June 21, 2017
Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2017/06/the-ketogenic-kitchen-cookbook/
[00:00] Introduction/Kimera Koffee
[01:36] Blue Apron
[04:22] Domini Kemp and Patricia Daly
[08:26] The Differences Between Domini And Patricia's Approaches
[23:41] Eating Too Many Calories on A Ketogenic Diet
[28:38] Staying Away From Whey Protein
[31:06] Yacon Syrup
[34:11] Ketogenic Toast
[38:08] Quick Commercial Break/Organifi
[39:29] MarcPro
[40:32] Mind Pump Podcast
[42:28] How to Make keto Cornflakes
[45:40] Ketogenic Cereal
[47:12] Ketogenic Pizza
[51:48] Low-carb Temaki
[55:15] High Fat Coffee
[1:01:55] End of Podcast
Ben: Hey. What's up? It's Ben Greenfield, and today's podcast is all about ketosis. But of course, one of the ways that you can get yourself into an extremely deep state of ketosis is by mobilizing fatty acids from adipose tissue. And what's one of the best ways to do that? Caffeine! Coffee! Green tea works pretty well too, but coffee is tastier in my opinion. And a sponsor for today's show actually creates not just coffee, but coffee that has brains vitamins added to it. Brain vitamins, vitamins, however you want to pronounce it. Things like alpha-GPC, taurine, l-theanine, DMAE, these are all things that help to increase focus, and power output, and cognition. They're are all-natural amino acids typically found in foods, but not always easy enough to get from diet alone. They help to protect and prolong coffee's dopamine effect and reduce the anxiety you can get from coffee. This stuff is called Kimera Koffee, K-I-M-E-R-A K-O-F-F-E-E. And you can go to kimerakoffee.com and use code Ben to get 10% off. That's kimerakoffee.com and code Ben. The stuff tastes really good 'cause it single estate, artisan coffee from the Dominican Republic grown at an altitude of 5,000, count 'em, 5,000 feet run by the same family for over 40 years. Plus they add the vitamins to it. Did I mention that? So, good stuff. kimerakoffee.com and use code Ben to get 10% off.
Speaking of tasty things, this podcast is also brought to you by Blue Apron. And yes, you can maintain a state of ketosis and still eat deliciously with some of the meals from Blue Apron. Like they have their sesame soba noodles. Those are not ketogenic I guarantee, but they're really tasty with gai lan, mushrooms, and ginger lime peanuts. They also have marinated chicken thighs with jalapeno rice and summer squash. I suppose if you skip the rice that would be ketogenic. And then they have their cod and tomatillo salsa with summer squash. And that one is amazing. I love me a little bit of cod. You can get any of this stuff over at blueapron.com. And not only that, but you can get your first three meals free with free shipping at blueapron.com/ben. You get these amazing meals for less than 10 bucks per person per meal. You can make 'em in 40 minutes or less. My kids love it 'cause they get these cool little cards, all the ingredients. So my kids actually learn to cook using this stuff and it tastes amazing. So check it out, blueapron.com/ben.
In this episode of The Ben Greenfield Fitness Show:
“What they saw is that with fatty acid, it can yield 120 plus molecules of ATP. Whereas glucose, which apparently, it generates more heat when it burns, it's a maximum 96.” “You really trash your metabolism at a very young age. And to fix it, I think you have to sometimes really reach to quite drastic measures. And I think ketosis can be also a fix, it can be a metabolic fix that doesn't have to be ongoing for the rest of your life necessarily.”
Ben: Hey, folks. It's Ben Greenfield and I've got a few paradoxical food ideas for you. Like how about ketogenic pizza? Or ketogenic toast? Or ketogenic cornflakes? And yes, each of these and many of the carb-a-licious food items that you may associate with a high carbohydrate intake actually do exist in a low carb, high fat and relatively nutrient dense form. You just have to know what to do. And you have to be willing to think outside the box of how, I guess, how many ketogenic eaters operate, which is basically by drinking copious amounts of full fat coconut milk, and buying avocados by the dozen, and going through a stick of butter every couple days, or perhaps every single morning in your coffee. And the fact is that's not necessarily what you have to do. It doesn't to be like all avocados, and coconut oil, and sticks of butter everywhere. You can actually make really good food if you have the right tools on hand.
And my guests on today's show just wrote this book that's called “The Ketogenic Kitchen“. And it's got like 250 recipes in it, but even more interesting to me, it also has some pretty comprehensive scientific information for those you nerds and geeks out there who want to kind of delve into the science behind why and how you make these type of foods. And it also based on my own experimentation with the recipes in this book, written by people who actually know what they're doing in terms of making actual healthy food that tastes good, high fat healthy food that tastes good. So this book was written by two people, both of whom are on today's show. The first is Domini Kemp. Domini, is it Domini or Domini?
Domini: It is. No, it's Domini. You got it right.
Ben: Domini. Boom. Domini is an award-winning chef, she's a food writer, and she's an entrepreneur. And in 2013, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she shifted her focus to a ketogenic diet, and as you've heard on this show before, that is one of the best ways to control the growth of cancer and also to prevent cancer is to limit the amount of glucose that you have available for mitochondria. She did that and she wrote this book, which is actually her fifth cookbook. She also has a juice company, a whole foods cafe, and she knows a lot about healthy cooking and healthy eating. And her co-author is also on the show today, Patricia. What's up, Patricia?
Patricia: Hi, Ben. Thanks so much for having us.
Ben: Yeah. And Patricia Daly, she's a nutritional therapist, she's an author who specializes in cancer care and the ketogenic diet. She's worked with hundreds of cancer patients in Ireland, and that's why you're going to hear her lowling Irish accent. She lectures at the Irish Institute of Nutrition Health, and she's written quite a few books, one even that I kind of worked with her on a little bit, and it's called “Practical Keto Plans For Endurance Athletes”, and I'll link to that in the show notes along with this other book, the book that we're going to talk about today, “The Ketogenic Kitchen”. And you can access the show notes for all the stuff that we talk about if you just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/ketokitchen. That's bengreenfieldfitness.com/ketokitchen. So Patricia and Domini, welcome.
Domini: Thank you so much, Ben. It's lovely to be here.
Patricia: Yeah. Lovely to chat. Finally, yeah. Exactly.
Ben: Now you kind of both have, and I don't know if this was awkward for ya'll, but you kind of have like your own unique approach to eating. Like it seems like one of you is kind of like a little more liberal, one of you is, correct me if I'm wrong, a little bit more strict. Can you go into the difference between your two different dietary approaches or philosophies?
Domini: Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. You hit the nail on the head there. And I suppose I took a more liberal approach to carbohydrates.
Ben: And wait. To interrupt real quick, this is Domini speaking, right?
Domini: This is Domini. You'll notice, you'll hear Patricia's Swiss/Irish accent going, but this is Domini here. So I took a more liberal approach to carbohydrates than Patricia does. So she would follow a ketogenic diet fully. I found low carb works for me, and I suppose trying to be a bit more sort of fat adapted, and I guess because I'm a chef and I work with food, I would find it hard to be in ketosis all the time. So for me, it's about sort of following low carb 80, 90% the time and then being a little bit flexible with that other 10%. And I suppose the book is in two halves. So my half was low carb and really trying to get people to get their head around embracing healthy fats. Because for years, probably for 40 years, I would have followed the food pyramid and eaten a very low fat, high carb diet, which clearly didn't suit me. And it was really after getting breast cancer in 2013 for the second time. I had a malignant melanoma my 20's and it was really at that point when I was in the oncology ward and handed a food pyramid leaflet and said, “This is what we'd advise you to eat.” And I just said and I thought, “You know what? There must be a better way.” And that's when I started really researching and trying to find out what I should be eating, going through treatments. And then I met Tricia. And after everything, we said, “Right. Let's write the book we both wish we'd had access to when we were both diagnosed.” And that was the start of a fantastic friendship and working relationship. And it's just been an incredibly interesting and fascinating journey that we're always learning and always trying to find out more. It's a really exciting time.
Ben: Yeah. And I think it's interesting how when you're laying out the fact that you, Domini, are a little bit more kind of like liberal in terms of not doing a strict carbohydrate restrictive approach, you delve into for example, a really interesting study back in 2012 where they took a bunch of overweight and obese young adults and they had them all eat the same number of calories, and one group got a low fat diet, and one group got a low glycaemic index diet, and one got a low carbohydrate diet. And the low glycemic index diet and the low carbohydrate diet both saw some pretty significant benefits, even though the low carbohydrate diet I think was 10% carbohydrate and the low glycaemic index was I think about 40% carbohydrate, you still saw some benefits from just being just freaking careful with blood sugar fluctuations even if you're not doing full on ketosis or something like that.
Domini: That's exactly right. And I found myself, just over the last year or so, actually measuring my own blood glucose just occasionally to see what spikes and what doesn't, because again the more you learn, the more you want to learn, and just seeing how everything from exercise and even sort of good carbohydrates things like chick peas, or lentils, or anything, how they can spike even a very small amount. And it's been really interesting to kind of see what works and what doesn't work. I'm a chef and so I would eat carbohydrates if I could morning, noon, and night, preferably slathered and fat and protein. I find eating this way, it's terribly satisfying, but you do need to be clever and you did need to try and figure out ways around this because we exist in a world where carbohydrates are just in abundance everywhere you look. And so it's really trying to find ways of adapting and getting a family to sort of join in the quest as it were to just try and reduce down the amount of sugar we eat.
Ben: Right. Because I don't want to give people the impression that I'm necessarily anti-carbohydrate. I mean even when you look at the blue zones, you read a book like Dan Buettner's “Blue Zones”, or a recent one I read by Dr. Daphne Miller called
“The Jungle Effect”, many of the long-living populations and very healthy population spread across the face of the planet, you see a pretty liberal amount of not just wild plant intake, which is a prevailing characteristic, but also the consumption of carbohydrates, but carbohydrates that are fiber-rich and also very low glycaemic index. Legumes, for example. You look at Dan Buettner's Blue Zones, and legumes are a huge part of many of the foods. And you look at the, I believe they're called “the three sisters” in like Native American cuisine, corn, and squash, and totally blanking out on what the last one is now. Is it beets? Corn, squash, and beets? Now I'm feeling like an idiot…
Domini: Maybe some other root, yeah?
Ben: But ultimately, they're low glycaemic index carbohydrates. And when combined with the fact that the other characteristic of many of these blue zones is the fact that they engage in low level physical activity all day long, which also controls blood sugar levels, I think that you can necessarily, you could definitely make an argument that this idea of just simply paying attention to blood sugar regulation and not necessarily eating strict ketosis is still going to give some pretty significant benefits from a longevity and blood sugar standpoint.
Patricia: Yeah. I think it's always also interesting to see where you start because these people, that's how they grew up. And the kids, they probably never got any refined carbs or they never got those junk foods that we basically, I see a lot of kids in Ireland grow up with, and just really excess sugar. I mean way above the WHO guidelines. And so you really trash your metabolism at a very young age. And to fix it, I think you have to sometimes really reach to quite drastic measures, and I think ketosis can be also a fix, it can be a metabolic fix that doesn't have to be ongoing for the rest of your life necessarily. And we also see, I mean the ketogenic diet comes from the epileptic world. That's how it all starts. That's why we have the most evidence. And epileptic children, they quite often, they're kept on a ketogenic diet for two years and then they're weaned. So it has to be a dynamic process to really, I think with carbs, that you can't just say, “Okay, I'm just going to stay at 12 grams of net carbs for the rest of my life.” This is probably not going to work. And it's really looking at the individual where they're at in terms of, as you said, all the other lifestyle aspects, and community, and sleep, and stress.
Domini: There's so much, yeah. Stress, that's so much of an influence in our blood glucose. I think for me, at this stage now, and I've been keto now, I started in 2012 and was really strict at the beginning, and now I sort of start to realize there's other things that have an even bigger impact now on my glucose than foods. So it seems that the body has sort of adapted and that there's other stressors that I have to be to keep an eye on, like sleep deprivation, stress, feeling overwhelmed sometimes. Back in our fear, fear of a relapse when I get sick sometimes, I do get scared. And that all influences then glucose and lots of other markers.
Ben: And then Patricia, in contrast to Domini, a lot of your recipes in the book, because some of the recipes are like, kind of like Domini mentioned, more liberal, and then all of your recipes are like no more than like I think 5 to 10% carbohydrate intake and involve I guess would be considered like a little bit more of like a strict ketogenic approach, I suppose for someone who wanted more of that metabolic therapy, like who might have cancer, or epilepsy, or something like that?
Patricia: Yeah. Exactly. I mean that's when it has to be really monitored and where people have to really start to weighing their food at least initially and just really learn as much as they can about quantities of food, how much of what they can eat, and really learn a lot initially. It can be quite overwhelming for people. But yeah, as you say, I have meal plans actually in my part because that's what I found when I was working with people. They said, “Oh, it's great to have recipes, but the magic comes when it's all being put together,” and also using leftovers. I'm a big fan of not wasting food.
So I decided to do meal plans in my part of the book in the second part. And it starts with I think 48 grams of net carbs. And then over two weeks, it goes down to 12 grams, and then two weeks of 12 grams. And the 12 grams, is mainly, I think it's Tom Seyfried from Boston College who mainly came up with the 12 grams, and obviously that can be a bit dependent on the individual. But that's what we went for in the book as well because it's very, very challenging to have only 12 grams of net carbs but also have a lot of nutrient density. And that's really my focus, as you said at the beginning, I am not one to recommend putting loads of butter into your coffee or just a drinking olive oil. That's a question I sometimes ask.
Ben: I love me a big glass of olive oil for breakfast.
Patricia: Exactly.
Ben: So tasty. So functional. So what you're saying is that your definition of low carb, and it sounds like it's pretty close to my definition of low carb, would be like, I think in the book you say about 50 to 100 grams of carbohydrate per day, and then ketosis would be kind of closer to like that less than 50 grams-ish range?
Patricia: Yeah, definitely. And there I also have the experience with people that, once they really adapt this and they're sort of fat optimized, or they're fat adapted, which means, it's not the same as being in ketosis, it means that your body preferentially uses fat as opposed to carbs. So even if the carbs are there, it's only used when it really has to. So for instance, in exercise. But otherwise preferentially fat is being the main source of fuel. And I do see, with me as well, especially when I increased my training load a little bit again, I could definitely tolerate more carbs and still be in ketosis.
Ben: Yeah. And you even mention this in the book, like you have a carbohydrate sensitivity quiz. And it's kind of like, I guess it'd be kind of similar to, Robb Wolf just wrote this new book called “Wired To Eat” that I interviewed him about in which he gives all the instructions for getting a blood glucose monitor, and just taking every meal that you eat, and monitoring your blood sugar response to see your carbohydrate sensitivity. But you guys have a little bit more of like a, I guess, just like this really simple quiz approach where if you take this quiz and you have high carbohydrate sensitivity, you might be one of those people who would want to switch to using more of, I guess, Patricia's recipes in the book or doing more of the ketosis instead of the low carb until you can restore some of that insulin sensitivity and carbohydrate sensitivity.
Patricia: Yeah. Exactly.
Domini: And that was a wonderful quiz that we borrowed very generously from Dr. Georgia Ede for the book. I think it just gives a good overview as to whether people, as I said, I would have definitely followed high carb, low fat diet for years, and I think when you make the switch, and you cut out carbohydrates, and you look at fasting and all the benefits of that, and as Patricia talked about, being fat adapted, I think it's amazing how before I would've eaten breakfast and then by 11 o'clock would be feeling that slump, tired, and cranky, and hungry, and always thinking of the slump in my next meal. Whereas now, to be able to go 24 hours and fast regularly, you feel so much better. I just think it's really interesting the way the body can adapt.
I think what we find is a lot of people, it could be very, very divisive at the moment between low carb, ketosis, ketogenic diets, low fat, everything hat got very, very controversial. And I think what we find is that, I keep saying there isn't the one perfect diet for everyone. It really depends on what suits you. And the two of us written this book, but we both slightly differently. But the one thing we have in common is just really reducing carbohydrates. If it suits, and you do that quiz, and you find out, yes, probably carbs, the high carb diet doesn't suit you, I think it's such a great way to eat and you can feel so good. There are so many recipes in the book where I suppose we can replace things like pizza, and so on and so forth, and corn flakes, as you touched on earlier, that you can still feel really, really satisfied. And I think you can't forget that eating has to be extremely pleasurable. It's such a wonderful thing to do socially, physically, the whole lot. It's an incredibly pleasurable thing. And I think for me as a chef, it's really important that all the recipes are really tasty and I think that we've done that. At least I hope we have.
Ben: Yeah. I definitely want to get into some of your recipes, but I actually had a couple other question, just a couple overview questions for you. One of the things that you talk about that I thought was interesting that I haven't seen many people talk about much before is this idea that if you're eating too many calories and you're eating a higher fat, lower carbohydrate ketogenic diet, excessive calorie consumption on that diet seems to have some pretty significant consequences. Can you go into what happens if you're doing like, let's say a ketogenic diet, but you're just eating too many damn calories? Like what happens that is unique to eating too many calories on something like a ketogenic diet?
Patricia: Yeah. It was basically, that goes back to a paper that was published in 2012. Tom Seyfried was one of the authors, and I think the lead scientist was Meydenbauer was his name. And they did show that on an unrestricted ketogenic diet, it was a mouse study, when they could feed as much as they wanted, they developed issues especially with their lipid profile, I think mainly triglycerides, they went up as well, and they sort of showed the signs of early heart disease as well. So I think it's hard to overeat on a ketogenic diet, but it's definitely possible. That's why we're talking about it. And also the other very interesting thing is, I often talk with Alex Feretti, a colleague of mine who is based in the UK. He more sort of specializes in athletic performance and ketogenic diet. So he did…
Ben: You mean Alessandro Feretti? That guy?
Patricia: Yeah. Exactly it.
Ben: I hung out with him. He was, I think when I was in London at the biohacker's conference in London, he was at that one.
Patricia: Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Exactly. So they're doing with Weco… I can't remember his last name, they're doing quite a bit of research into calories on a ketogenic diet. And what they realized is that if you, and now it's getting a bit nerdy, but if you take the 18 carbons of a fatty acid, an 18-carbon fatty acid, and you compare that with three molecules of glucose, which also then has, it's a six-carbon molecule, so three times six is 18 as well. So then you can compare it. And what they saw is that with fatty acid, you can yield 120 plus ATP, molecules of ATP. Whereas glucose, which I think it generates more heat when it burns, it's maximum 96.
So we also see there that it's actually a more effective, more efficient way of generating energy, and that's why you probably have to reduce your calorie intake so that you can really compare a ketogenic diet with a normal standard diet. Especially in trials. I think that's one of the downfalls of some trials as well. And that has never really being explored that way. But if you want to really be genuinely isocaloric, so if you want to compare two diets and the ketogenic diet is one of them, you probably have to go down on the calories. So I see that all the time as well. Because it can be hard to actually really eat all the calories, your appetite changes definitely. And not in a negative way. It's just you don't actually feel the need to eat all the time.
Ben: Yeah. So that's actually, like when you bring up some of the issues with the labs, like I see that a lot of times with folks like you see more with athletes who are eating, you actually see things like really elevated blood glucose, and like high LDL and low HDL with high triglycerides, and a lot of these issues that I think come from just doing the ketosis thing but just like eating too much, like just too much food. Not that the other issue isn't a problem too, people starving themselves into things like amenorrhea, and low thyroid, and low testosterone. But yeah, you can just like switch to ketosis and just like stuff face with copious amounts of oil in your coffee and think you’re going to be good to go. It's a good point that you're making in there.
Domini: And I think nutrients.
Ben: Yeah.
Domini: Yeah. I think nutrients as well. I mean so many people still haven't caught on that you really need to get your nutrients in. If you can tolerate vegetables, please eat your vegetables. I mean I know of people who can't, they have salicylate allergy, or for whatever reason, they just do not tolerate vegetables, and that's okay. But if you do tolerate them, please eat them.
Ben: There's actually a really good new book about that, about why a lot of people don't tolerate vegetables and what you can do about that. It's called “The Plant Paradox” by Dr Steven Gundry. It's actually a really good book. For those of you listening, I'll link to anything I mention, if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/ketokitchen, I'll put that one in there. But you guys also, one other thing that you mentioned that I was kind of curious about, 'cause I haven't seen this much is you're actually recommending that, especially like cancer patients, steer away from whey protein. Why is it that that would be the case?
Patricia: Well, again it depends a little bit, and interestingly I was talking about this, I was at the conference in Florida, in Tampa in February, the Metabolic Therapeutics Conference, and I was talking to Andrew Kutnik, who specializes in cachexia, so rapid weight loss in cancer patients. It's a very, very tricky condition. Nobody really knows what to do about this. There's no drugs that can stop it. There's a few things we can do, but in terms of the pharma companies basically are just pulling their hair out because they can't find what exactly is going on. So it's definitely a lot to do with metabolism no doubt. And sort of said, “Okay, would whey protein have a place there?” And he said, “I think so.” So I think for somebody who needs that IGF-1 boost, or insulin boost as well to put on weight for instance, it can have its place in cancer patients. But again, I would really do that with somebody who understands exactly what they're doing. And otherwise, and as I just mentioned, it's mainly the IGF-1, or insulin spike that whey protein can elicit. So that's the main reason.
Ben: Okay. Gotcha. So I mean it's really good though for you because of that. People I'm helping put on muscle or gain weight, I'm a huge fan of whey protein. But you're just saying, okay. So it's the insulin and the insulin-like growth factor spike, that is the reason you're not a fan of it.
Patricia: Yeah, exactly. Because it's one of the pathways that can be used for cancer proliferation…
Ben: In which case I'm assuming you would recommend if someone was going to use a protein, like pea, or a hemp protein, or something like that?
Patricia: Exactly. Hemp is sort of my preferred, or just mixtures of hemp and pea. So, yeah. There's some nice ones out there. So I would go for the plant rather than whey or something else. Yeah, exactly.
Ben: Okay. And then also, to get into like ingredients, one of the sweeteners that you talk about in there, of course you mention stevia as being something that you utilize a lot in these recipes that I know we're going to take a dive into some of the tasty recipes here in a little bit, but you also talk about this special kind of syrup. Y-A-C-O-N. Is it yacon?
Patricia: Yacon syrup, yeah.
Ben: Okay. Why is that?
Patricia: It's quite interesting because Domini and I, first of all, we didn't want to put dessert in there at all because we were sort of, “What's the point?” Because we actually want people to eat whole foods and to actually steer people away from sweets. So let's just stick to it. And then the publishers were, “But you can't really write a cook book without that section.” And then also in my experience, it can really be the make or break for certain patients. If they really have, in their view, nothing to look forward to when it comes to food, they just simply will not go there. And that's why for some people it's a crutch, and it's a very important crutch, and they need their sweets every now and then. And I do emphasize please don't make that, whatever, white chocolate sword every single day. And it really is for special occasions.
But, yeah, the yacon syrup. It was funny because some of my clients, they sort of, “Oh, I can't have honey, I can't have maple syrup, I can't have agave syrup. So what is there left?” We're all about sort of giving people options and I researched what is there left in terms of that nice, liquidy sweetener, and obviously stevia is just drops. It doesn't have the same consistency as some lovely honey or maple syrup. So yacon syrup is actually the closest and it has a lot of fructooligosaccharides, which can be really beneficial for the gut and can feed some gut bacteria. I mean some people do not respond well, like for instance inulin as well or you’re chewing some artichokes, it can be extremely beneficial for the gut if someone tolerates it well. And also it seems to have some beneficial effects on metabolism. And it's even being sort of, there's even a study into weight loss on yacon syrup. I think that's, I don't…
Ben: And you can just get just pure, raw yacon syrup off of like Amazon, the same way that you would get like raw honey for example?
Patricia: Yeah. I can't…
Domini: It's available on the health food stores over here. So I'm sure if it's available in Ireland in the health foods stores, it must be…
Ben: If you can get it in Ireland, you can probably find it in the US. Exactly. Although apparently the Guinness is a lot better over there. Okay. Let's start to delve into some of these recipes, because there's some unique things in here I wanted to ask you about. So first of all, you talk about toast, toast in the book, like ketogenic toast. How the heck do you actually have toast, or make toast on a ketogenic diet. ‘Cause we're huge toast fans at the Greenfield house. My wife makes sourdough bread all the time. It's definitely just like pure carbohydrates. It's not like a ketogenic, but I'm curious. Like how does one actually do ketogenic toast?
Patricia: Well, there are, actually in fairness, there are some fantastic bread recipes in the book. And there's a lovely hazelnut bread, and there's a lovely coconut focaccia.
Ben: We've got time. Go into how you make them. I mean obviously we want people to get the book, but at the same time, fill us in.
Domini: Yeah. I think the one that we call toast, sort of in quote, in inverted commas, that's the whole that made, it was mainly made with [0:34:29] ______, I think. So sunflower seeds, we're just trying to look it up here. I think it's at the beginning of my part where, it is quite crunchy. There's quite a lot of cracker recipes and they do come out pretty crunchy. But it's, that's why you put it into inverted commas.
Ben: They're crackers. They're supposed to be crunchy.
Domini: Yeah. Exactly. So it's not sort of the nice moist part that your toast would have, but it comes pretty close. So that's what we use. I have this recipe, I think it's with shiitake mushrooms and maybe eggs as well, and people just say, “But what do I eat that with?” So that's why…
Ben: Yeah. But how do you make the actual toast? Like the bread or whatever, or the crackers? Like what's the recipe to actually make these things?
Domini: There's one recipe for cracking crackers, and that's in my section. And actually they're wonderful when you are craving something to have with cheese or something like this, and they are bound with some psyllium husks. Again, a really good selection of seeds. And you bake them until they're really good and crisp. And what I always tell people to do is 'cause you sort of roll them out into a sheet, and once they start drying out on the outside, break those bits off and keep cooking them until they're really, really dry and crisp. And make sure you don't put them into an airtight container while they're still warm. Otherwise, they'll end up soggy.
Patricia: Something like toast.
Domini: But they're fantastic. And, yeah, people, regardless of whether they're following low carb or not, they actually adore them. And Tricia's a great one. The kale crackers…
Patricia: The kale crackers, that's what we call what we sell as toast basically.
Ben: Wait. There are kale crackers?
Patricia: It's kale, yeah. So it's kale, Brazilian nuts, sunflower seeds, and then you bind all this with eggs and you put some onion as well, and a little bit of coconut oil, and then just spices and salt. So depending on if you make them for kids or for adults, you can vary the spices a little bit. But I actually made them for the school recently. I went into my five year old's school and the kids just love making those crackers because it's all handiwork, and I prepared everything at home and they're basically like builders, just putting the dough down and just making it as thin as possible. And then you just put it in the oven and you make sure, as Domini said, you just sort of take off the edges initially when it's really nice and crisp, and then the middle sometimes takes a bit longer. But it's really lovely. And most kids just in school, they absolutely adored them. And moms told me they're making them at home now, especially because you can involve the kids. So that's kale crackers, for instance. And then we've got some other recipes for about three or four different cracker recipes, and then bread as well. And they are mainly, there's vegetables, quite a bit of vegetables in them, or nuts and seeds as well.
Ben: Okay.
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Alright. Earmuffs for the kids, you guys. Earmuffs for the kids. As you've probably heard me talk about before, the fitness industry is full of a lot of bullshit, including the fact that celebrities are out there trumping their workouts as the go-to workout that's going to get you the perfect magazine cover model look. But in fact, either those celebrities are now doing the actual workout that you're reading about or they're doing that, but also injecting testosterone up their right butt cheek and engaging in all manner of other risky business to really truly get the body that you're seeing on Hollywood. Not to mention a bit of photoshopping and airbrushing involved.
Anyways though, I have a couple of friends, well more than a couple, I've got three guys who I turn to when it comes to kind of peeling back some of the deep, and dirty, and dark secrets of the fitness industry, and these guys do a pretty good job of it. They're more willing to piss people off than I am frankly, and they do so in their show. It's called Mind Pump, Mind Pump. You should check these guys out. mindpumpmedia.com. And if you want to listen to an episode that is a perfect example of what I just explained to you, you should go listen to their episode on Zac Efron's Baywatch workout. Not only are these cats funny, but they also do a really, really good job just basically ripping to shreds all of the problems in the fitness, in the health, in the nutrition industry. They're really cool dudes. So check out episode 518, it'd be a good place to start, mindpumpmedia.com. Or on iTunes, “Zac Efron's Baywatch Workout” is the one that I would check out. So again, Mind Pump is the podcast. You'll like it.
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Ben: And do you do, like instead of crackers, do you do any actual breads at all? Or is a pretty much impossible to have like an actual high fat, low carb bread?
Patricia: No. It is. There's a hazelnut bread, and you can make it with any type of nuts. I actually had somebody e-mail me, “Hazelnuts are so expensive at the moment. Can I take anything else?” You can use almond butter, or cashew butter, or whatever. Obviously the carb content will vary a little bit, but it's lovely. Totally looks like a bread. It's got the texture of a bread. And with a bit of butter, for instance, it's lovely. And for my case, I just then put something sweet on top or whatever. So it is a family friendly bread. And then we got muffins as well with coconut flowers. It's very handy for muffins and breads as well. So I usually use those.
Domini: Yeah, the vegetable muffins are fantastic because you can also do them in a loaf and it's just a load of carrots, spinach, red onions, courgette, or what you would call zucchini, and garlic, and then a lot of melted butter, which just gives it just such great flavor, and some coconut milk, and a lot of egg. And it's almost like a cross between a sort of quiche/muffin. But these are wonderful and you can do it in a whole loaf and do slices of it. Again, it's like, I think, as Patricia was referring to earlier about us being reluctant to put in desserts and sweet things, I think it's great though to have things like this, especially for pretzels, for things like butter, or cheese, or something, or different dips, lovely pesto dips, and some of them that we have. And those are the things sometimes you really miss when you are eating low carb, as you were talking about your wife making sourdough, I'd eat sourdough morning, noon, and night if I could. I absolutely adore it. But it's one of those things that you really miss, and I think that if you have good replacements like that, the low carb, it just really can kind of help you stay on track.
Ben: Okay. What about cereal? Because I kind of like quit cereal for a really long time. I used to actually make oatmeal every morning, and my oatmeal recipe was just like steel cut oats and water, and then I put as much, speak of the devil, whey protein in there as possible, and then three scoops of peanut butter, and some cinnamon, and I would microwave that for about four minutes until it basically made like a cookie in a giant bowl, and that was like my breakfast for probably like three years back when I used to race a lot of triathlon. Like that's just what I ate every morning. And now I have like a plant-based, kind of like high fat smoothie, but I do like cereal. Like I grew up eating Captain Crunch, of course, peanut butter Captain Crunch, and you actually have a cereal recipe in the book. I think it's like a corn flake recipe or something like that, but can you go into how one would actually do a cereal?
Patricia: Well, we have cornflakes and then also granola. The granola is lovely too.
Domini: It's so delicious. The granola's amazing.
Patricia: The keto cornflakes is basically coconut flakes which I think are brilliant also, even for snacks. They are very satisfying. And then also some flaked almonds. And then cinnamon, and then we have, it's a protein coconut shake basically. Because it would be quite low in protein. So the coconut shake is then with, we have some [46:10] ______ using here or I like [46:13] _____ as well with coconut milk, or almond milk, or whatever people like. So that goes on top then.
Ben: Okay. So it's just like basically coconut flakes, and then like nuts, like almonds, and then you kind of like cover that with coconut milk or whatever. You throw some cinnamon in there, and there's pretty much like no grains. It's just like a bunch of crunchy stuff?
Patricia: Yeah, exactly.
Ben: You know what I'd throw in there if it were me is I would throw, 'cause they are kind of high fat, and they're really crunchy, and they taste great, I would throw cacao nibs in there.
Patricia: Yeah. That would be great too.
Domini: That would be lovely. Yeah, really good.
Ben: Maybe we can make book number two. Pay me a royalty on that recipe. Okay, I've got another one that a lot of people kind of quit eating when they quit eating a high carb diet and that would be pizza. How do you do pizza? How do you do a low carbohydrate pizza, especially when it comes to the crust?
Domini: This is when, so we have two different types of pizza. We have one vegetarian one, which is a cauliflower base, and my sister-in-law, she's a chef over in New York, and for years, she's vegan and raw food enthusiast. She wrote a fantastic with Talia Rose. So she gave the rest of this cauliflower pizza, and it's brilliant. You just blitz raw cauliflower until it becomes sort of breadcrumb-like. And then you bind it with some soft goat cheese and egg, and then you spread it out. And you blind bake it. So you bake it in the oven until it dries out a bit and it forms this wonderful base. And then you can top it with a really simple tomato sauce that you make sauteing off some onions, adding some tomatoes, and red pepper, a little bit of thyme, and some garlic. And then making some courgette ribbons and topping it with a little goat's cheese and a little drizzle of olive oil. And that's a fantastic, really nice vegetarian kind of pizza that is also really good the next day cold. But the other pizza that we have is a meat pizza, and this is one of Patricia's recipes and…
Patricia: I did a lot of slacking, by the way. Domini was like, we can't possibly put this in the book.
Domini: Yeah. I was horrified, I was absolutely horrified when I read it. I'd tease her. I'd say it's like her Homer Simpson pizza 'cause the base is made with ground or minced lamb or beef, and you mix it with some whole grain mustard, and herbs, and so on. And you just flatten it out, and you bake it, and then we'd top it with a lovely sauteed mixture of spinach, and mushroom, and then some artichoke hearts, and a little parmesan or manchego pizza. We also put it in some of the tomato sauce, this lovely hemp and sundried tomato pesto that we have a recipe for. And when we finished writing the book, we were shooting some videos and we made this pizza, and I swear, all the camera men and the lighting guys just basically, they were in heaven. They were just eating this meat pizza thinking, yeah, basically declaring their love for Patricia…
Ben: I need to give it to my wife because, in addition to the flax and coconut focaccia bread, which you make with milled flax seeds, and coconut, and chia seeds, it looks like your pizza base is just basically ground up almonds, and ground up Brazil nuts, and butter, and you just basically mix. So what you do is you mix all that together…
Domini: I think that's another one. That's like a kind of tart base instead of a…
Ben: No, it's like the pizza base that you have in here is you mix…
Patricia: Oh, yeah. We have another one. Yeah, that's right.
Ben: Yeah. You mix almonds, and you mix Brazil nuts, then you add the egg, and you add the water, and that's the dough. It's just like nuts, and egg, and water, and then you put that in the oil pan and you bake it, and, oh it looks like you put coconut flour and salt in there too, and then you just bake that, and that's your base for the pizza.
Patricia: The manchego pizza, I think. Yeah, exactly.
Ben: There's like no flour.
Patricia: Yeah. It's incredibly rich. So if anybody says, “I need to put on weight. What to eat?” That could be the one. But I think it's the naughty pizza base.
Domini: Naughty pizza base, yeah.
Patricia: Exactly. Yeah, that's a really nice one as well. And I always sort of, I actually freezes really well, that pizza base, so I always check “does it freeze or not” because I like to make double the amount. And, yeah, that's a really nice one too, especially…
Domini: So it's three pizzas. Three pizza bases that we have in the book, which is not bad considering it's all low carb and ketogenic. It's some pretty good [0:51:06] ______.
Ben: I know. I love reading books like this and then going in the kitchen and figuring out how to put it 'cause my wife has a pantry full of every single flour, like coconut and banana, or bread fruit and almond flour, and she has all this stuff 'cause she cooks a lot more than I do, but I like to go in and tinker when I read books like this and see what I can process. My boys and I both. You also have something in there, speaking of tinkering with new recipes, called temaki, T-E-M-A-K-I. I'd never really heard of temaki. What is that? And then what's the recipe and why's this included in there? ‘Cause it looks really simple, but I wanted to ask you about it.
Patricia: Yeah. It's borrowed by Japanese. I love sushi and Japanese food, and they generally fill it with lots of rice. A typical temaki recipe would be eggs, the nori seaweed [0:52:04] ______, so you usually use it as a wrap. So the seaweed is your wrap. It actually looks like a pin wrap. And so traditionally they would put lots of rice, and avocado, and fish, and different things would be very keto friendly, but what we do is we put, we pretty put anything. We have roast chicken, and then spinach and pesto. So Japanese people would probably pull their hair [0:52:36] ______. But it's just a really quick lunch. I usually, I always have pesto in the fridge. That's just always a given. And we have several pesto recipes in the book. And most people have a bit of spinach as well. So it's really sort of a leftover recipe where you can just use your imagination and just take the seaweed and stuff it with whatever you want. And we just give a bit of inspiration there. And yeah, it can be a complete meal because we sort of use a bit of coconut oil to fry the chicken, leftover chicken and spinach.
Ben: It's basically, in looking over it, 'cause it's like a meat, usually what I use is sardines for lunch. But I'll just take sardines with a few vegetables, and I wrap 'em up in seaweed, but I actually do use rice. I use a rice made from Japanese yam. It's no calories and it's no carbs. It's made by this company called Miracle Noodles, and so I wrap that as my rice up in the seaweed wrap, and so I still get kind of like that filler in the seaweed, I'm getting hungry talking about it 'cause it's almost lunch time. I'll go up and make some after this. But, yeah. I mean that's how I get the rice component, have you tried this before? These Japanese yam noodles?
Patricia: Yeah. For the shirataki, we actually have a recipe in there as well for shirataki noodles. And you need to wash them really well, otherwise they smell like rotten eggs. It's why I always warn people when they open the package. But we have a recipe in there as well, I'm just trying to find it. It is shirataki.
Ben: Yeah. I mean that's something, like I always have the shirataki fettuccine and shirataki capellini, shirataki spaghetti, shirataki rice. Like I have a whole box of it in my pantry that I'm constantly dipping into. My wife doesn't care for it too much, but my boys don't mind. And we did like, my boys last year at the Paleo f(x) Conference actually taught a cooking class, and their cooking class, they made Pad Thai but they actually used the shirataki noodles for the pad thai. And it was really good. They also used instead of chicken, crickets of all things. So it was like a cricket shirataki recipe. Like if you go to Ben Greenfield Fitness, actually, I'll link to it in the show notes. If anybody listening in wants my kids' pad thai recipe with Miracle Noodles, I'll put it in there. And again go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/ketokitchen for any of this stuff.
Let's talk about one of those things that I think is super popular, of course, among this whole ketogenic, low carb diet movement and that's coffee. You have in the book a little bit of a discussion about coffee, and specifically the fact that you found a lot of your clients complain about nausea, or bloating, or a lack of appetite for a long time after consuming the traditional kind of like, I guess, Bulletproof coffee recipe, and instead, hopefully Dave doesn't care about saying this too much, you instead have your recipe for High Fat Coffee. What is High Fat coffee?
Patricia: Yeah. We basically, I mean, obviously, Dave, you can't just take exactly his recipe, but it's such a big thing now. And what I like is, or what a lot of my clients like is just to reduce dairy a little bit. So we just use different kinds of fat in this particular coffee. I think Dave uses…
Patricia: MCT Oil…
Domini: And…
Patricia: Does he use coconut oil? I don't even know.
Ben: Well, coconut oil, or like C8, Brain Octane type of stuff…
Patricia: We talk about MCT, I have to say, most people, they're okay to tolerate his MCT, the Brain Octane. But any other one, sometimes, they can, if they're probably more C10 than C8, or whatever is in there, it's not quite as pure, it can cause, in some very sensitive people it can cause, actually diarrhea, or just cramps. So were a bit careful not to [0:57:12] ______ with that and just get everybody to use it without giving a bit of a caveat. So some people, obviously coconut oil is not the same as MCT oil. There's a lot of lauric acid as well it’s not pure and other fatty acids. It's not pure MCT. For some people, it's enough. And we also use cocoa butter in there. But it always depends.
Some people say, “I find it really, really helpful to help elevate my ketones,” and it doesn't, insulin? So some people, they find it easier to actually ease into fasting that way, just by having a Bulletproof coffee in the morning because they couldn't just have nothing at all. So for some people, it definitely has a place. It's really good, 'cause again, it's just liquid calories. So if somebody, say, has to lose a bit of weight, which actually can be the case with some cancer patients obviously not losing muscle or whatever it is, it certainly doesn't do any harm. I prefer that they actually eat food rather than eat calories in food form rather than drinking it because it's very easy, as we discussed earlier, than to just go shoot overboard. Especially if somebody's a bit of an emotional eater or coffee drinker.
Ben: So basically it's just like your hot coffee or your tea, and you're mixing it with coconut oil, with butter, and with cocoa butter? Those are the three main components.
Patricia: Yeah. Exactly.
Domini: But we also have, there's a keto coffee as well where we make it with some, actually tinned coconut milk, and coconut oil, and a little vanilla. So there's two different variations of it. Yeah. It's sort of one of those things. It's like a lot of these things, they become fads and people kind of go crazy for them. And then you hear people, like literally as you said earlier, adding sticks of butter to their coffee and eating those and everything. You're kind of going, you're missing the point. If you have just endless calories and endless amount, it's hard and people do need to balance it. And I think it goes back to what Patricia was saying, like trying to eat real food where you know that it's really nutrient dense is probably a better way to go.
Ben: Yeah. Well for those of you listening in, from no-grain, nut, kale, and seed bread, which you have to try, to white chocolate, to banana ice cream, to a whole host of things you never would have thought that you could eat on a low carb, ketogenic diet, they're all in here, and it's a really well-done book with amazing pictures. So it's going to be over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/ketokitchen if you want to add this one to your pantry. I think it's a great addition. And Patricia and Domini, it was really nice to have your fantastic lowling Irish accents on the show today. And thank you for writing this book. It really is a great read. I thought that when I got it, it was just going to be yet another cookbook, but it's actually got some really tasty, unique, low carb recipes in here. So nice job and thanks for coming on the show.
Patricia: Thank you very much for having us. It's been a pleasure talking to you. It really has.
Ben: Awesome. Alright, folks. Well I'm Ben Greenfield along with Patricia and Domini, authors of The Ketogenic Kitchen. Check it out at bengreenfieldfitness.com/ketokitchen, signing out. Have a healthy week.
Ketogenic pizza.
Ketogenic toast.
Ketogenic cornflakes.
Yep, each of these, and many of carbalicious food items actually do exist in low-carb, high-fat nutrient dense recipes.
You just have to know what to do, and you have to be willing to think outside the box of how most ketogenic eaters operate: which is basically drinking copious amounts of full-fat coconut milk, buying avocados by the dozen and going through a stick of butter every couple days.
Cancer survivors Domini Kemp and Patricia Daly just put the finishing touches on the first-ever comprehensive ketogenic cookbook – a cookbook based on the latest research on nutritional approaches to the prevention and management of cancer and a ketogenic diet. But this book is chock full of delicious recipes and practical ketogenic tips that go way above and beyond just cancer management.
For decades, the ketogenic diet―which shifts the body’s metabolism from burning glucose to burning fat, lowering blood sugar and insulin and resulting in a metabolic state known as ketosis―has been used to successfully manage pediatric epilepsy. More recently, it has been used by the Paleo community as a weight loss strategy. Now emerging research suggests that a ketogenic diet, in conjunction with conventional treatments, also offers new hope for those coping with cancer and other serious disease.
With endorsements from leading researchers and oncologists such as Dr. Thomas Seyfried (Cancer as a Metabolic Disease), The Ketogenic Kitchen offers more than 250 recipes, as well as meal plans and comprehensive scientific information about the benefits of a ketogenic diet, with sensible advice to help readers through periods of illness, recovery, and treatment.
Domini Kemp is an award winning chef, food writer, and entrepreneur. In 2013, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and since then she has shifted her focus towards healthier eating. She changed her column in the Irish Times to focus on healthier recipes and opened Alchemy Juice Co., a juice and wholefoods cafe. The Ketogenic Kitchen is her fifth cookbook.
Patricia Daly is an experienced nutritional therapist and author specializing in cancer care and the ketogenic diet in particular. She has worked with hundreds of cancer patients in Ireland and abroad, lectures at the Irish Institute of Nutrition and Health, and is a well-regarded speaker at conferences and in cancer centers. After writing three eBooks, including “PRACTICAL KETO MEAL PLANS FOR ENDURANCE ATHLETES: Tips, Tricks And How To's For Optimizing Performance Using A High Fat, Low Carb Meal Plan“, The Ketogenic Kitchen is her first print book.
During our discussion, you'll discover:
-The difference between Patricia's more “strict” diet and Domini's more “liberal” diet…[8:20]
-About how many carbs should you eat to be low carb versus ketosis…[11:20 & 18:55]
-The surprising dangers of excessive calorie consumption on a ketogenic diet…[23:10]
-The potential dangers of whey protein, especially for certain populations…[28:20]
-Why it is that both Patricia and Domini like something called Yacon syrup…[31:00]
-How to make your own ketogenic bread to have low carb toast…[34:05]
-How to make keto cornflakes or keto cereal…[45:25]
-Patrick and Domini's favorite way to make pizza that still allows it to be ketogenic (and how the heck they do the crust)…[46:55]
-How to make a simple and tasty low-carb version of the Japanese temaki recipe…[51:30]
-How to make “Bullet-proofish” coffee that doesn't result in any bloating or nausea…[55:15]
-And much more!
Resources from this episode:
-Book: The Ketogenic Kitchen: Low carb. High fat. Extraordinary Health.
-Book: The Plant Paradox
–Ben's cricket-shirataki pad thai recipe
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