Candida Cleanse: Day 6

I don't have much to report. Aside from agonizing gastric pains that left me doubled over on Wednesday, I've been doing OK. I haven't had any real sugar cravings. Occasionally, I think that it would be nice to eat some sugar, but then I don't, and it's fine. The only really strange thing is that I have had no appetite. I'll feel ravenously hungry, but when it comes time to eat, I have a difficult time choking it down. I've broken down and allowed myself to eat a few processed foods (namely rice crackers that I normally inhale in the space of a heartbeat) just so that I can get enough to eat, but even those hold no appeal. This complete lack of desire to eat is probably why I'm not having any difficulty with not eating sugar. If I don't want to eat anything, that includes the things I'm not supposed to eat.

Killing Ourselves with Speed

Here's a great article about the current trends in cooking. "It’s time to take a step backward when it comes to technology and get better acquainted with our ingredients."

I know I'm guilty of being lazy in the kitchen, but when I do cook, I make every effort to use fresh, organic, local ingredients, and it's amazing how much more delicious it is than getting something pre-made.

Fresh Flour

My whole life, I've never given much thought to flour. You just buy it at the store and put it into whatever you're cooking. I always thought it was basically idiot proof. Recently, I learned that the amount of gluten in the flour makes a huge difference in how it should be used. Bread flour should really be used for making bread, and cake flour should be used for making light fluffy baked goods. Still, all that information is basic mostly idiot-proof information that is readily available on the internet.

A stand at my local farmer's market has started selling fresh ground flour. I bought some after my friend E had tremendous success with it, even though it's more expensive than what you buy in the store. This is the sort of flour that requires a good sifting (or even two) before you use it to get the larger hulls out. It is worth every extra penny, and the extra work of sifting because holy crap, it makes the most delicious baked goods ever. Apparently, flour goes rancid after a few weeks if you don't freeze it. It doesn't taste bad, but it stops tasting amazing, and it becomes harder to digest. It also loses qi pretty quickly. The stuff available in the grocery store was probably several weeks (if not months) old before it even left the processing plant. What shows up at the store is perfectly functional, bland, uninteresting, difficult to digest, but easy to use flour.

When you use fresh flour, it turns a good recipe into a phenominal recipe. I made whole wheat bread in my bread maker - something I do on a regular basis. I used bread flour from a bag because I didn't have fresh bread flour. In place of my usual whole wheat flour, I used fresh flour. The recipe only calls for 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour, so I didn't think it would make that much difference, but I don't think I can ever go back to using regular flour again. I have also had the same success with pancakes and muffins. Having this flour makes me want to bake. I think I'm going to have to try making cookies with this stuff.

Food Rules - Review

Yesterday, I picked up a copy of Food Rules by Michael Pollan. The book is exactly what its title implies - 64 rules about food to get you to eat better. It is a very quick read, and he summarizes all the rules as, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants." He covers pretty much everything I've covered in my blog - eat whole foods rather than processed foods, eat animals that have eaten well, eat organic, and when possible, eat local, plus some other great suggestions.

The book is very accessible, and it's correct. If you follow the rules, you will have a much healthier diet than the average American, you will probably lose weight, and you will be less likely to succumb to all of the horrible diseases that are caused by the American diet (this statement was not approved by the FDA).

This morning, my roommate, who isn't nearly as excited about food and diet as I am, picked the book up off the coffee table and started reading it. He even told me, excitedly, that he had started following the rule, "Drink your food, chew your drink," which can be summarized as: eat and drink very slowly. At lunch today, I also followed that rule (while blatantly breaking a few of the other rules, but you have to start somewhere, right?), and I found that I ate about 2/3 of what I would normally eat.

The book lacks sources and data to back up its claims, though the author comes right out and says that he's not going to include them, but the data is out there if you look. On the plus side, the lack of scholarly language makes it much easier to read, so the average Joe can pick it up and start eating better immediately. On the negative side, the book is left wide open to criticism and ridicule from the corporations who don't want you to follow the rules in the book.

Overall, I give the book 4 out of 5 stars. It's definitely worth spending $11 and taking an hour of your time to read it.

Just in Case You Needed Another Reason...

In class today, one of my professors brought up yet another reason to minimize processed foods. There is a theory among some in the Chinese medical community that eating processed foods is a major factor in weight gain, and even a factor in difficulty with weight loss. Your body tells you to eat when it needs something, including qi. Processed food, as previously mentioned, has low or no qi. When you eat but don't get qi, your body tells you to keep eating hoping that you'll give it what it needs. It stores all those extra calories as adipose tissue, but it doesn't have the energy necessary to burn the fat.

This is all speculation and hasn't been scientifically proven, but it makes a great deal of sense. Whether its true or not, reducing the amount of processed food in your diet can only be beneficial to your overall health.

You Are What You Eat

Everyone knows that food is the fuel that keeps our bodies running. If you think about eating well, you probably think about making sure you get enough of the essential nutrients that our bodies require: vitamins, minerals, amino acids, etc. You probably haven't spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not your food has enough qi to keep your body running at maximum efficiency. All living organisms have qi - it is the energy that keeps us alive. Plants get it from the sun, animals get it from plants and other animals that they ingest.

Once you remove something from the mechanism that provides it with qi (whether that's picking fruit from a tree or ending the life of an animal), the qi will drain out over time. It's pretty obvious when food is fresh and when it isn't. Fruits, vegetables, and animals have protective barriers (skins or peels) that slow the rate at which qi drains. Just look at an apple that has been sliced. It turns brown quickly, and it becomes inedible days (and in some cases, weeks!) before it would have if the skin had remained in tact. The fresher your food is, the more energy it has, and with a few exceptions, the tastier it is.

Processed foods lose huge amounts of qi in their preparation. In some cases, they lose virtually all of it. Just look at the Twinkie. The ingredient list includes eggs, flour, and corn syrup, among other things that were once part of healthy, energetic foods, but the Twinkie itself is completely devoid of any nutritional or energetic value. Most processed foods contain processed ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup, and partially-hydrogenated oils. The further away from nature you get, the worse the food is for you. It is possible to live on a diet that has almost no qi. Vitamin supplements can help to provide your body with essential nutrients, but being processed themselves, they offer no qi. People eating diets composed of mostly processed foods are going to be lethargic and unhealthy. Without enough energy, white blood cells aren't exactly going to have the power needed to fight off diseases.

I realize that it isn't practical for people to cut all processed foods out of their diets. It's just important to make sure that you get plenty of whole foods in your diet.

It isn't enough to make sure you get enough qi in your diet - it is also necessary to pay attention to the quality of the qi. A person who is chronically ill has less qi than someone with a cold, who has less qi than a healthy person. Someone who lives under constant stress and in poor living conditions has less qi than someone who lives in a comfortable home and has all of their needs met. The same is true of animals. The majority of animal products - meat, dairy, eggs - available in the US comes from animals that are mass produced. Upon reaching maturity, the average meat cow is sent to live in a tiny pen where it is fed corn, which it can't digest properly. Its pen isn't kept in good condition, so it stands around in its own feces for the rest of its life. Because of its poor diet and unsanitary living conditions, the poor cow is susceptible to all sorts of diseases, so it's pumped full of antibiotics that keep it alive until it's slaughtered. The average chicken (both for eggs and meat) is kept in a cage too small for it to move, packed into rooms with hundreds of other chickens, none of which ever see the sun. If you eat meat from these animals, you'll get the full compliment of essential amino acids and loads of iron, but the qi you get will be sub-par, to say the least. Fortunately, there is a growing demand for animal products that come from animals allowed to live the life they were designed for. You can get grass-fed beef from cows that have spent their entire lives grazing in a pasture, and you can get cage-free chicken. It's more expensive than its mass-produced counterpart, but I think it's well worth the price. I'm eating less meat than I used to, but every bite is from an animal that led a decent life and had good quality qi.