Sam Apple: Surprising Links Between Cancer and The Food You Eat

Could you use a little inspiration to eat less sugar?

I think we probably all could.

So today, we’re here with Sam Apple, a writer, science journalist, and author of the highly rated book called “Ravenous.”

Sam is no slouch, he taught creative writing and journalism at the University of Pennsylvania for 10 years, and is currently on the faculty of the MA in Science Writing and MA in Writing programs at Johns Hopkins.

Sam loves digging into taboo and controversial topics, and his latest book, Ravenous, is no exception.

I think you’re going to dig this show. We’re chatting about:

• The scientific genius who discovered how cancer cells eat
• The link between cancer and the foods you eat
• Surprising results when looking for cancer in indigenous populations
• Benefits of low-carb ketogenic-type diets
• How to be a bookworm in the internet age
• And tons more…

Let’s go hang out with Sam.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Pandora | Stitcher | TuneIn | Deezer

Where To Find Sam Apple

You can find more over on Sam’s website: SamApple.com

I aim as much as possible to avoid sugar, sucrose, and to follow a low carb diet in the name of cancer prevention. @Sam_Apple1 Click To Tweet

Keep in touch and follow what Sam is up to on Twitter @Sam_Apple1.

Pick up your copy of “Ravenous: Otto Warburg, the Nazis, and the Search for the Cancer-Diet Connection” wherever you buy books, including on Amazon, Book Shop, or Norton.

Sam is a great writer, I highly recommend checking out his other books, as well, including Schlepping Through The Alps, and more.

I've never heard of a human being who ate more sugar than Hitler. @Sam_Apple1 Click To Tweet

And just one more time, you can find everything Sam is working on over at SamApple.com.

Before You Go

We hope you enjoyed this conversation, despite the fact that it will likely be censored on the major platforms because we’re talking about, 1) Health, and 2) History—two very forbidden topics at this point.

But we’re accustomed to being throttled and senselessly banned by major platforms, so as always, please find our uncensored full episodes here on fatburningman.com in video and audio.

On that note, I wish I didn’t have to say this, but many of you are already aware that YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other mainstream platforms shamelessly sensor, throttle and ban people like us for talking about perfectly reasonable topics.

And you might also get shut down just for using one of a growing percentage of words that comprise the English language. There are so many that are off limits at this point that it becomes difficult to have conversations, especially in the world of health.

So, if there are any emerging alternative platforms that you folks can think of where you’d like to find us, then please get in touch and send me an email at abel@fatburningman.com.

You can also sign up for our free newsletter and get in touch that way by just responding to any of my emails.

I love reading all of the feedback from you folks, and also we send out a lot of goodies from time to time.

Now, I want to share a quick note along those lines that came in from Denise, she says:

“I’m 100% ON BOARD.  I’ve missed my vegetables, and haven’t had a garden in two years.  

2015 began my journey when I was having horrible digestive issues.  Doctor said NO PROCESSED food.  Wow what a great start.

Then Paleo came into my life and did that for 3 years.  I learned a lot about carbs and burning fat.  A Friend of mine changed from Paleo to Keto, so I hopped on that train.  It worked. Learned some new things and then years passed and I just missed my vegetables.  

The amounts of veggies allowed on Keto are so limited , I just wanted to binge on them and feel healthier.  

At this point I have lost 40 pounds. Very slowly but consistently. 

WILD way of eating gives me good examples of what should be on my plate.  Portions are so much better. Loving it so far.

Curious, do you focus on Calories or Carbs or both?   I’ve gone from counting only carbs to watching my calories (then peeking to see what the carbs were for that day.  Not too bad.  Under 20)

Appreciate all you have done for the world!

You are an inspiration.

Thank you.”

– Denise

Hey, Denise, thank you so much for writing in and congrats on that progress.

Lots of questions in there. I’m going to unpack it real quickly here.

When I’ve coached multiple people over the years, either one-on-one or in circumstances with a lot of folks there in a big community, most of us have success, not necessarily through counting.

But I don’t want to discount counting completely, because learning how to eyeball the amount of carbs or protein or fat or calories in a given handful of snacks like nuts or cereals, or trying to learn how to estimate how much sugar is in something just by tasting how sweet it is. These are actually skills that you can develop over time.

And I would encourage a lot of folks to go in that direction. We certainly have.

So developing that intuitive way of eating is important, but you can’t get there without putting in some learning and front-loading that at the beginning.

So to your point, yeah, if you kind of hop around from Paleo then to keto and Wild and all of these different permutations of eating real food.

Pretty much all of them are going to work if you’re following the right principles, sticking to real food, making sure that you’re ticking off the boxes for the most important nutrients that you need, focusing on nutrient-dense food.

But you don’t have to weigh your food. A lot of people have success that way in the physical world and with their bodies, but over time, the mental tax that takes when you’re looking at all of your food and having to weigh every single morsel that goes into your mouth…

I’ve seen that backfire in a lot of people.

And it wouldn’t work well for me either, I don’t weigh my food. I’ve never really had to.

Now, if I wanted to get below 5% body fat, like some of the people who I’ve coached, then you do have to get serious and you have to find a way of really being specific with your macronutrients.

But if you’re looking to get rapid results, losing stubborn body fat, then I would encourage you at some point along your journey to use a food tracker, take pictures of your food or enter what you’re eating into a database, your meals and snacks and everything you’ve consumed that day to get a picture of how many carbs, how many calories and other macros, you’re eating over the course of a day or over the course of a week.

Now, don’t count forever. But if you do this for a short period of time and you’re conscious about it and you’re using that data and looking at it and being like, “Oh, I never knew that pumpkins had so many carbs in them.”

Or, “There’s a shocking amount of fiber in X food that can be very useful later on to develop the skills of intuitive eating,” which is what we’re really after.

So as long as you’re making progress, you’re eating real food, then don’t forget to eat your vegetables, you know.

I don’t want to be that guy who for more than 10 years is being like, “Don’t forget to eat your vegetables…”

But in this time when “keto” is slapped onto just everything that you find in the grocery store these days… even, you walk into Walmart or some of these big box stores and everything is “keto” right now.

Even though, when you look at the ingredients in these products, a lot of times they’re totally not. It has too much sugar, too much sugar alcohols or too much of the fake sweeteners that you shouldn’t be eating but don’t technically count as carbs because maybe they are not technically food.

These are things that you want to look out for.

And as you heard in today’s interview with Sam Apple, keto and ketosis are certainly not new concepts.

They’ve been around for more than a century, even in the current form.

It’s really been around for a long time, but it’s a sticky issue, so I would encourage you not to ditch your vegetables.

Especially the fibrous variety, those that grow above ground, the leafy greens and that sort of thing.

Eating some amount of starches can be really useful, especially if you’re re-feeding after a lot of physical activity.

But don’t give up the salad greens and the colorful veggies that are of the non-starchy variety.

I would encourage you to keep those in your, if not daily eating, then make sure that you eat them a few times a week.

Because what’s happening when you eat veggies and you eat fiber in general, is it’s not necessarily giving you a whole bunch of calories, but it is giving your gut bugs a gigantic amount of nutrients that are very difficult to source from other places.

Can you kick out vegetables for a period of time and have success?

Yes, and I have seen people do that, but I would encourage most people out there not to, because veggies are very wonderful. They improve the taste of a whole lot of different foods, and there are a lot of nutrients in both meats and in veggies that are difficult to source from one or the other.

So it’s important to eat real food, maintain that balanced approach and develop, as well, that intuitive way of eating, which can really serve you for years down the road.

Now, before I gab on for too long, I want to make sure that you also know about the Wild Challenge app very quickly.

You can find the Wild Challenge at WildSuperfoods.com/app.

Typically, we do a few of these per year, and we have a massive giveaway and people really enjoy them, we build a lot of community, and you can join from any country around the world.

So one more time, if you want a handy food tracker, sleep tracker, movement tracker along with meal plans, community support, giveaways and more, then go to WildSuperfoods.com/app

And right now, you can also get 25% off if you use the promo code WILD25

And real quickly, since we just launched, we have new blue blocking glasses from a new project that we started called WildRx.

If you’d like to be one of the very first people to get in on these, then make sure you go to wildrx.com right now. (Currently only available in the U.S.)

We have daytime and nighttime lenses. If you’re just getting into blue blockers or blue blocking technology, I’d encourage many of you to get started with the yellow daytime variety. We have a few different styles of glasses.

And if you’re an advanced user of blue blockers, like we have been for more than 10 years using all these sorts of strange glasses, check out the night time lenses.

I actually use these a lot of times in the dawn. I wake up before the sun comes up and play music. But oftentimes I’m on my computer, and it’s just too much light before the sun comes up, so this kind of turns everything into a nice little campfire, in a lot of ways. That’s how I like to think about it.

So I can’t wait to hear what you think.

One more time, just go to wildrx.com, and don’t forget to use the promo code, YOUROCK at checkout for an extra 10% off.

This episode of Fat-Burning Man is brought to you by our family company, Wild Superfoods over at wildsuperfoods.com, and the good folks over at DrinkLMNT.com and Neurohacker.com.

How are you staying active these days?

If I stay cooped up for too long, I feel like a rabbit in a cage, especially during the winter.

But if I break a sweat, I feel like I’ve accomplished something that day, I feel alive.

So whether you’re going for a run, bike ride, lifting weight or even out in the sunshine on an epic hike, you’re likely sweating out a decent amount of sodium, potassium, magnesium and other important electrolytes.

But commercial sports drinks carry some major drawbacks, as they’re typically packed with high fructose corn syrup, sugar, artificial colors and other nasty additives.

So instead of reaching for that sugar-laden fluorescent yellow sports drink from the gas station, I highly recommend taking a peek at the tasty electrolyte mixes they have over at DrinkLMNT.com.

After years of mixing his own homemade electrolyte concoctions, our buddy Robb Wolf started up LMNT to share a sugar-free clean electrolyte drink to help bring you back up to feeling your best.

And for a limited time, LMNT is giving away free sample packs to Fat-Burning Man listeners like you with 8 individual serving packets, so you can try the different flavors for yourself.

To claim your free LMNT sample pack, just go to: DrinkLMNT.com/wild

You’ll only need to pay for shipping, and then the 8-pack sampler is otherwise 100% free.

You’ll get a total of 8 different flavors to try, so let me know how you like them and which ones are you favorites.

So once again, just go to DrinkLMNT.com/wild  to collect your free electrolytes from our buddy Robb and the team at LMNT.

Now, let me ask you something, could you use a little extra mental energy?

You may remember Dr. Gregory Kelly from the Neurohacker team, when I interviewed him on the Fat-Burning Man Show a little over a year ago.

Well, I’d like to introduce you to a formula that supports long-term brain health, enhanced focus and improved memory.

After thousands of hours of research and development by scientists, MDs and PhDs, Qualia Mind was born.

It’s a premium nootropic formula from Neurohacker that helps you reach peak mental performance, and it packs a whopping 28 nutrients, adaptogenic herbs and ingredients that are proven to help support optimal brain function.

And with over 1000 5-star reviews, you can look forward to feeling powerful effects from this top notch formula.

So if you’d like to try Qualia Mind for yourself, head on over to Neurohacker.com, and right now they’re offering Fat-Burning Man listeners 15% off all products with the promo code WILD 

So one more time. Just head on over to Neurohacker.com and enter the code WILD and you’ll get 15% off your order total. Thanks so much for listening.

What did you think of this show with Sam Apple? Drop a note below!