Transcription
It's scary, but the meat you buy at the grocery store isn't even meat anymore. Look, you can eat high protein. You can eat low carb. Heck, you can even eat keto and still be quietly eating ingredients that inflame your gut, spike insulin, and hijack hunger every single day. Not because you're doing anything wrong, but because nobody taught you how to read meat labels. Once you see what they're sneaking in, you can't unsee it. Let me show you.
Ingredient number one, sugar in meat. This one probably shocked me the most, but there is sugar in the meat you're buying at the grocery store. You think you're sugar-free, but oh my gosh, it's coming through your meat. You're not eating dessert. You're not drinking soda, but you're getting sugar from meat. You'll find it in bacon, sausage, jerky, deli meats, even rotisserie chicken. And it hides under several names. Not just sugar, but names like dextrose, brown sugar, malttodextrin, high fructose corn syrup.
Now, here's the trick. It's actually not there to taste sweet. It's there to activate your brain. Human research shows that even small amounts of sugar increase dopamine response. Dopamine is the hormone that makes you want more. It leads to addictive behaviors, addictions to food. That dopamine increases repeat pushing behaviors. The sugar combined with the fat in the meat raises palatability and overrides satiety signals. This means you eat more and more and you buy more of that product.
Look, in human studies done on ultrarocessed foods, people eat 500 plus extra calories per day. And get this, even when protein and macros are matched because additives override fullness, they shut down your satiety hormones. So when sugar is added to meat, you eat more, you crave more, you spend more, and you snack sooner. That's not protein, my friend. That's profit engineering. And if you're insulin resistant, like 88% plus of United States adults, even trace sugars like this matters. Okay.
Ingredient number two, seed oils are found in meats. Yeah, vegetable oils, inflammatory fats. Why are we adding industrial processed rancid fats to meat that already has fat? You'll see canola oil, soybean, sunflower, safflower oil. And these bad oils are typically added to sausages, burgers, pre-marinated meats, and frozen patties. Here is why they're really there. Yes, they're cheap. They improve the texture. They extend shelf life. That's probably the most important reason. And they could replace real meat fat with this vegetable oil.
These oils arguably could be worse than smoking cigarettes. And that's not just propaganda fear-mongering. There was actually a study that I put in my latest book, Metabolic Freedom, from a toxicologist named Dr. Martin Grudfeld. And he was looking at several toxins that were produced from these bad oils when you fried foods in these oils, like French fries, for example. And one of the toxins he looked at was a toxin called aldahhides. Aldahhides are a known carcinogen. What does that mean? It's known to increase cancer. When you smoke a tobacco cigarette, it increases your risk of cancer in the future because of the aldahhides that are produced. And here's what the study found from this very prominent toxicologist. He found that 25 French fries cooked in these bad fats we're talking about right now found in your meats was equivalent to 25 tobacco cigarettes smoked. Yikes.
These are omega6 oxidized fats. And you might think, okay, what's the big deal? I've got detox mechanisms in place. My body could get rid of them in a few hours. Nope. A few days? Nope. The halflife of these bad fats found in your meats is 680 days. Two years. Which means if you stop eating it today, two years later, half of these bad fats will be around your cell membranes, your little mitochondria, creating inflammation. They block fat burning. They increase chances of heart disease and cancer. They create neuroinflammation, brain fog, gut issues. I would argue they're probably worse than the sugar. The simple translation is this. If you're eating meat with a vegetable oil in it, you're going to burn less fat. Heck, you're going to gain weight because inflammation. Your cells become more insulin resistant. Recovery slows from exercise or just sleeping at night. And you're going to be hungry all the time. You're not eating fat when you eat these bad fats. You're eating damaged industrial lubricant.
Ingredient number three, fillers and binders. Okay. Modified starches, potato flour, carrageen. These are showing up in hot dogs, meatballs, sausages, and even ground meat blends. Here's a rule I want you to follow. The less meat it contains, the more meatlike they have to make it. Human studies done on the digestive system show the following. These fillers slow protein absorption. They increase leaky gut, especially in sensitive individuals. What does leaky gut means? It means your tight junctions, your gut microbiome, your mucosal barrier opens up where undigested food goes into the bloodstream and creates an autoimmune reaction. It creates a hyper vigilant immune system. Not good. And they also trigger bloating and rebound hunger. So you might think, I just ate protein. 20 minutes later, you're hungry again. I thought protein was supposed to make me full. Well, because your body knows a good percentage of that protein wasn't real food. It was meatshaped product.
So let me simplify this for you. so you never feel confused again. Tier one, here are the worst offenders. Avoid this as much as possible. Always check labels. So, I would avoid sausages, hot dogs, deli meats, meatballs, and pre-marinated meats. These are ultrarocessed by default. Tier two is kind of hit or miss. Depends on the brand. So, these include bacon, jerky, frozen burgers, and rotisserie chicken. Some brands make clean products. Some are loaded with the bad stuff. So check the labels. Read the labels. That's so important for you. Tier three, these are usually clean. These are safer. So your safest bets are steaks, plain ground beef, chicken thighs, chicken breasts, whole cuts, just one ingredient. You control the flavor.
Now, if you're watching this or listening to this and you're thinking, "Okay, so what meat can I actually eat without wrecking my gut? Hormones and cravings. Like, what do I do, Ben?" Well, this is the missing piece right here. This is what I do and what I recommend to all my students. Everything I explained only works if the meat itself isn't sabotaging you. If your protein has sugar, seed oils, fillers, and binders, your body stays inflamed, no matter how clean you think you're eating. And you can buy the single ingredient cuts that are safer, but the animals need to be fed a natural diet. The animals should not be pumped full of antibiotics and hormones. That's why I personally use wild pastures. I've been using them for several years. Their beef is 100% grass-fed and grass-finished. Their chicken and pork are pastured raised. No sugar, no seed oils, no fillers, no label games they play with you. This is actually the protein your body knows what to do with.
What's really cool is they deliver it straight to your door. Frozen, clean, and ready to cook. Every month I get my shipment. For me, it's removed all the guessing, all the label flipping, all the second guessing. It's why I recommend it to all my clients. This is the cleanest fuel that makes everything else finally work. So, if you want to stop unknowingly eating meat that isn't really meat, click the first link in the description box right below this or scan the QR code below to check out Wild Pastures. And when you do that, I'm going to do right here on my phone. And when you do that, they're going to give you, as you can see here on the page, $15 off your first box and 20% off for life. And what's super cool, you actually get to customize your box. Choose how much meat you want, the frequency of how much how fast they deliver it to you or how frequently they deliver it to you. You can choose different cuts, beef, chicken, pork, etc. And uh that's how you do it right here. And then you'll just check out the coupon code and the special deal is automatically applied when you click the first link down below or scan the QR code on the screen.
You don't need perfection. You just need to stop eating the junk you never agreed to. So, let me be very clear. This isn't about fear. This isn't about perfection. If you're eating the tier one meat right now, you're still doing better than most people. But once you know, you get to choose. And these small changes, they compound fast. My friend Sean Croxton always says, "Little by little, a little becomes a lot." So, when you make these small changes, you're going to notice less inflammation, better digestion, fewer cravings, easier fat loss. You're not crazy for feeling off after a burger. You're not broken. You're not just aging. Sometimes your body is just reacting to things it was never meant to digest. When you eat real food from healthy animals, your body remembers how to feel good again. And it starts with flipping the label, choosing meat that's actually meat. If this opened your eyes, share this with someone you care about. The more we support brands doing things the right way, the faster the junk disappears. You vote with your fork. And subscribe to this channel if you want honest health info. No corporate BS and real solutions.
Now, let's get to the questions you submitted on this topic. Isn't the amount of sugar in meat way too small to matter? It is very small. However, if you're one of the 88% plus people in the United States that's insulin resistant, even a little sugar is going to be damaging for you. And remember, it's not about the sweetness. You're not going to really taste the sweetness. It's about the frequency and the neurologically neurological programming that's happening with the dopamine.
Seed oils are FDA approved. How could they be harmful? You know, when I interviewed a prominent medical doctor, author of dark calories, my good friend Dr. Kate Shanahan, she called authorities like the American Heart Association, which puts their stamp of approval on one of the biggest fake news organizations in America. Okay. the FDA, the government, big food, big guff, they're all in cahoots. And if you really want to know if seed oils are an issue for you, give them up and see how your body responds. That's the ultimate test.
Before I get to the next question, let me give you a free resource here. You've been lied to. Look, some of the healthiest vegetables you eat every day are silently wrecking your gut, inflaming your body, and locking fat around your belly. I put together a free guide breaking down the five vegetables you must avoid if you want real fat loss and what to eat instead to reset your metabolism fast. This is the truth that your doctor will never tell you, but hey, your belly fatter already knows. Click the second link in the description box below or scan the QR code on the screen to grab your avoid list right now. Less inflammation, less confusion, and a lot less belly fat in 7 days or less.
Let's get to the next question. This sounds like anti-meat propaganda. Well, if you know anything about me, I am so pro meat. I love the carnivore diet. Like the majority of what I eat is meat. I'm all for meat. This is not anti-meat. This is anti-franken foods. Anti-foodl like substances. You know, I wrote this in Metabolic Freedom, my latest book. Human beings are the only species smart enough to create their own food and dumb enough to actually eat it. Right? I'm for real meat, real protein, not the fake stuff that they're trying to hide in our food supply.
Isn't this just about calories at the end of the day? Depends. If you're one of the old school thinkers and haven't been forward thinking, keeping up with the research and working with people, then yeah, it's all about calories in versus calories out. I get these comments all the time. Calories matter, but they're not important. Hormones and inflammation are way more important than calories. You could be in a calorie deficit, eat these fake meats, be inflamed, and not lose any weight because it's not about calories. You don't have a weight problem. You have a weight symptom. Focusing on calories is focusing on the symptom. You don't lose weight to get healthy. You get healthy to lose weight. So everything I teach, what you learn today, it's all about how to lower inflammation, how to lower insulin, how to fix the gut. When you do that, you don't have to worry about calories. When you do that, weight loss is a side effect of good health, my friend.
I hope this is valuable. Look, share it with somebody you know. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. And if you love this lesson, you're going to love a previous video I just launched about protein timing and the number one protein trick that shrinks belly fat in just one day. Check out a clip from that lesson. Then click the video on the screen coming up here and I'll see you in the next lesson. He's a bully and he bullies your fat burning hormones. So, I want you to remember this. When insulin is high, you're storing fat. When insulin drops, you burn fat. Fat cannot be used for energy. This visceral fat becomes metabolically protected. So it accumulates this white fat around your organs, your heart, your liver, your kidneys, your pancreas.