Oils, Seasonings, Salt, and Low-Carb Products

Jonathan: Hey everyone! Jonathan Bailor and Carrie Brown here. We are living the Smarter Science of Slim. Not only are we living the Smarter Science of Slim but we are having a little photo shoot here, apparently.

Carrie: We are?

Jonathan: Well, we had.

Carrie: Oh, yes. That’s right. I thought it was a secret.

Jonathan: Well, that wasn’t really a photo shoot. So I’m wearing one of the new, the first edition Smarter Science of Slim t-shirt. We created three designs. One is ‘Get Eccentric,’ another one is ‘Go SANE,’ and the other one is just the “Smarter Science of Slim.”

Carrie: And very fetching, they are, too.

Jonathan: Folks might not get this, actually we’ve got some feedback on this, so if you wanted to grab one of these shirts, you can grab them in the SANE Store on the site, and I’m not printing these shirts. There’s a company called Zazzle, and when you click on the link, it will just take you to the Zazzle store. There’s 15, no, more than that, there’s like 90 different types of shirts, so you can get a hoodie or a sweatshirt or a fitted t-shirt or a strapless t-shirt for women, or a freaking laptop bag.

There’s all kinds of stuff you can get, and sometimes people can get confused by that, they’re like, “I don’t want this plain white shirt,” You can get all kinds of different colors. Point being, I got one that I really like, and I’m wearing it today. I’m wearing my ‘Get Eccentric’ shirt, wore it to work today, got some good feedback on it; and Carrie wanted to take a picture of it, so.

Carrie: Yes, so I have the picture, people.

Jonathan: By the time this podcast airs, we can go to your…

Carrie: Let me just point out, Jonathan is in the t-shirt. I have a picture of Jonathan wearing the t-shirt, and it’s awesome; but he wouldn’t let me post it on FaceBook.

Jonathan: It’s exclusive.

Carrie: The only way you’re going to see this all exclusive, Jonathan…

Jonathan: This is like TMZ style.

Carrie: Yes. You’re going to have to go to my blog and, which, actually, I’ve made it easier. People are always asking, the biggest search on my blog now is trying to find my blog, so I’ve made it easy. There’s two ways you can get to it: Marmalade Mile Posts, but also carriebrown.com. If you go to carriebrown.com, you’ll get there, and at some point in the next couple of weeks, there’s going to be an exclusive picture of Jonathan modeling his t-shirt.

Jonathan: By the time this podcast airs, it will be up there, so…

Carrie: Yes, it will.

Jonathan: Absolutely check it out, and I wouldn’t let Carrie shoot my face. I wouldn’t let Carrie shoot my face, it sounded odd. I generally wouldn’t let Carrie shoot my face with her camera, because it’s been an extremely busy and exciting time for us over here.

Carrie: With some designer stubble going on.

Jonathan: Yeah, that’s something to call it, so it’s been lower case insane. It’s never going to be upper case INSANE, because that’s just not possible so it’s just inSANE.

Carrie: Anyway, it’s a very fetching shirt, particularly with you in it.

Jonathan: Thank you, thank you. So, please, if you haven’t checked out the Smarter Science of Slim’s SANE Store, so check it out. We’ve got some cool shirts up there, and a cool way to show your sanity or your eccentricity or whatever you choose to show off; but today, Carrie, let’s continue our FAQs, Frequently Asked Questions, for those who do not care for acronyms.

Carrie: Everyone in Britain is going, “I wish they wouldn’t use that!”

Jonathan: Yes, for all our listeners from around the world. The first question, Carrie, and I’m going to direct this one at you first, and then of course, I’ll give my two cents; but very common question is, “Can I use cooking oils and butter and stay SANE?”

Carrie: It depends what cooking oils you use.

Jonathan: A+, that was the right answer, it was.

Carrie: Was that the right answer?

Jonathan: That was the right answer.

Carrie: See, I have been paying attention for the last year.

Jonathan: If you haven’t detected, we actually don’t, in any way, shape or form script these podcasts, so we have a list, for example, I have a list of questions we’re going to cover in this podcast, but the dialogue is all impromptu; so when it works out, we’re pleased.

Carrie: I think this brings a whole new meaning to the term ‘unplugged.’

Jonathan: Yes. Carrie, give us some more context on the conditional statement of what depends on what kind of cooking oil.

Carrie: We use, “the royal we,” we use coconut oil and butter for cooking. I generally use butter in baking. No, half and half coconut oil and butter, but if I’m heating oil, I will almost exclusively use coconut oil for cold applications; so for dressings or something that is not going to be heated, virgin olive oil, and that’s pretty much the only three oils that I add.

Jonathan: Yeah, I think there are some more.

Carrie: There’s some weird ones, macadamia.

Jonathan: Yeah, you could, macadamia nut. You could also use beef tallow and ghee. My personal experience was actually like there is a reason, not only from a simplicity sake, just stick with coconut oil wherever possible. One, it’s simple. We’ve had enough complexity in our lives. Keep it simple. The other thing is it’s also becoming much more widely available. You can get extra virgin coconut oil at Costco now, and they sell it in big tubs.

Carrie: Yeah, in enormous tubs.

Jonathan: It’s delicious. I started my new healthy addiction. I think I’ve eaten this for dinner Monday through Thursday consistently for the past 3 weeks. I take just coconut oil in the pan, put some salmon in there. I sauté, whatever you pan, sear, and I add this magic seasoning and that, oh my, whew! It’s good. It’s good eating, and there’s a reason to keep it simple with the coconut oil. Coconut oil has a lot of what’s called the medium triglycerides, which are a saturated fat which, when used in place of other types of saturated fats speeds the metabolism, helps the immune system, does all kinds of stuff; which you’re not going to find in other oils. Not only is it simple, not only is it delicious, but it’s uniquely, metabolically beneficial to just keep things simple with the coconut oil.

Carrie: Completely off topic, kind of off topic is, Girls, ditch your moisturizer and put that coconut oil on your face, because people are always asking me how I have such beautiful skin.

Jonathan: Well, this is the humble hour.

Carrie: Other people say it. I didn’t say it, people are asking me.

Jonathan: I have this friend…

Carrie: People are always asking me how my skin is like it is, and it’s coconut oil.

Jonathan: Yeah. So all in goodness, and again, just to be very clear and give a quick disclaimer that you’ve probably heard already if you listen to this podcast consistently or read the book; and that’s use coconut oil or butter when you need to for cooking purposes. Don’t eat tablespoons of butter and coconut oil. It’s for use when needed, when cooking, but by definition, it is not high in water, fiber, or protein. It’s not something we need to get out of our way to eat more of, but if we need to use these to make a delicious dish, there are our best options.

Carrie: That’s right.

Jonathan: Can you stay SANE while eating these? Oh, absolutely. Technically, are they SANE? Well, no. That’s why we don’t eat them by themselves, but they’re fine when you cook and things like that.

Carrie: Olive oil, people may be a little bit confused about why we don’t cook with olive oil, cook or heat with olive oil, and that’s simply a stability thing. Coconut oil is incredibly stable. In fact, you can keep coconut oil for years, and it will be fine. You cannot do that with olive oil, and olive oil becomes increasingly unstable the higher you heat it so it’s losing, the more you heat it, it’s losing some of its magical health properties; so that’s why we don’t.

Jonathan: Let’s add a bit science to the magical health properties.

Carrie: Luckily you’ve got that nice t-shirt and I won’t be smacking you.

Jonathan: To elucidate what these magical health properties are, in all seriousness, we’ve all heard about trans fats and how in fact they’re banned in many contexts. When you heat most oils, the chemical reaction when they are taken to a certain level of heat, essentially, for all intensive purposes turns them into a trans fat. Here you have this olive oil, which when it’s served cool, it can be very helpful for you. When you heat it, it actually turns into something else. It is actually molecularly different and becomes a trans fat, not a good thing. That’s why we don’t heat it, so…

Carrie: You see, I think my term magical, it got us to the same place, as a wet geek.

Jonathan: It absolutely did. Moving on, a similar question which is, are spices, seasonings, and salt SANE?

Carrie: I forgot something on the fat thing.

Jonathan: Rewind talk about the fat thing.

Carrie: You’re saying, in and of themselves, they’re not SANE, but when we use them in cooking, we also have to bear in mind not get weirded out, you’re using a tiny amount.

Jonathan: Oh, yeah. And the dish itself is SANE.

Carrie: When you’re searing your salmon… so the actual amount you’re using is tiny, so you don’t want people to get weirded out about using fat. It’s all being SANE or not. It’s a tiny amount in terms of the whole dish.

Jonathan: At the same time, you will probably read in some blog or magazine or something that is a little bit more opinion-oriented, eat 1 or 2 tablespoons of coconut oil a day. It’s good for you. What’s good for you would be eating more coconut, the whole food, not the processed oil derivative. In fact, one of the most conspicuous propagators of that message are the coconut oil manufacturers themselves if you read the jar, it’s like…

Carrie: No.

Jonathan: Yeah, like “You should eat more of this!”

Carrie: No, I don’t believe you. They would never do that.

Jonathan: Really, coconut oil manufacturers, you think we should use more of your product? No, but, anyway, okay, so…

Carrie: We love coconut oil.

Jonathan: We love coconut oil for the purposes of cooking. Spices, seasonings, and salt, are they SANE?

Carrie: They’re seasonings.

Jonathan: Exactly. Not applicable.

Carrie: You use one gram for an entire plate.

Jonathan: Yes.

Carrie: It’s all good.

Jonathan: Let’s just pop up a level. Spices, salts, and seasonings are non-caloric, meaning they don’t contain calories. They’re not something your body uses for energy. Asking if salt is SANE is a bit like asking if water is SANE. Water doesn’t have calories, it’s not applicable. Is cardboard SANE? It’s not applicable. Spices, seasoning, and salt, please don’t fear them. A lot of what you hear about salt intake is completely not backed by science. It’s much like what you hear about fat intake. It is myth and dogma. It is not backed by science. Of course, don’t drink saltwater, but season your food, make it delicious, enjoy that stuff. Pick your battles. Keep things simple.

Carrie: If any of the listeners have made any of my soups, they’ll know that it’s the spices and the herbs that completely transform it from being a kind of dull leek soup or dull cauliflower soup into something really, really tasty.

Jonathan: To channel Carrie even further, Carrie often makes the excellent point of, you’ve got to read labels, you’ve got to read labels, you’ve got to read labels, and this is an excellent example of that; because I personally find living a SANE lifestyle to be much simpler when I focus on seasonings and spices rather than store bought sauces because sauces are an InSANE minefield. Salad dressings, even hot sauce, they’re like high fructose corn syrup. Hot sauce, high fructose corn syrup. Ketchup, all these sauces… It’s very hard to find SANE sauces, let’s just put it that way. However, seasonings, go bananas. Make your own sauce by using seasonings. Store bought sauces, no. Store bought seasonings, often, quite fine.

Carrie: I spent half an hour at the grocery store a while back looking at pasta sauces, and it was scary. There was one brand of all the gazillion brands that had no added sugar.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Carrie: One. Now, I know what it is. It’s great, but you have to do your homework.

Jonathan: You’d really be surprised about how simple this can be. We’re all smart people here. We’ve all done things much more complicated than some of this foodstuff. For example, vegetable dip, not even vegetable dip, for example, you get some seasonings, you mix it with some Greek yogurt, and it’s fabulous. You can just even eat that by itself. You just say, “Okay, Greek yogurt is this relatively benign base, what can I season that with?” Use some experiments. You don’t need to make a big thing. Just take a little dollop of Greek yogurt, put some seasoning on it, mix it up, taste it. You’d be surprised what you can discover there.

Carrie: Actually, you will find with these brand, for example, ranch dressing in a bottle, don’t buy that. But if you get a packet of ranch mix, that is not bad.

Jonathan: No, not at all.

Carrie: If you put that into your non-fat Greek yogurt, you get the same thing as in the bottle, but a much, much, much, much healthier version. The dry mixes are mixed into yogurt is much, much better way to go than buying the ready-made one that’s mixed in the jar.

Jonathan: Much less expensive. That’s great.

Carrie: And much less expensive.

Jonathan: For those who may be a bit more sensitive, or if you describe this to someone else who like to poke holes in things, they may look at one of these packets of seasonings and see maltodextrin, or soy lecithin, or which, again, you look at it and you’re like, “Okay, that’s not optable.” Look at the seasoning. Look at the size of the seasoning packet. Unless it has crack in it, the quantity you’re consuming — put it this way: no one in this country is obese or is diabetic or has heart disease because they’ve consumed too much of that stuff.

Carrie: Right.

Jonathan: Is it great if we could find a seasoning packet that didn’t have that stuff in it, should we prefer it? Absolutely, but if you can’t find one, for the higher level folks, too, if possible, don’t be limited by your grocery store, because I was about to say, if you can’t find one at your grocery store while doing the best you can, at the same time, for things like seasonings, those are brilliant to look online for because they don’t go bad. You can usually get free shipping. Go on Amazon and type in, vegetable dip mix, and you’ve now got a thousand grocery stores at your disposal.

Carrie: When you consider how big or small the packet is, and you’re tipping that whole packet into a pound or two of non-fat Greek yogurt…

Jonathan: Exactly.

Carrie: Then for every meal, you’re only having a teaspoon. The amount of the maltodextrin you’re eating is so tiny. Don’t get lost in the minutia.

Jonathan: You’re doing that instead of eating a plate of pasta. It’s even like, yes, it may not be a 10 on a scale of 1-10 but it’s a 9.8 instead of a 2, o that’s a win. That’s a big win.

Carrie: Yes. Don’t get lost in the minutia, don’t drive yourself mad.

Jonathan: One other thing I want to… I just mentioned using the Internet for buying nonperishable foodstuffs. I really wanted to drive this home because it’s actually very important because a lot of people don’t, when they think “food”, they don’t think “Internet” for reasonable… You don’t necessarily want to buy perishable food on the Internet, although that is becoming more common with certain delivery models but, for example, Carrie talks about Xylitol. I started using Xylitol. I love it.

I can’t find it at any grocery store. I’m just like, “Well, screw this, I’m just going to try something else.” I was, like, “Well, that’s dumb.” I went on the internet, I typed in “Xylitol”, I was like, Whoa, that’s 15,000 Xylitols coming to me, but my brain didn’t say, buy food. Look for it on the Internet first, or the Internet is an option. For non-perishable things, I personally would actually even, well, once you find something you like, go to the Internet… I find Amazon.com to be very useful and not only that, but buy in bulk.

Carrie: Buy in bulk.

Jonathan: You’ll save yourself a lot of time and money, a lot of time and money.

Carrie: With Xylitol, anyone who’s looked at the price in the store versus buying it in bulk online, huge amount of money. It will sit in your garage for a year.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Carrie: I mean, if I could get through 55 pounds, just me and the cats, anybody can and ground almonds, 25 pound box. Keep it in your freezer. The deliveries cost $4, something like that, nothing It’s all good.

Jonathan: Really, folks, that’s, when you go to the grocery store, especially, you want to get more of these SANE options, you might need to go to a specialty store, traditionally, like Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, or an organic market or something like that. Those stores are not known for high value. They’ve got a cool selection so people sometimes get this misinformed opinion that going SANE is expensive. Well, it can be if you don’t know where to look, so, where to look is the Internet and where to look is bulk retailers like Costco or Sam’s Club so just keep that in mind.

Carrie: I do that cheat to help, I did recently do a blog post, where it had all the things that may be strange to you, like the Xylitol and the guar gum and other things that I use in my recipes which, it will take you to links so you could at least see the pictures so if you still want to go to a local store, you at least know what you’re looking for and have a better idea of what pitfalls to avoid; and I hope that will help you to find the ingredients and come away thinking, this isn’t weird and it’s not going to cost me a fortune.

Jonathan: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I think hopefully there are some awesome tips for everyone regarding spices, seasonings, and things like salt. The next question I want us to cover, Carrie, is things like things low carb products, which are low carb approximations of inSANE things, like low carb bread that if you look under the nutrition label, it actually has more fiber and protein than it has carbohydrate and that it’s getting the vast majority of its substance from fiber and protein but it’s bread or something else like that.

What are those, are they inSANE or are they SANE? Well, to be clear, folks, if a food, if anything is predominantly water, fiber, and protein, it’s SANE. The things you want to watch out for with those food products is just be careful they don’t have a bunch of other stuff added to them. That’s what you’ve got to watch out for. If it’s some sort of Franken cupcake that somehow doesn’t have all the things that you would find in a traditional cupcake in it, and Carrie didn’t make it, then you might want to be careful, because it needs to be shelf stable so there’s a bunch of other stuff they added to it. Processed baked goods are kind of a minefield. I’m not saying there’s nothing there but be careful.

Carrie: There’s 99 percent disaster.

Jonathan: Yes. I’m sure there’s some diabetic bread somewhere which is wonderful for you. I don’t know how good it tastes, but the point here is, if you want to keep it simple, make it yourself, make it in bulk, freeze it because you control the sanity. That said, I’m sure there are SANE low carb food products out there which are much better than the inSANE alternatives.

Carrie: I do, I might get upset here, because this makes me really mad. Increasingly, when I go into grocery stores, supermarkets, and I go down the bread and cookie aisle, there’s an increasing range of healthy options, and all the front packets they’re gluten free, they’re fat free, they’re sugar free, they’re this, that, and the other. Don’t be sucked in by the advertising on the front of the packet.

Make sure you read the actual label of what it contains, because I’ve been doing this lately and I’m like, “Oooh, it’s gluten free! Ooh, it’s, ooh, let me look at this!” and I turn it over, and it’s really no more SANE than your Twinkies and all that other stuff down the other end. So just please don’t be sucked in by the front. Read the ingredients. That’s the way you’ll really going to be able to determine whether they’re SANE or not.

Jonathan: Carrie is spot-on, and I want to channel the brilliant author Michael Pollan here. He talks about nutritionism and how our culture has moved away from food to thinking about ingredients; because what Carrie just said, for example, gluten free, they took the gluten out and just put something else in. It’s not about eliminating gluten or eliminating high-fructose corn syrup or eliminating these individual things, it’s about eliminating the classes of food which aren’t food.

If you just eat SANE food, they don’t have that stuff in them and think about this in a food manufacturer’s perspective. Right now the trend is gluten free. Let’s take all of our products and put something other than gluten in them, that’s it. That’s all we have to do, and then we can ride the gluten free wave, but they’re not healthier.

Carrie: The flour, the wheat is still there.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Carrie: The starchy carbohydrates are still there.

Jonathan: Potato, starch, all kinds of other crazy things.

Carrie: Yeah.

Jonathan: They just put something else in, because the media hasn’t grabbed on to that ingredient yet. Our point, our message here is, don’t focus on that like this ingredient versus that ingredient. That’s too complicated, just non-starchy vegetables, whole food fats, nutrient dense proteins, low sugar fruits. Simple, simple, keep it simple, so love it.

Carrie: I made muffins this week, and I know the muffin recipe will be old news by the time this podcast is produced; but I made muffins and unfortunately, everybody ate them Jonathan, so I couldn’t bring one.

Jonathan: Muffin top free muffins is what you should call them.

Carrie: They are muffin top free, but they are also grain free, gluten free, flour free, sugar free, added fat free and people are like, “What’s in them?”

Jonathan: Is this air muffins? I love it.

Carrie: I have to say, I’ve blind tasted them all over the place and people just went nuts for them. If you haven’t seen that yet, it’s up.

Jonathan: It’s up and it’s excellent. It’s all about substitution, folks, because, really, this is just, it just gets me excited, because I continue to be amazed. My most recent thing in addition to the salmon, Carrie turned me on to the Xylitol, is I take cottage cheese and Greek yogurt and some of this casein based protein called UMP and some coconut and I take some Xylitol and some cinnamon and some guar gum, which Carrie introduced me to, and I mix this stuff up and it is just, it is so good!

Carrie: I wish you could see his face. His eyes are rolling and he’s…

Jonathan: I could sort of eat it, like, now. I just eat it and I eat as much of it as I want, whenever I’m hungry.

Carrie: It’s all good!

Jonathan: It’s all good so you don’t need to be hungry. You don’t need to feel deprived. It doesn’t need to be complicated once you got all the correct information and that’s what we’re going to do, give you that correct information. On that note, next week, we’ve got more FAQs and more information, so, until, then, Jonathan Bailor.

Carrie: Carrie Brown!

Jonathan: Signing off. Have a good week. Eat more, exercise less but do it smarter.