LS 137 - Maria Emmerich and Her Ketogenic Recipes

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This is Jason Hartman. Welcome to the Longevity and Biohacking Show. Occasionally we have a guest host and today we have Fernando guest hosting for me. So I hope you enjoy this episode. It's fascinating. Dive in and enjoy and make sure you Visit us@hartmanmedia.com to check out all of our great shows and be sure you have actually subscribed to to the show so you don't miss any episodes.

Hello everyone, this is your host Fernando Aris in partnership with the Hartment Media Company. It is my pleasure to welcome Maria Emrick today. Maria is the international best selling author of the Ketogenic Cookbook which focuses on low carb, high fat, Paleo style meals. These are nutritious and delicious recipes for food that tastes good and also good for you. Her book includes a foreword by Dr. William Davis. For those who are not familiar with Dr. Davis, he's a cardiologist and author of health books such as the Wheat Belly series with a stance against what he calls modern wheat, what essentially is perfect chronic poison according to Dr. Davis and I tend to agree with him. Maria's book also has excerpts from Dr. David Perlmuter. Dr. Perlmuter is a neurologist and author of the New York Times bestseller Brain Brain, Very very famous book. Maria also authored eight other books including several cookbooks and three nutritional guidebooks including Secrets to a Healthy Metabolism. Her blog on her site includes a unique combination of recipes using alternative ingredients to less healthy options and easy to understand explanations of why these options are better for our health. What's interesting to me when reading Maria books is that she includes with each recipe kind of a snippet of information about different ailments and problems with our health that can be healed with proper nutrition. Maria, how are you today?

Oh, I'm fantastic. I'm so grateful to be on your show. Thank you for asking me.

Well, we're very happy to have you. I have quite a bit of questions for you, so I hope you're ready.

I hope you're ready. Yes, I am.

All right, so the first one I know that as you were growing up, you struggled with your weight and therefore decided to take basically matters into your own hands by studying health and wellness. Were you gaining weight while eating low fat foods and exercising? Basically following the USDA recommendations in the Standard American Diet?

I was. I was running marathons and gaining weight like a banshee, following all the guidelines that I should be eating, you know, like special K whisk and milk. And I felt awful. I went to the doctor because I had ibs, I was depressed, I didn't feel well. And I left the doctor with three medications, three prescription medications. But that same week I went to the vet because my dog was losing patches of her hair. And the first question the veterinarian asked me was, what are you feeding her now? Once was I asked that by my doctor and immediately I changed both my doggies diet and myself and started to really see food as thy medicine. And I'm not quite 40. However, I feel better now than I did when I was a teenager, than I did was in my twenties, all just by changing my diet. I never once took a prescription that she gave me. I just decided to do this with food. And I like to call this the happy diet because so many people are getting off of antidepressants and feeling like a million bucks again and getting away from that low fat mentality.

Yeah, isn't that amazing? I see so many testimonials and people that I personally know that got off the, you know, basically we were brainwashed. And most people still are thinking that the USDA pyramid of carbohydrates as a main source of fuel is just so wrong. You can see the rates of obesity and diabetes in society and, you know, the longevity numbers are actually going down now. I mean, it all has to do with the diet. And I'm so glad you were doing something. You're right in the thick of it with your cookbooks and talking about ketogenic diets and the benefits of it. It's clear to me that you have a passion, right, for helping people start a healthier lifestyle, mostly through food. And it seems like weight loss is really a side effect of helping treat a number of problems. Like, you know, we talked about diabetes and even cholesterol autoimmune diseases in general, isn't it?

Absolutely. I mean, I grew up really heavy and I grew up loving food. I will always love food. And I don't want to live off of salads the rest of my life. You know, the typical diet type foods. And so I like to recreate Some of our favorite comfort foods or whatever it is, into ketogenic foods, so. Because it's hard to stay on a diet if you're eating chicken breast and broccoli all the time. Like, nobody wants to do that.

Yeah, it's too plain.

And I don't. No, I don't eat even, like, chicken. I haven't had that in years, you know, But I actually, you know, just getting into the kitchen, nothing warms my heart more than spending the day in the kitchen with my kids and creating different recipes that people really enjoy. And then getting to see it all come together in a book is really fun. And then hearing about, you know, I never thought I could do this. And what ended up happening was about 10 years ago, my husband lost his job, and we lost just about everything. At the time, I was a rock climbing guide, and someone said, well, Maria, you've been putting all these recipes together. Why don't you write a cookbook and people can buy it to help raise money for your adoption? Because my health ailments caused pcos and that took my fertility. And that's why I'm really passionate, because I don't like people wasting their time, whether it be bad information or not, having the tools to change their fate in time. And maybe someone will be able to have a baby because I helped them change their life sooner rather than later. But anyway, it was all meant to be. My kids are fantastic. But I was so grateful that it went game busters. People bought the books and they loved them. And we were able to adopt our children. We were able to have a new house because we lost everything. And at the time, people would say everything happens for a reason. And, you know, I never wanted to hear that. But honestly, it was almost meant to be.

Isn't that interesting? Sometimes what we think is the worst actually turns out to be the best.

Yes.

It just opens new doors. And like you were describing, you probably wouldn't be talking to me now, you know, without going through what you went through with the adoption.

Absolutely.

You know, starting basically a new life with that.

Yeah.

I'm so glad that you're doing well. It seems like, you know, we've had guests in the show before that talked about the ketogenic lifestyle. You certainly focus on it in the programs you offer through your site. But let's explain a little bit what that means, especially from your point of view. What is your take on the ketogenic diet? Is this for everybody and who benefits from it?

Well, I believe it's for everybody. Like I said, Even my kids eat this way. It's more of a traditional way of eating. You could either run on glucose for energy or you could run on ketones. Now, glucose is a short lived fuel and that's why you're told that you need to eat every two to three hours. It's because you can't store that much. However, if you are eating a ketogenic diet, you have thousands and thousands of calories as fat on your body to use for fuel. But you need to be able to tap into that fat for fuel if you're eating sugar. When I say sugar, I mean carbohydrates, because they become the same thing in our bloodstream. Ask any diabetic. And a cracker, even though it's not sweet, that turns into sugar in your bloodstream. And when you're constantly eating those types of food, you know, we call you sugar burners or, you know, you're running off of glucose and you can't tap into your fat stores for, you know, making ketosis, it's going to utilize either your muscle or your bone tissue for more energy when you run out. But when you switch by lowering those carbohydrates as much as possible, getting your protein in, there's a specific protein goal that I like to aim for. It's about 0.7 times your lean mass and you hit that goal. So you keep your muscle mass. And then eating fat to satiety, you will be in ketosis.

Yep. And you mentioned your kids. How old are they and how long have they been eating ketogenic? And, and what is a typical. I guess you have many recipes, but maybe you can just give the audience a sense of what it really means. You know, maybe breakfast, lunch and dinner, kind of what normally is the, you know, your staple.

Absolutely. They're six and eight. They have been eating keto. My son Kai, who's six, he came into our life when he was just a baby and so he's been eating keto since, basically came into our life. His first food was bone broth. Besides, my friend donated her breast milk and then it was bone broth. And even when there I would make bone marrow. That was a great first food for them. They loved mashed avocado. My son yesterday had sardines for a snack, which I'm super proud that he.

Still loves those because most kids don't.

Yeah, no, but when you really start them off early, I mean, you're forming their palate, I mean, you are in charge. They don't know what a french fry is. Until you give it to them.

And sure enough, if you do give, or if parents do give, very salty and very sugary foods, the pellets adjust to that. And now they don't taste the subtle taste of a vegetable. And the body almost requires that level of saturation in order to even make the food taste good.

Yeah, there's a really cool book called the Dorito Effect on that. But when you start them off early enough, you're in charge of changing their palate. And I have wonderful parents, but I grew up on cereal and skim milk, and I grew up in Medford, Wisconsin, which is where the first frozen pizza was invented. My dad actually worked at the bar that was across from the graveyard. And so we lived off of frozen pizza. And so we make our own frozen pizza at home. And that's something that we do as a family. Talking to different psychologists about having family meal time. It's not actually eating together that's the most important, but it's spending time. So if your schedules don't work out, I think it's really effective to teach your kids to cook healthy and prepare meals. And we always make big batches because I know families are busy. And so when we do get everything out to make pizzas, we make about 12 of them, and then we freeze them just like frozen pizzas. And then it's really easy because I'm a busy working mom. We homeschool our kids, too. And so it's like chaos here. And when we're hungry, it's time to eat. Let's rock and roll. And we just throw one of those pizzas in the little toaster oven. My kids can do it themselves, and food is ready. They also, you ask what else they eat. They love my protein waffles. And so we make a big batch of waffles when we get everything out, and then I freeze them just like an Eggo waffle. And they can put them in the toaster oven and put some yummy butter on them and maybe some of my syru. And, you know, breakfast is served. Otherwise, we. We do love our eggs. So we do a lot of eggs for breakfast. Like scrambled eggs with salmon. We love that smoked salmon.

Since you brought up the different kinds of items that you're having, do you watch the amount of carbohydrates that you eat? Or you just stick with good quality? Like you mentioned avocados. Right. Do you pay much attention to how much you're eating of carbs? Or you just, you know, pick the right foods and eat as much as You're. You want to be satiated.

I'm not a big counter. Never liked typical calorie counting, carb counting or anything. So I would say that we are carnivores. We do not have a lot of fruits or vegetables in the house. When it comes to my children, I'm fine with them if they want strawberries or avocados. People think of avocados as almost a vegetable, but it is a fruit. And those carbohydrates do add up very quickly. People mistakenly subtract fiber from the total carbohydrates. But especially working with diabetics type 1 and 2, knowing that fiber does make a difference. So, yeah, I did mention avocado, but that was more for, like, I would do avocado for my children rather than myself.

And when you make pizza, what's the dough made out of? What's your typical, you know, pizza?

Like, the typical one? I gosh, we've. We've done so many different ones. We've done a bacon pizza crust. The latest one was a chicken breast crust where you take ground chicken raw and some parmesan cheese and an egg, and you mix that all together into a dough and you roll it out. You know, you flatten it out really well. There's a pizza place called Real Good Pizza. It's a frozen pizza that's made with chicken breast broth and parmesan, and that's their crust.

Wow, that is amazing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can get that at Kroger's and different grocery stores, and my kids love it. And I thought, well, I'm just going to make it myself.

Yeah, yeah.

And so, yeah, that one is wild, but it's really good. It just gives it that texture like, you know, a frozen pizza crust.

Actually, let's switch gears a little bit. I want to talk to you about sugar and actually sweeteners in general used for desserts, etc. Let's dive into that a bit. I think that there is a lot of confusion and misconception on the topic, honestly. And I like your clarification and perspective as well. What is clear to me is that we've learned over, especially over the last few years that refined carbohydrates, you know, table sugar, corn syrup. Corn syrup is prevalent in so many foods, in packaged foods. And besides that, what might be the biggest culprit in the entire diabetes obesity epidemic, which is fructose from fruit juices. And this is given liberally to children, you know, right from the earliest age, parents think that fruit juice is A better choice. It's healthy somehow. And they're being completely oblivious to the extreme detrimental effects of fructose metabolism through the liver. Yeah, as you know, fructose cannot be metabolized by our cells throughout the body. Needs to go through the liver first. And because kids are being given such large amounts, especially with juices, you know, they're not eating most of the time, the fruit itself, the liver becomes oversaturated and has no choice but to convert that into fat. You know, triglycerides. Right. There's a YouTube I highly suggest watching. Maybe you've seen it. It's called why Sugar is as Bad as Alcohol. And it talks about fructose, the liver toxin. From what I've learned, it's just very well made and it really opens the eyes to how toxic fructose is. What is your take on fructose in general and any advice to parents such as yourself that you have kids as far as sweeteners are concerned?

Absolutely. I work with a lot of families and children have fatty liver disease and they're not drinking alcohol, they're drinking Gatorade. I mean, I get that all the time. Well, if they can't have Gatorade, what can they have? It's like water.

Water?

Yeah, you know, like water is life. But you know, we get under this idea that, you know, they need something sweet. I mean, my father in law was over and he wanted to put a little bit of his grape juice that he brought along with them that was 100% grape juice, no sugar added into my kids drink just to give it color. I was like, no, we don't need any of that. We're okay. You know, they're not, they're happy kids.

Grape juice, apple juice, orange juice, those are just loaded with fructose.

Yeah, yeah. And that's what's really sad is fructose. You can find that at natural food stores marketed for diabetics. And that's because it doesn't raise blood sugar like table sugar does. However, like you said, it's dumping onto the liver. And you want to take care of your liver because T4 is converted into the activated T3. That's your thyroid hormone in the liver, not actually in the thyroid. So if you have this tired and toxic liver, watch out, you're gonna have thyroid disorders. This is where mood disorders come from. No wonder why we're all so depressed. But instead of using something like that, like I told you, I love food. I will always love food. I love making desserts for my kids. I Personally found peace with my diet when I allowed myself to have a ketogenic dessert. There's ice cream in our freezer at all times. We make popsicles, all of that stuff. And, you know, we just do it a little bit differently. One that I do recommend is stevia. I like to use stevia glycerite, which is a liquid stevia. It's very thick, almost like a honey, but a little bit goes a long way.

So when I'll make, like, my protein noodle lasagna, just to make the marinara a little touch sweet, I'll add just a teaspoon of that. So I use that. Make sure if you buy a stevia, you don't buy, like a stevia in the raw. That's often found at most grocery stores. That's a powder. If you notice, the first ingredient is maltodextrin. That's a corn derivative. Sugar has a glycemic index of 52, where maltodextrin is 110. And you find this in just about everything in taco seasoning, you find it in so many things, it's really sad.

Stevia is considered safe. Right. As a sweetener, I think it's been shown to improve blood glucose control.

So it's generally a good choice, right? Yeah.

Now, one I think misconception that people have, and I saw that in your book, coconut sugar. Coconut sugar is not as good as people think it is. Right.

It's another way to raise your blood sugar, you know? Yeah, it's natural, but so is arsenic. I'm not gonna eat coconut sugar. That's gonna. You know, for me, I'm very sensitive to sugar. That would throw me back into some symptoms of pcos, which is basically like diabetes, of fertility. But coconut sugar is gonna do the same thing. Same with honey. To me, it's the same. When you look at coconut sugar, it's basically high in fructose. And same with agave. People think that agave is a health food. It is 90% fructose.

Exactly.

So if you want a damaged liver, go for it.

Yep. Yep.

Again, agave is natural, but there's a lot of things that are natural that are not good for you.

Right. And the other part of this is that the word natural is so misused. There is no. There's no. There is no clear definition or official definition for what natural means. So you see that stamped all over the place. Oh, I know. Unfortunately, that confuses everybody. But coconut sugar, I think it has. Compared to table sugar, it's about the same Looking at the amount of sucrose and fructose, I think that that's. Yeah, that's pretty much it. And what about sugar alcohols? You know, recently we've, we started to use xylitol, erythritol. You know, what's your, your take on those?

There's definitely different metabolic properties to sugar alcohols. Neither are they sugar nor alcohol. It's weird that we call, but things like erythritol will pretty much not raise your blood sugar at all. Xylitol will a little bit. Malitol is not recommended. That's gonna raise your blood sugar quite a bit. And you're gonna find that in. If you buy a sugar free candy at the store or sugar free ice cream, you're gonna find malitol. That's also gonna probably cause gastronal gas, basically and maybe some stomach pain. So that one's not recommended whatsoever. Erythritol, that's the one. I. And you know, when using good non GMO vegetables, that's how you create erythritol. It could be made from corn, but you have to know your source of where you get it from. But even if it is made from corn, it wouldn't raise your blood sugar. But you know, use some company that uses a non GMO vegetable to make this. And it's no less natural than distilling maple syrup. That's how you make erythritol. So that's what we use a lot with xylitol.

Listeners should be careful with xylitol. This can kill your pets. If they eat xylitol, it will decrease, I think, their blood sugar because a lot of insulin will be secreted by dogs and I think cats as well. Maybe you can clarify that. But people just have to be careful with it.

Right, right. So yeah, if you have any xylitol in the house, like making candies with it, something like that. We make sure that we do have a dog and they're very aware of that. They don't want to drop a candy and forget about it or something like that. But, you know, other things are, you know, people worry like, oh my gosh, it's gonna kill my dog, what is it doing to me? But raisins, grapes, those all would kill dogs too. Chocolate, like they just have a different intestinal system than we do.

Exactly. Yeah, that's a very good point. I think, you know, the metabolism.

Onions would kill dogs.

Right. You just have to be very careful. Chocolate also can cause issues. In your book, you Seem to like the natural sweetener swerve.

Yeah.

Which is a mixture of erythritol and oligosaccharides. And why should we consider swerve? What's your take?

I guess I really like it because it's cup for cup, like sugar. You don't have to do some crazy conversion. It tastes a lot like sugar does, so people find it very palatable. Sometimes erythritol can have a cooling effect on the mouth, where swerve usually doesn't. They're a very responsive company. I love small companies that are very, like, if I have a question, even when they didn't know who I was, they would be very responsive and they're kind. So that's what I like to look for in supporting small business, especially where, you know, we came from nothing. And it's really nice to see good, kind people supporting their different companies. I like to do that.

Yeah, I agree. I think that that's important. Now, Maria, I wanted to just ask you a little bit about your books. Your latest book, the Ketogenic Cookbook book. You have a lot of recipes in the book. There's a lot of options for desserts and so on. You know, the Amazon reviews on. On this book are phenomenal. I'm looking at right now. You have 560 customer reviews, four and a half stars. I mean, this is just going gangbusters. I think it's definitely the right time, the right place for. For this sort of a lifestyle. What's coming next? You know, do you have plans for future books? You know, what's. What is Maria doing next?

What am I doing next? Yeah, I actually have an educational book that I wrote with my husband. His background is science, so he's really into all of this. But he's really great at explaining it in layman's terms, too. So he doesn't like to talk over people. So we wrote a book together called Keto and I would be honored to send you a copy when that comes out. It comes out beginning of December. Yeah. And then in the beginning of January, I have easy dairy free keto. Because, like you mentioned, Dr. Davis, poo pooing gluten. Right. We should all stay away from gluten. However, people don't realize that there's more of a dairy allergy out there than people realize. More than gluten. So that's why I think, you know, not for everybody, but a lot of people need to stay dairy free. And I hear that all the time and like busy families that we are and everybody wants really fast meals. We live in that type of, of a society. I wanted to create really quick and easy fast meals that are dairy free but really, really tasty. You know, like I told you, I want the food to taste good. So I have a lot of recipe testers that say this one is definitely a go. This one should be out of the book. You know, they're very honest, but I wanted that.

Of course. Yeah.

And I even have type ones and type twos as recipe testers for diabetes just because I do want to know how it affects blood sugar too and how much insulin the type ones need and stuff.

Well, that is excellent. I'm so impressed in how much care you take when you're producing these recipes. So time has flown by and we've come up to the end of the show. I wanted to give you an opportunity to point people to anything you think could be useful. Websites, any, any handles, any, any additional information that people can get from your cookbooks and from anything else that you want people to look at.

Well, I'm so grateful for this. I do have a website with over 1000 free recipes. I understand that, you know, like I was years ago, I couldn't, you know, have the money to afford a book. So I do have free recipes out there and information@mariamindbodyhealth.com otherwise my books are on Amazon, they're at Costco, they're at Barnes and Noble. But I do have Facebook account @ketoadapted if you wanted to check that out where I post fun recipes there. And I'm also on Instagram ariaemrich.

Excellent, Maria. So we had again maria@mariamindbodyhealth.com she is the author of the Ketogenic Cookbook and so much more. Maria, thank you so much. And you have a good day. Okay?

Thank you. You too, Fernando.

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