302: Udo Erasmus – Fats That Heal… Fats That Kill, Practice Stillness, Health Is Your Responsibility

Udo: What I do is when I wake up in the morning I joke about it. I say to people, well, when I wake up in the morning I want to check in to see if I’m still there. Cause, if I’m not there anymore, there’s no point getting up. Right. So that’s my joke about it. But when I wake up, I like to spend an hour just being present within myself feeling what it feels like to be alive.

Jesse: Hello and welcome to The Ultimate Health Podcast, episode 302. Jesse Chappus here with Marni Wasserman and we are here to take your health to the next level.

Marni: Each week we will bring you inspiring and informative conversations about health and wellness, covering topics of nutrition, lifestyle, fitness, mindset and so much more.

Jesse: And this week we are speaking with Udo Erasmus, the co-owner of Udo’s Choice brand, a global leader in cutting edge health products. He’s also an accomplished author that’s written Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill and The Book On Total Sexy Health. Udo has impacted numerous lives by passionately conducting live presentations, media interviews, staff trainings, and traveled to 40 plus countries with this message on how to achieve perfect health. I was first introduced to Udo way back when when I was a teenager. My Dad got a hold of his book Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill and this book had a profound impact on him and his health journey and I didn’t read the book at the time, but I really enjoyed researching before this interview and it was a real honor to interview Udo.

Marni: And that same book was also required text when I was studying nutrition and it was just such a good resource, so comprehensive to be able to give me the foundation of what good and bad fats are. And now it is a book that we plan on keeping on our shelf for a very long time. So I’m going to get into some of the points that we talk about with Udo. We cover so many different things, but fat being the main topic. So here’s some of what we talk about, how Udo became poisoned by pesticides and why he started studying fats. What are essential fatty acids, how oils are made, the difference between Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids and the different sources, the benefits of spices, and how to start your day with calmness. So much great Information. Hope you’re ready. Here we go with Udo. Hi Udo. How are you? Such a pleasure having you on the show.

Udo: I’m almost as good as you are and I’m fabulous.

Jesse: All right. Right on Udo, it’s great to have you on the show. And just to jump right into things, you were born during the second world war, so give us a snapshot of what your family was going through at this time.

Udo: Well, I was two. We were refugees fleeing from the communists who were chasing us and tanks and trucks and the allies were shooting at us from planes on the roads we were traveling. I don’t remember a lot cause I was pretty young, but I just remember the fear and the anxiety of it. And that carried, I mean, I still have little bits of it when I’m not consciously relaxing, I’ll go into a sort of an anxiety mode and there’s always like, what if you know, bad things will happen, you know, I don’t feel safe. That kind of stuff. I have pretty good control over it, but it’s like really deep because it was like pre-verbal. I wasn’t speaking. That kind of stuff affects you.

Jesse: Wow. And you said you don’t have memories, which makes sense, but what were your first memories?

Udo: I think the first memory I have, I was four years old and my father came back from being a prisoner of war. He had big arms and he had curly hairs on his arms. And the sun was shining on them they were sparkling. I didn’t say hello to him. I said, wow, your arm looks just like a sheep. And our relationship went downhill from there.

Jesse: Oh no, so in the book you talk about trudging through the war zone with your mom and five siblings and how many kids total in the family?

Udo: Well, there were actually only three siblings. Two of them were orphans whose parents had already died in the war. So she was trying to help. So she had six kids with her, four were her own and I actually have one more was born after the war. So I have four siblings.

Jesse: Okay, so let’s fast forward a little bit here. Take it to age 10 and you moved from West Germany to BC. Yeah. So what was this transition like?

Udo: Well, let’s see. I threw up every morning on the boat and then I went on the swing every afternoon. It was not a bad transition for me. I was a pretty quiet kid anyway and I didn’t have a lot of friends. So leaving, it was kind of an adventure. Then we took a train from Quebec City to Penticton in the Okanagan and that was like a three day, four day, five day. I can’t remember, but it was not high class, wooden benches and then it was just a new adventure. I like adventure. So then I was brand new and exploration of what’s this and what’s that? You know, we went picking cherries and I put the ladder up wrong because the stem has to be in the right place and it fell on my nose. So I thought it was a pretty good childhood. I learned how to swim in a week in Okanagan River. Spent a lot of time playing on the railroad tracks and out it was like as nature as it could be. It was a little town that I lived in Oliver, it was called.

Jesse: And you talk about in your book when you got to North America, you’re reading a lot of books. So what kind of books were you into?

Udo: I really like to know how things work. So I like stories and I like science and I like inner science as well as outer science. So I’m very interested in the nature of human nature, which if you want to explore it, you have to find a way to get your awareness inside. That’s how you explore it.

Jesse: Talk about that a little bit, more. How do we get inside and start exploring?

Udo: When you’re a kid, your awareness begins. Like when you’re in your mother’s body, your awareness has no place to go and there’s nothing to do and there’s nothing to pay attention to. And so your awareness is inside in its source in life. And then when you come out, your awareness gets externalized. How do you bring it back? You’ve got to sit still. There’s an ache in our chest that is a call to come home to ourselves. And if you sit with that ache and you sit still just right behind it is the feeling of being reconnected to yourself. And that takes practice just like everything else that you want to learn and get good at. It takes practice.

Jesse: And you talk about at age 17 first feeling this intense ache your chest. So is this what you were talking about?

Udo: I’m sure it was there before that because it was a pretty intense childhood in some ways. Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. And I couldn’t shake it and it wasn’t based on any physical problem and it was because I couldn’t find distractions. The way we go about it is when we get that disconnection, then we’re looking to get connected again. And we look for it everywhere. But on the outside, because our senses take us out whenever something moves, we go out to it. That’s about survival. You have to pay attention when something changes because that might be, you know, that might be good for you. It might be bad for you. So you have to assess it and then you have to react to it. So we do that a lot. And in the process we’re looking at where is our contentment? Where’s our connection? Where’s our love? Where’s our feeling of being taken care of? And we look forward in the outside world, you know, first in our parents and then in our jobs or our bosses or, friends or our adventures, we’re looking for something to make us whole again. Our wholeness is on the inside. It’s not on the outside. When you run out of distractions, then you end up with sitting with a heartache because that’s always been the call for you to come home. It’s also always been the drive that made you look for all the things that you look for in your life.

Marni: So do you find that things like meditation or just sitting quietly are some of the ways to connect with yourself or what’s worked for you and what are things that you recommend?

Udo: You can’t get to yourself if you can’t sit still, right? Because if you’re not sitting still, you’re doing something else and then you’ve got to pay attention to whatever else you’re doing. And it’s usually on the outside or in your head. Thinking, thinking, thinking. There has to be a way that you can get shut up, sit down, get quiet, turn off all your distractions as much as you can. You know, like the lawnmower outside or whatever, and just be there and then look around. Listen, listen inward, look inward, feel inward, can even taste inward and get in touch with the thing that is the source of your awareness in the first place. So yeah, you have to sit still, whether you call it meditation to get out of your head. Even if you take a cold shower, that’ll get you out of your head for a few seconds. Right? So there’s lots of different ways to do it, but ultimately it’s about standing still and getting quiet and see how deeply quiet you can get and see how long you can stay quiet. Even if you do that perfectly, pretty soon, you know, it’s like, oh, I gotta go pee. Right? So you’re always gonna be having to deal with your physical to make time to be instead of doing.

Marni: Yeah. And for me, when I do things like this or spend time by myself, I find that writing afterwards or journaling is a great way of expressing what’s come up for me or what I’m going through. Is this something that you do as well?

Udo: I have 9,000 pages of stuff that’s come out of the time I spent by myself. I used to do the practice and then after the practice up, man, I had this really good thought and I can’t remember it. So I started doing the practice and then interrupting the practice to write down insights that I had. And a lot of my work comes out of those insights. Out of those 9,000 pages.

Marni: That’s amazing. I can totally relate. Jesse knows this. He’s smiling because during yoga class or during yin yoga, I am often needing to write something down so I’ve started to sometimes bring a piece of paper and pen with me because I feel like it’s better out than in. So it’s just reassuring to hear that that’s something you’ve done as well.

Udo: I’ve got like probably three feet of journals. Like I have my own shorthand so I can write faster. I did a page and a half this morning. It was about love because I’m doing a seminar on love being the superlative state, that’s not my title, but so I’m going to be talking about that so you know, and it’s on my mind and I go to that quiet place. That’s where the love lives and then I can just bring it to expression and I’ll be using some of that. I don’t use notes when I talk, but I make the notes there basically for writing and it just to bring it into my consciousness and get clarity on a topic that I’m going to be addressing.

Jesse: So Udo, do you take time and put this into your calendar this time for voluntary solitude or does it just come up organically or what does that look like?

Udo: The outward movement of our awareness into the world is automatic because it’s required for survival and change pulls your awareness out through your senses, but there’s nothing wiggling on the inside that’ll pull you back. So you have to do the going back deliberate. What I do is when I wake up in the morning, I joke about it. I say to people, well, when I wake up in the morning I want to check in to see if I’m still there cuz if I’m not there anymore, there’s no point getting up. Right. So that’s my joke about it. But when I wake up, I like to spend an hour just being present within myself, feeling what it feels like to be alive. And then when I’m done that I get up and it starts my day beautifully because it feels beautiful to be alive. I get into my day not out of crazy dreams that I had or got to do this and got to do that and my day is organized. Cause that happens at the same time. I like to start my day from a place of calmness, from peace, from feeling whole because that comes to expression in how I live my life automatically. So I like to start my day that way. So I do it in bed lying down.

Jesse: So just to take a little bit of a pivot from here, I want to talk about some of the different jobs you’ve had over the years. And I know you’ve done a number of different things including fruit picking. Yeah. You’re a dairy farmer, you’ve done house painting, gardening, spraying. And we’re going to get into the spraying and a little bit more detail on a bit because that leads into a whole other story. But in a really general sense, having all these different jobs, what has that taught in life and what is that led to that you’re carrying forward today?

Udo: Well, you know, I did it even when I was doing it, I said, I don’t really know what I want to do with my life yet, but I want to try out to find out what it’s like to be in the shoes of the people who are doing these different kinds of jobs. That could be only good as a background of experience relating to people. So, you know, I also did mining and drilling and blasting and logging. And also what I liked about it is that when you begin a new job, it’s really exciting because there’s a lot to learn because you don’t know anything. And so maybe after three months, six months, by that time it gets a little boring because, because the biggest learning has taken place. And by that time I then would be ready to get another job. But it was basically for my learning. You know, I came out of a place where everything was confusing and chaotic. And how do you get to know the world? You find out how things work and how do you find out how things work. You get involved in them. A personal connection and a personal reference to what it’s like to live in a world that’s not in a war. And you know, my early programming was all about chaos, so I was always looking for what can I depend on and what is it like? Because if you don’t know what it’s like, then how can you interact with it effectively?

Jesse: Well, I want to come back to the spraying and I know you got this job, I think it was after your divorce, you had a few kids at the time and you had a lot of anger built up in you. So it’s the late seventies you begin spraying these pesticides and after a few years you become poisoned by them. You’re 38 years old. What happens next?

Udo: Oh, well I went to the doctor and said, what do you have for pesticide poisoning? And the doctor said nothing. That was the penny dropping day. That was the day that it became really clear to me that my health is my responsibility and if I don’t care about it, maybe nobody does because the doctor gets paid even if you don’t get well, right. So you have more interest, you have more investment in your health than anybody else on the planet. And if you don’t take on that responsibility, then probably your health is not going to go that well because we have so many choices to do things that don’t work for us. There are less choices of doing things that work for us. Then there are choices that don’t work for us. And so we have to be deliberate about that.

Jesse: So as somebody that took on a job spraying pesticides, what was your awareness in the health and wellness space at that point?

Udo: I knew more than, I knew better. Honestly, I knew better, but I was really upset. I wanted to kill something. So you know, when you spray pesticides, you kill things. So that was a way of dealing with that. I mean, I was very intense, so I knew better. I was around when Greenpeace started, you know, they started just down the road from me on Fourth Avenue and Fourth and MacDonald. So I was around and I knew all that stuff that should’ve said, don’t take a job spraying pesticides, but I wasn’t paying attention to what I knew I was paying attention to that I was really upset. And when you’re really upset, this probably not the best time to make decisions, but I did.

Jesse: Okay, Udo. So at this time your health is suffering, you’re poisoned. What do you do from there?

Udo: Part of my childhood, trying to figure out how things work is I went to university and took science. First science, then biological sciences, then psychology, then medicine. So I had background in biological sciences, genetics, biochemistry, all of that stuff. And it was fun. So I went into the journals and said, okay, I’ve been poisoned. My body is made out of food. It’s made out of food, water, Air and light. That’s what a human is made of. That’s what every body is made of. And if something goes wrong with the body, I need to improve my standards for food, water, air, and light. In order to get better because I have a program inside that knows how to make a healthy body, but I need to give that program or I need to give life that made that program, the building blocks, it needs to rebuild the body and I already knew by that time that every year 98% of the atoms in your body are removed and replaced, which is why healing is possible. Because if I set a higher standard, I can rebuild my body 98% in one year. I was going through the journals looking about health and disease and nutrition got stuck on fats because that was the most confusing area and I decided I needed to make sense of it. That’s how I got to fats.

Marni: And what about fat specifically? Got You hooked.

Udo: I realized there were so many contradictions. It literally was the most misrepresented, poorest, understood area in university we worked with DNA, RNA, protein. That was a very mathematically calculable system. Fats were all over the map. There wasn’t a nice way to make them fit a model. One of the things, for instance was that I found out there are two essential fatty acids. I knew one was essential and people thought they were three essential fatty acids when I went to university. So I found out there were two essential fatty acids. One is Omega-6 and the other one is Omega-3. Omega-3 was only established as essential the year after I got poisoned, while I already had my head buried in the journals. And essential means that these are nutrients that your body can’t make, that you have to have that because you have to have them and you can’t make them. You got to get from outside that are building blocks that life needs to make your body. If you don’t get enough, your health breaks down, your body breaks down, you get deficiency symptoms, they get worse with time. If you don’t get enough long enough, you die. So this is like really important stuff and if you bring back the missing building blocks in adequate quantities before you die, then all the symptoms from not getting enough are reversed because life knows exactly what to do with them. Provided you take responsibility for making sure all of them land in your body so that life can do its job. So I knew that definition there was a thing where they said, well, Omega-6s are essential. This was probably my biggest WTF. Omega-6s are essential. So you gotta have them and at the same time they give you cancer and they kill you. And it’s like, well how can that be? Like either it’s essential or it’s poison. You can’t be essential and poisoned at the same time. And it was that conflict, that contradiction that got me looking into the way that oils are made. And when I found out how oils are made, I got really surprised because when oils are made, they’re treated with what I call draino window washing, acid bleached and then fried heated to frying temperature before they go in the bottle. That gives them a longer shelf life. But in the process, a half to 1% of the molecules are damaged. And in a tablespoon of a 1% damaged oil, you get 60 quintillion damaged molecules that never existed in nature. 60 quintillion is more than a million damaged molecules for every one of your bodies 60 trillion cells in every tablespoon of oil. And they interfere with what needs to be going on in the body. And that eventually catches up with you. And there’s an association with cancer. Oh yes. And we also fry them after they’ve already been damaged so there damaged more. So my summary of that is more health problems, more physical health problems come from damaged oils than any other part of nutrition. And more health benefits come from oils that are not damaged if you get the right ones than any other part of nutrition. And it occurred to me that because I was sick and was trying to get better, I said we should be making oils with health in mind. And that was again one of those insights, right? We should be making oils with health in mind. And I said, okay, I’m going to do it. So I had to develop a message for doing that. And that really is my claim to fame, I developed a method for making oils with health in mind where the most sensitive of our nutrients, Omega-3s and Omega-6s are protected from light, oxygen, and heat, which damaged them. We protect them from the time there in the seed through the pressing, the filtering, the filling until they in a brown glass bottle with a box around them in the fridge. So we built a whole method for doing that. It’s very, very anal because you have to be very, very, very precise in how you create that machinery because light and oxygen, you know, they’re very, very small and so it’s very easy to not have a system tight enough to really protect the oil. So that’s how that started.

Jesse: Now we’re going to take a quick break from our chat with Udo to give a shout out to our show partner, Organifi.

Marni: Organifi has a new awesome product called Glow and it’s all about glowing from the inside out and nourishing your skin by helping it reclaim its natural radiants. It’s filled with beautiful superfoods like aloe vera, rosehips, bamboo, camu camu, pomegranate, raspberry, and our skin really does take a beating over the years, whether you’re exposed to sun, you have stress, you’re not drinking enough, and many people skin is left dehydrated. So what this blend can do is it can help replenish and rebuild yourselves from the inside out and get your glow on and it happens to taste really good. So go ahead, add Glow to your order along with your other favorite Organifi products. You are going to love it.

Jesse: And you’re going to love the fact that as a listener of our show, you get 20% off your order and to take advantage, all you need to do is go to ultimatehealthpodcast.com/organifi. Again, that URL is ultimatehealthpodcast.com/organifi. And Organifi is spelled o. R. G. A. N. I. F. I go and get yourself some of the Glow today your skin is going to shine.

Marni: And now a shout out from our other show partner, Perfect Keto. The MCT oil powder is such a great and easy way to get your fats on. It’s extremely easy to mix into a beverage and you can just drink it back and your body’s going to get the benefits right away and you’re also going to feel so energized. Your skin’s going to glow and it’s a lot easier to use than MCT oil. It doesn’t make a mess and it tastes really good and you can really add it to anything that’s cold or that’s hot. It comes in chocolate and flavored vanilla. We’re big fans of the vanilla. We love adding it into a smoothie. So if you haven’t tried the MCT oil powder, I highly recommend it.

Udo: And as a listener of our show, you get 20% off the whole Perfect Keto lineup. And to take advantage, all you need to do is go to ultimatehealthpodcast.com/perfectketo. Again, that URL is ultimatehealthpodcast.com/perfectketo. Perfect Keto products ship worldwide, free shipping in the US go and get yourself some MCT oil powder today, and upgrade your next elixir or smoothie. And now back to our chat with Udo. Udo, earlier you talked about the controversy of Omega-6s I’d love for you to go back there and talk about what you’ve learned over the years doing all the research you’ve done.

Udo: When it comes to the universe of oils or fats, fats and oils, there are only two molecules that you have to have. One is called linoleic acid. That’s the Omega-6. The other one is called alpha linolenic acid. That’s the Omega-3. You need those two in the right ratio and if you optimize your intake of those, that’s the only thing you need. You need to optimize your intake and they need to be in the right ratio because they compete in the body. Everything else is optional. Omega-9s are not essential. Your body can make those out of sugar and starch. The saturated fats are not essential. Your body could make those out of sugar and starch and you can eat some of those. If you’ve made sure that you’ve optimized your Omega-3 and 6 intake, but that’s the only thing you absolutely have to have from the entire universe of fats and oils and obviously you can wreck oils very easily because they’re the most sensitive of our nutrients. They should be getting the most care in practice. We actually give them the least care because we throw them in the frying pan and watch them turn into smoke and think, that’s not going to affect us. Well, we don’t think about it at all, I guess is really the problem and why the book was called Fats That Heal, FatsThat Kill is because there are two completely opposite stories on fats. Once you know that, then you just got to make sure you bring in the fats that heal and exclude the fats that kill out of your diet and good things will happen to your health, your energy levels, your skin, brain function. Every cell in the body requires both essential fatty acids, so not getting it right literally affects every part of the body and the research wasn’t all done when we started, but now a lot of research has been done over the last 40 years that I’ve been working with it. And the research says when you increase Omega-3s in the diet and they’re not damaged and they don’t contain toxins, you can improve virtually every major degenerative condition of our time. That’s pretty good. And 99% of the population does not get enough Omega-3s. And the most of the Omega-3s that that 1% gets are damaged by the processing.

Jesse: But Udo, earlier when you’re talking specifically about the Omega-6s you did talk about some controversy within that realm and we do know there essential, we know the body needs them, but go into more detail explaining what that controversy is and what science is later proven to be the truth.

Udo: The controversy was Omega-6s are essential and Omega-6s caused cancer and kill you. It can’t be good for you and poisonous to you at the same time. What I realized when I looked into it is the problems that are blamed on Omega-6s should be blamed on the processing that damages them should be blamed on the damaged molecules that come from the way they’re made processing damage and when you look at all of nutrition processing damage is the biggest factor in physical health from physical origin. If you ate only whole foods fresh, most of the degenerative diseases that we have would not exist because those degenerative diseases have two main causes. One is deficiency of something that you need more of or presence of something that shouldn’t be there, so that’s called deficiency and toxicity. Or it comes from poor digestion which gets you both deficiency and toxicity. If you optimize those three areas, digestion optimization of essential nutrients by eating whole foods because it’s more than just essential nutrients. They come with whole cascades of other molecules that are helpful and avoid the poisons. Then your life is going to make you a body that works at least for a time. You know, because some people’s genetic program only allows them two years and some of them get 120 most of us live below what is possible given our genetic material. That contradiction about Omega-6s got me thinking about processing, thinking about processing got me into thinking we should be making oils with health in mind. When I got all that I had an orgasm, honestly it was like, oh my god, we could help so many people. If we could make oils with health in mind, bring in the missing Omega-3s, get the balance right. We could help so many people and that was the driver. I’ve been excited about this for 38 years through all the crazy stuff that’s happened over the last 38 years. I still love the idea that we can help people live better lives. And maybe that’s driven by the fact that I grew up in a war which is not very good quality of life and I’ve always been interested in anything I can do that can make the quality of life of somebody better. Sometimes it’s just saying something. Sometimes it’s changing a habit. Sometimes it’s just sitting still. Sometimes it’s finding ways to communicate better. I mean there’s a lot of different ways we can make life better. I’m interested in every one of them and whatever I can do in my life to make the biggest splash for that kind of improvement in quality of life, that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.

Jesse: You mentioned your book Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill and this book had a major influence on my dad’s life a number of years back and I’m just curious where this book fits into the timeline. What year did you publish this?

Udo: Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill came out in ’94 and it’s predecessor came out in 1986 and I got poisoned in 1980 so I was in 1980 I was 38 so a 94 would be 52 so I was 52 when that came up.

Jesse: Okay. Let’s talk about your first product, the flaxseed oil, and I know this ended up being an unbalanced oil and you actually became omega-6 deficient taking this. So take us there.

Udo: Because the Omega-3s were established as essential in 1981 so it was just after I got started searching in the literature and so we said, okay, flax is the richest source of them. It’s over 50% Omega-3 the oil is, and if we could bring Omega-3s back we could help 99% of the population. Because 99% of the population doesn’t get enough Omega-3s that how’s that for a really nice project, we could help almost everybody because flax oil, and it’s also the hardest to work with because Omega-3s are five times more sensitive to damage by oxygen,, light and heat than the Omega-6s. So it’s a hard to work with. So we thought, well, if we make flax oil as a first oil with this new machinery that we have to put together custom made because it doesn’t exist on the market, you can’t buy it. If we could do that, if we could make good flax oil, then we could, any other oil we’d ever want to make would be a piece of cake. So we started with the hardest first flax oil. And then so what happened is at one point somebody was saying that flax oil is actually, some people I worked with, they were saying flax oil is the best source of both essential fatty acids. And I didn’t think that was true. I thought it was a best source of Omega-3s and not the best source of Omega-6. I couldn’t disprove what they said. So I made an experiment. I used flax oil as the only source of fat in my diet and within three or four months I had dry eyes, skipped heartbeats, arthritis like pain in my finger joints and thin papery skin and those are classic Omega-6 deficiency symptoms. And then to fix those symptoms, I just ate sunflower seeds. The oil of sunflower seeds has 60% Omega-6 and no Omega-3 so I was basically high grading Omega-6s to get the balance back. And out of that came the idea that we need to get in an oil that is better balanced. That was the first reason. The second reason was when I was used to give out talks, people would say to me, oh man, this is a complicated area. Is there one thing I can do? This is a convenience factor, right? Is there one thing I can do that gives me everything I need from fat? And nothing I should avoid. And so the oil blend was made for that reason. So what we did is mixed and matched Omega-3s and 6s. And because I was trying to help people get healthy and I didn’t like the idea that I could give them an oil if they used it exclusively, then first they’d get better because they get the missing Omega-3s. And then after awhile they’d become worse because I’d be pushing out the Omega-6s that are also essential because flax oil has so much 3 and so little 6. I didn’t like that idea so I said we have to make something that makes it easy for people that they could take every day for the rest of their life and never have a problem becoming deficient and only get good health benefits from it.

Marni: So we’ve talked about some of the sources of Omega-3 being flax and Omega-6 being sunflower. What are some of the other sources of both of these and maybe some of the sources that are included in your oil or that you recommend in general for people to consume?

Udo: Yeah, okay let me start with the oil. It’s flax for Omega-3s, sunflower and sesame for Omega-6s. Those two have Omega-6s but virtually no Omega-3s. And then evening primrose oil, which is also a source of Omega-6 and one of the derivatives which is GLA and then rice germ, and oat germ. Those are in four minor ingredients, so we don’t care what their fatty acid profile is, but they have some good minor ingredients like phytosterols and other minor ingredients that make up less than 2% of oil but that have good health benefits. And then we have a little bit of coconut oil and we have GMO-free lecithin that we have to import from Europe because we can’t get it in North America. And then there is vitamin E and that should be nine ingredients. Most of the oils that we get in our diet come from seeds and nuts. The seeds that have the most Omega-3 include flax and chia seed. And then there’s psyllium seed. We use the husk for bowel regularity, but the seed itself has some Omega-3s in it. And then there’s something called kukui nut that grows in the Pacific Islands that has about 30% Omega-3 in it. There’s a little bit in walnut, there’s a little bit in soybean and there’s a little bit of Omega-3 in canola as well10% or less. Omega-6 you find in pretty much all seeds and nuts, so you’re talking about sunflower is about 60%, safflowers seeds and nobody eats those seeds, but that’s about 65% Omega-6, sesame is 40, almond is 25, peanuts are 20, so pretty much of the nuts. Walnut is about 50, soybeans are about 57% Omega-6 so just about everything has Omega-6. Omega-6 deficiency, you pretty much only going to get, if you eat a low fat or a no fat diet. If you eat whole foods, you’re not going to be Omega-6 deficient. Even grass has a little bit of Omega-3 and 6 like 0.1% and fruit 0.1% they’re everywhere because they’re part of every cell membrane is made out of fats. In grains it’s a little bit, if you eat whole grains there like two to 4% fat beans are about 4% fat beans, lentils, chickpeas, soy beans are 18% fat, high amount of fat for a vegetable. That’s a pretty good list of where the Omega-3s and 6s come from.

Marni: What are your thoughts on avocado oil? We are big uses of avocado oil at home, so I’m just curious what your thoughts are.

Udo: You know, my view is eat avocados.

Marni: Which we do as well.

Udo: I put cayenne on my avocados. Avocados have a lot of monounsaturated which are not essential. They have a little bit of Omega-6, maybe like 10% and they have maybe 3 to 5% Omega-3 so also they have some Omega-3 and 6.

Marni: Yeah. Typically we’re using it for cooking, so when we’re eating avocado raw, we’re eating an avocado and then for cooking we’re using that or we’re using sometimes coconut or even some animal fats. And I know you’re not as much of a fan of the animal fats, but let’s talk about this.

Udo: Well. Now I’m going to talk about something a little bit different than you’re expecting. I have a chant that I do with people, fried oils, fry health, fried foods, fry health.

Marni: But what if we’re not frying? What if we’re just lightly cooking? So you’re classifying that all cooking is frying?Essentially, is that what you’re saying?

Udo: No. Cooking used to be done in water. When you cook in water, you don’t burn the food. When you use oils, you tend to fry the food. If you put an egg in a frying pan, then you know you can try to lightly cook it in oil. But the outside ring where it gets really thin actually burns because the water goes out and then it burns because oil has such a high temperature in the frying pan before it boils. And that’s the problem. And then that drives the water out at a hundred degrees and after that it’s dry and then it burns. So anytime food turns brown, the brown is toxic. You know, you’ve turned something natural into something unnatural. Anytime oil smokes in a frying pan, you’ve turned oil into smoke and you know that smoke is carcinogenic. In fact, cooks have four times more lung cancer than normal people who also cook, but cooks do it all day, four times more lung cancer then average people because you turn oils into poison when you fry them. I don’t know what you do, but I would recommend that you do whatever you do for cooking in water if you’re not going to eat raw, because raw is nature’s mandate. So if you’re not going to eat raw and you’re going to cook food than do it in water, and then after the cooking is done and the food is on your plate, then add a good oil to it for flavor and for the essential fatty acids you need. Coconut doesn’t get you essential fatty acids. That’s very, very low in 4 to 6% Omega-6 and a less than 1% Omega-3.

Jesse: Okay, Udo. I’d love to hear what is your current diet look like and if you’re cooking food at all, what does that look like?

Udo: Okay. I have a very nice expensive stove in my house and let’s see, I have a bag of quinoa on it and a bag of hemp seeds and some black sesame seeds and some flax seeds, a jar of turmeric powder and himalayan salt and some paper that I’m working on. So obviously you can’t cook anything on that stove right now because it’s a storage platform for me. I cook very little. Occasionally, I will cook some beets because I find raw beets when I eat them they scratch my throat. I’m not sure why is and when I cook them, they don’t. I basically eat mostly raw at this point and I’m not doing that from any reason other than not cooking takes less time than cooking. That’s one reason. And the other reason is that I am aware of the fact that life’s mandate for every creature on the planet, their food is fresh, whole, raw and organic, and I just find that it works for me really well. I do really well. I eat raw broccoli and I eat raw tahini and I put in herbs and spices. I’m really big on herbs and spices these days, like cayenne and black pepper and a black seed, nigella, moringa and garlic, onions, ginger, turmeric. And the spices, and why the spices? Because there are so many health benefits in spices. I’ve gone through about 1500 of them, anti-cancer, anti-cardio, lower cholesterol, you know all this stuff that kills us because of the way we eat, not natural, not raw, not whole, not organic. And then all kinds of things taken out. And the only spice we use is salt. When we overuse salt, we get high blood pressure. Most people can lower their blood pressure just by lowering their salt intake. And you look at that and it’s like we’ve gotten so out of line with nature the way we live. And why is that? Because somebody takes something, messes with it, makes it less valuable, charges more money for, it’s called a value added food when it should be called a value subtracted food. And then they do advertising because they’re making more money so they have money to spend so then they advertise people bamboozle them into thinking that they should be getting this crap. So you know what? You have a choice. You live in a free country, you have a choice not to play that game. And then it’s worthwhile to invest some time in learning how nature works and how the body works and how health works and how human nature works. And then you can live in an amazingly good life in the middle of all kinds of stuff that you shouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole.

Jesse: So do you consume any animal products at all?

Udo: Occasionally, if there’s dairy in something, I’m not a fussy guy. I’m not a vegan. I don’t like the religiousness of it. I’m a human being. I do really well on vegetables. I love my vegetables. But if I get a goat cheese or feta cheese in a salad, when I go out to a restaurant, I don’t make a fuss. But I gotta tell you, the research is really clear and it wasn’t always clear not so long ago, but now it’s really clear. You want the longest life and the best health. You do it on a diet that is whole food, plant-based and vitamin B12. The vitamin B12 is a pretty good indicator that we are not by nature 100% vegan because B12 mostly comes from animals, but the way we grow the meat commercially and the eggs commercially, there’s a lot that is not in line with nature and I just assumed stay in line with nature, but I’m not vegan, I’m just human. I’m just doing what works best for me and I do it by paying attention to what my body tells me, and sitting still is part of getting in touch so that you actually notice. So being sensitive to yourself, and I’m not here to judge anybody for their food habits. I’m just here to love as much as I can from now until the time I check out.

Jesse: Now we’re going to take another quick break from our chat with Udo to give a shout out to our show partner, Thrive Market.

Marni: If you’re in the USA and you’re ready to start shopping online, you better get onto Thrive Market right now. It has every kind of fat you’re looking for from plant-based fats to animal-based fats, so if you’re looking for flax, avocado, coconut or duck, pork, chicken or even ghee, Thrive has it all. And there is no shortage when it comes to choosing good quality, healthy fats from them and good quality healthy products. Thrive has such a comprehensive resource of different foods, different products for your home and your body. You are not going to have a problem shopping over there and the best part is everything is 20 to 50% off of regular retail value. You’re getting such a good deal by shopping online at Thrive Market and you’re also getting another amazing deal on top of that as a listener of our show, you’re going to get 25% off the top of your order plus free shipping and a 30 day free trial.

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Marni: And now a shout out from our other show partner, Sunwarrior. If your plant-based, you’re probably looking for a good quality Omega-3 supplement and Sunwarrior has it with Vegan DHA and EPA from algae and it’s totally sustainably grown and harvested and has bioavailable Omega-3, 6, 7, and 9 fatty acids. And if you didn’t know this already but you probably learned about this from today’s episode Omegas are great for inflammation, cardiovascular health and, as well it also promotes healthy vision, joints, and brain health. This is such an easy supplement to take daily, especially if your plant-based sometimes people miss out on their Omegas, so this is a great insurance and a great source to get them in.

Jesse: And as a listener of our show, you get 20% off the whole Sunwarrior lineup including this great supplement to take advantage of your listener discount go to ultimatehealthpodcast.com/sunwarrior. Again, that URL is ultimatehealthpodcast.com/sunwarrior. Other great news if you spend $50 or more you get free shipping. Go and get yourself the plant-based Omega-3 supplement by Sunwarrior and get in healthy fats each and every day. And now back to our chat with Udo.

Marni: So Udo, I want to move into physical health and talk about your fitness routine or things that you like to do for exercise and just the importance of movement and fitness in general.

Udo: There was a guy by the name of Jim Fixx who made the claim that if you do enough exercise, then it doesn’t matter what you eat. And he died of a massive heart attack at 52 so maybe he wasn’t quite accurate when he said that. So the other side of that is it doesn’t matter how well you eat, if there’s nothing to do because your body is made for doing. Right, made out of food. It’s made for activity. If there’s nothing to do, you don’t need a body. So if you don’t do anything, then your body will deteriorate. And we live in cities, so we’re not digging the soil and planting and harvesting and milking cows, whatever, all the things we did on the farm. So we have to deliberately do activity. I grew up on a farm without electricity, so I always have a little bit of attitude about that. Why would you do exercise when you’re not accomplishing anything with it? But I’ve had to come around. What I do is I have a medicine ball in my house. I have a mini trampoline in my house. I have a chinning bar in my doorway. I have some hand weights, I walk, I run. That’s pretty much what I do. Sometimes I go in the woods, you know, go for walks in the mountains in Vancouver, in nature. That’s pretty much what I do. And oh, I dance with or without music. I love movement. You know, for me, dance is not learning how to do a polka. For me, dance is me exploring the space that my body occupies and what I can do with my arms and legs, you know, stretching and exploring that space. There’s a million ways of body forms and movement to explore that space. That’s what I call dancing. I do it by myself and it’s a really good way of getting both stretching and muscular exercise and I don’t do anything that’s routine. I love not having to do it a certain way. It’s more creative when it’s not routine and it’s more fun.

Jesse: And what are you doing to connect with other people in a meaningful way? On a regular basis?

Udo: This is a really good question because I’m going to completely go elsewhere with it. If you want to have a meaningful relationship with other people, it has to begin by having a meaningful relationship with yourself. And that takes me back to bringing awareness inside. You know, if I get in touch with the energy that keeps me alive, that energy, it has no needs, it’s unconditional, it’s formless, it weighs nothing and runs everything and it is so light that it pulls up water and dust all the way up to the top of my head. If you think about it, if you’re standing, you know your three buckets of water and a handful of dust and you’re standing, so maybe you’re six feet like I am, so, okay, so at that water and that dust are off the ground. Six feet…

Jesse: Pushing against gravity.

Udo: Yeah. Pushing against gravity. Exactly. How come most people would say, well, because you have bones and muscles and the muscles you know and all of that. No. The moment you take this weightless life that is energy out of that body, everything goes back down on the ground. So life is a force against gravity. You could think of it as psychologically to life has a force against gravity. Life is so light that it can lift my 180 pounds off the ground all the way up to the top of my head. That’s pretty amazing. That life is what I want to have a relationship with. And when I have a relationship with that, when I feel that life, because actually I am that life. Either you’re a member of a group or you’re the body or you or the thoughts, the beliefs, or you’re the energy that is life or you are the awareness that’s even behind that. See, because we are all of that, so I like to focus on life. When I focus on life, life takes perfect care of the body. Unconditional 24/7 never asked for anything. Back through all the dramas and all the traumas that I get drawn out to with my senses in behind that life is taking perfect care of me when I’m going through a big trauma in my head or in a war. That molecule of folic acid that is needed by a cell on the right side of my right ankle. Life makes sure that that folic acid molecule gets there while I’m freaking out about the war or about whatever it is I’m freaking out about. That’s pretty unconditional. That’s where relationship starts. The relationship of life for the body. Life is perfect love. When I feel that I feel so taken care of that I’m not here to get. I’m here to give. If I don’t feel taken care of, I’m here to get, because the drive to feel taken care of is so powerful. I will do whatever it takes that I think will get me taken care of. I’ll kill people, you know, I’ll lie to people and I’ll embezzle money and I’ll start wars and you know, it goes on and on all you’re looking at all the crazy things people do because they don’t feel taken care. Even though they are taken care of. But their awareness is not where that taken care of ness lives inside of them. So when it comes to people in relationships, it’s really easy. When I feel taken care of, if I can help them, I help them. And it happens in just little ways, sometimes in big ways, sometimes in little ways. Do I have a circle of friends? We all repeat the same beliefs to each other over and over again. I find it very easy to be with people, but I don’t need something from them. And because I don’t need something from them, I can be a better friend because when people lean on you all the time after a while do, you don’t like it that much. And if you’re leaning on them all the time after a while they don’t like it and if you’re there to take all the time they don’t like it. But if you feel taken care of and you don’t need friends, you are much better at friendship than when you think you need friends.

Jesse: Okay. And Udo, as somebody who is in their mid seventies you’re mentally together and doing great physically you’re doing great. What would you say are a couple of the big needle movers? Things that if you’re looking back, you know on the things you’ve been doing for the last number of years, what is really kept you together and functioning so well?

Udo: The goal is to be fully present in all of my being and my surroundings and not lost in my head with crazy ideas, half of which are negative. There’s good research that shows when you do a stillness practice or a self knowledge practice, you actually reverse aging because you get out of the stress world because in your life energy, there is no stress. There will never be any stress. There can never be any stress that is beyond stress. Stress is for mind and body and it’s about survival. Well, life doesn’t worry about survival because if it’s formless, it’s indestructable so it never dies. And the same with awareness. If formless awareness is beyond life and death, no stress in those places. When you have access to those places and you practice til you become good at it, you actually age slower because you can stay in that feeling even in the midst of crazy things going on. Now, I didn’t know that when I was two in the war, but I know it now and it’s a really nice place to be able to go. So that’s one. The second one is feeling taken care of. That’s the life part. Third one is if you have a purpose for living, people lose their will to live when they lose their purpose. What is your purpose? What inspires you? What could you do that would make the world a better place? What can you do that would make life that would protect or serve or care for life better? So that helps as well. And then there’s the physical and the physical, fresh, whole, raw, organic, mostly plant-based, not too much. Oils, the essential fatty acids are the most neglected area there. But the other areas that are very important are about digestion. So we’re talking about digestive enzymes and probiotics and fiber, which it comes from plants because animal foods don’t have fiber. When you eat that way you get longer life and better physical health and then feeling comfortable in your social and natural environments. And spending time in nature is also really nice because the pace in nature, it’s not a bullet pace and it’s not a sought pace. The natural pace of things is very calming. And then one more thing to be okay with the fact that one day your body will check out. To be okay with the big picture that here we are like very tiny creatures in a huge universe. And to be okay with that because you are okay because you’re in touch with all of what is affected, but you’re also in touch with all of what is not affected by change. It’s a tall order, but you know what? You’re here for a hundred years. You’re not here for 4 billion years before that. You’re not here 4 billion years after that. So here you are on a holiday, you get 100 years. If you’re not making the most of your holiday, then you’re wasting it.

Jesse: Well Udo, my last question for you ties into this and you’ve dedicated a big part of your life to researching and sharing the message of healthy fats and now that you’re at this point in your life, looking back and a big part of our conversation as well as been about fats and been about healthy foods, but in the big scheme of things, how much of a role in the whole spectrum of health do foods and healthy fats play compared to everything else like you just talked about?

Udo: Well, for the body, they play the biggest role. For everything else they don’t play a role at all. The fats make your brain work better, but the brain is still physical, so the fats are physical. I wrote a book that was recently published called The Book On Total Sexy Health, the eight key parts designed by nature. The fats are only 2-50th of one eighth of the whole picture. If you like doing math, right, because it’s two essential fatty acids. There are about 50 essential nutrients, so that’s two out of the 50 the physical part is only one of the eight different parts of nature, the eight different parts, internal awareness, life energy, inspired creativity. Then comes to the body, then it’s survival smarts, then it’s social group, then it’s nature, planet, solar system, and then it’s big picture, basically infinity, whatever you call that. Each one, if you want to be fully healthy, each one needs to get it’s due. They’re all different. All have different functions, a different nature. Need a different kind of attention, need attention on a regular basis, go off in a different way and respond to a different kind of intervention. What I’m trying to do is create a whole field of health based on nature and human nature and that is the most fun, the most fun because I get to do it with myself. I can’t teach what I don’t have. I can’t teach what I don’t know. And so you know, they say if you want to learn something, start teaching it. So, so teaching it is my fire that I keep it to remind me that I want to be fully present in all of my being and my surroundings and not lost in thoughts in my head like we tend to do.

Jesse: Well that’s a really important answer because I think a lot of times people in the health and wellness space, especially when they first get involved can get really honed in and focused on the nutrition, on the diet, and health and wellness is just, that’s a small piece of it. Well, it’s a significant piece of it, I don’t want to undermine it as well, but that is just a piece of the big picture.

Udo: Yeah. It’s usually when people talk health, they talk about food and fitness. You know what water, and air, and light, and all the rest of what I’m talking about. Everything needs is part of it, but so food and fitness is a start, but it’s not the total picture. You want total health you’ve got to do the total picture.

Marni: I was going to say first we’ve got your book Fats That Heal Fats That Kill. If people really want to learn about the oils and the fats. And then the book you just mentioned The Book On Total Sexy Health. Where else can the listeners get in touch with you?

Udo: Udoerasmus.com. Udo. UDO e r a s m u s.com.

Marni: Perfect. And I’m sure a lot of listeners probably have a bottle of your oil sitting in their fridge right now and they’re going to be just more inspired to keep buying it. And for those who haven’t tried it yet, get your hands on it.

Udo: Mix it in food, spread your intake out over the course of the day and take a tablespoon per 50 pounds of body weight per day.

Marni: Amazing. Thank you so much for everything, all this knowledge. This is so great. And uh, yeah, again, just thank you for coming on the show today.

Udo: All right. Thank you.

Jesse: Thank you Udo.

Udo: This is fun.

Jesse: Yeah, it’s been great. Take care.

Marni: We hope you enjoy this conversation with Udo. We covered so much and hopefully you have a really good understanding of fats now and let us know what you think over on Instagram. Be sure you’re following us @ultimatehealthpodcast and you can also follow @udoerasmus and give us a tag in your stories. Let us know what you learned from today’s episode. We love seeing your stories and we love re-sharing them. We do a share every Friday with different stories that we get from the week, so let us know what yours is all about.

Jesse: For full show notes, be sure and head over to ultimatehealthpodcast.com/302 we have links there to everything we discussed, a downloadable worksheet and a show summary, so be sure to check that out. Before we let you go, I want to give some love to our editor and engineer Jase Sanderson over at podcasttech.com. Jase, you do such a great job putting the show together each week. We really appreciate it and this week’s fun fact about Jase is that he found a local maker of bee products and their honey is great. Awesome find Jase. We love buying local, whenever possible. Have an awesome week. We’ll talk soon. Take care.

Disclaimer: This is a raw transcript and it may contain some errors. To listen to the complete audio interview, go to ultimatehealthpodcast.com/302.