Newsletter #7: 5 Elements of metabolically healthy meals, grain-free flours 101, and the REAL reason habits matter
🥑 Good food - 5 Elements of Metabolically Healthy meals in one 💥 power bowl 💥
This week’s good food is the ultimate metabolic power bowl 🥣 . This is more than a recipe; it’s my simple, easy-to-follow framework for a versatile mix-and-match meal that includes the key elements your cells need to support optimal functioning, and leaves out the things that would harm them. I have a variation of this every single day.
The 5️⃣ things you want to include in the power bowl are:
🫐 Tons of antioxidants: These tell the mitochondria, “YOU ARE RESILIENT.”
Antioxidants encompass a wide class of molecules largely found in plants that include vitamins (like vitamin C), trace elements (like selenium and zinc), carotenoids (which often give plants their vibrant color), and polyphenols (which are another class of healthful plant chemicals). Unprocessed, fresh, locally grown foods (i.e., from the farmer’s market) will have more antioxidants than store bought or ultra-processed foods, as processing strips these nutrients from the whole foods, and shipping/transport of food leads to degradation of these compounds during transit time. Consume colorful fruits, vegetables, herbs, nuts, seeds, spices, tea, and cocoa for maximal antioxidants, and source foods grown in healthy, organic, ideally regenerative soil, as it is the health of the soil that determines how many nutrients the food has. For crafting your power bowl, pick one or more foods from the “antioxidant” section below and add to the bowl.
🌱 Omega-3 Fatty Acids: These tell the cell, “YOU ARE SAFE.”
We need to vastly increase omega-3 quantity in our diet, not only for the health benefits they offer but also to crowd out the excess omega-6 fats in the modern Western food supply. The omega-6 fats compete for the same protein enzymes for processing (called desaturases and elongases) as omega-3s, they promote chronic inflammation, and they will incorporate into the cell membranes and cause problems in excess. Therefore, shifting the ratio of the diet to vastly more omega-3s than omega-6s (by increasing omega-3 intake and decreasing omega-6 intake from industrial seed oils like corn oil, vegetable oil, canola oil, sunflower seed oil, soybean oil, peanut oil), is key. Foods like wild-caught salmon, mackerel, sardines, chia, flax, hemp, and walnuts are rich in omega-3 fats and build high integrity cell membranes and limit the impact of pro-inflammatory omega-6s from vegetable oils and processed foods. Aim for minimum 2,000mg omega-3 fats daily. A single 2 serving can of wild caught salmon has around 1,400 mg of omega-3 fats, so this is a great topper for a power bowl. Throw some basil seeds on top and you’re at 2,000 mg in one meal.
Fiber: These tell the microbiome, “I LOVE YOU.”
Fiber feeds gut bacteria which then produce beneficial compounds absorbed into the body called short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which are critical metabolic chemicals. Excellent sources of fiber include chia seeds, flaxseeds, beans, avocados, and raspberries. Aim for 50g of fiber daily. With ½ a cup of black beans, half an avocado, a base of cauliflower rice, and 1 tbsp basil seeds, your single bowl could easily have around 20g of fiber.
🥛 Probiotics: These tell the body, “WE’RE IN THIS TOGETHER.”
Probiotic foods contain live microorganisms that support gut health. Consume probiotic-rich foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, yogurt, and tempeh. Aim for 3+ servings daily. An easy way to do this is to top your bowl with sauerkraut or kimchi, and top with a dollop of whole milk unsweetened Greek yogurt mixed up with some herbs or spices.
🍖 Protein: Tells the cells, “LET’S BUILD!”
Adequate protein intake builds and maintains muscle. As we age, consistent protein intake and resistance training maintains muscle mass. Choose organic meats, fish, eggs, beans, legumes and dairy. Aim for 30g protein per meal and make sure to read Dr. Gabrielle Lyon’s book Forever Strong for an absolute masterclass on protein and muscle. Some of the omega-3 sources can double as a great protein source (like wild caught fish). A chicken breast, ¾ of a can of wild caught salmon, a little over a quarter pound of ground beef, or less than half of a package of high protein tofu will get you to 30g.
The way to build this bowl is to pick a few items from each of these categories, and mix them all up! 🔀😋
Serve these over a metabolically stable base that excludes any refined grains and sugars. Cauliflower rice, broccoli rice, zucchini noodles (zoodles), and konjac root noodles are all great options.
Your cheat sheet for simple sources of metabolically friendly elements.
To make assembling a power bowl faster, I will sometimes order harvest bowls from Daily Harvest as the base of my bowl because they are organic, primarily grain free (i.e., many are cauliflower rice based), and low carb, and then I’ll add some protein (e.g., can of wild caught salmon), fiber (e.g., black beans, hemp, chia or basil seeds) and omega-3s (e.g., can of salmon, crushed walnuts) on top for a very easy 5-minute meal.
Note, you can use the code DHDRCASEY at Daily Harvest to get up to $65 off your first box. My favorite bowl is the cauliflower rice pesto bowl!
If you want a recipe that uses my metabolic power bowl framework, check out this Levels article, here. I’ve also filmed a full length cooking video to teach you how to make metabolic power bowls for LIFE. 👇️
ICYMI: You can download my free ultimate food list here here, for even more ideas of foods to include in your metabolic power bowl.
🔄 Good swap - Grain-free flours 🥥
The grocery store shelves are lined with grain-free flours today and this is excellent news for our ability to make foods we love (tortillas, muffins, cakes, cookies, etc) in a healthier way without the ultra-processed white flour (which should basically never be eaten if we want optimal health, see below). Today, I’m going to share 4 wheat flour alternatives that I use in my rotation to make delicious, cell-supporting food.
Below is an excerpt from my upcoming book Good Energy that describes why I’m not a big fan of ultra-processed white flour:
Another major reason I avoid using white flour or products made with white flour is that these flours are often bleached. Would you ever drink bleach? No. Yet the majority of our white flour produced in the US goes through a bleaching process to make it lighter in color. 🤯 For bleaching, they use chemicals like benzoyl peroxide, chlorine, nitrogen dioxide, and azodicarbonamide (which is also found in yoga mats and shoes to make them more elastic, outlawed in Europe). This is mind-boggling.
Have you ever thought about the fact that it is ridiculous we allow harmful chemicals in our food just to make them slightly lighter? As consumers WE get to say no to this.
For obvious reasons, many of these bleaching chemicals have been banned in some European countries as well as Australia and parts of Canada due to health concerns.
📜 A brief historical anecdote (involving dogs! 🐶) that is worth reading: A study as early as 1946 found that dog biscuits made with flour bleached with nitrogen trichloride (fortunately now outlawed) may have been related to hysteria in dogs when given regularly.
For optimal health, I believe we should eat zero grams of refined ultra-processed grains in the US. The body does not need them, and they are damaging.
Many people are outraged by this. They will say: “But people have been eating flour for millenia! It’s part of the human diet! What are we going to serve at birthday parties?!” My response: Humans have NOT actually been eating this substance we see in grocery stores and in bakeries today for millenia. Nothing is normal about bleached flour, glyphosate covered flour, industrially ultra-refined white flour, flour grown in lifeless and dead soil destroyed by industrial agriculture, “enriched” flour, flour from wheat intentionally bred to be vastly different than it was in the past, flour mixed into processed products with refined sugars and industrial seed oils. And context matters. This new Franken-flour is also entering a modern body that has a damaged gut lining due to otherwise ultra-processed diets, pesticides, chronic stress, and overuse of antibiotics, which makes the inflammatory flour more damaging. Things are not once what they were.
The GOOD NEWS: there are tons of amazing alternatives that have more nutrition, less toxins, and will result in smaller glucose spikes (and therefore fewer cravings)! The flours I have on rotation in my house are organic almond flour, coconut flour, chickpea flour, and tiger nut flour.
Check out the articles below for four recipes I love that uses these flours:
On top of the fact these flour alternatives have no additives and toxicants, they also have more natural fat and fiber, and less net carbohydrates. It is so simple and easy to swap out regular flour for these flours. Start swapping! 🔄
The image shows the comparison of nutrition content of commercial, bleached white flour with four alternatives that I regularly use. The difference is MASSIVE.
Shoutout to one of our subscribers, Mara, for recently sending us a question about alternative flours - which made for an amazing newsletter topic. Keep the questions/suggestions coming! 💓
🧠 Good thought - The real reason habits matter: the relationship to spiritual development 🧘♀️✨
A habit is an activity that we do regularly. Collectively, we talk a lot about “healthy habits” and how to cram more of them into our daily lives. These habits become another thing to check off our to-do list, adding stress to our busy lives.
In reflecting on why the pursuit of healthy-habits sometimes feels joyless and wrought with self-flagellation, I’ve been musing on the idea that we might need to approach our health journey with an updated - and more spiritual - framework. 👇️
1️⃣ Fundamentally, our pursuit of incorporating “healthy habits” (the endless protocols, the bio-hacks, the morning routines, the wearables) is about reducing suffering and improving happiness and our ability to thrive for a longer period of time. Necessarily this is true, or we wouldn't be obsessed with figuring them out, reading books about them, spending money on them, and incorporating them into our lives.
2️⃣ In my experience (and that of nearly every major culture throughout history that we know of), the only way that we truly reduce suffering and improve happiness and thriving is by spiritual development: finding ways to connect with source, spirit, God - whatever you want to call it. Suffering comes not from lack of 12 full minutes of cold-plunges per week, but from our forgetting of our true nature as wholly one with the divine in an eternal, infinite universe of light.
3️⃣ That does not mean that the healthy habits aren't important. Quite the OPPOSITE.
4️⃣ The healthy habits all funnel through the result of creating an optimized and functional material and energetic form (the "body") that is a more open and clear channel to source/God/spirit, and which has an easier time of "remembering" that we are fully connected with and one with source/God/spirit. In fact, we ARE it.
5️⃣ The reason we must DO the many health habits consistently every single day is because the nature of our bodies is that they are constantly dynamic entities, constantly giving and taking matter from the environment (food, air) and transforming energy (metabolism) and producing electricity (action potentials, nerves). We renew our whole gut lining every week. We renew all our skin every 30-40ish days. We are transformers.
6️⃣ So to keep the "radio tower" of the body tuned to the frequency of source/God/spirit most potently/optimally, we have to keep giving the body the building blocks and signals (material - food; energetic - light, etc) daily to build - and literally 3D print - the new "structure" of our bodies to channel source/god/spirit.
7️⃣ This is why the Daoist statement that we as living beings are "a PROCESS, NOT an entity" is so foundational for health. Because the body IS a constantly changing process, so we must keep doing the things (habits, health behaviors, hacks, protocols, etc) to build the healthiest version that can attune to source/god/spirit every, single, day.
8️⃣ If we want bliss, thriving, and longevity, we connect with God (which we fundamentally are and is within us) simply by remembering our true nature. Part of connecting with God is thinning the illusory veil of duality. Part of thinning the veil of duality is building a healthy structure (i.e., half of duality - the material side, the body). This is done by the "healthy habits."
9️⃣ Build health goals on this foundation and it becomes much more “effortless” to be motivated to "be healthy” and do healthy habits. Because it's all in service of one thing: the unshakable bliss that comes from unity with spirit and awareness of our true nature.
🔟 Our de-spiritualized, de-sanctified, consumeristic, distracted, digital-obsessed Western culture has entrenched in us that we are simply bodies - things - alive now and then dead later. Because of this, we fetishize longevity and protocols while missing the point of why we’re really here. We are swirls of cosmic matter hurtling through space channeling consciousness for a brief moment as a way for spirit to experience itself.
So, what to do with all this?
🥗 Yes, eat real food picked freshly from organic, biodiverse, thriving soil to build highly functional cells.
☀️ Get lots of sunlight, which controls the genetic and metabolic pathways that create a functioning body.
🏃 Move your bodies as much as possible throughout the day.
🏋️ Lift heavy weights (a way to build more mitochondria to unlock more light energy from the carbon-carbon bonds of food).
😴 Sleep to keep the miraculous channeling structure of the brain more functional.
🥶 Sure, do the cold plunge and turn your shower to cold at the end of every shower for 30 seconds (in order to create more functional mitochondria that can, again, release more light energy and convert it to human energy).
Do ALL the health habits, but KNOW why you're really doing them. Build your life on an unshakable foundation in service of unlocking your limitless potential as a lightning rod of spirit, and as a part of god.
With good energy 💓
Dr. Casey
In this cold plunge using thermal signals (cold) to communicate to my mitochondria asking them to replicate themselves so that I can more effectively be a transformer of solar energy (photon energy stored in the carbon-carbon bonds of glucose in plants) to human energy (to power my consciousness) and spread as much light during this lifetime. That mindset makes it easier for me!
👀 In Case You Missed It
Excited that the Texas Heart Institute shared my food framework for metabolically healthy meals in their newsletter and blog! I talk about this framework in much more detail in my upcoming book Good Energy.
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