This article is based on my conversation with Chef Martin Oswald, author of the Chef Martin’s Healing Kitchen Substack, this is day 6 and the finale of the first-ever Brain Health Substack Summit, hosted by The Habit Healers.

If you missed Day 1 of our Brain Health Summit with Julie Fratantoni, PhD you can watch it here. We discussed how to exercise your brain day to day.

If you missed Day 2 of our Brain Health Summit with Annie Fenn, MD you can watch it here. We discussed foods to decrease dementia risks.

If you missed Day 3 of our Brain Health Summit with Jud Brewer MD PhD you can watch it here. We discussed how to unwind your anxiety.

If you missed Day 4 of our Brain Health Summit with Dr. Dominic Ng, you can watch it here. We discussed microplastics in your brain.

If you missed Day 5 of our Brain Health with Chris Miller MD, you can watch it here. We discussed brain inflammation.

Click here for the 25 recipes, Chef Martin, created for the Brain Health Summit!

Months before the first Brain Health Substack Summit interviews aired, Chef Martin Oswald and I did something a little unusual. We reached out to each of our experts and asked them a simple question: What are your favorite brain-supporting ingredients? They each sent back a list. They had no idea what would happen next.

What happened next was Chef Martin Oswald. From his kitchen in Vienna, Martin took those ingredient lists and built original recipes around every single one. The experts never saw it coming. Dr. Annie Fenn didn’t know her ingredient picks would become a Northern Moroccan Charmoula. Dr. Dominic Ng had no clue his favorites would land on a plate with Pumpkin Seed–Crusted Salmon with Sauce Gribiche, Roasted Beets & Leeks. Each recipe was a surprise, designed to show that the science these experts study can actually end up as something you’d want to eat on a Tuesday night.

This final session of the summit brought it all together. Martin walked through the dishes he created for each expert, and in doing so, he connected the dots between five days of interviews spanning inflammation, microplastics, the gut-brain axis, habit change, and blood sugar regulation. What became clear, sitting there watching him plate dish after dish, was that the same core ingredients kept showing up across every expert’s list. The overlap was the point.

The Sodium Problem (and the Flavor Fix)

One of the first things Martin addressed was sodium. High blood pressure damages the brain over time, and most people eat far more sodium than they realize. This came up in our conversations with Dr. Chris Miller about neuroinflammation and again in our discussions about cardiovascular health and its direct link to cognitive decline.

Martin’s approach to cutting sodium is not about deprivation. He builds flavor in layers. First, increase potassium-rich foods like sweet potatoes, beans, and greens. Then lean on acidity: balsamic drizzle, pomegranate reduction, lemon juice. These cover the flavor gap that opens when you pull back on salt. Next, fermented foods like miso, sauerkraut, and kimchi add a tangy, funky depth that salt alone can’t replicate. And miso in particular carries enough potassium to offset its own sodium content, making it close to neutral for blood pressure.

He also pointed to something practical: reduced-sodium salt is easy to find and an immediate swap anyone can make today. Combined with generous use of fresh herbs and ground spices, you’re not mourning the loss of salt. You’re replacing it with something more interesting.

The Blood Sugar Thread

If there was a single theme connecting every expert on this summit, it was blood sugar. Martin noticed it too. Across the original recipes he developed for the summit, almost none contain high-glycemic foods. The experts didn’t coordinate on that. They arrived at the same place independently, which tells you something about how central glucose regulation is to brain health.

Martin’s dishes rely on low glycemic load ingredients: beans, leafy greens, whole grains like barley, and plenty of non-starchy vegetables. He also explained the practical difference between glycemic index and glycemic load. Beets, for example, have a higher glycemic index when compared to sugar as a reference point. But the glycemic load of a real serving of beets is relatively small because of the fiber content. The fiber slows the glucose spike. This distinction matters because it keeps people from avoiding perfectly good foods based on a misleading number.

He also mentioned a useful eating strategy that came up in our conversation, eat the non-starchy vegetables first, then the beans or grains. That sequence alone can blunt the glucose rise from a meal. It costs nothing and requires no special equipment.

Brain Health in a Bowl: Feeding the Gut-Brain Axis

The gut-brain connection came up with nearly every expert. Annie Fenn, MD discussed it. Dr. Chris Miller went deep on neuroinflammation. Dominic Ng talked about it from a microplastics angle. Martin took all of that and built dishes that combine prebiotics and probiotics in a single meal.

One of his standout techniques is adding miso to cashew butter and letting it sit for two days. The probiotics from the miso colonize the entire batch. Add a splash of sourdough liquid, and you’ve boosted the fermentation further. That cashew butter then becomes a topping for a sauerkraut soup. When you cook sauerkraut, you kill the beneficial bacteria, but the cooked kraut still functions as a prebiotic, feeding the good bacteria you’re scooping on top. The result is a single bowl delivering both the prebiotic and the probiotic. That kind of layering is exactly what the science supports, and Martin builds it into dishes that make sense for a weeknight.

The Anti-Inflammatory Superbowl and the Color Rule

For Chris Miller MD ’s recipes, Martin created an antioxidant board packed with about nine different plant foods in a single dish. The principle is visible before you even taste it: every color on the plate represents a different phytonutrient. Red onions, dark greens, golden turmeric, deep purple blueberries. Both Chris Miller and Dr. Jud Brewer independently flagged blueberries as a priority ingredient, which gives you a sense of how strong the evidence is behind them.

Martin’s practical advice here was refreshingly low-pressure. The healthiest food, he said, is the one you actually have in your kitchen. You don’t need to replicate every recipe exactly. The goal is to get more color and more variety onto the plate, using whatever you have on hand.

He also built potassium into this dish deliberately, bringing the sodium-balance strategy full circle. And the turmeric was there because Dr. Miller specifically requested it for its anti-inflammatory properties. Every ingredient was pulling double or triple duty.

Microplastics, Salmon, and What You Can Actually Do

Our conversation with Dr. Dominic Ng about microplastics was one of the more startling interviews of the summit. He shared research showing that human brains contain roughly seven grams of microplastics, the equivalent weight of a plastic spoon. He brought an actual plastic spoon as a prop during the interview, which drove the point home in a way numbers alone can’t.

But the research also contained something reassuring. Studies comparing younger and older adults found similar levels of microplastic accumulation, suggesting the brain reaches an equilibrium. We appear to be filtering microplastics out, likely through the glymphatic system, which was only discovered in 2012. That system acts like a nighttime cleaning crew for the brain, clearing waste during deep sleep.

For Martin’s dish honoring Dominic’s ingredient list, he built a plate of spinach, beets for nitrates, and salmon crusted with pumpkin seeds for magnesium. The salmon delivers EPA and DHA, the omega-3 fatty acids that came up repeatedly throughout the summit. For people who don’t eat fish, Martin noted that beans and tofu can stand in for the salmon, though a reliable source of omega-3s remains important regardless.

The practical takeaways from the microplastics conversation were grounded and doable: use a HEPA filter, vacuum regularly, mop with a wet mop to capture particles instead of pushing them airborne, and protect your sleep so the glymphatic system can do its job. Sleep is not a luxury. It is maintenance.

Julie Fratantoni’s Matcha Dishes and the Power of Fennel

Julie Fratantoni, PhD brought brain exercises to the summit, and her ingredient picks led Martin to create two matcha-based dishes. One featured a matcha and hemp seed sauce thick enough to cling to roasted vegetables and fennel. The other was a konjac noodle dish with salmon and matcha. Martin shared that he’d eaten enormous amounts of fennel while losing 30 pounds in two months. Fennel has a structural bite to it that most vegetables lack. You have to chew it slowly, and that mechanical process keeps you feeling full in a way that watery vegetables like cucumber simply don’t. If you’re working on weight and find yourself unsatisfied after meals, fennel is worth trying for that reason alone.

Both of Julie’s dishes were, predictably, low glycemic load. The yogurt, the blueberries, the fiber-rich components all kept blood sugar stable. Martin pointed this out, and it reinforced the theme: when you cook with the ingredients these experts recommend for brain health, you end up with meals that are also good for metabolic health. The two are not separate problems.

The Blueberry Dessert That Made a Community Member’s Day

For Jud Brewer MD PhD ’s recipes, Martin created a blueberry bake that one of our Habit Healers community members, made the very next day. She reported back that it was so good the pan was already empty before she could take a photo. The recipe is remarkably simple: plant-based yogurt mixed with a tablespoon of tapioca flour per cup of liquid, poured over blueberries in a baking dish, then into the oven for 30 to 40 minutes. The texture comes out like creme brulee without the cream, the eggs, or the sugar. You can use any mixed berry you like, and vanilla plant milk adds enough sweetness that additional sugar becomes unnecessary.

Martin said something during this part that stuck with me. He said he always feels a little bad putting out recipes because he can’t fully convey texture and thickness through a written page. You just have to look at it, try it, and adjust. That honesty is part of what makes cooking with Martin’s recipes different from following a sterile set of instructions. There’s room to experiment.

Annie Fenn’s Recipes and the Barley Bread

Annie Fenn, MD, who has written an entire brain health cookbook, provided ingredients that led Martin to create a tomato-anchovy sauce served over toasted barley bread with greens. The anchovies deliver omega-3 fatty acids in a concentrated form. The barley bread, made from a European-style seed bread recipe, provides beta-glucan fiber that supports both cholesterol management and blood sugar stability. Martin emphasized that you should toast the bread until it’s dry and firm so it can soak up the tomato juices without turning to mush. White bread, he said, would just collapse. The toasted whole grain holds up, and the contrast between crispy bread and warm, garlicky tomato sauce is the whole point.

Martin built a cross-over dish connecting Annie’s ingredients with Julie Fratantoni’s matcha theme, showing how the same core nutrients keep appearing across different experts’ recommendations.

What Martin Got Right: The Biggest Lesson

Near the end of the session, Martin stepped back from the individual recipes and offered what he called the biggest lesson from the entire summit. Control your weight. Control your blood sugar. And make sure you have a reliable source of omega-3 fatty acids. That’s it. Three concrete things. Not a complicated protocol. Not a list of 47 supplements. Three priorities backed by every expert who appeared on the summit.

Martin has been working in metabolic health cooking for years, and he said this summit brought it all together for him in a new way. The connection between brain health and metabolic health is not theoretical. It shows up on the plate. It shows up in the ingredients. When five different experts from different specialties all land on the same foods, that convergence is telling you something.

Summit Recipes

Chef Martin Oswald created original recipes for each expert. Find them all here.

Key Takeaways from the Brain Health Substack Summit

Blood sugar regulation is the common thread. Every expert on this summit, across different specialties, flagged blood sugar as central to brain health. Martin’s recipes reflect that: nearly all of them are low glycemic load without anyone having to think about it.

Sodium reduction is a flavor problem, not a willpower problem. Use acidity, fermented foods, herbs, spices, and potassium-rich ingredients to replace what salt was doing. Miso is especially useful because its potassium content offsets its sodium.

Feed the gut-brain axis with real food. Combine prebiotics (cooked sauerkraut, fiber-rich vegetables) with probiotics (miso, fermented cashew butter, kimchi) in the same meal. The gut communicates directly with the brain through the vagus nerve, and inflammation can travel that route.

Eat the rainbow, but don’t stress about perfection. Each color on your plate represents a different protective phytonutrient. Blueberries showed up on nearly every expert’s list. But the best food is whatever you actually have and will actually eat.

Protect your sleep to protect your brain. The glymphatic system clears waste, including microplastics, during deep sleep. Go to bed at the same time. Wake up at the same time. This is not optional.

Omega-3 fatty acids appeared across every expert’s recommendations. Salmon, sardines, anchovies, or plant-based alternatives like walnuts and flaxseed. Make sure you have a consistent source.

The three biggest priorities from the summit: Control your weight. Control your blood sugar. Get your omega-3s. Start there.

This article is part of the first-ever Brain Health Substack Summit hosted by The Habit Healers. If you found this valuable, share it with someone who could benefit. And if you want to put these ideas into practice with a community behind you, join us in The Habit Healers community on Skool, where Chef Martin Oswald and I work together to help you build the habits that protect your brain and your metabolic health.

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