Dr. Steven Gundry:
Is your pantry aging you or helping you live longer? First, we’ll uncover brain boosting ingredients you probably already have but aren’t using to their full potential. Then, we’re giving vinegar it’s due. I’ll share which types support your gut, blood sugar, and waistline. And finally, a few true superfoods that can seriously level up your focus, energy, and longevity. So before your next snack run, stick around, let’s turn your pantry into a powerhouse of health.
If you’ve read my new book, The Gut-Brain Paradox, then you know this simple truth, the way to a sharper brain starts in your gut. So today, I’m sharing five foods that do wonders for both your gut and your brain, starting with one that most people avoid, chicken skin and chicken livers. Yes, that boneless skinless chicken breast is not the way to good gut health and brain health. Instead, the chicken skin, which you’ve been told to stay away from, and the chicken livers, which are kind of thrown in the trash, are actually loaded with a really cool polyamine called spermidine. And I’ll let you guess where that name came from.
Spermidine is one of the most important powerful anti-aging compounds that we know of. In fact, a 2021 cell report study found that dietary spermidine improved cognitive performance in older adults, in humans. And in animal studies, it enhanced mitochondrial function and triggered autophagy, your cells and natural cleanup process. Believe it or not, that’s why I developed an entire program called the Chicken and the Sea Diet, in my new book, The Gut-Brain Paradox. It’s a modified carnivore plan that the outline is in the new book. It’s full of spermidine rich proteins that have a variety of benefits.
I spend quite a bit of time in Italy, in the South of France, and I’ve always been fascinated by the amount of chicken liver pâté that is served, particularly in Tuscany. And you go, “Well, what the heck? Why are they doing all that?” Lo and behold, chicken livers are one of the highest sources of spermidine that you can eat.
In fact, usually, at least once a week I will have a chicken liver salad as my dinner. In fact, I have a favorite restaurant in Paris, in the Marais District, where I have a chicken liver salad every time I go to Paris. You’re going, “What the heck? That sounds crazy.” And yet, why would all these restaurants have chicken livers on their menu? Because they’re pretty doggone smart and know that that’s a great source of spermidine.
And please, please, please do not buy the boneless skinless chicken breast. Get the skin. In fact, I have many patients who actually buy chicken skin from their butchers, because they’re busy taking off the chicken skin because nobody wants it. And it’s the best part. Believe me.
I’ve seen patients suffering from memory issues, low energy, and even mood swings feel like new people following the Chicken and the Sea Diet in the new book, sometimes in just a few weeks. It’s actually a remarkable, and I actually profile one of my patients in the new book.
All right, number two. All right, so you don’t want chicken livers and you just are a little queasy about chicken skin. Wild shrimp, sardines, anchovies, small fish like pollock, or red mullet, the sea part of the diet, and it’s a gut brain dream team. These are small, wild-caught seafoods that are low in mercury and rich in omega-threes, like DHA and EPA, which are critical for brain development, focus, and mood balance.
In fact, your brain is about 70% fat. And as I remind my patients, if you’re in an argument with your significant other, you’re allowed to call them a fathead, and I’ll back them up. Half of the fat in your brain is a long-chain omega-three fat called DHA. And as I profiled in many of my books, the more DHA you have in your brain, the bigger your brain is, and the more intelligent and memory capabilities you have, and the larger your memory centers, called the hippocampus, are.
The less DHA, the more shrunken your brain is, I wish I was making this up, but I’m not, look it up, and the smaller these memory centers are, the hippocampus. So your mom was right when she said, “Fish is brain food.” She didn’t know why she was right, but now we have the science to back it up.
Now the other important part about the Chicken and the Sea Diet is you and I share a sugar molecule that lines the wall of our gut, that lines our blood vessels, that lines our joints, that lines our blood-brain barrier, called Neu5Ac. That’s what we make. That’s the lining of our gut. It’s also in poultry and it’s also in fish.
Now sadly, beef, lamb, pork, and milk contain a very similar sugar molecule called Neu5Gc, that differs by one molecule of oxygen. That difference, believe it or not, is critical. When we humans eat Neu5Gc containing foods, we view it as inflammatory. We hate it. We make antibodies to it and we attack it.
The bad news is, because these two sugar molecules are virtually identical, Neu5Gc, the bad guy, can be incorporated into the wall of our gut, into our blood vessels, into our joints, into our blood-brain barrier, and we attack it. In fact, studies show that the more Neu5Gc containing foods we eat, the more we displace new Neu5Ac from these structures, and the more inflammation we get, the more neuro inflammation we get, which is not a great thing.
In fact, I have patients who adapt the carnivore diet, where they primarily eat beef, and pork, and lamb. And they feel great, but they’re inflammation markers, to a person, climb, and climb, and climb. And when we change them over to the Chicken and the Sea Diet with Neu5Ac, they still feel great, but their inflammation markers plummet. And that’s why a modified carnivore diet that I developed for The Gut-Brain Paradox works so well. And just remember, that that’s not what you want in Neu5Gc food.
Is there a way around? Yes, there is. It turns out, the fermentation process of inoculating sausages and meats with bacteria, the bacteria will ferment Neu5Gc and they will also produce polyamines, spermidine, so true sausages that have been fermented. So how do you find those? You look for the words lactic acid cultures. If you see those words, that’s what you’re looking for.
And luckily, we’re beginning to see more and more of these. Traditionally made sausages in Europe, like in Italy, like in Portugal, like in France, these are safe to eat. Even, believe it or not, certain of the hams that are made in Italy, well, like 5J ham in Spain is devoid of Neu5Gc. And prosciutto, true prosciutto, di Parma, is devoid of Neu5Gc. So there are ways around this, and I specify all that in The Gut-Brain Paradox.
All right, number three, aged cheeses, like Parmesan, or sheep cheese, pecorino cheese, and aged cheeses that are raw cheeses, like Gruyère or Compte, also are devoid, number one, of Neu5Gc, the bacteria have eaten them, and are loaded with polyamines that supports your brain function and your mitochondrial health.
So cheese for brain health? Cheese for heart health? You’re right, it actually works. As you know, I study many long-lived people, and the thing that has shocked me, I guess, is that almost all of these communities eat a huge amount of fermented dairy products, primarily fermented goat and sheep cheeses, and they eat fermented sausages and fermented meats, exactly what supposedly we’re supposed to avoid.
So spermidine, you get probiotics, believe it or not. Prosciutto is loaded with friendly bacteria. Who knew? That’s what’s good for you in these fermented products. The other great thing about fermentation in cheeses is the lactose has actually been eaten by the bacteria. So most cheeses are completely lactose free.
The other great news is that most of these cheeses are made out of casein A2 milk, eliminating the inflammatory casein A1 milk that most of our cows in America make. In the Sardinian Blue Zone, where centenarians are known for their cognitive longevity, people eat pecorino cheese every day. In fact, Sardinian pecorino cheese is well known for its longevity producing properties.
Now get this, these cheeses will also support the production of GABA, the calming neurotransmitter that plays a role in suppressing anxiety and depression. Now unfortunately, without the right gut environment, GABA can’t be produced properly.
So eating GABA in these cheeses is one way around that problem. Again, I spell all this out in The Gut-Brain Paradox. All right, number four, perilla oil. Perilla seed oil is the number one oil of Korea and in most of China. Now you go, “Perilla oil? I’ve never seen perilla oil.” So you’ve seen the perilla plant, I guarantee it. Perilla plant is the coleus plant, that very beautiful ornamental plant that you often grow in your gardens or in the house. It’s got these beautiful colored leaves. And it’s an ornamental plant with us, but it’s a seed that produces perilla oil.
What’s so unique about perilla oil? Perilla oil is almost exclusively a short chain omega-three fat called alpha linoleic acid. Now you’re hearing the word seed oil. Let me assure you that all seed oils are not the evil empire. In fact, perilla seed oil has been shown to encourage the growth of my favorite gut buddy, that keystone species, akkermansia muciniphila, one of the most important gut bacteria to support your intestinal lining.
And as you know, a healthy intestinal lining means less inflammation, which can help your brain function more clearly. It also has rosmarinic acid. Yes, rosmarinic acid comes from rosemary. And rosmarinic acid promotes GABA signaling, helping reduce toxicity in the brain and supporting a calm, balanced mood.
Moreover, animal studies, and now studies in my lab with humans, show that the consumption of perilla oil dramatically lowers the amount of LPSs, those little pieces of you know what, that are one of the biggest drivers of inflammation in humans and animals. And perilla oil blocks the absorption of LPSs. And it’s amazing when I see this happen in my patients.
I personally mix perilla oil with olive oil and MCT oil for a brain boosting salad dressing. And I suggest you do the same. It’s getting easier and easier to find perilla oil. It’s in almost all Asian grocery stores. It’s on the internet, on Amazon, and it’s really quite inexpensive. So give it a try. It has a very neutral flavor.
Finally, number five of brain boosting compounds, dark chocolate. Yes, chocolate made the list, made the top five. Now dark chocolate, greater than 72% cacao or higher, and preferably higher is better, is loaded with polyphenols which support your gut flora and support brain function.
In fact, one study cited in the book found that just eating 30 grams of dark chocolate daily for three weeks increased microbiome diversity. In other words, the more kind of tropical rainforest of bacteria you have in your gut, the better off you are. It improved focus and it boosted mood. Now even better, your gut bugs might ask for chocolate, literally. Certain strains of gut bacteria can signal your brain via the vagus nerve to crave polyphenol-rich foods like cacao. So the next time you need a chocolate fix, don’t fight it. Your gut buddies are asking for it.
But please, the lower the sugar content in your chocolate, the better it is for you. Finally, if you see the word Dutch chocolate, or milk chocolate, or alkalized chocolate, run the other way. All the polyphenols have been neutralized, so it’s worthless for what you’re actually eating it for. So, when chosen wisely, chocolate is good for your mood, your memory, and your microbiome, the three Ms that we’re looking for.
If you want sharper thinking, better memory, and a more balanced mood, don’t start with your brain, start with your gut. To learn more, just check out my new book, The Gut-Brain Paradox, where I lay it all out, including the full Chicken and the Sea Diet.
We hear the term everywhere, we see it on advertising, we see it on packaging. You can’t go through an aisle in Costco or a grocery store without someone somewhere being bombarded with the latest superfood trend.
So today I really want to cut through the hype that’s out there around superfoods, and if you like this episode, make sure you hit the like button, or subscribe so you don’t miss any of this fun stuff. All right, let’s get started.
There is no such thing as the term superfood. It’s one of those that was made up. We make up terms to make it sound super, but there is no definition of a superfood. There are no qualifiers for calling something a superfood. So what do I consider a superfood to be? Well, kind of number one, my rule of thumb is, it should be nutrient dense and calories sparse. In other words, the more cool nutrients that you can cram into a food with the least amount of calories that you are going to absorb, the better.
Now you’ll notice I say the least amount of calories that you are going to absorb. Believe it or not, a super food ought to have calories or other components that your gut buddies want to eat. And if you follow me, you know that the happier we make our gut buddies, the happier and healthier you are going to be. And if we spend our time making sure that we’re eating what our gut buddies want to eat, the better that food is and the more super it is for your health and your gut buddies’ health.
So what else makes it super for your gut buddies’ health? Polyphenols. I have videos on polyphenols. I write books about polyphenols. Polyphenols are essentially protective compounds that plants produce to protect themselves and they’re fruits from damage, primarily sun damage, but also insect damage from harsh conditions. The easiest way to describe polyphenols are all those fantastic orange, red, yellow, dark purple, blue colors that you see on brightly colored fruits and vegetables.
You probably didn’t know it, but that beautiful foliage that you see every fall, if you’re lucky, is actually the polyphenols that were in the leaves, that they were there all the time, you just didn’t see them because the chlorophyll, the green, was covering them up. And as the leaf died, the chlorophyll disappeared, and you’re left with those beautiful polyphenols.
Now, we’ve known for years that polyphenols are not very well absorbed by humans. We kind of thought, well, so much for that. In recent years, we’ve discovered that polyphenols are really one of the favorite foods of our gut buddies, of our microbiome. They love this stuff. These are prebiotics that they like, and the more polyphenols we give them, the more they convert those polyphenols into absorbable compounds that we can then use to protect against oxidation, to protect our mitochondria. And so it’s kind of a win-win, but our gut buddies are the go-between.
So if we give them polyphenols, they’ll make polyphenols available for us and we’ll benefit from it. So for example, extra dark chocolate is loaded with polyphenols. Yes, there is sugar in there. More bitter, more better. The bitterness are the polyphenols. So I like you to ramp up the percentage of cacao in the chocolate you’re eating.
I personally eat 85 to 90% dark chocolate, very little sugar, but I’m getting all those polyphenols. For instance, coffee or tea is chock-full of polyphenols, plus there’s no calories. But you completely ruin it by putting in all that glop, all that milk, all those creamers, all those Frappuccino stuff. So you completely negated any benefit.
It’s interesting that both the British, and the Japanese, and Chinese consume tea. And it really doesn’t matter whether the tea is fermented, like the British, or it’s not fermented like green tea, like the Japanese.
But the difference is, the Brits, and I’ve lived in London, put milk in their tea, and that completely binds the polyphenols. Whereas, the Japanese and Chinese drink their tea without these things. They get the benefit. The Brits don’t. Sorry.
Now how about some superfood myths? Goji berries. I admit, I was a goji berry fan. I promoted them. One of my patient’s sons has a goji berry company, and I even had his package of goji berries in my office to show to patients. Imagine my surprise when I really dove into where lectins are hiding, that goji berries are not from China or Tibet. They’re actually a native American plant called the wolfberry. And during Colombian trade, goji berries were taken to China in trade and they grow extremely well.
Bad news, goji berries are part of the nightshade family, and the lectins are present in goji berries. And it’s every so often I find one of my patients where I can’t find why they still have leaky gut. And invariably, they’ve been on a goji berry trail mix mix, or having goji berries in their smoothie, because they’re a, quote, “superfood”.
Again, goji berries have polyphenols, absolutely, but they come with a delicious side order of lectins. So they’re not a superfood. The same way with a tomato or a pepper. There are some fantastic polyphenols in tomatoes and peppers, but the peel and the seeds have lectins. And isn’t it interesting that the Italians refused to eat tomatoes for 200 years after their native son Columbus brought them back to the old world? That’s because they knew of the dangers of nightshades.
And to this day, Italians will not make tomato sauce without peeling and de-seeding the tomatoes. I enjoy telling the story that my grandmother on my mother’s side was French, and she made my mother peel and de-seed tomatoes before she served them to us. Even sliced tomatoes in our household were peeled and de-seeded. And the first time I ever had a, quote, “a normal tomato slice”, was in college at Yale. And I thought it was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen, because there were peels and seeds, and it was the first time I’d ever encountered it.
So these wives tales, which have been passed down for centuries, have been forgotten in our effort to have a super food like a tomato. How about a replacement for goji berries? Personally, mulberries or a superb replacement. You can often find them in farmer’s markets. You can find them dried. I have a mulberry tree in my backyard in Santa Barbara and once a year it produces some pretty doggone nice mulberries.
I might add that it only produces them once a year. And one of the things we know about hunter-gatherers is they only eat fruits in season and they only eat them one or two times per year when they become available.
They do not have 365 days of super foods coming into their diet from the same source. They mix it up. And the more research we do in polyphenols, the more we realize that it’s this variation in mixing up the polyphenols that allows different gut bacteria to thrive. And the more changeable and diverse you have of a gut microbiome, the better off you are. So mix it up.
All right, how about sprouts? Well, I hope you know that alfalfa sprouts contain some of the worst poisons ever discovered by mankind. So please, please, please don’t throw the healthy alfalfa sprouts on your salad. Sprouts in general, sprouting grains, sprouting seeds, the newborn plant is at its most vulnerable, and plants increase the lectin content at the time of sprouting to prevent, primarily insects, from eating them, or larger animals.
And isn’t it interesting that one of the most popular sprouted breads, Ezekiel Bread, is probably, in my patients, one of the worst for them because they’re sprouted grains. Please, please, please stay away from sprouted grains.
Well, what about sprouted beans, like mung bean sprouts? Now, I do have a number of patients who do react to the lectins in beans, and mung beans are one of them. But once the baby gets bigger, then the effect becomes less. But if you know we’re dealing with an autoimmune condition, and 80% of my patients have an autoimmune disease when they come to see me, stay away from the sprouted beans as well.
Finally, there are alternatives. I know the broccoli sprouts, the radish sprouts are in. And yes, there are some really cool compounds in cruciferous sprouts, particularly a really interesting sulfur-containing compound called sulforaphane. But you can still get these compounds in the whole foods, like broccoli, like radishes, like radish greens. And quite frankly, these sprouts are incredibly expensive and you don’t get the benefit for the money.
So put it back and get yourself a bunch of radishes or get yourself some broccoli florets and your money will go a whole lot farther and you’ll still get the benefit of what you’re looking for in these super sprout foods.
Finally, chia seeds. This is a lectin alert, folks. Chia seeds contain lectins. Please, please use basil seeds as an alternative. They don’t contain lectins and they have far more polyphenols than the chia seeds, and they’ll behave the identical way as chia seeds. Chia seeds are not a superfood.
Some of my favorite superfoods, I’ve said this over and over again, I have yet to have a salad in the south of France or in all of Italy that does not have one, two, or three forms of chicory in it. What the heck is chicory? Well, the most common one that we see now in almost every grocery store is that dark red ball of lettuce called radicchio.
And it’s not a lettuce, it’s a chicory. And it’s loaded with a prebiotic fiber called inulin. And that dark red color, or purple color, tells you it’s also loaded with polyphenols. Now luckily, we’re seeing more of these available. There’s a whole family of radicchio. There’s treviso, a long narrow one. And a lot of the higher-end stores, like Whole Foods, are beginning to stock these.
Frisée, that frizzy stuff, is every salad I’ve ever had in Italy and the south of France. Belgian endive is another chicory family vegetable, and it’s at Trader Joe’s, and it’s in most grocery stores. I use Belgian endive, if I don’t put in my salad, as a dipping chip for guacamole or for properly prepared hummus. It’s a great way to get inulin, and polyphenols, and avocado into your mouth.
So the chicory family is my version of a superfood. And let me tell you, gut buddies, just think, the chicory family of vegetables is the best thing they could possibly eat.
All right, well how about fruits? There are some really great fruits out there that, luckily, only ripe and once a year. Passion fruit. Passion fruit is one of the great sources of polyphenols and fiber that you can eat. Now, they are expensive. It is a treat that is served in Europe. And I happen to have passion fruit vines. They’re actually pretty easy to grow in a lot of parts of the country. My passion fruit vines don’t like me very much, but I get a nice crop in the fall. Some forms will give all year round.
If you don’t have that, kiwis. Kiwis are probably the best of the fruits that you can eat. But eat the skin, slice the ends off and eat it like an apple, skin and all. It’ll take a day or two to get used to that funny feeling. But the skin contains a lot of great fiber and polyphenols. And kiwis have been shown in Australia and New Zealand to have this sort of fiber that a healthy gut microbiome loves. Fun fact, if you can find the little golden kiwis, those are even richer in these compounds that support your gut buddy growth. And we’re seeing these more and more available. So if you see them, buy them, they’ll be a great addition.
Finally, radishes and other root vegetables. You’ll learn in The Gut-Brain Paradox that root vegetables and tubers have their own microbiome. And that microbiome is actually really useful in teaching our immune system to not be worried about certain nasty bacteria that can lurk in our colon, that produce lipopolysaccharieds, LPSs. And you know what that stands for.
It turns out that these root vegetables are loaded with LPSs. And you go, “Whoa, I don’t want to eat LPSs.” It turns out that it’s the way we encounter LPSs that make all the difference. If we eat LPS-containing foods, we educate our immune system that we do not have to fear them and that they are a part of us. And it’s amazing what you’ll learn in The Gut-Brain Paradox about how useful eating root vegetables and tubers are.
So add these to your diet. When you buy them at the farmer’s market, just scrape the dirt off, don’t wash them. We had Victory Gardens when I was growing up, and when my kids were growing up, we always pulled a carrot out of the ground, brushed it on our pants, and ate it. Nobody screamed, nobody got the antiseptic wash to kill all the bacteria. Do that again. You need these soil-producing organisms in you to train your immune system.
Bonus tip, if you want to put something on your pasta, and please make it a great pasta, like a sorghum pasta or a millet pasta, get yourself some pesto. Preferably, make it yourself. It’s really easy to do in a food processor or a blender. All you need is fresh basil, olive oil, pine nuts, and true Parmesan cheese, Parmigiano Reggiano. Throw it in, blend it. It is such a great way to get so many interesting good fats, good polyphenols, good oils into you, and you get the benefit of a fermented cheese, Parmesan cheese, which is loaded with actual polyamines, like spermidine, which will promote autophagy in you.
So vinegars, why are they so good? Well, vinegars actually taste good. There’s a lot of them that taste great. There’s a lot of them that add unique flavors and other compounds to where you’re going to use them. But the reason vinegars are so important, it comes down to really two things. The first is that most vinegars contain a short-chain fatty acid called acetic acid.
Now, we’re beginning to hear a lot about short-chain fatty acids. They are classified as a postbiotic. For those of you who are new to this channel, most of you know probiotics, those are friendly bacteria. Most of you now have heard of prebiotics, which are the food for friendly bacteria, in general, soluble fibers. But postbiotics are the products of fermentation that bacteria, or yeast, or mushrooms make from fermenting these prebiotic fibers. And one of the most exciting types of postbiotics are the short-chain fatty acids.
Now, probably the most famous is butyrate. Now butyrate is kind of the holy grail of health, of gut health, of brain health, of even mitochondrial health. And butyrate is kind of the ultimate end point of short-chain fatty acid production.
But what’s important to know is that most of us need other short-chain fatty acids to be produced, either by other bacteria to be turned into butyrate by other bacteria, or we need to consume those short-chain fatty acids without depending on bacteria to do it for us. So this is where acetic acid comes in. So acetic acid is kind of numero two in the hierarchy of short-chain fatty acids. And we’re finding more and more, that the more acetic acid we can get into us, the better chance we have of getting our gut buddies the precursors they need to make butyrate.
So vinegars, almost all vinegars, their major component of acids are acetic acid. Now most vinegars have about 5% acetic acid, and it’ll vary. There may be other components of these short-chain fatty acids. For instance, we’ll talk about it in a minute, but apple cider vinegar has mostly acetic acid, but it has another acid called malic acid that comes from apples, but it’s not very big. So the reason you want vinegars is you want the production of short-chain fatty acids, and you want to change those into butyrate. And vinegar is one of the best ways to do it. So that’s why it’s a healthy Coke.
All right, so you see in the grocery store, or in the health food store, all sorts of vinegars, and you’re going, “Oh, my gosh, what do I want?” Let me tell you my favorites. First of all, good old balsamic vinegar. Now there’s a wide range of balsamic vinegar. True balsamic vinegar has to come from Modena, Italy. It’s made by fermenting grapes forever, and ever, and ever, and then aging the must. True balsamic vinegar has the highest component of bioavailable resveratrol of any compound.
Resveratrol, you’ve heard that word. That’s that miraculous polyphenol that’s the subject of the French Paradox. Resveratrol is in red wine. But sadly, to get enough resveratrol in red wine, you’d have to drink lots, and lots, and lots of bottles every day, and you’re not going to do that.
But balsamic vinegar concentrates that resveratrol. So it’s a great source. And if you can spend the money, the more aged the balsamic vinegar, the higher the price, but the more concentrated it is and the more resveratrol. And if you really want a tasty diet, fake Coke, without that kind of vinegary taste, it’s worth spending the money for a more aged balsamic vinegar.
Now, I happen to like a fig balsamic vinegar. Two reasons. Number one, still balsamic vinegar, but it also has figs that have been fermented. And figs, in and of themselves, are a great source of polyphenols. And if you’ve read my Longevity Paradox, you’ll notice that figs are on the cover of that book, because of their association with the compounds in figs with longevity. And it gives a really much smoother taste to balsamic vinegar. And it’s one of my real go-tos in my pantry. And it’s so delicious on some sugar-free coconut ice cream. Pour it on top. Don’t squirrel up your nose until you try it. Believe me, we get balsamic vinegar poured on our ice cream all the time in Italy. Some restaurants just are shocked that we wouldn’t want that balsamic vinegar brought to our table to pour on the gelato.
Number two, champagne vinegar. As the name implies, this is vinegar that takes champagne and then further ferments it into vinegar.
Now the cool thing about champagne vinegar is that it’s actually got a really delicate flavor. But there’s more to it than that. It turns out that champagne is, by law, required to, after you make the wine, you ferment the grapes, it has to stay on the lees. The lees are all the leftover dead yeast bodies and all the leftover polyphenols that have sunk to the bottom of the bottle. And they have to be in contact with the lees for a minimum of about a year and a half. Vintage champagnes have to be in contact with the lees for five to eight years before they’re bottled.
So what? It turns out that contact with all dead yeast and all those polyphenols, the longer they’re in contact, the more postbiotics and polyphenols are absorbed into the liquid. And there are two studies, of course done in France, that women who drink champagne, particularly vintage champagne, have better vascular health, better vascular flexibility than women who don’t drink champagne, a fact that my wife reminds me of almost on a daily basis.
So champagne vinegar is going to get you the acetic acid that you’re looking for, but you’re also going to get a healthy dose of other polyphenols that you wouldn’t have acquired from another vinegar.
Rice vinegar, as the name implies, rice vinegar is made by fermenting rice. And it’s actually rich in amino acids that other vinegars don’t have. And some of those amino acids are polyamines. Polyamines are chains of amino acids that come about from fermentation. And it just so happens that rice vinegar has a really mild taste, it’s easy to use, but you’re going to get another dose of amino acids that you probably wouldn’t get from other vinegars. So it deserves a place in your counter.
Now, one of my favorites is sherry vinegar. Now, as you know, sherry is, once again, a product of fermentation and of aging of wines in oak casks, sherry casks. And it’s that aging process in the oak that imparts, not only the dark color to sherry, but the flavor to sherry. But here’s the added bonus, it turns out that oak and wood are loaded with polyphenols, and that dark color is actually the polyphenols that have been leached out of the oak by the acid into the vinegar. So sherry vinegar has a tripled dollop of different polyphenols, in addition to the wine polyphenols, the resveratrol, and it’s got this kind of unique, I don’t know, nutty flavor, savory flavor, that just adds another dimension. You can even find aged sherry vinegars that have been aged oak casks.
So there’s all sorts of ways to continue to enhance the basic benefit of vinegar, which is acetic acid. So that’s the fun thing. You can layer, and layer, and layer all these different components into your vinegar.
So that brings me to apple cider vinegar. Now, apple cider vinegar, with the mother, is what you’re looking for. So what the heck is the mother? Well, that’s basically the lees of apple cider vinegar. Those are the yeast cells that have done their work and are still around. Those contain the postbiotics that you’re looking for. So apple cider vinegar is, once again, another method of getting acetic acid in you, getting a little bit of malic acid in you, but getting these polyphenols and these, for lack of a better word, dead yeast bodies, which are postbiotics, they carry information. So it’s another way of getting a fermented food into you.
The benefits of apple cider vinegar are that, once again, they foster a healthier microbiome. Interestingly enough, another benefit of any vinegar is, because it’s an acid, it actually delays gastric emptying. It slows the absorption of sugars, and that may be one way of how apple cider vinegar, and other vinegars for that matter, actually are kind of nature’s Ozempic, because Ozempic delays gastric emptying.
And the longer you delay gastric emptying, two things happen. Number one, the longer you feel fuller. But number two, the longer it takes for food to reach the rest of your GI tract where food is absorbed. And that’s why vinegars, and apple cider vinegar, in some studies show that they reduce hunger, but more importantly, may modulate insulin spikes and glucose spikes, which is exactly what you’re looking for from a superfood. So, vinegars deserve a place in your diet every day.
Well, if you’ve been watching my Healthy Coke video, you’ll know, hopefully, that I’m actually the father of the Healthy Coke that recently became a rage on viral videos. And what is a Healthy Coke? Well, when I introduced it many years ago on YouTube and in my books, it was taking San Pellegrino sparkling water, and adding a tablespoon or two of balsamic vinegar, and stirring it around and drinking it, like a Coke.
And it has a Coke-like color. It has, depending on the balsamic vinegar that you use, a kind of Coke-like taste. But unlike a Coke, the balsamic vinegar has amazing health properties that improves your health, rather than ruins your health. Make yourself a Healthy Coke. Experiment with the vinegars. You want a sparkling apple cider? Knock your socks off. If you want a champagne vinegar sparkling, that’s fine with me, but get them into your diet.
Now it’s time for the review of the week. The review of the week comes from @kellyibenzas1313 on my YouTube video on vinegars. She says, “I drink the Healthy Coke every single day. I love it.” Well, thanks, Kelly. I think it’s one of my best recipes and it’s got a lot to go for it.
Now it’s time for the question of the week. The question of the week comes from @johnkd1bf on my Whole Foods shopping video. They ask, “Does cultured cottage cheese come in A2?” Well, you do have to look for it. It does exist. Please look for it. Here’s maybe a touch of good news. Fermentation has been shown to break the casein molecule apart. So it’s quite possible that fermenting a one casein may not make it as mischievous as just drinking it. So keep that in mind. Anytime you ferment something, you are going to lessen the harmful lectin and other components. Great question.
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