(Breather) This episode is all about the Carnivore Scores Food Chart, a joint venture with Kate Cretsigner, a health coach who has seen the incredible effectiveness of the carnivore diet firsthand through countless clients, family members, and herself.

Kate began utilizing carnivore as a strategy and solution for healing for her clients who, while already eating a paleo or keto-style diet, were still suffering from inflammatory conditions. Kate quickly realized that by cutting out all potentially problematic plant foods, their bodies were healing much more quickly, while also receiving the added benefit of optimal nutrients.

Kate actually started this carnivore experiment in her own home: with herself, but first with her daughter, who was able to experience incredible healing in just 30 days from diverticulitis. Since Kate never advises her clients to do something that she hasn’t done herself, she went strict carnivore for 30 days. After the first month, Kate found that assorted health imperfections that she didn’t know that she had, or that she had just written off as ‘normal’ had improved right away. Her 30-day experiment turned into 560 days and counting! And get this: during the early stages of her carnivore journey, she actually rode her bicycle the entire length of Vermont — that’s 200 miles over the course of two days — without consuming any calories on the bike! Talk about a fat-burning machine!

I loved hearing about the amazing work Kate has been doing with her clients, so I was even further excited at the idea of collaborating with her on a Carnivore Food Chart to simplify and clarify what this diet is all about. In this episode, I’m breaking down the chart to explain why we have formulated it this way, and you’ll learn how easy and simple it is to get optimal nutrition once you have this handy set of guidelines to reference! Everything is clearly laid and explained concisely as you’ll see in the graphic here, so print it out and put a copy on your fridge, reference it when you’re grocery shopping, and enjoy the surprising amount of variety and options included in this diet. 

Global All-Stars (the most nutrient dense foods on the planet)

Liver, Oysters, Salmon Roe and Caviar

Animal Organs

Liver, Bone Broth, Heart, Kidney, Sweetbread, Rocky Mountain Oysters, Tripe

Wild-Caught, Oily, Cold-Water Fish

Sardines, Mackerel, Anchovies, Salmon, Herring

Shellfish

Oysters, Clams, Crab, Lobster, Mussels, Octopus, Scallops

Eggs

Don’t forget other egg options like Goose, Duck, Quail, and Ostrich

Red Meat

Also try: Buffalo/Bison, Elk, Lamb, Venison

The rest of the foods included reside below The Steak Line, meaning everything listed above are the foods that offer maximum nutrient density. The rest of the foods listed are still healthy, but do not need to be emphasized in the same way because of their differences in nutritional profile: Chicken, Turkey, and Pork and Raw, Organic, High Fat Dairy.

And yes, some plant foods are still included on this list! They are:

Avocados

Dark chocolate

Fermented foods

Fruit

Honey

Nuts & nut butters

Seaweed

Sweet potatoes/squash

These (optional) plant foods were included because they still offer extremely high nutrient value (along with the smallest chance of digestive irritation). But, if you do currently suffer from digestive issues or any inflammatory conditions, try going Kate’s route by sticking to a strict carnivore approach for 30 days. After that, see how you feel, and re-asses if you feel comfortable slowly introducing a few plant foods back into your diet. Chances are, you’ll be feeling so great that the reintroduction of these nutritious plant foods should be no problem. 

If you want to see for yourself just how fun and easy it is to nourish your body with the most nutrient-dense food on the planet, click here to download the Carnivore Scores chart. 

TIMESTAMPS:

When the body is getting optimal nutrients, it heals quicker. It has better energy. You feel better. [03:00]

Kate is going to embark on a Trans America bike race on no carbs, no sugar and just meat, organs and fat.  [04:00]

There’s a lot of people out there suffering due to gut inflammation, leaky gut syndrome, and quite a lot of it can be righted with a complete restriction of plants and then a gradual reintroduction of the least offensive plants. [05:00]

A preponderance of animal foods, the most nutritional superfoods are listed. [07:00]

Wild caught oil cold-water fish is the best source for Omega 3s in the human diet. SMASH stands for sardines, mackerel, anchovies, salmon, and herring. [10:20]

Shellfish are next on the list, also a very good source of Omega three. [12:16]

Eggs are next on our go-to chart.  Always look for eggs that are locally grown or at least in a carton stating they are pasture raised and certified humane. [14:02]

There are still many foods listed on the chart that are good to eat, just not in the super food category. Grass-fed red meat is on this list. [17:20]

Down below the steak line on the chart are chicken, turkey, and pork. Of course, look for organic or pasture raised. [22:00]

You want to make a blanket commitment to avoid all manner of conventional pasteurized and low and non-fat dairy products [23:10]

If you want to include vegetables into your diet, listed on the chart are the least objectionable.  They can be integrated strategically into the diet.  [26:35]

And with dark chocolate, get the beans to bar notation and not made with child labor. [26:49]

Raw honey, avocado, and nuts, fermented foods, fruits, sweet potatoes and squash are discussed as well. [30:36]

LINKS:

• Brad’s Shopping Page
• K84wellness.com
• Carnivore Chart
• Dr. Axe
• Podcast with Paul Saladino
• Ancestral Supplements.com
• Primal Blueprint
• Framingham Study
• Robb Wolf
• White Oak Pastures
• Bel Campo meats
• Wild Idea Buffalo
• uswellnessmeats.com
• ButcherBox
• The Paleo Thyroid Solution
• Grain Brain
• Meatrx.com

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B.rad Podcast

Brad:

Greetings listeners. I am going to talk you through this wonderful carnivore
scores, food rankings chart. This has been a very rewarding joint venture
with the inspiration for the project, the original creator of this concept and
the early chart, KATE CRETSINGER of K 84 wellness. Check her out at K
the letter, K the number 8, the number 4 wellness.com. She is a huge
carnivore enthusiast. You're not going to believe the levels that she has
taken this dietary strategy to. But she's also a popular health coach in
Vermont and has used the carnivore restriction diet experiment with great
success to her clients. So I'm going to quote her when she wrote me kind
of a summary, a recap of how this whole chart came to be and her brilliant
insight about eating above the steak line. So let me give you some
commentary from Kate when she was talking about how this chart and this
whole idea of doing a restrictive carnivore diet experiment with her clients
came to be quote: I started using this chart from my clients that would eat
paleo keto and still have inflammatory issues.
This chart was a guideline for them to get optimal nutrition while we took
everything else out of their nutritional intake, all the potentially problematic
plant foods. When the body is getting optimal, nutrients, it heals quicker. It
has better energy. You feel better. This was the elimination of elimination
diets. Some people did it for 30 days. Some did it for four months. It all
came down to healing the gut. Once my client's guts were healed, then we
would add things back to see where, and if they had any sensitivity, her
daughter was the first person that she got to try it. She had an assortment
of health issues that righted it very quickly. It was absolutely amazing in
just 30 days and amazing transformation from diverticulosis and all feeling
better, very quickly from eliminating all plant foods. And that's what her
inspiration to push this onto her clients was?
So her daughter was the Guinea pig. I've never had my clients do
something that I haven't done myself. So I decided I was going to try
carnivore for 30 days. The symptoms that I didn't know I had, or that I
thought were normal healed that 30 days has turned into 545 days of
carnivore and counting during the early stages of my carnivore journey,
get this people. I rode the entire length of the great state of Vermont, 200
miles without eating any food. My body has become a fat burning
machine. My next big adventure is to do this crazy event called the Trans
American bike race 4,200 mile route with 250,000 feet in elevation gain.
So she's going to try to ride her bike across America on no carbs, no
sugar, just meat, organs, and fat in order to promote gut health. The race
is coming in June of 2021 best of luck to Kate on that note.
So when she was talking to me about this on a podcast, I was so
interested and we got further in and did some great research together and
came up with an extremely comprehensive chart, obviously geared toward

the carnivore enthusiasts because there's an a little category from, for
plant foods at the bottom where we present eight of the least offensive
plant foods that have good nutritional benefit, and don't have those high
objections of the most toxic plant foods.

So people that are not in this carnivore mindset are open to it might object.
I know there's some great lists of the most nutritious foods that you can
find from people like Dr. Axe, that talk about the great benefits of a
broccoli and the assorted known super foods from the plant kingdom. But
this is a whole different deal here. And what we found in the details and
the user experiences, there's a lot of people out there suffering due to gut
inflammation, leaky gut syndrome, as it's known, and quite a lot of it can
be righted with a complete restriction of plants and then a gradual re-
introduction of the least offensive plants.
So while there's a lot of nutritional benefits to be had from some of those
foods that you see landing high in the rankings frequently, for example, Dr.
Axe's top 30 most nutrient dense foods, a ripping through this thing and
skipping over the animal foods just to show you he puts things like
seaweed, kale, collards, broccolirob, spinach, watercress, rugala cabbage,
bell peppers, garlic, parsley, berries, asparagus carrots, beets, pumpkin
lentils, artichokes, tomatoes, wild mushrooms, and so on sweet potatoes,
wild rice, and granted these things have nutritional benefits and properties.
But we're going with the premise that Paul Saladino conveys so
appropriately on my shows with him that these foods come with, what's
the known in the prescription drug world as the package insert, that's the
piece of paper that comes with your prescription detailing all the potential
side effects. So the argument, the rationale here is that by eliminating
these foods that do have nutritional benefits, but may be irritating your
leaky gut, you can have that health awakening.
So as we look toward what are truly the most nutrient dense foods on the
planet, you're going to see a preponderance of animal foods. And that's
what this ranking chart is all about. And so we have in category, number
one, we call these the global all-stars, the world's most nutrient dense
foods. And there are three foods that make the top list here. Grass fed
liver, oysters, and salmon roe, and caviar. So fish eggs may be a nominee
for the most likely food that you would choose. If you were stuck on a
desert Island with only one food to eat for the rest of your life, oysters
have that reputation as being an aphrodisiac because they do promote
reproductive health and energetic function with their high levels of zinc
and B12. And of course, grass-fed liver, arguably the most nutrient dense
single food on the planet.

If you don't like the taste, maybe you can try slicing it raw, and just, just
enough thought to slice it. I slice it into small chunks after its frozen thaw it
out, and then I can just grab a chunk out of the freezer and it tastes much
better raw, heavily salted than it does for me. Anyway, when it's in that
rubbery state and a lot of people have a distaste to have that be a dietary
centerpiece, but the global all-stars liver, oysters, and salmon eggs, and
then the next category down is animal organs. So we have liver as the
centerpiece, and then also in this category, things that you can find pretty
easily from most butchers heart, kidney are the main ones. So if you can
go with liver, heart, and kidney and slice that stuff up and pan fry it and
have it be a regular part of your diet, or at least a nice side dish, that
would be really great.
And if you can find sweet bread, that's made from the famous gland,
Rocky Mountain oysters, that's the euphemism for testicles, and tripe is
the stomach lining. It's a popular ingredient in the Mexican soup menudo,
which I am fond of enjoying my mother-in-law makes that wonderfully. And
these are truly nutrient rich meals. And if your game is a little bit off, you
can, of course pound the organ supplements from ancestral
supplements.com, especially MOFO that's the compilation that's designed
to optimize male hormone function with the gathering of testicles, prostate,
liver, heart, and bone marrow in a single capsule form. So there's no
excuse not to be up on your organ consumption, even if you haven't been
down to the butcher lately to grab this stuff that most people think is gross
or out of their comfort zone. So get your capsules going, try to consume
some of the actual organs and expand your horizons, your dietary
horizons, or go with the capsules.
And also in that category, you could put a bone broth, which is a great
super food. You get agents in bone broth that are very hard to get in any
other area of the diet, namely collagen and glycosaminoglycan’s for joint
and connective tissue health and skin health.

So that is a great boost. I love this morning beverage of bone broth with
several egg yolks dumped inside and stirred together inspired by Matt
Whitmore of fitter food in England. Follow him on Instagram. He's got
great workouts with his girl, Caris Marston; the super fit couple of the
planet. So that super beverage hard to top that in the morning blows
coffee or anything else away, even a big smoothie with protein and green
powders in there. So the bone broth with egg yolks, that is your super food
drink, and that is category number two, wrapped up animal organs.
And the third category is the wonderful wild caught oily cold-water fish.
This is by far the best source of Omega threes in the human diet. And the
cool thing about this category is most of these are really affordable.

They're called the SMASH family, and that stands for sardines, mackerel,
anchovies, salmon, and herring. And you can get all of these and it can
form a true super food. One of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet
without busting your budget. And when it comes to salmon, we want to
emphasize wild caught salmon. Of course, that's affordable in a canned
form. And if you like to dine and have that as a meal centerpiece, please
be vigilant to try and avoid the very common popular farmed Atlantic
salmon. That's 80 to 90% of what's out there in the marketplace. That's
what you will almost always find at a restaurant unless otherwise stated
with great pride and distinction that they're serving wild caught salmon.
But the there's many objections about pollution and crowded conditions
and adding agents that are unhealthy to the salmon feed, especially the
dyes that turn their skin pink because in natural, a wild caught salmon will
be pink because of their high antioxidant diet. And then you're trying to
match that with these poor salmon that are raised in crowded pens with
vastly inferior nutritional profiles so much so that authorities like Dr.
Macola recommend not even consuming Atlantic salmon. So that's a
tough challenge, but you can definitely find affordable sources of
previously frozen wild caught salmon like at Costco, big box store, has
that for a really nice price point and emphasize the wild caught salmon
and then the other canned fish that are in this SMASH family.
And then next in the rankings is the family of shellfish. These are a great
source of Omega threes as well and also monitor on saturated fats, a
complete nutrient profile. That again, we're talking about ranking the most
nutrient dense foods on earth. And so anything in the shellfish family
blows away the top ranked vegetable foods, and that's just nutritional
science and facts and looking at the profile and the RDA of the various
vitamins, especially when you're talking about animal foods, vitamins, A,
D, E and K things that are very difficult to obtain in a plant-based diet. So
that's why shelfish land up here nicely. And that would be, we already
mentioned oysters and put them at top ranking. But we also have our
clams, crab, lobster, mussels, octopus, and scallops. Gee, where can I go
to find food like that to the sushi bar? Of course. So thumbs up for
Japanese cuisine. That's why they have some of the great longevity stats
on the planet. Is that deep consumption of the shellfish.
And if you think about the human migration across the earth, when we first
left East Africa, 60,000 years ago, a small population of humans has
ventured out and successfully populated the entire globe over the ensuing
45,000 years. They mostly followed the coastlines and were able to
indulge in the marine life that helped the human brain grow to be strong
and resilient and rise to the top of the food chain with our superior
intelligence. And that was largely attributed to the access to the nutrient
dense foods, especially the omega-3 rich sea and marine life. So if you, if

seafood and marine life is not a centerpiece of your diet honor your human
genetic expectation for health and make it so.
So then we go down to eggs. Eggs, the original life force, essence super
food. How can you get any better than that? They have things like coleen
and the B vitamin profiles that are off the charts in comparison to other
foods, especially the yolk. If you have any lingering sentiment that you
want to tone down your yolk consumption in the name of monitoring
cholesterol. This has been widely refuted by respected science. Most
particularly the Framingham study, which is the longest and largest
epidemiological study in the history of science. And that means studying
the effects of environment, dietary practices on health and longevity and
the residents of wonderful Framingham Massachusetts have been
followed intensively since 1948.

So generations of study looking at dietary patterns and some of the great
conclusions we have these quoted in the original primal blueprint by Dr.
Castillo, the leader of the Framingham study back when the quotes came
out, that there was absolutely no correlation between egg consumption
and blood cholesterol levels.
So if you try with devotion to lower your intake of dietary cholesterol, your
body will manufacture more cholesterol to meet your needs for this very
important agent in making hormones like testosterone and the other sex
hormones, the other adaptive hormones. So trying to reduce dietary
cholesterol is ill-advised, especially when it comes to crowding out one of
the most nutritious foods on the planet. Now big deal here in the egg
category is you really want to strive to source either locally grown from the
actual farm, the farmer's market from the hobbyist or a carton that has the
distinction of being pasture raised and certified humane. These are vastly
superior to the conventional eggs that are grown in the feed lot, the
chicken coop environment, where the chickens are fed and inferior
nutritional source of feed, rather than being allowed to graze on the open
lands and consume worms and bugs and grass, and get that high omega-
3 content that a pasture raised egg will have. Certified organic is better
than conventional egg, but with the wide availability of pasture raised
eggs, Oh my gosh, it's, you know, for the budget with spending a little
more on a dozen eggs than the cheap old, regular eggs, you're getting a
huge boost in nutrition and avoiding these offensive agents that can get
into a conventional dairy such as hormones, pesticides, and antibiotics
coming from the environment that the crowded animals live in.
Also cool idea in the egg topic is to go looking for some alternative eggs.
That's right. It's not just chickens that lay eggs, and you can find goose,
duck, quail, and ostrich, and go to town. You'll how big an ostrich egg is.

Oh my gosh, your fry one, and you have a giant morning breakfast. I find
duck eggs really easily in some of the better supermarkets. So I'm fond of
duck eggs. They're larger and have a richer egg tastes than a chicken
egg. And of course, because these are so rare they haven't been mass
produced like the chicken egg, so you can find any kind of source for the
alternative eggs. And then look for the cartons that have stamped pasture
raised and certified humane.
And then we get down to the last category above the so-called steak line
from Kate Cretsinger and below the steak line. We're talking about stuff
that's still okay to eat, but not ranking with the super foods. And the last
category is red meat. Yes, indeed. It has a superior nutritional and fatty
acid profile to poultry, despite common headlines about red meat causing
cancer or people making that common quip that, Oh, I'm trying to improve
my diet. So, I'm just eating chicken and fish and put away red meat. Oh,
mercy. Okay. So the ranking system is what it is Robb Wolf, great
research on that with his book Wired to Eat and his Healthy Rebellion
podcast to go check that out for more information, and you really want to
try to source local or 100% grass-fed beef with bone-in cuts offering
additional nutritional benefits. That's the aforementioned collagen and
glycosaminoglycans that are found in bone broth as well. But that grass
fed is such an important distinction because we know about all the
objections from meat raised in concentrated animal feeding operations.
They contain their tissues; contain hormones, pesticides, and antibiotics
from the feed. They have to keep these animals away from illness in those
crowded conditions. So they have to feed them antibiotics. And although
there's not much difference in nutritional benefit from grass fed, that was
from the research that Rob Wolf offered on our podcast interview. You are
avoiding those objectionable chemicals and additives, and you're also
doing a solid for the planet because a grass-fed animal grazing on the
open range. There's great insights provided on Paul Saladin show
Fundamental Health and talking about his White Oak Pasture and Bel
Campo, and these great operations that are proving that a grass fed
properly run grass fed ranch can actually have a carbon sequestering
effect, a net positive carbon benefit to the planet because of how the
animals ruminate on the grass.
So in contrast to the concentrated animal feeding operations, which they
have that negative carbon footprint and all the bad stuff going into the
animals and the pollution, a grass fed animal, you can rest assured that
you are consuming the best possible option in that category. And just like I
mentioned, with the alternative eggs, you can get other sources of red
meat that are not so mass-produced things like Buffalo and bison and elk
and lamb and venison.

[05:00]

And if you go to wild idea, buffalo.com, you will learn a lot about the
wonderful animal that's roaming free on the open range as it has for tens
of thousands of years in the middle America and how much more humane
their lifestyle is and their slaughtering methods and everything in
comparison to the mass production. I believe the stat was 40 million cattle
are slaughtered every year in the United States versus 60,000 Buffalo.
And if you've ever tried a ground Buffalo, Oh, delicious, same with the
Buffalo steaks, you're definitely getting a, a pleasant experience that you
might want to integrate into your diet. And then we have on the wonderful
chart that you're going to download after this show, or hopefully before the
show, the steak line, trying to emphasize in your meal choices and your
food shopping foods above the steak line that we just mentioned for a
quick recap of those categories on the top, the global all-stars of grass fed
liver, oysters, salmon roe, and caviar. Second are the animal organs,
mainly as liver. The number one super food along with bone broth, heart,
kidney. And if you can find things like sweet bread, Rocky Mountain,
oysters, and tripe, and always trying to source grass fed animals because
the nutrients are concentrated in the organs as well as the toxins.
So we want to make sure you can find grass fed and liver. And it's pretty
easy to find these days; especially online places like
uswellnessmeats.com have a great opportunity. You can get the
liverwurst, which tastes really great. And also the grass-fed organ meats.
I'm buying their kidneys a lot, their liver and the pate the liverwurst. So that
was the animal organs category. Then we have the wild caught oily
coldwater fish, the SMASH, family of salmon, sardines, mackerel,
anchovies, salmon, and herring. Then we have the shellfish. We already
mentioned oysters on the all-star team. And then we have clams, crab,
lobster, mussels, octopus, and scallops. So go get yourself some sushi.
Then we have eggs looking for those pasture raised certified humane
cartons, and then maybe trying some alternative eggs. And then we have
red meat trying to find that grass fed with a high priority.
Then we have the steak line and down below the steak line, the next
category is chicken, turkey, and pork. The problem with these, the reason
they ranked below is because most of what we see in the marketplace is
corn or soy fed. And so their fatty acid profile is inferior to red meat. Of
course, now we can also find a lot of opportunities for organic or pasture
raised chicken or turkey. And the term for pork is heritage breed pork. So
if you go to my shopping page, Bradkearns.com. Look at the affiliates that
I associate with and recommend highly. One of them is butcher box click
on the Butcher Box link. And you will find that their entire selection is grass
fed meat, pasture raised chicken and turkey and heritage breed pork. So
it's a great membership opportunity to get this stuff shipped to your door.

The highest quality for a very affordable price, better than you might find if
you randomly go in shopping and your eyeballs pop at the price of grass-
fed beef. Okay.
So chicken, turkey, and pork, and then the next category are raw organic
high fat dairy products. So in the dairy category, you want to make a
blanket commitment to avoid all manner of conventional pasteurized and
low and non-fat dairy products. There's just too much objection here.
Particularly the hormones, pesticides, and antibiotics that are being dosed
into these animals when you're drinking your milk. So you got to go at the
very least, if you are drinking the homogenized pasteurized stuff, which is
what you mostly find, it's really hard to find raw milk. If you go to a good
store, you can find it. It's delicious, got so many nutritional benefits.
And interesting research on raw milk, by the way that, when they tried,
they did a a study with a large group of lactose intolerant citizens who
participated and they transitioned them over to raw milk and they
experienced none of the usual symptoms that they get from consuming
the pasteurized homogenized milk that's mainly presented in the
marketplace. Of course, raw milk has a slight risk of foodborne illness,
right? But mostly you're getting this product from a small operations, small
dairy farmers that are going direct to the market. I actually met a lady who
had a booth at a little kiosk in the grocery store, and she had driven from
her farm and was selling her raw milk right there in the refrigerator straight
from the farm. And we had a nice little chat about how her animals are
treated and cared for. And I scored some really delicious, raw milk, putting
it in my base for my smoothie.
So go for the raw stuff and including the other dairy products, like cheese,
cream cheese, heavy cream, sour cream, and full fat yogurt. We want to
go for the high fat stuff, none of that low fat or non-fat stuff.

[05:00]

Because again, when you're doing that, you're basically getting a sugar
bomb and lactose the form of sugar that's in dairy products is highly
problematic. Of course, we know that with a great portion of the world. I
believe it's 80% of the global population of adults are lactose intolerant as
adults. Okay. So with cheese, raw cheese is pretty rare, but you can find it
there's usually like one or two selections out of a hundred at a good
market where it's actually made from raw milk. Also in the favorable
category are the aged or the hard cheeses or the Brie, and then a raw
Keifer gets a plug there too, because that's maybe even more common
than raw milk.
You can find good sources of kefir and has a great probiotic profile. So
you can add that if you enjoy dairy and then going for the organic, for sure

when you're selecting cream, cheese, heavy cream and sour cream, and
again, dairy has long been an allowable food category in the primal, the
ancestral communication that we've been talking about for over a decade,
but we never said it should be a dietary centerpiece. So this could be sort
of a, an accoutrement, especially if you enjoy it, maybe you'll have a bowl
of yogurt and a spoonful of Brad's Macadamia Masterpiece, and that
better on top stir it together, tastes really great, throw some cacao nibs in
there, a great little snack, but not a centerpiece. And we want to
emphasize the foods above the steak line for the centerpiece.
So the next category is the favorable or at least objectionable, most
nutritious plant foods. So the idea here is to integrate these foods
strategically for an assortment of reasons, one of them is that you want to
enjoy your life. And so this stuff tastes good and you like it.
Dark chocolate is on the list. I'm going to integrate that for a number of
reasons. One of them is that has a great antioxidant flavonol, polyphenol
nutritional profile. You want to choose bean to bar in that category with
80% cacao or higher, you will quickly habituate to that, even if you're used
to consuming milk chocolate your whole life, and you'll become a
connoisseur of dark chocolate. I have a couple shows dedicated to the
topic of choosing the most nutritious and sustainably grown dark chocolate
bars. You want to get that bean to bar designation on the label. And that
means that the manufacturer knows where the source of these beans
came from.
They were carefully selected and it avoids the problematic reality that
most of the chocolate on the market today comes from a child labor
producing countries with minimal regulations in Africa and other places
along the equator. So if you find an affordable dark chocolate bar, you can
bet that you're consuming a product made with child labor. And that would
be a bar of two to three and a half ounces in the price point of $2 up to $4,
maybe, which is kind of what we expect to pay. But if you really want to
get a proper product with the best nutritional and the most sustainable and
eco-friendly benefits, you're looking to pay upwards of $3 per ounce.
So in other words, a quality bar is going to cost you 8, 9, 10, 11, $12 for
the same size that you see at Trader Joe's or the grocery store for $3.50
bar.
But if you want to get away from child labor, that's your commitment, is
look for that bean to bar designation. So integrating plant foods, I talked
about enjoying life and jumped right over to dark chocolate. There are
other reasons too. One of them is if you want to increase your
carbohydrate intake for recovery and glycogen replenishment, if you're
involved in a devoted fitness program improving insulin sensitivity,
because you have long periods of time where you're locked into eating in

ketogenic macronutrient profiles. Sometimes you can get this response
that might not be favorable. They call it metabolic insulin resistance, where
you're producing so little insulin that your body, your cells kind of become
insulin resistant because they haven't been fine tuned. They haven't given,
been given the workout of occasionally dosing on some carbohydrates
and processing those carbohydrates.
So also Elle Russ, you can hear her on the Primal Blueprint podcast and
her best-selling book. The Paleo Thyroid Solution talks about how,
especially in the female category, people suffering from thyroid
dysfunction might want to experiment with increased carbohydrate intake
to optimize thyroid and adrenal function, because it can be stressful to
especially drift away from a fuel source. That's been part of your diet for
your whole life. And then all of a sudden you're cutting it back to zero
could be perceived as a stressor by the body. And there is an assortment
of nutritious plant foods that you can probably integrate without much
trouble, unless you're one of those sensitive people.

And you can learn all about them at meatrx.Com. That's the organization
led by Dr. Sean Baker and an incredible assortment of healing stories. I
believe they have the stories organized by category. So if you are a
psoriasis sufferer, you can go click on that link and see people that have
righted their conditions, the amazing miracle healing stories that you can
see on that website from people that are excluding all plant foods or most
plant foods. So if you have leaky gut and you've been suffering from a
chronic condition, that's inflammatory, or auto-immune by nature, you owe
it to yourself to do at least a 30 day total restriction of plant foods and see
how your body responds. And then start adding back strategically
particularly with the foods mentioned on this chart.
So I talked about dark chocolate. I talked a little bit about honey, but those
are one of them on the list and try to find raw honey, because it has
wonderful antioxidant antibacterial properties. And also if it's grown locally,
it can help you with seasonal allergies because of the agents that you're
getting in the honey. The bees did the hard work for you. So raw honey is
on the list. Avocado is a wonderful introduction of the mono unsaturated
fats and a very minimal concern about plant toxins. Dark chocolate, pretty
tolerable for most people.
Nuts and nut butters. This would probably be one of the categories of
higher sensitivity. So if you have difficulty digesting nuts, and remember
peanuts are in the legume family, not the nut family. So a peanut allergy is
not the same and some of those people can tolerate nuts, just fine. but
this is a definitely a personal choice, but of course there's a lot of
nutritional benefits in the nuts and nut butter family. And I'm a big fan. I

don't seem to have any problem digesting the Brad's Macadamia
Masterpiece. Hopefully neither will you. You can learn more at
bradventures.com or check it out on Amazon. And again, this is way down
the list below the steak line and can probably be considered a treat or an
indulgence, or maybe a travel food. If you're going on a long car trip, and
you're going to be hitting the gas stations with poor options, you can pack
yourself a nice bag of almonds or macadamia nuts, but not a dietary
centerpiece.
Also on the plant food list is the family of fermented foods because of the
wonderful probiotic properties. So things like kefir, kimchi, kombucha,
miso, natto, olives, pickles, sauerkraut, tempe. And these nourish healthy
gut bacteria. But again, if you're battling leaky gut syndrome and you're
throwing down foods day after day, year after year, decade after decade,
even the fermented foods and the expensive capsules of probiotics,
probably aren't going to help you if you're gluten sensitive and you're still
eating bread and other wheat products and frozen, processed, packaged
foods, things that disturb healthy gut function. So the fermented foods are
great. As you embark on the process of sustaining healthy gut micro
biome and healing seaweed, also on the list, I think Dr. Axe had this as
the number one healthiest food on the planet. So it's a great source of
iodine, which is hard to get in the diet and related to healthy thyroid
function also has your vitamin D, B12, selenium, Omega 3, a true super
food of the planet.
And then we go to fruit and in the big family of fruit, there's some
distinction between the high antioxidant low-glycemic fruits, which would
be the most favorable. And this is the berry family predominate there also
the stone fruits are in that good category. And then when you go to the
other side of the spectrum, you have the high glycemic and low
antioxidant fruits which would be the family of tropical fruits, like mangoes,
papayas, pineapples. So those are the most sugary fruits and the berries
are the least likely to spike blood sugar and cause that insulin response,
and they have some better anti-oxidant properties. But if you're, you know,
doing a good job, eliminating the most irritating family of plants, the leafy
greens, the cruciferous the nuts and seeds, if that happens to be
something you're sensitive to, the fruit is certainly all favorable all across
the fruit spectrum for low sensitivity, low plant toxin.
So it can be integrating those. However I'd like to mention great advice
from Dr. David Perlmutter, a best-selling author Grain Brain, one of the
leading figures in ancestral health, and he recommends not consuming
any fruit during the winter months, because this is aligned with our
ancestral experience where we did not get any form of carbohydrate
probably for many months on end, especially no fruit. So just trying to live
that ancestral lifestyle, you can put the fruit aside, especially because

most of the fruit you see has probably been transported from a distant
origin. If it's winter time, right? You're going to get some berries year round
at the big box store, but they've been flown in from Chile. And so they
have a bad carbon footprint. They're not as fresh; they're not as teaming
with antioxidants and other nutrients as the stuff you find at the farmer's
market in the summer.

So go for it in the summer with those fresh berries. Oh my gosh. If I can
get my hands on some, doing a road trip up to Pacific Northwest Oregon,
Washington and finding these amazing roadside berries or picking them
yourself, Oh my gosh, open season. But then big difference from shopping
at the big box store in the middle of winter to get more of basically what it
amounts to a sugar dose.
And then finally, to, to complete this entire chart here in the bottom corner
are sweet potatoes and squash. So this starchy vegetables that has less
plant toxicity than the stuff that grows above the ground. A lot of other
benefits, including a healthy fiber, they believe to have some properties
that support gut bacteria, which is prebiotics. So that would also be called
resistance starch are indigestible fiber. And when you consume foods that
have prebiotics they take residents in your colon and become a healthy
gut bacteria.
The probiotics feed, the prebiotics or the gut bacteria that comes from
certain dietary sources. I know dark chocolate has a good level of
prebiotics. So do the starchy vegetables, sweet potatoes and squash. But
if you're really interested in this topic and you're trying to heal a broken
gut, you can get the best form, which would be a raw potato starch. So
you can take a teaspoon full starting slowly and putting that in your liquids
that you can consume or smoothie to try to rebuild that gut with a great
source of prebiotic fiber. Another sources of prebiotics are cooked and
cooled white rice and white potatoes, and also green bananas. So
indigestible fiber, right? The banana changes from green to yellow, where
it becomes mostly digestible carbohydrate high-glycemic carbohydrate by
the way. But when it’s green, you're getting a different experience and
you're not going to be you're not going to be consuming many carbs
because it hasn’t converted to carbs yet. So that's the Carnivore Scores
chart in comprehensive form.
Thank you for listening to the audio version. I think you're going to love
printing this colorful version out and putting it right on your refrigerator
door. So you can keep in mind where you stand on the scale on the
spectrum. Thank you for listening more at bradkearns.Com or
k84wellness.com.

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