Armed with a mission to promote clean eating and primal living, The Hunters’ Kitchenette translate its passion for making good food choices into meaningful jars of gourmet nut butters. These nut butters are made fresh from the oven daily with the finest handpicked ingredients.
Founder Herbert Salim created The Hunters’ Kitchenette for his wife Natalia as an extension of their daily life. The couple enjoys making delicious, healthy nut butters together for their family of two children.
Through The Hunters’ Kitchenette, the Salim family adopts a hunter gatherer lifestyle and inspires the community to be street-smart and inquisitive about what they choose to consume. Its mantra is for everyone to take full control of their health with the right information and apply that to their daily lives.
Nut butters by The Hunters’ Kitchenette are available in almond, cashew, hazelnut, hazelnut with cocoa, macadamia, pistachio and even unique custom blends. The nuts are lightly roasted to perfection and are seasoned with a sprinkle of unrefined French sea salt and coconut palm sugar.
In our quest to unearth some words of wisdom about eating well, we spoke with Herbert who offered more insights than what we could ask for.
Nookmag (N): Tell us more about the health benefits of nut butters.
Herbert Salim (H): First of all, not all nut butters are created equal.
– Tree nuts are far more superior than peanuts.
– Peanuts contain aflatoxin, which induce liver cancer in mice.
– The fat in peanuts is mostly Omega 6 polyunaturated fat. In our human body we need a balanced amount of Omega 3 and 6, and if that ratio is lopsided, it will trigger inflamation and suppress our immune system. That’s why eating lots of peanut or peanut butter will lead to a sore throat.
– Tree nuts on the other hand generally have a decent amount of Omega 3 fatty acid to balance the Omega 6, with Macadamias and Walnuts exceptionally high in O3 making them some of the healthiest nuts.
– Tree nuts contain more minerals and antioxidants compared to peanuts.
– Nut or nut butter must not be consumed in raw state, because it contains phytic acid; it’s an anti-nutrient that will bind with minerals in our food, so our body can’t absorb it and digest the nut properly. It must be roasted in low temperature, soaked or sprouted, to reduce or neutralize the anti-nutrients.
These are the reasons why Hunters’ Kitchenette does not do peanut butter, and why we produce our nut butters in a certain way.
N: What are some interesting ways to eat with the nut butters? Feel free to share a recipe or two.
H: Here are eight favourite ways to savour your nut butters but the sky’s the limit!
1. Eat the butters with gluten free bread, such as homemade banana almond bread.
2. Combine macadamia butter with good quality dark chocolate shavings for an epicurean delight.
3. As a dip for apples and pears, the almond, cashew or hazelnut butters make the pair a crunchy treat!
4. Drizzle macadamia butter with a touch of sea salt on baked sweet potatoes —tastes simply divine.
5. Create an appetising breakfast of gluten free pancake using banana, eggs and almond butter.
6. Make a grain free power bar with a mixture of nuts, dark chocolate, almond flour and almond butter.
7. Mix any nut butters into rich, yummy smoothies with coffee, coconut milk, coconut water or carrot juice as the liquid base.
8. Just enjoy them by the spoon full, especially pistachio.
N: How would you advise someone who wants to start eating healthy but not sure where to start?
H: First focus on real foods. Basically foods with ingredients that can still be recognized without using preservatives, artificial colouring & flavouring, and chemicals of any kind. If foods come in a packaging and has been processed, the only way to check is to look at the ingredients list. If it contains more than 5-8 ingredients, and includes things that we don’t have a clue about or can’t pronounce, it is not worth eating.
Avoid toxins like vegetable oils (all polyunsaturated oils which include canola, soy, sun flower, peanut, rapeseed, cottonseed oils), especially margarine or hydrogenated oils (spreadable vegetable oil of any kinds).
Avoid the obvious sugar in the form of table sugar, synthetic sweeteners, sweetened drinks, ‘diet’ or low calorie sugars that are basically chemicals and will damage our brain.
Limit hidden sugar in carbohydrate food source from grains, legumes. Grains include wheat (refined or wholegrain), barley, rye. One bowl of white rice or noodle contains 13-20 teaspoon worth of table sugar. Two slices of white bread have 7-8 teaspoon of sugar while whole wheat bread have 5-7 teaspoon. Note that the human body is not designed to eat three meals a day based on empty carbs/sugar which can be found in these sources.
Choose carbohydrates with high nutrition such as sweet potatoes, yam, pumpkin, all vegetables, and certain fruits like berries (full of antioxidants, minimal sugar). Pair these with healthy fats from coconut & avocado, animals that are raised in their natural environment and eat their natural foods, which are a great source of healthy fat and protein that will nourish our body.
N: What are some misconceptions about healthy eating that you’ve come across?
H: These four are the most misleading statements of all time…
1. Grains and whole grains are healthy. Grains are basically empty carbs, any kind of carbs be it whole grain anything, oatmeal, potatoes, noodle, pasta, bread, fruits, all will be converted into glucose or blood sugar when we digest them. If we eat our typical meal three times a day that are based on carbs, we are definitely ingesting excessive sugar to a toxic level, making diabetes, obesity, heart disease and cancer unavoidable.
Fibre in grains (especially whole grains) damage human digestive track and destroy our health, in some cases permanently. The good fibre for human is from vegetables and fruits.
2. Eat low fat. Humans have been living on a diet based on fat since 2.4 million years ago. The low fat diet was promoted in the last 50 years, based on bad science and supported by food manufacturers who are looking to gain profit. We have not been eating low fat for 99.99% of our entire existence on earth! Our body is designed to digest fat, just like how rabbits are designed by evolution to eat vegetables, and lions eat meat.
3. Soy is healthy. Soy is probably the most toxic food for human. It is not human food, it was grown to feed animals which in turn make the animal sick and fat. It contains phytoestrogen that affect our hormones, phytic acid, and 98% of soy in the world are genetically modified.
4. Saturated fat causes heart disease and cholesterol is bad for us. This is also based on bad science and politics to ban coconut/tropical oils entering the US market.
Coconut milk, coconut oil, butter, ghee and animal fats are the best saturated fats for the human body. For 2.4 million years, our hunter gatherer ancestors lived by hunting animals and gathering vegetables, nuts, seeds, tubers and seasonal fruits. When they get an animal, they will eat the brain (which is full of cholesterol), all the internal organs and fats. Our body is literally dependent on cholesterol to function.
N: How has the response been so far?
H: It’s been fantastic, and our customers know that we only produce the highest quality food/nut butters.
N: What’s next for Hunters’ Kitchenette?
H: Stay tuned. Whatever we do or make, it will be good for people; will support our health based on an evolutionary perspective, and not based on the ‘health lies’ that are flooding the mainstream media.
Catch The Hunters’ Kitchenette at Crateful. The Crateful pop-up store is located at 1M Yong Siak Street from now till end of the year.
