I Used to Eat One of These… Until I Found Out the Truth

Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast

Dr. Eric Berg

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2025

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Parmigiano Reggiano is a cheese made in Parma, Italy. It’s a grass-fed cheese made with high standards not seen in American Parmesan cheese-making.

Grass-fed cheese is loaded with microbes that come from the soil. Cows need the help of microbes to digest the fiber in the grass they consume. These microbes produce byproducts from the grass that help nourish the cow. The process of Parmesan cheese-making also involves microbes!

Parmigiano Reggiano is made from 3 ingredients: high-quality cow’s milk, salt, and an enzyme that turns the milk into cheese. The powdered Parmesan cheese at the grocery store contains cellulose, which is essentially wood pulp.

Cellulose is a filler and can legally make up 8% of a product! U.S. Parmesan cheese also contains potassium sorbate. Parmigiano Reggiano is a raw product without fillers or preservatives that's aged at least 12 months. There are no aging requirements for Parmesan cheese.

Some Parmigiano Reggiano is aged for 14 to 24 months, or longer. Microbes consume lactose during the aging process, so the finished product is often lactose-free. Parmigiano Reggiano has the following health benefits:

•High in glutamate •Contains bioavailable calcium and phosphorus•Helps build glutathione, a potent antioxidant that supports liver health•Reduces blood pressure•Contains butyric acid, which supports brain health

Parmigiano Reggiano has the highest amount of vitamin K2 compared to all other cheeses. Vitamin K2 redirects calcium in the arteries and joints to the teeth and bones. Parmigiano Reggiano contains MK-7, the most bioavailable form of vitamin K2.

Dr. Eric Berg DC Bio:Dr. Berg, age 60, is a chiropractor who specializes in Healthy Ketosis & Intermittent Fasting. He is the author of the best-selling book The Healthy Keto Plan, and is the Director of Dr. Berg Nutritionals. He no longer practices, but focuses on health education through social media.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Parmigiano-Migiano versus the U.S. imitation Parmesan cheese. The names are very similar,
0:06.4	but are they really the same? There is something in this cheese that is not only not in this cheese,
0:12.7	but it's not in any other cheese that I know about. I lived on this one right here. I don't even know
0:17.5	about this one. I put this on my spaghetti sauce until I went to a part of
0:21.7	Italy called Parma, where they make this cheese and saw firsthand how they made it. But I was more
0:27.1	interested in the cows. Went to the barn where they had these cows. Not only do all the cows
0:33.2	consume grass, but the type of grass that they fed these cows is extremely different than what
0:39.1	they feed other cows. To make this authentic cheese, they have to go through very strict standards,
0:45.1	whereas in America, you don't have these standards. There's a lot of types of cheese that are
0:49.2	mimicking or faking this cheese. It's a $2 billion industry. Grass-fed cows are also loaded with microbes that
0:56.2	come from the soil. So a cow eats the grass. It goes into several stomachs. And many people don't
1:02.1	realize that the cow itself cannot digest that grass, that fiber. It needs help from microbes inside
1:08.8	the cow. When a cow eats grass, they're basically feeding
1:12.0	their microbes. And then the byproducts that the microbes give off after eating the grass or the
1:16.5	fiber, that is fed to the cows as nutrition. The bacteria itself that's doing all the work
1:22.0	is loaded with protein. And so the cow gets very little direct nutrition. It gets a lot of the nutrition via the microbes.
1:29.9	So it's a combination of the type of microbes that are involved in the fermentation process,
1:34.7	as well as the production going from milk to cheese that also involves microbes.
1:40.7	This Parmigiano Rajano is made from three ingredients. This very specialized standard
1:46.1	cow's milk, number two, salt, and number three, an enzyme that allows the milk to turn into
1:51.5	cheese. Now, if we do a little comparison to the American Parmesan cheese, we get a pasteurized
1:57.8	part skim milk with the cheese culture salt enzymes.
	...

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