Yeah.

And, you know, like making sure you have your iron and your calcium and there's so many nutrients to think about, and that is important.

But I, I think sometimes there's too much focus on just the nutrients in the food and not, like, what this food is do- doing to you over the long run.

Whole milk, for example, or milk in general, we grow up learning that you need milk because it has calcium, and the dairy industry really pushes all the nutrients that are in milk.

It's such a nutrient-dense food.

But when you look at, like, long-term health outcomes of dairy products and milk, it's linked with prostate cancer and breast cancer, and it is, like, really high in saturated fat, which we know causes atherosclerosis and heart, heart disease, heart attack, stroke.

And so I think the number one-

Right.

Can you speak a little bit about what changed?

Yeah, there's a lot of changes, so I'm glad you asked.

And I think maybe one of the most important changes is the way that these guidelines were developed.

The whole process is very different from what we've seen in the past.

So previously, every iteration of the Dietary Guidelines, the government puts together this Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and it's very transparent and you get nominated and it's all very public and the public has input on their work and they meet publicly.

The meetings are, they have been streamed like on Zoom so you can live stream And this took place in 2023 and 2024.

We had a really good dietary guidelines advisory committee.

So can you talk a little bit about what changed there?

"When we say," she writes, "when we say processed meat increases colorectal cancer risk, what is actually happening biologically inside the body to raise that risk?"

Yeah, I love this question, 'cause I love getting into the biochemistry of it all.

Uh, but there's four main things.

And for processed meats specifically, a lot of it comes down to the way it's preserved.

It has these chemical preservatives called nitrates, which become nitrites in the body.

So these are, they're added to the meat to make them shelf stable and prevent them from spoiling and add color.

Uh, and then they interact with the protein in the meat when they're heated, and you get something called nitrosamines or N-nitroso compounds.

Um, Stephanie is wondering how beans and lentils compare nutritionally, uh, when it comes to red meat, and then also reducing that risk of cancer.