I'm on what I call the "mermaid diet." This is a diet that is a combination of blood type diet and paying attention to my ancestry. The ONLY way I was able to overcome many of my food-related health issues was to do some serious research along these lines. I cannot do the "normal" raw diet.
Susun Weed brings up a valid issue in her debate with Brigitte Mars. Although I know Brigitte and know that she eats locally and grows her own food, she does eat quite a bit of tropical food, food that is shipped in from far away. It is difficult to understand the food politics, but it is harmful to many countries even to buy fair trade food. My problems are a little more involved in that I cannot eat many tropical foods like citrus and coconut which are mainstays of a raw diet. I also have trouble with most nuts because they are acidic.
Because of my ancestry, I have a very acidic system. Not my blood, which is normal, but my stomach. There are two kinds of acid reflux; over seventy percent of cases involve, not too much stomach acid, but too little. As enzyme activity dies out in the middle years, most people have trouble digesting their food. My problems were with always with high stomach acid--runs in the family. Eating many fruits and grains and nuts and legumes just make my stomach go into overload, not while I'm eating but after my stomach empties.
But I have rare respiratory allergies to coconut and to citrus, both of which give me eye infections, asthma and sinus congestion.
I have found that eating foods native to the British Isles and Northern Europe helps me quite a bit with allergies. I can eat some American foods, but not many. Tomatoes and beans and corn are all no-nos with me.
I love being on the West Coast. I can eat food that's pretty much local to the NW and to California. It isn't trucked in very far and much of it agrees with me. However, even when I was in Colorado, I was able to get good salads out of my garden in January. In the West, we have enough sunlight to grow all year--there is no excuse at all for not having good food from your own yard all the time if you live in the West. Even when I lived at 9000 feet, the solar power was so great that I had to vent my grow boxes.
But most of the gardeners I know do not grow in the winter. I think it's too depressing. But I always get a rush about August and into September when I know it's time to plant for winter. I abhor the thought of the old-fashioned NE winter diet where one eats old cabbages, and root-cellared carrots and sprouted potatoes! It's just not necessary. Even NE gardeners can grow all year around--Anna Edey proved this in her book Solviva.
But there is one thing that is very hard to get in winter--fresh fruit. My raw diet does not revolve around fruit--it can't, I have blood sugar issues that limit my fruit and carb intake. I believe that, in addition to eating raw, it's possible to widen one's perspective about eating fruit or eating from the store, period. Even though it's hard to want to eat a salad when it's pouring out, the greens are very warming and I always feel warmer after eating a salad. Eating dense foods like winter squash and roots like beets and rutabagas and carrots are good for winter. I also step up my intake of nuts and oils in the fall, before the Solstice. After the solstice, no matter if it's 50 below outside, I try to eat more cleansing food like salads to get ready for the brightening days.
Although dried fruit is hard to eat if you have blood sugar issues, I can get away with a small amount of it. The key is to eat three dates, not ten. I cannot eat raisins, apples or pineapple and mango (way too much sugar) dates, figs, apricots, plums, berries of all kinds, are okay in SMALL amounts. They are very warming as a small snack, especially followed by nuts.
Don't take eating raw for granted. At first it's easy to eat all those strange fruits. I encourage people to explore. Don't think about what you can't eat, but explore new foods. But once you get going, try to pay attention to what you eat and be open to strange things like having asthma from coconut. Try eating what your ancestors ate, or combining diets like the blood type diet with your raw diet.
Happy eating!
Thursday, January 21, 2010
How to Eat a Salad
I hope you're laughing! I would have, but yes, I've learned to prepare salads.
Susun Weed did a good job of showing how thick the cell walls are on plants. Some nutritionists don't advise depending on greens for calcium and other minerals unless they are cooked because they can't be digested unless the cell walls are destroyed.
I always sit down when I hear things like this and think, in my usual way, "but then why do we have teeth?" And then I hear that apes are not cows and not cats and only meant to eat fruit. And I have to sit down again.
The favorite way for a chimp to eat leaves is to roll up a bunch of leaves into a pack and then chew and suck on them for an hour or so. Like gum or chaw. That seems like a very logical, very practical way of getting out all those nutrients, mixing them with enzymes and not eating all that cellulose. Cool. Now should we all start chewing leaves and spitting out the dead pack into spittoons in our offices? Hm.
I hear of many people eating blended salads. My husband is not big into noise, so no blenders at our house. And I did learn that chopping up salad greens was very bad because chopping destroyed the cell walls and turned the greens brown. Hm, I say, in my very Anne-ish way. Chopping destroys the cell walls. Chopping is good.
So I started cutting up my salads with scissors. I'm not a good chopper. But I have a wide, shallow dish for salad, and cut off the leaves of kale, lettuce and what have you into this dish and then go at it with the scissors until I can eat it with a spoon. Then I use the ol' grater. I grate beets or other roots or raw winter squash or summer squash or green papaya and put them in salad or use them as a rice substitute in a nori sheet. I also grate stuff as a pasta substitute and put pestos on top.
Pesto is another great way to eat a salad. I use a mortar and pestle and mash up herbs and greens that go a long way (strong tasting) like dill and basil and mix them half and half with dandelions or nettles or parsley, mix in a bit of olive oil, maybe some soaked nuts or seeds and, voila! pesto.
But the key to eating veggies is to masticate them into almost a juice by the time you swallow them. You can chew for a long time, but if you're rushed, used the scissors.
Recipe for a iron-rich salad
Three red lettuce leaves (or dandelion)
Three red kale leaves
A few sprigs of parsley
A tablespoon of dried dulse flakes
A grated beet
A teaspoon of dried nettles
Dill or other herb to taste
A tablespoon of sprouted sunflower seeds (or sesame seeds)
Some olive oil.
I cut up the greens very fine, and find that this combination of greens and such is very mild. I've found that certain strong-tasting herbs and greens seem to cancel each other out, or blend together to make a very palatable salad.
Here is my favorite pesto recipe
A cup of basil
A cup of parsley
A cup of dandelion greens
A teaspoon dried nettles
A half-teaspoon kelp granules
A tablespoon of some kind of soaked nuts (walnuts, sunflower seeds, pine nuts, etc.)
Olive oil.
I can't eat garlic, but if you can add it. I cut up the greens and them mash them in the mortar after I have mashed up the nuts with a little oil. Keep adding oil until you get the paste consistency you desire.
This is delicious on a cup of grated butternut squash.
Pestos are a great way of getting greens into kids and other people who won't eat nettles or dandelions or such. The basil is strong enough to hide the taste of almost anything. Basil is so strong that I usually cut it with another less expensive green anyway like parsley.
Enjoy!
Susun Weed did a good job of showing how thick the cell walls are on plants. Some nutritionists don't advise depending on greens for calcium and other minerals unless they are cooked because they can't be digested unless the cell walls are destroyed.
I always sit down when I hear things like this and think, in my usual way, "but then why do we have teeth?" And then I hear that apes are not cows and not cats and only meant to eat fruit. And I have to sit down again.
The favorite way for a chimp to eat leaves is to roll up a bunch of leaves into a pack and then chew and suck on them for an hour or so. Like gum or chaw. That seems like a very logical, very practical way of getting out all those nutrients, mixing them with enzymes and not eating all that cellulose. Cool. Now should we all start chewing leaves and spitting out the dead pack into spittoons in our offices? Hm.
I hear of many people eating blended salads. My husband is not big into noise, so no blenders at our house. And I did learn that chopping up salad greens was very bad because chopping destroyed the cell walls and turned the greens brown. Hm, I say, in my very Anne-ish way. Chopping destroys the cell walls. Chopping is good.
So I started cutting up my salads with scissors. I'm not a good chopper. But I have a wide, shallow dish for salad, and cut off the leaves of kale, lettuce and what have you into this dish and then go at it with the scissors until I can eat it with a spoon. Then I use the ol' grater. I grate beets or other roots or raw winter squash or summer squash or green papaya and put them in salad or use them as a rice substitute in a nori sheet. I also grate stuff as a pasta substitute and put pestos on top.
Pesto is another great way to eat a salad. I use a mortar and pestle and mash up herbs and greens that go a long way (strong tasting) like dill and basil and mix them half and half with dandelions or nettles or parsley, mix in a bit of olive oil, maybe some soaked nuts or seeds and, voila! pesto.
But the key to eating veggies is to masticate them into almost a juice by the time you swallow them. You can chew for a long time, but if you're rushed, used the scissors.
Recipe for a iron-rich salad
Three red lettuce leaves (or dandelion)
Three red kale leaves
A few sprigs of parsley
A tablespoon of dried dulse flakes
A grated beet
A teaspoon of dried nettles
Dill or other herb to taste
A tablespoon of sprouted sunflower seeds (or sesame seeds)
Some olive oil.
I cut up the greens very fine, and find that this combination of greens and such is very mild. I've found that certain strong-tasting herbs and greens seem to cancel each other out, or blend together to make a very palatable salad.
Here is my favorite pesto recipe
A cup of basil
A cup of parsley
A cup of dandelion greens
A teaspoon dried nettles
A half-teaspoon kelp granules
A tablespoon of some kind of soaked nuts (walnuts, sunflower seeds, pine nuts, etc.)
Olive oil.
I can't eat garlic, but if you can add it. I cut up the greens and them mash them in the mortar after I have mashed up the nuts with a little oil. Keep adding oil until you get the paste consistency you desire.
This is delicious on a cup of grated butternut squash.
Pestos are a great way of getting greens into kids and other people who won't eat nettles or dandelions or such. The basil is strong enough to hide the taste of almost anything. Basil is so strong that I usually cut it with another less expensive green anyway like parsley.
Enjoy!
Cooking Cavemen
Boy, people sure get messed up as soon as they try to drag science into food debates. I sometimes get a laugh out of people posting comments about cavemen cooking.
Why? Well, if you read accounts of modern hunter-gatherers, they, like many omnivores, were opportunists. They ate a LOT of raw food, snacking as they went, especially in summer. Most of them only cooked game at rare intervals and then pigged out on it. What if modern Americans just ate meat once a week, but ate a couple of pounds or more of it at that sitting? The other thing that hunter-gatherers cook are roots, which are usually tough and hard to eat. So, they ate soup/stew once a day. I don't see any caveman of any kind passing up a patch of berries or a tree full of fruit and not pigging out. Susun Weed in the debate, claims that raw fruit that is ripe has been "cooked" by the sun, by it's own enzymes and it's not raw. ???? Hm.
She also goes into great detail about some idea that cooking gave us a bigger brain. No, not so. Cutting edge archeologists have decided that we got the bigger brain by accident. Our ancestors probably lived in the shallow waters along the coasts of Africa and ate a lot of raw shellfish. Easy to eat, good for you, and gives kids bigger brains.
Most ancient people despised muscle meat. They preferred organ meats. I'm not a vegetarian, and eating raw meat is quite the treat, but very rich. It may be important to cook the bones down into a stew, but I'm sure that our cavemen ancestors ate plenty of raw liver, raw fish, raw shellfish, raw bugs, and raw fruit.
One can certainly join either side in the enzyme debate, but trying to "prove" that cavemen ate all their food cooked and that gave them bigger brains is pretty silly.
Why? Well, if you read accounts of modern hunter-gatherers, they, like many omnivores, were opportunists. They ate a LOT of raw food, snacking as they went, especially in summer. Most of them only cooked game at rare intervals and then pigged out on it. What if modern Americans just ate meat once a week, but ate a couple of pounds or more of it at that sitting? The other thing that hunter-gatherers cook are roots, which are usually tough and hard to eat. So, they ate soup/stew once a day. I don't see any caveman of any kind passing up a patch of berries or a tree full of fruit and not pigging out. Susun Weed in the debate, claims that raw fruit that is ripe has been "cooked" by the sun, by it's own enzymes and it's not raw. ???? Hm.
She also goes into great detail about some idea that cooking gave us a bigger brain. No, not so. Cutting edge archeologists have decided that we got the bigger brain by accident. Our ancestors probably lived in the shallow waters along the coasts of Africa and ate a lot of raw shellfish. Easy to eat, good for you, and gives kids bigger brains.
Most ancient people despised muscle meat. They preferred organ meats. I'm not a vegetarian, and eating raw meat is quite the treat, but very rich. It may be important to cook the bones down into a stew, but I'm sure that our cavemen ancestors ate plenty of raw liver, raw fish, raw shellfish, raw bugs, and raw fruit.
One can certainly join either side in the enzyme debate, but trying to "prove" that cavemen ate all their food cooked and that gave them bigger brains is pretty silly.
Brigitte Mars
Going raw for me was not as big a deal as it is for some people. I was Brigitte's neighbor in Boulder and was continuing to have my usual problems with food allergies and doing an elimination diet for severe acid reflux. I had always eaten a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, even being teased as a child for it. I was also an avid gardener, which is how Brigitte and I met again, over the garden fence, so to speak.
I read many of her books and picked up her book, Rawsome and decided to give raw a try, since I was already half-way there. I did not have Brigitte's experience with going raw; my food allergies were too severe and my body was very different from hers. I have since discovered that I am allergic to many of the "backbone" foods of the raw diet: citrus, coconut, and all soy products. I also have major problems with many foods, raw or cooked and stay away from all plants in the onion family, most crucifers, all plants in the grain family, sprouted or cooked or whatever, many plants in the beet family, and many fruits that are very sugary, like apples.
I'm not sure about the enzyme debate, however, I do think that eating raw forces us to eat better food, and, as Brigitte often says, that may be what is really going on, we just don't know.
Yet, what inspired me to finally write this blog was seeing this debate on YouTube between renowned herbalist Susun Weed and Brigitte. I found it appalling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nRwn7VRvb8&feature=related
Some of why I found this debate really sad and appalling was that Susun not only gets much of her nutrition wrong, but she backpedals on much of the cooking definition until she's talking about dehydration and fermenting foods as "cooking" them. This is just silly. By the rawfoodists' definition, "cooking" is raising the temperature of food over 114 degrees Fahrenheit. Neither dehydration or fermenting need raise the temperature of food this high.
But the positive treat of this debate is that Brigitte is loving, shining, glowing with health, and she's just enthusiastic. Now Brigitte is an enthusiastic person, but you can just see that she's done something that agrees with her health, period.
My experience going raw is that it is an alternative for HEALTH. It's not weird or funky or trendy or all of that, it just makes me feel better. The first rule of nutrition is: eat what makes your body feel and work better. So much of what we eat makes our moods temporarily better. Although we may pay the price later with a sugar crash, that chocolate bar does a temporary trick. Eating for long-term health just has to be a pleasant experience that will make you feel better all the time.
I have always disliked eating. I'm a grazer and a muncher, but I don't like sitting down and eating. I get no rush off of eating, no pleasure. Eating for me became a nightmare of pain and terrible side effects. Going raw has allowed me to eliminate the foods from my diet that gave me problems and has made eating something I actually enjoy.
So, I'm going to post quite a bit here. Enjoy!
I read many of her books and picked up her book, Rawsome and decided to give raw a try, since I was already half-way there. I did not have Brigitte's experience with going raw; my food allergies were too severe and my body was very different from hers. I have since discovered that I am allergic to many of the "backbone" foods of the raw diet: citrus, coconut, and all soy products. I also have major problems with many foods, raw or cooked and stay away from all plants in the onion family, most crucifers, all plants in the grain family, sprouted or cooked or whatever, many plants in the beet family, and many fruits that are very sugary, like apples.
I'm not sure about the enzyme debate, however, I do think that eating raw forces us to eat better food, and, as Brigitte often says, that may be what is really going on, we just don't know.
Yet, what inspired me to finally write this blog was seeing this debate on YouTube between renowned herbalist Susun Weed and Brigitte. I found it appalling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nRwn7VRvb8&feature=related
Some of why I found this debate really sad and appalling was that Susun not only gets much of her nutrition wrong, but she backpedals on much of the cooking definition until she's talking about dehydration and fermenting foods as "cooking" them. This is just silly. By the rawfoodists' definition, "cooking" is raising the temperature of food over 114 degrees Fahrenheit. Neither dehydration or fermenting need raise the temperature of food this high.
But the positive treat of this debate is that Brigitte is loving, shining, glowing with health, and she's just enthusiastic. Now Brigitte is an enthusiastic person, but you can just see that she's done something that agrees with her health, period.
My experience going raw is that it is an alternative for HEALTH. It's not weird or funky or trendy or all of that, it just makes me feel better. The first rule of nutrition is: eat what makes your body feel and work better. So much of what we eat makes our moods temporarily better. Although we may pay the price later with a sugar crash, that chocolate bar does a temporary trick. Eating for long-term health just has to be a pleasant experience that will make you feel better all the time.
I have always disliked eating. I'm a grazer and a muncher, but I don't like sitting down and eating. I get no rush off of eating, no pleasure. Eating for me became a nightmare of pain and terrible side effects. Going raw has allowed me to eliminate the foods from my diet that gave me problems and has made eating something I actually enjoy.
So, I'm going to post quite a bit here. Enjoy!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
