The 7 Healthiest Foods You Need in Your Diet

the seven healthiest foods you should be eating on a daily basis. And I'm also going to give you three additional bonus foods that will complete your entire diet. Most unhealthy foods on the planet raise your insulin, which is called insulin resistance, is at the root of probably 80% of chronic disease out there. In other words, most foods that lower insulin are good, and the foods that raise insulin are super bad for you. So, one of the common themes throughout this list is going to be foods that do not increase your insulin, okay? And there are no other foods that I know that will even come close to these seven, or shall we say 10 foods. So, let's start with number one, sauerkraut. You want to make sure you get the raw sauerkraut, because if you buy sauerkraut in the store that's on the shelf, that is pasteurized, which means it's heated, and heat or pasteurization is going to destroy the key thing in sauerkraut, which is the microbes. Did you realize that sauerkraut is one of the most powerful probiotics out there? Way better than yogurt, way better than kefir, and way better than most probiotics that you buy from the grocery store. One cup of this fermented cabbage provides like 1.9 net carbs, so it barely has any carbs at all. It's a lot of fiber, but a lot of nutrition. Sauerkraut is the most vitamin C dense food out there. In one tiny cup, you're going to get over 700 mg of vitamin C. That is 10 times the RDA, okay? Just from one little cup. It's a very easy vegetable to digest. Most people with digestive problems, especially if they have an ulcer or gastritis, can consume sauerkraut very easily. Sauerkraut also is loaded with something called glutamine, which actually heals the gut if there's inflammation. Sauerkraut also is loaded with vitamin K2. Vitamin K2 removes calcium from the soft tissues of the body, including the arteries, including calcium that builds up in your joints. And so, apparently the microbes in the sauerkraut make vitamin K2. It's pretty wild. Sauerkraut also is loaded with all sorts of phytonutrients, one being sulforaphane, which normally people think about in broccoli or broccoli sprouts, but it's also in other cruciferous vegetables like sauerkraut, which is basically cabbage. It's not only been studied as having anti-cancer properties, but also can help to put this microbe called H. pylori back in remission. This is the microbe behind ulcers. The real heavy lifter on the sauerkraut is something called vitamin U. The technical name for it is S-methylmethionine. This specific nutrient heals ulcers. It's great for inflammation in the stomach, but if you have any type of ulcers in your stomach, in your small intestine, in the large intestine, it goes in there and it builds up the mucus layer and it actually heals an ulcer. I would just put like a half a cup or maybe even one cup on your plate, and that's all you need per day. All right, let's go to number two. Arugula is one of the vegetables that has very low amounts of oxalates. Oxalates can aggravate the joints. They can end up as kidney stones, but arugula is a very safe vegetable if you're concerned about kidney stones. But the big reason you want to consume arugula as your alternative lettuce for your salad is in what it can do for the inside of your arteries. It's one of those foods that gives you the highest amount of nitric oxide, okay? Now, what is nitric oxide? Nitric oxide is a very special compound to help vasodilate the arteries to keep the blood pressure from going high, to help protect the arteries against inflammation. I'm not just talking about the circulation on the heart, I'm talking about circulation throughout the entire body. So, it's not just good for blood pressure, it's also good for erectile dysfunction. And out of all the foods on the planet, arugula has the most nitric oxide. The other cool thing about arugula is it has anti-cancer [clears throat] properties because it's a cruciferous vegetable. And of course, I dump a lot of extra virgin olive oil on arugula. And personally, I also add a little nutritional yeast on it because it gives it a little cheese flavor, and nutritional yeast gives you B vitamins, amino acids. And so, the combination of why I take it is it tastes good, and also it gives me more B vitamins, especially to keep the stress low. Number three, wild-caught salmon. Wild-caught is kind of like the equivalent of organic. You're going to get something a lot better than farm-raised because if farm-raised, sometimes they use antibiotics, sometimes they'll use certain additives that you don't want in that fish. And also, they have to use like different pigments to color the salmon to make it look pink. But when you're consuming wild-caught salmon, it's just super healthy because it's out in the wild. Just 3 oz of salmon equal 2,000 mg of omega-3 fatty acids. Now, what is an omega-3 fatty acid? It's a combination of two things, DHA, which is really good to build your brain and your retina to allow you to see, as well as EPA, which is a very powerful anti-inflammatory. So, anything related to itis, arthritis, bursitis, tendinitis, inflammation of whatever, you want more omega-3 fatty acids. So, if we actually compare salmon fish to cod fish, okay? Salmon, and we're talking about 3 oz. Salmon will give you 2,000 mg of omega-3. Cod only gives you 171 mg. Now, I'm not talking about cod liver oil, I'm talking about the fish cod. Now, some people are concerned about mercury when they consume fish. Well, you don't have to be with salmon because salmon is loaded with something called selenium. Selenium helps bind with the mercury and helps mobilize it out of the body so it doesn't build up. And further down the list, when I talked about another food with selenium, it's going to blow your mind. One thing about salmon that I always do is I always eat it with the skin on it, okay? The skin has a lot of nutrients, especially right underneath the skin, you have a lot of omega-3 fatty acids. And you have other things, too, like collagen. So, I would highly recommend you do salmon or other fatty fish at least a couple times a week. Now, I did mention cod, but I didn't mention cod liver, okay? Now, what is cod liver? Cod liver is something you can consume in a can. You can buy it online through Amazon or another way, but they actually sell cod liver in a can. Versus going to the grocery store trying to find it, you're probably not going to find it. So, cod liver is the liver of the cod fish. And cod liver is very unique because out of all the foods, including salmon, cod liver has the most omega-3 fatty acids. And omega-3 is so important right now, not just for your heart, just to drive inflammation down, to counter all the high omega-6 fatty acids from the seed oils, because omega-3 compete for omega-6. And so, the majority of the population consumes like 1/3 of their calories seed oils, and so we need a lot more omega-3 to balance that out. And if we're talking about nutrient-dense foods, yes, you have organ meats, you have liver and things like that. A lot of people don't like those organ meats, especially liver, including myself. Even though it's good for me and I want to like it, I just can't eat it, but I can do cod liver. It's like pudding. I like the texture, I like the taste. So, there's some unique things about cod liver, okay? First of all, it comes in cod liver oil, which is another thing super high in omega-3, but I wouldn't actually drink the oil, or your gallbladder is going to feel very heavy. So, I would just eat the cod liver in the oil and not drink the oil. But if I were to compare cod liver to salmon, cod liver has a lot more omega-3. And it's fattier, too, but the fat that you get is very, very good for your brain, for your nervous system, and for your heart. And just as a side note, the two things that don't increase insulin, fiber, which is in here and here, and fat, okay? So, that would be fatty salmon and cod liver, which is fattier than a lean fish. Several years ago, I did a video on canned products like this, and in my mind, I thought, I assumed without testing, if you heated these foods up like they do, that would destroy the omega-3 fatty acids, okay? That was in my mind, never tested it, so I did a video on that. And then I felt a little weird about it because I didn't really do a test on it. So, I went to the grocery store, I bought some canned tuna, I bought some cod liver, I bought some canned sardines, and I sent them to the lab because I wanted to see if the test aligned with what they were claiming. The report came back, and I was like, "Wow, it actually does have the amount of omega-3s that they say it does." And so, I deleted that other video, did a new video, and talked about that you can still retain omega-3 fatty acids with the heat that they do in the canning process. Number five, hamburger. Probably a surprising one, right? You're probably thinking hamburger as a junk food, thinking about, well, you go to McDonald's, you buy a hamburger. I'm not talking about that hamburger, okay? That hamburger has meat in it from probably two or 300 different sources, the quality's not that great. I'm talking about a grass-fed hamburger. If you can find organic, that would be even better, but grass-fed hamburger is not only easy to digest, but it normally has a little more fat to protein. I would not buy the lean one. I would buy the one that's like an 80/20, a little bit fattier because of this. If you consume lean meat, you're going to raise a little more insulin than if it was more fat with that protein. Same thing with eggs. If you're doing the egg whites without the yolk, where the fat is, you're going to have a higher spike in insulin. In fact, out of all the types of protein that you can eat, the protein that is the highest on the insulin scale is whey protein powder because it's super low fat. There's no fat in whey protein. It's just pure protein. So, what I recommend is that you consume protein with the fat that normally comes with that protein. So, it's you're not going extra lean or low fat at all. You're going to find when you eat that protein with the fat, it's going to stay in your digestive system a little bit more and you're going to get more absorption from the amino acids. It's not going to go through your body as fast because it's less refined. It's more natural. I consume a lot of hamburger, of course, without the bun. It just makes me feel good. All this data about red meat that people tell you causes cancer, diabetes is utterly ridiculous. It's absolutely not true. In fact, I healed my body on red meat, okay? Red meat, especially from animals that eat grass, is super high quality. It's very bioavailable. Hamburger also has a lot of other things. Not to mention the B vitamins, zinc, iron, copper. It also has something called carnosine. And carnosine is like an anti-aging antioxidant compound that just helps you live longer. Hamburger is also high in creatine. So, people buy creatine all the time as a powder to increase their muscle growth. And so, when you eat hamburger, you're getting like 350 mg per 100 g. And hamburger will give you the type of iron that is the most bioavailable on Earth, right? If you get iron from spinach, you're not going to even get close to the absorption as you would from meat. Number six, Brazil nuts. I wouldn't recommend consuming a lot. One or two per day. Now, what the heck is so special about a Brazil nut? Well, out of all the foods on planet Earth, Brazil nuts have the most selenium of any food on planet Earth. So, the next question is what's so special about selenium? First of all, it can help your thyroid, help T4 convert to T3, the active form of the thyroid hormone. A lot of people with hypothyroidism, not that they don't have enough iodine, it's they don't have enough selenium because it's not very prevalent in the soils. It's not in the food like it used to be. A lot of fertilizers that we use don't let selenium go into the plant. And if it's not in the plants or the animals, it's not going to end up in our bodies. So, if you suffer from a selenium deficiency, the thyroid's going to suffer, number one. But, number two, and this is a big one. This is huge. If you've checked out on my video, just check back in right now because this is like the most important part of this entire video. What selenium does for your immune system is mind-blowing. Certain T cells, specifically the T helper cells, cannot work without selenium. T helper cells, that's like the command center of your immune system. That is like the Pentagon over the military. If you don't have that high-level control to tell the troops to deliver certain weaponry against certain pathogens, viruses, and cancer, then you're going to be very vulnerable and susceptible to having problems like AIDS, for example. AIDS is a condition where you don't have your immune system. Did you realize there's a huge correlation between selenium deficiency and susceptibility to AIDS? And there's also a lot of data by increasing selenium and improving the complications of AIDS. One of the most common conditions on planet Earth right now, which is autoimmune diseases, and there's a lot of them. Hashimoto's, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, MS. These people with these conditions are suffering from either a selenium deficiency or a vitamin D deficiency. Both of them work hand in hand. A lot of men and women who have low selenium have problems with testosterone. Realize if you're female, testosterone turns into estrogen. The estrogen that you have comes from testosterone. And also, selenium protects the ovary to help someone become more fertile. It protects the testicle to be able to make the sperm more mobile. Selenium is also crucial in preventing your hair from falling out. And even think about a very common problem with hair loss, which is alopecia. That's an autoimmune disease. Selenium can greatly help that. Now, there's a problem with toxicity with selenium if you have like 20 nuts every day for months. So, I'm only recommending you do one or two Brazil nuts every day. Extra virgin olive oil. First of all, it's going to help you extract a lot of the phytonutrients from the salad you put it on. You're going to use arugula or romaine or leafy greens. The way that you know it's the real extra virgin olive oil is you'll feel a little tickle, biting sensation in the back of your throat. I've consumed olive oil for years and I didn't know that because I was consuming probably an adulterated version, which wasn't even the real thing. You just buy it at the grocery store. It's really cheap. And there's a lot of corruption with olive oil. They mix it with different things. So, you really have to just find a good brand that comes from either Spain or Italy or other countries. But, I consume a lot of olive oil. It's good for your heart. It's good for your cells. It works as an anti-inflammatory and antioxidant. And the phytonutrients are 20 times stronger than green tea. It's also really good for the mitochondria, okay? The little energy factories in your cell. It's anti-clotting. Realize this, 90% of heart attacks are related to a blood clot, not placking. Same thing with the stroke. So, extra virgin olive oil is really important to have in your diet. Now, let's give you the bonus foods. Cheese. I'm talking about quality cheese. Full-fat cheese, raw cheese, aged cheese. Most of the cheese that I consume, I get it imported from another country. But, that's not 100% because there are certain places in America that are doing it right. But, cheese is a fermented product. So, there's microbes in there. It's good for your gut. But, cheese also is loaded with vitamin K2. Vitamin K2, from my viewpoint, is an anti-aging vitamin on steroids. It keeps the calcium from building up in the soft tissues in your arteries, as well as keeping the calcium from building up in your joints. And as you're aware of, when we get older, we calcify. We become very, very stiff, filled with calcium. Not just in the joints and the arteries, but also even in our eyes and other tissues. The other thing that cheese has is something called CLA. It's a very interesting compound that can help you burn more fat. So, we have cheese as a probiotic. It has butyric acid that can help feed our colon cells. And cheese is fermented. And so, it eats up all the milk sugar, lactose. So, it's very low carb. It's a high-quality protein. The next bonus, chocolate. Now, I'm not talking about Hershey's chocolate kisses. I'm talking about dark chocolate. But, you can actually do cacao, which is a powder, and you can mix that in something and take that, which I do that as well. But, sometimes I'll get 85% dark chocolate as my dessert for the first meal, right around lunch. I don't consume chocolate late at night because it has certain type of stimulants. But, what's in chocolate is amazing. It's loaded with polyphenols. It'll increase your nitric oxide, that compound that's a vasodilator in the arteries that helps your circulation, just like arugula. But, the more I study this dark chocolate, I'm just the more I'm just it's mind-blowing on all the different cool effects that it has. Some people will say, "You better not consume this dark chocolate because it's high in oxalates, and oxalates can lead to kidney stones." But, there's one mineral that's loaded in chocolate that has high affinity for these oxalates, and it can connect to neutralize oxalates, and that is magnesium. Magnesium is one of the master controllers of calcium, keeping calcium in check. Magnesium is very deficient in a lot of people. Magnesium helps your muscles. It helps lower cortisol. It helps your sleep. And it helps you create more energy in your mitochondria. And a lot of people that think they're craving chocolate really aren't craving chocolate. Your microbes are craving chocolate. And it's sending signals to the brain, "Eat chocolate." And yes, there is a small amount of sugar, but there's like six net grams of carbs, which is on the low side because if you're in the ketogenic diet, you want it below 50. So, an extra six is not too bad. You can pretty much go for a walk and burn that off very easily. The last bonus, L. reuteri yogurt. Now, what is that? Well, I'm going to put a video down below so you can learn how to make this. You'll need a yogurt maker. If you don't want to bother with that, then maybe just do Bulgarian yogurt, which is also pretty good. But, there's something very special about L. reuteri yogurt that I'm going to explain. L. reuteri as a microbe is something that's missing in the general population. We just don't have it anymore. Especially if you've never been breastfed, especially if you've had antibiotics, you don't have it. And so, it's such a key microbe because it helps increase muscle mass. It helps your sleep. It helps with increasing this hormone called oxytocin. Oxytocin is one of the most powerful hormones that lowers cortisol and stress, and it increases social impulses. So, in this video I show you how to make it yourself, and we make it and we keep it in the fridge, and when I first started making it, I started taking it, and about a week later my wife's like, "What the heck has gotten into you?" I go, "What do you mean?" She goes, "You want to like hug me five times a day." Like you never want to hug me. What is wrong with you? Keep eating the yogurt. I said, "Okay, I will." Good thing it's my wife's around, but it's pretty wild this L. reuteri actually creates that effect, but really it's the microbe that's sending a signal through the vagus nerve all the way up to our brain to tell something in our brain to make more. It doesn't actually give you more oxytocin, it triggers your body to make more. Isn't that wild? A lot of people have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, SIBO, and that's where you get a lot of bloating in the small intestine. So, a lot of the microbes that should be in the large intestine end up in the small intestine, and every time you eat you just feel really bloated. And all you need is like a half a cup a day. Most people are eating the opposite of these foods, okay, they're eating refined foods. I want you to eat these foods just for 7 days to prove it to yourself. You will feel the best you've ever felt ever just by trying this. So, please in the comment tell me you're going to try this tomorrow cuz you have to prepare for it, and then come back in 7 days and tell me how you feel. Before I go, I want to give you my daily reboot routine that I do every single day in a one-page document. Presently I am 60 years old. I actually feel like I am 18. I am way healthier now than I was when I was in my 30s, okay? Like by a factor of 10x. Now, once you've done that, I have another video that I want you to watch, and this one is how to make that L. reuteri yogurt, and for that information, watch this video right here.