Max Lugavere on How to Boost Brain Health Through Diet | EP 556

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The fact that I could start to

implement whether dietary or lifestyle interventions in my own life that might not with 100% Thank you. Coming up next on PassionStruck.
Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles.
And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.
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Welcome back to episode 556 of the PassionStruck podcast. I am so grateful for your continued energy, passion, and commitment to living a more intentional life week after week.
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Before we dive in, let's take a quick moment to recap last week's inspiring episodes.

On Tuesday, New Year's Eve, I sat down with Shira Gill to explore the art of simplifying your life.

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And if you prefer watching these conversations, all our episodes are available on our YouTube channel where you can catch the videos and share them with others in your life who are passionate about growth. Now let's talk about our episode today, where I'm thrilled to have Max Lugavere join us.
Max is a journalist, filmmaker, podcaster, and New York Times bestselling author who's become one of the most respected voices in health and wellness. Max's work was born out of a deeply personal experience, watching his mother battle a neurodegenerative disease, a journey that transformed his life and sent him on a mission to understand how we can protect and optimize our brain and body health.
A journey that transformed his life and sent him on a mission to understand how we can protect and optimize our brain and body health. What began with a passion has evolved into the genius series of books, including Genius Foods and The Genius Life and his popular podcast, The Genius Life, which I'm a big fan of, where he distills cutting edge research and actionable strategies for a healthier, more vibrant life.
In today's conversation, we'll explore the groundbreaking findings from his documentary, Little Empty Boxes. Max shares how our modern world has left our brains and bodies in despair and provides insights into how simple, intentional changes in nutrition, sleep, movement, and even our home environments can help us reclaim our energy, fix anxiety and fatigue, and boost cognitive performance.
We'll discuss his journey from personal pain to professional purpose, the myths and misconception about cognitive decline, the power of resetting our bodies to their natural state, and how small consistent changes can create lasting impacts on our mental and physical well-being. Whether you're looking to optimize your health, boost your mental clarity, or understand how your daily habits influence your long-term brain health, this episode is packed with actionable insights.
Here's my conversation with Max Luguer. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.
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based on the February 2024 Nelson report. I am so excited today to welcome Max Lugavere to PassionStruck.
Welcome, Max. Hey, John.
It's great to be here. Max, thanks so much for joining us on PassionStruck.
As I mentioned to you, I've been a huge fan of The Genius Life, all your books and the podcast, the documentaries that you've done, including your newest one, which we're going to get into today. Your journey is such an incredible example of turning pain into a purpose-driven mission that has ended up impacting so many lives.
So that's where I want to start. I want to go to what ignited your journey for you, your mother's diagnosis and the profound effect it had on your life.
Can you take us back to 2011 when everything changed for you and share how it's ended up shaping the direction not only of your work, but your life. Yeah, absolutely, John.
That's a great place to start. People often ask me my why.
What is the purpose, the mission behind everything that I seem to put out into the world? And it really all comes back to my mother. Now, I was raised in a very small family, oldest child.
I've got two younger siblings, and I don't have much of an extended family. It was really just me, my mom, my dad, and my two younger brothers.
And I had always been interested in health and nutrition. That was an interest that began in high school for me.
But it was very much one that was rooted in, I think, vanity, fitness, performance, all the kinds of things that a young, insecure high schooler gets interested in as a way of alleviating some of the social pressures that we all feel growing up. And that led to me starting college on a path to go into medicine.
But ultimately, I realized that I was a storyteller and I had creative chops. And I really appreciated learning that about myself halfway through college.
And that led to me getting a job as a journalist, working for a TV network in the United States called Current TV for many years. I did that straight out of college and that took me up until around 2011.

And then it was then in my personal life where my mom, somebody who meant the world to me, the most important person in my life by a long shot, started to display the earliest symptoms of what would ultimately be diagnosed as a rare and incurable form of dementia called Lewy body dementia. She was 58 years old at the time.
She was still very much in the prime of her life. She was a woman who ran a business and who raised three kids and really was an incredible matriarch.
And at 58, she started to complain of brain fog. She started to experience and express confusion when articulating seemingly simple ideas and thoughts.
And in tandem with that, there was a change to her gait. She started to have movement symptoms.
And for me, somebody who's a non-academic, not a medical doctor, it took me completely off guard. But ultimately, I chalked up what I was seeing and what I was hearing to aging.
Just as simple as that. Just par for the course of getting older.
But it became increasingly serious. And it became something that was increasingly talked about around the dinner table or when I would call my mom to catch up with her.
Because had been living in Los Angeles at the time. And ultimately, I realized that I needed to step in and start accompanying my mom to her doctor's appointments to try to better understand what it was that she was experiencing.
And part of this was because when I was growing up, if I had so much as a cough within moments, seemingly, I would be sitting in a pediatrician's office with my mom. My mom was very hands-on with my childhood.
She always took an active interest in my health, how I was feeling. When my mom became sick, I was the only person really in my family with this background interest in health and nutrition to the degree that when I started college, I was on a pre-med track.
I realized that I really needed to be there with her because I mean, as anybody who's ever experienced chronic illness knows, disease is a very frustrating and alienating place. It can be confusing.
It can be scary. And it becomes difficult given all those emotions to advocate for yourself when you're in that doctor's office.
Physicians typically give you 10 to 15 minutes these days if you're lucky. And so I flew back to New York and I started going with my mom to doctor's visits.
And ultimately we had to take a trip to the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio where for the first time my mom was prescribed drugs for both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Because Lewy body dementia, for anybody who's unfamiliar with it, it's like having both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease at the same time.
And that moment to me when my mom was given that initial diagnosis, murky as it was even in those early days, googling those drugs and reading their phrases would stand out to me like no disease modifying effect. And, you know, that these conditions, whether Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease, that they were terminal conditions, ultimately incurable conditions, progressive neurodegenerative conditions.
That was the first time in my life that I'd ever had a panic attack. And I've always been a pretty even-keeled guy, very rational, very reasonable.
That was like an atom bomb going off in my world. And I was in my late 20s at the time, mid to late 20s.
And I had other career interests. I had other passions, but in one fell swoop for me, everything, my entire purpose, I felt

on this planet was to understand to the best of my ability, why my mom developed what she had developed to understand, to wrap my head around what might be done to help her from a holistic standpoint. Because I mean, from day one, I had the recognition that these drugs had no disease modifying effect.
And then ultimately to do what I could to prevent this from ever happening to me, because I realized for the first time that I had a risk factor now. And so the more I would learn, the more I would feel compelled to share.
Really, I mean, at its core, it was about self

interest. It was about how to improve my mom's life, how to potentially slow or stop this from progressing in her, which I unfortunately wasn't able to do, but then also to prevent this from happening to others that I care about.
And the more I would learn, the more I felt compelled to share in part because the best way to learn anything is to teach.

And I realized very early on that I was talking about

something that really nobody else was talking about. And it started to snowball and gather

traction. And the more I would learn, the more I would share, and the more people would be

interested in what I had to say about this topic, which I was discussing through a lens that, again, nobody else was talking about, dementia through the lens of prevention. And it really galvanized for me what I feel like is my life's mission and purpose.
And it's obviously led to this body of work, which you've referenced, John, but it all comes back to me, to my why. Everything that I do, everything that I put out, I envision in a way somebody on the other end of the screen being like my mom, confused, scared, worried about their cognitive health or the health of their loved ones.
And it's a really powerful filter through which to view wellness and nutrition and all these things that we now are seemingly inundated with, these topics which now seem to, well, especially now at the public stage, seem to dominate public discourse in many ways. And we've seen the rise of the wellness industry.
But for me, it was never about a commercial interest or anything like that. It was really about just doing the best that I could do for my mom.
Well, thanks for going into that. And it's interesting, you and I share a lot of commonalities, even though we've gone about it a different way.
We've both ended up getting into the health sphere because of personal stories, personal things that have happened. For me, I remember, you know Steven Cabral.
Steven was the Cabral concept is his podcast. And he was interviewing me.
He goes, John, how in the heck did you get to be with the top health podcast? And I said, it was me search. I had in the military and outside of the military had a number of traumatic brain injuries.
And I was starting to have cognitive decline and fog and everything else. To me, it started to come down to the choices that I was making.
I could choose to eat better. I could choose to get more sleep.
I could choose not to drink alcohol. I could choose to exercise regularly.
I could choose to take more omega-3s, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And those choices were all leading me to a better outcome.
And the more I doubled down on them, the better I felt and eventually overcame a lot of the symptoms that I was feeling. And then I tack onto that.
My sister at 46 then was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

And so we were wondering how does someone at 46 come down with this when there's no family history or anything else? So I started doubling down into that. So my point of this is similar to you.
I'm not classically trained as a physician or anything else, but I've used a lot of me search and research to really wrap my head around what are the things that are going on. So getting back to dementia, this is very personal for me from two standpoints.
My fiance's mom is in the early stages of it, but I was a little bit older than you, probably 34 or 35 when my grandfather came down with dementia. And for me, it was just heartbreaking because here you have a guy that at one point was the head of research at Kraft Foods, one of the smartest human beings I had ever seen.
And he couldn't remember things from 30 seconds to the next 30 seconds. And just watching his decline for me, it was heartbreaking, as I described.
So I sympathize having a dear one like you did have to go through this because it's difficult and you get mad because you don't understand why they're acting the way they are and at first at the beginning. So I want to take this to Little Empty Boxes.
Can you talk about how you came up with that name and maybe give a high level overview of your approach to creating it? So Little Empty Boxes is the name of my documentary, which just came out. And it documents this.
So I, as I mentioned, when I began college, I was on a pre-med track. And then halfway through college, I went to University of Miami.
And I in on a introduction to motion pictures course. I'd always loved movies, but actually music has been, was always the medium to me that was the most visceral and resonant.
But nonetheless, I think I became friends with somebody who just had me sit on a class that he was taking. And I just really loved what the intellectualization of storytelling, which is something that I hadn't previously considered and how story really is.
Historically, being able to tell stories is part of what defines us as human beings. And that I could learn more about this art and ultimately influence people, whether it's to have a certain emotion or emotions or to have a potentially positive impact on the world.
I realized the power of story halfway through college. And I realized my own aptitude for telling them, not just verbally, but across myriad mediums, whether through design or through, I mean, gosh, there's been so many instances of my life where I've dabbled creatively and I've just really enjoyed that process.
And music is a form of storytelling. Obviously people listening to this who are in the world of marketing recognize that good marketing is really all about story.
And that led to me pivoting away from a pre-med track, which I thought wasn't going to lead to my ultimate happiness. And despite having this passion for health and medicine, I ended up double majoring in film and psychology.
And that led to me getting this dream job out of college as a producer and a journalist and a host, a presenter for this television network in the United States called Current TV. So I was a filmmaker in college.
And that led to me somehow getting a job where I was reaching 100 million homes every night on this TV channel in the United States called Current TV. And anybody can Google it.
It doesn't exist anymore, but it used to. And so I had been a filmmaker in college.
And that led to me getting to produce films and short documentaries on this television platform for many years, working with some of the best in the industry. Now, when my mom became sick, I had actually, at that point, I had left that job and I was essentially unemployed, but I was still a filmmaker by trade, in terms of my skillset, a storyteller.
And as an artist, I think the plight of the artist in many ways is to take pain and suffering and burden and to transform it into something meaningful. Obviously, that's not the goal of every artist, but I think in a way that's what art does.
It takes an aspect of the human experience, pain or suffering, and turns it into something that allows us to see that pain and that suffering from a different vantage point in a way that makes it more perhaps meaningful, gives us a different sort of experience of it. And when my mom became sick, that was, as I've mentioned, the most painful, difficult thing I'd ever experienced in my life.
And as an artist, I felt compelled just in terms of my own mental fortitude as a way of reconciling what it was that myself and my family going through. I felt compelled to turn that into something meaningful and artful.
And the medium that made the most sense to me at the time was film. Now, I'd never made a long-form documentary film.
I had only worked professionally as a short-form documentary filmmaker. But I thought that this was a really powerful opportunity for me to accomplish multiple things at once.
One was to, again, create a piece of art that would give meaning to me for this experience that was painful and traumatic. But on the other hand, I thought that it was a really effective way of producing a body of work and a calling card that would potentially allow me access to people that wouldn't otherwise pick up the phone, so to speak.
And so in envisioning this documentary, for me, it was a way to actually exploit my media credentials to get to have conversations with researchers and scientists who might actually provide a degree of illumination in terms of what it was that my mom was going through. And so I had this idea of doing a long form documentary about dementia that centered on my mother and the most important person in my life that was potentially going to give meaning to this experience that we were all going through, but then also professionally give me a reason to reach out via email to some of these researchers who are publishing on the role of diet and lifestyle in brain health so that I can potentially go to their labs and bring a camera crew with me and ask them all of these burning questions that most people don't get to ask to researchers.
Because again, most people get 15 minutes with their doctors and then they're sent on their way. But I had the wherewithal to, and maybe the naivete or a sense of entitlement to actually reach out to some of the researchers who were publishing it in the peer-reviewed literature to maybe get to sit with them for 30 minutes to an hour to ask them these kinds of questions about maybe what it was about my mom's diet or lifestyle that may have over the years increased her risk for developing this condition.
Or from a more high-level view, what it was about the standard American diet and lifestyle that seemed to be increasing risk for so many of us, as you've seen, John, in your family. I mean, we're not alone in this.
So many people today are struggling with cognitive decline or seeing family members be diagnosed with conditions like Alzheimer's disease or even Parkinson's disease, which is now the world's fastest growing brain disease. And I didn't know what I was doing.
Again, I attribute the documentary, at least in part, to my own naivete. I didn't know what it was going to entail to produce, which is part of the reason why Little Empty Boxes took me 10 years to get done.
But ultimately, I think it's the most important thing that I've ever done. It's my greatest achievement thus far, and I'm incredibly proud of it.
So it's the world's first ever dementia prevention

documentary, and it focuses on the science of dementia prevention, focusing on the things that may have gone wrong in terms of policy, public health, that seem to be radically increasing prevalence of these kinds of conditions. But then it's also a deeply humanistic story, and it follows first and foremost, a family stuck in the throes of chronic disease.
And it's a film that anybody who's ever struggled with this will certainly relate to. And it's about the frustration, and it's about the fear that becomes so common when dealing with these kinds of things.
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Yeah, as I was researching, preparing for this interview, I was looking more and more into the documentary and reading some of the reviews that came out. And one that caught my attention was an IndieWire and it says, you attempt to find the root cause of your mom's dementia, but the documentary ends up shedding light on how helpless we ultimately are when decline comes for us.
And I thought the way that they phrased this was really unfair because I don't think that's what you're trying to portray with the film at all or your work. I think you, like I, were trying to tell how people to live differently so that they can take steps to prevent it coming in the first place.
Is that a better way to think of it? And that is, I wouldn't categorize it as unfair. I think it's honest in the sense that I really wasn't able to find anything to save my mom, so to speak, even though that was my intent.
Ultimately, my mom's health continued to decline. And that's why I've become so fixated on the notion of prevention, because I learned that these conditions begin decades prior to the onset of symptoms.
And so for me, it's about getting this message out to people who are not yet affected, so that they can perhaps steer the ship in a different direction. But yeah, just to go on a brief little tangent, we did a theatrical release for the film in the United States.
And we attempted to do a traditional sort of release in which we were going to try to get reviews about the film written up. And, you know, that was a really interesting experience.
And I would say that the reviews, we have a 100% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. And people who watch the film really understand was that I was trying to accomplish.
And on IMDb, the score is, I think it's eight and it's between eight and nine out of 10. I mean, the vast majority of reviews have been overwhelmingly positive and receptive to the mission of the film.
But when you're putting a film on a desk of critics, right, you have no idea how they're going to respond to the film, particularly a film that covers a topic that can be incredibly polarizing, as I've discovered over the past decade of my life, immersed in this space. And there was a degree of heartbreak that I felt for a very small portion of reviewers who thought that the film was, you know, like a stealth health documentary.
And that was really heartbreaking to me because the film really, it's about my mom. And it's, we present ideas in the film as the IndieWire review picked up on, but there is no silver bullet that's presented.
There is no magical diet protocol that's presented to prevent these conditions. I mean, the film explores, I think, really important ideas and some ideas that are possibly even a little bit outside of the box.
But I think that's important because this is a condition where we do need to look for answers, I think, in places that are perhaps less conventional, 99.6% fail rate. And we see widespread fraud, even within the field of Alzheimer's disease, showing us that a lot of the science that's been put out over the past few decades has actually been fraudulent, which pains me to say, but this is well-documented, published in the magazine Science, which is a highly credible paper.
So, you know, there's widespread fraud in the field of Alzheimer's disease. It takes 17 years on average for just a proportion of what's discovered in science to be put into day-to-day clinical practice.
And when the health, the lives of our loved ones are on the line, that's not time that we have to waste. And billions of dollars are being spent potentially going down erroneous paths with regards to these conditions, as we've seen.
And I've talked about this on other podcasts, ad nauseum, the fraud that has permeated the field of Alzheimer's disease. And again, I'm so grateful that the vast majority of reviews that we've had have been overwhelmingly positive.
Anybody who's taken the time to see the film has really, I think, appreciated it. But there has been a tiny proportion of reviews that, honestly, I feel are heartbreaking and don't represent the film at all.
But I guess that's just par for the course. For me, it's upsetting because I'm so close to the film.
It's a film about my mother that was done with zero commercial intent and it has taken me 10 years to complete. But I guess it is what it is.
I'm just grateful that the audience that the film deserves has found the film and that the audience reviews, which are the most important to me, not critic reviews,

audience reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. Again, a hundred percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Well, thank you for sharing that. And one of the people I want to introduce this to is my uncle, who was a researcher at Northwestern University for many years.
And you'll find this interesting. His research was focused on the families of those who were experiencing dementia and what does dementia's ripple effects do to family systems and caregivers and loved ones.
So I'm sure this will be a topic he would very much love to watch and be part of. So going through this and interviewing all the people that you did, what are some of the biggest misconceptions that people might have about cognitive decline? And how did you aim to address or correct those narratives? I think there are a few misconceptions.

When starting out, I realized that if I could do anything, it was to correct.

And these are misconceptions that I identified, at least in part, because they were misconceptions

that I myself had harbored.

One is that these conditions are genetic, that they're inherited, which I learned very early on was not in fact the case for the vast majority of cases. And this became viscerally apparent to me when I realized that my maternal grandmother, my mom's mom, lived until 96 and was cognitively intact until the very end.
And in fact, my grandmother was living with my mom. And there were a good number of years prior to my grandmother's passing where my grandmother's cognition was better than my mother's.
And my grandmother was 30 to 40 years her senior. And so that was very odd that my grandmother was cognitively perfectly healthy and sharp.
And her daughter was actually the one who was succumbing to dementia, this condition that we often associate with older people.

To me, the question became very early on, what changed?

Like, what changed in between my grandmother's generation and my mother's that led to my mom developing this condition. And yet my grandmother was seemingly inoculated against it.
Another misconception that I had was that these conditions were diseases of aging, that they were a natural part of the aging process, which again, you know, using my own grandmother as an anecdote, didn't seem to be the case. And my mom was very young.
And then finally, I think I learned that one of the things that makes these conditions so hard to treat once they've set in is that they begin years, if not decades prior to the onset of symptoms, similar to heart disease, cancer. I mean, these conditions don't begin overnight.
They're simmering under the surface preclinically for decades. And so that gives us a really powerful window of opportunity to change the course of our cognitive destiny.
And I realized that I was only interested in these topics because I was seeing it up close and personal with a loved one who had the condition but the fact that I could start to implement whether dietary or lifestyle interventions in my own life that might not with 100% certainty prevent me from ever developing a condition like Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease, but could, according to the best available evidence, lower or minimize my risk for these conditions? Well, that was a really powerful call to action for me. But the only reason why I was interested in taking those steps was because I had a loved one with the condition.
But what if I could get this information out to the public at large that, hey, these conditions which we tend to assume are inevitable, natural, dare I say natural aspects of aging or inherited, if none of those are in fact the case, and we can actually take steps today to improve our odds 10, 20, 30 years down the line of having a better fighting chance against these kinds of conditions for which there is no effective pharmaceutical treatment. Well, then that was something that I felt really inspired to do.
And so those were some of the misconceptions that I realized I had been harboring and that were in fact misconceptions. And so a lot of my work has been about debunking that.
We really do have a lot of agency when it comes to our brain health. There's a lot that we can do.
And diet, I love to talk about diet. Anybody who finds me on social media, I'm a big nutrition nerd, but diet is just one thin slice of the pie.
There are so many other factors, variables that fall within our control. And so being a sort of walking meta-analysis for this topic has become one of my missions.
And all that is to say that there is a lot that we can do, whether it's diet, whether it's lifestyle, whether it's various medical risk factors that we can attend to, there is a ton that we can do. And I just don't want anybody to feel helpless or hopeless about these conditions.
Okay. And Max, I have a follow-up question for you around these misconceptions, but I'm going to spin this a little bit different way.
One of your major goals has been to make brain health a topic of interest for younger audiences. And you've just talked about how over time we have the opportunity to change our trajectory, which is something I completely support as well.
Why is it so critical for people in their 20s and 30s to take proactive steps now? And where would be some of the easiest starting points for them to focus on? One of the things that I think is really important to wrap your head around is that these are conditions of midlife with symptoms that appear in late life. And this was actually one of the reasons why I decided to undertake writing a book.
My first book, Genius Foods, really was a project that was undertaken when I came to the realization that the same steps that you might take to batten down the hatches and reduce your risk for these conditions 10, 20, 30 years down the line also seem to improve the way that your brain works in the here and now. So while I would understand why a 20 or 30 year old might not be all that concerned with dementia during this phase of life, there's now a burgeoning field of science known as

nutritional psychiatry, which makes the connection between our diets and our lifestyles, well, specifically our diets, and the way that our brains work, our ability to show up in the world, our ability to focus, pay attention, tune out impulses, to have better mental health with regards to anxiety and depression. This field of nutritional psychiatry is incredibly exciting because depression, I think for many people, we tend to feel a sense of depression happening to us or a sense of perhaps moral failure around depression.
But depression is natural. And there are many aspects of, I think, modern life that are pulling the trigger for so many of us with regards to these kinds of mental health conditions.
I mean, today, so many of us are suffering from diseases of despair. And certainly, there are aspects of life that will lead to depression.
I was certainly very depressed during a lot of the time that my mom was suffering

with this condition, particularly at the onset and as well as at the end of her life. But also much of how we treat ourselves today, whether we're talking about overly sedentary lifestyles or diets that are replete with ultra processed foods.
I mean, for many, maybe not all, but for many people do actually elicit feelings of dour mood, of anxiety. And so to me, that was the real value add for younger people in their 20s and 30s who are really maybe just beginning their careers or are starting to see repercussions of their diets and their lifestyles in terms of their mental health.
that there really is an empowering story here and that the same steps that you might take to reduce your risk for these kinds of conditions in midlife actually also seem to improve quality of life when young. And so that's why I actually named my first book, Genius Foods, as opposed to the dementia prevention foods, because eating foods like, for example, avocado actually improve cognitive function.
I mean, for example, avocado consumers seem to have better cognitive function across myriad cognitive domains than avocado non-consumers. And that's an observational study, but mechanistically, it makes perfect sense when you consider the micronutrients and the phytonutrients that avocados contain.
And that's just one example. Blueberries are another example of a food that we know directly supports cognitive health.
There's a bounty of data linking blueberries to better cognitive performance. Dark chocolate, cacao flavanols are another food that can potentially boost brain function.
And this is something that should appeal to anybody across the age spectrum. So to me, that's the empowering message is that this is not just about preventing a condition.
It would be worth taking these steps and eating these foods to prevent these kinds of conditions that we're talking about. I think the exciting part of the story is that this is not just an investment.
This is not just like a long-term investment. This is an investment that pays dividends, like serious dividends in the here and now.

And that to me is part of the value add for younger people.

Yeah.

And if you had to name a few non-negotiables for people who want to protect their brain

through nutrition, what would some of those be?

Well, I would say today, the hierarchy that I use these days, and I try to remain open to changing my perspective as new data presents itself, or as my own thinking about diet and nutrition shifts. But today, I would say that my sort of food pyramid, it's a three-rung pyramid.
And the first rung of the pyramid really is about prioritizing minimally processed whole foods. So today, 60% of the calories that your average adult ingests comes from what are called ultra-processed foods.
And these are the kinds of foods that are now being linked to myriad chronic diseases, whether we're talking cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, also Alzheimer's disease and dementia, and worse mental health. These are the kinds of foods that tend to line our supermarket aisles.
Now, your average supermarket today, 73% of the items are characterized as being ultra-processed. And when I use the term ultra-processed, I mean, this is a very low resolution term at this stage.
We don't yet have the data to know exactly what types of ultra-processed foods are the most nefarious, although that picture is starting to emerge. We are starting to see that sugar-sweetened beverages, for example, are among the worst, like sodas and things like that.
But in general, as a general screening tool, shelf-stable, packaged, processed foods, the kinds of foods that you might see in a hospital vending machine, unfortunately, these are the kinds of foods that are now being linked very strongly to chronic disease. So you want to avoid those to the best of your ability, which isn't to say that you can't have some here and there and be totally okay.
You can. But again, today, your average adult, 60% of the calories are coming from ultra processed foods.
I'd like to see that.

I mean, I think 0%, it doesn't need to be 0%. It can be 10%.
It could be maybe 20%. You'd still be doing a lot better off than your average adult today.
Think of that another way is if you go in the supermarket, shop around the center of the store. Shop around.
Yeah, on the periphery. Yes, exactly.
And ultra processed foods, I mean, these are the cakes, the chips, the crackers, the confectionery products, even commercial breads these days, frozen foods. I'm not talking about frozen fruits and vegetables.
I'm talking about mixed dishes and essentially convenience foods that are loaded with preservatives that are usually nutrient depleted. Fried foods are a good example of ultra processed foods that you want to typically avoid unless you're frying them yourself.
And a good heuristic for an ultra processed food is a food that you couldn't possibly make in your own kitchen if you tried. So these are foods that need to be made at commercial scale and couldn't be replicated at home unless you try to use additives that are not typically found in an average kitchen.
You want to prioritize the minimally processed foods. I don't think that we should be extremists about our food choices.
Now, obviously, there are a lot of people today that have adopted carnivore-style diets, and many people are on, for various reasons, plant-only diets, vegan diets and things like that. I don't think that either extreme approach is ideal.
And I think there's value to be gained from both sides of the aisle, so to speak. And so for me, integrating both animal source foods like grass fed, grass finished beef, free range eggs, free range chicken.
There are lots of benefits to integrating those kinds of foods. But even if the foods with those specific characteristics are off-limits to you, any lean red meat is going to be a health food when compared to its ultra-processed alternatives.
I don't like to let perfect be the enemy of the good. If you don't have access to the most pristine grass-fed, grass-finished beef, I still think it's really important to underscore the nutritional value of red meat, despite it maybe coming from a more conventional farming system.
Eggs. Any egg is a cognitive multivitamin.
An egg yolk is literally a care package devised by nature to provide a little bit of everything required to grow a brain. And eggs are the top source of choline, for example.
In the standard American diet, 90% of adults consume inadequate amounts of, and yet it's one of the most important nutrients for good brain health. Eating eggs, eating wild fatty fish provides DHA fat.
It's an incredibly important nutrient for good brain health. So I'm a huge fan of animal source foods and I advocate for them unapologetically, but I also think that plant foods are incredibly important as well.
I've already talked about avocados, blueberries, dark chocolate are incredible. Dark leafy greens are amazing.
They have very low calorie density and they're very nutrient dense. Integrating both foods of plant and animal origin, I think is incredibly important.
And then the top rung of my food pyramid to really get granular is to prioritize protein. And that's something that I might not have said five years ago, but I do think that there is tremendous value from the standpoint of aging and longevity and also of brain health specifically.
Now data is starting to show of prioritizing protein in your diet. It's the best way to maintain muscle as we get older, which becomes increasingly difficult.
And when we prioritize protein in our diets, protein-rich foods like red meat and eggs, they're not just valuable for the protein that they contain. They also contain myriad essential micronutrients.
Again, choline, which I've mentioned, but zinc, like vitamin B12, iron, for example, creatine, which is concentrated in red meat and fish. And so I think that by prioritizing protein, I think it's a fantastic strategy.
And there are a lot, there's essentially no downside to even over-consuming protein because it's in part, one of the reasons why it's, I think, valuable to prioritize protein is because it's so satiating. It's the most satiating macronutrient.
And we live in a time now where two-thirds of adults are either overweight or obese. So this ultimately comes down to a satiety problem, that our diets are predominated by foods that are minimally satiating.
So by prioritizing protein, you're not only prioritizing the most satiating macronutrient, it's going to fill you up more effectively carbohydrate and fat predominant foods. These foods also tend to bring along with the protein, the amino acids, really important micronutrients that directly support healthy aging.
So I think that's a fantastic strategy. And there's no downside to over-consuming it for somebody with healthy kidneys.
There's no negative impact on kidney health. The potential downside of under-consuming it, while there are a lot, you will tend to under-consume protein, which is a very important micronutrient, of course, but also the micronutrients that come alongside of it, or this is known as the protein leverage hypothesis, which gives a rationale for that phenomena.
And so, yeah, that's just scratching the surface, but those are the three rungs of my food pyramid, so to speak. Well, Max, I'm just going to give a shout out to the audience that if they want to dive deeper into some of the topics that you discussed earlier this year, I did a whole bunch of interviews covering all sides of this.
Gabrielle Lyon really did deep dive on protein. I had Terry Walls and Morley Robbins, Cynthia Thurlow, Chris Kenobi, Eric Edmeades, talking about many of the other things that you covered.
So I want to go into the topic of choices, because this is something that I talk a lot about on the podcast. You've written and talked a lot about how our choices in diet and lifestyle can transform our lives.
What I want to ask you is a little bit different twist to this. How do you think this connects to living a purpose-driven, intentional life, which is a key theme of the podcast? That's a great question.
I attribute the impact that I've had, which to me is the primary indicator of success that I use. How many people am I impacting? Is that impact a positive one? What kinds of feedback do I get? And I attribute my success in that regard to the fact that I am aligned with my purpose.
And it took me a couple of decades to figure out what my purpose was. And my purpose obviously is something that I discovered by way of real personal tragedy, which is sometimes what it takes.
But I feel aligned in the sense that you have to do what you can't not do.

And I couldn't just sit back idly when I saw the most important person in my life suffering with this kind of awful condition, America's most feared condition, and being given 15 minutes in each doctor's office. at which point after which a doctor would scribble a few notes on a prescription pad

for a drug that had minimal effect, no disease modifying treatment, no disease modifying impact, and then send us on our way, left to our own devices. And I realized at that point that I couldn't sit idly.
I had to speak up. I had to stand up and learn all that I could, despite the fact that I didn't have a formal training in this regard.
At that point, I was able to do an inventory of my skills as a storyteller, as a communicator. I wasn't an academic, but I realized that I had spent the past six years communicating delicate and important topics to a mass audience.
And so that I knew that I was really good at thinking on the fly and on my feet and communicating responsibly because words are powerful. So when communicating topics such as health literacy to be really intentional about your word choice, which is something that I was very adept at, I realized that I was good at what it was that I was doing and that I enjoyed what I was doing.
Despite the fact that this was all rooted in something that was very tragic for me, I knew, as I mentioned earlier in our conversation, John, that I love nutrition and health and talking about this stuff. This is something that I would be interested in learning about had my mom not developed this condition.
I mean, I would probably be interested in learning about it from a different vantage point, more from a fitness standpoint. But all of these things had to align for me to realize that I was aligned with my purpose.
After I had that realization and I just simply proceeded to do what felt most natural to me,

things really started to accelerate in terms of my professional opportunities.

And I think it's really important for people to understand that

you don't need to apologize for achieving a degree of commercial success,

which I'm very grateful that I've been able to. My first book, Genius Foods, was a bestseller, and then my subsequent books have all been bestsellers.
But I wouldn't be able to dedicate the time in my life to learning the amount of time that I allocate to learning about this topic every single day, right? Not able to pay my rent what it is that I'm doing. The fact that I have a commercially successful podcast, for example, I wouldn't be able to dedicate such a significant proportion of my life to learning about this topic and the rigor that I dedicate to investigating nutrition science as a non-academic had I not been able to, from early on, start to make money with what it is that I do.
So you have to find a way to identify what your passions are, but it's not enough to just be passionate. You have to also identify what your purpose is.
And my purpose obviously had something to do with storytelling and communication. I recognized that early on, but then you also have to be able to find a way to commercialize it in a way that is responsible and doesn't involve selling your soul and compromising your integrity and your values in doing so.
Because money is in a way a form of energy. And because I'm able to keep a roof over my head doing what it is that I do, not distracting myself with other things, it's made me better at what it is that I do.
A lot of documentary filmmakers, for example, they have their one documentary passion project and they'll produce ads. They'll do marketing to pay their rent.
I had the idea of doing this long form documentary about dementia prevention, which is not something that has ever been undertaken before. And rather than go and try to make films for hire for other people, I just continued to learn about this topic that I was filming during the day.
But then I started writing about it. And I started creating social media content about it.
And then I started having broader conversations about it on my podcast, The Genius Life. And all of that sort of created this pie that at first wasn't very profitable, but there were signs that this might be profitable, which just further cemented the initiatives that I was taking to dedicate time to these various different arms of my business.
And then ultimately it became something that allowed me to focus full-time on health science communication. And I'm so incredibly grateful that I've been able to do that as a result.
But yeah, it all comes back to purpose and passion. And the fact that I wake up every single day excited to read new science, to read a new paper, to get better at understanding science and to get better at assessing scientific literature,

which is something that it's a skill that you're always improving on.

And I attribute it all to really getting to focus on this full time.

And part of that has to do with recognizing my purpose and not just being focused on the

passion side of things, but also the purpose and being able to do a self-inventory of

things that I know that I'm capable

of knowing where I could use a little bit of help and so on and so forth. Max, if there's one mindset shift or habit for someone who's listened to today's episode, you hope that listener adopts after hearing our episode, what would it be? I think it's important to remain open-minded and to never let go of that student mindset, to always be learning and seeking out answers and better answers, and to always be willing to pivot when new data presents itself.
Just to always be learning, sharing and improving and having a growth mindset about things.

I think that's really important.

When my mom became sick, I didn't sit idly on my hands and take a passive approach. I took an active approach in her health.
And in so doing, I learned more than I ever thought I would about these kinds of conditions, which so many people seem to be suffering from. The mindset that I credit, despite the fact that I hadn't gone down this traditional path, I felt entitled to answers.
And that entitlement compelled me forward to ask questions that I might have felt I wasn't able to ask had I had a different mindset about them of exclusion, where I'm not a medical doctor or an academic scientist. I should just assume that these questions are being asked by the so-called experts.
But no, I think we should all, there's a degree of entitlement that I think you have to have. Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in his book, I believe it was Outliers, where he talks about the value of having a sort of entitled mindset.
And yeah, it's been the world to me. And it's helped my family immensely, not always in the ways that I would hope it to have helped.
But I think my family's better off for it and I'm certainly better off for it. And getting to have conversations with you to such a large audience, John, I think in a small way, it's made the world better off for it as well.
I'm just grateful. Well, Max, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show today.
Where can our audience go to learn more about your work, whether it's your books, podcast, or Little Empty Boxes? Well, first and foremost, I would love for people to watch Little Empty Boxes. It's now available on Amazon Prime in the US, on Apple TV.
And for anybody who is outside of the US, it's at littleemptyboxes.com. And yeah, it's a real movie, so people can watch it tonight if they so choose.
For a real deep dive into any of these topics from a scientific standpoint, my first book, Genius Foods, is a great starting place. It's a literal owner's manual for the human brain.
And then I cover a lot of these topics regularly on my own podcast, which is called The Genius Life. Max, thank you so much for being here.
As a long-term fan of your work, it's truly an honor to have you on the show. Thanks so much, John.
It was a real privilege. Wow.
What an incredible conversation with Max Lugavere. From uncovering the impact of nutrition and lifestyle on brain health to understanding how we can reset our bodies and minds to their factory settings, today's episode has been packed with actionable insights and profound wisdom.
Max's personal journey from adversity to advocacy is not only inspiring, but also a powerful reminder that small intentional changes can lead to monumental shifts in our health and well-being. As we wrap up, I encourage you to reflect on the key takeaways from today's episode.
Whether it's making simple adjustments to your diet, prioritizing better sleep, or reducing the toxins in your environment, Max's message is clear. It's never too late to reclaim your cognitive and physical health.
Start where you are and take the first step toward a genius life. If Max's insights resonated with you, please take a moment to leave us a five-star rating and review.
Your support helps us reach even more people with these impactful conversations. And if you know someone who could benefit from this episode, share it with them.
A single conversation can truly change a life. You can find links to everything we discussed today, including Max's books, Genius Foods, The Genius Life, and Genius Kitchen, as well as his podcast, The Genius Life, and his documentary in the show notes at passionstruck.com.
The video version of this episode is available on our YouTube channels. And don't forget to check out our sponsors and deals at passionstruck.com slash deals.
Supporting our sponsors helps keep the show thriving. Before we close, I want to remind you that I'm passionate about sharing these insights with organizations and teams through speaking engagements.
Let's work together to create intentional change and ignite growth. You can find more at johnrmiles.com slash speaking.
Now, here's a sneak peek at what's coming up next on PassionStruck. I will be joined by Esther Dyson, entrepreneur, investor, and founder of Wellville.
Esther is a visionary thinker who's dedicating her life to solving some of our most pressing health and societal changes. In this episode, we'll explore her groundbreaking work in creating long-term community-based health initiatives, her thoughts on the loneliness epidemic, and how we can foster greater belonging and well-being in our lives and communities.
Esther's insights on aligning purpose with impact are both inspiring and actionable. You won't want to miss this powerful and thought-provoking conversation.
When you talk to the people who work at Facebook or at Google or

lots of these places, they know they're manipulating people. They know that they're

selling something addictive. And you're destroying the self-love and self-efficacy,

both of your supposed customers, that your customers are really re-advertisers,

and of the people who work for your company and feel they're being corrupted.

And then you have the CEOs are surrounded by people who tell them how great they are. And sometimes they totally believe it and sometimes they know it's not true and they end up committing what I call negligent suicide.
And as always, the fee for the show is simple. If you found value in today's episode, share it with someone who could benefit from it.
And remember, apply what you hear so that you can live what you listen.

Until next time, live life, passion struck. We'll be right back.
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