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Language: en
What if I told you that there is a way
to eat healthy during the holidays? If
you're like the typical person who's the
griller, you stand right over it. Smoke
is right in your face the whole time.
Not a good thing. Toxic to the brain,
toxic to your liver, toxic to your
heart. Sorry, that's just the way it is.
Triggers your metabolism so that your
good fat will burn down your bad fat,
your harmful fat called visceral fat.
Not a bad deal. And I know this one's
going to be hard. I recommend that you
skip meats. These are the things that
serve a lot of people and they're
crowd-pleasers. But guess what? The
World Health Organization has classified
meats as a class one carcinogen cancer
causing. So what are some healthier
alternatives? Well,
today we're going to be diving into the
best ways to eat healthy during the
holidays, any holiday. All right? And
I'm going to tell you why it matters,
what the science says, and what you can
actually do about it. You ready? Let's
get into it. The big question is, what
are the best ways to eat healthy when
you're celebrating a holiday? Regardless
of your religion or culture, you're
going to have some winter holiday where
food is a big part of the tradition.
Then in the spring, there are spring
holidays, right? Celebrating the coming
of the warmer weather, many events occur
during the spring. The summer
festivities are filled with food as
well. Not always the healthiest kind, at
least what we think. Okay. So, what is
the smartest approach to eating foods
during the holidays if you're interested
in health? Well, I have some
recommendations for you as a doctor, as
a scientist, and as somebody who studies
food is medicine for health and
longevity. And I want to share those
ideas with you. First thing is actually
to approach holiday foods positively.
All right? I want you to lean into your
holiday meal, whether you're meal
planning or just visiting to eat. And I
want you to focus on the healthy
ingredients. So, if you're planning
meals, build your meal plans around
healthy ingredients and a healthy
cooking method. You know, do use extra
virgin olive oil. Do try to go to the
produce section to figure out what you
can get fresh. Do use fruits,
vegetables, nuts, legumes, herbs, and
spices, healthy oils. Like, choose
choose from the good stuff. And that
way, the food is all going to be good as
well. And here's the other thing.
Holiday meals often about abundance,
right? Think about all the different
kinds of side dishes you can actually
serve so you can squeeze in a lot of
interesting healthy foods involving
veggies and whole grains and fruit.
Another thing for health during the
holidays, general principles, cook
everything yourself if you can. I know
it's a lot easier to order pre-made and
delivered over to you in gigantic
batches. But honestly, if you look at
the healthiest food traditions uh and
food cultures around the world, they
take pride in making everything from
themselves from scratch. You know why?
Cuz then you know everything that's in
it. All right? You don't need some
factory to put artificial coloring,
artificial flavoring, artificial
preservatives. By the way, a common
artificial preservatives called
potassium sorbate. Guess what that does?
Recently, it's been shown to damage your
gut microbiome. Healthy gut, you don't
want that. And it's so common. All
right. I I found this out because I was
going around looking at some sauces that
I was interested in getting. I picked it
up and potassium sorbate commonly like
one after another. I was picking it up.
It was always in there. I looked it up.
Holy cow, it actually can hurt the gut
microbiome. All right, cook everything
yourself. You know what's going to be in
it. Use healthy oils like extravirgin
olive oil. Minimize salt. Don't add any
artificial sweeteners at all. Minimize
the sugars. All right. And if you're a
baker, by the way, if you like to bake,
please, I strongly advise using those
artificial colors that come in the
plastic squeeze bottles. Those
artificial colors, you know, the red 30,
red 40, you know, yellow 30. They're not
good for you. And when those little
plastic bottles, they're going to be
shedding microplastics, which you don't
want in your food either. Okay? Make
pretty cookies, but those chemicals not
so good for your body. All right, go
light on meat. That's the other thing
I'll tell you. You're going to plan a
holiday meal. Even though meat, red
meats are often tradition. You know, I
totally get it. I understand. But go
easy on it. Go down on it. Don't make so
much. Make sure there's other dishes
around it offset. So, this isn't only a
carnivore's meal. And I know this one's
going to be hard. I recommend that you
skip processed meats. You know, the
sausages, the hot dogs, the cold cuts,
deli meats. These are the things that
serve a lot of people and they're
crowd-pleasers. But guess what? The
World Health Organization has classified
processed meats as a class one
carcinogen, cancercausing, and with good
reason. Okay. Um, studies have shown
that eating a lot of processed meats
increases your risk for digestive
cancers like colon cancer. Well, of
course, you got to put all this
processed food, processed meats into
your gut, and it's going to go right
down eventually to your colon and hurt
your gut microbiome. All right. So, what
are some healthier alternatives? Well,
seafood being one of them. You ever hear
of the feast of the seven fishes?
Healthy, tasty Mediterranean meal.
Chicken, a good choice. Turkey, a good
choice. Duck, I love duck. All delicious
choices you can actually make that are a
little bit better than red meat. Um, so
consider those. Now, obviously, how you
cook your proteins can make a
difference, right? You ever heard of
deep fried turkey? Turkey meat is not so
bad for you, but deep frying it not a
good choice. The frying actually creates
acryumides which are actually plastics
that actually have toxic effects in your
body as well. All right, deep frying
that golden brown that's a chemical
reaction called the Mayard reaction that
exactly generates those harmful
acryomines. Look, every now and then you
have it, you're going to be fine. Once a
year, okay, but whatever it is, don't do
it often and don't eat too much of it
when you when you have it in front of
you. Here's another one that you want to
actually be very cautious about in terms
of the methods of cooking if you want to
eat healthy during the holidays and
that's grilling your food summertime.
Get that bust out that grill. Man, it's
like it reminds me of the summer time.
All right, but be careful. Grilling meat
produces carcinogens because the oils
and the amino acids and the proteins,
they drip from the meat, especially red
meat, right into the flames and poof,
there's this like nice magic smoke. It's
the stuff that smells really good in the
barbecue. If you're like the typical
person who's the griller, you stand
right over it and you this nice
delicious aromatic smoke is right in
your face the whole time. Not a good
thing. All right. That contains cancer
riskinccreasing chemicals from the
reaction between the drippings onto the
flame. It generates polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons, phahes, and heteroscyclic
amines. I'm just telling you, you don't
have to remember these. I'm just telling
you that standing over a grill, having
that smoke go into your face, packed
with carcinogens. And by the way, it can
actually get the carcinogens to co coat
your meat. Tastes great, smoke flavored,
but it's got those carcinogens. So, how
do you counter that? Marinate your meat.
Okay? Regardless of what it is, any of
your veggies in tropical fruits,
pineapples and those kinds of things.
Guess what? The um antioxidants uh in
fruit marinades uh can actually counter
some of those harmful cancer-causing
chemicals as well. You can neutralize
them. All right? Marinate them ahead of
time. Citrus, pineapple, pomegranate,
cherry, papaya, those kinds of things.
All great ways to actually marinate your
meats ahead of time to protect yourself
against some of the more harmful aspects
of grilling the food. All right, let's
talk about something else that we see a
lot during the holidays. Beverages. I
always tell people there's the holy
trinity of beverages. The three best
beverages, water, coffee, and tea. Now,
water of course is important for health
because you need to hydrate all of your
cells to work properly, including your
brain. Your brain is made up of a lot of
water, so it's super sensitive for being
dried out. Uh but water is good for you.
Coffee. I love coffee. Great for waking
up in the morning. Give you that morning
buzz. Uh makes me a lot more alert,
sharp. Coffee is really really good. Uh
c coffeey's got caffeine. Good for brain
health. Better cognition. But it's also
got chlorogenic acid. This is a natural
bioactive a natural chemical found in
coffee beans, found in coffee grounds,
and found in a cup of coffee. Benefits
your circulation. Anti-inflammatory.
Good for your overall health. Has cancer
starving properties as well. All right.
So chlorogenic acid good overall and it
activates your metabolism. How does it
do that? Well, it helps a kind of fat in
your body called brown fat burn down
harmful visceral fat. So it drinking a
cup of coffee has chlorogenic acid. That
chlorogenic acid gets in your
bloodstream and triggers your metabolism
so that your good fat called brown fat
will burn down your bad fat, your
harmful fat called visceral fat. Not a
bad deal for some the first thing in the
morning, right? By the way, coffee is
also good for gut health. And so here's
the thing about coffee that makes it
versatile for the holidays. It's
beneficial. Whether you have it hot,
whether you have it cold, you want to
have ice coffee, you still get the
benefits from it. And here's a pro tip I
want to give you about coffee. Black
coffee is always the healthiest version
of coffee to have. And the reason of
this, if you add dairy to it, cow's
milk, cream, half and half, all those
traditional things you would add to
coffee to cut it. Guess what? The fat
from dairy actually makes it harder for
your body to absorb the good stuff. the
chlorogenic acid forms little soap
bubbles around it. Now, you can use a
nut milk and you'll be fine. Almond
milk, soy milk, cashew milk, all that
stuff is fine. They don't absorb with
absorption, but cow's milk does. All
right? So, that that's a little tip for
coffee. And the same thing is true with
tea. Tea has got kakans in it. Those are
polyphenols that actually do all kinds
of good things for your body. Lower
inflammation, improve your metabolism,
actually even activate your stem cells
to help you heal from the inside out.
The good news about tea, you can have it
just like coffee in different ways. all
still good for you. Hot tea, iced tea,
by the way, you can even even use tea in
your cooking, like in a stew, that's all
good. Just don't add extra sugar. Don't
add dairy fat uh to the tea. Almond
milk, nut milk, all fine. You want to
get those benefits from polyphenols,
both in tea and coffee. Uh and you don't
want to add extra sugar. That's a key
thing. Extra sugar once in a while is
okay. All right? But if you do it all
the time and you put lots of sugar load
into your body, that's a big calorie
load. You're going to grow body fat. And
guess what? That's going to actually
cause inflammation in your body as well.
All right. Oh, one more thing I tal
about holidays and coffee that I forgot
to tell you about is chocolate plus
coffee. All right. Now, because
chocolate's often a part of holiday
food, I recommend chocolate for anybody
who loves chocolate, but dark
chocolate's what you want to go for. 85%
or higher dark chocolate. It's pretty
dark. All right. Now, the chocolate
contains polyphenols called
proanthocyanidins. These are bioactives.
They come from the cacao beans, a
plant-based substance. It's what you use
to make chocolate. The darker it is, the
more polyphenols, the more
proanthocyanid that's found in your
chocolate. Uh, good for you.
Antioxidant, protects your DNA, lowers
inflammation. Okay, good for your
metabolism. But dark chocolate, 85%
pretty bitter. Okay, now some people
like it. So, I'm going to suggest if
you're somebody who doesn't really like
really dark chocolate, hey, here's a
tip. Pair the dark chocolate with
coffee. Chocolate plus coffee equals
mocha. All right. So, here's a perfect
way to celebrate a holiday with a
healthy beverage that's twice as
beneficial because you've combined the
coffee and the chocolate. Let's see if I
can offer you some more practical
advice. If you're entertaining and you
are taking all this time to select
healthy choices for your guest and for
yourself, you know what? When you're
actually eating, um, tell your guests
why you chose the food. All right? From
a health perspective, make that part of
your conversation. If you look at the
healthiest cultures in the world,
Mediterranean, Asian cultures, food
cultures, you get people together,
people are talking about their food, and
if somebody's a host, everybody's
talking to the host about the food that
they've cooked. Talking about it
actually helps to, you know, actualize
what you've done uh uh in your in your
mind. All right? Um and by the way, if
you when you do that, realizing during
this holiday, you are giving a gift to
your friends, your family uh members,
your guests. Speaking of of um of
eating, one of the things I want to
actually tell you, it's also practical.
Uh and I wrote about this in my book,
Eat to Beat Disease. Please quit the
Clean Plate Club. You know what I'm
talking about. When we were kids, our
moms told us, "Whatever you put in your
plate, you better clean it off. There's
people starving in. Name the country."
All right. Clean plate club. Actually,
that came out during World War I.
Brought back during World War II. Not
even relevant today. That was to save
food for soldiers, etc. But listen,
today we live in an era of abundance and
a lot of the chronic disease burden that
we're dealing with has to do with the
fact that just cuz we have it around us
doesn't mean we should stuff ourselves
to the gill with it. And yet many people
do. Here's how you quit the clean play.
Number one, don't put too much on your
plate. Whatever you think you might put,
take a third less. Leave white space on
your plate. Okay? Number two, eat it
slowly. It will actually fill you up if
you eat slow. You wolf food down.
Guarantee you're going to feel like
wolfing more down. Eat slowly and then
the hormones in your stomach will signal
to your brain as your stomach is filling
up slowly. Hey, back off now. I think
we're kind of full. So, don't take too
much. Eat more slowly and never go back
for seconds, no matter how good it is.
All right. Leave yourself wanting for
more. That's actually what's really
important. And when you're, you know,
sampling different holiday foods, choose
the ones that are healthy first. Pick
some of the veggies up and put them on
your plate. Not too much. Even the
veggies, even the good food, don't eat
too much of that. All right, so let me
back up again. and we talked a lot about
different foods for the holidays. Let me
give you kind of like some standout
foods that you might think about. I like
to host and I like to cook. So, I'm just
telling you from my own experience, some
standout foods that contribute to health
if you're planning foods for the
holidays or you're actually eating foods
for the holidays and you want to
actually know what you should pay
attention to. Let's go at it. Veggies,
spinach, kale, broccoli, broccoli
sprouts, ridiculio, cauliflower, green
beans, red onion. Not too bad, right?
Cranberries. common for many of the
winter holidays and fall holidays. Dried
cranberries are also good. Little pro
tip, cook your cranberries down and use
freshsqueezed orange juice, which is
going to be quite sweet by itself, but
not as sweet as just putting in a/2 cup
of of pure cane sugar. All right, but
the orange juice will actually give a
nice citrus flavor to the cranberries as
well. Just my little pro tip for you.
Olives, olive oil, you're going to be
cooking, it's going to be on a stove top
or you're going to be roasting
something. All right, olives and olive
oil. They contain healthy fats,
monounsaturated fatty acids, contain a
little bit of omega-3s, and they contain
a lot of polyphenols, hydroxyol,
oolocanthol, olive oil is one of the
best things that you can do. And by the
way, you can cook with it. You can also
serve it. Let's say some sourdough
bread, a little plate of extra virgin
olive oil. You've seen it in a
restaurant. You can dip your bread in
it. great way to get the 3 to four
tablespoons of olive oil that's been
shown to be heart healthy and brain
healthy as well. What's another one
healthy food to consider? Now, normally
I don't encourage people to eat a lot of
cheese. So, I'm not telling you to eat a
lot of cheese here either, but because I
know cheese, they've got high in
saturated fat, high in salt. But you
should know that some cheeses, hard
cheeses especially, Gouda cheese or how
cheese is how the Dutch pronounce it.
Yalsber cheese, ammon cheese, edam
cheese, Swiss cheese. They actually have
vitamin K2, healthy vitamin for you. Uh
can be good. Parmesano rio cheese, the
Italian big orange wheels. You uh shave
that onto your pasta. Absolutely
delicious. also is a probiotic in it
because there's some healthy gut
bacteria that you can actually get from
eating parmesan or reiano cheese. Cam
bear another healthy cheese good for
your gut. Whole thing is like I'm not
encouraging to eat cheese. I'm just
telling you when you see cheese around
the holidays, you can pick out specific
ones and know that eating a little bit
might actually be not so bad for you. In
fact, might even be good for you. Now,
the other thing that you're going to see
around my table around holidays are
dried fruits and tree nuts, which is a
good mix. Dried apricots, dried
cranberries. mix it with walnuts or
almonds. Um, dried fruit is good because
you actually can get the fruit peel. The
peel will have bioactives like urselic
acid which helps your body regenerate
from the inside out. It's hard to eat a
lot of fruit peel and not very pleasant
to do it. But on a dried fruit, you're
going to be eating the peel and that's
the reason you'd want to get organic
dried fruit because you don't it's, you
know, once it's been dried down, you're
never going to be able to wash off any
pesticide residues on it at all. All
right. Okay. What about herbs? I like to
cook. I love to use herbs. Rosemary,
basil, oregano, thyme, parsley, sage.
All right, these common herbs that you
can get any farmers market, any grocery
store, they contain bioactives that can
be helpful for your metabolism, helpful
for your brain, helpful for longevity,
good for lowering inflammation. What are
some of these bioactives and herbs?
Rosemic acid, carvacrol, epigenine.
They're in there and they're good to eat
and they're good to actually use to cook
holiday meals, especially like rosemary.
That scent of rosemary reminds me of the
holidays. They make food taste
fantastic, right? And in fact, if you
want to know about more than 200 foods
that actually light up your health
during the holidays, but also all year
round, um I teach a whole course called
the E2B disease course. It's all about
these foods, how they work, how much you
should eat, what they're good for. And
so I've been teaching this for a few
years now and I've got um students from
90 countries from around the world. So,
it's pretty cool to to see that there's
so many people interested in celebrating
food and this is information you can
definitely take with you uh to the
holidays. Now, what about some foods
that you want to kind of avoid or um try
to stay away from? Well, try to stay
away from processed meats, ultrarocessed
foods, sugar sweetened foods, you know,
extra sugar sweetened foods,
artificially sweetened beverages, or
artificially sweetened anything.
Frankly, stay away from unhealthy
saturated fats. Why am I telling you
this? Because all of these substances
that I've just told you to stay away
from, they weaken your body's health
defenses. They take your shields down.
Best to avoid them if you want a healthy
holiday meal. I don't want you to be
kind of go crazy over thinking about how
to eat healthy during the holidays. But
if you're mindful and make it second
nature to think about what's good for
you and what you would serve to other
people that'd be good for them, you're
going to be kind of uh confident in how
to actually make good choices and avoid
drinking alcohol in excess. Alcohol
toxic to the brain, toxic to your liver,
toxic to your heart. Sorry, that's just
the way it is. That said, I do
understand that alcohol has been used to
celebrate big events in in lives of
humans ever since, you know, humans
started to ferment grains. So, leave it
to wine, little champagne, little beer.
Don't over consume. If you overindulge,
your body's going to pay for it and
you'll know it. So, stay away from high
sugar. Obviously, uh lots of extra added
sugar raises your insulin levels. That's
this in increases in your bloodstream
something called IGF-1, insulin like
growth factor 1. You know, a little
bit's good for you. too much, very
dangerous for your health, even linked
to stimulating, triggering the growth of
cancer. All right, so I I've just given
you a bunch of things that I think
you're going to actually enjoy holidays
if you know that some of the foods that
I've talked about in this video, you can
eat with confidence that they're
actually going to be good for you. I
would actually seriously think that you
can take notes from this video, make a
shopping list, and you'll be able to
actually have healthy meals all year
long at any celebration. Okay, that's it
for today on Dr. ly unplugged. And now
you know what you can eat that's
actually good for you during the
holidays. But there's even more you can
do for your health. And if you actually
found this uh video interesting, eye
opening, practical, make sure you hit
the subscribe button and turn on
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deep dive into food as medicine. And by
the way, if you're serious about
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love this one. Check it out.