In this video, the speaker addresses the common concern that people have when trying to cut out sugar, processed foods, and junk food – the belief that there will be nothing left to eat. The speaker emphasizes that humans have been eating real food from the planet for thousands of years, but in the last 50 years, we have been conditioned to eat processed foods with chemical flavors. The speaker lists a variety of real food options such as meat, fish, nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruits, fats, and condiments, reassuring viewers that there are plenty of options available to eat healthily.
Key Insights:
- Processed foods, breads, and junk food have become the norm in our diets, leading to chronic diseases and unhealthy eating habits.
- The food industry designs processed foods to trigger pleasure receptors, making them addictive.
- The solution to long-term health problems is to eliminate these unhealthy foods from our diets.
- There are many alternative food options available, such as different types of meat (including wild game), fish, shellfish, nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruits, fats, and condiments.
- It may take time and effort to transition to a healthier diet, but the benefits, such as improved taste buds, increased cooking skills, and enhanced well-being, make it worthwhile.
- Choosing high-quality, organic, and pasture-raised animal products is important for optimal health.
- Being aware of carbohydrate content is essential for those following a keto or low-carb diet.
- Exploring new foods and gradually incorporating them into your regular meals can expand your culinary repertoire.
- Making your own sauces, dressings, and condiments using healthy ingredients is recommended to avoid harmful additives.
- Experimenting with different flavors and spices can make healthy meals more enjoyable.
Transcript
Hello Health Champions. I’ve had so many people tell me that they can’t stop eating sugar and processed foods and breads and junk food and fast food, because if they did there would be nothing left to eat. They’re asking what else is there. They’re so accustomed to those things and this is really really sad because what it means is that not only are people eating bad food but we have entire cultures that basically eat things that aren’t food at all and we’ve been trained we’ve been conditioned into this behavior in just the last 50 years.
So every other species on the planet has been eating straight from the planet for as long as they’ve been around and so have humans, but then in the last 50 years we’ve been conditioned to eat processed foods with chemical flavors. We don’t even know what things taste anymore. It’s the chemical flavor. There are whole industries making chemicals to stimulate certain things. We have artificial ingredients we eat preservatives and these foods are purposely designed. They’re industries that design these things on purpose just to trigger pleasure receptors so it’s not the food value that keep us eating it’s the chemicals by design.
In my videos I talk about how the vast majority 90-95% of all of our modern chronic degenerative diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart disease and stroke and cancer are lifestyle problems because we’re eating all this sugar we’re eating too much starch and grain. We’re eating processed foods we’re eating chemicals artificial sweeteners trans fats and then the solution obviously to the long-term problem is to stop eating these things and then people don’t know what to do. They’re saying there’s nothing else to eat.
Well that’s what I want to talk about today so I’m going to go over a lot of different foods to show you how much there really is to eat of real food and one of the most basic foods is meat so we have ground beef we have various different steaks we could eat roast beef, ham, bacon, pork chops, sausage, lamb chops, leg of lamb, ground lamb, and a lot of cultures around the world also domesticate and raise goats for meat. And all of these meats are high in protein and they’re very very satisfying so it’s a good foundation for food.
But now all those meats I just mentioned have gotten a bad rap because they have saturated fat and for some reason we’ve been told that saturated fat is bad. But it’s not about the saturated fat it’s about how the animals were raised so if we feed them grain and hormones and we raise them in an unnatural environment the animal is going to be unhealthy and then the meat and the fat is also unhealthy. But the biggest problem is that we have also been eating tons of sugar and grain and starches that raise insulin. And with high levels of insulin we can’t metabolize the fat and that’s the biggest problem. But if we lower insulin and we eat healthy meat and fat then it’s not a problem if it’s saturated. Saturated is actually very stable and very neutral for inflammation so it’s one of the best foods that we can eat. So as long as we feed the animals their natural food in their natural environment. Then the animal is healthy and it produces healthy fat and healthy protein.
But there are lots more choices because there’s also wild meat and we have things like bison, moose, elk, and reindeer, and there’s a population in northern Scandinavia called the Sami, who have been around since the stone age basically thousands of years and they have been herding reindeer and they have cherished and used every part of that pretty much like the native Indians in north America used every part of the bison. We have venison we have wild boar and rabbit if you want to get a little more exotic there are things like alligator antelope and ostrich. And if you live around where I live where we are in the southern united states there’s a group of people called rednecks and they think that there’s some delicious things you can find on the road called roadkill so you could also eat squirrel raccoons and possums and then there is a version a variety called armadillo which is almost like a possum with armor on it this is Spanish for armored little one and there’s also some other people who refer to the armadillo as a tactical assault possum.
And for more variety there is also deli meat. We have hundreds of different pates, salami chorizo we have pancetta pastrami prosciutto we have pepperoni bologna, soppressata, bresaola, cappocolo, jamon iberico, jamon serrano and canadian bacon. Now a lot of people have heard bad things about deli meat and they’ve heard oh there’s too much salt and there is this and there’s that but you don’t have to worry about the salt unless your kidneys have severe disease. Your body knows how to regulate salt but basically it’s about the quality of the ingredients and you don’t want to eat just any kind of cold cuts you want to look for the good quality so you want to look for the good sources from healthy animals. You want to make sure they don’t add a bunch of sugar and chemicals and preservatives and msg and coloring agents and so forth. But if you have a good quality deli meat without that stuff then it’s perfectly fine to eat it.
And then of course there is fish which a lot of people prefer to meet and there’s anchovy which I’m not crazy about but some people like that there is bass, blue fish, carp, catfish, cod, grew up on a lot of cod croaker, eel, flounder, grouper, haddock, halibut delicacy herring king crab mackerel mahi mahi mullet there’s snapper perch pike sardines and of course salmon. And there were hundreds of different fish to choose from but I limited my list here because I don’t want to go past the slide but just realize there’s many many different options there when it comes to which fish to choose you want to look for safety and quality just like with the other animals on land so you want to avoid the farm raised because they’re only as healthy as what they’ve been fed and if they’re farm-raised they feed them just about anything. The wild caught are going to be a better choice for the most part and you want to avoid fish that have a lot of mercury and pcbs and the way that you figure that out is the fish that are primarily lower on the food chain so smaller fish like sardines and herrings etc. They don’t live very long they don’t have time to accumulate a lot of mercury and pcbs and most of the whitefish most of the flat fish are quite safe the ones you want to avoid are high up on the food chain like tuna and swordfish and shark and so forth. As well as fish that live for a very long time I’ve done a video that talks a little bit more about that you can check it out.
And then of course there is shellfish and we have things like abalone and clam and crab and crawfish or crayfish which is a huge thing in Sweden. If you’re ever around there in late august is when you want to go try to find a crayfish party try to see if you can get invited to a crayfish party that’s quite the experience. There’s langoustine there’s lobster, mussels, oysters, prawns, scallops, and shrimp. The one thing to watch for is even a lot of people who can tolerate other fish they might have a pretty severe allergy to shrimp even if it’s not symptomatic so if you can get that checked out that would be a good thing.
And of course fowl or poultry is a huge staple we have chicken we have turkey, pheasant, goose, duck, quail, and even pigeon. And the thing to look for is with the chicken which is by far the most common is how it’s raised do your best to find at least something organic and preferably something pasture raised if you have access to that.
Next category is nuts and we have things like almonds walnuts pecans macadamia nuts and coconut and for the keto community where they’re often trying to replace grains and flours these nuts come in handy because they can be ground up and used for baking. And also for the vegetarian and vegan community these nuts are excellent sources of protein and fat so that you can stay on a low carb diet not having to eat so much of the grain and starch. And all the animal products we talked about before are zero carbohydrates meats don’t have any carbohydrates but now if we’re trying to go keto we have to start watching the carbohydrates so almonds have nine percent so nine grams of carbohydrates net carbohydrates per 100 grams of food and net carbs means that we take the total carbs and we subtract the fiber because we don’t metabolize the fiber and then there is hazelnuts also low in carbs pine nuts pretty low and then there’s pili nuts and sacha inchi these are not so commonly available in most of the world but they’re very popular apparently in the Philippines with the pili nuts and I’m not sure such a inch I think is more like central America brazil nuts are popular and common and they’re very low in carbohydrate but for some reason in my clinic I find that it’s the most common intolerance it’s the one that most people react to of any of these nuts then there is cashew and pistachio and if you’re going keto then you want to really focus on these single-digit nuts because if you start eating a bunch of cashews you get 27% net carbs that’s why it’s so sweet and creamy but if you’re a little more flexible on your carbohydrate count then you can certainly include some of the cashews and pistachios as well.
Next group is seeds and seeds and nuts are similar in many ways but seeds tend to have more protein and more fiber but less fat and you might also eat them a little differently like nuts you eat more like a snack seeds you might put in something not eat by itself so much but chia seeds cocoa beans or cocoa nibs, flaxseed, hemp seed, very popular for smoothies things like that they’re extremely low in carbohydrate and very inexpensive. We also have pumpkin seed that is tasty to snack on we have sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pomegranate seeds, they’re very different because most of these others are high in protein and fat but pomegranate seeds basically have zero fat and zero protein we have caraway seeds and poppy seeds as well and those you probably wouldn’t eat by themselves they’re more like spices really you just add them to things.
And then we have legumes or beans things like snow peas green beans French green beans or haricots verts. We have Romano beans wax beans green peas lentils peanuts and black beans and kidney beans and there’s some controversy around beans because it’s a staple for a lot of vegetarians it’s a good source of protein and sustenance it’s quite filling but if we talk to the paleo community. Paleo is a philosophy that says we should eat like our paleolithic ancestors and if our ancestors tens of thousands of years ago had the food then we know that it’s safe for us to eat because it’s been around that long but beans haven’t been around that long so paleo people says to avoid all beans I don’t think that matters that much necessarily but if you want to be that strict that’s up to you.
Now if you’re keto you want to go with the top half of these beans because these are basically very high in water and very high in fiber so they’re almost like a green vegetable whereas the lower hand here are more starchy the from the green peas and down but it can still be an important staple especially if you don’t have to be so tight so strict on your carbohydrate count.
A lot of people like salads and I strongly recommend them I like to put lots of stuff in mine and you base it on leafy greens with iceberg lettuce romaine lettuce Boston lettuce green leaf lettuce arugula bok choy collard greens kale spinach mustard greens and Swiss chard some of these on the lower half you might want to cook a little bit more. I like to cook them if I use any of these down on the second half the first five I love to eat just raw in a salad and I didn’t bother including numbers on these because they’re all around three to four grams of carbohydrate but they’re so high in water and so high in fiber that there’s no way that you can overeat and get too many carbohydrates on these but there are many many other vegetables that are very low carb even though they’re not leafy greens we call these non-starchy vegetables and things like broccoli cauliflower celery asparagus leek onion brussels sprouts cilantro cabbage parsley artichoke and cucumber and these are typically about two or three grams up to maybe six or seven at the most so these you could eat a pound of cauliflower and and the carbs would add up a little bit but it’s very difficult to eat so much of these that you would have too many carbs unless you’re just really going for zero carbs then this could add up a little bit but you can eat this pretty freely.
Here’s another group that there’s some controversy about they’re called tubers or root vegetables there’s radish there’s rutabaga turnips celeriac or root celery there’s beets carrot onion parsnip potato and sweet potato and what’s the controversy well most people when they say tuber or root vegetable they think potato and sweet potato and if you see these have 16 grams of carbohydrate per hundred so that adds up pretty quick but then people kind of lump these all together and say you can’t have any tubers any root vegetables because they’re too starchy if you’re on a low carb or keto diet well that’s not true as you can see so everything down to carrot and onion I would say is relatively safe even on a keto diet if you’re strict keto again you want to limit the beets carrot and the onion and you want to avoid the potato and sweet potato but if you’re on a low to medium moderate carb then you could even include some potato and sweet potato I do eat those from time to time I certainly don’t eat them every day but a couple of times a week if you’re just moderate carb is totally fine and if you’re keto you can still eat a lot of the ones on the top half.
Now big problem is if you’ve been eating sandwiches and cereal and fast food and that’s all you know and then you give that up it’s like what do you do most people can’t cook and they’re unfamiliar with a lot of the things that I’ve been listing but just like everything else about health and quality of life there is no quick fix I’m not going to lie to you you are going to have to invest a little bit of time and effort into this but you’ll be amazed how much you learn and how quickly you make progress if you just have a goal and a strategy so internet is an amazing resource and if you just try one new thing every week okay don’t hold yourself back if you want to try three new things but if you just do one new thing every week and then let’s say that you like one out of four then once a month you have something that you can add to your repertoire that’s gonna be a new favorite for you and this is going to add on and grow very very quickly and as you learn to cook those things it’ll carry over it’ll spill over and you will enhance your other recipes and you’ll actually learn how to cook and I want to emphasize that it is so worth it to do this to become familiar with these foods and try new things because food is really important it is an important experience of life it provides great satisfaction when you know how to cook something and you know that you’ve done it in addition to that great flavor experience and what you find is that your taste buds will change your taste will come back if you’ve been conditioned to eat all these bland starchy foods you may not know why these foods are so attractive but you will learn to appreciate them they will taste amazing they’ll taste better than anything you’ve ever had before and I’ve had so many people tell me that after they’ve started eating like this eating real food then the fast food and the fake food and the processed food they taste disgusting and sugar is too sweet and any processed food tastes like chemicals and so on.
I don’t think you should eat unlimited fruits and berries but there are several that I think that you can have once in a while and seasonally and things like raspberries strawberries blackberries and blueberries the berries are the most dense they have a lot of fiber lots of nutrients lots of flavor and relatively low in carbohydrates so even on a ketogenic diet you can still have a handful of berries here and there another great berry is called gooseberry in Sweden it’s called krusbär and if you have a little more flexibility on your carbs then you could also have things like peach apricot lemon grapefruit and orange these are all under 10 grams of carbs again I don’t think that you should follow the standard guidelines that says eat more fruits and vegetables more fruits and vegetables as if fruit was this thing that we should eat as much as possible of all the time but I also don’t think you have to cut it out completely. Eat berries if you want to go keto if you’re maintaining eat moderately of the rest and the last one on the list is watermelon a lot of people look at the number and say oh just seven grams of carbohydrate and net carbs I got to eat a lot of watermelon but the problem is of how much of it that you eat if you have raspberries you could eat 10 raspberries and it gives you some level of satisfaction it’s quite the tasty bite but with watermelon it’s all water it’s just water and sugar it’s like sugar water in a cube and I don’t know anybody who can just eat like one little cube of watermelon you’re probably going to go through at least a pound of watermelon which isn’t all that much and now that sugar really really adds up so keep that in mind of how much of this would you typically eat. If you’re eating keto and low carb you definitely want to know what some good fats are if you’re just eating a lot of non-starchy vegetables it’s good to put some fat on my favorites are butter extra virgin olive oil and coconut oil those are my three staples I use them all the time on a lot of different things then also a coconut cream very popular in Asian cooking in Thai cuisine especially and also great for smoothies. I use coconut cream in tea and coffee and cocoa butter great for smoothies and baking you can also use lard and tallow if you get leftovers or if you find it at a good quality and then there’s also avocado oil and this one’s kind of in between because if you squeeze it very very fresh like cold pressed like extra virgin olive oil then it’s a super nutritious super natural and healthy oil but a lot of people use avocado oil because it has a high heat tolerance high smoke point but now we’re not talking about this natural oil anymore we’re talking about a processed oil that has been filtered and processed to tolerate that high heat so it’s not a terrible it’s still much better than all the seed oils but it’s not as healthy as that whole food unprocessed raw oil anymore and then we also have eggs yogurt and sour cream in the eggs and dairy section and just about any meal can turn into a gourmet meal with the right sauce so with a good béarnaise sauce which is based on butter and egg yolk you can enhance any steak meal hollandaise sauce is very similar but slightly different spices is great for vegetables and fish and eggs and things like that bordelaise sauce is a red wine reduction sauce that is just super delicious for steak and garlic butter could be added to just about anything and then one of my favorites is crème fresh and a lot of people don’t know about this it’s very popular in France especially but often in Europe overall and it’s a high-fat version of sour cream I find mine at a place called trader joe’s and sour cream usually is about 12 to 15% fat whereas crème fraiche is about 35% fat and it’s really thick and creamy so if you cook a steak and then you just kind of rinse out the pan with some water you reduce that down and then you add some crème fraiche you have instant gourmet sauce another way to enhance food is dressings and condiments mustard is a common favorite we also have mayonnaise now mayonnaise is only as healthy as the oil that you put into it and most of the store bought is going to be canola oil or soybean oil so those are not really that great they probably won’t kill you either if you don’t use it all the time if you use it very sparingly once in a while then that’s probably fine but you’ll be better off if you make your own mayonnaise and you use a better oil now the problem is if you use like extra virgin olive oil the flavor is going to be so strong it totally takes over and then if you use some other oil that’s less flavorful it’s not going to be as healthy a good middle of the road is often to use the refined avocado oil so it’s not like a super stellar health oil but it’s really not bad either. With my salads I love to have oil and vinegar as a base and then I make batches ahead of time and you can be creative with all kinds of different spices to make it a little more interesting. Additional choices are things like Caesar dressing blue cheese dressing and ranch so there are some better alternatives out there where they’re starting to use better oils if you make it yourself I would probably try to baste them on an extra virgin olive oil unless the flavor gets too strong for you if you buy them traditional the regular stuff in the store they’re going to have canola oil and soybean oil in them so do the best you can in finding good ingredients and ranch try to find something without msg because the msg is not that great for most people and it is the ingredients that make ranch taste like ranch so a lot of people don’t realize that without msg it’s not going to taste like the typical ranch that you know but you can usually find some good versions anyway.
From the Middle East we have things like tahini and hummus and from the Latin countries we have guacamole all of these are great additions great condiments to serve on the side and then of course any type of dressing on the market you can mock up your own version as long as you don’t add a bunch of sugar or you sweeten it with something else like stevia or monk fruit or erythritol and so on most of the time when your taste buds change you won’t be able to stand all of the sugary commercial dressings anyway.
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