In this short episode of Tuesday Terrain Talks, you’ll hear all about a food I was recently introduced to and learned to love as an easy step to incorporate healthy fats and lots of nutrients into my diet. 

As you work to support the health of your body, simple, easy, and delicious is the route I always recommend when it comes to food. 

Today's tip will give you all of that and more. 

This episode is for you if you want to introduce a delicious anti-inflammatory, antioxidant ingredient to dress up veggies, salads, baked goods, or stand-alone as a snack. 

Referred to in this Episode: 

Pili Nuts -Moving beyond the organic level 

Health Benefits of Pili Nuts 

Pili nuts on Amazon 

Read the full transcript below:

Laura Lummer  00:00

You're listening to the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a Certified Life health and nutrition coach, and I'm also a breast cancer thriver. If you're trying to figure out how to move past the trauma and the emotional toll of breast cancer, you've come to the right place. In this podcast, I will give you the tools and the insights to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer. Well, let's get started.

Laura Lummer  00:33

Hello, hello, welcome to another episode of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. And today is our Tuesday terrain talk episode. Today, I've just got a quickie episode for you. And I want to use this time to introduce you to a delicious food that not a lot of people have heard about. And I had never heard of this food until I started working with my oncology nutritionist who is absolutely wonderful. And she made this recommendation to me. Because, as I so often get asked by people, when following a ketogenic diet, I have a high fat macro nutrient intake that I aim to hit on a daily basis. But I don't want to eat a lot of dairy, I don't want a lot of cream, I don't want a lot of cheese, I don't want a lot of high fat meats in my diet. That's just not the way I like to eat. I like to eat very clean, very plant forward. I love wild caught seafood, I definitely will have pasture raised chicken in my diet. And now and then some beef, but it's just not my favorite way of eating. So when it comes to getting a lot of fat into my diet, I look for sources that are more like olive oil, avocado oil, sesame oil, very clean very high in Omega three oils, because they're anti inflammatory. And that's very important to me. And the same with the foods. So I'm looking at foods and I want to incorporate foods that have a high fat content, but don't have that, but that also have a high nutrient value, right that they're really good for my health. Now, that being said, you may be thinking, well, I don't care about following a ketogenic diet, and that is totally fine, you don't have to. But all of us want to make sure that we're incorporating healthy fats into our diet. And by healthy fats, I actually have some podcasts coming up on that. And what we'll think about when we talk about healthy fats, we're thinking about being anti inflammatory fats, having a high omega six to Omega three ratio, we'll go into that another another time, because those are more anti inflammatory, the higher the Omega three, the higher the anti inflammatory benefits of that. I want to keep my saturated fat levels low because I know I have the genetic variant that can cause my insulin levels to spike when I eat saturated fat. So that's something that I keep an eye on. And for overall heart health, I think most people are concerned with what types of saturated fats they eat. So how do we construct a diet, whether it's a ketogenic diet or not, it's just an overall healthy diet to incorporate the healthiest fats, but still keep it really delicious, really fun to eat really fresh and really bright. That has been a challenge of mine. That's something that I have really taken. I don't know a lot of attention I give to into making sure that that that is how my diet is constructed. And so whether it's ketogenic diet you're following or not, it's a good thing to look at. And so my oncology nutritionist, she recommended to me this nut called a pili nut. Now, this is spelled p i Li, and it is pronounced like PE l y p li. It is indigenous to the Philippines. It's a tropical tree nut that has grown in the Philippines. And so I want to say right off the bat, if you have a nut allergy, this is not for you. Don't think don't tempt fate. Don't play around with tropical nuts or any other kinds of nuts. If you have a nut allergy, obviously, that is dangerous. And that is not some place that you want to go regardless of how many fats you want to get into your diet. Okay, so that being said, pili nuts in one ounce of pili nuts, you're going to find about 22 grams of fat. And of those fats, only nine grams are saturated fat. So that's well within a healthy intake of saturated fats. Now, something that people think about when we're constructing a healthy, anti inflammatory, whole food, fresh food diet is nuts. A lot of times people think, oh, I can eat more nuts. And we have to be really careful about a health halo. And that means we look at a food and we think, Oh, that food is really healthy. So I can just To eat it endlessly. And that is not the case with any kind of nut. And the reason why is nuts have a very high caloric intake because they're high in fats. So one ounce appealing nuts, as I said 22 grams of fat, we're talking 10 to 15 Nuts depending on the size. So appealing nut is as a little bit of a longer nut. Similar looking to the pit of an avocado. It's called tear shaped, I think it's kind of like an oblong shape. But depending on the size of those pili nuts, one ounce is just a few nuts. So when we talk about consuming these healthy foods, we have to be mindful that something that has this high of a fat content is not something we want to sit down and open a bag. While we're watching Netflix and just munch on bag appealing nuts, we need to be really mindful of how many we incorporate into our diet. But also, it is a wonderful way to use a small amount of food and get a very satiating meal. So when I first started using pili nuts, I measured out an ounce of them, I wanted to have them for a snack. Now these nuts are very, very rich with 22 grams of fat in an ounce, you could imagine they're very satiating, they're very rich. And so when you roast them, just put them in a warm pan on the stove, all of those oils come out and they get golden brown and toasty really quickly. And they are delicious. But I have yet to been able to finish eating an entire ounce of pili nuts in one sitting because there's so filling. And I think that's the great thing about them if you want to use them as a snack, but it's also a great thing about them just for the feeling of satiation. So when people are following or modifying their diets and incorporating more vegetables and incorporating more salads into their meals, in an effort to crowd out the things they don't want to eat, we bring in more of the delicious things we do want to incorporate. Part of that problem can be that you don't put enough calories and some that you don't have enough fat. Fat is really important for overall mouthfeel is very important for the feeling of satiation and fullness in our body. And so even when we're doing things like very plant forward diets, and incorporating lots of vegetables or making lots of salads, it's easy to make them beautiful and add a lot of vegetables. But those vegetables aren't going to have the mouthfeel and the fat content that may leave you feeling satisfied afterwards. So it really is important to consider getting enough fat into your salads and onto your vegetables by drizzling them with oils by chopping up something like a pili nut and putting those on top of your vegetables, putting those on top of your salads, roasting them and having them as a snack, you can put pili nuts in a dressing. So if you're making a dressing, you can put them in the blender and whip them up right in the blender to add some delicious fat to it, you can chop them up and add them to baked goods. But a really fun and delicious way to make plant forward eating plant dense eating much more filling and flavorful, I think is to add this nut into it. So pili nuts, as I said, are grown. They're indigenous to the Philippines and they're grown in the Philippines and the company that I have purchased from is called pili hunters and I'll put a link to that product which you can find on Amazon you can find on their website, I'll put a link to it in the show notes. The breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash 253. And the reason why I love this company is not that any other company is bad or that it's better than them. But when I first heard about pili nuts, this was the brand that was recommended to me. And I looked into it because I know that many nuts can be high consumers of glyphosate and other pesticides, and especially almonds, which is something we will talk about in another podcast episode. So I wanted to look into pili nuts to understand how are they grown, how are they harvested. And what I loved about this company in pili hunters was that they use local workers in the Philippines to give employment to people to help them harvest and they wild harvest these nuts. So pili nuts are a little more expensive. Because one, they go through a lot of work to get these nuts and they're not easy. They're not like a peanut you just pick them up and crack the shell. They're kind of rough to get into more like the challenge of a coconut would be right splitting these things open and then getting down into the center core of it and getting the nut out of the center. So they're very labor intensive. But I love the fact that this company uses wild harvesting as way to get these nuts and package these nuts. So I mean that's even like a step beyond just organic right they're not having this fun arm that is just focused on mono culture just growing a bunch of pili nut trees, they go out and they look for them in the forest and they harvest them. And I love that story. And so I do I am a fan of the the pili hunters pili nuts, and they have different kinds they even have, if you want to have a nice treat, sometimes they have a cocoa covered one. And I love to take pili nuts, and as I said toast them, I will toast a half an ounce because I've learned that I cannot eat a full ounce, but I'll toast for half an ounce. And then I'll take these little, they're like 95% cacao chips, so there's no sugar in them. And I'll just melt those and drizzle them a little bit on the pili nuts on the really warm salted roasted pili nuts. Oh my god, they're so delicious. It's a very delicious, healthy sugar free snack. And very satisfying again, because of the high fat content. So I wanted to share that tip with you today. This is just a quickie episode about something else that is easy to find. Very delicious, easy to incorporate into your diet. And again, even though pili nuts are a little more expensive, because they are so filling because of the fat, you don't have to use a lot of them. So don't be freaked out by the price. If you look at the price brands go oh my gosh, these are just crazy expensive. It's nice to have some around. I don't use them all the time. For that reason, I like to treat it as a very special ingredient in my pantry in my cupboard. But I do love to use them, especially in times where I feel like those days come when you're just having like a hungry day. And you just feel like oh, I just I'm not satisfied like I didn't have enough or I don't have that comfort feeling whatever the feeling is that we try to get from foods we feel satisfied. And that's when I'll go to it and go to my pili nuts and roast them up and just have something satisfying and very filling I find. So I'll post links to them. You check out some peeling nuts for yourself. I'll post a link to an article that tells you a little bit more about them and about their health benefits. And if you decide to incorporate them into your diet or if you're familiar with pili nuts, I'd love to hear about it. So come and find me on Facebook, Laura Lummer Instagram also Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach, and let me know what you think about pili nuts and adding this beautiful natural whole food into your diet to support your body's overall well being and healthy trading. Take care and I'll talk to you again soon.