Hello Health Champions today we're going to talk
about the top 10 healthiest foods by the end of this video you're going to have a brand new
perspective on what healthy food is plus we're going to debunk one of the big nutrition myths
on the internet today food number 10 is romaine lettuce and these are in no particular order so
romaine lettuce has a bunch of different minerals like calcium magnesium potassium Etc it has some
zinc manganese selenium has a bunch of B vitamins and it has a good bit of vitamin C and vitamin
K so when we look at the percentages we see that the minerals are going to range in the one two
three percent range and the vitamins are going to be between two and seven vitamin C is about
10 percent Vitamin K is about 70 percent of the recommended daily allowance so you're getting
a little bit of a lot of different things and there's more things than that in there but we want
to stay away from picking one food necessarily and say that this is the best food or these are
the top 10 foods because then we think that if it didn't make the list then it must not be so
great and here's the thing that you still have to eat a lot of these different servings so if
you eat seven or eight servings of leafy greens you're gonna get a substantial contribution to
the nutrients that you need but we don't want to exclude everything else and that's what happens
when we play favorites so we want to keep in mind that arugula and leafy greens and kale Swiss chard
spring mix all of these have similar nutrients all right some might be one percent higher in this
or one percent lower in that but overall they're very very similar so we don't want to really play
favorites now a lot of people love love spinach and it's a part of a lot of different mixes so
this is okay for most people but a lot of people are also sensitive to oxalates so I put a question
mark on spinach because it's one of those you want to be a little bit careful with another thing
we want to try to get away from is to focus too much on the numbers because what is the RDA the
recommended daily allowance well it's someone's opinion or conclusion about how much nutrients we
need but here are some of the limitations so first of all there's a difference between a deficiency
amount and the optimal amount so if they check a nutrient and they say below this level you get
a deficiency symptom then what amount is the optimal we don't really know the second thing
is that they don't test these on humans because it's costly it's complicated and it's unethical
so most of the Studies have been done on mice that they assume work the same way as humans and
then they just extrapolate the results the third thing and maybe the biggest is that they always
test these on synthetic nutrients on isolated synthetic nutrients and when we get the nutrients
from food it might be a completely different story number four is gut Flora so everyone has a
different gut flora and how healthy yours is it's going to determine how much of those nutrients you
actually absorb and how effectively you use them we can also have different foods interact with
each other and affect how things are absorbed we can have anti-nutrients some foods contain
chemical compounds that prevent the body from absorbing and using nutrients different climates
can affect how much you need if you live in a very hot climate you might sweat and lose a lot of
minerals if you live in a cold climate you might need more of certain things also if you're very
Physically Active you might need more nutrients or if you're emotionally stressed you might
need more nutrients requirements can change dramatically if you have a chronic disease or a
metabolic problem and if you're on some kind of medication that can also affect what you need
and how much you absorb so basically what I'm saying is that yes it's important we don't want to
ignore the RNA but we can't look at that number as a truth either we have to understand that there
are very very broad ranges and we don't know to what extent they apply to us so we want to think
about it a little differently which is what we're going to talk about in this video number nine
again in no particular order is extra virgin olive oil and if you read up a little bit on
it they're going to tell you that it can reduce inflammation that it can protect you from heart
disease cardiovascular disease they'll tell you it can protect the endothelium the inside of blood
vessels you'll hear that it can reduce the bad LDL the oxidized damaged LDL that it can reduce blood
clotting and that it can reduce blood pressure and I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with
those claims but the question is compared to what and extra virgin olive oil became super popular
when they figured out that people around the Mediterranean had less heart disease than
a lot of other places so now they said that well it's all the things that they eat there
the fish and the olive oil and the so forth but a lot of those countries around there like
Crete for example they get 30 to 40 percent of all their calories from extra virgin olive oil
which means they don't eat any seed oil at all they don't eat hardly any processed foods and
that's the whole point of this extra virgin olive oil is great simply because it's not bad it's good
because it's not garbage so when we're comparing extra virgin olive oil to a diet like the Western
American diet where 60 to 70 percent of calories come from processed sugar processed white flour
and processed seed oils things that are toxic inflammatory and completely devoid of nutrition
than anything else is going to be better so I'm not trying to downplay Extra Virgin Olive Oil I'm
just trying to get you to Don don't think of it as some kind of Miracle just think of it as good food
if it comes from planet Earth and we don't destroy it then it's a good food an extra virgin olive
oil is one of those eat it put it on everything drink it as much as you want because it's a
whole good food number eight is salmon in a six ounce serving of wild caught salmon you're getting
almost three times the daily allowance of vitamin B12 you're getting about three quarters of the
niacin and the vitamin D and then we get to the Omega-3s they don't have an exact RDA on those but
you're getting 730 milligrams of EPA and you're getting 1100 milligrams of DHA so they're very
concentrated sources of those absolutely vital omega-3s EPA is for inflammation control and DHA
is a building block for your brain that influences how well the brain can signal and function some
of the great benefits is that it has zero carbs because a lot of people are carb intolerant
they can't handle a lot of carbs and it's a great source of protein you're going to get 30
grams of protein and this kind of protein just like in meat it's very well absorbed and utilized
but as much as I love salmon and I like to put it on a top 10 list we don't want to play favorites
because now we get the wrong idea about food now we think that other foods are not as good while
there's a wide variety of great Foods so if we compare it to sardines for example and we compare
these numbers we're going to see that some of them are a little bit higher and some of them are a
little bit lower but overall they're very very similar so just like leafy green genes are pretty
similar to each other then fatty fish are also pretty similar to each other and that's how we
need to start thinking about food another example of a fatty fish is mackerel which I also love
and again you can see these numbers being very very similar some are a little better some are a
little bit lower but overall quite similar number seven is macadamia nuts one of my favorites
if you put it in a smoothie it just turns it super super creamy and yummy it is very low in
carbohydrate it's high in protein and high in fat plus it has quite a bit of vitamins and minerals
and one of the main things I want to emphasize is that it is very low on the allergy scale very
very few people I've never really found anyone who's sensitive to macadamias whereas millions of
people are sensitive to Brazil nuts and peanuts and so forth but let's compare some similar
knots so if we start with the macadamia nut and we compare it to pecans and walnuts they're
quite similar and if we look at the total amount of carbs we see that they all have a total carb
count of 14 grams per 100 or 14 percent but then we can subtract the fiber and the Macadamia has 9
grams of fiber the pecan has 10 and walnuts have seven so we can subtract the fiber and now we're
left with the net carbs the carb impact on blood sugar and so forth so now we see Macadamia has
five pecans have four and walnuts have seven so they're very low carb they're very concentrated
very satisfying dense foods so these carbs are not going to have much of an impact regardless
we can nitpate can say that four is a lot better than five but it's not a huge difference all of
these are totally okay but something we want to be aware of when it comes to nuts and seeds is
something called omega-6s because Omega-3s are generally anti-inflammatory but we want to get
them primarily from fish because once they're in seeds they tend to get oxidized and rancid
pretty quick but nuts and seeds have a lot of omega-6s which are generally pro-inflammatory and
when we look at that the Macadamia has one percent one gram per hundred of the omega-6 the pecan has
20 times more and the Walnut has 38 times more so again we don't want to nitpick but we want
to understand the different seeds different nuts can be widely different in that aspect so
we can still eat all of these but we want to get a variety of foods we don't want to think
oh this is the superfood let me just eat that but we want to understand what they have in
common and start seeing some patterns and then we don't have to memorize all these things and
all these lists that we're getting number six is cauliflower totally awesome food and it is
low carb it has tons of vitamins and minerals in it it's pretty high in vitamin C and I like
how it is inexpensive and it's available widely available and it's versatile you can use it so
many different ways and it has quickly become one of the absolute top favorites of the
low carb Community the keto community and they're using it for everything there's riced
cauliflowers there's cauliflower pizza crust but that's another thing you have to be aware
of when something becomes popular then there's going to be a lot of people try to mislead you and
take advantage of you and trick you so now because somebody figured out how to make a cauliflower
pizza crust and I never really succeeded because they get kind of soggy and watery but now they're
selling all these different Pizza crusts with cauliflower but if you look at the label the first
ingredient is not cauliflower it's wheat flour and if you check the total carb content you'll
find that it's exactly as high as a regular pizza crust so they're basically making a regular
pizza crust they are sprinkling some cauliflower on it and calling it a cauliflower pizza crust
just because it's trendy right now so don't fall for those things understand what good food and
Whole Food is and stay away from those scammers and as much as I love cauliflower I'm also very
fond of things like broccoli asparagus brussels sprouts bell pepper and eggplants they're all
very similar they're all non-starchy vegetables they're full of nutrition and fiber so don't pick
one don't raise one to a superfood status at the expense of others which is what so many people
tend to do number five is sauerkraut and I love sauerkraut but I had to clarify something here so
they say that cabbage on its own has a good amount of vitamin C about 30 milligrams per cup but then
they say that something miraculous happen that the amount of vitamin C Skyrocket when you ferment
it and turn it into sauerkraut now it increases almost 20 fold that we get enormous amounts of
vitamin C and antioxidants and then they claim to refer to an article and they say that levels of
antioxidants and vitamin C could reach as high as 695 milligrams with raw fermented cabbage having
the highest levels of vitamin C hitting almost 700 milligrams per cup and I'm always looking for
mechanisms I'm curious how does that happen how do you make vitamin C by fermenting something and
they gave gave you the reference so they refer to this article here and said that this is where
they found the information so I went and looked at that article and I'm not too surprised
unfortunately to find that this article had nothing to do with what they were talking about
the article was not talking about vitamin C it was talking about antioxidant properties expressed
as an equivalent of vitamin C so they assume that vitamin C has a certain antioxidant capacity
and then they examine all the other compounds in cabbage that has antioxidant capacity and then
they express those as Vitamin C equivalents which is something completely different and then if you
read the heading here it doesn't say fermented and it doesn't say sauerkraut it says processed so
what they did was something different but sure enough they mentioned the the 695 milligram but
they're very specific to say that it was vitamin C equivalents not the vitamin C and then they say
that it wasn't the fermented but the processing they're talking about is actually pickled cabbage
which means you typically add vinegar and salt and then they say there's a good linear relationship
between the phenolics and the antioxidant capacity meaning basically the antioxidant capacity came
from phenolics and then they translated that into how much vitamin C or ascorbic acid would it take
to get that antioxidant effect and then at the end they say that the relationship between the
vitamin C or ascorbic acid and the antioxidant was very low so it had basically nothing to do
with the vitamin C one more thing we want to understand is that when they measure these things
they're not talking about the vitamin C complex that you get in real food and that's what the
body needs they're talking about the antioxidant ascorbic acid which is basically a preservative
and it's there to protect the plant not to protect you because when it comes to antioxidants you
have your own intracellular production called glutathione but there's so many different myths
there and here in this example they managed to get every single one of them wrong unfortunately as a
result of their misinterpretation or their willful neglect we now have a new truth so now there's
all these different articles we have in fact 1790 results if we do a search and we put the 695 in
quotation marks so only results show up that has that exact phrase we have thousands of results
and they're saying things like sauerkraut and fermented and this much 695 milligrams of vitamin
C and the next article says the exact same so this thousands of these and even a Channel of video
YouTube channel with a name very similar to my own managed to find this information and quote
it as a truth and now thousands of articles are published with a new truth that a lot of people
believe when the article that it came from didn't even mention fermented or sauerkraut instead they
were talking about antioxidants and fresh and pickled cabbage so this is what happens when we
try to sensationalize when we don't understand the bigger picture about food that the biggest part is
if it came from planet Earth and we don't process it if we don't destroy it then it's going to be a
good good food but now we nitpick and we find out these little molecules and the more we dig into
the molecules the more we lose the big picture and we get confused and they publish list after
list after list and they're comparing numbers and nothing makes sense anymore so just try to focus
on the big picture and understand what food is but don't get me wrong sauerkraut is still one of my
favorites just for different reasons it's still low carb it has vitamins minerals it provides
really good probiotics which are bacteria that can populate and keep your gut healthy but it's
not the only thing that can do that either you can ferment lots of different vegetables and you'll
still get those probiotics it is very inexpensive it's widely available it's very versatile just
like cauliflower it has a good amount of vitamin C it does not have the 700 milligrams that they're
talking about but even 30 milligrams is a pretty good source so if you eat a couple of 300 grams
of sauerkraut you're getting most of the vitamin C that you need and now it's going to be the complex
vitamin C your body is looking for number four is hamburger and interestingly the hamburger has no
ham in it but on the other hand hot dogs also have no dogs in it for which I'm very grateful what
we're talking about instead is ground beef and we're not talking about the fast food hamburgers
with all their chemicals and their sugary buns and their synthetic additives and dressings we're
just talking about the ground beef and while most ground beef is going to be better than a lot of
other food if you really kind of want a healthy meal you want to look for the grass fed because
if the animal lived the way it was supposed to live and ate the things they're supposed to eat
then the animal was healthy and the meat from it is also healthy and if you eat that healthy the
grass-fed and ideally organic meat even though I think grass-fed is even more important than
organic then you want to actually eat high fat because the fat is not a problem and this is a
little shocking to some people because we heard so much about eating lean meat lean chicken lean
ground beef and they're even labeling the ground beef they don't say 10 fat they say 90 percent
lean which is just crazy to me and it's again backwards but what we need to understand is
fat is okay it's a great fuel source and yes we do need protein but excess protein turns
into glucose protein can only do two things it can be incorporated into tissue and hormones
and molecules into structural things or it can and the excess will be burned for fuel it will be
converted into glucose raise blood sugar and be burned for fuel so yes protein is super important
but more isn't necessarily better so if you eat a good amount of meat which I recommend because it's
very satisfying not at the expense of everything else but I think meat is a good foundation
then look for the high fat meat and here is if you compare the calories from fat and protein
respectively in different types of meat so we'll just stick to ground beef for right now if you buy
the seven percent fat then the fat percentage the calories from fat is actually 43 percent whereas
the protein is 57.
So a little more protein but close to to 50 50. but already when we get to 15
percent fat 85 percent lean meat now 64 percent is from fat and 36 from protein so it's almost
a two to one ratio now the other way if we get up to 20 percent now we have 73 from fat and
27 so almost a three to one ratio and once we get up to 30 percent fat which you can't find
now with the wagyu and high fat products now 83 percent of the calories come from fat and only
17 from protein so with this you can eat a lot of meat a lot of ground beef without getting excess
protein and again you don't have to be terribly afraid of protein but typically the fattier cuts
the fattier grinds actually taste better they're more satisfying they're more juicy and a lot of
people have avoided them because they heard that the lean is better but that's not really the case
now one thing that you're going to find is that if you do the 7 or the 15 and you grind it up like
I often just grind it up in in pieces in a frying pan and I spice it a little bit and I put it on
a salad then with a 7 or 15 you're not really going to let get any left over fat but when you
get up to 20 25 30 now there's going to be quite a bit of melted fat in the bottom of the pan
especially with 30 you're going to have a huge amount of fat in the bottom of the pan and
don't think of that as something bad because we've been taught to throw that away that is top
quality Tallow this is great fat you can save it for later you could just kind of strain it off or
filter it and save it for later you can use it for cooking it's very heat stable it's great source
of energy it doesn't go rancid or bad for a long long time or what I do is if I put this on a salad
then I'm going to use part of this as a dressing I'll pour this over this they're leftover fat over
the salad and then I'll put a little bit of extra olive oil and some vinegar and that's part of the
dressing and while this example is about ground beef we don't want to exclude other kinds of meat
so other meat like steak and bison and lamb and poultry as long as they're raised under quality
conditions then they're going to be very very similar nutritionally number three is cod liver
and this is an interesting one the one I find and you can get this online because it's hard to find
in stores is cod liver in its own cod liver oil so it's the same stuff that you buy as an expensive
supplement as cod liver oil liquid this actually packed the cod liver in this in the can so can is
about four ounces 115 grams and with this you're getting some very very packed nutrition now a lot
of people they're going to hear the word liver and they're going to be hugely turned off and then
I'm going to or cod liver and they're going to associate it with something rancid that they
might be forced to take when they were kids but understand that if you buy the right kind and just
look at some of the reviews online this is almost completely neutral in flavor you can't really
taste any fishiness at all and it's going to be super packed with nutrients so when we're talking
about these epas the Omega-3s the EPA and the DHA we're not there's so much in there that we don't
even measure it in milligrams we measure grams now so 5.8 grams of EPA and 9.2 grams of DHA these are
enormous amounts and you're going to get several days worth in one can and the same thing holds
true for vitamin A and vitamin D you're getting 73 000 IUS and 8400 IUS this is basically a week's
worth of vitamin A and vitamin D and therefore you want to be a little careful with this because you
can eat too much you don't want to eat this every day another thing to keep in mind is that one can
of only 115 grams is going to have 84 grams of fat in it which again it's not a bad thing because
of the fat because it's super nutritious however if you have trouble digesting fat if you have a
weak gallbladder then that might be a little too much in one sitting so it is delicate and flavor
neutral enough that you can eat it straight out of the can but what I would recommend is put it on a
salad and use the oil as a dressing and then just spice it up you salt pepper vinegar whatever
you like and it's going to be just like salad dressing basically you probably won't even notice
the cod liver on there but you're going to get a massive amount of Omega-3s and vitamin A and D
but because there's so much vitamin A and D you probably just want to eat one of these cans a week
if you ate more than one a week you could develop a toxicity in vitamin A and D it takes a while to
get there so it wouldn't happen if you just ate it a few weeks in a row but if you kept eating it
month after month more than one a week then that'd be something to be concerned with another thing
to keep in mind is that unless you just really love that fishy smell you don't want to save this
once you open the can then you eat it the same day or maybe the next because already two days later
even if you keep it in the fridge it's going to be very fishy and the reason for that is that it
is so high it's so super concentrated in these EPA and DHA and those are extremely highly reactive
they oxidize they go rancid so easy and that is why they're so beneficial they have so certain
properties where they're very reactive they're very highly unsaturated so that's good for your
nervous system and brain but they can't be stored number two is eggs and while I said that we don't
want to count percentages and get too focused in on it this is one example where one single food
item so this is for a single egg if you ate three four five eggs you're gonna get a significant
amount or all of these nutrients that you're going to need in a day and that's very very rare to get
that wider variety so it's a very complete food and if you use this as a base for your food then
you're going to get a lot of nutrients in just one food product but again you need a variety so don't
think that you're just going to eat one thing and that's the best but if you eat eggs then realize
that quality matters it matters with everything that you get but especially eggs because some
chicken some hens are mistreated and misfed so badly they're fed hormones they're kept in
terrible conditions and a healthy chicken is going to lay a healthy eggs they're going to have much
higher nutrients plus of course you don't want to contribute to the mistreatment of chicken so what
you're looking for my preference is pasture raised that means the chickens actually had a certain
area per chicken and they actually went outside to find some natural things to eat like bugs and
grass and things the chicken would look for on its own so most of the other classifications like
cage-free they don't really mean anything they don't mean that the chicken ever really saw the
outside and also realize that pasture raised is not the same thing as pasteurized pasteurized
simply means they immerse them in a hot water bath very quickly to kill off some bacteria but
if you get the healthy eggs from pasture raised chicken then that is not really going to be an
issue number one is avocado it's a huge favorite with so many people it doesn't matter if you're
omnivore or vegan or vegetarian or low carb they tend to all love avocado it's rich and creamy and
satisfying it is however pretty low in protein only two grams per 100 so if you're vegan you need
to look for your protein elsewhere but like I said low carb people love it because the net carbs
are only two grams per hundred even though it does have some total carbs the fiber is subtracted
and the fiber is substantial seven grams per 100 and only two grams of net carbs so the fiber can
also help to feed the gut bacteria and contribute to to a healthy flora and the high fat is one of
the reasons it's so popular at 15 grams of fat per hundred quite unusual for a plant if you enjoyed
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