 I like to eat out a lot. How in the world am I going to follow all the crazy ideas you have eating out? Well, a lot of times there's a gray area where we really have to make compromises. If we really want to be out with friends or family or we just don't want to be in the kitchen all day long, you know, particularly post COVID, a lot of people really want to go out and but they're worried. They're worried about what food eat. So I've come up with some lists of exchanges of what's probably not all that great for you and undo all the hard work you've done. So let's go through a few of the easy ones and go from there. First of all, most restaurants are not going to have wild salmon. They're gonna have farm salmon. I get it. Ask for wild salmon. Ask if it's Alaskan salmon. By law, Alaskan salmon has to be wild. None of the other places where salmon is farmed is wild. If you're in a pinch, ask for organic salmon. At least they were fed organic corn and soybeans and they weren't treated with antibiotics. So make the best of a bad situation and please please please ask for it grilled or even steamed rather than breaded and fried. Okay, all they've got is a breaded chicken breast or fried chicken. Okay, you're better off getting that breaded chicken breast or that fried chicken and taking the breading and the skin off. It's okay. Is it perfect? No, absolutely not. But I'd rather you do that than having a hamburger that hasn't been grass fed and grass finished. So there's a compromise. In general, when you're at a restaurant scan the appetizer list and the side order dishes. You're gonna be much safer. My good friend Jimmy Schmidt who's won three James Beard awards says that chefs get so bored with the main courses that they spend a lot of time and interest in the appetizer area because they can really shine and I think that's very true. Plus the appetizers usually, unless you're at a real fast food chain or fast casual chain, might have some decent ingredients for you. That brings me to salad. Almost always you can get a salad but please the dressings are usually the troublemakers. They're usually made with really bad seed oils. They usually have a lot of sugar or artificial sweeteners in them so you're much better like my friend David Perlmiter does to bring your own olive oil and vinegar to the restaurant. That's cumbersome. Bring a flask of olive oil and ask for red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, whatever vinegar the restaurant has and you'll be fine with that. How about fried calamari? Same thing. Peel the breading off the calamari and you'll make the best of a bad situation. Look for sides. Like usually there's asparagus, usually there's steamed broccoli. Often there's mushrooms. The sides are often where you can make up for a bad meal. A lot of times the restaurant will tell you, oh you have to order a meal to get the sides. Say, well there's nothing here I can eat. Can you make an exception? If they don't, that's not where you want to go. Italian restaurants. Now please try to avoid the chains like Olive Garden. I mean they don't even use olive oil to cook with. If you have to and you're there, sure order the never-ending salad bowl, but don't get their dressing. Ask for some vinegar and oil or bring your own extra virgin olive oil. Now look for Italian vegetables, like puntorella. I just had some last night. Chickery, radicchio. That's that Italian red lettuce that you'll see more and more in grocery stores and even in restaurants. Prosciutto, believe it or not, prosciutto is aged and fermented. Now a lot of prosciutto in the United States is not from Parma in Italy, but a lot of it is in Italian restaurants. So you're actually getting good bacteria in prosciutto and you're eliminating that nasty little sugar molecule called Nu5GC and there's some really cool papers showing that the bacteria that ferment prosciutto are really good for you. So don't be afraid of ordering the prosciutto. Don't be afraid of ordering true Italian salami and true Italian cold cuts because they're actually good for you, not bad for you. Many Italian restaurants will have grilled fish and that's always a good option. Okay, steakhouses. A lot of steakhouses now are using or have as an option grass-fed grass-finished beef. A lot of them do not. If you see the word corn fed, well at least they're honest. You know that's what you're getting. Even if that's the case. Look for aged beef. It turns out that aged beef, which a lot of really nice steakhouses do use, you'll notice it hanging in a locker and there's mold and bacteria all over it. This aged beef is fermented and that fermentation actually takes the danger out of the Nu5GC in those meats that I talk about in gut check. Steakhouses are great for side dishes. Look for steamed or sauteed spinach. Look for the asparagus. Look for the broccoli. Avoid the mashed potatoes. Avoid the hash browns. A lot of places now have either mashed sweet potatoes or at the very least sweet potato fries. There's still a much better option than the mashed potatoes or the french fries. Mexican. This is trouble, unfortunately. Please avoid the cheese-laden dishes. This cheese is not cheese at all. It's from casein A1 cows. It's not fermented. It really has very little health benefit. They'll always have guacamole. Ask for them with vegetables, with broccoli, with chopped broccoli, with jicama as the dipping chips. Please pass on the corn chips. Same way. Pass on the tacos unless they're going to give it to you with lettuce wraps. A lot of Mexican restaurants are more than happy to give you pieces of lettuce as taco wraps or as fajita wraps. And by the way, don't be afraid to order the fajitas. Please use the shrimp or chicken rather than the beef or pork. Push the green peppers off to the side. Load up on the onions and put them in the lettuce wraps. You'll be delighted. Look out for the deep-fried stuff, like the burritos, like the chili reinos. Those things are just lectin and bad oil bombs. How about Chinese? Now, this is one of the hardest restaurants to eat okay in. First of all, MSG, monosodium glutamate, Chinese restaurant syndrome, has gotten a really bad wrap. There are many placebo controlled trials in human beings where MSG did not cause any of the symptoms associated with Chinese restaurant syndrome. So don't think that that's the trouble in Chinese food. So what is the trouble in Chinese food? First of all, almost all the oils used in Chinese restaurants are either peanut oil or another vegetable-based oil, like corn oil, like safflower oil. And these things are just loaded with nasty omega-6 fats that are called linoleic acid. And these things really damage your mitochondria that make energy. So please stay away from those. The meats, you know, are coated for the most part. Kung Pao chicken is coated with lectin-containing flour and then fried in these oils. So what can you do? Well, in general, the soups are pretty safe. You can have the chicken soup with vegetables. The egg drop soup is okay. The sweet and sour soup, unless it's loaded with these coated vegetables or coated meats, is usually also safe. And a lot of these soups will have really great chopped up or slivered cabbage or other root vegetables as part of the soup. So in general, that's your safest area. A lot of these restaurants do have steamed vegetables. Now if you've got to have rice, get the white rice. But, you know, add some mustard to spice it up. Overall, use Chinese at home. As you know, one of my most popular recipes on YouTube or on the Gundry MD blog is my egg roll in a bowl recipe. You can have all the deliciousness of an egg roll. Make it at home. You can use the meat as corn, Q-U-O-R-N. You can find it in any vegetarian freezer section of most grocery stores. And you can have yourself a great controlled Chinese meal at home. How about a deli? Well, look for prosciutto. Look for made in Italy cheeses. Pecorino is almost always there. Parmesan Reggiano is almost always there. Buffalo mozzarella is always there. These are great options to look for. Now if you're going to have a sandwich, have it protein style. Get all these sliced salamis. Get all these sliced mortadellas. And get all the veggies. Get all the lettuce. And then wrap it. Have them wrap it in lettuce. They'll do it for you. I guarantee you they got lettuce in the back. They often have great soups. You know, have chicken soup, minestrone soup. It's okay, but just watch out for the pasta. Push it to the side. Hey, you can even order matzo ball soup and ask for no matzo. They'll look at you funny, but your broth will be delicious. Stay away from any of the cheese laden soups. All right, how about an American diner with the chilies like chilies and applebee? Well, walk in there planning on having the salads, but bring your own dressings. Watch out for the beans. They often have sweet potato fries rather than regular fries. Try to avoid the fried stuff. Request things like grilled fish or steamed fish. Again, if you're going to have the chicken breast, ask for it broiled. Worse comes to worse. Order the fried chicken and take the skin off. You'll be okay. Fast food. Now, fast food is the last food that you should think about eating. Recent studies have once again shown that every fast food meal is loaded with glyphosate roundup, which is a gut and human toxin. Insane levels are allowed. The three worst, believe it or not, were Panera and Dairy Queen. The best was actually Chipotle. Now, the other problem with fast food meals is that they have incredibly high levels of endocrine disruptors that are estrogen-like substances that really screw up your hormone levels. I talk about those in specific and fast food meals in gut check. The other thing to realize is don't eat the fries. If you're going to have a burger, have it protein style. Please avoid the cheese. These things like melty American cheese. This isn't cheese, folks. It's actually plastic. Please don't eat it. All right. How about the gas station? You want to fuel up your car and you can't resist going in and fueling up yourself. First of all, as I've said over and over again, please stay away from the energy drinks. Please stay away from the diet drinks. Most of these stations now have various forms of water that are perfectly acceptable. The snack section. Most of these places have numerous types of nuts to choose. Please avoid the peanuts and the cashews, even though they may be the cheapest. A lot of these places will have mixed nuts. You're in a much better space with mixed nuts. A lot of stations will have protein bars. Now, as you know, I'm not a big fan of a lot of protein bars, but in a pinch, a protein bar is going to be far safer for you than something like a granola bar. Huh? A granola bar. All those delicious rolled oats. As you'll read in gut check, all American oats are loaded with glyphosate, even the organic ones, and are also loaded with a banned herbicide that is cancer causing in humans. And every oat product tested in America tests positive for unhealthy levels of herbicides and Roundup. More amazing episodes just like this one. Watch now. Now, women, you probably know that if you're pregnant, you are supposed to avoid cats, and you're supposed to have your partner scoop the poop because you don't want to get infected with toxoplasmosis because it can actually damage your baby.