The Bear Diet is a powerful diet for healing, health and longevity. The diet is unique in it’s focus on providing the body with the highest benefit-to-burden ratio. This means it provides your body with the most possible nutrients and resources with the least amount of burden on the body’s precious resources. This focus not only provides the body with the nutrients needed to support the body’s innate healing capacity but also prevents using up resources that could be used for healing. Additionally, it’s worth noting that The Bear Diet provides the body with all essential amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals.
The 8 Criteria of the Best Diet For Health, Healing and Longevity
There are so many diets and opinions surrounding diet. There are diets for specific conditions and outcomes – like low glycemic diets or anti-inflammatory diets. There are also extreme diets that adhere to strict avoidance of certain food groups – like vegan diets and carnivore diets. And there is the more commonly recommended conservative diet often described as a balanced whole foods diet.
While many diets just focus on one of the following objectives, The Bear Diets meets all of them.
The 8 Criteria of the healthiest possible diet:
#1 Isn’t High in Burdensome Antinutrients, Enzyme Inhibitors and Natural Preservatives
#2 Supports A Healthy Microbiome BUT DOES NOT PROMOTE Overgrowths of Unhealthy Microbes
#3 Is Anti-Inflammatory and Autoimmune Safe
#4 Is Low Glycemic / Ketogenic
#5 Provides An Abundance of All 50+ Essential and Conditionally Essential Nutrients
#6 Is Not Absent of the Bioactive Peptides Found in Fish, Collagen, Gelatin and Bone Marrow
#7 Matches What Humans Have Eaten for Millions of Years
#8 Allows for All Natural In-Season Foods (When Properly Prepared)
#9 Includes Fermented Foods
#10 Is An Organic Diet Free of Glyphosate and Other Destructive Herbicides
#11 Is High In Neuroprotective Healthy Fats That Support Healthy Cell Membranes
#12 Is High In A Variety of Antioxidants
The Bear Diet
Let’s jump in and take a look at the foods that are emphasized, allowed and not allowed in each main food group.
Meats
Meats are allowed and are an important part of The Bear Diet. An emphasis is placed on the freshwater fatty fish – Salmon and Trout. The DHA and EPA Omega 3 fatty acids found in these fish are critical in healthspan, disease prevention and chronic illness recovery. It’s worth noting that you can also get good amounts DHA and EPA from salt water fish like Mackerel, Herring, Anchovies, and Sardines. And while grassfed beef, and free range chicken eggs can support your DHA and EPA dietary intake they lack the abundance of these nutrients that become essential under conditions of illness or aging.
Any meats that are inorganic, grainfed, grainfinished or processed are not allowed in the diet.
Organ Meats and Bone Marrow
Organ meats are certainly among the foods with the highest benefit to burden ratio. Liver in particular, is an especially nutrient rich food that gives an enormous bang for its buck. Consider working beef liver or chicken liver into your diet. It doesn’t need to be a daily staple but if you’re able to work some organ meats into your diet your body will thank you.
Bone marrow is also a powerful food as it provides bioactive peptides among other nutrients that can help stimulate healing and repair. Some diets emphasize bone marrow broth as a way to help heal and repair the gut.
Collagen and Gelatin
Hydrolyzed collagen and gelatin peptides round out the third and fourth sources for bioactive peptides (fish and bone marrow being the other two). These peptides provide such a simple way to get powerful healing peptides in the daily diet. Note there are 20+ types of collagen peptides and they each offer different benefits to the body. For example, type 2 collagen impacts gut healing in ways that the more common type 1 or type 3 do not. The same is true for gelatin peptides. So consider trying different types of peptides as well as different sources such as marine sourced collagen – and see which benefit you most.
Eggs
Eggs are another very high benefit to burden food. They are very nutrient rich and one of the healthiest ways to get an abundance of phosphotidylcholine which can be critical in healing and preventing many chronic illnesses including autoimmune, inflammatory or age related illnesses.
Eggs should be organic and preferably free range.
Vegetables
Fruits
Fermented Dairy
Non-Fermented Dairy
Yeast and Mushrooms
Honey
Oils
Properly Prepared Nuts, Seeds, Grains and Legumes
Nuts, seeds, grains and legumes are (at least as they’re used in the modern/western way) the worst possible foods to consume. This is for multiple reasons. First, they’re often not used in their whole form as they usually have the bran and/or germ removed. Secondly, they’re almost never sprouted before being made into flour. Third they’re often used without fermentation to make crackers, pancakes, waffles, cookies, muffins, cakes, pasta cereals, doughnuts and so much more.
This is heartbreaking …
To demonstrate the point of how much a burden these foods are on your bodies precious resources. Simply take a handful of nuts, seeds, grains and legumes and leave them in the pantry or on the counter. Observe how that handful of food is preserved and remains for days and even months with little to no sign of decay.
Compare that to a handful of fresh ripe fruit, vegetables, or meat.
The nuts, seeds, grains and legumes don’t pass the “perishable” test. And therefore must be avoided as they have a much larger burden on rather than benefit to the body’s precious resources.
THERE IS A SOLUTION AND EXCEPTION!!
Consider taking a handful of the same wheat berries that didn’t breakdown for months. Now soak a cup of them in water for 24 hours. Be sure to rinse them every 8 hours during the soak. You’ll notice they’ve begun to sprout at the end of the soak. Next, dry them out to become sprouted wheat berries. Now they can be ground into sprouted wheat flour. Use this flour to make a fermented bread dough. Finally, bake the dough to make delicious bread. Cut a slice of your delicious bread and leave on the counter. What happens?
Your fresh homemade bread becomes stale in hours and moldy and rotten is less than days. It passes the “perishable” test.
So … let’s note the 5 criteria for eating nuts, seeds, grains or legumes,
- Soaking:
- Sprouting:
- Grinding:
- Fermenting:
- Baking:
This means say goodbye to the high burden of crackers, pancakes, waffles, cookies, muffins, cakes, pastas, cereals, doughnuts etc. etc.
And say hello to the nutrient-dense sprouts that can be used to make bread, rolls or pizza crust.
An Important Note On Moderation and When Carbs are Helpful and Not Hurtful
It’s shockingly good news to many that bread, rolls and crusts could still be part of a healthy diet. After all, many restricted diets don’t acknowledge the vast difference between non-whole unsprouted unfermented grains and the nutrient-rich and perishable sprouted fermented bread, rolls and crusts.
BUT THERE ARE TWO IMPORTANT GUIDELINES
Moderation: Just because you can eat bread or toast or rolls doesn’t mean they should be the priority or should take the place of meats, eggs, berries, or leafy greens. It’s important that to note that even when prepared properly these foods should be roughly 1/16 of your diet. So enjoy the bread, roll or crust but don’t allow it to become a foundational part of your diet.
Pairing and Order: Another important note is that you want to keep your body from having any unnecessary rise in blood glucose. This means that your slice of toast or roll should not be eaten alone as a snack (which raises your blood glucose). But should always be paired with a fat and protein-rich meal AND EQUALLY IMPORTANTLY should not be eaten alone at the beginning of that meal but with your servings of fats and/or proteins or at the end of the meal (which has little to know impact on blood glucose – depending on the sprouted flour used and how much).
Here’s the list of nuts, seeds, grains and legumes that are more commonly used to make sprouted flours and their breads, rolls or crusts:
- Sprouted Wheat Flour
- Sprouted Spelt Flour
- Sprouted Buckwheat Flour
- Sprouted Quinoa Flour
- Sprouted Almond Flour
- Sprouted Lentil Flour
- Sprouted Chickpea Flour (Besan)
- Sprouted Sunflower Seed Flour
What If You Don’t Tolerate Something In The Diet?
Don’t Tolerate Salmon or Trout?
Don’t Tolerate Salmon, Trout and Eggs?
Don’t Tolerate Fruits, Vegetables, and Fibers?
Don’t Tolerate Kefir?
