 All right, here we go. Four popular foods that absolutely destroy your gut. And you've heard me say it before. All disease begins in the gut, which is why caring for your gut is one of the most important things you can do for your health. So today I'm going to share four widely used foods that could actually be unique in habit on your gut microbiome and the wall of your gut, especially if consumed in large amounts. So let's get started. First off, artificial sweeteners. Almost all products with a label reading sugar-free or light-containing artificial sweeteners, like saccharin and spartane sucralose, which are practically poison. You know them by brand names like sweet and low, equal and splendid. The problem is that these sweeteners actually kill gut bacteria. A Duke University study in 2007 showed that one packet of Splendidin, and it is sucralose, can kill all about 50% of your gut bacteria. One packet. This can lead to incredibly bad things happening to you and your gut microbiome every time you do it. I did an experiment showing exactly how it works. You can actually check it out right here on my YouTube page. When you kill off good bacteria, you populate your gut with more and more gang members or bad bacteria. These guys actually hijack your brain and your taste buds and actually make you look for high calorie, high sugar, high fat foods. And the remarkably weird thing about these bad bacteria is they actually extract more calories from the food you eat and deliver it directly to you. What you want and what we talk about is you want gut bacteria that actually extract the food that you eat for themselves so that you can actually eat more food and actually lose weight. That sounds pretty good. So when you're looking for sweet, look for healthy sugar substitutes like allulose, which is my favorite, non-gmail allulose and monk fruit. If you want to use stevia, that's fine, but again allulose is now my new favorite. More and more products using Rithritol are safe, but use it in small amounts. A lot of my patients, Rithritol, really gives them some GI upsets. And while it used to be one of the better ones, there's so much better ones on the market now like allulose, one's stereo towards them. All right, popular oils like corn and peanut oil. Now, I know you may not be buying these bottles of oils at the grocery store. They are hopefully not, but the truth is if you buy packaged food or takeout, you're still consuming them in huge amounts. Almost all restaurants use these industrial extracted oils because number one, they're cheap. A lot of them have a low frying heat of smoke temperature. That means they won't smoke up the room when you're frying. And you can use them over and over again, even though they accumulate harmful compounds. But the problem with these are number one, they are primarily short chain omega-3 fatty acids, which although essential omega-6 fatty acids are essential, we've been bombarded in our food system with more and more and more omega-6 fats. And it's a balance between omega-3 fats and omega-6 fats that really make a difference. Way back when, we actually had a pretty good balance between omega-3 fats and omega-6 fats. Now, in the old days, we used to have two to one or three to one omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. Now, in America, we have about 30 to one ratio between omega-6 fats and omega-1s. No wonder we have so much more information. Other problem with these oils is that they contain lectins. And lectins, as you know, are one of the best ways to cause a leaky gut. Now, leaky gut is exactly what it sounds like. Normally, you have a closed intestinal barrier between everything you swallow on one side and you on the other. 80% of all your immune cells or white blood cells live against your gut, because this is where trouble can come through. But the leaky gut, the seal between the various cells that mind your gut is broken. And work from the less sealed fissons is now at Harvard has shown that lectins, including gluten, which is a leptin, are one of the main causes of leaky gut. So, vanish these seed oils from your diet. Just remember, almost every time you're getting something that's been prepared, packaged, or from a fast-food restaurant is going to be containing these no-no oils. What are the best oils? Well, quite frankly, olive oil is still the lowest oxidizable oil for cooking. Yes, olive oil has a low smoke point. But smoke has nothing to do with oxidation. So, you're still better off with olive oil. Avocado oil, sesame oil, and one of my favorites, perilla oil. Perilla oil is the preferred cooking oil in Korea and China. It has a very high smoke point and has a lot of really interesting antioxidant compounds. But please, stay away from industrial seed oils and really be careful about your fast-food purchases. So, read labels carefully. If you see corn oil, peanut oil, cottonseed oil, those are the oils to run away from soybean oil, partially defatted soybean oil. In general, skip the oils, particularly in restaurants. How about oats? Well, sorry, oats are leptin bombs. Oats contain a protein that cross reacts with gluten, which means even if the oat package says gluten-free, that doesn't mean that your immune system doesn't recognize oats as a foreign substance. So, oats are mischievous. As my oldest daughter, who's a horsewoman, likes to remind me, dad, oats are good for one thing and that's for fattening horses for winter. And I assure you, you and I are not horses and we certainly don't need to fat for winter. And yes, this includes healthy oat milk, oat meal, and oat flour. Not to mention, almost all of our oats in the United States are sprayed with random glyphosate. And multiple studies have documented that almost all oat products sold in the United States, including healthy oat bars, including healthy oat cereal, and even several organic oat products, have glyphosate in them. And as you know, if you want to destroy the wall of your gut and kill your gut bacteria, glyphosate is the way to do it. So, oats, even if it says organic gluten-free are absolutely a no-no because of the cross reaction with protein and oats with gluten. So all of you folks eating your gluten-free oats, thinking you're safe in terms of celiac disease and leaky gut, I got news for you. We see this all the time in our office when we look at people who are eating a healthy oat diet and they've got dramatic leaky gut. All right, fluorothia, animal protein. Now, truth is, carnivores live shorter lives. There has not been a society ever discovered that eats a high protein diet that has exceptional longevity. I'm sorry, I've looked for it. I've asked my carnivore diet guests to find me one. There aren't any. In fact, the blue zones, those areas of the world with the longest longevity and health spans, including Loma Linda California, where I was a professor, perhaps my career, all of these areas, one of the universal truths is that there's very limited animal protein eating in any of these areas. Animal protein stimulates insulin-like growth which ages us rapidly. Plus, unfortunately, beef, lamb, and pork contain a sugar molecule called Nu5GC, which has been shown to cause autoimmune attack on our blood vessels and has also been associated with tumor growth. So lastly, most animals that we eat in the United States are fed corn and soybeans and other leptins. So you are what you eat, but you are what the thing you're eating, eating. So if you want to get yourself a double dose of trouble, eat animal protein that's been fed corn and soybeans, like most are in the United States, you've got multiple reasons why you really want to cut down on animal protein. If you've got to eat it, look for a pasture-raised poultry or 100% grass-finished grass-fed beef. Look for the word grass-finished. There's no labeling law that requires how long you have to feed a cow grass before you can actually call it grass-fed. So by her, beware. The next episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast is waiting for you now. Prebiotics, whether they're fiber, whether they're polyphenols, will actually make you lose weight more than the amount of food that you're eating, which is really, really exciting.