love the smoke and the salt of these smoked almonds. I wonder if you could just throw in a little liquid smoke and chopped almonds. I don't know. That may get you that. or chopped walnuts he's saying a little drop of that i don't know chopped walnuts but then you left you they're not smoked yeah yeah right i have a smoked walnut recipe that i put a tiny bit of maple syrup so it grips on they can't put a lot because then it turns into like candy but you put a little bit of maple syrup and some smoked paprika in the bowl and then add your almonds or sorry yeah easy yeah that sounds so good all right we're gonna try this i'm gonna I'm going to wash my hands.
[1:15:23] We have to have this tonight. Yeah. Let's do it. Very casual. We're very casual when we're making her food that each other is going to eat. But I probably wouldn't use my hands this much if I was making it for guests. Oh, I would. You would? I'm trying to be a little. You could use a little more lemon. Lemon. So, needs more lemon. Got it. Hey, you too. You too. On the way out, I got a question for each of you. So we're learning how important it is to express gratitude. What are one or two things that you guys are grateful for in 2024?
[1:16:07] I'm grateful for my decision to stop drinking alcohol. I would like to say I had a huge, like, physical transformation. I didn't. Probably, you know, I didn't. But my watch said I slept better. So there's that for sure. I didn't, like, wake up with more energy. Like, it just didn't, probably because it wasn't messing with my life, per se. But the decision impacted my children. They noticed.
[1:16:39] And what I wanted them to see at the age of 15, now that they're going to remember it, if you're drinking especially too much, stop, no matter how old your children are. But your two-year-old is not going to remember it or thank you. But in my Mother's Day card from my kids, one of them wrote, thank you so much for going dry that's what he wrote but when he said going dry I was like it just seemed like but the point is well taken um that he noticed and he knew I did it in part for them as an example I wanted to show them like it's never too late you can do anything you want to do and even though this was a part of our lifestyle and our parties that we had at the house like it doesn't have to be that way going forward you just make a decision you make a change. So I'm grateful for having made that decision and for the response that I got from my children because they really did notice it impacted them in a definite positive way. And I think that will empower them going forward to make what could be considered hard decisions and to stick with them and to be proud of themselves. Yeah. Nice.
[1:17:48] Nice beautiful beautiful yep and the thing i'm grateful for is the three-week RV trip we have coming up i'm finally gonna get those kids off screens and we're gonna go hiking zion and water skiing like pal and i'm just grateful for family time that sounds dreamy that sounds amazing yeah how about you chrissy yeah i'd say like number one i'm grateful for my family amount of time i spend with my family i have two adult children so 20 in college and one who just graduated college which I'm also very grateful for.
[1:18:18] So he just graduated. But I'm grateful for the amount of time that they want to spend with us. Because I know some kids leave and they're like, later, Gators. But our kids still want to hang out with us. We just went to Switzerland and did a hiking trip and hiked up mountains and stood by the Matterhorn and got pictures of it behind us and walked out. It was absolutely outstanding. And not just because of the mountains. It was just that our kids got along and they wanted to be with us. And we did everything together and never was a time where they were like, oh, we're going to go do something on our own. It was really special. So grateful for family. Grateful that my parents live with us five months a year in our guest house. And so I'm really grateful for that. The amount of time because I moved from New York to California to go to physical therapy school and moved away from my family. And now they get to spend time with us. So I'm really, and I know you're, you know, you guys spend a lot of time with your family too. So I know that you can relate to how special that is. And I feel really, really lucky. And I also, I guess the other thing I'm grateful for is just kind of getting like a little more into, into my fitness back to I'm teaching spin again. I haven't taught since COVID and I'm really enjoying that. So that's, that's been fun. And I'm also, I'm a PT. I haven't seen patients in a while and I'm back to treating patients. And I'm really grateful for that because it brings me a lot of joy. I'm working with very sick people and it's challenging, but it's been really great.
[1:19:45] I guess that's what I'm grateful for. Beautiful. Wonderful.
Gratitude Reflections
[1:19:49] Well, I'm grateful for you two. I'm grateful that you guys decided to join us for part of Plant- Stock 2024. Love the recipes. Love the education. Love the banter. Love the moving of the ladder. I mean, this is awesome. So much fun. I need to add that while we were talking, I added salt and pepper to the celery. Oh, okay. Okay. It needs a little, no salt, salt and pepper, you know, or it's like, it needed it. So I'm grateful I got to be here at the end. Like, wow.
[1:20:31] I'm like, Oh my gosh. I'm so thankful to see these amazing recipes because we have to make dinner tonight. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. We'll let, we'll let my daughters tackle the tofu ricotta lasagna. Do it it's it's fun it's it's a fun project all right you guys hey on the way out can i get a nice virtual PLANTSTRONG plant-stock fit excuse me fist bump from you both of course.
[1:21:00] We love you you guys are the best you really are you really are Chrissy and Dr. Kristi Thanks again to Chrissy and Kristi for their time, their talent, and all their knowledge. We are so lucky to have these two in our corner, keeping it PLANTSTRONG. I want to thank you for watching and listening to this episode. For more information on Dr. Kristi Funk and her practice and programs, go to PinkLotus.com. As always, thanks so much for listening and sharing these episodes with loved ones and friends who may potentially benefit. Truly, this is how we keep the show growing. And it's also how we keep the whole food plant-based movement heading in the right direction. As usual, always, always keep it PLANTSTRONG. Thanks.
Closing Remarks
[1:22:01] The PLANTSTRONG podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, and Ami Mackey. If you like what you hear do us a favor and share the show with your friends and loved ones you can always leave a five-star rating and review on apple podcasts or spotify and while you're there make sure to hit that follow button so that you never miss an episode as always this and every episode is dedicated to my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. And Anne Crile Esselstyn. Thanks so much for listening.
