Ketogenic Pizza, Ketogenic Toast, Ketogenic Cornflakes, Bulletproof-Ish Coffee & More: The...

Hey, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield, and today's podcast is all about ketosis. But of course, one of the ways that you can get yourself into an extremely deep state of ketosis is by mobilizing fatty acids from adipose tissue. And what's one of the best ways to do that? Caffeine. Coffee. Green tea works pretty well too. But coffee is tastier, in my opinion. And sponsor for today's show actually creates not just coffee, but coffee that has brains vitamins added to it. Brain vitamins, vitamins, however you want to pronounce it. Things like Alpha, gpc, taurine, L Theanine, dmae. These are all things that help to increase focus and power output and cognition. They're all natural amino acids typically found in foods, but not always easy enough to get from diet alone. They help to protect and prolong coffee's dopamine effect and reduce the anxiety you can get from coffee. This stuff is called chimericoff K I M E R A K O F F E E. And you can go to cameroffee.com and use code BEN to get 10% off. That's camaracoffee.com and code BEN. The stuff tastes really good because it's single estate artisan coffee from the Dominican Republic grown at an altitude of 5,000, count them, 5,000ft, run by the same family for over 40 years. Plus they add the vitamins to it. Did I mention that? So good stuff. Cameracoffee.com and use code BEN to get. Speaking of tasty things, this podcast is also brought to you by Blue Apron. And yes, you can maintain a state of ketosis and still eat deliciously with some of the meals from Blue Apron. Like they have their sesame soba noodles. Those are not ketogenic, I guarantee, but they're really tasty with gai lan mushrooms and ginger lime peanuts. They also have marinated chicken thighs with jalapeno rice and summer squash. I suppose if you skip the rice, that would be ketogenic. And then they have their cod and tomatillo salsa with summer squash. And that one is amazing. I love me a little bit of cod. You can get any of this stuff over@blueapron.com and not only that, but you can get your first three meals free with free shipping@blueapron.com Ben, you get these amazing meals for less than 10 bucks per person per meal. You can make them in 40 minutes or less. My kids love it because they get these cool little cards, all the ingredients. So my kids actually learn to cook using this stuff and it tastes amazing. So check it out. Blueapron.com Ben in this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, what they saw.

Is that with fatty acid you can yield 120 plus molecules of ATP, whereas glucose, which apparently, you know, it generates more heat when it burns, it's maximum 96. You really trash your metabolism at a very young age. And to fix it, I think you have to sometimes really reach to quite drastic measures. And I think ketosis can be also a fix. It can be a metabolic fix that doesn't have to be ongoing for the rest of your life necessarily.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power.

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Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield and I've got a few paradoxical food ideas for you. Like how about ketogenic pizza or ketogenic toasts or ketogenic corn flakes. And yes, each of these and many of the carbolicious foods items that you may associate with high carbohydrate intake actually do exist in a low carb, high fat and relatively nutrient dense form. You just have to know what to do and you have to be willing to think outside the box of how a lot of, a lot of, I guess how many ketogenic eaters operate, which is basically by drinking like copious amounts of full fat coconut milk and buying avocados by the dozen and going through a stick of butter every couple days, perhaps every single morning in your coffee. And the fact is that there's, I mean, like, that's not necessarily what you have to do. It doesn't have to be like all avocados and coconut oil and sticks of butter everywhere. You can actually make really good food if you have the right tools on hand. And my guests on today's show just wrote this book that's called the Ketogenic Kitchen and It's got like 250 recipes in it. But even more interesting to me, it also has some pretty comprehensive, like, scientific, scientific information for those of you nerds and geeks out there who want to kind of delve into the science behind why and how you make these type of foods. And it also is based on my own experimentation with the recipes in this book, written by people who actually know what they're doing in terms of making actual healthy food that tastes good. High fat, healthy food that tastes good. So this book was written by two people, both of whom are on today's show. The first is Domini Kemp. Dominique. Is it Dominique or Domini?

It is. No, it's Dominique. You got it right, Dominique.

Boom. Domini is an award winning chef, she's a food writer and she's an entrepreneur. And in 2013, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and she shifted her focus to a ketogenic diet. And as you've heard on this show before, that is one of the best ways to control the growth of cancer and also to prevent cancer is to limit the amount of glucose that you have available for mitochondria. She did that and she wrote this book, which is actually her fifth cookbook. She also has a juice company, a whole foods cafe, and she knows a lot about healthy cooking and healthy eating. And her co author is also on the show today. Patricia. What's up, Patricia?

Hi, Ben. Thanks so much for having us.

Yeah. And Patricia Daly, she's a nutritional therapist. She's an author who specializes in cancer care and the ketogenic diet. She's worked with hundreds of cancer patients in Ireland and that's why you're going to hear her lowling Irish accent. She lectures at the Irish Institute of Nutrition Health and she's written quite a few books. One even that I kind of worked with her on a little bit, and it's called Practical Keto Plans for Endurance Athletes. And I'll link to that in the show notes along with this other book, the book that we're gonna talk about today, the Ketogenic Kitchen. And you can access the show notes for all this stuff that we talk about if you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com ketokitchen that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Ketokitchen so Patricia and Domini, welcome.

Oh, thank you so much, Ben. It's lovely to be here. Yeah, lovely to chat finally. Yeah, exactly.

Now you kind of both have. And I don't know if this was awkward for y', all, but you kind of have like your own unique approach to eating. Like, it seems like one of you is kind of like a little bit more liberal. One of you is correct, correct me if I'm wrong, a little bit more strict. Can you go into the difference between your two different dietary approaches or philosophies.

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. You hit the nail on the head there. I suppose I took a more liberal approach to carbohydrates.

Wait to interrupt real quick. This is Dominique speaking.

Right, this is Dominique.

Sorry.

You'll notice you'll hear Patricia's Swiss slash Irish accent going, but this is Domini here. So I took a more liberal approach to carbohydrates than Patricia does. So she, she would follow ketogenic diet fully. I found low carb works for me and I suppose, suppose trying to be a bit more sort of fat adapted. And I guess because I'm a chef and I work with food, I would find it hard to be in ketosis all the time. So for me it's about sort of following low carb 80, 90% of the time and then being a little bit flexible with that other 10%. And I suppose the book is in two halves. So my half was low carb and really trying to get people to get their head around embracing healthy fats. Because for years I, probably for 40 years, I would have followed the food pyramid and eaten a very low fat, high carb diet, which clearly didn't suit me. And it was really after getting breast cancer in 2013 for the second time. I had had a malignant melanoma in my 20s, and it was really at that point when I was in the oncology ward and handed a food pyramid leaflet and said, you know, this is what we advise you to eat. I just suddenly thought, you know what? There must be a better way. And that's when I started really researching and trying to find out what I should be eating, going through treatment. And then I met Patricia. And after everything we said, right, let's write the book we both wish we'd had access to when we were both diagnosed. And that was the start of a fantastic friendship and working relationship. And it's just been an incredibly interesting and fascinating journey that we're always learning and always trying to find out more. It's a really exciting time.

Yeah. And I think it's interesting how when you're laying out the fact that you, Domini, are a little bit more kind of like, like liberal in terms of not doing a strict carbohydrate restrictive approach. You delve into, for example, a really interesting study back in 2012 where they took a bunch of overweight and obese young adults and they had them all eat the same number of calories, and one group got a low fat diet and one Group got a low glycemic index diet and one got a low carbohydrate diet. And the low glycemic index diet and the low carbohydrate diet both saw some pretty significant benefits. You know, even though the low carbohydrate diet I think was like 10% carbohydrate and the low glycemic index was I think about 40% carbohydrate, you still saw some benefits from just being, you know, just freaking careful with blood sugar fluctuations, even if you're not doing like full on ketosis or something like that.

That's exactly right. And I found, you know, myself just over the last year so actually measuring my own blood glucose just occasionally to see what spikes it, what doesn't. Because again, the more you learn, the more you want to learn. And you know, just seeing how everything from exercise and even sort of good carbohydrates, how, you know, things like chickpeas or lentils or anything, how they can spike even a very small amount of. And it's been really interesting to kind of see what works and what doesn't work. So, you know, I'm a chef and so I, you know, would eat carbohydrates if I could, morning, noon and night, preferably slathered in fat and protein. So, you know, it's. I find eating this way it's terribly satisfying, but you do need to be clever and you do need to try and figure out ways around it because, you know, we exist in a world where carbohydrates are just in abundance everywhere you look. And so it's really trying to find ways of adapting and getting your family to sort of join in the quest, as it were, to just try and reduce down the amount of sugar we eat.

Right? Because I don't want to give people the impression that like, you know, I'm necessarily like anti carbohydrate. I mean, even when you look at the blue zones, you know, you read a book like Dan Buettner's Blue Zones or a recent one I read by Dr. Dan Daphne Miller called the Jungle Effect. Many of the long living populations and very healthy populations spread across the face of the planet, you see a pretty liberal amount of not just wild plant intake, which is a prevailing characteristic, but also the consumption of carbohydrates, but carbohydrates that are fiber rich and also very low glycemic index legumes, for example, you look at Dan Bootner's blue zones and legumes are a huge part of, of many of the foods and you look at like the, I believe they're called the three sisters in like, you know, Native American cuisine, you know, corn and squash and totally blanking on what the last one is now. Is it beets? Corn, squash and beets. Now I'm feeling like an idiot or.

Some, maybe some other root. Yeah.

But ultimately they are, they're low glycemic index carbohydrates. And when combined with the fact that the other characteristic of many of these blue zones is the fact that they engage in low level physical activity all day long, which also controls blood sugar levels, I think that you can necessarily, you can definitely make an argument that this idea of just simply paying attention to blood sugar regulation and not necessarily eating strict ketosis is still going to give some pretty significant benefits from a longevity and blood sugar standpoint.

Yeah, I think it's always also interesting to see where you start because these people, that's how they grew up. And the kids probably never got any refined carbs or they never got those, you know, junk foods that we basically. Or I see a lot of kids in Ireland grow up with and just really excess sugar, I mean, way above the WHO guidelines. And so you really trash your metabolism at a very young age. And to fix it, I think you have to sometimes really reach to quite drastic measures. And I think ketosis can be also a fix. It can be a metabolic fix that doesn't have to be ongoing for the rest of your life, necessarily. And we also see, I mean, the ketogenic diet comes from the epileptic world. That's how it all started and that's where we have the most evidence. And epileptic children, they quite often, they're kept on a ketogenic diet for two years and then they're weaned. So, you know, it's. And it has to be a dynamic process really. I think with carbs that you can't just say, okay, I'm just going to say at 12 grams of net carbs for the rest of my life, this is probably not going to work. And it's really looking at the individual, where they're at in terms of, as you said, you know, all the other lifestyle aspects and community and sleep and, you know, there's so much stress that's so much that influences our blood glucose. I think for me at this stage now, and I've been keto now for, I started in 2012 and I was really strict at the beginning and now I sort of start to realize there's other Things that have an even bigger impact now on my glucose than food. So it seems that, you know, the body has sort of adapted, but there's other stress source that I have to really keep an eye on, like sleep deprivation, stress and feeling overwhelmed sometimes, you know, that can. That can. Or fear, you know, fear of a relapse when I get. Sometimes I do get scared. And that all influences then glucose and lots of other markers.

Yeah. And then Patricia, in contrast to Domini, a lot of your recipes in the book, because some of the recipes are kind of like Domini mentioned, more liberal. And then all of your recipes are no more than, I think, 5 to 10% carbohydrate intake and involve, I guess, what would be considered a little bit more of a strict ketogenic approach, I suppose, for someone who wanted more of that metabolic therapy, who might have cancer or epilepsy or something like that.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's when it has to be really monitored and where people have to really start weighing their food, at least initially, and just really learn as much as they can about quantities of food.

How much of wasps they can eat, and really learn a lot initially. It can be quite overwhelming for people. But, yeah, as you say, I have meal plans, actually, in my part, because that's what I found when I was working with people. They said, oh, it's great to have recipes, but it's the. The magic comes when it's all being put together and also using leftovers. And I'm a big fan of, you know, not. Not wasting food. So I decided to do meal plan plans in my part of. Of the book, in the second part. And it starts with, I think, 48 grams of net carbs. And then over two weeks, it goes down to 12 grams, and then two weeks of 12 grams. And that's, you know, the 12 grams is. It's mainly. I think it's Tom Seyfried from Boston College who mainly came up with the 12 grams. And obviously that can be a bit dependent on the individual. But that's what we went for in the book as well, because it's very, very challenging to have only 12 grams of net carbs but also have a lot of nutrient density. And that's really my focus. As you said at the beginning, I'm not one to recommend putting loads of butter into your coffee or just drinking olive oil. That's the questions I sometimes ask.

I love me a big glass of olive oil for breakfast.

So functional. So what you're saying is that your definition of low carb and it sounds like it's pretty close to my definition of low carb would be like, I think in the book you say about 50 to 100 grams of carbohydrates per day and then ketosis would be kind of closer to like that less than 50 grams, ish range.

Yeah, definitely. And I also have the experience with people that once they're really adapted and they're sort of fat optimized or they fat adapted. So which means it's not the same as being in ketosis. It means that your body preferentially uses fat as opposed to carbs. So even if the carbs are there, you know, it's only used when it's. When it really has to. So for instance in exercise, but otherwise preferentially fat is being the main source of fuel. And I do see with me as well, especially when I went increased my training load a little bit, again, I could definitely tolerate more carbs and still be in ketosis.

Yeah. And you even mention this in the book, like you have a carbohydrate sensitivity quiz. And it's kind of like, I guess it'd be kind of similar. Like Rob Wolf just wrote this new book called Wired to Eat that I interviewed him about, in which he gives all the instructions for getting a blood glucose monitor and just taking every meal that you eat and monitoring your blood sugar response to see your carbohydrate sensitivity. But you guys have a little bit more of like a, I guess just like this really simple quiz approach where if you take this quiz and you have high carbohydrate sensitivity, you might be one of those people who would want to switch to using more of, I guess like Patricia's recipes in the book or doing more of the ketosis instead of the low carb until you can restore some of that insulin sensitivity and carbohydrate sensitivity.

Yeah, exactly.

And that was a wonderful quiz that we borrowed very generously from Dr. Georgia E. For the book. And I think it just gives a good overview as to whether people, as I said, you know, I would have definitely followed a high carb, low fat diet for years. And you know, I think when you, when you make the switch and you cut out carbohydrates and you look at fasting and all the benefits of that. And as Patricia talked about being fat adapted, I think it's amazing how, you know, before I would have concert, I would have eaten breakfast and then, you know, by 11 o' clock would be feeling that slump and tired and cranky and hungry and always Thinking, you know, of the slump and my next meal. Whereas now, you know, to be able to go 24 hours and fast regularly, you know, you just, you feel so much better. And, you know, I just think it's really interesting the way the body can adapt and it just, you know, I think what we find is a lot of people, you know, it can be very, very divisive at the moment between, you know, low carb, ketosis, ketogenic diets, low fat, you know, everything has got very, very controversial. And I think what we find is that, you know, keep saying there isn't the one perfect diet for everyone. It really depends on what suits you. And, you know, the two of us have written this book, but we both eat slightly differently, but the one thing we have in common is just really reducing carbohydrates. And if it suits and you do that quiz and you find out, you know, yes, probably carbs, a high carb diet doesn't suit you. I think it's such a great way to eat and you just, you can feel so good and, you know, there are so many recipes in the book where I suppose you, we can replace things like pizza and so on and so forth and corn flakes, you know, as you touched on earlier, that you can still feel really, really satisfied. And I think you can't forget that eating has to be extremely pleasurable. It's such a wonderful thing to do socially, physically, the whole lot. It's just an incredibly pleasurable thing. And I think for me as a chef, it's really important that all the recipes are really tasty. And I think that we've done that. At least I hope we have.

Yeah, I definitely want to get into some of your recipes, but I actually had a couple other questions, just a couple overview questions for you. One of the things you talk about that I thought was interesting that I haven't seen many people talk about much before is this idea that if you're eating too many calories and you're eating like a higher fat, lower carbohydrate ketogenic diet, excessive calorie consumption on that diet seems to have some pretty significant consequences. Can you go into what happens if you're doing it like, let's say ketogenic diet, but you're just eating like too many damn calories like, like what happens that is unique to eating too many calories on something like a ketogenic diet?

Yeah, it was basically that goes back to a paper that was published in 2012. It was, Tom Seyfried was one of the authors and I think the lead scientist with me, Mightenbauer was his name. And they did show that on an unrestricted ketogenic diet. So when it mouse study, when they could feed as much as they wanted, they developed issues, especially with their lipid profile. I think the mainly triglycerides, they went up as well and they sort of showed the signs of early heart disease as well. So I think it's hard to overeat on a ketogenic diet, but it's definitely possible. That's why we're talking about it. And also the other very interesting thing is, and I often talk with Alex, from a colleague of mine who is based in the uk, he more sort of specializes in athletic performance and ketogenic diet. So he. He.

Did you mean Alessandro Ferretti? That guy? Yeah, I hung out with him. He was at, I think when I was in London at the Biohackers conference in London. He was at that one.

Yeah, that's right, yeah, exactly. So they're doing with Waco, I can't remember his last name. They're doing quite a bit of research into, you know, calories on a ketogenic diet. And what they realized is that if you. And now it's getting a bit nerdy, but if you take the 18 carbons of, you know, fatty acid, so an 18 carbon fatty acid, and you compare that with three, three molecules of glucose, which also then has. It's a six carbon molecules. So three times six is 18 as well. So that you can compare it. And what they saw is that with fatty acid you can yield 120plus ATP molecules of ATP, whereas glucose, which.

Generates more heat when it burns, it's maximum 96. So we also see there that it's actually a more effective, more efficient way of generating energy. And that's why you probably have to reduce your calorie intake so that you can really compare a ketogenic diet with a normal standard diet, especially in trials. I think that's one of the downfalls of some trials as well. And that has never really been explored that way. But if you want to really be genuinely isocaloric. So if you want to compare two diets and the ketogenic diet is one of them, you probably have to go down on the calories. And so that's, you know, I see that all the time as well, because it can be hard to actually.

Really eat all the calories. Your appetite changes, definitely, and not in a negative way. It's just you don't actually feel the need to eat all the time.

Yeah. So that's actually like when you bring up some of the issues with the labs. Like, I see that a lot of times with. With folks who are. I guess you see it more with athletes who are eating a ketogenic diet. You actually see things like really elevated blood glucose and like high LDL and low HDL with high triglycerides. And a lot of these issues that I think come from just like doing the ketosis thing, but just like eating too much, like, just too much food. Like, like, not. Not that the other issue isn't a problem too. You know, people starving themselves into things like amenorrhea and. And, you know, lowerlow thyroid and low testosterone. But yeah, I mean, you can't just like switch to ketosis and just like stuff face with copious amounts of oil in your coffee and you're gonna be good to go. It's a good point that you make in there. Yeah.

Yeah. I think nutrients as well. I mean, so many people still haven't copped on that. You really need to get your nutrients in. If you can tolerate vegetables, please eat your vegetables. And I mean, I know of people who can't. You know, they have salicylate allergy or for whatever reason, they just do not tolerate vegetables. And that's okay. But if you do tolerate them, please eat them.

Yeah, there's actually a really good new book about that, about why a lot of people don't tolerate vegetables and what you can do about that. It's called the plant paradox by Dr. Steven Gundry. It's actually a really good book. Those of you listening, I'll link to anything I mentioned if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.cometoKitch and I'll put that one in there. But you guys, also. One other thing you mentioned that I was kind of curious about because I haven't seen this much, is you're actually recommending that especially like cancer patients steer away from whey protein. Why is it that that would be the case?

Well, again, it depends a little bit. And interestingly, I was talking about this. I was at the conference in Florida, in Tampa in February, the Metabolic Therapeutics Conference. And I was talking to Andrew Kutnik, who specializes in cachexia, so rapid weight loss in cancer patients. And it's a very, very tricky condition. Nobody really knows what to do about it. There's no drugs that can stop it. There's a few things we can do. But in terms of the pharmacist, pharma companies basically are Just pulling their hair out because they can't find what exactly is going on. So it's definitely a lot to do with metabolism, no doubt. And I sort of said, okay, would whey protein have a place there? And he said, they think so. So I think for somebody who is. Who needs that ITF1 boost or insulin boost as well, to put on weight, for instance, it can have its place in cancer patients. But again, I would really do that, you know, with somebody who understands exactly what they're doing. And otherwise, I. And as I just mentioned, it's mainly the IGF one or insulin spike that whey protein can elicit. So that's the main reason.

Okay, gotcha. So, I mean, it's really good, though, because of that. At like, I, you know, I don't. But people I'm helping put on muscle or gain weight. Like, I'm a huge fan of whey protein, but you're just saying, okay, so it's the insulin and the insulin, like, growth factor spike that. That is the reason you're not a fan of it.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, exactly.

Got it.

Because it's one of the pathways for. That can be used for cancer proliferation.

In which case, I'm assuming you would recommend if someone was going to use a protein like a pea or a hemp protein or something like that.

Exactly. Hemp is sort of my preferred. Or there's some mixed mixtures as well, hemp and pea. So, yeah, there's some nice ones out there. So I would go for the plant rather than whey or something else. Yeah, exactly.

Okay. And then also to get into, like, ingredients. You're also one of the sweeteners that you talk about in there. Of course, you mentioned stevia as being something that you utilize a lot in these recipes that I know we're gonna take a dive into some of the tasty recipes here in a little bit. But you also talk about this special kind of syrup. A Y, a C, o N. Is it Yacon?

Yacon syrup. Yeah.

It's quite interesting because Damoni and I, we sort of. First of all, we didn't want to put desserts in there at all because we were sort of. What's the point? Because we actually want people to eat whole foods and to actually steer people away from sweets, so let's just ditch it. And then the publishers were. But you can't really write a cookbook without a section. And then also, in my experience, it can really be the make or break for certain patients if they really have, in their view, nothing to look forward to when it comes to food, they just simply will not go there. And that's why for some people, it's a crutch, and it's a very important crutch. And they need their sweets every now and then. And I do emphasize, please don't make that whatever white chocolate torte every single day. And it really is for special occasions. But yeah, the Yacon soup, it was funny because some of my clients, oh, I can't have honey. I can't have maple syrup. I can't have agave syrup. So what is there left? And we're all about sort of giving people options. And I researched what is there left sort of in terms of, you know, that nice liquidy sweetener. And obviously stevias just drops. It doesn't have the same consistency as some lovely honey or maple syrup. So Yacon syrup is actually the closest. And it has a lot of fructooligosaccharides, which can be really beneficial for the gut and can feed some gut bacteria. I mean, some people do not respond well, but it's like, for instance, inulin as well, or cherisoma artichokes. It could be extremely beneficial for the gut if somebody tolerates it well. And also it seems to have some beneficial effects on metabolism. It's even been sort of. There's even a study into weight loss for your. And yakon syrup. I think that's, you know, I don't know why they did it.

And you can, you can just get like, like, just, just pure raw Yacon syrup off of like, Amazon the same way that you would get like, like, like raw honey, for example.

Yeah, I mean, it's. I can't.

It's available on the health food stores over here, so I'm sure if it's available in Ireland in the health food stores.

Ireland, you can probably find it in the U.S. yeah, anywhere. Exactly, exactly. Although apparently the Guinness is a lot better over there.

Oh, that's true.

Okay, let's start to delve into some of these recipes because there's some unique things in here I wanted to ask you about. So first of all, you talk about toasts toast in the book, like ketogenic toast. How the heck do you actually have toast or make toast on a ketogenic diet? Because we're huge toast fans. At the Green Filled House, my wife makes sourdough bread all the time. It's definitely just like pure carbohydrates. It's not like a ketogenic. But I'm curious, how does one actually do ketogenic toast.

Well, actually, in fairness, there's some fantastic bread recipes.

In the book. And there's a lovely hazelnut bread and there's a lovely coconut focaccia.

We've got time go into how you make that. You don't have to. Obviously, we want people to get the book, but at the same time, I mean, like, fill us in.

Yeah. I think the one that we call toast in, you know, sort of in quotes, in inverted commas, that's the one that is made. It was mainly made with seeds, I think, so sunflower seeds. We're just trying to look it up here. I think it's at the beginning of my part where, you know, you can. It is quite crunchy. You actually. There's quite a lot of cracker recipe and they do come out pretty crunchy, but it's. I mean, that's why you put it into inverted common crackers.

Supposed to be crunchy.

Yeah, exactly. So it's not sort of the nice moist part that your toast would have. But, you know, it's pretty. It comes pretty close. So that's what we use. I have this recipe, I think it's with shiitake mushrooms and maybe eggs as well. And people just say, but what do I eat that way? So that's why.

How do you make the actual toast? Like the bread or whatever, or the crackers? Like, what's the recipe to actually make these things?

There's one recipe for cracking crackers, and that's in my section. And actually they're wonderful when you are craving, like, something to have with cheese or something like that. And they are bound with some psyllium husks and again, a really good selection of seeds, and you bake them until they're really good and crisp. And what I always tell people to do is because you sort of roll them out into a sheet and once they start drying out on the outside, break those bits off and keep cooking them until they're really, really dry and crisp. Make sure you don't put them into an airtight container while they're still warm, otherwise they'll end up soggy. But then they're like toast. But they're fantastic. And, yeah, people, you know, regardless of whether they're following low carb or not, they absolutely adore them. And Patricia is a great one.

The kale crackers, that's what we call what we sell as toast, basically.

So it's kale crackers.

It's kale, yeah. So it's kale, Brazil nuts, sunflower seeds, and then you bind all this with eggs and you put some onion as well and a little bit of coconut oil and then just spices and salt. And so depending on if you make them for kids or for adults, you can vary the spices a little bit. But I actually made them for the school recently I went into my 5 year old's school and the kids just love making those crackers because it's all handiwork and they can just. I prepared everything at home and they're basically like builders, just putting, putting the dough down and just making it as thin as possible. And then you just put it in the oven and you make sure, as somebody said, you just sort of take off.

On the edges initially when it's really nice and crisp and then the middle sometimes takes a bit longer. But they're really lovely and most kids just in the school, they absolutely adore them. And mom's told me they're making them at home now, especially because it could involve the kids. It. Yeah, so that's kale crackers for instance. And then we've got some other recipe. We've got about three or four different cracker recipes and then bread as well. And they're all they are mainly, you know, there's vegetables, quite a bit of vegetables in them and then. Or nuts and seeds as well.

Okay.

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All right, earmuffs for the kids, you guys. Earmuffs for the kids. As you've probably heard me talk about before, the fitness industry is full of a lot of bullshit, including the fact that celebrities are out there trumping their workouts as the go to workout that's going to get you the perfect magazine cover model look. But in fact, either those celebrities aren't doing the actual workout that you're reading about, or they're doing that, but also injecting testosterone up their right butt cheek and engaging in all manner of other risky business to really truly get the body that you're seeing on Hollywood. Not to mention a little bit of photoshopping and airbrushing involved. Anyways though, I have a couple of friends. Well, more than a couple. I've got three guys who I turn to when it comes to kind of like peeling back some of the deep and dirty and dark secrets of the fitness industry. And these guys do a pretty good job of it. They're more willing to piss people off than I am, frankly. And they do so in their show. It's called Mind Pump. Mind Pump. You should check these guys out. Mindpumpmedia.com and if you want to listen to an episode that is a perfect example of what I just explained to you, you should go listen to episode on Zac Efron's Baywatch workout. Not only Are these cats funny? But they also do a really, really good job just basically ripping to shreds all of the problems in the fitness and the health and the nutrition industry. They're really cool dudes. So check out episode 518. Be a good place to start. Mindpumpmedia.com or on iTunes. Zac Efron's Baywatch workout is the one that I would check out. So. So again, it's Mind Pump is the podcast. You'll like it.

And do you do like, like, instead of crackers, do you do any actual like, like breads at all? Or is it pretty much impossible to have like a, like an actual high fat, low carb bread?

No, it is. There's a hazelnut bread and you can make it with any type of nuts. I actually had somebody email me. Hazelnuts are so expensive at the moment. Can I take anything else? You can use almond butter or cashew butter or whatever. Obviously the carb content will vary a little bit, but it's lovely. Totally looks like a bread. It's got the texture of a bread and with a bit of butter, for instance, it's lovely. And for my kids, I just then put.

Something sweet on top or whatever. So it is a family friendly bread. And then we've got muffins as well with coconut. Flour is very, is very handy for muffins and breads as well. So I usually use those.

Yeah, the vegetable muffins are fantastic because you can also do them in a loaf and it's just a load of carrots, spinach, red onions, courgette, or what you would call zucchini and garlic. And then a lot of melted butter, which just gives it just such great flavor. And some coconut milk and a lot of egg. And it's almost like a cross between a sort of quiche slash muffin. But these are wonderful. And you could do it in a whole loaf and do slices of it. So again, it's like, you know, I think as Patricia was referring to earlier, about us being reluctant to put in desserts and sweet things, you know, I think it's great though to have things like this, especially for vessels, you know, for things like butterfly or cheese or something, or, you know, different dips, lovely pesto dips and so on that we have. And those are the things sometimes you really miss when you are eating low carb. You know, as you were talking about your wife making sourdough. I'd eat sourdough morning, noon and night if I could. I absolutely adore it.

But it's one of those things that you really miss. And I think if you have good replacements like that that are low carb, it just really can kind of help you stay on track.

Okay, what about cereal? Because I kind of like quit eating cereal for a really long time. I used to actually make oatmeal every morning. And my oatmeal recipe was just like steel cut oats and water. And then I put as much speak of the devil whey protein in there as possible. And then like three scoops of peanut butter and some cinnamon. And I'd microwave that for about four minutes until it like basically made like a cookie in a giant bowl. And that was like my breakfast for probably like three years. Back when I used to race a lot of triathlon. Like that's just like what I ate every morning. And now, now I have like a plant based kind of like high fat smoothie. But I do like cereal like, like I, you know, I grew up eating Captain Crunch, of course, peanut butter Captain Crunch. And you actually have like a cereal recipe in the book. I think it, I think it's like a cornflake recipe or something like that. But can you go into how one would actually do cereal?

Well, we have corn flakes and then also granola. The granola is lovely too.

So delicious. The granola is amazing.

The keto corn flakes, it's basically coconut flakes, which I think are brilliant also, even for snacks. They are very satisfying. And then also some flaked almonds and then cinnamon. And then we have, it's a protein coconut shake basically because it would be quite low in protein. The coconut shake is then with. We have Sun Warrior using here or I like new zest as well with coconut milk or almond milk or, you know, whatever people like. So that goes on top then.

Okay, so it's just like basically coconut flakes and then like nuts like almonds. And then you kind of like cover that with like coconut milk or whatever. You throw some cinnamon in there. And there's pretty much like no grains or no, it's like just like a bunch of crunchy stuff. Stuff.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

You know what I'd throw in there if it were me is I would throw, I would throw. Because they are kind of high fat and they're really crunchy and they taste great. I would throw cacao nibs in there.

Yeah, that'd be great too.

Yeah, really good.

Yeah, maybe book number two.

Pay me royalty on that recipe. Okay. I've got another one that a lot of people kind of like quit eating when they quit eating, you know, a high carb diet. And that would be pizza. How do you do pizza? How do you do like a low carbohydrate pizza, especially when it comes to the crust?

Yeah, well this is one. So we have two different types of pizza. We have one vegetarian one which is a cauliflower base. And my sister in law, she's a chef over in New York and for years she was vegan and raw food enthusiastic. She wrote a fantastic book with Natalia Rose and so she gave me the recipe for this cauliflower pizza and it's brilliant. You just blitz raw cauliflower until it becomes sort of breadcrumb like and then you bind it with some soft goat cheese and egg and then you spread it out and you blind bake it. So you bake it in the oven until it dries out a bit and it forms this wonderful base. And then you can top it with a really simple tomato sauce that you make. You know, sauteing off some onions, adding some tomatoes and red pepper loaded thyme and some garlic and then making some courgette ribbons and topping it with a little goat's cheese and a little drizzle olive oil. And that's a fantastic, really nice vegetarian kind of pizza that is also really good. The next day cold. But the other pizza that we have is a meat pizza. And this is one of Patricia's recipes.

And I got a lot of slacking for you. Dominique can't possibly put this in the book.

I was horrified, I was absolutely horrified when I read it. And I tease her, I say it's like her Homer Simpson pizza because the base is made with ground or minced lamb or beef and you mix it with some whole grain mustard and herbs and so on and you just flatten it out and, and you bake it and then we top it with a lovely sauteed mixture of spinach and mushrooms and then some artichoke hearts and a little Parmesan or Manchego pizza. We also put it sort of instead of the tomato sauce, this lovely hemp and sun dried tomato pesto that we've a recipe for. And when we were, when we finished writing the book, we were shooting some videos and we made this pizza and I swear all the cameramen and the lighting guys just basically they were in, they were just eating this meat pizza thinking, yeah, basically declaring their love for.

Patricia, I need to give it to my wife. Because like, you know, in addition to the flax and coconut focaccia bread which you make with like milled Flax seeds and cocoa and chia. It looks like your pizza base is just basically ground up almonds and ground up Brazil nuts and butter, and you just basically mix. So what you do is you mix. Okay. You mix all that together.

Yeah, that's the recipe.

I think that's another one. That's like a kind of tart base.

It sort of looks like a quiche.

No, it's like the pizza base that you have in here is. You mix.

Oh, yeah, we have another one.

Yeah, that's how. Yeah, you mix almonds and you mix Brazil nuts. Then you add the egg and you add the water, and that's the dough. It's just like nuts and egg and water. And then you put that in the oil pan and you bake it. And. Oh, it looks like you put coconut flour and salt in there, too. And then you just bake that. And that's your base for the pizza hunger.

Pizza, I think. Yeah, exactly.

There's like, no flour.

Yeah, yeah.

It's incredibly rich. So, you know, if anybody says, oh, well, I need to put on weight, what to eat, you know, that's. That could be the one. But I think, yeah, it's the nutty pizza base. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, that's a really. That's a really nice one as well. And I always sort of. I actually. I think that freezes really well, that pizza base. So I always check does it freeze or not, because I like to make double the amount of mind. And yeah, that's a really nice one, too. Especially three pizzas. Three pizza bases that we have in.

The book, which is not bad considering it's all low carb or ketogenic. It's a pretty good strike rate.

I know. It just like I love reading books like this and then going in the kitchen, figure out how to. How to put it. Because my wife has. Has a pantry full of every single, like, flour, like coconut and banana or breadfruit and almond flour. And she has all this. This stuff because she cooks a lot more than I do. But I like to go in and tinker when I read books like this and see what I can make in the process. My boys and I both. You also have something in there. Speaking of tinkering with new recipes called Tamaki T E M A K I. I'd never really heard of tamaki.

Tamaki.

Yeah. What is that? And then what's the recipe? And why is this included in there? Because it looks really simple, but I wanted to ask you about it.

Yeah, yeah. It's sort of inspired By Japanese. I love sushi and Japanese food. Food. And they generally fill it with lots of rice. So, you know, it would be a typical temak recipe would be. It's, you know, the nori seaweed that is on the outer. So you usually use it as a wrap. So the seaweed is your wrap.

Right.

And it actually looks like a thin wrap. And so traditionally they would put lots of, you know, rice and avocado and fish and different things that wouldn't be very keto friendly. But what we did is we put. You can pretty much put anything. But we have roast chicken and then spinach and pesto. So Japanese people probably pull their hair out.

But it's just a really quick lunch. I usually. I always have pesto in the fridge. That's just always a given. And we have several pesto recipes in the book. And most people have a bit of spinach as well. And so it's really sort of a leftover recipe where you can just use your imagination and just take the seaweed and stuff it with whatever you want. And we just give a bit of inspiration there. And yeah, it could be a complete meal because we sort of use a bit of coconut oil to fry the chicken. Leftover chicken and spinach.

It's basically, you know, in looking over it because it's like a meat. And usually what I use is sardines. Sardines for lunch. But I'll just take sardines with a few vegetables and I wrap them up in seaweed. But I actually do use rice. I use a rice made from Japanese yam. It's no calories and there's no carbs. It's made by this company called Miracle Noodles. And so I wrap that. I wrap that as my rice up in the seaweed wrap. And so I still get kind of like that, that filler in the seaweed. I'm getting hungry talking about it because it's almost lunchtime. Make some after this. But, yeah, I mean, that's how I get the rice component. Have you tried this before? These Japanese yam noodles?

Yeah, the shirataki. We actually have a recipe in there as well. For shirataki noodles. Yeah. And you need to wash them really well, otherwise they smell like rotten eggs. I always warn people when they open the package, but we have a recipe in there as well. We're just trying to find it. And, yeah, it's shirataki.

Yeah. I mean, that's something like, I always have those shirataki fettuccine and shirataki capellini. Shirataki spaghetti, shirataki rice. Like, I have a whole box of it in my pantry that I'm constantly dipping into. My wife doesn't care for it too much, but like, my, my, my boys don't mind it. And we even did like a. We did. My boys last year at the Paleo FX conference actually taught a cooking class class. And their cooking class was they made pad thai, but they actually used these shirataki noodles for the pad Thai and it was really good. They also used instead of chicken crickets of all things. So it was like a cricket shirataki noodle recipe. I have it set like if you go to Ben Green Fitness, actually I'll link to it in the show notes. If anybody listening in wants my kids pad thai recipe with the miracle noodles, I'll put it in there.

And again, go to Ben Green.

Ketokitchen for any of this stuff. Let's talk about one of those things that I think is super popular, of course, among this whole ketogenic low carb diet movement. And that's coffee. You have in the book a little bit of a discussion about coffee and specifically the fact that you found a lot of your clients complain about nausea or bloating or a lack of appetite for a long time after consuming the traditional kind of like, I guess, bulletproof coffee recipe. And instead, hopefully Dave doesn't care about us saying this too much. You instead have your recipe for bulletproof ish coffee. What is bulletproof ish coffee?

Yeah, we basically, I mean, obviously, you know Dave, you can't just take exactly his recipe, but it's, it's such a big thing now. And what, what I like is, or what a lot of my clients like is just to reduce dairy a little bit. So we just use different kinds of fat in this particular coffee. So it's. I think Dave uses MCT oil. MCT oil. And does he use coconut oil? I don't even know.

Well, coconut oil or like brain, like ca. Mct, brain octane type of stuff.

Yeah, yeah, we talk about. Yeah, exactly. We talk about mct. And I mean, I have to say most people, they're okay to tolerate his mct, the brain octane. But any other ones, sometimes they can, you know, if they're probably more C10s than C8 or whatever is in there, or it's not quite as pure, it can cause, in some very sensitive people, it can cause significant actually diarrhea or just cramps. So we were a bit careful not to, you know, just go gung ho with that. And Just get everybody to use it without giving a bit of a caveat. So some people, obviously coconut oil is not the same as MCT oil. There's a lot of lauric acid as well. It's not pure. And other fatty acids. It's not pure mct.

You know, for some people it's. And we also use cocoa butter in there. But, you know, it always depends. Some people say, I find it really, really helpful to help elevate my ketones and it doesn't.

Insulin. So some people, they find it easier to actually ease into fasting that way just by having a bulletproof coffee in the morning, because they couldn't just have nothing at all. And so. So for some people, I think it definitely has a place. It's really good. But again, it's just liquid calories. So if somebody say, has to lose a bit of weight, which actually.

Can.

Be the case with some cancer patients, obviously not losing muscle or whatever, but.

It certainly doesn't do any harm. I prefer that they actually eat food rather than eat calories in food form rather than drinking it, because it's very easy, as we discuss discussed earlier, than to just go shoot overboard, especially if somebody is a bit of an emotional eater or coffee drink.

Yeah. So basically it's just like your hot coffee or your tea and you're mixing it with coconut oil, with butter and with cocoa butter. Those are like the three main components.

Yeah, exactly.

But we also have. There's a keto coffee as well where make it with some actually tinned coconut milk and coconut oil and.

And a little vanilla.

So there's two, two different variations of it. And yeah, it's sort of one of those things. I think it's like a lot of these things, they become fads and people kind of go crazy for them. And then you hear people like literally, as you said earlier, adding sticks of butter to the coffee and eating loads and everything, you're kind of going, you're missing the point. This is, you know, if you have just endless calories and endless amounts, you know, it's hard and people do need to balance it. And I think it goes back to what Patricia is saying, like trying to eat real food where you know that it's really nutrient dense is probably a better way to go.

Yeah. Well, for those of you listening in, from no grain nut kale and seed bread, which you have to try to white chocolate, to banana ice cream, to a whole host of things you never would have thought that you could eat on, on a low carb ketogenic diet, they're all in here and it's a really well done book with amazing pictures. So it's going to be over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com ketokitchen if you want to add this one to your pantry, I think it's a great addition. And Patricia and Domini, it was really nice to have your fantastic, lulling Irish accents on the show today. And thank you for writing this this book. It really is a great read. I thought when I got it was just going to be yet another cookbook, but it's actually got some really tasty, unique, low carb recipes in here. So nice job and thanks for coming on the show.

Thank you very much for having us. It's been a pleasure talking to you. It really has.

Awesome. All right, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Patricia and Domini, authors of the Ketogenic Kitchen. Check it out@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Ketokitchen signing out. Have a healthy week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

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