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Each episode of GAIN Momentum focuses on timeless lessons to help grow and scale a business in hospitality, travel, and technology. Whether you’re a veteran industry leader looking for some inspiration to guide the next phase of growth or an aspiring executive looking to fast-track the learning process, this podcast is here with key lessons centered around four questions we ask each guest.
GAIN Momentum episode #44 - Discussing the Book "Ultra-Processed People" for Hotels | with Neil Foster
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Adam Mogelonsky: Welcome to the Gain Momentum podcast, focusing on timeless lessons from senior leaders in hospitality, travel, food service, and technology.
I'm here with my special co host and guest, Neil Foster. Great to see you again, Neil. How are
you?
Neil Foster: Great to see you too, Adam. Doing Great How about yourself?
Adam Mogelonsky: Oh, fantastic. It's a nice sunny Friday, and, uh, we're indoors
recording.
Neil Foster: before we begin, can I ask you a question? you do anything for your wellness this morning? Did you go for run, have a workout, anything along those lines just yet?
Adam Mogelonsky: I did some basic movements and yoga while listening to a podcast to discuss the latest research on LDL cholesterol. And then for breakfast, I had my super fruit bowl, which we can, [00:01:00] remind me, we can describe that later because it gets quite technical. So yes, wellness every morning, as well, I had coffee, and coffee has caffeine, which gets you up and stimulates the brain, but also has something called chlorogenic acid, which is even in decaf coffee, which has been showing some positive health benefits for the brain.
So yes, I've been doing some
wellness,
uh, this
morning.
How about
Neil Foster: for you.
Well, just hearing you describe all of this, and you've heard me
say this
before, I think I can learn so much from you. Looking forward
to this episode, Adam, as we unpack ultra processed people and ultra processed foods. For me, this episode actually inspired me to get my butt out of bed early in the morning and go for 10k runs.
I figured that this would be a great chance to, uh, uh, get my mind in gear, and I feel ready to go. How about you?
Adam Mogelonsky: Awesome. Well, uh, for everyone, we are discussing a book today, which is Ultra Processed People. If you [00:02:00] can see that there, uh, maybe some flipped around, but it is a fairly recent book and it goes at lengths describing. The modern food system and some of the potential or well researched negative consequences of modern foods, which are highly mechanized and they are called Ultra processed, not just processed, but ultra processed foods, UPF, and how our bodies are not necessarily well adapted to take them.
And we're seeing a lot of knock on effects of that. What I want to start off with here for the discussion is something that's brought up in the book that I think is very important, which is just putting some safeguards around, we are talking about food, and we're also going to be talking about [00:03:00] those knock on effects, and one of the most prominent knock on effects of UPF, of ultra processed food, is obesity and overweight.
And then all the other ones that it's now being associated with, including cardiovascular risk and later on they're, they're showing signs, a correlation between UPF and dementia or brain disorders. So one of the important, uh, safeguards here is that eating is identity. Therefore, when we mention.
Ways to change your eating habits. It is very tough to change because in order to change you have to basically say to your own ego saying, oh, this thing that I've been doing for the past 20 to 30 years may be wrong and it can be an attack on your character. So the safeguard that the book puts in place to reshape this conversation is by saying [00:04:00] that obesity is a disease, but you are not obese, you have obesity, you have overweight.
And when you reframe it as something you possess, not something you are, you make it more transient, and you distance your own identity from it. And therefore, you can better approach it from an objective angle. And you can better enact change upon that by approaching it more strategically. So, Neil, to flip it over to you, did you notice that, as a safeguard and
have you approached it this similar way since you've read the
book?
Mm
Neil Foster: So, um, we hear this all the
time since we're kids, you are what you eat. there are a lot of different, uh, ways in which we can identify with, with what we eat. marketing and the marketing machine plays a big role in this. So, eat your Wheaties, for example.
What do you mean they're your Wheaties? The whole point of, finding diet and, and sort of [00:05:00] finding an identity. And I think to to satisfy corporate ends, and we've been, many of us have been sort of trapped in that. The best food that you can eat doesn't come in front of a screen that catches your eye so easily. and it also, one might also think about the sophistication or, or sort of the fallacy of sophistication when it comes to ultra processed foods, that there are a whole bunch of things that have been done. Just to be, the cost, the expense that you're, that you're spending versus, you know, a fresh banana or a fresh apple where you think, well, someone's just picked it and that's pretty much all that they've done.
And why are they charging 2 for this thing? so, well, yeah, I guess in terms of guardrails, and some of the schemas that we've developed, I think many of which have been developed with the help of corporate interests. And I think that. The benefit to the times that we're living in, one of the benefits, is that we're starting to sort of see those corporate interests from a different perspective,
Adam Mogelonsky: So one other guardrail before we move on, or [00:06:00] a safeguard is, This whole idea of three square meals or snacking to boost your metabolism, and we've all heard of intermittent fasting and increasingly the evidence is showing without going into too many biomechanical or biochemical mechanics or mechanisms that you can't fix the car with the engine on, you need time away from eating to for your body to go through its own self renewal.
And people who may have been raised on three square meals, breakfast, lunch, dinner, breakfast, lunch, dinner, or they feel slightly sluggish at 11 a. m. after eating breakfast at 8 and they need a snack to pick them back up and they end up eating roughly seven or eight times per day. Those actual messages, three square meals, snacking is good for them.
The metabolism, those were actually marketing messages that were put forward by studies that were funded by the snack food [00:07:00] industry. so an important guardrail to put up there is saying, well, do you identify as somebody who eats three square meals per day? Or was that something that was just part of the system you grew up in, but it doesn't necessarily need to be your future?
Your, you know, your past is not your future, so to speak, but it requires a, a personal reframing of thought. And we're talking about the personal because to put it into context for people who want to learn here to do with their businesses, for their hotels, for their companies to improve their teams, whichever it is, is that people are slowly realizing this.
They're waking up to the latest research that's come about. Pretty much in the past 20 years and now doubling since the pandemic in terms of research towards actual nutrition and not just reductive nutritional sciences about, you know, how various supplements work and all that. They're waking up to this and they want change.
They're changing themselves at home and they're going to expect their [00:08:00] employers and their accommodations and their travel providers to do the same. So, uh, Neil, I'm wondering if we could flip it over to you. We're going to talk just to define what ultra processed food is versus processed food, or you mentioned just a piece of fruit, which is unprocessed or raw food.
And I'm wondering if you could succinctly describe in your own words,
what ultra processed food
is.
Neil Foster: well, ultra processed foods, I think probably the easiest definition is something that's processed to the extent that we don't
I don't understand the, the, nature of the processes, uh, so processed foods are, are really not as bad as one might, might infer, just going back to, sort of fire and, and, and sort of cooking, cooking our first meals, that, processed foods is really anything that, that is done to the, the raw materials or the foods. and so ultra processed foods takes that to, uh, such an extreme that we have really no [00:09:00] idea, uh, what has actually happened to those foods and whether they are still foods at the end of all of, the processing. Um, the main benefit I, I suppose is, uh, is shelf life, and trying to sort of respond to the need to scale.
so as populations increase, as urbanization has become, a factor over, over the last, uh, century or so, the need to sort of find food resources that, deal with, with perishability, has become, probably one of the main drivers for, uh, ultra processing. And so, yeah, maybe that wasn't the most succinct, but I guess, uh, uh, really, the view that it's just processed to the extent that we have no idea what's, been done to the original ingredients.
Adam Mogelonsky: Right. So the book does try to clarify this. It has the Nova system, which is the. more or less the standard that's emerging. There isn't a standard for ultra processed foods, but I guess the best way to describe this is through examples. So the number one example to look at is olive [00:10:00] oil. So olive oil is a processed food because you are taking olives, a raw fruit, and then you are pressing them, a form of mechanical pressure, whether it's using a grindstone or something.
more modern, but it's technically a processed food versus high fructose corn syrup. Which is, you're taking corn, you're reducing it through a bunch of different industrial processes down to an actual sugar that is now high in fructose, which is a specific type of sugar, as opposed to glucose. So, there's lots of nuances here and I want to give you another example here just to show you the complexity of it before we bring it back to a simple maxim to abide by.
And the example here is milk. Now, uh, I'm going to go against the grain here and I'm going to maybe trigger some [00:11:00] people, but I said I would do it. Uh, raw milk is healthy for you. If it is fresh. I want to throw that in there. And of course it's illegal for a reason because, you know, it's hard to keep fresh, fresh from the farm, farmhouse milk, et cetera.
But you look at it. Milk is a Raw milk is raw. Uh, it's coming packaged in fats that are then sequestering the albumin and the casein and the whey protein, things that when you refine them out of the milk, the whey, the casein, and you put them into things like protein powder. So protein powder is a UPF because you're using a industrial process.
And we don't yet know whether protein powder as an ultra processed food is actually good for the body long term. There are a lot of studies, not necessarily from this book, from others that show that too high animal protein can activate the body in certain ways to then [00:12:00] initiate certain disease pathways.
Drawing it back to raw milk, you can go to raw milk all the way to UPF with, uh, with the protein powders, whether whey or casein. Yeah, but you can go halfway in between, which is actual milk that's sold in stores. And what they're doing there is they're doing two forms of processing. They're doing pasteurization, which is killing off the bacteria, which some of those bacteria, as we are learning with the microbiome, some of those bacteria might actually be good for us, as we see with raw cheeses that are made.
But another process that people don't consider is what's called hydrogenation. where what they're doing is essentially blending up the, the milk at very fast, very fast rate. And the reason why they do that is to ensure that the fats that are in raw milk are more evenly distributed. And when you hydrogenate raw milk, you reduce the size of the fat globules from around [00:13:00] 15 nanometers down to 2 nanometers.
And during that process, reducing from 15 to 2, what ends up happening is the proteins become liberated from the fat. So now those proteins that are in raw milk are liberated, they're free in the water soluble part, and therefore they are, can attack the lining of our guts when we ingest store bought milk versus raw milk at a different way.
And of course I'm rambling here into the biomechanics. It is very important to talk about the biomechanics a little bit in order to understand the nuances that go into defining UPF versus just processed food versus just raw food. The overall maxim is that we should be eating whole foods, natural whole foods.
I'm not advocating that you go out and, uh, you know, find an [00:14:00] underground midnight farmer to give you raw milk. That's more of a nuanced situation, but overall. raw or whole foods. And, uh, of course we can
get into plant versus animal within that conversation. Let's stop it at whole foods.
Neil Foster: can I just
present sort of a, maybe a counter argument to, uh, uh, so completely agree that, that, that raw
whole foods are best, but just to give a little bit of an anecdote, I lived in a really remote place for three years, and years ago, this place had a single dairy. they imported cows from a long way away in order to maintain this dairy farm. And over a period of time, it was determined that this dairy farm was no longer sustainable. it just couldn't, couldn't provide, uh, dairy for such a small population. if it weren't for UHT milk that was, that's imported on a, semi regular basis, there would be no milk available. in this place.
And I guess there are other remote [00:15:00] places like this, that would probably also, uh, not be able to have certain kinds of whole foods, simply because of perishable nature of the whole foods and that, that these processes, allow for an extended shelf life. is it possible that, that some of these changes are. Uh, well intentioned, uh, that they're a way of being able to deliver the, the second best option, uh, where the best option's not available. And perhaps by extension, is it up to us to sort of understand, how to take the best option wherever it's available, and to think about the second and third best options in moderation? that perhaps we don't completely understand how to prioritize, our dietary needs, and this may be part of the problem.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, uh, you, you've hit the nail on the head here. Uh, so the reason why ultra processed foods have come into our food system is because of scaling and having regular supply and. There was a need for them and [00:16:00] there is a need for them and I believe that people are all well intentioned. you know, I don't believe in, you know, people, uh, just being evil and, and, and selling poison.
I, I don't, I don't believe that. I believe that everyone is well intentioned, as you said, and the, the situation has just gotten out of control because, uh, you know, we, we, we didn't know any better. in the 1920s, they were saying you needed your tobacco vitamins, therefore you should smoke cigarettes.
And yes, there was starting to get some evidence in there that, you know, tobacco consumption through the lungs wasn't all that good for you, but it really, it didn't reach the zeitgeist to use a word until the fifties and then the sixties when it started to rapidly go throughout the population. We had that paradigm shift.
And then it took many more years to get it across because it's addictive and it was part of people's daily habits. And then more recently now we have [00:17:00] vaping and smoking isn't all that popular anymore in certain places, but now vaping isn't necessarily good for you either. So it's, we're sort of passing the buck around a lot of ways, but overall we are getting better.
Um, one, one of the other things in this book here is to address the subtitle. And we're still sort of in our preamble going 20 minutes into this conversation, but the subtitle, as you can see here, it says why we can't stop eating food that isn't food. So we've talked about the isn't food part. And Neil, I want to throw it back to you to talk about the why we can't stop portion in terms of what you've gleaned from the book about why ultra processed foods are so addictive.
in various ways and how they've tricked our
brains with something called hyper palatability.
Neil Foster: Yes. Uh, so [00:18:00] there's a chapter 18 is it is a great chapter in the book that sort of outlines, uh, well, the title of the chapter is UPF is designed to be over consumed. and I guess one of the important pieces to, um, consider is that we've sort of messed with God in a sense. Uh, the destruction of the food matrix by physical, chemical, and thermal, thermal processing means that UPF in general, um, it's soft, which means that you can eat it fast, you can eat it, you can eat far more calories per minute, and you don't feel full for long until after you've finished. so, it's also, potentially reduces, well, I, I guess there are also, some issues physiologically that, uh, uh, without chewing your food, that your bone density over a period of time is going to diminish. So we've kind of opened up a little bit of a can of worms, but imagine this, you're sitting in a movie, you've got your packet twizzlers and your popcorn with, uh, with the synthetic butter on it. You're watching something mindlessly and sort of grazing. this I think is kind of, our greatest danger. [00:19:00] And going back to, I think you made a point a little earlier, Adam, about, the conditioning on when we should eat, how we should eat, whether it's three square meals. that I think The big issue that ultra processed foods has introduced is it's sort of enabled us to become grazers.
We're sitting at our desks eating Doritos or popping jelly beans. And I think these are issues because we don't completely, without the food matrix, There isn't a natural mechanism tells us that we're full, that we're satiated.
Adam Mogelonsky: could you describe what the, what you mean by the food matrix? That's an important term for people to, uh,
consider.
Right.
Neil Foster: way to describe this is think about you're biting into a big, juicy apple.
And that apple's got sugars in it, it's got juices, it's something that allows you to rehydrate and find energy. And years ago, when we were moving around a lot, that apple would reward us. Take a bite out of it, [00:20:00] it's sweet, and it would tell you, hey. Adam, you're doing something right. You've got to walk five kilometers to get a big jug of water or, you know, you've got an errand to run. you're hunting, and you need that, that stamina, and also the endurance. So the Apple rewards you, but it also, it also sends the signals that you're done, that you have enough, that you've got enough energy, that you've got enough hydration to fulfill your, your task. What's happened, I think, with ultra processed foods is that we've kind of short circuited all of that. We've found the reward without the payload. We've basically scraped out the payload. We've separated that from the reward. Now imagine that if in life that you're only rewarded for things without putting in the effort. Imagine you get your university degree and Just by showing up on the first day, and it's a prestigious one from a, you know, a, a good university. There's something wrong with this. [00:21:00] The, the, the, reward is in part meaningful because of the effort that you put in the sacrifices that you made. This, I think, is important to consider in the context of the human condition that anything meaningful in life. involves a little bit of sacrifice. It involves moderation. It involves thinking through, the nature of the task and, taking the reward without being overly consumed by the, the benefits of the reward. So anyway, maybe my, my analogy, I've taken it a little bit too far, but, if you take the juices out of the apple, You consume the juices in two seconds, you can probably eat, you know, ten apples worth of juices, which are the sugars. and you won't feel any reflex or mechanism to tell you that you've had enough. The food matrix tells you that you've had enough. And this is an important thing for our dietary need that we've largely discounted.
Adam Mogelonsky: it's the packaging that's important. Not just the raw ingredients, it's all them together. The, [00:22:00] the term I use is nature's symphony. They're all, you know, we're all conducting an orchestra and we need to eat it together in some way. To unpack one point, you, you talk about reward, uh, circuitry, and it's very important to know that What governs our eating is two different brain circuitries.
We have the seeking of food, the craving, the yearning, the hunting for food, which is dopamine, which is the reward seeking circuitry in our brain. But when we feel satiety, i. e. we're full, we feel nourished, that then shuts down that pathway via the opioid circuitry. It's a different circuitry. So, what you're saying is the ultra processed foods, they keep our dopamine
circuitry firing without activating the shutdown switch that is the
opioid pathway.
Neil Foster: In a [00:23:00] nutshell, bad foods are making us crazy. They're overloading our
circuitry. And there's not much that we can do about it. were saying earlier that, some of the consequences of eating ultra processed foods are not our fault. and I would agree with this. We do not completely understand the machinery and whether this is a function of education that we haven't learned, uh, early age, uh, what food does to us, that a healthy body. truly does mean a healthy mind, uh, needs to support it, knowing this and without sort of having that continual reinforcement, it's easy to fall into the traps of the marketing and the colors and the flashiness, and then we fall into this death spiral. of our circuitry, sort of going on overload.
Adam Mogelonsky: you know, to, to segue the conversation towards what, Businesses can do. Hotels or hotel tech companies that are looking to get the most of their employees by giving them nourishing foods so they think better, they have better moods, they're more creative, etc. A term that you [00:24:00] have, that you, that you repeatedly say, and I think it comes back to the core element of hospitality, not just lodging, hospitality is the duty of care.
And with ultra processed foods, a lot of people, they weren't educated to know any better. So therefore they may have obesity or have overweight, and it really isn't their fault. Because they're brought into a food environment that is actually a food swamp or a food desert where they don't have access or have the education.
to know where to access foods that are actually nourishing and better for them and have the proper food matrix. So a lot of food terminology, uh, we can write that up or you can look at it later. You can read the book, but Neil, to flip it over to you is you talk about this duty of care and how can hotels really feed into this duty of care by [00:25:00] modifying or shifting the foods that they have and how they educate their staff
or their, guests about the potential drawbacks or dangers of
UPF.
Neil Foster: I, do, emphasize that the duty of care is, what we should be baking into our hospitality models. but I would caveat
that with that there's a duty of care with commercial guardrails. Uh, so the, the
duty of care extends to
every business has an obligation. to profitability and to ensure that shareholders are happy. Um, and I feel that
I guess I want to tie it together, maybe with a little bit of abstraction here, but our first challenge in hospitality
was solving for scale.
So looking at the first hotel, or a group of hotels that had hundreds of rooms that were in hotel groups that were geographically dispersed, where you had 1 800 numbers, the first distribution systems, that you had really, a hospitality model that [00:26:00] demanded a different way of, management, uh, a different mechanism for managing hospitality model. this is where technology came in. And electronic distribution systems, property management systems. What I would say is that when these systems solve for scale, that experience, in some cases, was a casualty of that solving for scale. Our current opportunity is to solve for experience at scale. And what that means is that we are, uh, we've already mastered the, solving for, for scale with the help of technology. But we've somehow, we've lost our way to some degree, with, on the experience side. What I would say, so by extension, and tying this together with, with food and with the duty of care, is that, solving for scale often means you're looking at Commercial models that, that look at finding economies of scale, finding economies of scope that you're looking to sign big deals with large producers, [00:27:00] not necessarily understanding that, the hospitality model is about intimate, Careful, presentations of the experience. This is often at odds with, with scaling and, and big sort of big contracts and, big partnerships. And so when you have, um, I guess to use an example, one of the, the biggest food, providers on the planet, which is actually, uh, referenced a few times in, in our book here, uh, Nestlé. Nestlé is a
great.
potential partner for a large hotel group, where there's sort of a support in, in sort of scaling efforts. So when it comes to distribution, when it comes to consistency, if part of the the challenge of scale is to provide a consistent product, then finding a partner that, that enables consistency, uh, whether it's on the F&B side or otherwise, may seem to be on the surface a good, a smart business decision. What I think the challenge is, is that [00:28:00] consistency as we think, think about it in, in business terms and consistency in the way that it's presented by, in the way of ultra processed foods presents a little bit of a paradox or a contradiction. Whole Foods, I feel that, that Whole foods by, nature of, sort of the natural process, means that, that consistent, finding consistency is hard. You're having to deal with perishability, you're having to deal with, fluctuation in natural conditions, you know, from farm to farm, from environment to environment, there are going to be some differences. And I feel that, many industries are petrified of, the downside of inconsistency. So, I sense that, that really the, the big win for our industry, for hospitality, is in trying to figure out how to use technology. To mobilize the small producers and to tap into the Gen Z and the Millennials in particular, those two generations, their desires for authentic, natural [00:29:00] experiences.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, you, you raised so many good points here, and of course, the issue of scale and being cost efficient here is a driver. And, you know, we, we're running businesses. We're not here, we're not charities. So we need to drive cost efficiencies, especially in food service where the margins are so low.
So that is one very important element, and this isn't for everyone in terms of shifting off of ultra processed foods. It has to be a give and take you, you apply it where you can. Where I would say to draw in one maxim that I live by is if it were easy, it would've already been done. And where I draw that in is to draw to the converse of that maxim, which is to say that when you choose to do hard things.
You will be rewarded. And what we're seeing is that there is a market for better foods. People [00:30:00] are showing preference for these foods and they're willing to pay a premium to eat healthy foods. And as well, they are choosing their accommodations based on that accommodations ability to consistently provide those nourishing foods, be it organic vegan restaurants or, Conferencing facilities that are offering, proper food stations or more dynamic, forums of group and event, uh, group and event arrangements in their food service.
We're seeing this and I want to draw attention just to one statistic that I'll, I'll post the link in the show notes, but it was a recent study by, uh, Lifesum, a company called Lifesum and it was 2024 state of healthy eating and wellbeing report. Thank you. And based on a survey of 10, 000 Gen Z and Millennials, it was unveiled that the experience economy has significantly influenced individuals with healthy eating, serving as a moment of respite and escape amidst the hustle [00:31:00] of daily life.
So that's one thing, the experience economy and food is an experience. So even though you're not able to provide that consistency, Uh, that is done, uh, by the Nestle, Cisco, Gordon Foods, a big major supplier. Part of it is that, that variability is an experience and it's exciting. So that's number one from the study.
Number two is the fact that Gen Z and millennials, young people, are willing to forego, uh, the other discretionary spends in favor of healthy food. So of those 10, 000 people sampled, 62 percent were willing to sacrifice spending in fashion for healthy foods, 55 percent in tech and gadgets for healthy foods, 39 percent in online courses for healthy food, 36 percent in streaming services for healthy foods.
SOPs. Around a quarter or around a third [00:32:00] of people were willing to give up Netflix in order to eat healthy. And then 34%, again, another third were willing to forego or sacrifice travel in order to stay healthy. And I think that this really draws a line here in terms of the generational shift that we're We're seeing in terms of the demand for healthier options and not being bombarded by ultra processed foods.
So to sort of conclude this section here, what I want to talk about is we've mentioned meetings, conventions, mice, travel in general. And I want to draw something because we were both at High Tech, we're recording now July 12th. We were both at Hitech last month and it is a grueling, grueling three days, you know, it's evening events, you're on your, on your feet, it's, it's go, go, go, handshakes, handshakes, meetings, meetings, meetings, fast questions.
And people have these candy bars and these [00:33:00] ultra processed foods at their, at their boots. And part of the reason why they have those is because yes, they can stay shelf stable on there for three days straight, but also because that's The host convention center is supplying in terms of what can be supplied to site.
And it doesn't take into context the person that's there where you're dealing with an individual who is jet lagged, is low on sleep, low on energy, and now you're giving them essentially jet fuel, which then they're going to crash and it's not going to be a healthy day and it's going to take them another week to recover off of that three day stretch.
Where I see the big gain for nourishing foods is in helping with sleep and alleviating jet lag. I really see that as a big opportunity for hotels. Neil, do you, do you see any opportunities there in terms of reframing nourishing foods as a way to, to, to charge a [00:34:00] premium in a way that is very marketable for guests looking for better
sleep and to alleviate jet
Neil Foster: you bring up some
great points. If I may make a small and interesting
observation, When you go to the airport and you're traveling internationally and you're going through customs, they ask you, are you bringing any food with you? You know, any fruits, any vegetables, any meats, basically, are you bringing any whole foods with you? we're penalized for bringing our good diets with us and, unfortunately at most airports you're stuck with like a 20 sandwich that's full of ultra processed foods and you can't do anything about it. to your point of sort of the comfort circuit and, and sort of, uh, road warriors folks that are constantly on the road and traveling. This is a big headwind that you're basically stuck with whatever there is. and if you're one of the exhibitors at the trade show and my hats off to all of the exhibitors at high tech for putting in all of the time and effort. These are [00:35:00] very long and difficult days. to be able to do that with little to no food, and if there is food that it's a candy bar that's crammed down, at the last minute, imagine how much better it would be.
Those interactions, the quality of those interactions would be with the help of good wholesome foods. Now the irony is, and I want to get back to something interesting, something interesting you mentioned also about the way in which we're conditioned on the meals that we should be eating. It can't be forgotten that the meal is the perfect social lubricant that in almost every culture, sit down and break bread together is the very Essence of the hospitality that we live and breathe in our industry. What a shame it is when, that hospitality or the element of hospitality, either it doesn't exist because we're too rushed, or when it does exist, that it doesn't bring out some of the interesting nuances of the cultures that bring us all together, You know, [00:36:00] within the human domain of, uh, of hospitality. One of the most interesting things to me about hospitality is being able to travel around the world and, to eat local fruits and vegetables, to have, some local authentic experiences. but it seems that that's very hard to do for a number of different reasons. So the first is, being discouraged to sort of bring things back and forth between countries. The second is that we're living the fast life, that we don't have time to do anything, most of us. let alone take a, take a step back, a, a breather and have a, a nice meal. And thirdly, when it comes to meaningful social interactions, if progress happens because we work together, being able to take those meals and turn them into something truly productive that we can all celebrate truly, having a great meal together and being with each other, I think that there's some room for improvement.
And our industry is perfectly positioned to be the leaders in that domain.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, just to not be too much of a devil's advocate here, [00:37:00] on your first point, the whole thing about bringing raw foods or whole foods across borders is that is done to protect local food growing environments because there could be pathogens. that need to be controlled across food borders and there have been instances of pathogens that have made it across continents and have destroyed interrupted and, and really hurt farmers, um, for instance, there was, or right now there is a disease affecting olive trees in Puglia, Italy.
That's the heel and it's killing off trees that are 3000 years old, upwards of 3000 years old. And it is a bacteria that they've traced back to plant. So, there is some nuance here in terms of controlling, uh, things across borders, uh, so we need to be careful of that. But to your [00:38:00] point about local authentic experiences and really experiencing the local cuisine and finding those local cultivars as local varietals.
When you travel to a city for a convention, like HITEC like where we were and you Are you really seeing that city, that destination, or are you just seeing the convention center and you could be In Charlotte, in Minneapolis, in Indianapolis, in San Antonio, are you really experiencing that destination?
And again, hotels have been barking down this, this tree here for, about local authentic experiences. And I'd say that, There's a lot more barking that they need to do in order to really get this across in terms of really bringing that local authenticity into the space and meeting the consumer where they are.
Whether it is they have time to sit down and eat, [00:39:00] which oftentimes they don't, and they got to eat on the go or just having that available as an upsell option to sell to various guests across different segments as something that they can do to bring that local flair in between whatever the purpose of that event is.
Uh, that travel modality was, be it a convention or wedding or just seeing a destination. So this all said about the local authentic experience is there are innovative brands that are doing some amazing things in this regard. I could list off some and, and I can, and we both have our notes, but Neil, I'm wondering if you have one example that really highlights how hotels.
can set up a successful program that is phasing out of ultraprocessed foods. And then it has a positive halo back on their brand,
their ability to
[00:40:00] command a higher ADR, their
F& B sales, etc.
Neil Foster: I'm sure that there are some really great examples of hotel companies that are looking to make a, to make a difference. I think though, part of this discussion is sort of, it's a discussion of matchmaking that I think the guests and the hotel companies have to speak the same language that I think there's sort of a cause and effect question that is, wellness working in a hotel, because it's encouraging people that are, Not, presently focused on wellness, to take that first step on the ladder, or are they already catering to folks that are,
crazy about wellness, and basically they found a match, that now that group of people, they're able to travel, because they would not ever want to travel and sacrifice their, their lifestyle.
I guess the really great hotel companies, More than anything, they're really good at understanding the needs of their target guests, and they're very focused on a market mix that makes sense for them. [00:41:00] They're not trying to be everything to everyone. And I think one of the big challenges of being able to offer wellness and to be able to offer, good quality meals. is that I think many consumers are still thinking, well, is this really healthy? What corners are they cutting? Are they just presenting it as, you know, this is a whole grain, whole grain bread, but it's actually full of emulsifiers and, uh, ultra processed ingredients.
So I think part of this discussion is sort of more of a macro question of, how are menus communicated?
How are ingredients communicated? And in Canada, we have the benefit of pretty strong regulation that on the boxes and bags of the foods that we buy, that there's a fairly comprehensive list of ingredients. It's not perfect, but it's certainly better than it might be elsewhere. And so when it comes to commercial interests, there always has to be that skeptic thinking on the part of [00:42:00] the consumer that the business is trying to make money. And they may be looking to, cut some corners in order to find the most profitable outlook. How are hotel companies, how are the successful ones, able to communicate that they are using the absolute best quality ingredients, and in a way that's compelling, to the guests in the diners? So maybe this is sort of pushing back, I guess, and saying that even for the very best that are out there, How do we know that the way that they present, uh, those best options are, that presentation is received objectively?
That you can say, all of these ingredients are a whole? food handling, uh, that, you know, it's fair trade and, no antibiotics the nature of, the food production is exactly what you're hoping for as someone looking for a good quality meal.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, you raised two points here. Number one is, of course, understanding your market mix. So for a hotel that caters to heads and beds at the economy, budget, mid scale [00:43:00] level, it maybe is more about customer education, about opening their minds to the fact that they should be eating more whole foods and simply just offering the options alongside processed foods because you have to meet the guests where they are.
Not just doing things like banning Coca Cola, Pepsi, and Nestle from your, hotel. Uh, knowing that soda is one of the worst things you can consume. so that's number one, is that, that works that end. I work more at the luxury end, and the two ways that you get that message across is number one, There are organizations that can give you a stamp of approval to make sure that you're using organic, uh, you know, uh, raised without antibiotics, RWA, other sorts of classifications to ensure the high quality of ingredients.
And then the other way you do that is by charging more. You charge more at your restaurant and it's assumed that within that price [00:44:00] you're using good ingredients. So, for instance, if you come across a salad that is 35 for a salad and it says that the dressing is made with olive oil, well, you know that it's going to be made with real ingredients.
all so much for joining us today, and we'll see you next time. Tell you the exact farm where the piece of beef came from, and it's grass fed, grass finished, and there's lots of ways you can do this. Neil, I think the overall point here is that there's an opportunity by getting more specific.
into the actual ingredients by saying, Hey, this isn't just beef or a ribeye. That ribeye came from here, came from this farm, [00:45:00] and you can go to their website and see what their things are. And we have staff training and our staff knows this. There's an opportunity through customer education to verify your quality of goods
and therefore have that premium that guests are then willing to pay for because it's part of the story.
And it's also
part of the health guarantee.
Neil Foster: I really love that answer, Adam. The thing that I love the most is that when you talk about training, to me
that speaks of culture. When you talk of storytelling, storytelling speaks of hospitality. I
just wanted to sort of highlight one of my pet peeves that I think leads into some of the miscommunication. So one of my pet peeves is this. I go to a high-end restaurant and I order a bottle of mineral water. They charge me $12 for the mineral water, and they give me an a glass with ice in it. The first question I would have is, where does the ice come from?
do, do they use mineral water for The
ice or, but these are questions that I think few people are, are willing or, or courageous [00:46:00] enough to ask. What those details shed, uh, light on is that without understanding the big picture, and if there are some of those important details that are ignored, that you could have your 35 salad with one little detail that's wrong, and that salad is, there's an ultra processed ingredient in there that negates the whole experience.
It's about trust.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. I mean, you know, um, high end restaurants, they, they make their own Caesar salad dressing. They make their own ketchup, all from raw, from raw, from raw, but that's expensive. And therefore, but that becomes part of the branding of that restaurant, which then halos onto the branding of the hotel. And then of course, it, it's part of this ecosystem where now, you know, if you're paying over a thousand dollars a night for a, uh, a restaurant, hotel room, you would expect the 100 meal at the restaurant downstairs to reflect that quality in terms of the raw ingredients.
And so you never want to [00:47:00] show a chink in your armor. You never want to have that 35 Caesar salad and then find out that the croutons weren't from sourdough, leftover sourdough bread, and that the Caesar dressing wasn't made from scratch. It was made from seed oils. you want to have that guarantee and part of the premium is that you have that guarantee where if people were to find out it would be a scandal.
What I wanted to add about the, the ice is that this is something where. People aren't asking that question now so much, but they are going to, because increasingly we are seeing brands, I'm gonna name two brands, so the One Hotels, One Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, and the East Hotels, which is a part of the Swire, Swire property space out of Hong Kong, and they've put in water filters directly into their rooms.
behind that, that's an expensive amenity to put in place when you're looking at it from a CapEx development standpoint. And somewhere along the lines, they had to do some sort of feasibility to basically say, this [00:48:00] is where the market's going. There is demand. for people who have the wherewithal to know that tap water has a lot of weird stuff in it that shouldn't be in our bodies, be it, you know, uh, leftover birth control pills, leftover prescription medication, uh, heavy metals, now fluoride as well, which has been shown to directly decrease testosterone levels.
And of course there is, you look at the charts, the testosterone is basically going like this across generations and male populations. So people are increasingly wanting to drink reverse osmosis filtered water to eliminate 99. 9 percent of the total dissolved solids. And so people are asking right now, saying, You know, what do you do with my ice?
Is the ice coming from reverse osmosis or filtered water? They're starting to ask those questions. And [00:49:00] the brands that cater to them are the ones that are finding a new niche. And then they're able to charge for the increased costs that they have to bear to do that. And I mentioned seed oils. There's now an app on your phone that lists off restaurants that do not use seed oils to fry.
that are fried. They're deep fried in beef tallow, the way McDonald's originally used to do it prior to switching over in I believe 1991 to vegetable oil, but beef tallow up long HALO'd by the Ancel Keys generation about saturated fats, bad for the heart. Yada, yada, yada, but it turns out that the trans fats and the partially hydrogenated vegetable oils are much worse due to a lot of the inflammatory effects they can have.
Again, getting a little bit into the biomechanics here, but important to mention and just to ramble on about in terms of the new [00:50:00] markets that are opening up. Where you have an app, if you are so inclined to be on the anti seed oil bandwagon like I am, you have an app and you can find places nearby in North America that are cooking french fries the way they used to be cooked in the 1950s and 60s, which was fried in beef tallow, in beef fat, or duck fat, I guess, and in France, but you can actually find that.
And therefore people are maybe choosing the healthier option according to their system of beliefs.
Neil Foster: This is really interesting. So what you've articulated is that
that technology, if used correctly, that technology can solve for experience at scale. So, folks
like us, uh, we can go anywhere in the world, and find, assuming that these apps, uh, gain traction, that this is a way of sort of filtering our preferences, and finding, a little bit more, a better match between [00:51:00] what our preferences are, what our lifestyles are, and the hotels and organizations that can cater to it. Now, just thinking about the landscape, I mean, it's a red ocean out there with, hotel reviews, with TripAdvisor, that, you know, everywhere you go, you, you see hotels that are begging their guests for good reviews. Now imagine
if, if your guests are, well, maybe this is part of a larger, a larger discussion here. but if you are able to find a much closer match, in expectations that this is what you're able to do, this is what your guests expect, that everyone's happy, that you're able to find, much more sort of natural satisfaction. what I want to say also is that imagine if we're eating healthier. And if a healthy mind is a more rational mind, if a healthy mind is, is one that's, more sort of, open to interesting possibilities, then it would follow that if you're eating healthy foods, at hotels and restaurants, if you're in the habit of eating, healthy [00:52:00] options, that you're probably going to be a much more rational person.
in terms of the culture of, these organizations, that I think this is another side of it is it's all good and well to say that you have hotels and restaurants that are serving healthy foods, but what are those organizations doing for their own people? And what's that culture fit looking
like between the purveyors of the health and the receivers of the healthy options? I would hate to think that my waiter at a healthy restaurant, lives on Big Macs and fries. Uh, and, you know, milkshakes that are made with, uh, with all these ultra processed ingredients. To me, it just seems like, like there's a bit of a, a misfit culture wise. And when it comes to some of these innocent mistakes, that you have a 35 Caesar salad with something added to it that changes the whole nature of this, that I feel that that's as much a cultural, problem or opportunity as it is sort of, uh, uh, matching a guest's [00:53:00] expectations with products that they're looking for. What are your thoughts? I mean, I'm kind of opening a little bit of a can of worms. It's not just providing, the goods and services. It's sort of thinking about the whole culture, uh, that's behind this.
Adam Mogelonsky: Right. So what we're seeing is as a macro macro mega trend is that labor is going to be increasingly in short supply in there's nuance in different markets. If labor is in short supply, you have two ways, two dominant ways we've seen to incentivize to keep your teams. knowing that you can't really have high CHRN, because there's, with CHRN employees leaving, you don't necessarily have people coming back in.
You can't refill that pipe. So, number one way is you pay above market rates. You increase your pay scale. That's a cost. The other way you can do it is through wellness programs. That can be mental health, it can be team building exercises, [00:54:00] but it can be staff lunches, staff meals. For And if you're feeding your teams better foods and you educate them on the importance of good foods, there is more likely a chance they're going to stay with you long term and that also that their moods are going to be better and therefore they're going to better serve their guests.
So You know, an army runs on its stomach. And therefore, the better food you give your army, your teams, the better they'll be able to serve your guests. And that will have a knock on effect, a positive halo on guest service. And then on to all the business pluses that derive from guest service, brand
equity, ability to grow rates, ancillary spend, all that, all that fun stuff.
Neil Foster: I was going to jump in with a tiny anecdote, probably a perfect one given your analogy of the army, that it was Constantine
Fahlberg that discovered saccharin accidentally. Just [00:55:00] before, it was the late 1800s, and it was an accidental discovery, and that saccharin was most notably used to supplement sugars for the armies in war. So, I guess you could also say that if you want people to sort of, um, Lose their, their minds that maybe filling them up with ultra processed foods is a way of, getting people not to think so much about their actions or the consequences of them.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, I have another anecdote for you. Um, this is gonna piss a lot of people off, but the French baguette, the long haloed bread, is originally of Italian origin. It was adopted by the French and became known as a French food due to Napoleon. Because of its shape, it could, as a cylindrical shape, it could fit into people's trousers.
So it became common as part of the esprit de corps [00:56:00] in the French military system that Napoleon put in place, that every soldier would have their bread and cheese ration to feed them. And the best type of bread to give them was the baguette shape because they could hold it on their, on their bodies, easily fitting it down a pocket.
So there we go. Anecdote and anecdote. you mentioned the word milkshake, and I want to draw on the nuance here because we can't expect people to become monks. We can't say, oh, you're in my hotel, therefore you're going to be eating 100 percent vegan, and we're only going to be serving food for one hour in mid afternoon because everyone should be only eating one meal per day, and they should all be in their intermittent fasting.
So, we have to provide breakfast, we have to provide food in the late hours of the evening, we have to provide room service, and we've mentioned burgers and fries, we can't expect everyone to come off it. And, You, you look at most, most restaurants in the United States and in [00:57:00] Canada and the, The majority of the sales are from burger and fries or the basic stuff.
So the point isn't to completely eliminate the bad foods, so to speak, whether that is burger and fries, it's to meet them halfway and say, okay, if we're going to have burger and fries on the menu, we're going to make it the healthiest burger and fries possible. So, those fries, we're going to get them organic, we're going to fry them in good oil instead of bad oil, uh, we're going to get good quality beef, maybe even nose to tail beef, we're going to use proper cheese, not processed cheese, raw vegetables, we're going to make our own relish on site, uh, we're going to probably try to have a naturally fermented brioche bun or potato bun, etc.,
etc. And now you mentioned milkshakes. Milkshakes. are an ultra processed food, but there's nuance here. So if you look at freshly made gelato, it is a processed food, not an [00:58:00] ultra processed food. Because the ingredients are milk, cream, sugar, and the ingredient. And it's not, it's using a basic, industrial process or mechanical process of you heat up the milk and the cream and the sugar to bring it all together, then you add the things, then you slowly mix it and freeze it to ensure that it doesn't form the icy glass, uh, watery crystals in it and creates that smooth texture.
And prior to this episode, I actually went to the grocery store and I looked at all the store bought ice creams and I was trying to see, okay, if somebody's going to get a pint of ice cream because they need their fix, they're human, what is the brand that is the least processed? And my barometer for this is I was looking for the weird stuff you couldn't pronounce and saying, what's the, what's the one with the least amount of ingredients?
What's the one with the least amount of these? emulsifiers and flavor enhancers, these [00:59:00] things that are these chemicals that our bodies, our human bodies never encountered prior to 50 years ago. And the best brand is Haagen Dazs. So if you're gonna purchase ice cream, my recommendation is Haagen Dazs because you look at the label and the vanilla, the vanilla store bought ice cream has maybe six ingredients under 10 ingredients in an ice cream.
And it's just like, wow. Yeah, you wouldn't expect that from a processed or ultra processed food these days. You'd expect it to have like, just boom, this laundry list here. And then the last three things are these food dyes and emulsifiers that are like, Oh, what's, what's, what's xanthine gum? What's carrageenan?
I don't know what those things are. Where do they come from? So, uh, there's nuance here. And That's what makes this conversation so complicated. So, you know, you know, I mentioned other brands here [01:00:00] that are making the difference and it's not a one size fit all. So, two brands I want to mention. Number one, Body Holiday in St.
Lucia. And I mentioned this because it is a destination place. We've mentioned one hotels and East hotels that are international brands. Body Holiday is one hotel. And what they've done is they have their Ital restaurant, which is based on the Rastafarian tradition. Vegan form of eating and they grow all their own foods for this.
So this is the high end resort where people can tour the garden right next to the, restaurant. They can see it and it literally is plant to plate. That's one way. Any resort can do this. You can set up a green garden. You can make it an experience. On the other end, the urban hotels that are catering to guests, they, and they're in Canada, they have winter, this thing called winter that prevents them from really doing this.
You have places like Le [01:01:00] Germain, Luger Man Hotels, where recently what it did for its Quebec properties, this is a Canadian brand, a great Canadian brand, for its Quebec properties, it partnered with the Quebecois authorities to feature locally made artisan farmers and manufacturers. So it reduced the food miles, it kept the economy within the province of Quebec.
And it gives you more of that local authentic experience brought right to you in Montreal, in Quebec City. So that way it's accessible for anyone coming for corporate travel or, to a big city where they can't necessarily just go out and go out and visit a farm. Neil, do you see any other, any other
ways that hotels can really get in on this trend and build out, uh, the exit strategy from ultra processed
Neil Foster: think so. and those are good
examples. I wondered, as you were talking about Quebec,
uh, a good authentic poutine
using, without using seed,
seed oils, that, that that could be one way of showcasing one [01:02:00] of the greatest contributions that Canada has to the global culinary scene, poutine. But, uh, one, one example, so, um, the, uh, Raritongan resort, uh, on, on the, in the Cook Islands, the Raritongan
Resort in Luget, there's also another, uh, lodge at Aitutaki. both of these lodges, both of these resorts are owned by Tata Crocombe, who's based in the Cook Islands. And one of the things that I found really wonderful is the way that they showcase some of the, the local produce. So, coconut, um, they prepared coconut as a snack and fried it in a way that it didn't burn. it tasted like popcorn, and they added a, uh, a papaya chili sauce, and you're thinking, you know, this is, I know where I am, because I'm eating, some of the local cuisine, and some of the happy memories, uh, are, are good meals, good food, so I think it makes good business sense also, for resorts and, and hospitality providers To have some signature dishes that bring out the best in the local community, so [01:03:00] that you think about the community, you think about the hotel, that it all comes together as a big package. so, just my experience on remote islands, I did live on the island, you mentioned Napoleon earlier, where Napoleon was
exiled. Ironically,
Adam Mogelonsky: yeah.
Neil Foster: the island was known for being the place where ships would get fresh
provisions. They would stop
for water, they would have fruits and vegetables. Well, guess what, Adam?
When I was there, very little local produce. Bottled
water came from South Africa in five liter bottles. So, it can't be underscored how important it is to sort of preserve these, uh, natural ecosystems and to ensure that the best of the local produce is highlighted. and that, that farmers are given, uh, the support that they need, that they're given, uh, the encouragement that they need in order to be part of this wonderful tourism experience. Now, my, my wife always gave me the advice. She said, Neil, [01:04:00] if you want to meet interesting people, you need to do interesting things. And I think this underscores what people crave in hospitality, is that you get out
there, you find an interesting experience, that provider's able to give you something that you're never going to forget, and this is going to be part of who you are.
So coming full circle maybe, if one of the things that the book tells you in the beginning is that we identify ourselves by the foods that we eat. Why not take that to a different level to say that we identify ourselves by the experiences that we embrace in our lives. And
if wellness, if healthy eating, if being explorers and being adventurous, These are all things that add sort of interesting chapters to our lives.
And as things are, you know, with, some of the uncertainties in the world today, that getting out there living our best, the best versions of ourselves, that this is something that hospitality is perfectly positioned to support us in all the best ways.
Adam Mogelonsky: I think you hit the [01:05:00] nail on the head here and one point to add to this is we've talked about the premiums that can be realized by shifting to these, you know, more local, better experiential food systems. It isn't easy, but precisely because it isn't easy is where you can derive the value for your brand and for
increasing top line growth.
Neil Foster: Adam, we're just talking about, uh, so on the Cook Islands, the, uh, wonderful presentation of, of local produce, really a great way to solidify that local experience and to walk away, having experienced not just the hotel, but, that environment. you mentioned a little bit earlier, uh, your example of the baguette and with Napoleon. Uh, now I actually spent three years on, on that little island where Napoleon was exiled. And before Napoleon was exiled there, the island was really well known as being the place where these little wooden ships would stop for water and provisions on their way to far flung places like Australia [01:06:00] and, Indonesia and places like this. Well, today, the water is imported, the drinkable water, a lot of it's imported, most of the produce is imported. And so, this is sort of a call to action that even a place that has been well known for, providing, unique and interesting produce and whole foods experiences, this involves support, and that no single organization, hotel or otherwise, can prop it up on their own, that it's part of a culture and it's part of supporting the farmers and the producers and having really healthy, two way relationships between the producers and the restaurants and the accommodations providers, that they're all playing for the same team. I think this is one of the, key things to consider in the, the equation. What are your thoughts?
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, we've discussed off and on and going back and forth about the premium that can be realized. It is not easy to shift off of the big suppliers and to adjust your food chain, but when you [01:07:00] do and you go through the effort of doing the hard thing, there is value to be realized. Brand equity, new types of guests who are willing to pay more for this, for top line growth.
Brands like Six Senses at the ultra luxury end that part of this is just their brand standard or cool places like the farm at San Benito in the Philippines. That is, it's part of their brand is regenerative onsite farming. So these are examples of the future of food, of the future of hospitality leading the way.
their balance sheet, their income statement speaks for itself in terms of the business case that can be made. And what I would say for everyone else is that Knowing that there is a business opportunity here is look at your local, look at your local farmers. Maybe you sponsor a heritage farm or you associate with them and that becomes part of your experience because you're bringing that into your [01:08:00] restaurants or maybe, uh, you know, that you can modify your actual marketing message to express that.
And it's the story. It's the experience that we're selling. And. Within all these foods, the food is, yes, it has health benefits, but it, it allows us to grow and evolve our businesses, which is how you can put it across the actual bean counter. So we're going to scrutinize you for why your cost of goods sold has gone up so much.
So, Neil, to finish things off, we've been here for a while, we've been bouncing back and forth, and we're both open to rambling some more if people want to get in touch with us. I've sort of known about ultra processed foods and its dangers for a long time now, and I've made the change, and I continue to change and evolve my own diet based on the research that's coming out.
But you're sort of a little bit newer into this health journey, and can you describe We're recording in July. [01:09:00] When did you first read this book, and what changes have you made since
that time, and
what health benefits or otherwise have you realized in
that time?
Neil Foster: we've been talking about this book since, uh, so this is sort of part two in sort
of, uh, the humanities series. We did Generations, now we've done Ultra Processed People. I can say honestly that this book has changed my life. I really didn't understand at all, uh, what ultra processed foods were. I figured that to stay in shape, to, to get healthy, to lose weight, that I should run marathons, which is something I started years ago. Problem is, I would eat a frozen pizza before running my 10K. And without knowing that, that these two things didn't necessarily connect with each other, that running didn't necessarily make the effects of the pizza go away. So, you know, I'm encouraged by my kids, uh, my wife, who's Japanese, cooks, amazingly healthy dishes, and I'm inspired by her every day, [01:10:00] and so, I guess my message, and when we've talked about this book, I've been telling everybody, anyone that's interested to hear, that they should read this book, and it really doesn't matter whether they intend to keep eating Doritos or, burgers and, and shakes and, and fries. at least understanding the rules of the game, is something that I think we all owe it to ourselves to do. so I've lost weight since reading the book and sticking to, not eating, as many ultra processed foods. I do still eat burgers. I still, still do eat the occasional milkshake. Uh, I'm not a saint. Uh, and also recognize that it's very, very hard to eat whole foods, but my preference
is for whole foods, and it really does taste delicious. It's a great experience. so when you said that this isn't new when did you start, considering good health, Adam? And when was your turning point?
Adam Mogelonsky: Oh, well, we're going back to my pre medicine days in terms of nutrition and everything. So you could say 20 years. Then [01:11:00] I found out about intermittent fasting around 2017 and started incorporating that. And then during the pandemic, I had a lot more time to read. So I started reading up on all the various forms and tutelages of nutritional science.
And then I started reading scientific papers. And it's all just sort of come together into my own sort of philosophy on it. So I guess 2017, I've been on this train, I mean, a long time ago, and now it's just part of who I am. You know, there's, there's so many thoughts we could touch on and we could be here for 10 hours talking about nutrition.
it's fun, but it's also confusing. And there's a lot of nuance between processed and ultra processed foods. You know, getting back to natural and whole foods plant forward. I think that's probably the best, way to finish it off as a, as a simple maximum. Whole foods. And then of course we are omnivores, so can't just go pure carnivore, can't just go [01:12:00] pure vegan.
got to meet at halfway, uh, you know, yeah, you can, you can argue with me on the, on the, the vegan, the, the plant based versus plant forward. I am an omnivore. that's who I am. We can, you know, That's a whole other, whole other book, I think. So we'll finish it there, Neil. This is really is the opportunity is there for the taking for hotels that really want to upgrade their food and use their food to elevate their brands, elevate their revenues in various ways.
It isn't easy.
When you do the hard things, you get the results.
Neil
thanks so much.
Neil Foster: Thank you Adam. Great discussion. And I've
learned a lot from you
Adam Mogelonsky: Learn from you. Thank you for recommending this book to
me. Thanks.
Neil Foster: Thank you.
[01:13:00]