Empower Your Kids - Episode 2793

I get asked all the time, what's more important, aerobics or weightlifting? And if you want me to tell the truth, I'm going to have to lie because I don't know. Guess what? No one knows. Why? Because both are important. But here's the thing. You must lift weights. The more muscle you keep down the road, the better off you will be as you age. and you can do that now by going to VinnieTorteris.com workout, sign up for one of the three workouts I have there are videos, I have PDFs I have everything, you don't have to know anything about going to the gym all you have to do is sign up, everything is self explanatory hey guys, I was a Hollywood trainer for almost 40 years get that knowledge right now, VinnieTorteris.com slash workout. Thanks for listening to Vinny Tortorich on NSNG Lifestyle Audio. From Los Angeles, California, this is the Fitness Confidential Podcast with Vinny Tortorich, founder of NSNG and his co-host, Anna Vachino. I am Vinnie Turridge. Folks, you get attention, say I've been stolen, but don't worry. I'm here to help you get them back. You may be soft and suck at the beginning of this process, but hang in there. Before long, you will be lean and mean, guaranteed. She's a very geeky girl. The kind you don't take home to mother. She will never let your spirits down. Once you get her off the street, our girl. She likes the boys in the band. She says that I'm her all-time favorite. When I make my move to her room, it's the right time. She's never highly pleased. Oh, no. That girl is pretty wild now. Yeah. That girl is pretty wild now. That girl is a super freak, folks. It's the Monday show. So we can only be talking about one girl and one girl only. I'm talking about the biggest super freak we've ever known, the beautiful Miss Anna Vocino. Oh, come on. You guys can do better than that. Come on. Yeah. There we go. Oh, boy. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They love you, Anna. Have you seen that? Oh, God. I don't want to see that. I don't know what that is. But I don't think I want to talk about it. We're going to talk about it. This is bullshit. I'm holding in my hand. OK, I got to tell you, I and I tried to buy some avocado mayo the other day. Good luck. I. All right. You know. I I've gone back to old school because, you know, I'm putting on more muscle now and I want to stay lean. and I'm working out like a super freak, super freaky yowl. And so I'm prioritizing, folks, I'm not cutting out fat. Don't get the wrong idea here. But I'm prioritizing protein. So in order to prioritize protein, I had to cut back on fat a little bit and up my protein. The only way to do that on the cheap and the simple, well, there's two ways to do it. If you want to do it the way that I don't like, you could take some protein powder, but God only knows what you're getting. And, you know, I'm not a big fan of bastardized protein. It's highly processed. But you end up with cans of sardines and tuna fish. It's just what it is, right? And there's a lot of eggs. So I literally make an egg salad, tuna salad, all mixed in one. Yeah. And I decided, oh, you know what? I'm going to buy, because I'm going to tell you the way I make it in just a second. But I said, let me try to go old school with the mayo. Of course, you go in the store and you look at the Hellmann's and all those kinds. You can't eat that stuff. It's just seed oil central, the first ingredient in there, seed oils. Awful. It's just not good. Now, you could go another route. Anna Vucina will give you a recipe. but I'm going to be honest with you. I'm not going to go do the recipe midday. Now, I guess I could make a lot of it and do it back. Do you have an immersion blender? No, I don't. We need to get you an immersion blender because that's the thing. Okay, well, Anna, you know what? Hang on. I'm going to let you convince me in a minute. I'll let you convince me. Great. I've never been good at, you know, I want to move quickly. I got to get back to selling vitamins and answering phone calls and talking to people and everything. And I make this thing. I make this thing. It works. Right. I was like, oh, I want to go old school. I want to put some mayo in here. And I can't find the tomato at the Harris Teeter. I can't find it anywhere. So I'll go over to the Whole Foods. You're not going to find it at the teat. The teat does not have it. One thing leads to another, Anna. I find myself at Whole Foods and I get one with avocado. Before I even opened it Serena goes, what did you buy? I said, honey, I gotta try this, I wanna try. I wish you had texted me, I would've told you exactly what to buy. Well, she said she said, you're not gonna like it I've tried it. I opened it, I took a little scoop out put it in my tongue One swoop Was it primal? No, it wasn't Primal. I don't like the taste of the Primal. It was some other brand. I paid a lot of money for it. I didn't take it back. I didn't do anything. I opened up the trash, and I took my thumb and four fingers, and I released it right over the trash can and dumped it in there, and that was that. I released it. Yeah. Go be free. Yeah. Get out of here. I'm never going to eat this. The only, the only, the only avocado oil mayo that I think is decent tasting is by Chosen Foods. Now, I'm curious if that's the one you got. I actually like that one. I think I would have remembered that brand. It's hard to find. They have it at Costco, and that's the only place I've ever bought. They have the bigger things. Now, I got a little bit excited when I heard that Graza was going to do a mayo. You know, they're the olive oil people. But I also had a thought that I was like, Graza got real famous for doing those squeeze bottle of olive oil. And they also got real famous for dividing them into sizzle and drizzle to getting you in effect to double your purchases because they had one that was for cooking and one that was for salad dressings. Right. And which, as we've exposed on this podcast, is a BS marketing thing because good olive oil you can use for sizzle and for drizzle. So then they blew up so much and they have like a $250 million valuation. Like they're a huge company. Right. And kind of came out of nowhere and really capitalized on the olive oil movement. And I thought to myself, I know how olive oil production works. It's real hard to make an olive oil that sells that much without sourcing a shit ton of different oils. You know, you have to. It's really hard to keep a clean supply chain when you're that big of an olive oil company. Well, you know, we talk about it during our Villa Capelli ads all the time. You know, it's like if someone has selling that much olive oil, you have to start looking at the number of trees on the planet. You know, where is this coming from? Right. There's no way that California can make enough olive oil for a company that says that they only use California olive oil the amount that they've grown to make that much olive oil because California doesn't produce that much. So they have to get it. I mean, if you read the labels, you'll see. That being said, at least Garza or Graza or wherever they're called is part of the clean food movement. And I appreciate that, that they're doing that kind of thing. But I have my eyebrows raised about where they're sourcing everything. But I got excited when I found out they were coming out with the mayo. Because I was like, well, maybe because maybe it'll be. And then this was on my shelf for $12.99. 17 fluid ounces in a giant squeeze bottle plastic. Here, I'll do this like they do on the Internet. The first ingredient, Vinny, they didn't even use olive oil. They're using pomace oil. which if you remember pomace oil is the trash dregs that's at the end of not even it's not even after they press the extra virgin oil out it's after they press the second third fourth oil and then they have to refine it because it's trash and it even says on here a glorious mix of naturally refined olive pomace oil and extra virgin olive oil but let me read you the ingredients vinnie The first ingredient is refined olive pomace oil, water, egg yolks, white wine vinegar, sugar, then extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice concentrate, whatever. So here's what I hear from that. And I haven't tasted this yet. I almost don't want to. It's $13. I just bought it. I was like, good for them. and I bought it. But Anna, it comes in a... Then I got home and read the ingredients. I was like, damn it! I'm shocked you didn't read when you were there. I saw the Thomas oil on the front. Okay? Oh, yeah, that's tiny. It's Lampante. It's Lampante. No, I did see it before I bought it. I was like, that's interesting. I'll buy it. But then I was like... Did you taste it? Not yet. Did I taste it? I don't think your taste buds deserve to... Folks, she's taking one for the team here. Yeah? It tastes sweet. And I don't like a sweet mayo. It's sugary. That's a bummer. So, folks, instead of us just complaining, we're going to help you here. First, I'm going to give you guys what I do with my tuna slash egg salad sandwich every day, sandwich bowl. that I eat every day now just to up my protein. And by the way, I'll tell you how much protein is in that bowl. I'll tell you exactly how I do it. You measured. Yeah, just because the audience, they always ask me to do that. Dude, I don't know how much. I'm going to help you out. So I've been adding a midday because a lot of times I don't eat midday. I've been prioritizing to get this in, you know, Within an hour or two after my workout, when I'm ready to eat something again, before I move on to do other stuff. I've been putting a can of tuna fish packed in water. I'm nonspecific about the brand. A lot of times I use off brands. But when I do want the really good stuff, there's a 365 at Whole Foods. That's pretty good. And also, I like Bumblebee from the regular grocery store. The one at Whole Foods is line caught. I don't know why that matters. The other one is white, blah, blah, blah, apple core, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So those are the two I tend to like. The amount of protein per can is between 27 and 30, depending on the company I use. So let's go with 27. I then take four eggs. I only use two of the egg yolks. No, it's not that I'm afraid of the other two yolks, but it becomes too yolky. I've tried all four yolks. I take two out. My dogs enjoy when I make this because they each get a yolk and they love it. That's cute. So I chop up four eggs in there, two whole eggs and two extra egg whites. So you figure six grams per egg. So that's another, what, 24 grams of protein. So it's around 50, 55. Yeah, let's call it 50 grams of protein, somewhere around there. I don't measure exactly. But it's all animal protein. Yeah. It's all a complete protein. And here's the cool thing. I take one of three things, either yogurt, full fat. Well, as full as you could get, you know, the Faije 5%. Mm-hmm. Faya. It's pronounced Faya. Okay. I'll use sour cream made by the same company. It's delicious. Mm-hmm. Or I will use creme fraiche. Any of the three, they all work about the same. I just put a dollop in there, a scoop of enough. I just want to moisten up what I'm doing there, right? Yeah. It's not a time. Make it a salad. Yeah. And I put black pepper. I used to put regular malt and salt, but I've changed. I use Anna's seasoned salt. I thought I was going to gild the lily by doing that, but stick with me, folks. It's what I'm doing. I started putting Anna's salt in there. The salt dust? The salt dust. Yeah. And then I put Anna's ranch dust on top of that. Ranch dust, yeah. I thought I was going to be gilding the lily with that. I combine dusts always. Anna, it's better than the malt and salt by itself. I mix those things together with my tuna fish and my eggs and my whichever dairy I decide to use. they all taste exactly the same whether I'm using yogurt or creme fraiche or sour cream right oddly enough they all taste about the same you'll go why do you use the different ones it's whichever one is in the front in the fridge and that's the one I grab absolutely I use all kinds of dairy all day long so that's a 50 gram protein hit right there that's great That's amazing. Let me give you. It's delicious. But Anna, if I want to go an extra step, go. Here's the thing. You could make this in advance and it would take care of probably three, four, five days of your. So it sits for that long. You see, I'm worried about the sitting, but go on. No, not. I mean, you keep it in the fridge, but of course you need. Everything is on my Instagram or my sub stack, the one minute mayo. I'll send the link to Leona so she can put it in the show notes. And then you can just print it off and you guys have it. And also send the link to me so that I can have it. Oh, you want it too? Yeah, because I don't want to write it down here. No, no, I'm not going to go through the whole thing. But it's basically you plop the ingredients at the bottom. You pour a bunch of oil over it. You sink that immersion blender in. Boom, you're done. As soon as it makes a little fart noise, boom, you're done. okay it's easy and then and then it's so i put lots of lemon juice in there because i like it to have a lemony flavor which i think is yummy um with salads and stuff but you don't have to put lots of lemon you can just do the right regular acid or you can use a white wine vinegar regular white vinegar or apple cider you can use whatever kind of vinegar you want right but you need acid you need and you need two kinds of fat so that's how you make mayo and by the way leona actually She texted me about a separate kind of mayo. I believe she had the primal avocado. And she said, why is a product that's made with egg yolks? Why does it say zero grams of protein in the nut facts, the nutritional facts? And I said to her look how far down egg yolks are in the ingredients And then you have a tablespoon is the serving size And so you have the margin of error thing happening where it looks like it zero grams of protein in your mayo And you've, in fact, put in several egg yolks, four or five egg yolks. And by the way, egg yolks do not contain much protein at all. Most of the protein is in the white part of the egg. The egg yolk is mostly fat. and most of the nutrients and vitamins and everything else that you need to be completely healthy all day long. And folks, well, Vinny, you pulled two out. Guess what? I usually have between four and six eggs every morning. Yeah. So that's a lot of egg. So let's say I have four eggs in the morning. That's four egg yolks right there plus another two. I'm at six egg yolks with eight total eggs. well my my one minute mayo recipe i do put a some whole egg in there just because why not um because it still works the the thing is with the mayo and this is going to be true of okay so how miracle whip was invented was because the the craft i think it's craft right is craft I'm not sure. They were looking for a way to make mayo more shelf stable and less expensive. So what's the best way to do that? What's the most expensive ingredient? Not the processed seed oils, but the egg. So if they could remove the egg from mayo and figure out a way to make it just like mayo, then they have a product that they can sell and that they make it for pennies because it's all processed stuff that you shouldn't put in your body. And it's grass generally regarded as safe by the FDA. And hence Miracle Whip. So think about this. If you're going to be a mayo company making mayo, and you're going to use a nice oil, that's expensive. And you're going to use eggs, which are crazy expensive. They're going to figure out a way that they could talk about shrinkflation. they're going to figure out a way to make the mayo as firm and viscous and mayo textured as possible right that sort of like viscosity that mayo is right they're going to figure out a way to make that thickness that creaminess with as few eggs as possible right because those eggs are expensive so it's not going to show up they're going to use fewer eggs than you would if you would make it at home. By the way, there's another way to make a tuna slash egg salad. You can, for this, I would probably leave, or when I've done it, I've left all the yolks with the egg because now you need something to cream it up more. You just take olive oil and black pepper and Anna's dust, the ranch. And I've got to be honest, I can't lie to you guys. I've never done it with her salt because I haven't done it like this over the past three or four weeks. I just started using her salt with the ranch dust recently and found that I like it better. Last time I did this, I just put malton salt, Anna's ranch dust, and crushed black pepper in there with the olive oil. And that works like a charm too. And it gives it just a different taste, just a little different. And of course, I use the Villa Capelli. Villa Capelli is the best oil that I've ever come over. As a matter of fact, I came up, you know, my neighbor who is Greek, she's from the Isle of Crete, and she is an olive oil connoisseur. she dropped off a couple of olive oils, one from Greece, one from Italy. Small batch stuff, kind of like Villa Capelli. And they were both 325-milliliter bottles. I got to tell you, they were delicious. I bet. And I asked her, I said, hey, if I wanted to get more of this, what am I looking at price-wise? and both of them were ranging up near $50 for 325 milliliters. Yeah. That's basically one-third of a liter for running up on $47, $48. Now, Villa Capelli, you could get three liters. That's a lot of 325 milliliters put together. I didn't do the math, but three, six, nine. I think at least nine of those, all for about $100. That's it. You get a big 10 of Villa Capelli for the same. I think it might be up to $125. Yeah, it might be, but still, it's pennies compared to, you would not even get one liter of these other oils, these comparable boutique oils. So you see, I'm not going to lie to you guys, folks. There's other oil out there, but go find it, number one. Go vet it and make sure it's 100% pure olive oil. And then get ready to open your pockets really, really wide because that stuff ain't cheap. Villa Capelli is the Toyota of all oils. Number one, it runs well. It never breaks. And it costs way less than a Bugatti Viron, for instance, right? So go get Villa Capelli. That's a very expensive car. And I think they're a couple of dollars just to get one. I don't know from expensive cars. Yeah. Obviously. A Veyron is like not cheap. I don't know what they cost because. What are they like 20, $25,000? Yeah. Or like two or three million for like one car. I don't think you even get all four wheels for like 3 million. I got to be honest. I don't shop for those kinds of cars because I'll never be able to afford them. pushing olive oil on the podcast for a living. At any rate, go get Villa Capelli. We're getting rich! I'm rolling in it. Go get Villa Capelli. Promo code VINNIE, V-I-N-N-I-E, will save you 10%. If you spend more than $100 and some odd it'll tell you there after the discount. I think it's $135 after the discount. You also get free shipping. So there's two ways to save. But make sure you put in promo code Vinny, V-I-N-N-I-E, Villa Capelli. We use it around here. You'll love it where you are. And like I said, a connoisseur came here and gave me something comparable, but it was a gazillion dollars. I can't afford that kind of stuff. I'm too busy buying eggs and tuna fish to be able to afford that. Villa Capelli, go there right now. Well, I didn't expect for us to go on this rant, but I had just bought that mayo and I was like, okay, I got to talk about this. And also I get excited for stuff and then it doesn't work out. I'm trying to support good food companies on my Instagram besides my own. And unfortunately, I will not be making a video about that. Don't at me, Garza. But it is what it is. By the way, speaking of that, Anna, I think I'm selling your stuff. Am I selling your stuff on my site now? That's what Chris said. Can we look and see? How do I do that? What do I do? Do I need to go to Pure Coffee? No, Pure Vitamin Club? Go to Pure Vitamin Club and see. I think, I was like, you know, why can't, you know, people like vitamins. And then we're going to get into snacks for kids. So shop all. People like vitamins. People like coffee. And I was like, you know what? I love Anna's Cheesy Pops. I don't think it's up yet. I'm going to make sure it's up by the time this. By the time the show comes out? Yeah, this comes out because, you know, I was like, you know, I want to add Anna's stuff onto my site. I love it. That's great. Yeah. I'm so excited. People think, oh, he only sells his stuff. You know, my buddy, after I stopped selling the nut butter, my buddy, Ross, was supposed to come back with his, you know, F-bombs. And I was like, Ross, as soon as they come out, I want to put them on my site. And he was like, wait, what? I was like, yeah, I'm not selling a product right now. And I don't think he started selling his yet. But as soon as he does, I want Ross back on my side because I'm not making that. I'm sure he thought that it was a conflict because he didn't know that you're not selling your nut butter right now. Even if I started selling my nut butter again, I would put it side by side and go, hey, you could buy mine or you could buy Ross's or, you know, I could probably get some kind of discount if you buy some of each. I'm not in this thing to become rich I'm in this thing to help everyone else I don't know how many different ways I can say this I am not going to sell another brand of pasta sauce on my website when you go to Eat Happy Kitchen you're only getting my sauce I would sell other spices though of course find a good spice that's the thing I believe in Ross's finding a clean spice that's the biggest complaint I get on the Facebook ads is the price. I'm like, yeah, okay, you get what you pay for. You're getting cornstarch and sugar and fillers and bullshit. Absolutely. Look, I went to Flagstaff before I started making, you know, I said, look, Ross, I've been working on these in my kitchen. Ross had a professional kitchen. I went in there and was like, look, I'm thinking about doing this, that, and the other thing, putting my ultra salt in there and mixing in a little vanilla just to give it a little oomph. That's true. They are different products. Yeah, they're completely different products. And, you know, some people might want his, some people might want mine. So, yeah, I'm never against, if there's a good product out there, I'm not competing with you. I want to help you. I'm trying to get Villa Capelli to join the Shopify Collective so we can put their oil on both of our sites. Oh, you know what? See, I like the way you think. Right? Yeah. I want to have more one-stop Italian food shopping on my site. You know what? We could start calling you Anazon. Yeah. Oh, my God. Anazon. Yep. And you're just Jeff Bezos. And we're back. We had a little glitch. We're talking about kid snacks. Yeah. Today. We're talking about kid snacks. I had to teach a kid's culinary class, Vinny. get out of here yeah all right in new york city in new york city actually i was in long island for that one all right so wait hang on anna back in the day we have a mutual friend named nancy wolfson yes and um i used to go over to nancy's house this is back when i used to train her back and i'm talking 1991 we're going way back right right yeah and she was basically putting like peanut butter and jelly bellies between bread. I'm not making this up. She was eating like a child. Like a kid. I said, I said, Nancy, what the, what the app? And she was like, I learned how to cook on afternoon specials on television. Yeah. They used to tell kids, Hey, you want something really cool? Put some jelly beans with peanut butter and mix it up and put it in the sun. and this was a grown woman still eating it's like you realize you're just going to keep getting heavier right you're not gonna and she's like i know but it tastes so good and i gotta be honest i tasted some of those things it's like she ain't wrong but that was our friend this is all nance this is also nancy who came in for uh which when we used to record the podcast in the garage in north hollywood she walked in eating uh for once the soft serve machine at McDonald's was magically working because Nancy walked in with a giant soft serve comb from the McDonald's and made no bones about it. Just came on in. She did it on purpose to piss you off. Yeah. And I was like, you know, you're not going to get a rise out of him. Well, she used to show up. We would take hikes on Saturday. Like I would take a lot of my celebrities up and I would always include, you know, Nancy on those hikes. Yeah. She would show up eating candy bars. like literally you know how people wipe it when they take the thumb and wipe it off yeah i was looking at a car there would be two or three candy bar wrappers in the car i was like nancy what are you doing and she's like that 100 tracks i didn't want to get low blood sugar while i was hiking it's like yeah god oh you know what i was thinking of not eating candy bars because i can't remember the last time i ate a candy bar but i was thinking when we first started podcasting and I was running the 5Ks. And I remember thinking like I had to carry a bottle of water with me to run a 5K. Yeah. Like I had to carry a bottle. Like the only time now that I'll carry it, like we went to Sedona and hiked. It was very hot that day. So I brought water on that hike. But like that's literally the only time that I'll bring water anywhere unless I'm going for like two hours or more in hot. You know what I mean? And I was like, that's so cute. Like I thought like if I don't have my water, I could die. And that's so I'm just saying that because you've taught me. You've taught me that I'm I'm I'm a survivor and I will get through running three miles without carrying water like it's crazy. I used to do 10 K's in New Orleans in the summertime. Yeah. And there would be like one aid station about halfway through right at about the five K mark. and there would be like little Dixie cups of water and you would run by. You wouldn't slow down. You would run by, grab one, and just kind of throw it at your face. Right. Yeah. And that was it. It never went in your mouth. You just threw it at your face and then you ran another, you know, three miles to get to your 10K. And that was that. Nobody was drinking water around the clock. Nobody. that came that's a thing that just came on out of nowhere now yeah my whole childhood they would say eight eight ounce glasses of water a day right so i don't know what you know again that was made up out of whole cloth but we look you see the things on the internet we were like hitting off of hoses and whatever you would stop at a water fountain water would come out like in an ark and you would sip it and that was it that was it i mean there was there was no walking around with a water bottle no right but that we you know i still look right here boom drink when you're thirsty and right now i'm thirsty i'm thirsty too you know i did um i did a lot of skating today a listener wrote me he said i have an idea for a topic of a show and i know you used to do sunday school with gina grad but I don't know maybe you've addressed it with Chris recently but he was asking about snacks for kids because he buys um the cheese bites to put in the kids lunches which I'm like that's awesome I love it but you know obviously you got to have variety you don't want your kids getting sick of stuff um so we were talking about he asked me about like if we could address snacks for kids and I know we talk about like sports stuff and the time that I was the the snack mom for sports and which by the way, I said I would never do again because every mom came at me with a different requirement for their kid. And I was like, I'm not doing this. If your kid has special requirements, and this is somebody who I have a special dietary requirement and I never come at people and expect them to cater to me. Um, but I know I'm not necessarily talking about sports, but like afterschool snacks, snacks that you pack in the lunches, like, is it okay to give them fruit? And I'm leading the witness a little bit here, but I want you to talk about snacks for kids. And then I would like to also give some ideas from my end about how to get your kids off of all the processed junk and taking some responsibility for what they're putting in their mouths. Okay. First, I'm going to go. Let me just jump on my soapbox for about a minute and a half. Okay. when I played football 7th grade through high school we ate at around noontime school let out at 3 we were on the football field at 315 I hadn eaten since noontime. None of the other guys have, you know, the only nutrition that would go in any guy's mouth on the way to that field was, uh, Skoll, Copenhagen, or Happy Days Mint. Yeah, that's it. That tracks, that tracks. Okay. Um, we would practice, from 3.30 until about 6 o'clock, so that's two and a half hours every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and we would play on Fridays, period. Mm-hmm. We did not eat anything before practice, period. Nothing. I would then go take a shower at 6 o'clock. It's about 6.30 by the time I headed home. Got home right before 7 o'clock, and my mom had dinner, and it was usually a ton of meat and potatoes. I was going to say, you probably ate so much, you're probably starving. Oh, I ate, ate, ate, ate, and then after I ate, downed as much ice cream. You know, I was always trying to keep weight on. Might even eat a few eggs. You know, I might do like a blender of eggs, that kind of thing. after, you know, like an hour after dinner, after you burped a few times and it all settled down, I would go eat more protein. Right. You know, protein shake, milk, eggs, boom, in the blender. Okay. Now you send your little darlings out there. They trip over a soccer ball for 30 minutes with their thumb up their ass. So true. And somehow they had a snack before they started and a juice box. And then there's got to be a mom out there at the end. And now I don't know about where you guys live, but in California, there was something called Suzy Cakes. And these moms would show up in their Range Rovers with Suzy Cakes or Krispy Kreme donuts. I didn't bring those Suzy Cakes to practice. You were on the wrong end of the valley, Anna. You were on the wrong end of the valley. I was over there around Calabasas. Yeah, no, we didn't have no Suzy Cakes. Suzy Cakes is a muffin with, I guess a cupcake. Suzy Cakes is a cupcake. A cupcake. And I'm not kidding, Anna. What, it was about three quarters of an inch of icing on top? At least. I would say more. Maybe an inch of icing. Yeah. And each kid got a Suzy Cake. Because they were tripping over a volleyball, over a soccer ball. They're very special boys and girls. So they got a Susie case. And we can't understand why these kids are morbidly obese with type 2 diabetes. And every other, my kid is on the spectrum, my kid is this, my kid is that. What are we feeding these kids? And that's just one thing. You're telling me that's the only time they have this kind of crap? Because you think they worked out enough? I didn't eat after 1230 and made it until 730. Me and every other football player, I was not special and different. that was it yeah period and if you wonder when we started with the skull Copenhagen or happy days man it was around 8th grade I promptly stopped it when I was like 17 or 18 my dentist told me I was going to ruin my teeth I went cold turkey on that stuff never did it again good yeah right I didn't realize how addicted I was but most of the kids were most of the kids that did it some of them are still doing it. I go home and they're still doing it. They've had cancer and everything else in their mouth. It's horrible. Not most of them, some of them. My older brother who never played sports learned it from me, started taking hits off of my cans and he didn't stop until like his 50th or 50th, like he's 64 now. I think he made it into his 50s and then went cold turkey one day. Right? Same sort of deal. He saw too many people with mouth cancer and the whole deal. I didn't know it. I didn't know when I was a kid. But the bottom line is we had none of that stuff. None of it. And by the way, you want to talk about water? I grew up in the day, back in my day, they wouldn't even give you water at practice. You were a pussy if you took water. It wasn't until I got to college where I remember that you get back to the back of the line after you run through a drill. They have water things there. they had compression things and they would just squirt water in your mouth and they would have to tell all the freshmen because all the freshmen go no no no no i'm good i thought they were testing us to see if we would pussy out and take water the trainers would tell us no we're telling you to drink water and you would see all the upperclassmen hitting it every time it's like oh wait and then you learn oh my god i could have been this much better in high school i could have done this well with more water we learned that when you work that hard in the deep south more water is a good thing. Hydration is a good thing. I wish they had pushed that when I was in high school. And we did have salt tablets. They came in tablets. They were just pure salt. Take a handful of those and gulp water, as much water as you could before you went to the practice field. I think that's the only reason we didn't die. Yeah. You know, you took a bunch of salt tabs, guzzled, you know, 32 ounces of water or so, and you called it a day. You were hoping that that would make it through. And it did. Anyway, I didn't mean to go off on a tangent. Go on. That was your soapbox. But now let's talk practical. We're talking about snacks, lunch. I mean, listen, the fact of the matter is you usually do give your kids a snack when they get home from school, whether or not they have sports practice. So let's be practical and give people some ideas, some solutions. Hardball eggs, salami, baby carrots, celery, peanut butter and celery. I don't know. Peanut butter and celery is a great idea. Peanut butter and anything is a great idea. I would try to keep it off of bread. Check the label on your peanut butter, guys. Yeah, it's got to be the hippie kind. Make sure it's just peanuts and salt. That's it. Peanuts and salt. You could get crunchy. You could get smooth. They could be dry roasted peanuts if you want. They do them that way, too. And those, you don't have to mix it up as much. the oil kind of for some reason stays in it more but there are ways that you can and you'll go peanut butter that's like 250 calories per you know serving yeah it might be less than it might be 200 i'm just making it up i have no idea but it's it's protein and fat and there's some carbohydrates in there but if you want to give your little darling something don't give them a suzy cake give them peanut butter you can you can put it on a carrot i know that sounds odd but it tastes pretty good. You could put it on celery. I don't know why any parent would give kids celery because they hate it usually. I still hate it. Oh my God, when I was a kid, you would take celery and wash it and then cut it into the sticks and then you put peanut butter in it or cream cheese in it. It's delicious. I'm just not a big celery fan. It's just me. I love celery. I think celery is really good. And lots of fiber, obviously. You mentioned eggs, egg salad, deviled eggs, that kind of thing. Some kids will go for that. Some kids don't like the texture. They're too young to enjoy that texture. If you could get them into guacamole or avocado, that's good. You're not going to get a young kid into olives, but you can try. Maybe you have an Italian or a Greek kid. You can try. You could get them into the nice salami, the nice prosciutto. Listen, I had this kid, Maddie Greenberg. She's all grown up now. She's Jimmy Kimmel's assistant now. Maddie Greenberg would be in my kitchen eating all my blue cheese olives, eating my prosciutto and the melon, eating the salami. She had that. And you know what she would do? The tinned sardines. My business partners, Matt and Todd, their daughter, Audrey, who's now at her first year at college, she grew up, she would have the tinned sardines. She loved the tinned sardines. Loved them. See, Anna, that's a learned thing. I learned the sardines when I was young, too, from my grandfather and my great-grandfather. But a lot of kids don't get it. They don't like that when they're young. I'm trying to help people. Look, folks, you could try the sardines. You could try the olives. You can try this kind of thing. Some kids don't like it as kids. But you know what you might be able to do? You could take peanut butter, put it in a bowl, put a couple of raspberries in there, mix it up. It almost tastes like peanut butter and jelly. Yeah, it's delicious. You can put that on celery or something like that. Right. There are ways to do these things. Bugs on a log is when you do the peanut butter and then you put the little berries on the top. It's usually raisins, but you don't have to do raisins. Look, I know it sounds crazy, but you can actually take that, put a little peanut butter and put a little chocolate nibs or something, you know, some dark chocolate nibs or whatever, 100%. You know, meaning real cacao, not – Yeah. It could be sugary. Not sugary milk chocolate. Yeah, you don't want the fake stuff like, what do you call it, like the Toll House deal. That's crap. You know, they're putting all the stuff. Barely any chocolate. It's all manufactured. Not the emulsifiers, yeah. But you could find good chocolate out there where you could put a little bit and let your kid have that. It tastes like a Reese's or something. There are ways to work around these things. And you go, you keep mentioning peanut butter. this is so much better than the alternative fruit roll-ups and and and and juice boxes and all this crap at least you're giving a fat and apple and peanut butter or is an apple too sweet an apple and peanut butter is fabulous a pear and peanut butter um get them into peaches when i was a kid man i was a kid we had we had mackinaw peaches at some point we had um we had the nectarines come around for a week or two every year. You had the Bing cherries that would come around. I learned to love white onions because of Vidalia onion season. I know this makes me sound like the biggest southerner in the world. Vidalia onion season is a hallowed time of year. It really is. Nobody come for our Vidalias because we hold them very dear to our hearts. There was pear season. There was apple in the fall. You only got apples in the fall. Folks, You know, with all this refrigeration and getting stuff from Chile and everywhere else, we don't have seasons anymore. You know, my buddy Jim, my best friend growing up, Jim Noel, I was talking to him on the phone the other day because someone else died. So we always get to talk when someone dies. Oh, it was one of our friend's moms. She was 90. She lived a good life. Rest in peace, Miss Barbara. I was talking to Jim and he said yeah I just got back from Romeville which is very near where we grew up now Jim lives over in Covington on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain I said Jim what were you doing in Romeville he goes it's the only place where you could get true what do you call that Creole tomatoes like the store will tell you these are Creole tomatoes but they're not right there are like two places in louisiana that we still know of you get good creole tomatoes right and you got to go to romeville he traveled about a hundred miles i don't blame i do it i would do it i don't think people understand how things taste differently than when you buy stuff that you think is supposed to be something but it's not did that make sense yes i want to go back to the kids snacks and i want to say because people will want to know about chips and crackers and whatnot. And what I will say is if you can get them, if you can cut the cucumber on the diagonal, so it's like almost like it's got a little scoop, you know what I mean? It's like a bigger, you can scoop up the guacamole, you can scoop up the cheesy dip. You can make a French onion dip. That's delicious, fresh. You can make a ranch dip, obviously, with the ranch dust. There's all kinds of things you can do. Plus you could make the ranch dust, the ranch dip, and you could also just have that cover stuff that you want them to eat. You know what I mean? I'm going to tell the story of teaching this cooking class, and then we can wrap it up. We'll save. No, wait, wait. Anna, this portion of the show is brought to you by jasper.co. Jasper.co. Folks, we love Jasper around here. Anna has one. She can't get enough of it. I have two Jaspers. I'm getting a third. That's how good these things are. We're doing construction upstairs. You can't even tell. You can't smell it. You can't. There's no dust. There's no nothing. The Jasper is just an, it's not an air purifier. It's an air scrubber. Go right now. Save $300 by putting my name in Jasper, J-A-S-P-R. That's the way they spell it. There's no E. J-A-S-P-R, Jasper.co slash Vinny. Go right now and get your Jasper. And Bob's your uncle. Anna, before we. I got to say I made chicken and onions when we got back because I just didn't have the energy to do anything. And that was what was in the fridge. And I fried up chicken and onions. And that Jasper kicked in, cleaned that like, you know, because you're doing it in the cast iron. So it gets real smoky. Cleaned it right up. I love it. By the way, Anna, I want to just say this. For kids, watermelon. I know this is going to sound crazy because people are going to, Vinny, a glycemic index in a watermelon is like 80 or something, right? Okay, great. I think people get real carb phobic when they get new to NSNG and they get real scared. Right. And then they wipe that fear onto the kids. You know what I'm saying? Right. And I don't want that to happen. I want people to feel confident and reasonable. So explain about the watermelon. Okay. Okay, watermelon on its face has very high sugar content. The glycemic index is high. I'm guessing it's around 80. I haven't looked it up in a long time, but it's up there. It's not 100. And we tell people you want to keep your glycemic index fruits down below 50 if you can. Berries and cherries and all this kind of stuff is very low. Hear me out. Hold on, though, Vinny. Didn't they figure out with the glycemic index they were using different amounts for each type of thing. So it's not the most reliable. Cause like, I know you're about to explain the fiber content and the water held within, like you'd have to eat so much watermelon, right? You would have to eat like a whole watermelon because like 90, nobody does that. I want to think, I want to say like 90% of a watermelon is water. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so like 90% is water. So if you bring that out to the soccer pitch, they call it a pitch. I guess they call it a pitch. Not in America, but soccer field. Soccer field. You go out to the soccer field with you. You're bringing a watermelon out there. All the kids are going to enjoy it. It's got a nice sweet taste to it. And they would have to eat the whole watermelon. You know, give them a couple of slices of that so much better than a processed muffin or cupcake or, you know, any of the other crap you're going to bring out there. Just bring or honeydew melon or, you know, cantaloupe, any of the melons, just bring it out there. Let these kids enjoy that. Yeah. Because most of those are just mostly water and whenever it's not water, what about the little pixies or the cuties, the little Ojai oranges, the little mandarins. I don't know where they are on a glycemic scale. I can look it up really fast while you're talking about something else. Again, the glycemic scale, there's been all sorts of stuff coming out to disprove it. So you would have to know exactly how much they were eating to know where it landed on the glycemic scale. Oh the Pixie is under 50 making suitable food choice for managing blood sugar levels So I guess you can you know if you want look again you giving a kid a pixie there going to be some vitamin C in there, a little fiber in there, everything else very healthy for you. Because it's not like you're squeezing it and drinking the orange juice. Right, right. Even though I tell people when they're metabolically broken, stay away from citrusy fruits and everything else because them trying to get their blood sugar really low. Your kid is not broken yet. You're trying to break them, but they're not broken yet. So before they break, you know, give them good things. You know, pixies are fine. Mandarins, all that kind of thing. They all fall in the pixie category, I guess. Kumquats. Does any people eat kumquats anymore? I don't think so. Is that a thing? You can probably still buy them, right? I lived in a place that had a kumquat tree and it was delicious. Me too. We had that. We also had a Japanese plum tree. It was also good. I love the stone fruits. Yeah. Okay, so let me just talk about real quick this cooking class because I'm asked all the time, will you please write a cookbook just for kid recipes? And I will not, and here's why. Because there are different tactics you can use with kids to get them involved and excited about the foods that you're making. Number one, Eat Happy, my first cookbook, is a kid-friendly cookbook. All the recipes in there are family-friendly. Nothing in there is too crazy. If you wanted to start with the quesadilla casserole, you can modify certain things. Kids don't like vegetables, right? That's kind of like the stereotype. And that is not exactly true. And here's why I say that. If things are seasoned well, kids do have very strong taste buds. So they can, their bitter profile can be off-putting. So if you're making some sort of bitter greens, which by the way, if you're in Italy, all the kids are fed bitter greens from the time that they're young and they're used to eating bitter greens with all their meals, right? So I think it's about making sure you season stuff, which is why the bacon broccoli recipe in the First Eat Happy is so popular. You're putting bacon and pine nuts and lemon juice and things that cut that bitterness to get the kids to eat the broccoli. It's not fun to eat broccoli that's plain and steamed and has no flavor. It's gross. Nobody enjoys that. Except for me. I like it with olive oil and salt. I'm talking about plain steamed broccoli with nothing on it. You cannot expect kids to want to eat that. They're not. No. Olive oil and salt on broccoli is delicious. I do that all the time. But so here are my tactics, and this works. give your kid the cookbook, whether it's mine or you have a collection of recipes and you say here and you give them a pack of post-its and you say here, I want you to flip through this book and I want you to tag anything that you think looks good to you that you'd like to make. What this does is it gives them a sense of ownership of I chose that. We very often don't empower kids anymore because we make all their decisions for them. You're going to go, you got to go to school and then you're going to go to this practice. Then you have to do this extracurricular activity. Then you're eating this for dinner. And then you're eating that. And then you can watch 30 minutes of this show and they never get to choose something themselves. And this is a really, really easy way of getting them to feel empowered and to make choices for themselves. And that's actually really important for them to learn how to do that and also feel empowered that they can make choices. So that's number one. Number two, I went to teach this class. These people that I know have built this really cool facility called the Culinary Clubhouse. I think it's a great idea. It's exhausting. Anytime you work with kids, it's exhausting. Anytime I work with kids, I'm reminded how much teachers are underpaid in this country. teachers are doing literally the lord's work of taking your children off your hands for you and and they are not paid accordingly right um but teachers are just wonderful humans uh especially the good ones and they should be cherished so i went to teach this class and i decided here's what i'm going to do i'm going to do chicken parm with zucchini noodles and we're going to do it the we advertise it as gluten-free but we did it the low-carb way that's in eat happy Italian, right? I say gluten-free because it's a little more palatable because I don't want to go through the work of explaining what low carb is to a seven-year-old because they don't give a shit and nor should they. But so the kids that have come to these classes, they come to a lot of these, they like to cook. And the sweetest thing that I found was that almost all of they taste it and they love it, but they save it because they want to take it home and share it with their parents and their siblings to say, look what I made and I have the recipe now. Can we make this for the family? They're all so sweet. They want the families to taste it, homemade food, right? And I just, that really moves me. And it shows to me how much kids want to be cooking in the kitchen. They don't, sure, McDonald's is a fun thing to do every now and then for like a surprise and a treat, but like they actually want to be making delicious food at home. They don't want to go through the drive-thru every time. It's not good. So anyway, so we teach this class and you know, Vinny, I had the kids spiralize the zucchini, you know, so there's, they're spiralizing the zucchini noodles. So they learn how to do that. And then I teach them about sweating the zucchini. So we put, I have them put the salt on the zucchini and say, okay, we're going to set these aside while we prep the chicken. We set the zucchini aside. We prep the chicken, the kid, You know, they learn how to season the chicken. They learn how to dredge it in the almond flour. And I brought some Eat Happy Kitchen sauce. We did that. They grated their own mozzarella and they grated their own parm. So that was all fresh on there. And then they have their names next to each thing. Listen, it's kind of – they all have – oh, by the way, they all had tiny little gloves. What? They had the tiniest little – it was the cutest thing I've ever seen. They had tiny gloves. And then for their graders, they put on these, you know, like fencing kind of gloves. You know what I'm saying? Where it's like protecting their hands. And all their graders that they had at this place were shaped like swords. It was the cutest thing. So they were like little – when you have stuff like that that gets kids excited to cook, you know, it got me excited. I was like, oh, my God, they're sword-shaped. That's so cute. And, you know, they're like doing – you know, they can stab each other with it, and it's great. so they're all really excited to do all these steps and um also the big draw was the fact that they had the voice of mrs potato head there so at the end i signed books and took pictures and signed all their toys which was their idea by the way but so anyway we get to the zucchini portion while the chicken's in the oven and one kid i said look at how much water came off of these zucchinis i'm like pouring it out of the bowl so much came off the zucchini and one kid goes can i taste it and i was like the zucchini noodle i was like we need to cook it first and he goes no the water and i was like you want to taste zucchini water and he was like yeah really and i was like okay so i i looked at like the the the chef who's there she's like sure why not i was like okay So we pour it. I said, it's going to taste like seawater mixed with vegetable. And then, of course, when one kid says, I want to drink the zucchini water, all the other kids also want to drink the zucchini water. And so and I kept telling him, you're not going to like this. This is not going to be good. And I learned in that moment to shut up about my expectations about what they would and wouldn't like, because it was funny to see them all. Some of them went, that's too salty. And then other people were like, that's good. And I thought of you, Vinny, because I was like, oh, Vinny would like the zucchini water because he likes salty stuff and he likes drinking salty water. I wouldn't like it because it's not my thing. And it made me realize this is a diverse group of kids from all different racial backgrounds, socioeconomic backgrounds. There were even three young men in their early 20s who were all special needs who had joined the class. So I had this group over here was there were some four year olds, but mostly seven to 12 year olds. And then these three young men, the special needs men. And so it was a diverse group. Every single one of them with gusto drank zucchini water because they wanted to taste it. Yes, they wanted to have the experience. And I was like, you can't just assume kids are just going to be noodle nugget kids for the rest of their lives. They want to have these new experiences. you know right uh so i just want to tell that story because in case anybody out there was is getting crestfallen because their kid is just not trying new things try different things to get them to claim ownership of it and don't ever give up don't ever give up no look i mean i i grew up around chefs and you know my best friend um from high school became a pretty incredible chef uh Big Daddy Callahan, Phil Callahan. Oh, as a matter of fact, my cousin, Sebastian Ambrosia, that was his real name. That is quite a name. Yes. Everyone called him Buster. So if you guys go look up Buster Ambrosia or Sebastian Buster Ambrosia, he was one of the great New Orleans chefs. He opened up Mr. B's. He was, you know, the Brennan's family restaurant. He worked for the Brennan's family from the time he became a chef as a teenager and became one of those great New Orleans Brennan chefs. Right. And if if you don't know who the Brennan's are in New Orleans and chefs, you know, all their different restaurants, you know, Commander's Palace, you know, Mr. B's. Oh, yeah. All of the great New Orleans restaurants. Right. He he was a chef for that family. He just passed away like a week or two ago, like on April 10th or 12th or something. Someone called me and said, hey, Buster died. And I was like, oh, my God. As a matter of fact, he had a long-running radio show on WWL Radio. WWL Radio is one of the strongest radio stations in the United States, if not the strongest. That's where truckers would listen to all through the South because back when you listened to, you know, AM radio, And Buster was one of the main characters on that station for probably 30, 40 years and kind of gave me the idea to do talking fitness over at a competing station because I couldn't get on WWL, even though I had been on his show several times. But yeah, it's great that you were teaching these kids. You never know which one is going to become a chef. you know if they're over there drinking zucchini water that's a good yeah listen whatever like it told it told me a lot about their palates and i was like oh i get it and i realized i needed to shut up because why am i squelching this creativity and then just because i'm like that's gross you don't need to drink that you know what i mean i'm like oh shut up lady you don't know what you're talking about let them drink the zucchini water like what's the worst that can happen they say ew it's salty okay well now you know i'm here to tell you you do know what you're talking about when it comes to making gravy, and by gravy I mean sauce, folks, go to Eat Happy Kitchen right now and get yourself, just do yourself a favor, get a pink crema. And while you're there, get yourself an adobeata. And while you're there, get yourself a puttanesca. And while you're there, get yourself, what's the other one you make, Anna? Marinara. How could I forget marinara? The OG. Yeah, listen, my two favorites are the adobeata and the pink crema. So if you want to be like me, get a four pack of that and just rock and roll. Listen, while you're there, don't mess around. Get the whole set of spices. I call them the powders because when my wife goes away, I'll live on the powders. I just talked earlier in this show. I talked about using the dill powder and the salt to make my protein mix during the day. Go check out everything at Eat Happy Kitchen right now. Bob's your uncle. By the way, the dill is the ranch dust, guys. We rebranded because nobody knew what dill was except for me and Vinny and all of us in the old school. Yeah. But it's the ranch dust. But you see, that's the thing. People don't grow. I'm getting ready to start. You know, we're going to have probably one more frost here. And then I'm going to start my in the back here. I'm going to have all my herbs growing again. Yeah. I got to be careful because the snakes go around over there and everything. But I grow my herbs over here. I get it all. The dill. I get the rosemary. We're going to get new thyme and new oregano going because those did not last. As a matter of fact, I don't eat oregano. I know I'm a broken Italian. I'm a broken Italian. I don't like oregano. Even though I think Anna has a little oregano in her salt. In chives. You have oregano in your salt, right? In your salt dust? No. Nope. It's only in taco. It's in taco and a little bit of koutineska, but you can't. I don't even taste it because I can't have a strong oregano because I got sick. I got salmonella once when I made oregano chicken and then, you know, it ruined me. I can't have strong oregano, but I... Also, oregano chicken sounds very 80s. Oh, it was. That's when I was doing it. So, do everything Anna's doing over there. You know what to do with me. And real quick, one more effort, please, don't forget to pre-order Eat Happy Cocktail Hour. Oh, yeah. And Vinny, you know what I found out today from my publisher? Go on. If you'll pre-order it from Barnes & Noble or Indie Bookshop or Books A Million, Target or Walmart or anything that's not Amazon, it will really help the case for the bestseller list. I don't know. Go on. Do that. I don't know. Go do it. Just throw it out there. Let's get Anna on the bestseller list. How about that? What would happen? What would happen? How bad could it be? How bad could it be? How hard could it be? It actually is kind of hard. but I think that we can do it. And that's why I mention it. And if we do that, it just brings more attention to this work. Yeah. Go anywhere but Amazon to buy, to pre-order that book right now. Get out on that bestseller list. You know what to do with me. Go buy vitamins, purevitaminclub.com, purecoffeeclub.com. Before you go to Amazon, go to vinitoris.com. Puts a little coal on the fire, gets my train down the track. We were talking about squeeze boxes earlier in the show. And, of course, this song came up. So on behalf of Anna Vocino, put life into living. What is it? And do it with the who. Squeeze box. Mom's got a squeeze box she wears on her chest. But when Daddy comes home, he never gets no rest. Cause she's playing all night And the music's alright Mama's got a squeeze box Daddy never sleeps at night Well the kids don't eat And the dog can't sleep There's no escape from the music Hey listen everyone, I know you said at the beginning of the show I need to go to VinnieTorterich.com slash workout to get those videos, but you thought you would do it later. Well, now is later. So go right now to VinnieTorterich.com slash workout. Thank you for listening to Fitness Confidential. Get more information at VinnieTorterich.com. Remember to rate and review us on iTunes and follow Vinnie and Anna on Instagram and Twitter.