What The Heck Should I Cook?

Dr. Mark Hyman discusses lifelong health and how to use food as medicine for a vibrant, healthy body and mind. Read Transcript

- Well did you make aNew Year's resolution

to eat right in 2020?

I know I did and in just one week,

are you already wonderingwhat should I cook?

Well here's the great news, Dr. Mark Hyman

has the answer for us and it's easier

and cheaper than you think.

(logo wooshing)

- [Man] Dr. Mark Hyman is an 11 time

New York Times bestselling author,

a physician and health advocate,

who has dedicated his life to wellness.

He says in order for youto improve your health

and stay fit, you haveto use food as medicine.

In his cookbook, "Food: Whatthe Heck Should I Cook?,"

Mark offers easy, satisfying recipes

that not only taste great,but can also improve

your body's overall functionand keep you fit for life.

- And Dr. Mark Hyman is here with us now.

Welcome to the 700 Club, great to see you.

- Thanks for having me back.

- You created the pegandiet, what in the world

is a pegan?- Yeah, well you know

everybody's in a dietwar these days, right?

Paleo, vegan, keto, lowcarb, low fat, high fat,

I mean it makes people crazy.

So I said listen, the rulesof eating are common sense,

based on science, good science.

And so I said well, if you took a paleo,

you look at vegan, theyhave a lot of common

principles together.

Right?- Right.

- Whole foods, real food, freshfood, low starch and sugar,

which make peoplediabetic, and pre-diabetic,

and overweight.

Lots of veggies, lots ofplant foods, plant rich.

- But you could still have meat.

- Not necessarily plantbased, but plant rich.

So 50-75% of your plate should be veggies,

lots of good fruits, nutsand seeds, lots of good fats,

olive oil, avocado, whole grains, beans,

just good animal productsthat are sustainably raised,

that are not, you know treated inhumanely

and that are grass fed, ideally.

- It's so easy now, to get grass fed beef

at any supermarket.- It is.

And you can do it online,it's even cheaper,

where you can get it for a serving,

that's less than a McDonald's hamburger.

- Well you say that foodreally is our best medicine,

and so many of us are strugglingwith different things,

and why is that?

- Listen if I had one medicine to use,

to treat all my patients,it would be food,

because it is the most powerful drug.

We had a woman, Janice, come to our clinic

and she had diabetes,heart failure, angina,

she was, kidneys werefailing, liver wasn't great,

she had high bloodpressure, pile of pills,

shooting insulin.- Oh my gosh.

- She was 243 poundsand within three days,

she was off her insulin.

In three months she wasoff all her medications,

diabetes reversed.

In a year she lost 116 pounds and got off

of everything.- Just by changing her diet?

- Yes, but it wasn'ta weight loss program.

It was just eating this way,

that we're gonna talk about.

- And you say that food goesway beyond personal health.

What do you mean by that?

- Well, I think, you knowwe live in a larger context

of the food system.

So how we grow thefood, how we process it,

market it, distributeit, eat it, waste it,

all that plays a big role andit's causing so many problems.

Chronic disease affectssix out of 10 people,

we have an economic burdenof that on Medicare.

We're gonna run out of ourMedicare trust fund in six years.

We have climate change iscaused by the way we grow food.

We have social injusticebecause of poverty.

Mental illness, depression, suicide,

often have been linked to our diets

and our poor ultra processed diet.

- Well how has the foodindustry hijacked our kitchens?

- Well most people don'tknow how to cook anymore.

I mean in 1900, almost everymeal was eaten at home.

2% maybe eaten out.

Now it's over 50% of mealsare eaten out of the home,

and so it's mostly processed food,

even if you eat in thehouse, it's some packaged,

processed thing made in a factory,

instead of home cooked meals,

which are not that hard andwhich are not that expensive,

and don't take that much time,

if you follow some simple principles

that we're gonna talk about.

- And that's true, people say,"Oh I'd love to eat healthy,

but it is too expensive."

But you're gonna say that is not the case.

- No I mean I work with afamily in South Carolina

who lived in a trailerand are a family of five

on food stamps, disability.

They were very overweight and sick,

and I said, "Look you can do this."

I showed 'em how to cook,we gave 'em a little guide

called, "Good Food on a Tight Budget,"

they lived in the worstfood desert in America,

and they lost 200 poundsin the first year.

Brady the boy,

went on to lose 138 pounds,- Wow.

- and went to medical school.

So you can do it anywhere.

- Well you are gonna showus some delicious ways

we can do just that.

We start with theseamazing pancakes over here.

These are gluten free.- Oh yeah, pancakes, yeah.

- These are gluten free.

These are blueberry, lemon pancakes?

- Yeah, so to eat good and feel good,

it doesn't have to taste bad, right?

You can eat delicious food.- All right.

- Pancakes are so good andthey're not made from flour.

They're made from no grains,so they have coconut flour,

and they have cassavaflour, which is a root,

and also eggs which givesit protein, coconut milk,

and blueberries, which is yummy.

And you can sprinkle alittle maple syrup on there.

And it's basically a proteinand fiber pancake that tastes

like the real thing.- Okay.

I've had gluten free pancakes before.

- Yeah, they can be bad, they can be bad.

- These are amazing.

- They are amazing.

- I don't miss the flour.

- There's no suffering here.

I mean I don't like to suffer.

I like good food, I don't wanna eat junk,

that tastes bad, even ifit's good for me, right?

- And all of these recipes are in your,

"Ways to Cook."- Everything's in the,

"Food: What the HeckShould I Cook?," book.

You can go to,- Which we'll get to,

in a second.- Foodthecookbook.com,

and there's all kindsof extra bonus videos

and everything on there.

- Okay seriously those were delicious.

And I love how thin they are too,

and I love the blueberries on top.

Now this is for lunch, we have a chili,

what kind of chili is this?

- Well this is called cremini chili.

Now it's a great way tosneak in veggies, right?

So it's grass fed meat, or ifyou don't want to eat meat,

you can put in creminimushrooms, which are like meat,

and you have carrots, celery,onions, lots of spices.

Spices are the medicine in our cabinet.

And they have avocado ontop, a little cilantro.

Super yummy, delicious,

very filling and satisfying.- What kind of spices,

are in this?

- Oh we have chili, wehave cumin, we have garlic,

we have all kinds of onion powder,

just yummy spices.- Okay, I love chili,

especially in the winter.

- Yes.

- All right, so I'm notsure if this is still hot,

but I'm gonna just try the spice

because it's all in the spice, right?

- Yeah it goes good withthe pancakes (laughing).

- Oh my gosh, I'm serious,that is so delicious.

- It's so good.

When you can actually- Oh my gosh.

- eat good, feel good, and then do good.

You know if you wannabe in service of God,

how do you do it when youfeel like crap, right?

- What is it, what am Itasting, is it the cumin?

- Yeah.- Is it cumin?

Yeah, you have to be, somepeople don't like cumin,

but I like it and you canreally, really taste it.

So.

- Yeah we're gonna make some lasagna.

- But gluten free.

- It's gluten free, grainfree, but not taste free.

- Okay good.- And it has a special

kind of cheese, we're gonna talk about.

So the first thing we do,is we make some Swiss chard

and we wanna use a lot of greens,

greens are such a,- This is avocado oil.

- Avocado oil, which is a great oil

to use while you're cookingin high temperature,

because it doesn't smoke

and it's not like some- Okay.

- of the other refined oils.

It's much better for you.

It's more like the, kind ofolive oil of high cooking,

high heat cooking.

- Right.

- And then you just let thepan heat up a little bit.

You throw the chard in there.- Swiss chard.

- Yep, you just throw the chard in there

and you get it all going

and it cooks up really fast.

So people say, "Oh youdon't have time to cook,"

but you chop up some greens,

you throw a little garlic in there.

I should have done thatfirst, but you know,

stuff happens.

(sizzling)

- [Mark] I need this for a second.

- Okay take over.- All right.

- [Wendy] We've only gottwo minutes, so take over.

- [Mark] Okay here we go.

Garlic.

- Okay, lots of garlic.

- A little bit.- I always put

way more garlic

than they call for.- A little bit of lemon juice.

You know, a pinch of salt.

A little thyme.- Garlic's a

natural antibiotic, right?

- [Mark] Oh yeah, garlic's an antibiotic,

it's good for you gut.

It boosts your immune system,

it actually detoxifies.

- [Wendy] We might need toturn this down a little bit.

- We might need to havesmell-a-vision on here,

'cause it smells so good.

So this is all good, while that's cooking.

- Well let's start making the lasagna.

- We're gonna make lasagna.

So what you do, is youprecook these in the oven.

You sort of bake 'em andthen you lay them in strips.

You use a mandolin to slicethem in nice thin strips.

- Right.- Right?

So we put all that down,so that's like the noodles.

And then you throw on the turkey chili,

which is organic turkey, but you also have

a tomato paste in there, you have again,

all the amazing spicesthat make it taste good.

And then you throw anotherset of noodles on there,

so you're making like a layer cake.

- [Wendy] So you don'tput the cheese on yet?

- No and then we go Swiss chard,

we get the chard that you already cooked.

You throw the chard on there.

- [Wendy] Okay (laughing).

- [Mark] Okay we're making a mess,

but you can play with your food,

that's what's so good.

Of course I should be wearing gloves,

but whatever.- And this is goat cheese.

Right?- Yes,

some people have trouble with dairy.

They have stomach issues,

they have issues with inflammation,

it can cause acne and all kinds of stuff.

- And goat, is really tasty.- So goat

is a different kind of dairy,

which doesn't have the inflammatory stuff

and the gut busting stuff inthere, so it's really good.

And then, we throw.

- More.- Another layer

of this on.

- Okay.

- I think we need a deeperpan, we got so much chili.

Okay here we go.

Got all the layers of chili,

and then we put more meat.

- I love that it's zucchiniinstead of the pasta,

- More meat.- Because I love lasagna,

but the pasta just makes me

feel bloated.- Yeah the pasta

can make you feel bloated.- I feel fat.

- And this is full of protein,and veggies, and spices,

and this is all the medicine.- Cheese on top?

- Yep more cheese, nopewait, we need more noodles.

More noodles, more noodles, more noodles.

- [Wendy] You know, we didn'tcriss cross, you know that?

We did it all the same way.

- Oh, oh darn, okay wellwe'll do one criss cross,

like this, and like this,and then put cheese on.

And then.- Now this is grated

goat cheese, I've neverseen grated goat cheese

in the store, but youknow, you can grate it.

- And then we take this and we put it

in the oven.- The oven, okay.

That's right.

- I'm gonna need these.

Okay, we're gonna put it in the oven.

- Oh we got a hot one.

(oven rack clanging)

- Okay.- And like magic,

we've got our chili, look at that.

It's so good, and it'sso tasty, it's so yummy.

- All right so.- Smells so good.

And you know for dessert,'cause I know we're in a hurry.

- How much time do we have?

We got 30 seconds, so okay,

but everybody's gonnawanna know how this tastes.

- Okay, well all right.

- So.- How come they

just gave you the fork?

- I don't know, here.

- Okay we'll try it.

- Yeah, okay.

- Oh my gosh,

it's so good.- Okay, I can't,

well, here I'll try.

- Three wins, three wins.

- And they're, well four,

'cause there's no suffering here.

You do get dessert, but you can make it

with great ingredientsthat actually are full

of natural sweetness.

For example, frozen peachesand frozen cherries,

are picked at their ripest.

They're cheaper.

And you take 'em, put 'em in the oven,

bake 'em with some spices,and some flaxseeds,

and almond flour.

You take some nuts and seeds,which are full of protein,

antioxidants, vitamins, andyou roast 'em in the oven,

then you put it all together.

Put some coconut cream, it'slike coconut whipped cream,

but without the badstuff of regular cream.

So it's really simple, really easy,

and you don't have to suffer.

There's no pain, there's no suffering,

you get to eat delicious food,

and you get to gethealthy at the same time.

Lose weight without effort and get rid of,

what I call FLC syndrome,

which is when you feel like crap.

(laughing)

- And we all wanna do that.- Yes.

- Honestly, everything was so flavorful.

I wanna make very singlething that you've made here.

- I know, then there's somany more recipes in the book.

The Persian cucumber,the slow cooked lamb,

I mean so many great desserts.- Yes, thank you.

- Cheesecake, that's not cheesecake, but.