SUMMARY: What do I feed 4000 pounds of twenty-four men the night before the big game? SCD PALEO Pot Roast with Orange and Dates redic EASY and delic! This dish has graced our table repeatedly over the years. In fact, my boys request this dish when we feed their basketball team the night before big games. Bonus: Double it always. This is an EASY make Ahead and Freeze. I send it to school so my kidos slurp in extra immune boosting bone broth. It travels over twenty-four hours as the ice in my cooler and feeds my ever expanding clan at the beach. The secret ingredients: Dates, apples, pineapple, allspice, red wine vinegar, OJ, and parsley (still coming out from under our garden’s blanket of snow) combine with the tenderness of a Dutch Oven. Credit for this culinary redic delic creation goes back years to Mara from the SCD Breaking the Vicious Cycle yahoo blog. It is without a doubt my favorite amazing healing diet recipe. Add it to your arsenal!
Tag Archives: WHOLE FOOD
Why You Must Understand Epigenetics
SUMMARY: Why Must You Understand Epigenetics? Because epigenetics is the real driver of your health status, and diet plays a major role in gene expression (aka epigenetics), at least in this post’s animal study! Mention this fun fact at holiday gatherings as others notice and comment — good and bad — about your favor of healthy whole foods with resist of the nutritionally empty and microbiome harming options! Epigenetics is a big word but it simply means the process by which your genes are turned on or off (aka expressed) in good or bad ways. You already know, diet pre-selects “who” comprises the gut microbiome. This post shares the University of Wisconsin-Madison mouse study which found that the molecules produced by the microbiome (aka metabolites) tells our genes what to do (turn on or off). This study looked at two diets: a carbohydrate rich diet (one rich in plant carbohydrates similar to fruits and vegetables humans consume) and pitted it against the Western, Standard American Diet (SAD) (think high in simple refined carbs, added sugars, and unhealthy fats — this is found in most all home cooked, grocery prepared, and restaurant meals as they use convenient processed ingredients). Their results showed the plant based diet yielded a more rich microbiome which in turn, produced metabolites that seemed to favor host-microbe communication as they chemically communicated with cells, including cells FAR beyond the colon (the liver and white fat tissue), to dictate gene expression and health (metabolic — insulin, lipid to name a few) in its host. In contrast, the metabolites of the SAD did not provide this communication likely because it was MISSING the necessary metabolites to do so! If you think this is awkward party talk, what is even MORE AWKWARD is feeling others watch what you eat so that they can learn what foods express their genes best! You’ve worked hard to learn microbiome. I am in awe and proud of you. Now it’s your turn to pay it forward and teach others by doing!
My Healing Diet Holiday Appetizers, a Roundup!
SUMMARY: Openers Thanksgiving Day are actually all day long in our home. Friends and family stop in knowing a culinary taste dream awaits them. Incredibly though, my openers are simple with many made way ahead of time and pulled from the freezer a day or two ahead. That is the only way to go because, well… it is too much fun celebrating with my guests then being creative in the kitchen! Here’s my roundup! You will find the recipe links below, or if the recipes have not yet posted, I printed the instructions below. The Holiday Board on my Pinterest has these plus even more greats if you want other variety! Hoping you enjoy My Healing Diet Holiday Appetizers Roundup! Happy holidays!
Fiber Additives Starve Gut Microbes. They Eat Mucus Lining.
SUMMARY: This is not a 1950s sci-fi movie. This is what is likely happening now in your gut according to an amazing study just now publishing in Cell. If you are eating the Standard American Diet, the normal, helpful bacteria in your gut are not getting natural whole food fiber. Instead they are being fed fiber additives supplemented in processed foods, or isolated fiber supplements you are buying. Surprisingly, both the fiber additives and the supplements FAIL to feed your microbiome, and instead, they CANNIBALIZE the mucus lining for fuel, at least for mice, according to this study. Repeat: Fiber Additives Starve Gut Microbes. They Eat Mucus Lining. That compromises the intestinal barrier role in preventing pathogen infection. Bottom line: EAT WHOLE FOOD BASED FIBER to feed your microbiome, AND DON’T COUNT ON THE FIBER ADDED IN PROCESSED FOODS OR THE SUPPLEMENTS YOU TAKE FOR THAT FIBER. No wonder so many are sick.
Get SCD Cheese Right. It is Loaded with Nutrients & Bacteria!
SUMMARY: Hey… listen up! You want to get SCD Cheese right because it is loaded with Nutrients & Beneficial Bacteria! ALL healing diets (SCD, GAPS, PALEO, AIP, FODMAP…) eliminate lactose because most inflamed guts can not digest lactose! Actually, the lactase enzyme in our gut (which breaks down lactose) is the last to return to normal after the gut has healed (see page 25, Breaking the Vicious Cycle (BTVC), Edition 13, 2010). Further, certain diseases (like 65% of autism have a lactase deficiency) are associated with lactose intolerance, and some diseases (like IBS which afffects ten to fifteen percent of the population) may have an intolerance to the quantity of lactose consumed in the diet. For IBS sufferers, 3 out of 4 are helped with the FODMAP diet which figures out if foods we all digest poorly (which includes lactose) are even tolerated and if so, in what amount! And the British Dietetic Association 2016 update for IBS recommends a trial period of a low lactose diet where sensitivity to milk is suspected and a lactose hydrogen breath test is not available or appropriate. So many people are benefited by reducing or eliminating lactose in their diet! This post explains how to do that deliciously using the SCD tenets, and it explains why eating lactose-free cheese is important (if you tolerate the casein protein) sharing 7 SCD cheese requirments to consider in selecting cheeses! Bottom Line: Everyone wants to get cheese right because it contains a whopping 10,000,000,000 or 10 billion MICROBES, and it seems they survive the gut transit ride and beneficially impact your microbiome diversity + richness… all good immune boosting stuff!
SCD Seasoned Almond Flour ‘Bread’ Crumbs and Veg Recipe
Summary: Seems everyone enjoys this staple gracing holiday tables going back generations! It was my Dad’s favorite and for good reason. Broccoli smothered in butter, cheese, and breadcrumbs. What’s not to LOVE about that? Wait tho — What to do if gluten-free? Toss the tenets of healing diets to the holiday wind? NO! Here’s my holiday gift to you — use SCD Seasoned Almond Flour ‘Bread’ Crumbs! Find the How-to in this post’s recipe: Broccoli, Cauliflower, and Cheddar Cheese, with Seasoned Almond Flour ‘Bread’ Crumbs. Don’t know how it never made it on my Holiday Pinterest Board, but it’s there now! HAPPY THANKSGIVING and early MERRY CHRISTMAS! Last, read my special note for thyroid patients. It’s crazy how so many of you don’t know this but, the cruciferous vegetables are on the goitrogenic foods list. That doesn’t mean they are off limits. What that means is they need steamed or cooked and that is what this recipe requires. You should be free to enjoy this recipe without worry of kicking up thyroid antibodies, but always check with your doctor! This recipe meets PALEO/SCD/GAPS/UMASS IBD-AID/Mediterranean too!
SCD Chicken Tortilla Soup
Summary: SCD Chicken Tortilla Soup is an EASY and nutritious family favorite that my kidos ask me to make! We have this soup year round, not just on cold Fall and winter nights. It’s a great way to increase your children’s vegetable and bone broth consumption, And if you must have ‘tortilla chips’, try the below substitute! Tip: Grill twice as many chicken breasts as you need for the week and make this soup in bulk. Often I quadruple this recipe and freeze portions. My kidos always take it back to college, and often, I use frozen soups as my “ice” for travel! If you happen to have a lot of leftover chicken or turkey (think Thanksgiving), this recipe makes great use of it! The “hot” seasonings — simply adjust to your family’s preference. Last, I’m sharing for the first time, my real thoughts on our pre-SCD meals (in hindsight) along with where the healing recipes that I post are really rooted. Clue: “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.” ― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
Defy Autoimmune Psoriasis: Green Tea, Black Tea, Lemon Juice Antioxidant
SUMMARY: Plenty of studies find anti-inflammatory effects of dietary antioxidants such as green tea for chronic disease. Even in IBD patients, who have a very messed up microbiome (a finding of the American Gut data), the benefits of antioxidant therapy is well documented (see below studies). Read here about a simple EASY N=1 hack for one IBD patient that shut down a mild psoriasis skin flare that began two years ago. They flared psoriasis, but not the autoimmune IBD, eating strict healing diet Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) probably due to a gluten/sugar airborne exposure. The hack that worked for stopping psoriasis: Green Tea, Black Tea with Lemon Juice antioxidant blend! I share their recipe here! It is simple enough that you may want to add it to your immune calming anti-inflammatory arsenal too! Make sure to see below for why it is important to NOT drink Green Tea for antioxidant benefit along with Iron.
Microbiome Awareness Conversation from Seminar
SUMMARY: Sharing more Microbiome Awareness conversation from the May 26 seminar, so that all can benefit, even those unable to attend! Learn great microbiome support tips! Amaze yourself with how much you actually learned and know! Comment if I don’t touch on your thoughts; lets continue the conversation!
Background and more on our bio
Dana Grau and I spoke at the Microbiome Awareness Seminar. We explained what the microbiome is and included discussion of diet and lifestyle impact to the microbiome which affects its health. 70+ percent our immunity resides in the health of the microbiome and that microbial community then plays a key role in determining your health:
Food as Medicine? Free Monash U online course!
Summary: Can we really use food as medicine? This is the question Professor Helen Truby and her team at the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Monash University seek to answer in a new 3 week, FREE online course offered by the department.
The course? Food as Medicine, and I’m attending!
When? 3 week course begins Monday, May 2, 2016.
I hope you take advantage of this opportunity and register here for the FREE Monash U online Food as Medicine course as well!
Equally important… share the opportunity please!
I am hoping we’ll learn:
I am also hoping that the material will be consistent with the summary of the interesting patterns emerging from the American Gut data presented from Dr. Rob Knight’s talk, Saturday, October 18, 2014, as documented in this post, as well as The American Gut website, and the Preliminary Characterization of the American Gut Population PDF. Food-wise, the repeat seems to be: