 Now, everybody wants to know if you can actually find compliant items at big box stores. And the answer is yes. In fact, time goes by that people find me in Costco and grab me and say, is this okay? Is that okay? And oh my gosh, Dr. Gundry, you're in Costco. Now, what are you doing here? And the answer is you can actually find a lot of safe items, but also a lot of really good items for you in a big box store like Costco. So today I want to talk about the protein choices and the oil choices that you can find in Costco and what you should look for. So first of all, Costco has wild salmon. They'll have it fresh in season and it will say wild Alaskan salmon. And one of the tip-offs is it's usually a lot darker red color than farm raised salmon. And it will usually say wild. Ignore the organic that is farmed by definition. They didn't follow the fish around to see if they were eating organically. And they were fed organic grains, corn and soybeans primarily. Number two, most of the time, Costco has frozen handy pieces of wild salmon. You have to kind of sort around and look because they'd be much happier selling you frozen Atlantic salmon, but stay away from that. Look for Alaskan salmon. Alaskan salmon by law has to be caught wild. That's not true of Canadian salmon, Norwegian salmon, Scottish salmon. Look for Alaskan salmon. And by the frozen pieces is really handy. Also, they have canned salmon. And look again for canned wild salmon. So lots of options for salmon. What my wife and I do is we tend to wait for salmon season and then we buy several pieces of whole salmon and take it home, cut it up into pieces. We put it in Ziploc bags because as you've read in the new book cut check, Ziploc doesn't have any phthalates in the plastic. And then we have it the rest of the year. Next up, canned sardines. Costco often has really good canned sardines. Now canned sardines are full like salmon of omega-3 fats, long chain omega-3 fats. And they're a great source of protein, but you're really looking for the omega-3 fats and interestingly enough, you're looking for them for the little bones in the fish, which are a great source of natural calcium, not the calcium pills you're swallowing. Try to find them in water. They're better for you in a lot of ways, but if all you can find is olive oil, make sure it says olive oil, not packed in oil. Usually the ones that are packed in oil have soybean oil or cottonseed oil. And these are nasty short chain omega-6 fats that you really don't want. So water, preferably, second choice olive oil. And these brands appear and disappear in Costco, but in general, most of my patients are very pleased with the sardines that you can buy at Costco. Canned tuna. Now canned tuna, just for the record, usually comes from small tuna, not from sashimi-grade tuna. They would not be that dumb. Small tuna are much lower, if you will, on the food chain, and they have not been acquiring heavy metals like mercury for a much longer period of time than sashimi-grade tuna. So you're really quite safe with canned tuna at Costco. In fact, some of the brands will say mercury-free or low mercury, and you can trust that because, again, most of these canned tuna at Costco are small, and grab yourself some cans of it. They often go on sale. You often have to buy six or 10, but that's when you want to buy them. Okay, over in the cheese area, Costco frequently has a number of goat cheeses. If cheeses are fermented, then you're much safer in lowering the amount of a mischievous sugar molecule called Nu5GC. So you really want to go past the fresh goat cheese logs, which are not fermented, and instead look for goat cheeses, feta cheeses that actually say the ingredient is goat. Read the label. Unfortunately, in America, many feta cheeses, which should be goat or cheese, are actually made from cow's milk. So just look for the words goat or sheep. Lastly, there are a number of sheep cheeses that are great for you. You can find Pecorino from Italy. You can find Menchingo from Spain, and often there's a sampler of sheep cheeses from Spain, cut into small wedges, and it's a great way to experience some of these fantastic fermented cheese from sheep and from goats. The prosciutto from Italy is a fermented food, and all the Nu5GC from Italian prosciutto is gone, and it's in almost every Costco. It's already pre-sliced. It's really easy to use, and it's a perfectly acceptable addition to your diet. The same way Italian Parmesan cheese, Parmesan Reggiano cheese, is by far the cheapest you will find at Costco. And I actually buy our Italian Reggiano cheese, Parmesan Reggiano, at Costco. And it's gotta say that, it's gotta say from Italy, beware of cheeses that have Italian sounding names, but aren't from Italy. Same way with the Italian meats of the Italian salamis. Make sure it came from Italy. Costco started carrying sliced Italian charcuterie with salamis and prosciutto in a very convenient package that are actually from Italy. And what's exciting about that is these are traditionally fermented sausages, and the exciting news from Kutchak is that these sausages don't contain Nu5GC, and they are loaded with postbiotic fermentation products like polyamines, like spermidine. So they're actually pretty doggone good for you, and they're at Costco. Yeah, what about non-meat protein? So well, there's actually plenty there for vegetarians and vegans. Hemparts, you can get big bags of hemparts at Costco. Hemparts have the benefit of being high in protein, but also high in soluble fiber. So it's a win-win. And you can use hemparts in so many ways. I find the easiest way is to just sprinkle them on salads, sprinkle them on vegetables. If you wanna throw it in a smoothie, that's fine with me. But hemparts, and they're really reasonable. Pistachios, there are a number of pistachios that are available at Costco. Whether you want them peeled, dry-roasted, salted in the shell, unsalted in the shell, they're readily available. Here's a word to the wise. Try to buy them in the shell. Cracking open that shell and picking it out slows you down. And it's true with any nut. Nuts are really good for you. They contain a lot of protein, but you'll eat a lot more if the work's been done for you. So just a word to the wise with pistachios and also with macadamia nuts. Macadamia nuts, it's difficult to safely find raw macadamia nuts. And if you do find them, if they're in half, they've probably gone rancid already. That's why you see most macadamia nuts have been already roasted, and that's to stop them from going rancid. It's easy to find macadamia nuts at Costco. Word to the wise, it's easy to gain weight eating macadamia nuts. In fact, if I have a skinny patient, and I believe it or not, see skinny patients who wanna gain weight, my go-to snack is macadamia nuts. And you can put on the weight with macadamia nuts. Walnuts, Costco has both organic and regular walnuts. Should you spend the extra money? Well, just remember that with most nuts, the nut is never exposed to herbicides or insecticides because it's contained in a nut. And once you break open that nut, the flesh will not have those herbicides and insecticides. However, in the interest of good agriculture, if you can afford the organic, please buy the organic. But don't be afraid of non-organic nuts for the most part. And I did mention macadamia nuts, be careful. Okay, now how about oils? Well, Costco is a pretty doggone good place to find really good cold-pressed organic olive oil. But word to the wise, you don't wanna buy your organic cold-pressed olive oil in those big plastic jugs. Two reasons, number one, it's in plastic. But number two, although it sounds like a good idea to buy your olive oil in bulk, the minute you open the top on olive oil, it starts going rancid. And you won't use it up fast enough before it goes rancid. So the alternative is almost every Costco has in an organic, usually Italian olive oil that's in a long, tall, cylindrical bottle. And it usually has a label of authenticity called Toscana. I've actually been to the plant where it's made in Tuscany. And it's true, it has to come from the Tuscan region. Now, sometimes they don't have that, but there's a very similar one that comes from Spain. And it's in a very similar bottle. And it's also quite safe in a very high quality. But just stay away from the big plastic bottles and you'll do yourself a favor. Sesame oil, you can usually find untoasted sesame oil, but it's not in all Costco's. Preferably, once again, look for sesame oil in a glass bottle. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast. Make sure to check out the next one here. There is an entire microbiome that's dedicated to the manipulation of sex hormones. And it could just be that rosemary is the aphrodisiac that maybe all of us should be munching a little bit more of.