Healing Foods That Taste Great

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

I realized this is why I'm doing what I'm doing. If we can get people to understand they can cook meals that are going to give them a lot more energy, a lot more clarity, a better night's sleep, stronger during the day, and have fun and really enjoy the taste. This is a quite exciting mission.

Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark. Now there's so much debate in the diet world about eating meat, but whether you're vegan, paleo, or Pegan like me, One thing we can absolutely agree on is that conventionally raised feedlot meat is dangerous for our health and the planet and just an awful way to raise animals. For those of us who do eat meat, we can actually do it in a way that benefits the environment, the climate, and our bodies if we choose animals that are regeneratively raised. And one of the pioneers in making regeneratively raised meat more accessible is Belcampo, which you may have heard me mention recently on the podcast when I interviewed their founder, Anya Fernald. Belcampo is the leader of hyper sustainable, organic, grass-fed and finished certified humane meats, bros and jerkies. They're revolutionizing the meat industry for the well-being of the planet, for the people and the animals by farming meat the right way with humane, regenerative and climate positive practices. Now, Belcampo believes in letting animals grow slowly and naturally, letting them graze on open pastures and seasonal grasses resulting in meat that is higher in nutrients and healthy fats. They have the data to back that up too. Their grass-fed and grass-finished beef averages a healthy 1 to 1.2 omega-3 to omega-6 ratio, which is better than other brands of grass-fed beef and much better than conventional beef. Their pasture chicken has 20% more protein per serving than conventional chicken, and their meats have more antioxidants, vitamin E, C, and B, and minerals. Plus, the way they raise their animals is actually carbon negative. this is some seriously good meat. Right now you can order Belcampo sustainably raised meats to be delivered to your door using my code HYMAN at www.belcampo.com/hyman for 20% off first time customers. That's www.belcampo.com/hyman with the code HYMAN for 20% off your first order. I highly recommend checking out Belcampo and feeling great about the meat that you eat. Now let's get back to this week's episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

Hi, I'm Kaya Perowich, one of the producers of the Doctor's Pharmacy podcast. Using food as medicine is an empowering way to take care of your health every single day. But many of us are in an identity crisis when it comes to what we eat. In this conversation with celebrated chef David Bouley, Dr. Hyman discusses how we can.

Eat foods that feed our health and get incredible flavor all at once. You've gone all over the world. You've explored cuisines from everywhere. You've looked at ingredients that nobody's using and you brought them into your restaurants. I've eaten the food. It's unbelievable. And for example, you have crackers that are made from Kuzu, which is a root, a Japanese root.

It's like a starchy thing. More of a vine.

It's more fiber than starch. And tell us about Kuzu. It's delicious. And what does it do?

And Well, Kuzu goes back 1000 years in Japan. In fact, I went to a 14th generation family in the mountains in the south of Japan, and they have an early black and white photograph of one of the emperors where they were picking up blocks of Kuzu, and this saved this man's life. He had a problem, digestive problem. The samurai would suck on the branches, when they had digestive problems or colds or other issues, and they were constantly healed from the kuzu.

It's only the gut.

It's only been used for 30 years, 35 years in cuisine, even in Japan, or longer in monasteries. Because when you go through a monastery or you have a cleanse of your soul and your spirit, the first thing you eat is kuzu noodles. So that's where I was introduced to them by Mr. Suji from Suji Cooking School, who has the biggest school in the world. He's in Osaka and Tokyo. a dear friend, and he exposed me to that. And then I brought it back and I was making desserts for different people using no sugar and I was using no gelatin because Kuzu will set up. If you can make noodles, you can make cornstarchy thing. Yeah, it's way better. Yeah, it's not something that has a effect of glycemic. Yeah. It's not those level of carbohydrates.

Yeah.

So again, it's higher fiber. The mystery is that it stabilizes blood sugar. Doesn't reduce blood sugar, will stabilize it. and we've wired people up and I've cooked for them with those, I don't know if we have them yet, those- Continuous glucose monitors. Yeah, yeah, right. Are they here yet? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so we didn't see any movement.

Yeah.

Doesn't change your blood sugar. No, so eating crackers. Right. And the story, well we make bread out of it, crackles, make noodles. You're gonna have it tonight, three or four courses. Ooh. The evidence was particularly with Lou Reed one night was eating in the private room, And his friends had a tasty menu, but he didn't want to eat. And he had-- you- took a walk on the wild side? Yeah, he took a walk on the wild side. He wanted to be empty because he was doing an album the next morning in Brooklyn, probably really early in the morning. And he, you know, like an athlete, didn't want to go with food. So I made this orange where I cooked the orange juice down, thickened with the coulis, put the wedges in, put it in the martini glass, put it in the refrigerator, let it set up, put lychee sorbet and granulated honey. so there's three forms of sugar there. Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't have anything outside of those three elements except for kuzu. Yeah. Right. Now he had one because they made it for him one time before. And then he ordered another one. Then he went home and checked blood sugar because he was diabetic. Yeah. And he couldn't believe that his brother sugar was stable. He hadn't eaten anything else. I remember said 8 hours at least. And I think he was going to do the album only 3 or 4 hours after this. This could have been even the people that he was going to work with. But they had the long tasting menu. So we're closed on Sunday. We're open on Monday. He's looking for me. And I didn't realize how important it was for me to answer this question when he grabbed my arm and said, I want to know what you did to me. I want to know what you did to me. My blood sugar. So at that point, that was like 15 years ago. We started to study. And even going back to Japan, we had to work with folks. Some of them had some knowledge on it, some of them hadn't. Yeah. So that would be, you know, an example of a culture of food or cuisine that can translate into another culture without having side effects.

I mean, the whole idea of chef and doctor, really, they are the same. And in order for a doctor to be a healer, he needs to learn how to use food as medicine. In order for chefs to create amazing, delicious food that heals, you need to understand food is medicine.

Food is extremely powerful. And if your sugar is high after a meal, your food didn't service you. I realized this is why I'm doing what I'm doing. If we can get people to understand they can cook meals that are going to give them a lot more energy, a lot more clarity, a better night's sleep, stronger during the day, and have fun, and really enjoy the taste, this is a quite exciting mission.

In fact, the flavors in the food, it actually is where the health benefits are.

Right.

Right.

Which is people don't realize, and it's not the crappy flavors we use in America, it's the true flavor of real food.

Find those foods that perform like saffron. Saffron is extremely healthy for you, particularly for your eyes. But a lot, or vanilla bean, a vanilla bean is a pre and a probiotic. It's a fermented bean. And if everybody wants to know more about fermented foods, well, take the fermented bean out of the sugar and maybe use it in cuisine. So that would be an example. So how do we get these things to become building blocks, which people can execute under their own design? For instance, turmeric oil, curcumin, all the benefits, right? Yeah. Yeah, when Dr. Steg, neurosurgeon, he was the president of Cornell Medicals, I believe. I think he just changed. He did a Chef and Doctor series, and I had just presented them, I've done over 800 oils. In fact, the Crohn's people, when I have a problem with someone who has Crohn's, I'll use a lot of peppermint oil and oregano oil. Now, peppermint oil is very good for the digestive system. It helps the mucus lining, but it's very bad if you have acid reflux. So, it's the bottom half, not the upper half. So, that would be an example of clarity that we need to have in the building blocks.

But, when I did the turmeric oil.

Which I've been doing since 87. Infuse oil with turmeric, which is actually.

Needed to absorb the tumor.

Right. It's a fat-soluble vegetable that has to be in a fat medium to have your absorption. To get into bioavailability stage, you have to have it in fat medium. So here's, we didn't really talk, Dr. Steg and I, but I started to show that 10 minutes and I talk about what I'm doing here with the chef and doctor series and nine minutes into his lecture, He's describing India having one of the lowest Alzheimer's disease in the world, because he ate a lot of curry and curry is turmeric and turmeric is curcumin and that goes into ghee. Ghee, which is a butter and oil and fat. So if I can make turmeric oil for you and you can come on from a crowd of life, boil some pasta, put a tablespoon of that on, mix it around a little bit, starts to smell great, put some toasted pine nuts for some protein, some good fats, a little parsley, and maybe a little grated cheese, You're gonna sit down and talk to yourself, but you're gonna have a meal that's engineered for health. And you do it yourself in less than eight minutes. So that's how the building blocks will be used. Ceylon cinnamon is another one. We make oil out of that.

Ceylon will help people with a fatty liver. Oh my God, I can't wait for this book because this is gonna be really building blocks to create food as medicine and infuse all these different ingredients.

That we know are healing into recipes that people can make at home.

Right.

Food is not just calories or energy, food is information, and it is the most powerful medicine that we have to heal chronic disease. Dr. Hyman discussed this in his conversation with world-renowned physician, scientist, speaker, and author of Eat to Beat Disease, Dr. William Lee.

Well, as we've been talking about, food as medicine is very natural in most parts of the world. And I think just sort of in our society, we've lost touch with things. Earlier we were talking about chefs getting into this, this whole farm to table movement. Yeah, well that's what it used to be for everybody. We only ate stuff that was growing around us and we ate it because it tasted great because it was rich with these polyphenols and flavonoids. And by the way, you know, these bioactives that are natural chemicals and foods, what do they do? It's really interesting when you think about health defense. Most of the bioactives that are found in foods evolved in the plant, plant-based foods to protect the plant. So either they were natural insecticides or they helped to attract bees and other insects so they'd pollinate so they could reproduce. Right.

So when or protect them from elements.

Or protect them from the elements of damage, make them stronger, right? So then when humans started to eat these plant-based foods, then these natural chemicals had another job description, which is they interacted with our human cells. And because they were already engineered to be protective, the ones that were useful to us and we developed this relationship with our plant-based foods also help us. And so there's really not a lot of surprise if you really take the large view of what we're finding out. What we need to do now though is actually to help everyone understand that the knowledge is around us for us to help ourselves. And if you're interested in the science, it's an evolving science. Yes, we have health defense systems. Health isn't the absence of disease. It's our body working full steam, cranking along, and you can take chronic diseases and you can prevent, treat, or even reverse them by activating your defense systems using food. And whether you're healthy or sick, every person can take a decision three times a day to really enhance their health and you don't need a doctor's prescription. So, what do we now know about food? We know that foods can actually boost our immune system. I mentioned oysters. It's quite amazing that actually oysters have polysaccharides, these long sugars and proteins that actually can help boost our immune system.

Oysters and oyster mushrooms.

And oyster mushrooms, yep, exactly. And then, you know, our microbiome, talks to our immune system. So here's the pomegranates and here's the mushrooms again that help our microbiome to actually boost our immunity. And then we do know that there are other foods that can calm our immune system. So tea, for example, green tea can not only help boost our immune system, but it can calm it if it's overly active. So people talk about inflammation, right? And sometimes we use inflammation in sort of this broad sweeping statement. Inflammation, a little bit of it, the ability to have it is good. You need inflammation, a little bit, but you still want too much of it. And so there are foods that can calm and quell inflammation as well. And that's important if you have autoimmune disease.

Like?

Well, so again, tea is one of those foods that can actually lower your immunity. not your entire immune system, but just the inflammatory component.

Yeah.

Because those catechins actually can actually help to quell things.

So, I was talking to a gastroenterologist from Harvard. He was saying, yeah, they use curcumin and green tea extracts as ways of treating colitis.

That's right. Well, I mean, so curcumin is an interesting one because when you eat this yellow natural spice powder, which is delicious, by the way, it can be produced.

You know, from curry.

Right. Curry powders. It tends to go right to our system out the other end unless you have it with fresh cracked black pepper. I don't know if you know about this, but basically if you have fresh cracked black pepper, you actually help your intestines get activated so it absorbs more of the curcumin from the turmeric. So again, this is- and also traditionally like in India they used to make.

Oil with the tea and turmeric. That's right. In fact, I'm writing a cookbook called Food, what the Heck Should I Cook? And I've invited chefs to contribute recipes in David Boulet created this amazing thing called turmeric oil. And it's a special infused oil with turmeric that actually helps to activate all the inflammation fighting properties.

And, you know, it's so interesting you mentioned that because combinations of foods can be really important. You know, for example, tomatoes which contain lycopene, most people don't realize that if you pick a tomato off a vine and you eat it like an apple, you get the vitamins from the tomato, but the lycopene actually is in a natural form that the body doesn't really like to absorb. It's called the transform. If you heat the tomato and cook it, you gently change the chemistry into another form. That's why they love to absorb. But, it's still fat soluble. So, if you actually cook the tomato slowly with olive oil, a healthy oil, it's fat soluble and then you eat that together, now your body really loves to absorb it.

Sounds good.

So, right, like, and again, back to the Mediterranean and, or, you know, in Asia, too, there's combinations that work. Let's go back and look at what the people from olden times knew. Like, I think that, you know, we're forward looking. I'm a researcher, so I'm always looking at the latest new thing. But I think there's great value in looking back at the ancient cultures, the ancient recipes. You know, we've probably forgotten more than we have to learn. But we still have a lot to learn. So, we should all work together, find ways to apply our knowledge so that everybody can benefit from the most advanced knowledge possible. And, you know, actually honestly for the average person, they shouldn't have to think too much about it. It should be natural all around them. They should be doing the things they like, be moderate and actually do it for a long time.

Well, it's tough because we're not educated about it. We don't learn about it. The environment of our food is so toxic. We live in a nutritional wasteland where to try to find something that's good for you is really he talk?

Well, that's what we've done, and that's what we've done for ourselves. But I'm saying that the health is an invisible thing. And that's why we need to think through what our health actually means. And because we're against really a brick wall almost every single day in, you know, modern society with everything we've done to the environment and to the stress that we put ourselves in, just living life in general, you know, the odds are kind of stacked against us unless we take our own Control.

Food has the power to prevent and reverse disease, and it's been shown that the more people prepare meals at home, the healthier their diets are. There can be so many powerful and delicious benefits waiting for you in each bite. The more we learn about using food as medicine, the more power we have to reach our health goals. If you'd like to learn more about anything you heard in today's episode, I encourage you to check out Dr. Hyman's full-length conversations with Chef David Boulet and Dr. William Lee. If you liked this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or leaving us a comment below. Until next time.

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