Food and Healing : diet

How to Get Fat - Not!

Annemarie Colbin — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 10:12:00 GMT

So many people are worried about their weight! It’s either the look, or the health, or the concern about what other people may say about them, or the bullies in school – all the messages from society are that being chubby, overweight, zaftig, or plump is not OK. At the same time, the common foods we find in cheap restaurants, fast food outlets, snack bars and the like all contribute to that extra weight.

Not everybody is overweight; some bodies have a fast metabolism that burns everything. But others are not so lucky, and need to be more attentive. Here are some of the foods or aspects of food that are likely to put weight on susceptible bodies:

Sweeteners: sugar (including “organic evaporated cane juice”), high fructose corn syrup, “natural sweeteners,” as well as artificial sweeteners (it’s not the calories, it’s what they do to the insulin system).
White flour, which is refined and stripped of its nutrients.
Milk, cheese, ice cream.

While each one of these may have an effect, it is the combination of the three that is the worst. The sweetener, the flour, and the high-protein cow’s milk products all together seem to produce the most noticeable weight – so, having a meal of pizza, ice cream, and soda is a superfast way to put on weight. Also, the consumption of soft drinks, both regular and diet, is part of this problem.

How to make changes?

Replace all soft drinks with a combination of bubbly water (seltzer or mineral water) and natural juices (apple, cranberry, orange, etc), in a 50-50 proportion, or just the bubbly water with lemon or lime slices.
Eat as many fresh vegetables and salads as possible.
Replace cow’s milk with coconut milk
Replace bread with rye crackers
Replace ice cream with frozen bananas, sherbet with frozen grapes.
Finally, whatever you eat, CHEW IT WELL. Chewing will perforce make you cut down on calories without counting them, as you will be satisfied sooner. It will also help with digestion, and more than anything, it will get you in touch with what you are really eating, so changes may come much more easily.

While getting rid of excess weight is a good thing, it should, however, not be an obsession. Sometimes the body wants to be at the weight it wants to be, and fighting with it is counterproductive. So chew, enjoy your meals, and live your life!

Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.

ANNEMARIE COLBIN, Ph.D., CHES, is an award-winning leader in the field of natural health She founded Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts (TM) in New York City in 1977, and is adjunct professor of nutrition at the city’s Empire State College. She is the author of four books, including The Book of Whole Meals (Autumn Press, 1979; Ballantine Books, 1983), The Natural Gourmet (Ballantine Books, 1989, 1991), and Food and Healing (Ballantine Books, 1986, 1996). Her website is: www.foodandhealing.com

Recuperating from the Holidays

Annemarie Colbin — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:39:00 GMT

I certainly hope you had a grand time, and that the New Year is a good one for you. And does your New Year’s resolution include cleansing and detoxing your system? If so, here are some ideas, from the least complicated to the most committed.

1.   EAT LESS! If you just overdid it but don’t want to spend too much time worrying about what you should or should not eat, try just cutting down on what you normally eat. In every meal, pay close attention to how you feel, and as soon as your hunger is assuaged, STOP. This takes some attention, but only while you’re eating, not for planning or cooking, so you’re off the hook there.

2.   Go low-fat and vegan for a few days – no dairy, eggs, meats. LOTS of vegetables, soups, whole grain breads and brown rice. Chew well!

3.   Start each day with a detox drink. Examples: freshly made fruit or vegetable juice, with some garlic, ginger, and ground flax seed.

4.   Try a liver flush: Into the blender, while running, drop a garlic clove, stop when chopped. Add 2 tablespoons lemon juice, ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil, blend briefly, pour, drink up. Chase with a glass of water. Then for lunch have a big salad and nothing else, a light dinner. You can do this 3-4 days in a row.

5.   Do a one-day vegetable juice fast – try carrot, celery and apple, or carrot, celery, beet, parsley, in the juice machine, and one snack of freshly squeezed orange juice. Then only soups (no flour or cream) and salads with lemon juice and olive oil the next day. Back to normal eating the third day.

Eating with consciousness – that is, chewing well and paying close attention to how your food makes you feel – is a good idea, as it will prevent “eater’s regret” next time you have a fine event where the food is truly tempting. If you just eat some of it, savoring it slowly and stopping when you had enough, you are less likely to overdo it.

Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.

Holiday Eating: three helpful tips

Annemarie Colbin — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:29:00 GMT

The holidays are coming, and we’re all looking forward to stuffing ourselves with all the special and delicious dishes that mark the season.
But what to do with the aftermath of bloat and guilt? Here are some thoughts.

To prevent overeating and stomach aches, the best technique is a very simple one: CHEW EVERY BITE 25 TIMES OR MORE. Yes, I know, sounds onerous, but believe me, if you do this you can eat anything you want and not get bloated or stuffed. Chewing initiates the digestion of carbohydrates through the action of the salivary amylase enzyme, and this is an essential first step in good digestion. Chewing also gives notice to the body that food is coming down, so the stomach, liver, gallbladder, pancreas, etc., all get ready, and bloating is avoided. Then, as sufficient notice is received, the appestat signals that enough food has come in, and the message to your brain is that you can stop eating now – so you will not tend to overeat.
If you have eaten too much rich and fatty food, get some lemon – hot water with lemon is my favourite after-dinner drink, and you can also try seltzer with lemon or peppermint tea. That helps cut the grease, and according to Chinese medicine the sour taste stimulates the liver.
Finally, two words about guilt: Forget it. It’s a useless emotion around eating. Either enjoy the food you’re eating to the fullest, or don’t eat it. And if you’ve eaten something you think is no good for you, hold off with the guilt. Instead, pay careful attention to the results of your gastronomic adventures – see how you feel, act, sleep, if you get pimples or hives, and how your stomach reacts. In other words, whatever you eat, consider it RESEARCH! That is how you get to be an expert on the effects of food on your own health.

Have a wonderful 2007 holiday with your friends and family!

Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.

Beating the blues through diet

Annemarie Colbin — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 13:12:00 GMT

In the early sixties, I got what I eventually recognized as “the blues”. I had a series of low level jobs, and at times had brief fantasies of sweeping everything off the tables and making a mess. These feelings surprised me, as they were new.   I associated the feelings with the German expression “weltschmerz,” or “pain about the world.” Mostly, I felt sorry for myself and didn’t like how I felt. Life sucked, as we would say today. I ascribed it to the state of the world and my understanding of how people messed everything up.

As I recently looked back on those days, I realized that those feelings of nameless despair had long ago disappeared and never returned, regardless of my personal circumstances of trouble or happiness in the ensuing 40 years. What was it that had made the difference?

First of all, diet. Early on I found that the food most clearly associated with the “blues” is sugar.   My late friend William Dufty, whom I knew well and saw often during the late ‘60's and early ‘70s, knew what he was talking about when he called his book Sugar Blues. About 8-10 days after I quit eating sugared breakfasts (coffee with sugar, donuts), as well as desserts, the gloomy feeling lifted completely. In other words, if you are sad, blue, mildly depressed, sighing about the miseries of your life - the first thing to do is to quit eating refined cane and other sugars. And I mean ZERO sugar. No sweetened cereals, no breads or bean salads with sugar in them, no muffins, no cookies, no jams, no desserts. This means careful label reading, as well as very conscious eating – none of this shoveling food into your mouth without noticing what it is.

After eliminating sugar, the next step for me was replacing all refined carbohydrates with whole grains: brown rice instead of white, steel cut oats instead of farina, wholegrain bread instead of white, even whole grains instead of potatoes. That made another big difference, as it gave me a sense of strength and groundedness.   For many, that means also avoiding wheat products and dairy foods, as mild allergies often manifest in emotional states.

Insuring that I got enough protein was another step for mental health, and especially for avoiding sugar cravings. I found that some animal food in each meal (not much, one egg, 4 oz meat or fish) was a great help for insuring steady moods.

Eating only fresh, home cooked foods (instead of frozen meals or canned vegetables), was a major aspect. This is not a new idea, nor is it an airy-fairy notion of the counterculture. More than 30 years ago, in the 1977 report of the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs of the US Senate, chaired by then senator George McGovern, there was an extensive discussion of the dangers of relying on frozen and highly processed foods. Mention was made of prisons where inmates stopped complaining about the food and throwing their meals against the wall when they were again fed properly cooked meals.   Mary Goodwin, a Montgomery County public health nutritionist, was quoted as saying “if you eat enough precooked, frozen, reheated foil-and-plastic packed lunches out of machines, part of you will starve to death.” (Dietary Goals for the United States. Printed for the use of the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, United States Senate. US Government Printing Office, Washington: 1977)

So the dietary approach to getting out of mild depression includes the following:

no cane sugar (white, brown, or organic); no corn syrup, molasses, high fructose corn syrup, regular fructose (refined), or artificial sweeteners (which confuse the blood sugar regulation system and so can affect moods)
eating sufficient protein (meat, fish, organic chicken, organic eggs) daily
choosing only freshly prepared foods (nothing canned or frozen)

And finally, if food is not enough, look into therapy, acupuncture, energy healing or soul retrieval. We humans are very complex beings.

Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.

Eat your way to lower blood pressure

Annemarie Colbin — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:32:00 GMT

High blood pressure is considered a “silent epidemic,” as lots of people have it but don’t know it. The usual treatment is drugs, and there are some dietary suggestions as well, especially cutting down on salt and fat as promoted by Dean Ornish and Nathan Pritikin. Stress reduction is highly recommended as well. However, there seems to be more to the issue than salt and stress.

Samuel J. Mann, M.D., an associate professor of clinical medicine at the Hypertension Center of The New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, is a hypertension specialist. Dr Mann has seen thousands of people with all varieties of high blood pressure. He began to notice a pattern that did not accord with the common view that stress is linked to this condition. “Even patients with severe hypertension did not seem more emotionally distressed than others,” he writes in his book Healing Hypertension: A Revolutionary New Approach (John Wiley & Sons, NY: 1999). “If anything, they seemed less distressed. Their high blood pressure appeared to be more related to what they did not seem to be feeling than to what they were feeling.” He began to see in his patients that old, un-healed, repressed trauma seemed to be a major culprit in the problem.

These are the main concepts covered by Dr Mann in his book, and they warrant serious attention.
1. Blood pressure fluctuates all the time, day by day, and there has been extensive over-diagnosis and unnecessary treatment of millions of people.
2. Anger or stress can elevate blood pressure temporarily, but do not actually cause hypertension.
3. Here is the kicker: “it is our hidden emotions, the emotions we do not feel, that lead to hypertension and many other unexplained physical disorders.”
4. To deal with hypertension at its core, it is necessary to bring those hidden emotions to the light, to consciousness, and to deal with them.
5. For those who are under the care of a physician for hypertension, incorporating this new information can help the physician select a more appropriate drug, if required, to match it to the cause of the condition.

While for many people there are contributing factors to hypertension such as genetics, obesity, and salt consumption, for countless others it may be driven mainly by repressed feelings due to traumatic experiences. Generally it is not easy to deal with these, and the process can be painful. However, it may be worth it. What I liked best is that Dr Mann points out that we have a choice: those who are willing to face their hidden demons can take on the work of uncovering them, while those who do not want to deal with these issues can opt for the standard medical treatment to help control the condition. What is not advisable is to ignore it.

For a dietary approach, cutting out added salt is the standard route. It would also pay to avoid all manner of commercial foods with added sodium, of which there are many. Read the labels carefully! In addition, high-fat eating may contribute to the problem, so eating lots of vegetables, cooked and raw greens, beans and grains would be a good idea, as proposed by the Pritikin and Ornish diets. Curiously enough, plant foods with natural sodium, such as celery and bananas, can also help in lowering blood pressure, so some pieces of celery daily and a banana before bedtime would be good. Give it a try!

Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.

Super-immune kids: four tips for the new school year

Annemarie Colbin — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 09:21:00 GMT

Here are my four top tips for helping your children to stay healthy and avoid illnesses in the new school year.

The foods that make kids the sickest are sugar and dairy.

1. Avoid dairy

If you can possibly raise them without milk products, you will prevent the most common mucus conditions, especially colds and ear infections. Milk is a great mucus producer; bacteria love living in it, and casein, the protein in milk, is commonly used in laboratories to set up bacterial cultures. Cheese is just as much of a problem, and yogurt is little better. And it’s not because of the fat – in fact, butter does not bring on infections, according to my observations – it is the protein and the calcium, which in cow’s milk are intended to help baby cows become big cows (or steer), and are excessive for humans.

2. Don’t reward them with sugar

If you can avoid giving your kids sugared foods – including sugared breakfast cereals, cookies, cake, candy, and ice cream – you will allow their immune systems to do a better job of keeping them healthy. Sugar is known to depress the immune system, and what is worse, it is really addictive. According to a recent study at the University of Bordeaux, France, it appears to be more addictive than cocaine. I know that we tend to reward the children with sweet goodies, but that habit is perhaps best reconsidered – crayons, balloons, comic books or nuts and raisins might be a better idea for rewards.

3. Give them lots of protein

To keep the kids healthy, they also need to eat sufficient protein (some in each meal, such as fish, chicken, meats, or beans and legumes), with lots of vegetables both cooked and raw, as well as good quality fats (extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, organic butter). See my post on protein breakfasts for more advice.

4. Make sure they get plenty of rest

Most importantly, they need enough sleep and rest, which will allow their bodies and their brains to recuperate and restore, as well as grow. Lack of sleep is one of the major causes of stress and illness.

So there you have it: feed them well, keep them off the ice cream and sweets, and make sure they sleep enough, and they will avoid many illnesses.

Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.

Protein Breakfasts for the Health Conscious

Annemarie Colbin — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:54:00 GMT

Let’s start by eliminating dry cereal with milk, a really wimpy breakfast that doesn’t carry you for more than a couple of hours. Here are some easy ideas:

For cold weather:

Oatmeal with one fried egg on top, with a light sprinkle of good sea salt.
Oatmeal with a handful of almonds and hazelnuts, a little salt or soy sauce.
Left-over dinner, such as cooked fish, chicken or steak, quickly sautéed in a little butter with left-over vegetables, rye crackers
For the vegetarians or the adventurous: cooked beans or chili, reheated, in a whole wheat wrap with some cucumbers and tomatoes
Obviously, eggs any style, with rye crackers, maybe some nitrite-free sausage or bacon.
Miso soup with brown rice eel-avocado sushi and pickles
Canned salmon and egg omelet with sauerkraut

For warm weather:

Smoked salmon or whitefish on wholegrain toast, with butter or cream cheese, onion slices, pickles (a real New York weekend breakfast)
One poached egg atop one slice of toasted sprouted wholegrain bread, which has been sprinkled with about a tablespoon of really good extra virgin olive oil, plus a little good sea salt and freshly ground pepper on top.
Rye crackers with almond butter
A bowful of soaked and roasted nuts, including almonds, pecans, walnuts, cashews, sunflower seeds. Add some soaked raisins for a sweet touch.
Kippers, with chopped raw tomatoes, onions, and cucumbers
Canned tuna fish with 3 tablespoons chopped celery, same of onions, 1 tablespoon good quality mayonnaise, sea salt to taste, on rye crisps

I trust you’ll find something to eat here!

Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.