On this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I’m joined by award-winning journalist and food nerd David Page, the guy who created Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. We get into the wild evolution of American cuisine, the social role of food, and how to balance eating what you love with not tanking your health. David also shares his personal story with diabetes and weight loss, plus some practical cooking tips you can actually use. It’s part history lesson, part food therapy, and a whole lot of fun. Don’t forget to check out the sponsors and subscribe to my free daily newsletter for nerdy nuggets on nutrition, training, and metabolism—plus a free gift just for signing up. Sponsors: Beyond Power Voltra 1: https://www.beyond-power.com/michael13 PNOE - tell them Dr Mike T sent ya: https://pnoe.com Killswitch for sleep: https://www.switchsupplements.com/DRMIKE use code DRMIKE to save $$ Available now: Grab a copy of the Triphasic Training II book I co-wrote with Cal Deitz here.
On this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I’m joined by award-winning journalist and food nerd David Page, the guy who created Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. We get into the wild evolution of American cuisine, the social role of food, and how to balance eating what you love with not tanking your health.
David also shares his personal story with diabetes and weight loss, plus some practical cooking tips you can actually use. It’s part history lesson, part food therapy, and a whole lot of fun. Don’t forget to check out the sponsors and subscribe to my free daily newsletter for nerdy nuggets on nutrition, training, and metabolism—plus a free gift just for signing up.
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson. On this podcast, we talk about all things to increase performance, add muscle, improve body composition, do all of it without destroying your health in a flexible framework. Today on the podcast, we've got David Page. So David Page is award-winning journalist and.
Just general person who's super interested in all things related to cooking and food. You've probably heard of him through the ground. Berry King Network Show, diners Drive in Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives which he was the executive producer for the first 11 seasons. And in this podcast we talk about.
His journey and the thing I was really interested in talking with him about is the crossover between the [00:01:00] social importance of food and going out versus what is good nutrition. So I think is an area that doesn't get talked about enough, like I think in the fitness field. We probably overemphasize that, or at least we seem to, that you need to be a hundred percent, you have to hit your, all your macros and all this stuff, and there's a time and a place for that.
I'd argue 90% is probably much more realistic. However, people have a real life. People wanna do things that are social. So how do we combine that and how do we do both things? And so we talked about that. Got lots of great information about his experience and he even shared with us his own personal journey about some of the big changes he's made to his nutrition and related to diabetes and other things.
So, I think you'll enjoy this conversation with the David Page. And check out our sponsors. If you're looking for electrolytes, check out our friends over [00:02:00] at Element below Teton. Ketones will be coming back soon. I'm just waiting on a big announcement from them. Once it's public, I will let all of and then if you want more information from myself please hop on to the free newsletter, which you can hop on right below. We'll put the link and everything. You can get daily updates from me on everything that we talk about here. On the show plus a free gift, and most of my content, probably like 90% now goes out primarily through the free newsletter.
So make sure to check that out. And then without further ado, here's my conversation with David Page.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Welcome to the podcast, David. How are you? I'm terrific. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Thank you so much for being here.
I really appreciate it. And I thought one of the topics with your background, which we'll dig into is. The cultural and social significance of food [00:03:00] versus, well, I just want to have a healthy lifestyle and it seems like everybody is on one extreme or the other now of you just need to eat soggy broccoli and shoe leather chicken and lose weight and air quotes be healthy or, well, it's social events, so what do I do then?
And it seems like their whole life. Monday night by themselves at home is a social event. Now,
David Page: well look the two sides of that equation are not exclusive. Don't exclude the other. There's so much of the. The foods that take us back to cultural or ethnic origins started out as healthy as hell.
And I think if we go back to how those foods were originally served and prepared, what, whatever culture they're in way back when nobody was using processed ingredients. So there's no reason that. Tasty food with a cultural heritage [00:04:00] can't be good for you. We all know that the Mediterranean diet is arguably about as healthy as you can get.
And frankly the cultural aspects of food the interpersonal aspects of food, seemed to me to be one of the great binders, one of the things that brings us all together. So, that's a great opportunity to reinforce health.
Dr Mike T Nelson: What would you consider some examples from the past that were healthy and what would you consider maybe a more bastardized version now?
David Page: Let's go to Chinese food. Which was and when I say Chinese food China's a huge country. And as with any cuisine, the cuisines of China are regional. So you can't compare Mongolian cuisine with Cantonese cuisine, for example. So let's deal with Cantonese Chuan and Huan, which are the three regional cuisines that have most showed up in America.
[00:05:00] It was Cantonese that came here first the food as made in China. And by the way you can, go to Flushing Queens to, to that big food hall there and you can get that food as it's still made in China. These were dishes mostly reliant on vegetables. With limited amounts of protein frying was done quickly.
There was not a whole lot of deep frying, so by definition that was healthy food. Now, fast forward to what Chinese American food has become in our culture and remember Chinese food. First got here with the gold rush of the mid 18 hundreds in California when a number of Cantonese men came over to, to search for gold, and a number of other Cantonese men came with them to supply them with goods and food.
They started cooking within their own community and that. Began to become of interest to non-Chinese Americans. At which [00:06:00] point what always happens to another culture's cuisine happened here, which is that it was modified to suit American tastes. Were not real big on. Toned down often in terms of spice and its evolution continued along the line of American taste, which was increasingly sugar and fat and salt.
And you end up with a version, for example, of general Cho's chicken.
Which, and that's not Cantonese that was actually invented in Taiwan. But there's a great documentary and book in search of General Cho, which compares. The original, which was not sticky, sweet, thick, breaded chicken.
It was chicken on the bone. It was more tangy. It was more spicy. Compares that with what it's become here, which is this. Wonderfully delicious gut bomb that should kill you in your tracks. Take a look at take a look at Italian food. The folks who first came here from Italy to the East Coast at least, were [00:07:00] coming from Southern Italy and they were tremendously poor.
So, pizza, where it was invented was little more than a basic dough. With perhaps some tomato. And if you were having a really good week, you could have a piece of lard on top or an anchovy. These immigrants came here and they discovered that being poor in America was very different than being poor in southern Italy in the 18 hundreds, that even poor people here could afford.
And all of a sudden, a relatively healthy Spartan cuisine developed aans, everything got bigger and there was more meat in everything. Sunday sauce now, which is a wonderful thing. I live in New Jersey. It's this massive, highly caloric concoction pasta in among the poor in southern Italy was a luxury.
Perhaps you could have it on Sunday in America. It was available and it was [00:08:00] affordable and now you got stuffed shell. Pizza, as we all know in America, is topped with all sorts of everything. We've got a more is better. View of food, unfortunately. And yeah, those are two examples. I could continue through pretty much any culture or society's food, a as it's been modified and interpreted here.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Why do you think all the US sort of modifications tend to go one way? You mentioned more use of salt and sugar, and I also think of. Maybe this is more recent, but just portion sizes. Like I remember the first time I went to Europe in general, I was like, oh wow, these portions are crazy different.
It wasn't that I was starving at the end of a meal. It was, you're so used to these massive, oversized portions in the us.
David Page: Look I may be speaking somewhat beyond my intellectual competence here, but based on. The years of research, not academic study, but, [00:09:00] I've been a food journalist for a very long time.
I would actually look back to the post World War II era.
It was a time of immense optimism and happiness for white Americans. It was a terrible time for black Americans who were not even included in the GI Bill. But after World War ii, the country. Again, the majority of the country was euphoric.
We had just first of all, we'd come out of the depression with the help of the war, and we had just proven ourselves to be the best, the greatest, the most wonderful. And every, everything was open to us and we were building cars again, which will add highways under Eisenhower. We built the interstate system, which gave us access to suburbs, and we began moving.
Away from city centers and fast food establishments grew up along with the the growth of the highways and everything was about bigger, better, more. And I think [00:10:00] that's probably where the seed of bigger is better was first planted. Look. Over years. Some people wanna see a conspiracy in it, others don't.
But the fact of the matter is, the food industry, especially the fast food industry, figured out that the more salt and sugar they gave us, the happier we were gonna be, which came first. The chicken or the egg, where the brain receptors poised for it. Did we develop over the years to, to respond to it.
But it's undeniable now that we crave. Sugar, salt and fat.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Especially if you can find some way to combine all of those at once. Well,
David Page: that's yeah. Welcome to Fast Food World. Welcome welcome to Popeye's. Welcome to McDonald's. Welcome to any of those. And by the way, it's not just fast food. It.
Look at portion size and nutrition information for a place like the Cheesecake Factory.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh, yeah.
David Page: It's immense amounts of food. And look, one of the dirty [00:11:00] little secrets of restaurant chefs, why is food so much better in a restaurant than it is at home, is because of the massive amounts of salt and butter.
That restaurant chef used. I don't know where this happened, but I remember a circumstance where maybe we were shooting diners, driving center. I don't know, but I specifically remember seeing a chef make an egg white omelet by starting with a pool of butter. Yeah, technically speaking, there were no yolks there.
But I, and the fact of the matter is I don't trust any restaurant when I go out and I ask them to, no, no butter on this. I just assume that ain't gonna happen. Just as I assume that in most New York coffee shops, the orange tariff that. Supposedly holds the caffeine free coffee, the decaf coffee.
I just assume they poured regular coffee into that.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I've often joked with clients, they're like, oh, well, I went out for dinner like five times this week, [00:12:00] but I checked the macros on the menu, and I'm like, okay. Like those might have been representation of that food at one point in time.
But I can virtually guarantee you that the chef or the cook in the back is not following those macros, and there's probably way more oil and fat on that than what your macros actually indicate on the menu,
David Page: which is not to say that you can't eat that look. Oh, no, I was ju first. There's two things. First of all.
As we may or may not discuss, I had my own diabetes battle, so,
Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah, we'll talk about that. I have an
David Page: endocrinologist and a nutritionist and my endocrinologist said to me, look, you can cheat. No one's gonna be perfect 'cause Yeah. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
You, you can do it. Sometimes it's all right but more to the point. A lot of this does boil down to portion size and volume. I was just at a wedding in Minneapolis over the past weekend. Ah, you were just [00:13:00] here. Hey. And there was no, I wasn't here that weekend. Oh, sorry. Well then you might know the restaurant high in in St.
Paul, which is, basically Vietnamese, and I know them because I put them on my podcast. Christina Wynn the chef there, the owner won the 2024 James Beard Award, his best chef in the Midwest. Oh, wow. Yeah. And Murielle, another restaurant in town, the chef there, Karin Tomlinson, who I've also had on the podcast won the same award this year.
Anyway, back to high I wasn't gonna not order. Her signature dish is a very spicy beef dish, served on rice. I'm sure it's very fatty beef because a, it's a cheap cut. That's what you do with braised food. So I had four fork fulls and stopped there. I ate, I got the flavor, but, so I got.
400 calories instead of a thousand. That sort and look the hardest part about [00:14:00] weight control and I fought my weight my whole life is obviously self-control and there are times you just can't stop yourself. But in this particular instance, I was pretty aware all weekend that I was at an event that was food intensive.
Like the dinner I'm talking about. We are best friends of 30 years journeyed to this wedding. Our closest friends from Minneapolis joined us at this meal. I wasn't gonna not eat. For one thing that, that turns a social event into. Unpleasantness, but I didn't have to eat everything and I didn't have to eat a hundred pounds of it.
And when we went across the street to the Turkish ice cream place that feed this rolled ice cream, then I didn't eat. But, you can make your choices.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And especially I think what you mentioned is you're choosing to be more moderate and you're doing those things on occasion. It's not like you're going out for [00:15:00] dinner every night.
And so I, 'cause the contra argument, which I agree with is, yeah, most of the time you're probably better controlling your environment. It does make it easier, but at the same point. Yeah, but that, that you can't, that forever.
David Page: That also assumes that you're gonna do what most Americans don't, which is actually cook.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Then you have to know what
David Page: you're doing. Yeah. The fact of the matter is, and it ain't that, look, I'm a huge advocate for cooking your own food, cooking real food and cooking it in a way that is healthy or i'm gonna have, I'm gonna have a Philly pork sandwich tonight.
Sounds good, which is the specialty in Philadelphia. It's roast pork on a version of French bread with broccoli, rob oil and vinegar. It's a phenomenal sandwich, but. First of all, pork loin is pretty low in calories if you just roast it. Secondly, a limited amount of French bread, [00:16:00] 200 calories worth, isn't gonna destroy me and I ain't gonna cook the broccoli rob in that olive oil.
Then I'm gonna cook it in for my wife. So I'm going to enjoy the meal. It's gonna be, let's see, it's gonna be about 600 calories. Yeah. And it's, and as a diabetic with controlled blood sugar levels, I'm allowing myself the indulgence of that French bread. But I'm factoring all of that in cooking at home is a matter of A, starting with good product, and B, knowing what the most effective and efficient way to make it is.
Nothing's more of your friend than chicken stock. You wanna, any protein can be braised in chicken stock and retain moisture right off the bat. Flavorings, you can use flavorings. The question is how much and of what you know, tomato sauce, not the stuff in a jar that Ragu puts out.
That is about [00:17:00] 92.7% sugar. But basic crushed tomatoes, which is what most Italian sauces are. That's not gonna hurt you and Frank, frankly. It's healthy for you. But you gotta take the time to cook. And most Americans I'm not sure if most is fair. Well, yeah, it is. Most Americans see, I'd say most can't cook.
Yeah. Most Americans see cooking as drudgery. As opposed to enjoyable and an opportunity, I invented something, was it last night or the night before? I guess it was last night. I in invented a Thai dish. Frankly, because I, my, my guest this week on culinary characters unlocked are a Thai Co.
Well, she's Thai. He's American. He met her there. She just won the James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Southwest for their Thai cooking. And it inspired me. So I was looking around for what to make. I got chicken breast, which is about as low as you can get in calories, shrimp. For my [00:18:00] wife, I got rice noodles.
I chose not to have the noodles myself, although it wouldn't have killed me. And I got jarred Thai peanut sauce, which is about 70 calories for two tablespoons.
Gave my wife more than I'd put on my dish, but. I had mine on cabbage. It was a terrifically tasty meal. It was made fresh. It was from relatively pristine ingredients.
The sauce that I bought probably wasn't pristine. I chose on this evening. Again the good versus perfect. I could have made a sauce outta coconut milk and peanut butter, and if I was nuts, I could have gone for natural processed peanut butter. But there, there's a point beyond which I'm not gonna go.
But that's the trade off I made. It was a very healthy meal. It was terrific. It was filling and it's so much better for you and your pocketbook and your health, I think, than these. It's a podcast. Can I swear?
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah.
David Page: Yeah. You're all good. Okay. Than these bullshit meal prep. [00:19:00] Kits where you're supposed to rip open a little thing of cellophane to pour out just the right amount of pepper, and they've cut the chicken up for you.
Come on. It ain't that hard. There's YouTube. You can YouTube a recipe every night that's basic and decent and good. And and by the way, recipes don't have to be complicated of late. I've been into Juicy Loosies. Which you'd be familiar with. It's, yeah, of course. Cheese in the middle.
Yeah. I'm buying very low fat ground beef, 94%, only 6% fat which is low in calories. I am portioning out my blue cheese, which is 110 calories for 28 grams. And I'm cooking in a non-stick pan without oil. That is, look, nothing is more satisfying to an American than a cheeseburger.
That's a fine meal. I it shouldn't be that hard. It shouldn't be that. Now you go to a [00:20:00] restaurant and you go to a cheeseburger that's 1500 calories easy. Yeah. I wouldn't go there, but that's a different issue. It's a completely different issue.
Dr Mike T Nelson: What are some other good cooking tips that people are listening?
They're like, oh man, I. I feel like I just don't cook enough. And the argument you always hear is like, why? I just don't know what to do. Like if you could wave your wand and be like, oh these tips will change your life.
David Page: The first thing I would do is send you to the, and I hate this word, but they use it, the ethnic foods aisle.
And I would buy a sauce or flavoring for every kind of cuisine that's there. So, right. Because look, the first thing you lose. Or you think you're gonna lose when you start watching carefully is flavor. Yeah. Butter adds flavor, oil adds flavor, fat adds flavor. So the first thing I would do is look for flavor components.
And then I would focus on what can I do with basic [00:21:00] proteins that are not bad for me. I live at the on the seashore. We bring in remarkable scallops here. Nice. Probably the Look I've been all over the world. These are probably the best gallops I've ever had. Scallops are tremendously low in calories.
Oh
Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah.
David Page: And the way to cook them is in some butter. Well, you know what, if you're real careful and you know the side of the stick of butter that has the little lines on it, each one of those lines is I think a hundred calories. I'll put a hundred calories in a pan along with a dozen scallops and amortize them scallops with some old bay seasoning and some lemon juice.
And by the way, you only cook them on one side. Never flip a scallop. It'll finish cooking itself. But if you Oh, cook it on both sides, you're gonna end up with a rubber eraser. Throw 'em in there. And by the way, don't be afraid to undercook a scallop. You can easily eat it raw. There's nothing wrong with it.
So just throw it in the pan. [00:22:00] Don't touch it. Let it generate a crust, then pull it out and be delighted. Any kind of fish same thing. But one of the things that, that I like to do is I like to poach my fish. I like to cook it in liquid either chicken stock 'cause it's simple or this is the real secret for a lot of recipes.
Clam juice. Clam juice adds a depth of flavor and a sweetness to more than just seafood. Frankly you can use it on almost anything, but if you if you poach the seafood you'll cook it through in liquid. Then if you want some kind of crust thrown under the broiler I'll cook salmon, I'll poach it.
Then I'll top it with a relatively moderate amount of shaved Parmesan and some Panko breadcrumbs. And you get the mouth feel, you get the crunch. That satisfies our need to think we're eating something bad for us, but you're eating salmon, [00:23:00] which, what was his name? Andrew Weill.
Yeah. The, yeah, the noted Harvard research for alternative medicine. I was lucky enough to have dinner with him one night. Oh, awesome. And he said to me, he thinks salmon's the single most nutritious food on earth is freezer at home is full of it. You can't go wrong with that. But also, look you again, good versus best.
You can make fish and chips. You. Now, I'd use an air fryer. I wouldn't dunk 'em in oil, but a limited amount of a panko on top of some cod. And again, a potato by definition is not the worst thing in the world. Oh, no. How much of a potato you choose to eat is not well, that's the issue.
Additionally, don't take the skin off. That's where so much of a, the nutrients, and b, the fiber that if you have any kind of diabetic situation, look, fiber is your friend. Air fry yourself. Some fries that way. And again, perfection is not [00:24:00] required. You can buy a bag of frozen french fries.
The brand I buy 27 fries is 160 calories. I can live with that if that indulgence is going to make me feel like I had a great meal. Fine.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I think it's also prioritizing the long view too. I think people get too, a little bit spent up on one one meal, which yeah, one meal outta the week.
Probably not a big deal, no matter how crazy it is. But as long as you're consistently doing things like you mentioned, like some of those recipes that are a little bit better than you, you're gonna still enjoy food and not feel like you're in some food prison that you have to follow all the time.
David Page: And look, there are.
Now that science seems to have said, wait a second, and eggs are okay. That I guess they don't raise your cholesterol. You can do so much with eggs. A frittata for dinner is a look. Eggs are 70 or 80 calories per egg. You can throw [00:25:00] anything in onions are your friend chicken sausage a dinner frittata just that fills a frying pan that you've put in the oven.
Again, maybe a little Parmesan on top. That's a wonderful thing.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, that sounds great. And tell us a little bit about your journey. You said you've lost a ton of weight and you've changed Yeah. Your, well, I,
Quite radically.
David Page: I've had a weight problem my whole life. I've always loved food. I'm the stereotypical son of New York Jewish parents and New York Jewish grandparents who equate food with love.
So I've had a weight battle my whole life. About a year ago, my, my GP gave up. I had been pre-diabetic but she threw her hands up after a checkup. She said, you're not listening to me. My, my blood sugar was 2 56 oof. My A1C was over eight. [00:26:00] She said, go to, I'll give you an endocrinologist.
Go there. Now, first thing I don't believe, and I think she was representative, I don't think the medical industry really knows what to tell people about. Diabetes, her information to me about what to eat, what not to eat, and why was confusing, complex and wrong. There was no basic explanation about the trade off between fiber and sugar.
The fact that I ought to be eating strawberries, not peaches, the fact that grains need not be bad for me if they're integrated into my diet in the appropriate way. So I'm still pissed at her, but my endocrinologist knew what she was doing, and along the way, recommended a particular nutritionist.
At the local hospital paid for by my insurance, and I'm on Medicare. It's no better [00:27:00] than anyone else's insurance who specialized in diabetes. And she put me on Ozempic which a technically is for diabetes, but also has an appetite suppressant element to it. And my nutritionist mapped out a plan for me.
We began with no calorie counting. We began with two meals a day, two snacks a day fast till midday, have a meal about three o'clock, have a snack. He recommended a particular brand of faux ice cream. It was like a good humor bar covered in dark chocolate, which again, I did not know until. I was taught dark chocolate's, actually good for a diabetic.
Milk chocolate is not. Anyway and then at dinner time have another meal and then about nine o'clock have another one of those chocolate bars. And over the course of a few months, I very quickly dropped [00:28:00] 50 pounds and the Ozempic in concert with a couple of other drugs. And the weight loss, of course took care of my blood sugar and A1C levels.
I'm down in the 100 to one 15 range for blood sugar. My A1C is 5.3, and then I continued losing weight. I've lost a total of 85 pounds. I feel great. Now, what's interesting is Ozempic will reduce your appetite. It will not get rid of your emotional need to eat. Your ingrained desire to snack when bored or just for the hell of it.
So what's interesting is after the significant weight loss, as I continued losing weight, I've had to go back to counting calories because my issue is not portion size anymore, but it is. What else? I use food for. So to allow myself an opportunity to have a [00:29:00] couple of almond biscoti during the course of an evening, or that bread that I'm gonna have on tonight's sandwich, I'm counting calories again, which, you know what, it's not the end of the world.
It's fine and dandy. In fact, I'd like to lose another 10 pounds. I don't want to go beyond that. And if I don't. I'm, I feel good. I'm. Health is good. I've got energy. I like looking in the mirror despite this. So that, yeah, that's been my journey, but I credit entirely a dedicated endocrinologist and nutritionist for explaining what I face and why and how to attack it, and giving me a very supportive plan by which to do it.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I think that's key of having a plan that works for your lifestyle and also, yeah, the education that goes along with it for the, just the trade offs and, if you have this, then the trade off is, this [00:30:00] instead of the black and white of, oh, you can never have this or never do that, or.
I think humans don't do as well with that.
David Page: It's being realistic. I was, among the guidance I've been given is I should walk 20 or 30 minutes a day. I ain't gonna do it. No walking. I'm just, you know what? It doesn't work for me. I walk my dog. But that's, I don't consider that aerobic exercise my doctor says.
Okay. If that's you. I do lift weights a few times a week. No, that's good. But again, I'm 70 years old. I've never liked to exercise, so I created for myself a very quick, low weight weightlifting program that I can do quickly, two or three times a week. I stick to it. It makes me happy.
That's good enough for me, and it contributes to my wellbeing. I ain't a Gold's Gym trying to set a record.
Dr Mike T Nelson: What do you think that's better? That you found what works [00:31:00] for you? And, like perfect sometimes is the enemy of just, doing something that is gonna be better instead of trying to worry about the optimal or the perfect thing and still not making any progress forward.
David Page: Hey, Carrin Tomlinson, the, this year's Michelin award-winning not Michelin James Beard award-winning best chef in the Midwest.
Her restaurant, again is Murielle in St. Paul. She is a huge proponent of eating well. All of her all of her product comes from local farms.
She's very big into this, and yet she says at the end of a long night of cooking. She likes to sit down and have herself some really bad for you.
Sugared cereal. Moted Flakes or honey Nut Cheerios. 'cause you know what? Nothing's a thousand percent.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I think that's great. How did you notice the effect of. Like the ozempic you had mentioned, [00:32:00] I just, it killed the appetite, but there's other things that didn't really touch
David Page: it. It allowed me to sit down to a meal at which I was not counting calories and feel satisfied without gorging.
It occurred to me in retrospect that I never stopped eating till I was just absolutely filled to, and it made me comfortable not doing that. And it was great. And not having to count calories at the early stages of what would be considered a diet, I think was essential because it wasn't a pain in the ass.
I knew what I had to do, but I was cooking look, I was making short ribs. I, I was eating steak. I was eating the foods I like, and by the way, they are fatty, but the short ribs are great. They're well, they used to be a cheap cut. They're not a cheap more, but I would strongly endorse making those.
Anything you can braise from a cheap cutter meat [00:33:00] is, is good. And by the way, many of the cheap cuts do not have a lot of fat like a hanger steak. And as a result of that they are cheaper cuts 'cause fat is flavor. But I was basically just, eating comfort food.
For most meals. And it was fine. It was working for me again, and at that point I was fixated on, okay, and then in three hours I'll have my snack and then in three hours I'll have my snack. Now without that structure, that's why I have to count calories. 'cause if I'm watching something on tv I do have the freedom to get up and snack and I'm not denying myself that.
But I do have to limit it. And to limit it, I have to count my calories and that works for me. So, it may not work for someone else.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Perfect. Tell us about your time with Diners and Drive-ins. Like how did you come up? How did it all come about?
David Page: Well, by [00:34:00] accident I had been in network news for the longest time.
Saw it starting to change and become more audience demographic driven. And I got out unfortunately, I got out for a completely different industry, home shopping, which I hated.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Took
David Page: about 10 minutes for me to realize I don't wanna do this. So I opened my own production company and started pitching projects and no one was buying.
Luckily Al Roker had a production company and he had, when I ran the Weekend editions of the Today Show, he was on that show.
It was before he was on the big show. And so we were friends and I called him up and said, you got any work? I'm starving. And he started throwing me some projects that he was doing for the Food Network.
And so I got to know them and, clearly I wasn't gonna make it on my own. By subcontracting work. So I started talking to the network directly. One day I'm on the phone, I had done a documentary for them through AL'S Company about diners. And I'm on the phone and I'm pitching and pitching and [00:35:00] pitching, and no one's buying a damn thing.
And finally this executive took pity on me and she said, don't you have anything else on diners? And I said, oh yeah, I'm developing this show. Called Diners, Drive-Ins and Dimes. And I told her all about it. And she said that, that sounds good. This was a Thursday. Get me a writeup by Monday. We have a development meeting Tuesday.
Well, I was full of crap. I was not, I just pulled the title outta Thin air. I was not developing a show called Diners Drive-Ins and Ds. But I spent the next couple of days figuring it out. I sent in a proposal and they bought it for a special. Because what I didn't realize is they needed something to keep Guy Fii in front of the public.
He had just won the Food Network Star contest and they wanted to make him a big deal, and they were waiting for some proposals from big deal production companies for a primetime show for him. So they figured, what the hell, we'll do this special which rated far better than they expected. Then they got the proposals from the big boys and didn't like 'em.[00:36:00]
So now they had nothing to do with Al with the guy. So they said, let's take a shot on this. And they did. And it was a big hit and the rest was history.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Huh. That's pretty wild. And I think he had even mentioned, it was on another interview that he loved doing that show and was hesitant about what he was actually gonna do next.
And it sounds like it was perfect timing for both parties.
David Page: Oh, the timing was great. Couldn't have been better. Look, I'd rather be lucky than good.
Dr Mike T Nelson: What did you learn from that show that you didn't expect going into it?
David Page: Just how hard the business is and how passionate you have to be to make it now.
I developed a tremendous respect for small restaurant owners, the mom and pops who truly gave it to him. In the toughest business on earth, margins are paper thin. The audience can be fickle. And you really, you have to work 37 hours a [00:37:00] day and care. And we certainly didn't intend the show to do this, but I was thrilled to realize after a short bit that we were saving businesses, that a number of the restaurants we had on.
Or on the verge of bankruptcy before we aired them and we saved them. And I take no credit for that. It was an unintended, it was a corollary to what we were doing, but I was delighted to see it happen. I also developed I think a better understanding of what happened to the foods that came to this country from elsewhere.
As we mentioned earlier, and then were transformed into the American versions of those cuisines. I ended up writing a book about it, A Food Americana. It's a very interesting historical story to see how food arrives here and then what it becomes over [00:38:00] time,
Dr Mike T Nelson: and it, what I liked about the show, the two things that stood out to me were exactly that.
How each area had its own spin on what it was doing, even if it was a very, I dunno if I'd say a standardized food. Like they had their, all their own little, oh, there's every kind of pizza.
David Page: Detroit pizza is completely different than a New Jersey Bar Pie. But what's interesting and.
I'm not in love with. This is regional barriers, if you will. Regional silos are breaking down now. You can get Texas brisket in Missouri. You can get Texas brisket in North Carolina. The problem is, as it moved, as it was translated. Is it as good? And the fact of the matter is it tends not to be I'm nostalgic for an era where if I was traveling in North Carolina, I was all excited 'cause now I could have North Carolina barbecue.
And [00:39:00] if I was traveling to Ohio they do a particular kind of roasted chicken there. Now you can get pretty much anything, anywhere, and I think to some extent it has lowered. Expectations about what the best version of regional food can and should be. I am sick to death at lobster rolls.
Outside, outside of New England. I live on the Jersey Shore and they sell lobster rolls here, and it's just wrong. Lobster rolls should be eaten in New England. As close as you can get to where those lobsters
Dr Mike T Nelson: grew
David Page: up.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. You mentioned barbecue also, which I feel like is a very.
Regional specific thing, like we've like, we'll usually travel down to South Padre, Texas, and even just going through what is considered really good barbecue in Kansas City versus Texas, I feel like is quite, they're completely different. Completely different. Like I, yeah, but
David Page: understand, but understand something if you're going down.
To South Padre you're down in an [00:40:00] area where the barbecue is influenced by the southeast because yes, there's an influx of of folks from the southeast many of them African American into lower Texas. That's a completely different cuisine. Then the barbecue of Central Texas, which is brisket and sausage, which was developed by German and Czech butchers.
Basically looking for something to do with spoiling meat. And which was also made possible. In volume by the development of the meat packing industry in Kansas City, which began shipping parts, not whole animals so that you could get, I want a truckload of briskets prior to that. Well. At the very beginning, barbecue was whole animal.
But no. And Kansas City Barbecue, for example is very different than Texas. Well, Texas has multiple kinds of barbecue. Yeah. I've mentioned two of them, [00:41:00] but Kansas City Barbecue is a sweet sauce. And, I think it's, yeah, it's generally beef as opposed to the Carolinas where it's pork.
So, barbecue's about as regionalized as it gets. But again those walls are breaking down. You go to North Carolina, you go to a barbecue joint, you may well be offered the the option of Texas barbecue. There's a great, and look, you don't have to do it poorly. There's a great restaurant.
In Chicago called Smoke with a Q where the owner Barry Sorkin went around the country to figure out how to make regional barbecue the best. And he offers all sorts of regional barbecues in the place. And he does it well, but I would argue that doing it well is more the exception than the rule outside of a particular region.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. So tell us about the podcast you got going on.
David Page: It's called Culinary Characters Unlocked. It's available anywhere you get a podcast. And [00:42:00] it's extended interviews. It's me shooting the breeze with interesting, entertaining, significant people in the world of food.
From Dan Barber and Nancy Silverton to 12 of this year's, 15 James Beard Award winners.
To mom and pops. I if someone is making good food and has an interesting story, I wanna talk to them. And it's just, we sit down and we schmooze and I drop a new episode every Tuesday and I'm having the time of my life. It's a ton of fun. And it's, I started in radio, so it's a routine.
Ah, it's full circle now. Return to the be, although we also do, you, we do it as a video cast as well on YouTube.
Dr Mike T Nelson: What made you wanna start a podcast?
David Page: Oh I want to keep telling stories and I've always tried to stay up with whatever the most current medium is. And now podcasts rule the world.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Do you think podcasts will keep going [00:43:00] or do you think something else will replace it at some point?
David Page: I cannot predict because, any contract you sign about media these days includes you're giving the rights for TV and streaming and. Any other media medium that made me invented? So, are we gonna get broadcasts directly into our brains? Maybe. I think podcasts are gonna be here for quite a while because there's really a decentralization taking place in mass media thanks to platforms like Substack.
And I do write a culinary characters on locked substack where individual creators. Are generating their own audiences these days. If you leave linear television there's a very good chance you're gonna end up on Substack. So I see podcasts as as a great example of the individual creator controlling the message and the storytelling, and I don't see that going away very quickly.[00:44:00]
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and there's, I think, something, the podcast feel this nice niche where you can listen to it while you're doing the dishes or out for a walk or out for a drive. It shows us, Hey, look, extra time that everybody can find in their schedule.
David Page: One of the things, the dirty little secrets, about Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives was that I believe a lot of our listening audience was using us as white noise as background, but.
I made sure A, to include every step of everything we made, and B, to include it in sound either during the interview or during narration. So that even if you were doing something else,
Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah, you could hear, you heard it all.
David Page: Ah, that's cool. And that's always been the 60 minute secret. They Don Yu had always insisted on basically writing a radio script.
And covering it with pictures as opposed [00:45:00] to the similar programs done at NBC, which were shepherded by a guy named Ruben Frank, who believed in letting the story tell itself. And with that, and he eventually conceded years later, that looks like Don was right.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I think that's one of the reason that show appealed so much is you could tell that.
There's very much a lot of art and time put into crafting the story, not just the information. It wasn't just being blasted with info. There was a very artful story arc to each one that they did
David Page: look for storytelling to succeed. It has to naturally take you from step A to step B to step C without you realizing that you've been pushed.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time and yeah, tell us where they can find the podcast. It sounds like it's on all podcast players, the substack,
David Page: Any place you you get your podcast. You can also go to culinary characters unlock.com and my substack is just go to the substack site, type in culinary [00:46:00] characters unlocked, and I hope you'll enjoy it.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. And any social media or other places they should follow?
David Page: Oh yeah, Instagram, TikTok and Threads.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Okay. And Facebook. And Facebook. All under the same name. All under the same name. All right. We'll make sure to link to all those. So, awesome. Well, thank you so much for everything and thank you for sharing all of it today.
I really appreciate it.
David Page: I very much enjoyed this. Thanks for having me.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. We really appreciate it. Make sure to check out all the great stuff David's got going on the podcast and everything else he is involved with. Really appreciate him coming on the show and sharing all of his expertise. That was great. Really appreciate it.
If you're looking for tasty electrolytes, check out our friends over at Element Below and if you want more information from me. You can hop onto my free newsletter, which you can hop on the link right down below here. So thank you for all listening to this [00:47:00] podcast. Again, huge thanks again to David Page.
Make sure to check out all of his great stuff there. I think you'll really enjoy it. And then if you have time, please forward this to a friend. Hit the old like, subscribe, download. Leave us a review. All those wonderful things really help us a ton with the old algorithms to get better distribution with the podcast.
So thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate it, and we'll have more for you next week. See you.
You are my sunshine. My only sunshine. Why you old fool? What? I'm not your son. And my name's not shine. He calls me an old fool.
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