Hello, Health Champions! Today, we're going to talk about the top 10 foods with no sugar and no carbs that matter. The reason I say "matter" is going to become apparent very soon.
We're going to do a countdown in no particular order, so this is not a ranking. We're going to start with number 10, which is meat. That includes things like beef, fish, chicken, wild game meat, etc.
When we look at the amount of carbohydrates in this food, it is zero for all of them. But, like I said at first, we don't really care so much about a food having zero as having zero carbs that matter. So, why do we care whether it has zero or whatever it has?
What it really comes down to is that different foods affect blood sugar differently. The more carbohydrate and the more processed the food is, the quicker your blood sugar is going to rise. Then, what's going to happen is we're going to release insulin to bring that blood sugar down.
When we have high blood sugars and fluctuating blood sugars—blood sugar roller coasters—that is associated with all kinds of health problems, including mood swings and energy swings, etc. So, what we care about in food is how it affects blood sugar and how it affects insulin because that affects our metabolism and our energy supply, and so forth. Here's what a lot of people don't understand: a lot of people think that carbohydrates are evil and that we should only eat food with zero carbs, and that is not what I'm saying.
If we compare carbohydrates to protein to fat, carbohydrates contain glucose. They're different types of sugar, but primarily, carbohydrates contain glucose that can very quickly become blood sugar. This happens very fast.
If we look at the insulin response in terms of an arrow, the size of this arrow is huge because it's a combination of a large amount of glucose that gets into the bloodstream very fast. Those two factors influence how much glucose and how much insulin we're going to release. Now, if we look at protein, we have to understand that there is no such thing really as a zero-carbohydrate food because all foods, including protein, can turn into glucose.
Protein contains something called amino acids, which are primarily supposed to become body tissue and hormones, but the excess—those things that we can't fit together and utilize as tissue to make body parts—get turned into glucose. The important thing to understand, though, is that this happens very slowly, much slower than with carbohydrates, in smaller amounts, and there is a delay. So the amount of insulin response is much, much smaller.
When we look at fat, it's kind of interesting because people think that fat is just fat and that fat per se cannot get turned into glucose. However, there is something called glycerol. If we look at a fat molecule, we store them and eat them in a form called triglycerides.
That means that there are three fatty acids (triglyceride), but then there is a backbone of glycerol. This glycerol has three carbons that we can reattach and make glucose from. Therefore, even fat actually produces glucose—not fat per se, but the way we store fat as a triglyceride.
So, this glycerol turns into glucose, but just like with protein, there's a delay, and it's a much smaller amount. If we compare again, carbohydrates have a huge response, protein has a moderate response, and fat has an almost negligible impact on blood glucose and insulin. This is why we can fast for days and even weeks without eating any carbohydrates.
There’s enough glucose indirectly available through this glycerol backbone. If we understand this, then there is truly no food that is really zero carbs because all food with a caloric value can be partially turned into glucose. The only truly zero-carb foods are water, tea, and coffee—things with no caloric value.
So, what we need to focus on is not the zero-carb foods as much as low-carb foods and slow-carb foods. Another thing that there's a lot of confusion about is net carbs and why that matters. When I talk about net carbs with different foods, I'm talking about the available amount of carbohydrate that we can turn into energy per 100 grams of food.
Total carbs, when we subtract the fiber, give us net carbs. Why do we subtract the fiber? Because it is not available to humans to digest and turn into energy; we can't metabolize it.
A lot of people on low-carb diets hear that, well, don't worry about net carbs; just look at the total carbs. If you're looking to go low-carb or even ketogenic, that should probably be around 50 grams of total carbs, but some of that is fiber. So, if we subtract the fiber, we would end up with 30 grams of net carbs.
Many people say, well, to get to a ketogenic state, you need to be around 30 grams of net carbs. Again, these are not absolute numbers; those are rough numbers that work for a lot of people but not everybody. Here's the important thing to understand about this: If you only look at total carbs, you may not understand what the food is doing to you.
For example, a mystery food that we're going to reveal in a moment would have 8. 6 grams of total carbs. However, 6.
8 grams out of those carbs are fiber, meaning you cannot turn that into energy; it does not affect glucose. So, the net carbs here are only 1. 8.
The problem now is that if you only look at total carbs, you might say, "Hey, I'm not going to eat that because it adds up the carbs too quickly. I can't eat very much of that before I hit my 50 grams. " Whereas.
. . If you look at the net carbs now, you see that, hey, this is a very low net carb food.
I can actually eat quite a bit of that. And there's some controversy about fiber historically. I think humans have eaten quite a bit of fiber.
Now, in the carnivore camp, they're disputing whether fiber is really necessary at all. I believe that for long-term optimal health, I do think that fiber plays a role because fiber feeds our gut bacteria, and our gut bacteria is tremendously important for our overall health. We need a large number and a large variety of gut bacteria.
So, fiber has no calories; it has no impact on blood glucose because we do not have the enzymes as humans to break it down. It does not impact blood sugar, and therefore it does also not impact insulin at all. As we talk through today, we also want to look at the bigger picture—the balance.
How does the combination of different things affect each other? So, fiber is something that will actually slow down absorption. The worst kind of carbohydrate would be glucose or sugar suspended in water, dissolved in water, like a juice or a soft drink, because there is nothing slowing that glucose down.
But if you had a little bit of fiber, or if you had some protein, or if you had some fat, then that sugar is not as readily available, so that's going to slow down the absorption a little bit—and that would be a good thing. So, when we have a certain amount, a small amount, of carbohydrate with fiber and with protein and with fat, then it doesn't have the same impact. Food number nine is non-sweet fruit.
The reason I call it that is these are things that a lot of people think about as vegetables, but technically, in the pure classification scheme of things, avocado is a fruit. These are the numbers we saw on a previous slide, so this is indeed the mystery food that I talked about. It has 8.
6 grams of total carbs; it has 6. 8 grams of fiber, for only 1. 8 net grams, which is amazing.
So, you can eat a ton of this food. It has plenty of healthy fats, tons of good fiber, and most of this fiber is the soluble kind that will feed your gut bacteria. Another great non-sweet fruit is olives, which have 3.
1 grams of net carbs per 100 grams. Also, tomato is a fruit. Now, depending on the tomato, some of those could taste sort of sweet, but it's still a very low amount of sugar and net carbohydrates—2.
7 grams. Food number eight is leafy greens, and it does have a tiny amount of carbohydrate, but not to the degree that it matters. Lettuce has 1.
2 grams of net carbs; it has tons of fiber, lots of water, and this carbohydrate is packaged inside fibrous cells. So, it takes a long, long, long time to release that glucose, and there is virtually no way to just eat lettuce and spike your blood sugar significantly. Arugula is very low at 2.
1 grams, spinach at 1. 4 grams, Swiss chard at 2. 1 grams, and cabbage—some people would probably put this in its own category, but I had room here, so I just lumped it together with the leafy greens—cabbage has 3.
3 grams and kale would be 5. 2 grams. Now, some of these we want to watch out for, as a lot of people are sensitive to oxalates, and they might want to stay away from spinach and kale.
Even though it's sort of classified in every list as this superfood that everyone should eat as much as possible, there are a lot of people who don't tolerate kale all that well. So, just because someone calls it a superfood doesn't mean that your body is going to love it, so just keep that in mind when other people tell you what foods are good for you. Number seven is non-starchy vegetables.
Here we have one of my favorites, broccoli, which has a very low 4 grams of net carbs. We have cauliflower at 3. 0 grams, and these are tremendous good sources of potassium and various different minerals.
Asparagus has 1. 9 grams, and we have bell pepper—depending on the color, it could be like with green bell pepper probably around three, and the red and yellow varieties would be a little bit higher, probably around four. Also, eggplant is very low at 2.
9 grams, green beans—depending on some of the very slender ones, the French style would be maybe two grams, and some of the sugar snaps could be as high as five—but all of these foods are low-starch, non-starchy, very low-carb foods, so it'd be very difficult to spike your blood sugar significantly. So again, we want to focus on the carbs that matter in terms of insulin and glucose because, like I said, there are very few true zero-carb foods. Number six is berries.
One of my favorites is raspberries at five net grams per 100 grams, and a few berries go a long way. So, this is five grams per 100 grams, so if you have maybe 10 raspberries, that's probably like 35-40 grams of total berries, so you would get less than two grams in 10 berries. If you have blackberries, it's about the same; if you have strawberries, also about the same; and blueberries come in a little bit higher.
It doesn't necessarily taste sweeter to the tongue, but it has almost twice as much sugar at nine grams. Now, what makes berries so unique and so attractive is not just that they are very, very low in sugar compared to other fruits, but also that they're much higher in fiber. Like we said, the fiber further slows down this small amount of carbohydrate.
So, raspberries have seven grams of fiber, blackberries have about five, strawberries about six, and blueberries about four. Compared to other fruits, this is very unusual that they have more fiber than they have sugar in them. Other fruits are kind of the other way around; they probably have four, five, six times more sugar than they do fiber.
So, it's not just the amount of sugar; it is also how. . .
Quickly, it's absorbed. Number five is nuts, and here my favorite would be macadamia, followed by pecans, followed by walnuts. A lot of people in the low carb community also love almonds and peanuts.
My macadamia nuts have 5. 2 grams of net carbs, pecans have 4. 3, and walnuts have 7.
0. So those are very low, especially when we look at how much protein, fat, and fiber is in there as well. This small amount of sugar is absorbed very, very slowly.
Now, almonds have 9. 1, and peanuts have 13. 5.
The amount of carbs doesn't necessarily turn these into bad foods, but a lot of people, as they start eating more and more almonds, begin getting reactions because almonds actually have something called lectins, which is a way that plants defend themselves from being eaten. It's a type of mild poison, if you will, and some people are very sensitive while others probably are not so much. However, it is something to keep in mind: the more you eat of something, the greater the probability that your body will develop a sensitivity to it.
Peanuts are the same; they also have lectins. Furthermore, peanuts, of course, are not really a nut; they're a legume—more like a bean, such as a kidney bean or black bean. They just have more protein and fat.
So, people sensitive to legumes and those sensitive to lectins can start reacting to peanuts. Number four is seeds, and they're somewhat similar to nuts in their nutritional makeup. Nuts are probably more of a snackable food, whereas seeds would be something that you add to a food.
They may not be as tasty to some people, at least not all of them, but flax, chia, hemp, and pumpkin seeds are my favorites that I eat on a regular basis. I sprinkle them on yogurt, for example. Flax has only 1.
6 grams of net carbs, chia has 4. 4, hemp has 3. 4, and pumpkin has 4.
7. These are very small amounts, and again, just like nuts, there is a tremendous amount of protein, fat, and fiber in these, so these small amounts of carbs are going to be absorbed extremely slowly. Therefore, it really doesn't matter; we're not looking for a zero number as much as we're looking for whether it matters or not.
Number three is fats and oils. These are items you can cook with, but they’re also things that you can use to supplement your calories. If you're really looking to be strict on a low carb or ketogenic diet, then you want to keep the carbs very, very low, your protein moderate, and the rest becomes fat.
You kind of fill up on fat after that. So, extra virgin olive oil would probably be my overall favorite. Butter, coconut oil, MCT oil, lard, and tallow are other good options.
These are all beneficial because they require minimal processing; they come from food sources that are naturally very high in fats. We don’t need to expose these foods to high temperatures, high pressure, and chemicals to extract the fat. Of course, being pure fat, these all have zero grams of carbs, zero fiber, etc.
One thing I want to point out is that there’s a lot of confusion about fat when we go on a low carb, high fat diet—that it’s okay to eat fat. You don’t have to be afraid of fat, but that does not mean that more fat is always better. You eat very low carb, moderate protein, and then eat fat to satiety.
However, that does not mean that more fat is better. If you are fine with a black coffee in the morning and that carries you to lunch or dinner, then adding butter to that coffee is not an advantage; it is only to help you transition. If you go from a high carb or moderate carb diet to low carb, then it’s good to add a little extra fat to help you transition and become fat adapted.
Especially with MCT oil, you can have just a teaspoon to help you make some ketones for quick energy. But the goal is to burn the fat off your body, not to burn the fat that you’re eating. The more fat you add to your diet, the less incentive there is to burn it off your body.
Food number two is eggs. We can eat them whole, but of course, humans like to mess with things, so we often break them apart into the white and the yolk. Depending on your belief system, you might eat more or less of one or the other.
When we look at the net carbs, they are all very, very low in carbohydrates. A whole egg has about 1. 7% carbohydrates; most of that is in the yolk percentage-wise.
The white has about 0. 7, and the yolk has about 3. 6.
However, a lot of people get into trouble, like bodybuilders. They hear that egg whites are where the protein is, so they just separate out the yolk. Other people hear that the yolk has all the cholesterol, so they cut it out.
We have all these people eating white omelets and drinking egg whites out of the bar, and so forth. The key here is to understand that nature doesn't pack things together accidentally. Nature created possibly the most perfectly balanced food available to us and put the white and the yolk together.
The difference here is that there are different amino acids and different percentages and ratios of amino acids in the yolk and in the white. When we eat them separately, we're not getting as good a balance. When we eat the whole egg, we can utilize 49% of all the amino acids, which can turn into body tissues.
They are so close in the combinations of amino acids to what our body needs to make tissue that we can use 49%, which is the highest of any food that we eat. Can we eat other than mother's milk? If we only eat the white, this drops tremendously.
But because a lot of these combinations of amino acids we need are in the yolk, they complement each other. We only utilize 17% of the protein in the egg white, and what happens to the rest? If we can't make tissue, the rest of it turns into glucose, stimulating blood sugar and insulin.
So, again, not nearly to the degree that a carbohydrate would, but it's still a whole lot more, and it's probably not what you're looking for when you're eating egg whites. Number one is dairy, and it's again in no particular order, so I'm not ranking these. But dairy just illustrates a lot of these points so well that the combination matters so much.
So we're going to look at skim milk, whole milk, half and half, heavy cream, and cheese, and we'll examine them in terms of net carbs, fat, and also in terms of the percentage of calories from carbohydrates. We'll start with these two, in terms of grams of carbohydrate per 100 grams of food or fat per 100 grams of food. If we look at milk—the skim, the whole, etc.
—all of these are basically low-carb foods, and they are at five grams or less. As we look at the fat, we see that skim milk obviously has virtually no fat. Whole milk has more, half and half has more, heavy cream has three times, and cheese is close to heavy cream in terms of fat content.
So, as the fat content increases, in cheese there's also more protein, and the percentage of carbohydrate decreases. But still, it's not a tremendous change; the red bar is still kind of similar. But where it really makes a difference is when we look at the percentage of calories from carbohydrates.
We're going to look at that over here. In skim milk, we think of milk as sort of a protein food, etc. , but in skim milk, almost 70% of the calories come from carbohydrates, from lactose, so it's basically an almost all-sugar food.
When we look at skim milk and add back or remove some of the fat in whole milk, we drop tremendously, getting down to almost half of the calorie percentages. When we look at half and half or cream, the percentages drop further and further, so we go from skim milk, which is a high-carbohydrate food, to cream, which is a very low-carbohydrate food. Cheese would be the lowest because there is a lot of protein in there as well.
But the key point here is, as we've talked about throughout this video, it's not about the carbohydrates necessarily; it's about the carbohydrates that matter. In skim milk, it matters tremendously because the carbohydrates are most of the calories. Even though the carbohydrates change, they don't change dramatically; they are roughly the same for most dairy products.
However, when we look at the percentage of calories, we go from a high-carbohydrate food to almost a zero-carbohydrate food, and that's what we're after. The protein and the fat are going to slow it down. Another way to look at it, of course, is that with milk—skim milk or whole milk—you could easily drink a cup or even two, and two cups of milk are going to have about 25 grams of milk sugar, lactose.
Whereas, I'd be hard-pressed to think that you could drink two cups of heavy cream or eat a pound of cheese in one sitting. So, the more concentrated the food is, the more it will satisfy you, so you end up eating less. There are so many different factors; you end up eating less.
The fat slows it down, and the percentages drop down as well. If you enjoy these graphics and these tables and would like to have your own copy, I put them together in a PDF for you. There's a link down below that you can click, and you can have your own version.
Then, obviously, if you watch this video again, you can follow along and really get all the details. If you enjoyed this video, you're going to love that one. And if you truly want to master health by understanding how the body really works, make sure you subscribe, hit that bell, and turn on all the notifications so you never miss a life-saving video.
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