Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast where Dr. Steven Gundry shares his groundbreaking research from over 25 years of treating patients with diet and lifestyle changes alone. Dr. Gundry and other wellness experts offer inspiring stories, the latest scientific advancements, and practical tips to empower you to take control of your health and live a long, happy life.
Dr. Gundry :
Ready to join me in a grocery hall at your favorite shop for TVs and toilet paper. Can you guess where we’re going shopping today? Well, if you guess Costco, you were spot on. It’s funny, sometimes people will spot me in my own local Costco and go, “Dr. Gundry, what are you doing here?” But you know what? I’m at Costco to find good deals just like you are, especially gut health friendly groceries and supplements. But this does take some sleuthing. So I created not one but two episodes about healthy groceries at Costco that will help keep you and your family eating well and your gut buddies too while staying on a budget. Ready to go shopping with me? Stay tuned as you’ll learn what’s in my cart.
But before we break for our sponsor, there’s just one thing I want to point out. Costco, like other food manufacturers, may change the ingredients of a product like the Costco pesto, for example. Sometimes it’s made with sunflower oil instead of olive oil. So I say all this as a friendly reminder, just because you hear me recommend a product doesn’t mean you don’t need to look at the label to make sure the ingredients are still okay. So stay tuned, I’ll be right back.
So today I want to talk about the protein choices and the oil choices that you can find in Costco and what you should look for. So first of all, Costco has wild salmon. They’ll have it fresh in season and it will say wild Alaskan salmon. And one of the tip-offs is it’s usually a lot darker red color than farm raised salmon. And it will usually say wild. Ignore the organic. That is farmed by definition. They didn’t follow the fish around to see if they were eating organically. They were fed organic grains, corn and soybeans primarily. Number two, most of the time Costco has frozen handy pieces of wild salmon. You have to kind of sort around and look because they’d be much happier selling you frozen Atlantic salmon. But stay away from that. Look for Alaskan salmon. Alaskan salmon by law has to be caught wild. That’s not true of Canadian salmon, Norwegian salmon, Scottish salmon. Look for Alaskan salmon and buy the frozen pieces, it’s really handy.
Also, they have canned salmon. And look again for canned wild salmon. So lots of options for salmon. What my wife and I do is we tend to wait for salmon season and then we buy several pieces of whole salmon and take it home, cut it up into pieces. We put it in Ziploc bags because as you’ve read in the new book Gut Check, Ziploc doesn’t have any phthalates in the plastic. And then we have it the rest of the year. Next up, canned sardines. Costco often has really good canned sardines. Now canned sardines are full, like salmon of omega fats, long chain omega fats. And they’re a great source of protein. But you’re really looking for the Omega-3 fats. And interestingly enough, you’re looking for them for the little bones in the fish, which are a great source of natural calcium, not the calcium pills you’re swallowing.
Try to find them in water. They’re better for you in a lot of ways, but if all you can find is olive oil, make sure it says olive oil, not packed in oil. Usually the ones that are packed in oil have soybean oil or cotton seed oil, and these are nasty short chain omega six fats that you really don’t want. So water preferably, second choice olive oil. And these brands appear and disappear in Costco. But in general, most of my patients are very pleased with the sardines that you can buy at Costco. Canned tuna. Now, canned tuna just for the record usually comes from small tuna, not from sashimi grade tuna. They would not be that dumb. Small tuna are much lower, if you will, on the food chain. And they have not been acquiring heavy metals like mercury for a much longer period of time than sashimi grade tuna.
So you’re really quite safe with canned tuna at Costco. In fact, some of the brands will say mercury free or low mercury, and you can trust that because again, most of these Cantu at Costco are small and grab yourself some cans of it. They often go on sale. You often have to buy six or 10, but that’s when you want to buy them. Okay, over in the cheese area, Costco frequently has a number of goat cheeses. If cheeses are fermented, then you’re much safer in lowering the amount of a mischievous sugar molecule called Neu5Gc. So you really want to go past the fresh goat cheese logs which are not fermented, and instead look for goat cheeses, feta cheeses that actually say the ingredient is goat. Read the label. Unfortunately, in America, many feta cheeses, which should be goat or sheep, are actually made from cow’s milk.
So just look for the words goat or sheep. Lastly, there are a number of sheep cheeses that are great for you. You can find Pecorino from Italy. You can find Manchego from Spain. And often there’s a sampler of sheep cheeses from Spain cut into small wedges. And it’s a great way to experience some of these fantastic fermented cheese from sheep and from goats. The prosciutto from Italy is a fermented food, and all the Neu5Gc from Italian prosciutto is gone. And it’s in almost every Costco. It’s already pre-sliced. It’s really easy to use and it’s a perfectly acceptable addition to your diet. The same way Italian Parmesan cheese, Parmesan Reggiano cheese is by far the cheapest you will find at Costco. And I actually buy our Italian Reggiano cheese, Parmesan Reggiano at Costco. And it’s got to say that, it’s got to say from Italy. Beware of cheeses that have Italian sounding names, but aren’t from Italy.
Same way with the Italian meats, the Italian salamis. Make sure it came from Italy. Costco started carrying sliced Italian charcuterie with salamis and prosciutto in a very convenient package that are actually from Italy. And what’s exciting about that is these are traditionally fermented sausages. And the exciting news from Gut Check is that these sausages don’t contain Neu5Gc and they are loaded with post biotic fermentation products like polyamines, like spermidine. So they’re actually pretty doggone good for you, and they’re at Costco. Now what about non-meat proteins? Well, there’s actually plenty there for vegetarians and vegans. Hemp Hearts, you can get big bags of hemp hearts at Costco. Hemp hearts have the benefit of being high in protein but also high in soluble fiber. So it’s a win-win. And you can use hemp hearts in so many ways. I find the easiest way is to just sprinkle them on salads, sprinkle them on vegetables. If you want to throw it in a smoothie, that’s fine with me, but hemp hearts and they’re really reasonable.
Pistachios, there are a number of pistachios that are available at Costco. Whether you want them peeled, dry, roasted, salted in the shell, unsalted in the shell, they’re readily available. Here’s a word to the wise, try to buy them in the shell. Cracking open that shell and picking it out slows you down. And it’s true with any nut. Nuts are really good for you. They contain a lot of protein. But you’ll eat a lot more if the work’s been done for you. So just a word to the wise with pistachios and also with macadamia nuts, macadamia nuts, it’s difficult to safely find raw macadamia nuts. And if you do find them, if they’re in half, they’ve probably gone rancid already. That’s why you see most macadamia nuts have been already roasted. And that’s to stop them from going rancid.
It’s easy to find macadamia nuts at Costco. Word to the wise, it’s easy to gain weight eating macadamia nuts. In fact, if I have a skinny patient and I believe it or not see skinny patients who want to gain weight, my go-to snack is macadamia nuts. And you can put on the weight with macadamia nuts. Walnuts, Costco has both organic and regular walnuts should you spend the extra money. Well, just remember that with most nuts, the nut is never exposed to herbicides or insecticides because it’s contained in a nut. And once you break open that nut, the flesh will not have those herbicides and insecticides. However, in the interest of good agriculture, if you can afford the organic, please buy the organic. But don’t be afraid of non-organic nuts for the most part. And I did mention macadamia nuts. Be careful. Okay.
How about oils? Well, Costco is a pretty doggone good place to find really good cold pressed organic olive oil. But word to the wise, you don’t want to buy your organic cold pressed olive oil in those big plastic jugs. Two reasons. Number one, it’s in plastic, but number two, although it sounds like a good idea to buy your olive oil in bulk, the minute you open the top on olive oil, it starts going rancid and you won’t use it up fast enough before it goes rancid. So the alternative is almost every Costco has an organic, usually Italian olive oil that’s in a long tall cylindrical bottle. And it usually has a label of authenticity called Toscana. I’ve actually been to the plant where it’s made in Tuscany. And it’s true, it has to come from the Tuscan region.
Now, sometimes they don’t have that, but there’s a very similar one that comes from Spain and it’s in a very similar bottle. And it’s also quite safe and a very high quality. But just stay away from the big plastic bottles and you’ll do yourself a favor. Sesame oil, you can usually find untoasted sesame oil, but it’s not in all Costcos. Preferably once again, look for sesame oil in a glass bottle.
It’s time to head back to Costco to get our produce snacks and all sorts of other things. First of all, Costco is a great source for dried herbs and spices, and the more you can get herbs and spices into your life, the better off you are because herbs are one of the best easy to use sources of polyphenols. And polyphenols, as you know, feed your good gut buddies and also are really important for protecting your mitochondria who make energy for you. You can also find a great selection of olives at Costco. Costco, believe it or not, has organic rice cauliflower in the frozen food section. They’ve got sesame seeds, they’ve got San Pellegrino. But buy the ones in the glass bottles, not the plastic bottles right next door. If you like the flavored San Pellegrino in the can, that’s perfectly safe as well. But please resist the urge to pick up San Pellegrino in the plastic bottles.
Avocados, there’s always a avocados and Costco. Preferably look for the organic variety, but Costco is a great place to pick up avocados. Costco is a great place to buy guacamole. Thankfully, they have guacamole in individual serving containers that doesn’t have any tomatoes. And guess what? Tomatoes are not part of guacamole. That’s somehow missed by most people. But they have tomato free guacamole and it’s great. Their pesto over in the refrigerator section usually next to the cheeses is some of the best pesto you can buy. I’ll tell you what, number one, it uses a type of basil from the Liguria region of Italy. By far, Ligurian basil is the most flavorful, the best source of polyphenols of any basil in the world, and it’s in the Costco pesto. It also has pine nuts. It also has Parmesan cheese. And the wonderful thing about it is you can buy it fresh and then you can put it in your freezer and just thaw off what you’re going to need. Personally, it’s phenomenal on Gundry MD sorghum spaghetti. And that’s how we use it most of the time.
In the produce area. You can find organic shiitake mushrooms. You can find crimini mushrooms. Often, particularly this time of year, you can find some really exotic mushrooms like chanterelles. They’re vastly cheaper at Costco and well worth including in your really daily routine. More and more we’re seeing organic whole lettuce heads that have still got their roots attached. They’re fantastic as a salad. Kiwis are easy to obtain at Costco. And Costco often has the golden kiwis. And fun fact, the Golden Kiwi has been shown to be the source of one of the best prebiotic fibers to feed your good probiotics there is.
And there’s some really cool golden kiwi studies in humans showing it promotes gut microbiome diversity. So if you see them and they’re in season, buy them. Speaking of in season, pomegranates are a great buy at Costco in season. Often you’ll see the pomegranate seeds in season. You can find in season organic raspberries and blackberries and even cherries. But word of warning, look for where these produce came from. There is nothing seasonal about a raspberry in February. You’ll see it at Costco, but you’ll see it came from Chile or Argentina or Uruguay. That’s not a seasonal produce. Oh, it looks good, and you go, “Oh, it’s organic,” but please, we are not supposed to encounter fruit 365 days a year. And sadly I see it in my patient’s blood work when they’re eating these wonderful fruits non seasonally, but it’s a great place to pick them up on a seasonal basis.
Costco has artichoke hearts and they also have whole artichokes. They have pine nuts, they have hemp hearts, they have pistachios in multiple varieties. Whether you want them peeled or in the shell, my advice is please buy them in the shell and you can get them salted or unsalted. But the key is if you buy them in the shell, it will slow down your eating considerably. It is far too easy and fun to eat handful after handful of peeled salted pistachios and not think about what you’re eating. On the other hand, it’s far more entertaining to pour yourself out a bowl of in the shell pistachios and pop them open slowly and enjoy. It really slows you down and you’ll get the benefits of the pistachios. Costco has a great choice of walnuts, both organic and non-organic. Why buy walnuts in a big bag from Costco rather than somewhere else?
Well, whenever you’re looking to buy nuts, particularly shelled nuts, you really want to go to a place that has a high turnover because these nuts will go rancid. And good news, Costco has a very high turnover if you’ve ever noticed. And that’s good for nuts because you are going to get literally very fresh walnuts or pecans or pine nuts. And you’re not going to have to worry about the rancidity of these nuts. And that’s another really good reason to buy them at Costco. Now, you can also find almonds at Costco. But word to the wise, almonds have a pretty nasty lectin in the peel of almonds. So even if it says organic almonds, just put them back. Luckily, most Costco stores have Marcona almonds. Marcona almonds, as you may know, are peeled. And in traditional cultures, particularly in Spain and Portugal, mothers teach their daughters how to soak and peel the skin off of the almond because they’ve learned through generations that the peel is the problem.
So that’s the safest of the almonds in Costco, the Marcona almonds. But word to the wise, if you’ve read Gut Check and you have an autoimmune disease or think you have an autoimmune disease, almonds are way up there on the nut that so many of my patients with autoimmune disease unfortunately react to. And there’s so many other better nuts. Speaking of which, macadamia nuts are a really great choice at Costco. Macadamia nuts are expensive. If you want to gain weight, macadamia nuts are the way to go. But macadamia nuts have a really fantastic oil profile within them. They’re mostly in monounsaturated fat. But they also have an omega seven fat that’s almost impossible to find in any other nut. So they should be included in your repertoire. Next, vinegars.
Costco has an amazing selection of vinegars. And if you’ve read Gut Check, you know that you want to get vinegars into your life. Whether it’s balsamic vinegar, whether it’s apple cider vinegar, whether it’s red wine vinegar, you name it, vinegars are great for you. Make yourself the famous Dr. Gundry fake Coke. Buy some San Pellegrino at Costco. Buy some balsamic vinegar at Costco. Pour some balsamic vinegar in your San Pellegrino and make yourself a fake Coke. Balsamic vinegar, any vinegar is a great source of acetic acid, which is a short chain fatty acid that is actually needed for your gut microbiome to make this all important short chain fatty acid called butyrate. And you got to get vinegar to kind of supercharge the process. Next up, most Costcos have a pretty decent selection of greater than 72% chocolate either in bars or in other forms. Now it comes and goes. You got to look for it. But if it’s there, get it there. Finally, Primal Kitchen Caesar dressing is a pretty doggone good choice.
It’s made by my friend Mark Sisson. Primal Kitchen in general are safe products. Their avocado mayonnaise is a safe product. But try their Caesar dressing. Now, there are a few snacks that could be used in moderation, and I specify moderation for a reason. So you’ll see really good buys on Siete chips. You’ll see really buys on taro root vegetable chips. And yes, they’re pretty safe except people overeat them. And I see this over and over again that, “I saw Dr. Gundry say that taro root chips are safe. That means I can have the entire bag I bought at Costco this afternoon.” No, you can’t. You got to be really careful because these are concentrated sources of carbohydrates. And yes, they don’t have any lectins. But they still have lots of easily digestible carbohydrates. So the word is moderation and use these chips not to munch on, but as a delivery device to get avocado into your mouth. Buy the guacamole in individual serving containers at Costco and use that chip only as a delivery device. It’ll slow you down and you’ll get all the benefits of the guacamole as well.
Now it’s time for the audience question. Both the audience question and review of the week are from the YouTube version of the Costco episode. Here’s a few questions that may be what you’re wondering about too. @AVA5552091 rights, “FYI doc, talking about fruits that are not in season in winter mints, November, December, January, and so on, there are fruits that come from Chile, Argentina, Peru, where the best blueberries come from. Those countries are going through their summer season, unlike us, so their fruit is very seasonal. That’s why Costco is so special, because they offer fruits all year round. Why can’t we eat in season fruit from another country?”
I get this question all the time. You were not designed to have fruit 365 days a year. There is no such thing as endless summer where you and your ancestors came from. We carry a genetic mutation that I profiled in most of my recent books that we inherited from great apes that allowed them to take advantage of seasonal fruit to fatten up for the winter where there wasn’t much food, and this allowed them to out compete other apes that couldn’t do this.
That mutation sadly takes the fructose in fruit and turns it into triglycerides, a fat for storage and uric acid, one of the worst mitochondrial disruptors there is. So just because it’s seasonal in Argentina and Peru doesn’t make it healthy for you in a non season. Plus, spoiler alert, all these fruits from other countries are picked unripe and then ripened artificially with ethylene glycol gas and the lectin content, as I pointed out in The Plant Paradox, is extremely high because the fruit didn’t ripen on the tree. Sad, but true. Believe me, I’d love to eat fruit year round. It’s just dangerous. But great question.
@VIR5261 asks, “Hello, doc. Thanks for the Costco heads up. I have a question about their olive oil. The extra virgin organic comes in a plastic jug, but I buy the glass bottle that’s not organic. Which is the better olive oil?” Another great question. Please, please, please do not buy olive oil in plastic. I meet and work and talk to farmers throughout Italy particularly the Tuscany region, but other regions like Liguria and Northern Italy. And I can assure you that the organic process, the certification process in Italy is profoundly expensive. So even though the small producers do not carry an organic seal, that doesn’t mean that they’ve ever used chemicals, which would just be anathema to these small producers. So please buy the olive oil in the glass bottle. I love the Toscana brand, which is certified coming from Tuscany, but there are other great brands that Costco makes in the tall square bottle from Spain, for instance, or Portugal. So don’t get the plastic bottle. Okay, great question.
The next question comes from @kichijitsu Dr. Gundry. I noticed that some of my supplements, vitamins from Costco contain organic brown rice, organic rice, all concentrate medium chain triglycerides, soybeans, or rice flour. Is it safe to take them or should I throw them away? Thank you very much.” Well, you’ve got to look at where these ingredients sit on the label. The farther down on the label, the less you have to worry about them. For instance, medium chain triglycerides are great no matter where they are on the label and rice flour or organic ground rice. If they’re way down the label, that means there’s really not much of them there and you don’t have to worry about them. But if they’re way up on the label with first or second ingredient, that’s when you want to steer clear. Another great question.
Now it’s time for the review of the week. @ArcherHunter8691 writes about the Costco YouTube episode. You loved this episode. You scored 100%. “I have Gut Check, Longevity Paradox, Plant Paradox, and my fave, Energy Paradox. I followed this post with my fab book Energy Paradox. It is absolutely the best. I even have my daughter doing the same. We love you, Dr. Gundry.” Well, thank you very much, ArcherHunter. I do this to help you on a daily basis making informed decisions. And now that I’ve been at this 25 years still seeing patients six days a week, I want to report to you what I find with suggesting what my patients eat, suggesting what supplements my patients take and getting their blood work every three to six months to see what happens. And I report to you. So thanks for appreciating that. I’m going to keep doing it.
Speaker 1:
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Gundry Podcast. If you did, please share this with family and friends. You never know how one of these health tips can completely transform someone’s life when you take the time to share it with them. There’s also the Dr. Gundry Podcast YouTube channel, where we have tens of thousands of free health insights that can help you and your loved ones live a long, vital life. Let’s do this together.
