Kind: captions
Language: en
your cookbook is there is there one
thing that you cook that you want to
share with people
there's there's
there's so many that i love uh right
before we even go there i i i can't help
but think about the mediterranean here
for a moment so
you know
so you you mentioned where do they get
their food from where do they get their
food from where does where does the
produce and everything come from
well so the priority is whatever they
can actually get and grow locally
exactly right so here's some great
things capers
they grow rocky little things they pick
them by hand they want their wild they
wash them they rinse them they brine
them put a little vinegar they store
them they jar them this is what they
bust out when there's tomatoes it's
tomato season in the summertime they
pick them they harvest they bring them
fresh they buy them in the morning they
eat them at lunch and at dinner and then
they reload the next day by going back
out to the market you know it's a it's a
different mindset but they're really
proud of what they have now obviously
look
we're in the 21st century
planes fly boats sail trains deliver all
kinds of stuff so yeah sure even in the
mediterranean today if you look for the
mass market stuff um you can find it and
that's the stuff that's actually
bringing down their health too
well and yeah sure you can get it you
can get a coca-cola classic if you want
it but you probably are paying seven
dollars for that right right so that's
part of the issue but you know
what i come back to will thinking about
the mediterranean and why this is so
beneficial
is that
these are food traditions that
originated prior to modern times
right and so because of that they had to
eat local they had to eat whatever was
available to them
they didn't have the advantages of a
whole foods or fresh market or whatever
it may be
and as a young country in the united
states we didn't establish also being a
melting pot we didn't have those
established food traditions
that are based upon certain local foods
and so
you know as a result i think we were
more prone and susceptible to falling
into the trap of just kind of eating
whatever was presented to us we also
want to have things that are convenient
and less expensive whereas i think that
in many other food cultures they
actually invest in their food because
they know that what they are eating is
going to go into their body and it's
going to affect how they feel um so
they're much more in tune with i think
the land and the food and how they feel
about it you know i i think that we if
there's anything that i would say
growing up in america is that it's easy
to get disembodied from yourself so that
you're not thinking about how you feel
after you eat i mean you talked about
you know laying down on a couch after to
recover from dinner like i i think that
you know in most places in the
mediterranean that i know my friends
will they'll have a great meal and then
they'll go out for a walk you know and
because they feel good about it and it's
a beautiful location as well and they
feel better and they have as they sleep
better afterwards as well as whereas you
and i you know getting our butts kicked
uh in medical school and in medical
training you know like we're you know we
get like no sleep on an on-call night
and and by the way that's so destructive
for us and so i think that you know
kudos to anybody who's a doctor and this
is what i'm trying to do by bringing uh
my doctor friends uh onto this video
series like look we're real people we
are just as vulnerable to
the junk that's out there as anyone else
in fact i would say maybe even more
because we got our butts kicked in
training and
pretty much every sensibility that we
should have had for health even though
we're supposed to be health care
providers got stripped away from us and
so we've had to like earn it back and
and own it uh so i i think that the fact
that you put out um two new york times
best sellers um proves the fact that
people want to hear from a credible
source
that actually can uh walk the walk and
not just talk to talk well think about
think about how the uh you know we're
talking about doctors
and
though the
rigorous lifestyle that we're forced
into as a part of our medical training
and it's really no different than what a
lot of people go through who live in
poverty to be honest with you
think about the mom who's working two
jobs to put to put food on the table for
her kids
right and because i i know a lot of
these people
and
um they don't have time to come up for
air they don't have time to take a break
they need food that's inexpensive and
cheap and quick and delicious
and so they fall into the exact same
traps that you and i did right
so and then you see what happens in
those communities where socioeconomic
status becomes such a powerful thing in
terms of health outcomes it's this is
part of the issue and on the other side
of it you see why doctors
uh
many of them wind up being so ill
prepared to talk about nutrition because
they actually haven't had a good uh
necessarily good life themselves now i'm
going to ask you one quick question
about what's in your book so
just to tell you a little story so i am
always fascinated by what the local
market has
um do you have anything with um
did is there any recipes contain garlic
uh in your book
tons i'm a huge fan
cool so let me just tell you something
that i was at the market the other day
and i found um there's a farmer's market
i found garlic scapes have you ever
cooked escapes no tell me about that all
right so the garlic bulb is under the
ground right it's the white flaky skin
thing right you got to peel it to closer
inside there it's got little hairs and
little roots on the bottom of it well
the stuff that's above the ground
is this um
large twisty uh stem-like thing i'm
gonna show i'm gonna show you a picture
of it and um uh and i bought it and uh
i've cooked with escapes before they
taste like garlic but here's what's
wonderful about them is that you can
actually um
you can actually
caramelize them so what i did is i took
these garlic escapes i'm just looking
for a picture of my phone i can show you
on the screen here um
here it comes i think i have it close by
and um uh they're long twisty uh uh
things i'll check it out i got it right
here
look at this thing
garlic escape yum that's the stuff on
top of the garlic yeah you cut that up
into like two inch segments
put it onto a cookie sheet
sprinkle a tiny bit of sea salt a little
extra virgin olive oil and then because
i like to do it together with some other
vegetables i take some shiitake
mushrooms slice them up thin stick them
in there put them in an oven like at 400
degrees for seven minutes
and what winds up happening is that the
olive oil will actually start to cook
and caramelize the garlic escapes the
whole your whole house will smell it
have this wonderful aroma
of a finished dish but here's what's
great you take it out of the oven and
you let it cool
okay and now you've got these
caramelized slightly crispy things and
then you can scoop them and you can just
pop them into a salad you can snack on
them
there's so many different things you can
mix them with
and it's a delicious you put into pasta
it's a delicious way of doing so that's
that's one of the more recent things
that i actually cooked oh i love that um
all right so a couple things that i've
been working on recently okay i actually
have two chapters in the back of the
cookbook that i i believe are unique to
a cookbook
one is about fermentation oh
and the other is about sprouting
and i believe that these are two
opportunities for from a gut health
perspective to enhance your gut health
that most people are not doing so
fermentation
there's actually 17 recipes that i have
and um there was a study that was done
by people that i'm quite sure you know i
i know them
uh professors sonnenberg
and gardner from stanford university
pushed in the journal cell right around
a year ago
and what they found is that in an
interventional trial when they forced
people to consume fermented food because
people were not consuming fermented food
most of us are not
when they forced people to consume
fermented food
in just 10 weeks they enhanced the
diversity of their gut microbiome that's
a measure of their gut health
and they also reduced measures of
inflammation
i think the inference i think the
fermented foods should be a part of
everyone's routine so so you teach
people how to in your cookbook how to do
their own fermentation yeah so there's
17 fermentation recipes i actually teach
you how to create your own sourdough
your own sourdough starter
multiple recipes to make with that
starter
we have
sauerkraut we have pickles we have
kimchi fantastic um so i right now am
drinking some kombucha downstairs if i
were to take you downstairs i would show
you my little food lab i have a food lab
what do you call the thing in the
kombucha the floaty stuff
the scope
okay
so yeah the sagobias at the top i also
have a kvas so now kvass you know
fermented foods are celebrated food
traditions from around the world oh yeah
yeah yeah kimchi in korea sauerkraut in
eastern europe you know et cetera you
can go down the line
so kvas is a eastern european beverage
and we make kvas in the in the
fiberfield cookbook with beets
pears
and ginger all together
all together now here's what's cool this
is what i love will
number one
there is no added sugar
beets have their own sugar beets pears
they have their own sugar right so you
have the sugar that you need for
fermentation because in order to ferment
you do need that
but number two
there's no added microbes
the microbes naturally exist
ins of the ginger and the pears and the
beets they're already there they're
they're they're there when you purchase
them
interesting and so by quite simply
putting this combination together
and then submerging it in some water
you within 24 hours
we'll have bubbles
okay and you do this like in a jar or in
a
bowl or what what are you actually
fermented it so when i do beverages i go
big because from my perspective i don't
want 16 ounces that i had to wait five
days for right right i want 32 ounces or
more okay
so i get jars with a flip top lid yep
all right and so the flip top lid will
create a seal
now the thing that you do have to do
because i'm not kidding you will have
bubbles in 24 hours with these things
is you have to burp it
so by burping it what i mean is you go
and you open up the jar and you allow
the gas to come off
is it stinky no it's not stinky it
smells great it smells like ginger but
the issue
the issue is that if you don't burp it
it continues to pressurize pressurized
pressurized boom
exactly what happens if you take a beer
and you shake it up or right
right so that's what happens and so you
have to burp it so i actually missed a
burping session on my kvas one day uh
what happened and we got beats we got
beets on
the wall so
you know it's it's so interesting i i
wouldn't have thought of putting beets
and pears and ginger although i love all
three together
um what does it taste like can you
describe it
okay so the the um the beets impart that
i mean i think it's beautiful but it's
like a basically deep magenta red
and the liquid becomes opaque you can no
longer see through this and this is
because of the beets
so you combine that with the ginger
gives you that's that's that mellow
sweetness
and then the ginger i'm sorry the the
pears give you that mellow sweetness the
ginger gives you that punch that punch
of ginger
you put these three together now what is
fascinating about fermentation one of
the things that i love will
is that flavors
change
yeah of course the profile changes
and where you end up like if you were to
sip this on day one or two
it would taste like beets and pears and
ginger
okay
where you end up on day five or six all
right tell me is a melding of these
flavors together and it's hard to
describe other than it has changed is it
like hard cidery or is it smooth or
smooth not spicy not spicy so the
ginger's been mellowed out the ginger
has been mellowed out you know i'll give
you another quick example one of the
recipes that i have in the fiberfield
cookbook is for fermented radishes okay
yep now as you know radishes are health
foods these are great for you yeah the
problem is that
i actually don't like them i just have
to be honest like i don't i don't like
the pepperiness of the of the radishes
yep
if you ferment radishes
it is a whole new game so number one
they are crispy they're crispy as hell
okay
crunchy
but the flavor the pepperiness gets
smoothed out
so that it's really in the background
and then you bring in whatever new
flavors from your fermentation so
pretend you do garlic dill and black
peppercorns okay
it's gonna taste like a little bit like
a pickle
wow but the crunchiest pickle that
you've ever had and we all know that you
love a crunchy pickle so so here we here
we here we're back to
your roots as a chemist right your your
your you get your basement with all the
stuff going on in your experiments and
you know as you were talking about
burping your
your your your container
i was thinking about chemistry class you
know like how you have to tend to the
to the bunsen burner so uh nothing
boils over or or burns right like you
got to kind of
be on top of it i actually have a food
scale a digital food scale and the the
time that i pull it out is when i do
fermentation and it's because i like i
actually feel like a chemist i'm being
very precise in what i'm doing
um but the other thing that i would
encourage people to think about with
fermentation there's
there's two things i want to just bring
to bring forward for people because i'm
i'm a passionate advocate for this type
of food
number one
fermentation is transformation
you you transform the flavors but you
also are transforming the biochemicals
you get new types of fiber there's a
change to the to the proteins you are
actually reducing the presence of
anti-nutrients or
if there were toxins for example if your
food were sprayed with a chemical
actually the fermentation removes that
um you are enhancing the vitamin content
i mean it's
amazing that how does how does the
vitamin content get enhanced i guess
different
ingredients together well you know when
you think about for example b12 will now
i'm not saying that the b12 is
specifically is in fermented foods but
the b vitamins aren't fermented foods
the b vitamins yeah e vitamins are
energy vitamins right
and so when you think about for example
b12
b12 is produced by microbes
microbes are capable of producing when
you give them the proper ingredients
they will produce things for us and you
can create a little factory you've
created a little mic vitamin factory
with your fermentation 100
that's so cool the other thing that
you've done
is you are cooking
but it is the slowest cooking ever when
we talk about slow cookers
about eight hours right
you know people are still cooking their
food this is the slowest cooking ever
you're still cooking over five days you
know one of the things that i'm writing
about in my next book is the fact that
uh a lot of our food culture
just as you were talking about come
thousands from thousands of years ago so
these techniques are you know they may
sound new
if we're not from if you're not familiar
with them anybody listening or watching
this but in fact they've been known for
thousands of years and i'm writing about
this
incredible um
historical
phenomenon where
food and goods were traded
along the silk road yeah not the
internet silk road but the but the
original silk road that connected
china uh to turkey in the mediterranean
and went through all these mountains and
deserts in central asia and you could
not bring fresh food for of any great
distances so a lot of the foods that
were carried along were fermented in
ceramic urns
uh that were on camelback and so a lot
of the stuff by the way you know that um
sauerkraut
which i used to always think was a
germanic eastern european food right
cabbage you know fermented
sliced up and you know when i was
growing up it was always put on hot dogs
or whatever um now i love it
by itself but um that was a was it came
from
chinese cabbage
that was attempted to be transported
over the gobi desert
all the way over to europe and they
would never last and so they figured out
how to ferment it and it wound up
eventually making its way into eastern
europe and establishing itself as a as a
tradition and so you know one of the
things that i think is so wonderful
about um you know what we're talking
about and what you have in your new book
is really trying to bring into a modern
context
things that
can't be wrong because they've been used
for thousands thousands of years yeah i
i view
the cookbook my cookbook part of what
i'm trying to accomplish is to take you
on a culinary world tour
and what you're going to find is
celebrated food traditions from across
the globe and you're enjoying them from
the friendly confines of your own
kitchen
well listen this is great i i need to
wrap up right now but look thank you so
much for for sharing and uh you know one
of the things i wanted people to do is
to really be a fly on the wall and hear
you know
dr will bolswitz and dr will lee having
this conversation and like we could have
been having this conversation
uh sitting at a cafe someplace in the
mediterranean i wish we were
so so listen um tell everyone watching
where they can find out more about you
and your book
uh okay so my my
book the fiber fields cookbook book is
widely available not just in the u.s but
including in the uk canada australia
and again this is more than a cookbook
it's it's 125 recipes it's full color
photography but it also is 11 chapters
most of those chapters actually don't
involve recipes they involve me
educating
and it has two uh recipe-based protocols
so i actually have protocols built into
the program
so the fiberfield's cookbook is widely
available i'm very proud of it and
if you check it out please reach out to
me through social media and let me know
what you think of it how do people find
you on social what's your handle you can
come to instagram and facebook at
theguthealthmd
i'm technically on uh
on
tiktok
but i'm just getting started so i'm the
gut health md underscore i had to add an
underscore to the end
and um finally come to my website
theplanfedgut.com sign up for my
newsletter
uh people seem to really love it when
there's breaking news research you know
this will
it's really hard to have a nuanced
conversation on social media about
research so i like to send an email to
my list so if you're interested in that
kind of stuff
sign up for my email list
i'm totally telling people to sign up
and check you out and um and by the way
tick tock uh i started myself not too
long ago and i was amazed at how um much
traction um i i did a video about
carrots and carrot tops and it had 1.1
million views wow it was crazy
um
and i didn't have to dance or you know
talk about my fiat or whatever um
so
anyway so listen if you want to learn
more about um gut health please check
out dr
will bolsevitz and the fiber fuel dock
in the fiberfield book and the
fiberfield cookbook you should actually
have the whole collection like i've got
a whole collection now um and that
should be in your bookshelf or on your
um your mobile if you're doing audio and
then if you want to learn about more
about me and food as medicine and the
work that i'm doing i do have a free
resource available on my website so come
sign up and download it it's at
www.drdrwilliam
dr william lee and i'll only just leave
you with one thing that uh i think you
know uh
uh will you and i both share with that
you know you gotta really enjoy your
food it should really speak to you and
so what i always tell people is you
should really love your food to love
your health and so with that thank you
very much and we'll see
you again soon hopefully it was a great
conversation thank you will thank you
everyone for hanging out
bye