You Kept Asking - Dr Gundry's Foods You Can Eat (Almost) As Much As You Want!

Foods that you can eat almost as much as you want of them. So, welcome back to the Dr. Gundry Podcast. Now, I usually don't like telling people that they can eat as much as they want of anything. Because, let's be honest, most of us can get carried away, as I see in my patients, unfortunately, all the time. But, there are a few foods that I make an exception for. They're crunchy, they're filling, they're low in sugar, they're low in starch, and packed with the kind of fiber that your gut buddies love. In other words, these are foods that you can pile on high without actually worrying you're overdoing it and killing your progress. So, today I'm going to give you five food or food groups that I'm happy to see you eat very generously. Starting with one of the most overlooked snacks in your grocery store. And that is celery. Yeah, good old celery. Now, celery does not sound exciting, and I hear you. But, it's actually one of the most underrated snack foods on the planet. Now, you're not always hungry. What you're actually looking for is crunch. Recently, you may have read of a colleague of mine's personal experiment of designing the healthiest snack chip imaginable. And I won't go into what he did, but it was not deep fried. It was baked. It was thin sliced. It was made out of pretty doggone clean ingredients, whatever that means. And he made this patch. And he found that he could not stop eating them. He couldn't. One led to another led to another. And he was shocked because he knew better. And yet, it was that irresistible crunch that he could not stop eating. And I happen to have a theory why we like crunchy things. And you'll actually learn about it in my upcoming book, Feed Your Brain. We like crunch. We like that sound. And my colleague kept crunching. So, the nice thing about celery is it gives you that crunch. But it's a great replacement for chips, crackers, pretzels, the things you're crunching on. High water content. Low in sugar. And a pretty decent amount of fiber. One of my favorite things is it's great as a dipping chip. You can dip guacamole. You can dip olive tamponade. You can dip avocado mayo based dips. Tahini style dips. And the nice thing about it is you can pre-cut it and keep it in the refrigerator. And it's a safe crunch food. So, if you're going to eat a huge pile of it, it's one of those foods that for most people, I'll go, yeah, okay, you know, munch away. Is it a negative calorie food? No, but it's a crunchy food that feeds gut bacteria. So, go ahead. All right. Now, next up. And I really want to urge you to try this. So, these are what are called konjac noodles, sometimes shirataki noodles. Now, the konjac root is where these come from. And the konjac root is a very soluble resistant starch called glucomannan. And the cool thing about glucomannan is that your gut buddies think this resistant starch is so delicious. And there's many studies, human trials, that show the more glucomannan that you eat, the more weight you lose and the fuller you feel. Now, the problem is getting people to actually use these properly. You can buy these in most stores now. You can certainly buy them on the internet. You almost always pack them in water. The water often smells a little fishy. But you don't dump them out and then put sauce on them. That's not going to work. They're really slimy. And you got to make them unslimy or you're not going to like them. So, what you do is pour out the water, put them in a colander, and rinse it under water for a minute or so. Then you take a nonstick pan or a ceramic pan and you put them on over medium heat. And you keep stirring them around. And the longer you stir them, they dry out. And the longer they dry out, the more they're going to actually have that mouthfeel that you're having pasta for. The more they dry out, the more they'll absorb the sauce that you're putting on them. Now, the key is you got to be careful with the sauce. Because if you're using a, you know, high-fat sauce or like an Alfredo sauce or something, you're going to negate the fact that those noodles are there to actually make you feel full. So, I like to just experiment with salt and pepper and some herbs, a little dash of olive oil, and treat those as a way of getting the noodle-like flavor. Add some vegetables, add chopped up broccoli, add chopped up basil, add some pesto sauce. But these guys are just great for giving you that noodle experience. But the best part is they're some of the best food you can give your gut buddies. And that brings me to snacking in general. One of the more recent developments in hunger is the gut-centric theory of hunger. Now, for years, we used to think that you got hungry because your stomach was empty. And there were stretch receptors in your stomach. And when it shrunk, you got signals that you better eat. And for years, we said, well, if you fill up your stomach, it'll send signals that you're full. And that actually doesn't work. We now know that the bacteria in your gut have food requirements. They're looking for soluble fiber. And when you give them their food in an adequate amount, they will send signals like GLP-1, like leptin, to your brain that says their needs are met and you don't have to be hungry anymore. And this was proven in volunteers in China on a 14-day water fast. All they got was water. Half of the group was given 100 calories a day of non-absorbable fiber. In other words, they did not get 100 calories a day. But it was fiber that their gut bacteria could eat. That group had no hunger during a two-week water fast. The other group, as you can imagine, was ravenously hungry. And now that we know about GLP-1s, the gut-centric theory of hunger is really taken over. And the important thing is, if you give your gut buddies what they want in terms of soluble fiber, like glucomannan, they'll send GLP signals to your brain and you won't be hungry. And that's the whole idea. And you won't have that insatiable need to snack. All right, what else are basically free foods? Arugula. So arugula is part of the cruciferous family of vegetables. And they're sulfur-containing compounds. Now, arugula is great because, let's face it, salads can be pretty boring. And you'll want to spice up your salad. And like most cruciferous vegetables, they've got some bite to them. They've got some bitterness. And they've got some nice color. So having an arugula salad or adding arugula to your salad really kicks up your salad game a lot. The sulfur-containing vegetables, all the cruciferous vegetables, actually improve your ability to make the most important antioxidant in your mitochondria called glutathione. And it's in arugula. The other thing that you don't want to miss is you can also use arugula to mix in with your shirataki noodles. It'll give them a great flavor. It's a cruciferous vegetable. And it really cooks down fantastic. And it'll spice up your glucomannan shirataki noodles. So that's a great way to add another real cool food. All right. Next up, mushrooms. Now, word of warning. There is a really mischievous toxin in a great number of mushrooms that you should be aware of. Now, in animal studies, this toxin does associate with causing cancer. It's present in white button mushrooms. It's present in crimini mushrooms, which are just more mature white button mushrooms. And it's present in portobello mushrooms, which, believe it or not, is the same mushroom, just gotten bigger. So they're all three of the same species of mushroom. You don't want to eat white crimini or portobello mushrooms raw because of this compound. The good news is if you cook them, the compound is dramatically reduced. Now, interestingly enough, microwaving mushrooms detoxifies the compound more. But sauteing or cooking will do the job. There's one of the most famous mushroom experts. Paul Stanitz is so in love with mushrooms and their health benefits, but is so adamant that none of us should be eating raw white button mushrooms, white crimini mushrooms, or raw portobello mushrooms. Cook your mushrooms and then they're completely safe, almost completely safe. Now, mushrooms are great because they're loaded with polysaccharides. What the heck is a polysaccharide? Well, poly means a lot and saccharide means sugar. So these are long-chain sugar molecules that are bound together with chemical bonds. Our digestive system does not do a good job of breaking long-chain chemical bonds, resistant starches, but our gut bacteria just think this stuff is dessert. They love fermenting these long-chain chemical bonds. And so much of the benefit of mushrooms in our immune system, in natural killer cell promotion is actually because they're so good at stimulating our gut microbiome. So the key is mushrooms really cook down a lot. And the more mushrooms you eat and the more mushrooms you cook down, the better your health because you're actually feeding your gut microbiome. So it's really easy to microwave them. It's really easy to saute them in a little bit of olive oil, sprinkle in some garlic and herbs. You can add mushrooms to everything. You can put them in soups. You can put them in stir fries. Omelets are a great place to put them. Cauliflower rice bowls, lettuce wraps. Put them in your shirataki noodles and you can have, you know, mushroom pasta. Really knock your socks off with trying different mushrooms. Shiitake, oyster mushrooms, portobello mushrooms. I have recipes for portobello mushroom buns for your burgers. They really make any meal feel much more fulfilling because you're actually feeding your gut bacteria. All right. Another group that I think is well worth you considering is the chicory family of vegetables. Now, some people hear chicory and they think of New Orleans coffee. And that's right. Believe it or not, chicory mixed with coffee is New Orleans coffee. But chicory is actually a rich source of another very friendly resistant starch called inulin. And inulin, once again, is one of the favorite foods for gut buddies. Now, there's chicory family vegetables in your grocery store right now. They're at Trader Joe's right now. One of the easiest ones to find is Belgian endive. And if you haven't seen it, in fact, I bet you've seen it. It almost looks like a tulip bulb. And they come in different colors. There's red. There's kind of yellow. There's pinkish. And the beauty of Belgian endive is that if you peel those leaves, they are one of the world's greatest dipping chips. I like to use them to dip guacamole, just like celery. It has a nice little tiny bitterness, but it's got that crunch you're looking for. So, Belgian endive is actually part of the famous Italian tricolore salad, which is arugula, which we just mentioned, Belgian endive, and another chicory family vegetable, radicchio. Now, radicchio is that red ball that some people say is Italian red lettuce. It's not lettuce. It's chicory. And radicchio, we're now finding more and more. Same thing. The reason you're eating this chicory family of vegetables is to get the inulin. Now, there's other ways to get inulin besides the chicory family vegetable. Artichokes are a great source of inulin. And now we're finding frozen baby artichokes in a lot of stores. We're finding artichoke hearts. These are good for you, and you can have a ton of them because they feed good gut bacteria. In Italy, in the south of France, at this time of year, I cannot go into a restaurant that they don't have a fresh baby artichoke salad that's just sliced baby artichoke. Everyone's got it, for good reason, because they know it feeds good gut bacteria. Jerusalem artichokes, sometimes called sun chokes, are another great source of this soluble fiber. And the beauty of Jerusalem artichokes, you can cook them. But what I like to do, and by the way, they look almost like ginger. And some people confuse Jerusalem artichokes with ginger. They're not related, but they are a root. You take Jerusalem artichokes, and you slice them very thinly, and you put them on a plate. You put a little drizzle of olive oil and salt and pepper, and you eat them like a potato chip. You're going to get just loads of good gut-friendly feeding fiber, and you're going to get the crunch you're looking for. And you're going to get a little dose of olive oil, too. All of these actually make great dipping chips, like Belgian endive, like sun chokes, or Jerusalem artichokes, or even artichoke hearts. So, great way to add more of these kind of snacky foods into your diet. And remember, the goal of eating these things is not to make you feel full, but to make your gut buddies full. And when you do that, they tell you you're full. That's the signal that you're looking for.