Episode 93 | Aug 16, 2024

Ditching Ultra-Processed Foods For Family Health, With Dr. Madiha Saeed

How does diet affect your family’s (especially children’s) health? This week on Health Coach Talk, Dr. Sandi welcomes family physician and holistic health advocate Dr. Madiha Saeed to discuss the profound effects of diet on cellular health and the importance of choosing real, whole foods over ultra-processed alternatives.

“Food is not just food. We need food to run trillions and trillions of biological processes that are occurring in your body every second.”

Dr. Madiha Saeed

As a busy mom raising a family of five, Dr. Madiha is no stranger to the allure of convenient, shelf-stable ultra-processed foods. Her experiences balancing a demanding career with family responsibilities revelaed the need for practical, nutritious food choices that support our bodies. Now she’s on a mission to empower families with the knowledge to make informed dietary decisions. She dedicates her career to exploring and teaching the interconnectedness of nutrition and health (she’s even been a guest on an FMCA webinar about this topic!).

In her conversation with Dr. Sandi, Dr. Madiha sheds light on how modern diets filled with ultra-processed foods affect not just our digestive systems but our cellular function and overall well-being, too. She provides practical advice on educating children and families about the value of real food, with tried-and-true strategies for making healthier food choices even in the face of time pressure, budget constraints, and picky eaters.

The battle against ultra-processed foods is one that health coaches help their clients fight every day. Dr. Madiha offers insights for coaches on how dietary choices influence overall health and how to educate clients about the importance of whole foods. Her approach includes practical tips for overcoming common client challenges, like time constraints and budget limitations. Coaches can use these insights to help clients make sustainable dietary changes and improve their overall wellness.

Ready to get inspired and join the fight against ultra-processed foods for a healthier, more vibrant family life? Check out the episode below.

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Episode Transcript

Dr. Sandi: If like me, you are concerned about the health of our children, your grandchildren, then this episode is for you because we’ve seen a drastic change in the health of children. We see type 2 diabetes being diagnosed younger and younger ages. When I was younger, I would hear about adult onset diabetes. No, it is being diagnosed in young children. We have an obesity crisis. We have children who are consuming ultra-processed foods, and that is a big part of the problem. We have food companies who are literally engineering foods with that right combination of sugar, salt, and fat, not only to hijack our taste buds but to hijack the taste buds of young children where they are preferring this.

So, we get into ultra-processed foods. We talk about solutions. If you are a health coach or thinking of becoming a health coach, this is an area where you can really make a difference because parents need support. They have busy lives, and it’s overwhelming. They often think, how can I prepare nutritious meals? I want my children to have a healthy diet, but perhaps I can’t afford it. I don’t have the time. I may be working two jobs. I’m a single parent. So, there are so many obstacles. These are the things that we get into with my very special guest. She is a good friend of mine. I’m talking about Dr. Madiha Saeed. Let me tell you about Dr. Madiha Saeed. She’s also known as the HolisticMom, MD. She’s a practicing board-certified family physician, an international speaker, and a global bestselling author of the “Holistic RX, Your Guide to Healing Chronic Inflammation and Disease.” She wrote “Adam’s Healing Adventures,” a children’s book series, which we’re going to talk about today.

Dr. Saeed is the Director of Education for Documenting Hope and KnoWEwell. She sits on multiple medical advisory boards, including Holistic Primary Care and Wellness Mama. She was the past president of the International Institute of Islamic Medicine and is the president of the nonprofit organization, Pure Healing Foundations. Dr. Saeed and her children speak internationally in the most prestigious medical holistic conferences. They’ve also appeared on radio and television. Her children host the “The Holistic Kids Show.” This is a podcast that has over 150 interviews helping kids empower and educate other kids.

So, without further ado, I bring to you Dr. Madiha Saeed. I think you’re going to enjoy this conversation as much as I’ve enjoyed recording it. Excited to welcome you to “Health Coach Talk.”

Dr. Madiha: I am so incredibly honored to be here. This is literally a dream come true. You are my hero. So, being here with you is like goosebumps. I’m like on cloud nine, so thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Sandi: Well, you are amazing. You are an author of many books, but today we’re going to focus on a special series. So, would you share your newest work? Because we’re going to dig into ultra-processed food and particularly how we can help our children, our grandchildren to avoid the dangers of ultra-processed food.

Dr. Madiha: Absolutely. The newest edition, this is the fourth book, it’s called “Adam’s Healing Adventures: Fake Food vs Real Food,” the food label detective. And my 13-year-old actually illustrated this book. So, it’s really exciting. It is the fourth. So, this is the first one, then I have one on the rainbow foods, and then gratitude. I know you have them all. At least I hope so. Otherwise, I’ll give them to you. But this is the latest one, which is such a huge problem today. Because if we just look at the statistics, year after year, asthma, allergies, eczema is affecting more and more kids. I remember that, when my 16-year-old was in kindergarten, there was only, like, one table of allergy, nut-free table. And now it’s, like, two or three and four and, like, multiple. And then walking into the nurse’s office, EpiPens are, like, now the new normal.

So, this is a problem. And then we think, oh, it’s, like, the new normal. But if we actually start to look at the statistic, like, we know that asthma and allergies are on the rise. One in six youths ages 2 to 19 are overweight. One in five have obesity, and one in 16 have severe obesity. The incidence of type 1 and type 2 diabetes is bombarding…like, growing at an accelerated rate where I think, just in the pandemic, the diabetes type 2 in kids has doubled. JAMA reported one in three teens have prediabetes. And then not even just prediabetes, like, the amount of teens that are now dealing with fatty liver is unheard of. It was never like that before. And then that was the body, but what about the brain? Roughly one in five teens report experiencing depression and anxiety. So, 1 in 10 have ADHD. So, the risks of all of these chronic health conditions are on a rise, and we did not see these problems when I was growing up. This was not in my day and age. And even if you just look at the autism rates, it’s crazy how they’re just exploding. And if anybody is, oh, it’s just better diagnosis, but where are all the super severely autistic? There may be some, but they’re not…like, right now in the kids, there’s one in every 32 kids.

So, it’s, like, craziness how this is just exploding. And I don’t know any 42-year-old that has severe autism. Kids today are dealing with things that we have never dealt with. And not even just that, our planet is suffering with all of this fertilizer that we’re throwing on. I think, in 1965, we used only, like, 46 million metric tons of fertilizer, but now it’s like 195 million tons. So, these are all chemicals and toxins we’re dumping into the land that’s creating marine dead zones that’s decreasing the biodiversity. They say that one-third of plants and animal species on the planet could face extinction by 2070. So, with 75% of our pollinator species disappearing at a rate of mass extinction and the United Nations says we only have, like, 60 harvests left of top soil because we’re all turning it into dirt that really doesn’t have those microbes in it. So, there is a problem here. We need to wake up. And this is where we need to start asking the questions, why are we getting sicker? Why are our children getting sicker? Why is our planet getting sicker? And we need to educate our children. So, we need to figure out those answers are, educate our children, because guess what. This world we’re inhabiting, this is theirs. Like, yes, we have, like, 50 years left on the planet maybe, but what about our children? We are inheriting this down to them, so we have to start educating them about what is going on and what we can do about it.

Dr. Sandi: Oh, you are so right. And your talk about the rise of autism, for example, I want to share something. So, many years ago, we’re talking in the ’70s, I worked for a local teachers college, and I supervised practicum students in special education. And I would go out to the centers where they were doing their student teaching. And one was a facility, it was for kids who are high-risk, kids with autism. And I want to tell you, and you’re also in the Chicago area, this was Lake County, which is just north of Chicago. And it extended from the road that was just north of Chicago up to Wisconsin. That’s how big it was. So, all of Lake County. So, think of this massive county that is north of Chicago. There was one classroom, there were nine children who were diagnosed with autism. In all of Lake County, they had one classroom. So, these were kids who were severe. Now some people, as you said, could say, well, the diagnostics weren’t very good. I was one of those psycho-educational diagnosticians doing that testing, and we had state-of-the-art ways of assessing in terms of specialized testing. Parents know that something was wrong, teachers identify. So, we were diagnosing those kids. So, that was just one example.

And you’re correct. When I taught school, we didn’t have that. There was no special table for allergies. The parents brought in snacks. We never had nut-free. And so something has changed. And in my day, we called it adult onset type 2 diabetes. We didn’t say type 2, we said it’s adult onset diabetes. Now, of course, we’re seeing this with our pediatric endocrinologists. So, you make such a good point where we have to reach the children, and that’s why I think that this book series, particularly this last one… So, how can we help kids recognize fake food and make better choices?

Dr. Madiha: Absolutely, we have to teach children that the reason why our bodies are becoming out of balance and our world is becoming out of balance is because we are not feeding it the foods that it was intended to eat. And we’re putting all of this artificial chemicals that we’re using to create these foods into the planet, we’re destroying the planet. So, we have to recognize that this body is one of life’s greatest miracles. As we’re sitting and talking, about 300 million cells die every minute, producing 25 million new cells every second. Every 10 seconds, there’s a million new white blood cells, 20 million new red blood cells, 30 million new platelets every 10 seconds. The heart is beating a close to 100,000 times a day. We’re breathing about 22,000 times a day. But it all starts with that basic building block, the cell. The average human body contains about 37.2 trillion human cells. And each cell contains cytoplasm inside all of these different pieces like Golgi apparatus, lysosomes, peroxisomes, mitochondria, nucleus, ribosomes.

But the most important is that mitochondria. And the mitochondria is a lot more than just the powerhouse of the cell. The mitochondria is constantly sensing and integrating the environment. And so every single mitochondria in your body is always surveying, “Am I safe or am I unsafe? Am I in peacetime metabolism? Am I in wartime metabolism?” So, depending on the state of our body and we need… So, each one of these cells needs real food to function, but unfortunately today we are not giving our kids and our bodies that ultra… Like, we’re just giving them ultra-processed foods. And that ultra-processed food is raising our blood sugar higher than it’s ever raised it before. It is leading to the stickiness, which basically now is attaching to everything and creating problems or glycation. It also is leading to destroying our gut microbiome. It is destroying our gut health and then thereby destroying our brain health. But most importantly, it is destroying these mitochondria and leading to something called chronic inflammation.

So, if we live unbalanced lives… So, for example, if we’re giving our kids too much junk food with chemicals and we’re not eating enough of the good food, toxins, all these things, it’s actually starting to… These cells don’t work and they don’t do their job well. They start to go off balance. And when they start to go off balance, it creates this flame, and this flame gets bigger and bigger into chronic inflammation and can really create all of these chronic health conditions that we are dealing with.

Now some people are like, is it inflammation that causes mitochondrial dysfunction or is it mitochondrial dysfunction that causes inflammation? Nobody exactly knows, but what it is is fundamentally is the immune system is not working properly and specifically because of these ultra-processed foods is one of the key pieces that is really disturbing our bodies. And this is where I really want to emphasize here because food is not just food. If we’re in a car, in order to make sure the car works, we have to give it the right fuel. This is how I teach my kids. If we give cars, oh, but today apple juice is or orange juice is cheaper than gasoline and so let’s go ahead and put that in the car. Do you think it’ll work? And they’re like, “No.”

So, that’s really how I start to educate my children about teaching them, like, what’s going on in the cell, what’s going on in the mitochondria, why these ultra-processed foods are so bad for us that we need the…that food is not just food. We need food to run trillions and trillions of biological process that are occurring in your body every second. And if we put all these unrecognizable ingredients in it like junk food, our bodies are going to work like junk. And we know that real food is what our body needs to not only optimize our immune system where 80% of the immune system lies in the gut but also it determines the health of these trillions of gut bacteria and the biodiversity that then determines your health.

And this fake food, this ultra-processed food, and I tell them. We look at the ingredients. We see, “You know what? Is this food even food?” Like, go and look at, like, Red #40, Yellow #5. Like, what are these things? So, ultra-processed foods, they use these industrial methods and these ingredients that you can’t even find in a grocery store like hydrogenated oils and additives and high fructose corn syrup, emulsifiers. They all lack value. And unfortunately today, more than 70% of all of kids’ diets comes from ultra-processed foods. So, how are we expecting our kids’ bodies to work? And then studies have shown that… There was a large study that came out in 2024, so this year, that consuming ultra-processed food was associated with at least 32 health problems like heart disease, diabetes type 2, and then mental health disorders. This, again, leads to those blood sugar spikes that lead to glycation, the sugar cells sticking to things like protein, fat, and DNA, leading to chronic inflammation, oxidative stress that hurts the brain.

So, unfortunately, this is… So, I teach the kids. I know you’re like, “Oh, but this is too difficult to teach the kids that information.” They’re learning really complex things in school that we’re not even going to really use. How many of us are actually using, like, division on a daily basis? But the thing is we need to actually help them look at the ingredients, figure out what these ingredients are, and how it’s actually affecting our body, that these ultra-processed foods, they’re not like not doing anything to us. They’re actually hurting us. They’re throwing their cells out of balance, leading to chronic inflammation, oxidative stress that can break down the whole car. And that is what I really start to emphasize to show kids that this there’s these friends in our gut, this is the mitochondria, this is what happens. And going through this in a large amount of detail with the kids, and then again, helping them become food label detectives to understand what is going on in their food.

Dr. Sandi: It is critical that we impart this information to our kids. And there’s a time in their life when parents have a lot of control. And so many times though, kids, when given a choice, they’ll choose the ultra-processed option, and it hijacks their brain. And then now they’re addicted to it. And then it’s so hard for them to make better choices, because it just doesn’t taste the same. And one of the things that I see as going through even places that are healthy like a Trader Joe’s or a Whole Foods market, and you see health washing, especially with kids cereals, I was noticing this. Well, it’s eco-friendly. It’s gluten-free. It’s keto. They’re so adept at the front of the package and having the latest buzzwords. And yet it’s meaningless. You got to look at the back. You got to look at what is in these foods. And yes, it may not have the red dyes, but it still isn’t giving them empty calories, it may be full of seed oils, and it’s not real food. But what do you say to a parent who’s say they’re busy? Now, you’re very busy, and you’ve got five kids, and you manage to cook. I’m just amazed at what you get done in a week. But for someone who say, “I’m overwhelmed, and I can’t cook from scratch, or I’m on a budget. I can’t afford organic,” for example, how would you help a parent who is concerned, and yet they have a lot of reasons why they cannot give their kids a healthier diet?

Dr. Madiha: Absolutely. And it all starts with empathizing, right, with them, because it is difficult, especially in this day and age when we are bombarded with easier meals that are just to-go. Parents are working full-time jobs, and then their kids have school, and then it becomes a lot. And so I completely understand, and I have been there too. But specifically when we show that there are so many healthier alternatives to these fastfood options, and to recognize that first, to give them hope. There’s so much hope that we can do. Like, if your kids want chips or there’s places that you can quickly get a salad, there’s it is possible to look for those real food options. We just gotta look. But the thing is the biggest piece comes from educating the parent. And we need to recognize that if we as parents don’t take control of the situation, big food, big tobacco companies are gonna take control of your child.

And I know this is really sad to say, and you’re gonna probably, okay, now this is a little cuckoo. No, because studies have shown that fatty, salty, sweet food that make up, like, 68% of the American food supply has been pushed onto us by these nations leading big food corporations. And for decades, the tobacco industry hooked people on cigarettes by making their products irresistibly addictive. And then recent studies have actually shown that these tobacco companies have the same strategies, are using the same strategies in big food that works for them, getting kids and adults hooked to tobacco. And so in the 1980s, tobacco kings like R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris acquired companies like General Foods, Nabisco, Kraft, and they developed number of hyper-palatable foods between 1988 to 2001. And so that then resulted in a substantial tobacco-related influence on our United States food system.

So, we think that our kids are like, “Oh, do they just want it? It’s easier just to give them this food.” No, we need to first take a step back and recognize, yes, they’re craving those foods. Well, why are they craving those foods? They’re craving those foods because of the fact that they have been manipulated by these big food companies to create that artificially rewarding eating experience. By how? By filling with sugar, caffeine, fat, sodium, bad carbs like all this stuff. And actually, we’re being tricked and addicted. And we know that, for example, now, even on TikTok and social media, influencers are being paid by big food to promote their sugar and artificial food. Almost half of the commercials out there are for processed food, ultra-processed food companies.

So, to recognize that if we as parents don’t take charge, somebody else will take control of our children. If we don’t help them make their own choices, if we don’t put them in the driver’s seat of their own health, if we don’t educate them because guess what? They’re not going to learn this in school. They’re not going to learn this at their doctor’s office. As a family physician, we were never taught any nutrition unless I missed it during maternity leave. But the thing is you’re not going to learn this on social media. So, this is where us as parents need to take control. And for that busy parent, I understand. It is frustrating. But there’s so much that we can do. And we’ve actually talked about this in the book. And this is where, as a family physician, I knew nothing about this before. I had to educate myself and learn about this and then find out what are these ingredients. And then I would go to the store with my children and look at those ingredients like, “Mama, what is Red #40?” Let’s become food label detectives. We were doing it as a family. Go look at them and find those. What do these things do? What kind of harms do they have on the body? Are there any pluses? What’s going on?

So, having your child take full control of that and getting them all involved is key. It’s like you’re fighting, right? And then any busy parent is like, “I’m just going to give up and just give the kid what they want to shut them up because I have to get on with the next thing. I’m overwhelmed myself.” And this is why prioritizing your meals on real food. So, I think we’ve got to empathize it, role model it, start to educate yourself, and then prioritize on eating real food. If we just incorporate more real food, we can crowd out all the bad. And I love to start wherever the child is at. So, for example, they love pancakes for breakfast. I’m like, good, then let’s make them pancakes for breakfast, right? I use, like, a cassava flour and then I put Himalayan Tartary Buckwheat in there and then make that…

Dr. Sandi: I do too.

Dr. Madiha: It’s so delicious. And the kids will have that and then they can put whatever toppings they want like blueberries and different types of raspberries, blackberries, you know, and make a little face out of it, whatever it is. They can have anything they wish that they would want, but then you just have to find a healthier alternative. So, for example, if you’re on the run and you want something cheap and easy, I’m just thinking like the… Most places have a Chipotle, which is non-GMO, right? But even a healthier and better option, Whole Foods has, like, a whole chicken that is, like, $11 cooked, organic, and it’s like $11.99 or whatever for the whole cooked chicken. That can feed an entire family and then I grab a packet of coleslaw. I put some avocado mayo in there and honey just to sweeten it up and a little bit of Dijon mustard. And I have a meal for the entire family in seconds.

And those are things that you can do even out and about. And this is what I do whenever I’m out and about. I’m like, oh my God, I have five boys to feed. Where am I even going to find any food right now that’s cost-effective, fast? So, if I’m in a rush, this is what I’ll do. Or I’ll even have salmon, right? Like, I’ll take salmon out. It takes literally minutes to cook salmon or I’ll have smoked salmon and take that with me everywhere we go. So, there are options. There’s beef jerky sticks, right…

Dr. Sandi: Yes, love them.

Madiha: Yeah, exactly, right? There’s bars out there. You can even… So, whatever it is, vegetables, clean protein, healthy fats, fruit, eating the rainbow, so many different options. If we start counting, “Oh, my God, how many different options?” The options are endless and so much fun. So, even if you’re on the go and busy, it can be done, but making it simple and easy and cost-effective is doable.

Dr. Sandi: I love it. And what I’m hearing is making it fun, relax about it, because we do not want to go to the other extreme because we know parents who become obsessed and will pull their child out of a birthday party when everybody’s having the cupcake, “Well, you can’t have it,” and then the child throws a fit. So, knowing that there’s room occasionally, but once their palate has not been hijacked, they’re able to have those occasionally and then go back to the way the family is eating. And as a grandparent, when you mentioned Himalayan Tartary Buckwheat, I have a recipe for… We call them toddler muffins because my toddler twin grandkids, they love it. And it’s just buckwheat flour and mashed up ripe bananas and very little sweetener. And there are these mini muffins and they love them. And it takes minutes to make them…

Dr. Madiha: And you can take it on the go.

Dr. Sandi: …in big batches. And you can take them on the go.

Dr. Madiha: You can take them on the go, but that’s like high power food for like… Let’s say you’re a sports mom and you’re going here, there and everywhere. Take these little muffins, and that’s like quick energy, nutritious energy.

Dr. Sandi: Yes, you could throw in protein powder. So, health coaches I believe can be critical because already they’re going into schools. They’re having special programs. They’re working with PTAs, helping schools that are establishing gardens but also supporting parents because as we’re saying, it is tough and to go against the mainstream of these big companies that are seeing profit in our children and our grandchildren getting sick, because big pharma would like nothing better than to have a child getting sick, because that means for the rest of that individual’s life, they’re going to be dependent on medication, which is cross-purpose. We need to take charge, and a health coach can help parents feel empowered that you can help it. You can make a big difference in your children’s life and even working with grandparents, because often there’s family dynamics that get in the way. So, that’s something that in terms of the psychology of eating and how families can often get torn apart because maybe one spouse believes in eating one way and thinks the parent’s crazy for this or a grandparent sabotages or sees what families are doing wrong, wants to intervene. So, so many issues. Now a health coach can really help to support people wherever they’re at in this journey.

Dr. Madiha: Absolutely. They are the most critical piece of that puzzle, because remember, doctors are not taught this. This is where health coaches need to step up. You have an intimate relationship with that family and with the children of the family and really start to create a plan, help your families create this plan that can be lifelong, not just like a quick diet, right? And this is where helping them hold their hand, walk alongside them, show them this is doable. It’s so much easy. It’s fun. We don’t get overly stressed. It’s okay. The body is resilient, right? But the thing is providing them with that tool. And sometimes all the patients and the families really need is somebody there to hold their hand, because it is a scary world out there, especially when you’re eating against the social norm and where you’re looked at weird and you have to now change your entire eating way and lifestyle. It is a lot.

And that is where health coaches are key in making that transition easy and lowering the stress for those families. And so we can really create that change. So, you guys, health coaches are that drop in the ocean that can create that ripple effect because you touch so many people’s lives and it starts with all the guidance that you can give them. And this is why it is so important to start educating yourself and then obviously then your families so then we can truly make the world a better place and educate our families to take charge of their own health.

Dr. Sandi: Madiha, you are making the world a better place. I can’t wait to share this with my grandkids. This is a wonderful book. It’s never too young to have kids looking at identifying real food versus fake food.

Dr. Madiha: Absolutely. Back here, we talked about how Adam is becoming food label detectives and then finding healthier alternatives for the foods that he eats like eating the rainbow. And then at the end, providing them with a list of fake food versus real food options. So, then they have that. They could take that to the grocery store with them and say, “You know what? Let’s say I love juices. What can I do instead of that? I love soda. What can I do instead of that? I love McDonald’s. I love, like, Doritos, Takis, things like that.” So, then I’ve gone through a lot of the main foods that our kids really like but then finding that healthier alternative. And it is doable. It’s so much fun. My kids actually just love to go to the store, go with me and taste and find all those different things, read the ingredients. It is so much fun. So, you guys, if we can do it in our house, you guys can. I know Sandi does this too at her house, even with now hopefully with her grandbabies now. So, we can do this. Thank you so much, Sandi, for having me.

Dr. Sandi: We sure can. So, Madiha, where can people find you? Where can they find the book?

Dr. Madiha: I’m on social media, HolisticMom, MD. My social media… We also have a podcast called “The Holistic Kids Show” podcast where the kids have interviewed over 155 people. And then all my books are in Amazon. So, I just submitted my ninth book to the publishers. This is number eight.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah. We’ll have to have you come back and talk about that and check out this podcast that her kids run. It is phenomenal. And they also spoke at IFM’s international conference. They were rock stars. So, this is so wonderful to be with you. Thank you so much for being on “Health Coach Talk.”