047: How to Survive in a Supermarket with Olli Posti

Where you can find the healthiest foods at the grocery store? Our guest knows and he’s here to tell us how to survive in a supermarket. Olli Posti is a superfood blogger, product advisor and front line health advocate based in Finland.

After eating his way out of multiple sclerosis, Olli Posti has been a staunch health advocate for over a decade promoting nutrient dense foods and healthy eating. His best-selling book, Supermarket Survival: For The Love of Food and Well-Being, outlines what to look for in a supermarket and what to avoid.

Today he shares about how he shifted what he ate to overcome multiple sclerosis and compete in tennis tournaments! In 2002, Olli was told he had multiple sclerosis and only had a few years to live. Initially devastated by the news, he eventually began exploring more “woo woo” options from the alternative health world. His approach was to change his mindset as well as his nutritional intake: he ate less flour-based products, fewer processed foods and focused on better hydration, Vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acids.

He also changed his friends, his mindset and his internal world. He became more active in online communities and found more positively-minded people as a result. He studied personal development and persuasive marketers, everyone from Earl Nightingale to Frank Kern. From them he learned many things, including that there is a solution to every problem. He knew he could find a solution to his health issues, and he did.You’ll hear him describe his experiences in more detail on today’s show.

Then we talk about censorship and speaking truth before wrapping up our with his biggest tips from his Supermarket Survival book. He recommends adding a broader selection of quality hydration to your diet, quality fats as well as more greens and plants of other colors.

Join us for that and more on today’s Awesome Health with Olli Posti!

Episode Resources:

• Supermarket Survival Website
• Olli Posti’s Website
• Supermarket Survival by Olli Posti
• Olli Posti on Instagram

Read The Episode Transcript :

Wade Lightheart: Good afternoon. Good morning and good evening wherever you are. I'm Wade T Lightheart from the Awesome Health Podcast and today we have a very special guest all the way from Finland Olli Posti who's going to teach us today how to survive in a supermarket and how you can discover why food and supermarkets may not be good for you, what to look out for, what to upgrade and how to enjoy eating without guilt. Olli is an author, he's what I would call a health influencer and a health product designer. Got quite an extensive history in the field. We met way back last fall at Biohacking Summit in Finland and it was pretty fun and a lot of great people and there's a huge community of biohackers and super food advocates and health advocates in the Scandinavian countries.

Wade Lightheart: And so we were looking to bring in some of our friends from overseas to share some of the insights that they have in regards the next level of health. Olli has been a super food blogger and product advisors since 2009 as I talked about his. We'll talk about that in a minute. He has been widely read for 10 years and get this, he ate his way out of multiple sclerosis. Think about that. I mean this is a very debilitating condition and he's been on the front lines for over a decade, promoting healthier eating, nutrient dense foods and supermarket survivalism right now. Now there's also something we're going to find out about. He was involved in founding, in developing the, let me see if I'm saying this right, Freetoxaajat, community. I don't know if I spelled that right.

Wade Lightheart: My Finish is terrible. And was chosen as the Finnish health influencer of the year 2016. And his “Supermarket Survival: For the Love of Food and Well-being” has been a bestselling book in Finland. We'll put his links in here how you can find out about it and learn about what's happening overseas. Olli, welcome to the show.Olli Posti: Well that's a nice intro. I wonder where you actually got pulled up that information from because none of that is really the English language yet. I don't think so.

Wade Lightheart: We go very deep at the Awesome Health Podcast show. So I have my secret agent Vaida who will go in and translate information and extract all the information that we possibly can on everybody that we bring onto the show. We like to do a little due diligence. So we selected you and so some of that translation came through and that's why I was kinda like "I don't know if we got this right." Hey, welcome to the show!

Olli Posti: Yeah, I mean that was really amazing because I was like, okay, we're going to talk about something, but you actually know a lot of about myself. This is going to be great conversation.

Wade Lightheart: So I want to go this backstory right off the bat because this is really powerful. How did you eat your way out of multiple sclerosis? So first, what happened before it, maybe a little background on your lifestyle before and then what led to the diagnosis and then what that was like and then kind of moving into how you just took things into your own hands. I mean, this is pretty remarkable story and I think it's very motivating and inspiring for people who are suffering from conditions, whatever they might be. Now we're not here to treat or here or anything like that, but I think the power of food Hippocrates once said, let food be your medicine and medicine be your food. So tell me about your background story. Where did it all start?

Olli Posti: Yeah, I mean it was crazy. When I was 10 years old, I got asthma diagnosis and I was always using medication for that. And when I was 19 years old, then I got the multiple sclerosis diagnosis and, and thenwhen I was around 20, I did find out about natural health. I got rid of the asthma pretty fast. But then the multiple sclerosis that wasn't so easy. So that actually took me many years of serious study into just holistic health, everything that can do to just to make my health better. So initially I was like, okay, like there are these bad foods, these inflammatory foods that I shouldn't, maybe it's so much of, and then there are those good foods. And then I realized at some point that, okay, right amount of sunlight or a better quality air, for example, they are also like good nutrients.

Olli Posti: And then there are bad things like, let's say bad emotions or bad thoughts or bad company or whatever. So it was a long process of upgrading my life and every part of it and realizing that there are so many different things that actually affect our health and healing. And also one thing I noticed was that when I'm engaged in doing some things that I really love, then I'm not feeling pretty much any of those symptoms. So that was also one thing that was very important for me. But yeah, it was quite crazy.

Wade Lightheart: When did you get your diagnosis?

Olli Posti: That was 2002.

Wade Lightheart: Okay, so you were how old at both this time?

Olli Posti: I was 19.

Wade Lightheart: So you had asthma around 10 you said?

Olli Posti: Yeah. Yeah.

Wade Lightheart: And then you kind of corrected that, but when you got 19, you got the MS and this is like next level of stuff. And then what was this journey like? How did you start, you know, step-by-step, piece by piece. So I think that's an important part. A lot of people start and say, okay, I want something that's going to fix me tomorrow. What do I need to do? Do I need to eat this? Goji berries are going to fix this? And it's, no, that's not it. It's a lifestyle. It's a journey. So take us on that journey. How long was that whole thing and what were some of the pieces that came through for you?

Olli Posti: Yeah, 3 or 4 years. Something like that. First the journey started by me realizing that I don't really have any hope, so I would just go, spend my money on whatever. I have a few years left. So let's just do fun things. And then at some point it was so bad that I couldn't really do that many fun things. So then I was just sitting on the internet or in the library, just trying to find something, some hope, and then I'd find something, for example, maybe vitamin D has something to do with it. Maybe turmeric might have whatever. To find something that might help them. Then I followed that trail. Most of those trails that offered any kind of hope were considered very woo by the mainstream. So I wouldn't have paid attention any attention to those without my condition. So that was a nice, nice thing in the end.

Wade Lightheart: Just before you go on there, I want to just interrupt because I think that's really important. Based on the medical model, there really wasn't much hope for you. It was more of like a managed decline.

Olli Posti: And there's power in that.

Wade Lightheart: From understanding that you just didn't accept it.

Olli Posti: Yeah.

Wade Lightheart: But at some point you changed and said "Hey, you know what, what do I got to lose? I'm going to try some of these other things." How did you do, what was the emotional or psychological process that led you to that? What was the moment where you just made the switch?

Olli Posti: Yeah, that's a great question. For me it was basically just part of it was just letting go and part of it was like horror basically, or just historical feelings driving me. I think most of the drive came from horrible feelings and a hopeless feelings. But of course it was a lot of fun. That's just fine. I mean, it's just amazing feelings, just finding out even some little piece of kind of hope.

Wade Lightheart: I want to talk about that a little bit because I think for those who haven't heard or don't know, my own story is I remember when my sister was diagnosed with cancer and when it became terminal and you know, the feelings and the emotions and stuff, can you describe for people, because I think there might be some people that are listening that might be going through something challenging. What were some of the thoughts that were coming up for you on the negative side? Because I know we were going to get to the positive side and the good news and stuff, but I really want to capture what that feeling was like and what was it like to be a young man saying I'm going, I'm certainly dying and it's not going to be a quick death or an easy death. It's going to be actually a very painful and uncomfortable decline. What was going on to you?

Olli Posti: I mean initially there are so many things that you take for granted when you're like 20 years old - you don't realize how easy you've had it all the time. You had problems, but those kind of "first world problems" mostly in your life. And then at some point all the things you love to do - you can't really do them anymore. Like playing guitar or playing tennis or whatever it is. And how would I say it? I mean, part of it's the worst possible feelings that you could imagine, but also a part of it is like,kay, I don't have anything to lose anymore.

Olli Posti: In some ways your momentary happiness can actually even go up because there are no expectations anymore of yourself or from anybody else or from the society or all of those things that would weigh me down in a way for all my life without even realizing it. All those kinds of piece by piece dropped away. So in a way it was also complete freedom, but also it was complete feeling of just being scared basically.

Wade Lightheart: That's really, really powerful. I'm an advocate of kind of a spiritual teacher by the name of Dr. David Hawkins. And one of his books was called "The surrender." And the reality is that everybody, people think of surrender as a passive thing, but he said the power of surrender is when you actually surrender to the absolute truth that your life is going to end or that you're going to die or whatever that horrible thing that you're feeling. If you can get to the point where you just sit on it and surrender and surrender and surrender until it loses the thing. This is the part where you become super powerful. And of course this was also a meditation that the samurai used to do. They'd do seven meditations on their own death before they would go into battle because they felt that they could only fight their best once they had accepted the potential outcome of their demise.

Wade Lightheart: And I've noticed for people who have kind of accepted that as there's a key moment and the people that I've studied who have overcome life threatening is somehow they surrender that said like "I got nothing to lose." I've made peace with it, but I'm going to go do this and get as much out of it as possible. And it's very magnetic and powerful to be around it. Those people are very different. They're just wired up differently or they're not under the illusions that so many of us live under day to day. So you made that choice and then you started moving in the quote unquote woo direction.

Olli Posti: Yeah. And in some ways, sometimes that was even more scary because my identity was completely wrapped in a certain kind of worldview. So it was very scary to let go of that. But at some point the fear of actual guidance became bigger than shall we say, ego death of having to change my mind and change my world. And then at some point I would describe the process like this: I have this worldview that I'm kind of hanging onto, and then I had to let go of that and find something else like, okay, if I eat this way then I will be better. But then at some point I realized this is not enough, so I have to get back to the drawing board again. And then at some point I realized that actually this is not this, it's not so scary. It's actually kind of fun. Like being hooked on skydiving or something like that. It's safe for them, then you would think to change your mind basically. So yeah, it's been a fun journey actually after that.

Wade Lightheart: That could be a slogan - "Change your mind. It's safer than you think." We're so locked into these identities or habitual patterns or social constructs or realism or these identity forms that we take on sometimes unconsciously and sometimes consciously that changing our mind, seems to be more of a threat from the old, I'm going to be excommunicated from whatever quote unquote try by field, which was certain death and historical patterns. But it doesn't necessarily apply in today's world.

Olli Posti: Yeah, exactly. I mean today it's the opposite. Your ability to operate in the bonded world, it's largely based on you being able to change your mind fast and also even change your past if needed or adapt to new conditions very, very rapidly. So in retrospect, it has all been a blessing for me because I was definitely one of those people that nowadays I still see on the internet who are like, everything is the way I believe and there is nothing else. Now I just block them immediately because I know that there's nothing that they can learn from me because they don't learn and there's nothing that I can learn from them because I already know how they think.

Wade Lightheart: Yeah. I was listening to podcast with the Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater and one of the wealthiest persons in the world. He wrote a book that I read, he studies neuropsychology and neurophysiology, which I do as well. And he pointed out a really illustrating point that the way the brain works - we make a decision and then we seek evidence to support that bias. And it's very hard to overcome that. But in a life threatening situation forces you to adapt. And then the breakthrough is, yeah, I can't change my mind. I can change my friends, I can change my diet, I can change this. So what were the things that you started to do and what would you know that started to work or that you felt that was getting you results?

Olli Posti: Initially for like 2004-2005 was just really basic things like less white sugar, less white flour, less processed or ultra processed meal products, less of those other processed seed oils, industrial seed oils and less of a certain additives like sodium glutamate, things like that. And also less of some obviously bad things like things that you cannot pronounce in the food labels. And then more of things like spices or just actual vegetable colors, things like that. More of better hydration and also vitamin D, Omega 3 fatty acids. And then by the end of 2015 I bumped into Mike Adams, the Natural News guy. And back then he was talking more about nutrition. So through him I discovered chlorella, spirulina, and also some of those superfoods. And then during that time, for the first time, I felt like this is actually going in a better direction. I felt like well, my brains aren't growing back or something like that. I feel like I'm getting my capabilities back.

Wade Lightheart: So you kind of went from slowing the decline if you would say? And then all of a sudden it was starting see "Hey, I'm gaining back ground and starting to really begin the recovery process"?

Olli Posti: Yeah! And that was the best moment, the best moment ever.

Wade Lightheart: What was that like? You know, coming from such a dark and depressing parallel to kind of doing that and then learning piece by piece, and then hitting that kind of apex of the bottom of the curve and then you starting to see, "Hey, this is starting to work." How motivating was that?

Olli Posti: The most amazing feeling ever. Like you said, it was the most rewarding feeling ever. That was December 2015 so the next year, 2016, I wouldn't do anything else but just study more about nutrition and all this stuff. Even before that I was studying quite heavily. But then I was like yeah, that's all I was doing. All day. And even when I went to sleep, I would still be listening to for example lecture from let's say David Wolfe or inspiring people like that. And then when I woke up in the morning, I still would have lights on my headphones.

Wade Lightheart: Amazing. That's amazing. So subliminal programming or re-programming. There's an interesting thing by Earl Nightingale. He said there was one of the first motivational audio ever produced called "The Strangest Secret." And he said the strangest secret is as people become what they think of most of the time. And if you're studying health all this time, eventually you become healthy. You know, it's like, what I find always interesting with the Western medicine model is that we study disease, we study death, we study all this sort of stuff. But very few of the experts actually study health. And the people who study health are poo-pooed by the people who study disease. It's very ironic not to condemn it, but I think it's fascinating. So now you're getting momentum. You're listening to the audios, you're taking on superfoods, you're kind of on fire! So then what?

Olli Posti: Then at the end of 2016, a year later, I'm spending the holiday season at my parent's place and I'm feeling like, okay, now I feel it in my body - this fight is kind of over. I've overcome this now and I can actually start. I can give myself permission to have other passions. So then quite soon after that I discovered, or in a way, rediscovered all this personality development stuff. For example, Steve Pavlina's blog. I really like a lot and things like that. And also I was studying everything from Eben Pagan and also, for example, Frank Kern and guys like this to be able to influence the world better, these kind of things. Then at some point I realized that, well, I feel like there is a solution to every problem, not just health problems, but they're there.

Wade Lightheart: Yes!

Olli Posti: There is a solution to pretty much everything that is plaguing people nowadays that's just in terms of health, but all the areas that we are in, it's usually play out in one way or another. And that was a very interesting realization. But what happened during 2007 was also that I also rediscovered the sports. I started playing tennis again and I got much better results than ever, ever before the diagnosis. That was pretty fun. Like all the other doctors that I know, they wouldn't believe - how can you win tennis tournament? And so when you've been diagnosed with MS, things like that.

Wade Lightheart: So now you're winning tennis tours. So you've gone from a death sentence with MS and now you're running around winning tennis tournaments.

Olli Posti: Yeah. I mean there was this big national championship. Like A class that is the best, but then there's the B class and some other classes below that. So I had never won A class tournament in my life. So now I went to the kind of national championships of the B class and I felt I won half of my matches, 6-0, 6-0. I was that good at that point. Much, much better than ever before. And I'd like my coach that had been coaching me ever since I was a kid, he was like "What happened?" He couldn't almost believe that. And yeah, it was crazy. I mean, I remember at the end of the summer I played this one match against the guy who was like one of the best in Finland basically.

Olli Posti: And I lost the magic, but it was very, very, even I had never been even close to the top of it, just like all my motoric skills that I had pretty much lost in the MS. They were much better than ever, much better than average. And one thing that also happened was that I never got sick again. So my immunity was also super strong. And also one thing that happened was that when I was younger, my skin would burn pretty easily in the sun. So now I wouldn't burn, I couldn't burn myself no matter what I did, of course, because it's so many more care notes and things like that. So there were so many cool things. And then also when I was only focusing on my health studies, I didn't pay any attention to, for example, my physical appearance.

Olli Posti: So now I also started getting into buying clothes and things like that. For the first time in my life, girls were really intimate. They called me the "the fire kit' because I was always so energetic and, you know, so passionate about everything, things like that. It was a lot amazing fun. And then a little bit later 2008, because during the winter for the first time people started asking me about health because I wanted to talk about these things, but people just wouldn't believe me. So now people started believing me. So I was on the computer all the time answering people questions and things like that. Unless I was having fun with people or something, but I didn't do any sports. So then without training, without doing any sports, I would have to see how many meters I can run in 12 minutes. That's the Cooper test that we take. For example, in schools in Finland, I was always pretty good at that. My result was3250 meters. That was my best result ever. And now without any training,

Olli Posti: I did 200 meters better than that. That was the craziest thing because at that point I was on raw food so my body was super open in a way that I didn't need that kind of conditioning to be able to just run and just keep running. That was a crazy game. Plus I remember that during that same winter before that I would put my jeans on and I would start walking to the school and then I would just start running and then I realized that I'm actually passing all those bikers. So I was like well, this all right. I didn't pay any more attention to that. But then I tried the Cooper test and I was like, okay, there's something here. Like why don't the sports people, why don't the long distance runners know about these things? And I was doing a lot of enzymes also. And living foods like sprouts and things like that and like heavy MS and whatever. Just to get my body super open and take all I can take off from my digestion to make my day just as good and as easy as possible and save all that energy for all those other healing processes in my body.

Wade Lightheart: It's a powerful message. And you knowI was attending Tony Robbins event last fall and I highly recommend everybody go check it out. His "Date with destiny is extraordinary. And he was dealing with people who were are suicidal to relationships that wouldn't work. And he said, look, the problem in your life is not a lack of resources. It's a lack of resourcefulness in today's world. And you know, you've just kind of outlined how in a very compromised state you do start looking for the answers and they're there today. This is the beauty of living in the modern world, digital technology and the internet. And all these things, those answers are there. You have to go out and find them. And you did. And then once you found them, you said there was another self-expression for yourself as a physical being.

Wade Lightheart: But there's another piece that I want to get into next. And that is I think what happens with most people, cause I mean you've got the classic hero's journey. If you were to look at Joseph Campbell's illustration, you've lived that at a very young age, which is quite unusual. But usually what happens at the next stage is people come and say "Hey, wait, now that we've slayed the dragon and we won the prize. Now we got to come back and tell everybody about the stories of what we've learned". So talk to us about your book, your work, new tricks, all this sort of stuff that you're currently doing today as a health and wellness and vitality expert that you are. And helping others who are looking to have a healthier day.

Olli Posti: Yeah. I've said it many times that if I had been, let's say born five years earlier, I wouldn't have had a chance because the internet just came around. But the people that helped me out, guys like for example, Joseph Mercola or Mike Adams, or later this guy called Wade Lightheart, what's this role? Bodybuilder? There were a lot of really cool names. I felt such a debt of gratitude to those people and their bravery. I felt like I totally owe this second chance to live to those people and their bravery. So I will try to do the same. And anytime I would follow these people have their message. I was learning a lot, but I was getting very inspired to do the same because
Olli Posti: What are the kinds of people that I have been looking for my whole life? But I never really found those kinds of people. And then I started trying to find those people and then I started using internet to connect. I just put my message out there. I stopped trying to argue with people and anytime I had something that I wanted to say passionately, I would write a blog post and then later also in other social medias. But one thing that I learned from studying nutrition was to be able to discern the official not so good information from the really passionate underground high quality information. So after that, anytime when I've been in a situation where I have limited time to find really good information on any subject, I have confused that same intuition or same experience to do that.

Olli Posti: So after I wrote my nutricion guide book, the next eight months I studied passionately just about marketing an influence on things like this. And then after about those 8 months, I was ready to put up my blog and that also became a pretty instant success. And yeah, I'm still on the same road, but there have been bumps on the road also. Definitely. So at some point, actually the Finnish media attacked me very, very hard because I was always just like the people who kind of saved my life. I was always very outspoken and I didn't censor myself. Here in Finland, if you're out in the public eye, you have to be very politically correct, otherwise you will be attacked very harshly. So that's what eventually happened to me around 2011 and then after that next 5 or 4 years I was actually living on social support mostly.

Olli Posti: And a part of that time I was also homeless a couple of times and things like that. So it wasn't just just roses and butterflies, but still, even through those 4 or 5 years, throughout those years, I was behind the scenes I was still helping the companies in this field and the influencers in this field to do their job better in a way. And then once I was able to get myself back on track, then of course they have been helping me to get back on. So now that I have been on standing on my own feet a few years or maybe 3 or 4 years or something like that. But let's see. It hasn't been easy, but it's been, but it's been nice.

Wade Lightheart: I think you make a great point to interject. And that is when someone comes up against kind of the social conditioning of whatever, and this is a very big issue that I'm very concerned about in the world today, which is political correctness, which we are losing the sense of following the individual's identity or their journey that they have discovered and listening to him as a point of influence or interest or a possible teaching. And now there's collective pressure from media channels to make everybody fit into some sort of group or identity or whatever. I don't know if people historically understand the consequences of that. And there's a lot of great voices in all areas, in all fields who have had breakthrough discoveries. I've talked with world renowned scientists, scientists who are put down by their peers because they've proven their peers wrong.

Wade Lightheart: And the peers are the ones that whether they're get peer reviewed journals or whatever, so they can't do real science. I've seen health advocates who go to QuackWatch and you'll see all these people who are run by other special interest groups who are not interested, who have other financial interests in you, not going down one road or another. And then I also see people in the holistic health industry who kind of attack the medical community and so it's on both sides of the aisle, I think. And the reality is - it's come to with the internet bringing so many choices. We have one, I can live my life in a little echo chamber with my little tribe and we can reaffirm my biases and condemn everybody else. Or two - I can expose myself to a variety of informations and kind of extract the commonalities out of each one of those and create a more unified theory for myself. And then experiment from there. And I want to commend you for staying true to your mission, which is very, I almost every health advocate I know has been viciously attacked at some point, either online, in person, through media, on TV, whatever it happens to be and sometimes even jailed, sometimes threatened, sometimes gone to court, sued a variety of different things that are to do, to take out the truth. How did you fight through that no matter what, what was that?

Olli Posti: I think for me there has been value in feeling very strongly about something for awhile. And then there has also been value in learning my lesson and accepting more perspectives and not being so passionate about one or something like that. Sometimes I miss these guys like David Wolfe back in 2005-2008, when he was still kind of under the radar. So he was able to just speak his mind and he didn't have to censor himself or anything. When you find some, for example, video or audio of David Wolfe from 2001, he's on fire. 2003- he's on fire. And then the last 10 years he's been just attacked so viciously that nowadays it doesn't even appear that much in things at net.

Olli Posti: I'm listening to two more, let's say, a scientific and more kind of polished people. For example, I think Ben Greenfield is a good example, such a great guy. But I don't get that same emotion, hardcore inspiration from pretty much anybody today. And even from myself, even myself, I said to myself nowadays and I tried to be more correct, but I also tried to be more accepting of everybody's opinions and things like that. But lately I've been feeling maybe I can gat that hardcore passion, kind of get some of that back into my videos or into my talks or into my texts that I publish. And now that we have this Corona epidemic I have a hard copy of that guide

Olli Posti: That I have written without any censorship of myself, just speaking. Like I would speak to my print behind the scenes and it's like, wow, "I can still write like this". And I'm not sure if I can publish this, but I want to find a way to publish things like this because we are all in this field, we are so used to being very mindful about our words. And there's of course benefits of that, but still, I wouldn't be here if there hadn't been guys like, for example, David Wolfe who's not factually correct always, but he's speaking to you like a good friend. It's something that I haven't been thinking about lately. I feel like I always, I still owe it to myself or to some universe to bring that out of myself a bit more I think. But what was your question again?

Wade Lightheart: I was just kind of tapping into commiserating I guess about what you say that now you get to a certain level of success or notoriety and all of a sudden, you know, the people come out with the knives to attack you, then you do have to be correct. In my own journey very often I have to correct what I'm saying or censor what I'm saying or put it through a, what I would call, a filter. So that it fits the current political and legal environments that we live in, in a way those things were designed to protect us, to have freedom and liberty. But now the very things that are supposed to give the guidance and growth of the individual for freedom and Liberty and self-expression and self-discovery and self-actualization are actually the institutions who are now stifling it, which is interesting and this happens periodically throughout time.

Wade Lightheart: You know, we can go back to Socrates and you know, it's a beautiful play and I think everyone should read it written by Plato, which is called "The death of Socrates", where Socrates, who has been charged for corrupting the youth of Athens to his philosophy, he has to either rescind his, what his statements are, or drink the hemlock poison. And the play is beautiful because he gets all of his top disciples to come in and he argues that he has to drink the poison and die, but he asks each one of them to convince him using the various philosophical messages to say "no,you don't need to live" because he says "I want to live. But I see no option other than to stay true to my words". And I thought that's a very powerful expression and something that I think fueled. Conscious movements or individuals who pushed to the extremes that, you know, whether it's Martin Luther King or whether it's a Gandhi or whether it's anyone of these individuals who have emerged throughout history as a rebels as someone to ignite the people when they've lost the sense of what an essence of what it is to be a human. Very, very powerful. And it's something I think we all struggle with on a certain level of how to best express that.

Olli Posti: Yeah. I think also one thing that I've been observing lately is that whenever I'm having a really deep conversation with a brand or just trying to give a good value, invaluable insight to like mentor my friend, for example, I have never once did a scientific study, I have never even used a difficult word. So why the hell do we do it when we talk in public about health? Well, because we kind of have to, but that's not the way we talk. That's not the way we give value to other people. That's not the way we teach. That's not the way we mentor. That's not the way we write that, but so it's kind of like we have been handicapped in a way. Like we kind of express ourselves very freely in this field. And I would really love to being able to bring that back.

Olli Posti: And then when somebody says that, how can you write like that about health? I'm like, watch me. I can write like that about health. And this is not scientific information, but this is anytime I'm able to bring at least some of that into my writing, it gets a million shares or things like that because people love that. They feel like, wow, finally somebody talking like a person to a person and not like some difficult to understand authority to somebody who's not going to understand it anyway.

Wade Lightheart: I was reviewing Jordan Peterson, who is an outspoken university professor in Toronto who stepped up against literally the government determining what he called compelled speech. And they made it all about gender, but it wasn't about gender. That was not his issue. His issue was the government compelling speech. And he stood out and then came to worldwide fame. And he's very insightful and a well-thought person. And of course now he's going through some health challenges of his own right now. And his wife is dying and our prayers are with Dr. Peterson. But he pointed out a great writing and he suggested that everybody today read it, which is a fellow by the name of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who wrote the "Gulag archipelago" in the middle of the communist regime. And one of the excerpts from this,I'll paraphrase something that Jordan Peterson actually illustrated is that he realized that a certain part, and he had a very tragic life of eating, was on the war.

Wade Lightheart: He was wounded. He was in the Gulag. He ended up in the Gulag. It was just this horrific experience, he had diseases, this terrible life, very tragic life. And he wrote this incredible book of overcoming that point. And there was a point in his journey in his life where he realized and recognized that he had been part of that problem of control. He had been part of that problem that had condemned the other people. And he realized that he was in the Gulag partly because of his own choices in his life. And I think so many people now were here quarantined for this virus that is spreading around the world supposedly. And the consequences of that and people are living home and people are social distancing and people there really have got to this component. And what a beautiful time to kind of bring this up.

Wade Lightheart: You've written a book and you've written a blog and you are fully expressing yourself about that. So can you talk to us about that message that you are putting in that book?

Olli Posti: That's so important! This is the book. I hope it will be in English at some point.

Olli Posti: "Supermarkets survival". So it's an English name, but it's a Finnish book because it's such a catchy name. We decided to use that against the advice of many people. But yeah, the main message is that there are so many diets and that you have to eat these things that you maybe wouldn't naturally eat. You have to avoid these things that you wouldn't naturally eat. So like you said, you talked about compelled speech. Well, a diet is kind of like compelled eating and avoiding. And so this is the opposite. This is that,let's see, whatever you like, whatever you are eating at the moment, there are better versions of that. For example, if you're into ice cream, there are organic ice creams and there are even better ones that you can make from better ingredients in your home. So that's the whole message of this book, that instead of trying to eat something you don't like or instead of trying to make yourself avoid something that you feel drawn to, you can eat what you want but even better. So that's the whole idea.

Wade Lightheart: That's a beautiful message.

Olli Posti: I got that actually from David Wolfe. David Wolfe gave that to me. I'm just passing it on.

Wade Lightheart: It's a beautiful thought because "Hey look, I like ice cream". Okay, well why not have, you know maybe a plant based burger or maybe you can do a sugar free ice cream or maybe you can do a nut ice cream or maybe you can make it like - we see for us that have been in the health industry, we see these evolutions, things that you could never imagine, possibly having before. All of a sudden it can totally happen. You can totally have. And here's another interesting part though that I find, and I'd like to know if you've found this too, and that is once you found an optimized quote unquote the taboo food that you're not supposed to have, when you advocate, you follow a diet and you found the Holy grail of the super health of the food that you're not supposed to eat. What I find is once people have mastered that, they tend to go back to a very simple diet because all of a sudden there's no appeal to quote unquote the forbidden fruit.

Olli Posti: Yeah. I feel very strongly that at least in my life, the habits that stick are the ones that I actually enjoy and the ones that somewhat naturally. So let's say that I'm trying to stop watching TV. Well, if it doesn't come naturally, then maybe I haven't thought it through enough. Maybe a better strategy would be to replace that with something better, but as appealing, like for example opening a YouTube instead and putting on the BiOptimizers channel or something like that - that might work. You know, if I'm into those kind of videos, for example. So it's just very simple strategic thinking that we just, as a culture, we just don't do, we just skip that part and we just take the basically the stupidest strategy that you can imagine. And we just go with that.

Olli Posti: Like we don't think strategically at all, but we don't have to make it complicated. It's very easy. Whatever you're trying to accomplish, just come up with a few things. Can it be easier? Can it be more fun? And in some ways, yeah, people try to quit smoking, but I mean, there can be many things that you could try and replace that with something that might treat you. And also people try to quit eating candy and they almost always fail. And once you find for example, let's say that you get hooked onto coconut water and fresh mango and things like that, after a week you're like "why did I ever eat that crap candy?" Because it's not as good as this. My body crave mango much more than candies, but we'd have never think like that because of course the advertisers in TV and at the big media, they don't remind us or nudge us into the middle aisle.

Olli Posti: They just don't want that to be out. So that's kind of the only problem and that's why like you said in the intro about this bestseller book - not one media has touched this. None of the big medias in Finland, like I'm in some kind of another planet because all of their business models are based on food advertising to some extent. And in Finland the big makers know that if you get sort of listed by the big food industry, then you're going to have to look for a smaller office space quite soon because you're not gonna be out.

Wade Lightheart: So what's in the book? And how do you advocate to people what they should do in the supermarket? I think we want to touch on those points. What is the kind of premise and the thoughts and you don't have to reveal everything that's in the book, but you can share what's the highlights or what's the points that you're educating people?

Olli Posti: There's basically three things, like I said - you can upgrade your choices, but also there are certain things that you can and maybe should add in. For example, you should probably add in a broader selection of high quality hydration. That's something that people in general should do. And then also you should probably add in more greens, especially here in Finland, and other plants, colors. You should increase those. You should find ways to make it fun and easy and tasty to increase those if you want to be healthier and make everything else easier down the road. And then whatever section of the supermarket you go into, there's basically a scale from like super ultra processed, super artificial, super heavily advertised to the "not so advertised", but more fresh, more real foods.

Olli Posti: And so once you get a taste of it, it's actually quite easy to discern which is which. Like if there's an advertising saying that this product is made by mums and it's probably not made by moms because it's advertised in the big media and there are crazy things like that. The food advertising is just so horrible. It's wonder that people still fall for that to some extent, but I'm trying to give them the immunity, give them the vaccine against I guess the very ugly virus of food advertising and false information about nutrition and the big problem is that, especially here in Finland, people believe what the big media say, but also even more they believe what the government says and the government says pretty much what the food industry wants them to say in the official recommendations.

Olli Posti: They don't talk about quality at all, except when they talk about the industrial seed oils, they say that's the high quality fat that you should be eating. In many ways it's the opposite. But I think it's pretty easy to make people realize and get them to open their eyes to those kind of things. It's a little bit more difficult because people actually, as crazy as it sounds, they believe in the government very, very heavily. So that's, I think that's the biggest hurdle. But so some of my colleagues, they take the strategy that, okay, because everybody believes that the official recommendations have to be correct because it's kind of like the Bible has to be correct. So the government has to be correct because the government is kind of like the guard. So some of my colleagues take the stance that okay, we cannot really speak against those official recommendations, so we have to fit our model into that.

Olli Posti: So we have to find the commonalities in the official recommendations and maybe just focus on those and if you ever recommended that, you have to eat these industrial healthy foods then okay, we'll go with that. We'll go with that. But that never helped me so I'm not gonna get a life like this, but yeah, that's why nobody in the big media has to say a word about this, but the social media is all of this. So I think that's a good place to be because of that, that means that I don't really have the sense of myself that much because if my position was based on lie, then I would have to keep up those lies once I go on with my career.

Olli Posti: So it's much better this way and it's also much better for my health. But still, just getting back to what I want to talk about in this book - there are so many good health books with so many good recipes and those recipes require a lot of skills and a lot of time. So it's like, okay, if you're having a really nice date, then it's nice to have those skills and take that time. But how could you actually just make the better quality food apart a common part of your life? Most of my recipes are under under one minute. It's not like fast 15 minutes recipes. It's like best 15 second recipes. So that's also very important because that's how I did it.

Olli Posti: I couldn't do it any other way. I don't have half an hour, 3 to 5 times a day to make good quality food. I could never do that. So I just grab something. I want to teach people to snack better, upgrade their snacks and upgrade their fast food. Just an upgrade. Also, especially the things that we gravitate towards when we're not really thinking about health because so many people they get pumped up about health for a week or two and then they can get back to their old habits because the old habits are more sustainable in a way. They don't require so much effort. So I want to make sure that at least most of the advice that I give, it's very effortless and very rewarding in many ways.
Wade Lightheart: Beautifully said. And so now we're coming up on the end of the show. What are you doing today and where can people find you and get your book and find more information or get ahold of your blog, where is all this happening?

Olli Posti: It's interesting because I think for most of my career I have been getting most of my income through social media one way or another. Perhaps affiliate marketing or in some ways my income has been tied to my position in the social media. So that means that there's a conflict of interest, whether I want to admit it or not, there is a conflict of interest to some extent. So nowadays I get my income from product design, I advise companies in product design and they pay me well enough so that I don't have to get any other kind of income, although sometimes I do, I give lectures and I have an eCourse about how to get rid of sugar cravings, for example.

Olli Posti: I also advise just for free many, many brands and companies and things like that. I want to make sure that this whole industry develops in a degree reduction. But yeah, my actual work, most of it, it's definitely just advising those companies in product design, which is kind of my first love. I had been just reading labels more than most people I would say. And it's been quite crazy, how many labels I've read in more than 15 years. So that's kind of my first love. I love this stuff. But then also I'm actually upgrading my book. I'm writing the next explosion of this expanding the content so that there's more information about products like this.

Olli Posti: Updating and expanding the content. So those are the three things that I mainly do right now, but of course there's so so many other fun things also, like for example, today I was advising a friend's company where, for example, if you buy already made meal from the supermarket, there aren't any really good options there yet. So my friend has a company taking over that side. So today, most of the workday I was just advising him. And I think actually most of the work I do nowadays is just combining people.

Olli Posti: Like somebody who kind of created an industry or a sport / hobby or something. So I kind of have that status in these circles in Finland, even though I haven't been the most successful, but I have been doing this longer than pretty much anybody else. So I have the social capital and I think most of the value that I create is through just finding the right people for the right opportunities. And also sometimes just . Arranging something fun somewhere and just going through my list of people. Well, and inviting the right people to meet each other. And sometimes it's these two people doing some nice things together.

Olli Posti: So I always want to be the guy who doesn't have to worry about his income so much that I could just look at this whole industry and make sure that everybody's in the right place and things like that. So nowadays I feel like I'm more than ever before. I mean that kind of position. I have to do a little bit product design, which I also love, but then most of my time I can actually tell you like, okay who should meet who?

Wade Lightheart: Olli Posti, the grand old man of superfood and his book, "Supermarket survival". Hold it up for everybody here. He's got some of our products. That's great. Where can they find your blog though? You have a blog, are you still writing? Are there any way to find you other than just to go hang out at a healthy food?

Olli Posti: I have zero technical skills, so I have a few websites but they look so horrible that I don't even want to share yet.

Wade Lightheart: Maybe social media.

Olli Posti: I mean you can find my name Olli Posti on any social media pretty much. And also in Google. And also if you Google or put in any social media "The supermarket survival" will come in case you know Finnish language.

Wade Lightheart: That's great.

Olli Posti: I have also Olliposti.com website which is in English. That's like one article there. But will be more at some point.

Wade Lightheart: Google now translates everything. So it's much easier to communicate with people. And I think you have an incredible story. I think it's awesome. I think it's fascinating for people who have, you know, it's one thing to advocate health, it's a whole other thing to advocate health after you've overcome a serious debilitating condition and then you know, kind of transcend that into another world that's truly, truly remarkable. And you're living example of what's possible. And I'm hoping that someone might get inspired who might be suffering. I mean the Awesome Health Podcast - we designed to interview the best, the brightest, the most interesting, the most transcended people who are there, who are making a difference in the world and you're making a difference in the world. And I think you're very humble guy. Probably I would say, we'd say in America under-selling yourself. I think it's a great thing. I think you've got a great message and I'm just delighted to have you here on the show and I would encourage anyone if you're going out to one of the Biohacking Summit this fall that he'll be on, or there's another one I think in Amsterdam, I don't know if you're going to go to that one. Are you going to be at the Amsterdam one? If it's open?

Olli Posti: I heard that due to the Corona situation, they might not have it.

Wade Lightheart: Well I know they've moved some but I think they're still having it, but we'll see.

Olli Posti: Yeah, I definitely want to attend all those by some extent. They are really awesome. And your products are amazing. I'm actually out of most of mine so I probably even today will actually put in an order to the Biohacker store in Finland. They carry your products, the kApex and Masszymes and also the others. But most of it kApex and Masszymes, they have changed my life, but now I have been out of them for maybe a month. So I'm really missing them. I will have to put in an order today. They are miles above the rest, so thank you for those products. Thank you for doing that work. And it's very inspiring because my main job is to design products. So I'm always looking for the best ones. I'm always trying them out and then trying to learn something.

Wade Lightheart: Thank you so much. I want to thank you for joining for another day on the Awesome Health Podcast, a fascinating story today. Check out "The supermarket survival" guide and I'm sure we'll be hearing from the grand old man himself. Again, thank you very much for joining us today, Olli. Really appreciate it. Take care and have a great day.