 The five surprising vegetables you need to eat to stay healthy. Okay, by now you know that not all veggies are created equal. But healthy vegetables are absolutely essential in my opinion for good health. So today I'm going to share five vegetables that you should feel free to eat as often as you like. First, cruciferous vegetables. Yeah, these are the ones that you know so well. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, rapini, cabbage. Why are these so useful? Well, they're a great source of sulfur and sulfur-like compounds that actually improve mitochondrial health and produce energy. So if nothing else, the more sulfur-containing compounds we get into our diet, the healthier we are. In fact, there's a standard joke that probably on some other planet, there will be a sulfur-based life form rather than a carbon-based life form because they're parallel to each other in the periodic table, but I digress. Don't forget, there's a great trick to remember when eating cruciferous vegetables, and that is you should chop these even if they're frozen before you cook them to get the benefits of an enzyme called myrosinase. It's a cancer-fighting enzyme that's released after you slice and dice them. Surprisingly, if you cook them first and then chop them, you will not release this enzyme. So even if they're frozen, just chop them up. The good news is, if you get packages of say, chopped frozen broccoli or chopped Brussels sprouts or chopped cauliflower, the work's already been done for you and you can just throw them in. Now, some of you take cruciferous vegetables to the extreme. You have them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, and I have seen thyroid suppression in people who eat huge amounts of cruciferous vegetables. So you don't have to overdo it. More in this case is not necessarily better. Most people this will never happen to, so don't take away that, oh my gosh, Dr. Gundry told me to avoid cruciferous vegetables for my thyroid. That's not the case. You need to get cruciferous vegetables in your diet. Just don't go crazy. Second, root vegetables like tubers, hecoma, onions, radishes, fennel bulbs. These are full of prebiotic fiber and nutrients that your gut microbiome just thinks is the best thing that ever happened to them. I have a hecoma, French fry recipe in my books. Oh, it's really good. Use hecoma as a way of getting guacamole into your mouth. Many stores now have hecoma sticks, chopped hecoma that you can use as a dipping chip to get guacamole into your mouth, and that's another easy way to get these root vegetables into your diet. Also, have you tried my herb roasted radish recipe? It's absolutely delicious, and you can find the recipe online. Now, a word to the wise, just because it's a root vegetable may not mean that it's great for you. Specifically, carrots and beets. If you cook them, you release most of those sugars as a pure sugar rather than a starch. They don't call them sugar beets for nothing, but raw, you're just fine. In fact, over in Italy recently, I had sliced raw beets with feta cheese and olive oil as a carpaccio of beets. And let me tell you, mamma mia, that's some spicy, spicy beet. Delicious. Mushrooms. All right, mushrooms have so many beneficial ingredients. I probably could write a whole book about mushrooms. Mushrooms are full of polysaccharides. Polysaccharides are sugar molecules that are all bound together. Now, don't let the word sugar fool you. Polysaccharides are some of the favorite prebiotics that gut bacteria like. And the polysaccharides in mushrooms have been shown to benefit our immune health because of the fiber that these gut bacteria eat. They produce postbiotics that produce amazing effects on our immune system. Melatonin is present in mushrooms. It's actually one of the best sources for melatonin. And as you've read in my current book, Unlocking the Keto Code, we need to stop thinking of melatonin as a sleep hormone and start thinking of melatonin as one of the most important compounds to protect our mitochondrial health that there is. So why not eat mushrooms and get the benefit of melatonin? Chitake mushrooms are loaded with a polysaccharide called beta-glucan, which, among other things, lowers cholesterol. But more importantly, it boosts immune health. Lion's main mushroom is a brain-supporting mushroom. And in fact, people who eat lion's main mushrooms make a funny-sounding word called B-D-N-F brain-derived neurotropic factor. And it does exactly what it sounds like. It makes neurons grow and thrive. Reshy mushroom is called the mushroom of longevity. And the good news about reshy mushrooms is it actually tastes like dark chocolate. Portobello mushrooms, you can find this in almost every store. They make a great burger patty or a pizza crust. In fact, you can find my Portobello mushroom pizza in the Plant Paradox Cookbook. It's delicious and a great way to get mushrooms into your life. Now, a word of warning about the white-button mushroom. I do, as you know, lots of food sensitivity tests on my patients. And interesting, the white-button mushroom frequently comes up as a sensitive food. The good news is any of the other mushrooms, like a crimini, the brown mushroom, or any of the ones I've just mentioned, don't come up as reacting. So, they're side-by-side in the grocery store. Grab the brown ones, not the white ones. Number four, okra. Oh, this is one of the greatest foods of all time for two reasons. Number one, it's rich in prebiotic fiber. But number two, okra is a secret ingredient that absorbs lectins. And as you know, the more we can keep lectins away from ourselves, the better. These block lectins by lectins actually attach to some of the polysaccharide sugar molecules in okra. It's available frozen in most grocery stores. You don't have to wait for it to become fresh in the summer. And the frozen is just as good. Now, I love baked okra chips. You can find several of my recipes for baked okra chips right here on my YouTube channel. They're delicious. In fact, whenever we make them, they never make it to the dinner table because my wife and I, our kids and our grandkids, consume them before they ever make it to dinner. They are that good. Finally, number five, dark bitter greens. One of my original sayings was more bitter, more better. These are truly some of the healthiest foods on the planet. Things like bok choy, radicchio, arugula, Swiss chard, more bitter, more better. Interestingly enough, long-lived peoples in most cultures love the taste of these bitter foods. The bitterness tells you they are loaded with polyphenols. And as anyone who's been reading my books or listening to me, polyphenols are those plant compounds that, number one, feed good gut bacteria. They act as a prebiotic for our gut bacteria. But more importantly, these compounds are changed by our gut bacteria to become potent anti-aging mitochondrial protecting compounds. So more bitter, more better. Finally, you'll finally remember one of my favorite quotes. If you eat dark green, you will become lean. Two reasons for that. Number one, these things really fill you up. The more you feed your good gut bacteria, the more they actually send signals to your brain that they're full and you don't need to eat anymore. Secondly, the more polyphenols you get into your diet, the more weight you lose by uncoupling mitochondria. But that's a story for another day. That's it. Five vegetables you got to get into your life on a daily basis, please. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast. Make sure to check out the next one here. All meat speeds up aging. Yes, you heard me right. All meat speeds up aging. And there's actually three reasons for that. And I want to go through that for you today.