Nutritional Authority Discusses Your Metabolism and Chocolate

This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni's Fountain of Youth Summit, which can be found at http://fountainofyouthworldsummit.com. In this excerpt, David Wolfe shares on foods that speed up metabolism and the truth about chocolate.

The Fountain of Youth World Summit with David Wolfe, nutrition authority and author of Sunfood Success System.

Kevin: Yeah, I think that's a nice approach. What other foods are there that can speed up metabolism. People love to hear, I love to hear, foods that can speed up metabolism because everyone feels they're so sluggish.

David: Well, we categorize these foods that speed up metabolism as super foods because not only do they speed up metabolism but they're also usually complete protein sources. They're usually some of the richest sources of minerals, natural trace minerals in food, and some of the best sources of vitamins. For example, the goji berry. The goji berry is one of the hottest substances, foods, in the world right now. In fact, it's just really, you know, caught fire in the west. The goji berry is a simple berry. It's a snack food. It's about the size of a raisin. It tastes great. You know, I start people on goji berries, even some of the top executives in America. That's the one thing they get from me. They get on the goji berries and they eat it all day long every day. What it does it keeps you alert because of all the protein. It keeps the blood sugars stable but it also has all these trace minerals. It speeds up metabolism. It increases weight loss. In fact, I have a little story to tell. I sent this one executive off to Europe. I had met him at a party, talked to him about what I do. He said look, just give me a bag of whatever you've got. I'm going to Europe for six weeks tomorrow morning.

Kevin: Right.

David: I had to come up -- I had to go to my car and just pull together all I had right there. What I had was I had goji berries.

Kevin: Um-hum.

David: I had another super food, which we're going to talk about, which is cacao beans, which is the raw chocolate nut. All chocolate is made from a nut. Most people are not aware of this. And this nut is the most widely eaten nut in the world; a hundred times more people eat it than almonds but not in its original form, in its processed form, which we call chocolate. Anyway, I gave him a bag of the cacao beans, the goji berries, a bag of cashews and I mixed it all together and within – I mean it must have been two pounds of stuff. It was a big -- you know those big Ziploc bags?

Kevin: Sure.

David: And I handed it to him and I said okay, every time you're tempted to snack on something in an airport. Every time you run out of food. Every time you feel hungry snack on this. Well, he shows -- I hear a knock at my door six weeks later and it's him.

Kevin: Um-hum.

David: And I say, my god John, you look incredible. He had lost over 30 pounds in six weeks. I said what happened. Did you change your diet? What's going on? And he actually didn't change his diet. All he did was change what he was snacking on in between meals and stopped eating the junk and started eating these super foods and his metabolism speeded up and the weight just dropped right off.

Kevin: Wow.

David: And, you know, he was even more astonished that I was.

Kevin: Yeah, that's amazing; and the thing about it that cashews have fat in them.

David: And of course we're talking about raw cashews and this is such an important thing for people to understand. You know, I've heard so much from people saying I can't eat avocados because it's too fattening. Let me tell you, I saw my cousin when he got onto our program lost 150 pounds. He was over 300 pounds. He lost half his body weight just by eating food that was richer in nutrition, lower in calories, richer in fiber, which is basically raw foods, including, including one day he ate 15 avocados and continued to lose weight. Now, people might go that's impossible. It's not impossible. It is important for people to understand that avocados are not fattening. They're an excellent source of fat in the right kind, which is raw natural and that's the whole idea behind basically the Sun Food Diet.

Kevin: And you say there's protein in these goji berries. I think it's hard for a lot of people to wrap their heads around the fact that protein can be in a berry.

David: Right. It's interesting about the goji berries because in Chinese medicine the goji berry is considered the number one thing. It has a higher ranking that even ginseng. Now, that's a system that's been around for 5,000 years and has 8,000 foods and herbs in its itinerary of different choices. Now, that, to me, is astonishing that this could get the number one ranking. Well, again, when Western analytical science got a hold of this food and started studying what was in it they found 18 amino acids, all essential amino acids. It's a complete protein source.

Kevin: Wow.

David: Wow, that's something.

Kevin: Yeah. So let's talk about -- do you want to move on to cacao or...

David: Yeah, I think we should talk about chocolate a little bit because this is the number one weight loss food ever. It's the number one appetite suppressant. It's something that the chocolate industry has known is associated with weight loss since the very beginning, you know, hundreds of years ago. Now, I know that sounds like a big one to swallow but chocolate weight loss? And it's absolutely true. The original chocolate form is the nut that all chocolate comes from. It's a tropical fruit true that produces a nut and that nut is called cacao, c-a-c-a-o. We've seen it spelled in the British form, which is c-e-o-c-o-a but that's not the real word. The real word is cacao.

The cacao nut, or the cacao bean, is in, my opinion, the most nutritious food in the world. It's the most nutritious food on the earth. It is the most identical to exactly those nutrients, those vitamins, and in particular minerals, that the human body requires more than any other. For example, the cacao bean is the number one natural source of magnesium of any major food in the world, which is, by the way, coincidentally the number one mineral deficiency in the Western world. Chromium, which balances blood sugar, the cacao bean is the number one source of any major food in the world of chromium, which is really important with all the hypoglycemia and blood sugar imbalances we have today. It's extremely rich in vitamin C, which is astonishing considering that all processed chocolate has no vitamin C.

Kevin: Really?

David: Yeah, because it's all been damaged by heat processing. Vitamin C is very sensitive to oxidation and to heat. And when you take cacao and you process it into chocolate sometimes it's heated two or three times above 240 degrees Fahrenheit for several hours and then the oils are extracted. The whole thing is basically torn apart and then reconfigured into "what we call chocolate bars" or cocoa powder.

Kevin: Um-hum.

David: But this is not what chocolate really is. Um, the number one antioxidant source of any food in the world is chocolate. In other words, it's cacao. The cacao bean is the richest antioxidant food in the world. That, to me, is astonishing, especially with all this evidence now that antioxidants are important to stop aging.

Kevin: Right.

David: They're an anti-aging substance. Let me just tell you a little bit of research that was done by Harvard University. Harvard University researched chocolate. Now, I'm not talking about the cacao. I'm talking processed chocolate, that you know, really the stuff that we shouldn't be eating. They found out that people who ate that lived, on average, a year longer than people who didn't eat chocolate. So we know it's associated with longevity. This probably has to do with the antioxidants.

Kevin: Right, and even with all the sugar and all the other processed stuff that's in that chocolate they still...

David: That's right exactly. Now, here's another astonishing fact. The cacao bean is one of the highest sources of iron of any food in the world. You'd be hard pressed to find any nut or seed, any vegetable, anything that has much iron as cacao has. It's one serving, one say 28 gram serving, which is less than a handful is equivalent to about 314% of the U.S. RDA of iron.

Kevin: Really?

David: Just one little handful of that stuff. It's amazing. And then in terms of trace minerals, copper, manganese, it's off the charts. It's one of the highest natural sources of copper. It's extremely rich in manganese, which is very important for the enzymatic reactions of our cells, our immune system and the overall proper functioning of our neurological system, of our nervous system.

Kevin: Why don't you talk a little bit more about where the information that we get comes from because I always want to explain to people who we're getting the nutrition information. Why don't you go a little bit into how that information is being given to us and why it might not be the best?

David: Well, it's marketing and the thing is it's being sold to us; meaning that the television networks are being paid by advertisers. Those advertisers are the huge conglomerations and corporate interests that control, for example, the corn industry, the soybean industry, the cattle industry, the dairy industry. These are major, major industries in America that have huge lobbies in Washington that lobby not only the government but also that make huge marketing efforts to lobby media.

Kevin: Right.

David: So the media that we've gotten all our lives that's really kind of just sat in front of us on a television screen or in magazines is what's being sold to us. It doesn't really have anything to do with our health. When we finally realized this, what ended up happening is that we started doing our own research and we discovered it really to our great fortune an entirely new vista of possibilities. And this is something I was fortunate to discover when I was 18 years old because I was allergic to so many foods I couldn't really eat them anymore. You know, obviously, pain is great motivator and it motivated me; and it might motivate you if you're listening right now. You don't ever have to be in pain. You don't ever have to eat foods you don't like or that don’t agree with you. You don't ever have to suffer for lack of taste or flavor. You don't have to, you know, eat bulgur wheat and all those other kinds of health foods that don't taste good. You can eat the stuff that tastes incredible. You can have your chocolate and eat it too. Once you have the information, and not only that, it's a superior food and flavor experience than anything you've had before and that's what guides people right into this is we're guided by pleasure. We want the stuff that tastes good and is good for us and that's all available now. It's awesome.