Corn and GMOs, part 2

Remember not long ago when I posted about how to avoid GMOs?

Well, it seems harder than ever to avoid corn, and most of the corn out there is genetically modified.

I just read a very interesting article about one woman's experience trying to avoid corn completely. I knew corn was in a lot of things, but even I didn't realize how many non-food products it is in!

Check out the article below:

http://www.elle.com/beauty/health-fitness/allergy-to-genetically-modified-corn

The author had a lot of weird symptoms that seemed allergic and autoimmune, but were very hard to pin down. She went to doctor after doctor searching for answers. Finally, one doctor helped her figure it out. Research is still sparse on the condition, but she seems to have an allergy to the GMO corn itself.

The second page of the article lists off a few of the scary unexpected places we all may still be getting exposed to corn. It can be found in a lot of wacky places, like tea bags, paper cup linings, the coating on store bought apples, and additives you wouldn’t expect, like vitamin E, citric acid, and ascorbic acid! I have found that I am sensitive to corn, so I avoid it both for my digestion's sake and because Roundup isn't a food additive I prefer to consume.

I make almost all my own food from scratch. But I'm probably getting exposed to corn from places I didn't realize! I eat fruit nearly every day. Most is local, but some of it is from grocery stores because we don’t grow everything here all year round. Is there corn on my fruit? Every now and then I use tea from a bag rather than loose. Is there corn in my tea? Compostable plastic bags and utensils are made from corn. Am I consuming corn through the produce I buy in degradable bags? This makes me wonder if corn’s ubiquity might be part of why even though my symptoms have managed to improve, they haven’t gone away entirely.

Scary stuff, and very much worth investigating further!

Where have I been all this time?

Hi peeps! This post is long. It's a lot of venting. I apologize in advance.

It's been so long I don't remember how to do one of those breaks where you hide the rest of the text and people only have to read it if they click. Why can't I remember how to do that?

Anyway, here's where I'm at these days. I've got a bunch of injuries, arthritis, and general stuff going on. This weekend, I can't walk particularly well. Earnest is a massage therapist, but we haven't had mutual free time for a massage in about a month. He taped my knee with Kinesiotape last night and I was able to stand up and walk to the market about two blocks away, but the back of my knee was super angry on the walk back. I want nothing more than to go to the gym and lift heavy, and I've been sidelined for absolutely ages. I'm in workout clothes now. I'm going to go and I'm going to see what I can do. I am going to try to be satisfied with what I can do gently, safely, and with good alignment. If that's just a few chest presses, then at least I'm showing up. I'm going to gently work mostly upper body and stretch a lot.

I've had recurrent injuries and problems for a while (most notably, a dislocated knee 20 years ago, and a  bike accident causing limited mobility in my neck about 10 years ago.) A year ago, I got heat stroke. Leading up to that, I was working out a lot and restricting pretty hard core. I was almost 100% raw vegan, and eating an average of 1200 - 1300 calories a day. I was taking boxing classes, playing capoeira, doing hot yoga, running, lifting fairly heavy on the machines in the gym (I have SO MANY QUESTIONS about how to get started safely with free weights, but that's a different post for when my knee stabilizes.) Working out almost every day, often twice. If I didn't work out, I usually walked to work to make up for it. That's 4.5 miles each way to one job, and 2.5 miles each way to the other. Yes, really.

I was tracking religiously. Some days I'd eat 800 - 900 calories. Some days I was up around 1400-1500, but most days I was between 1200 and 1300. You guys, that's below my BMR. That's just dumb.

I'd been doing this for nearly two years at this point. The first six months high raw vegan I had felt great and hadn't intentionally restricted calories or macros, and was still eating a little more cooked food. Then serious restriction slowly snuck in. Somehow, I started gaining weight. It fluctuated wildly. I often had swings of 6, 8, or more pounds in the space of 24 hours. There were tons of dramatic swings up after especially long work days, and an overall gaining trend. Also, I was orange. All over. Bright. Orange.

Everything pointed to just a whole lot of chronic inflammation, but I couldn't figure out how to make it stop. After all, I reasoned that a raw vegan diet should be 100% anti-inflammatory, right? I would blame the fact that I tasted some of the foods I cooked for seasoning - even though I would usually spit out the taste. I reasoned that I must have been absorbing some tiny amount from the cooked food, and that must have been triggering inflammation. (Did it occur to me that I needed rest days, and I ought to eat more than a banana to fuel my long workouts? Not usually.)

It was July. It was hot. We had had over a week of 90+ temps, and really high humidity. We had no AC in our 4th floor walk-up apartment. I'm a chef. When I'm not home or at the gym, I'm in a hot hot kitchen. I had not taken a rest day, or taken the time to cool off properly, in ages. I was hot.

I kept up my usual workout routine, despite the heat. In boxing class one night, I realized I was bright red, way overheated, and not sweating. I drank water and kept going, just a lot less intensely. A half hour later, I nearly fainted. Still red, still not sweating. Someone got me more water, and someone else got me a cold wet towel. I didn't go to the hospital because I'm a stubborn moron when I'm sick. When I got home I took electrolyte tablets and more water.

For the next week, the edema was so bad it was painful. My ankles were so wide I couldn't wear socks. I couldn't bend my knees. It was really hard to climb stairs. (Fourth floor walk-up apartment, remember.)

I kept going to work, though. Because I am crazy, and because I have so many bills that a couple of missed days of work will invariably mean that I'm late on student loan or credit card payments. Work means 10 to 14 hours of standing. No, I didn't walk to work that week. I may be crazy, but at least I knew I couldn't do that.

I started pulling muscles all the time. I had a pulled hamstring for two months. I had knots in my calves all the time. My butt and low back hurt all the time, because my piriformis muscles seized up. My upper back, shoulders, and neck hurt. The muscles wouldn't relax, even with massage. My elbows hurt. I lost grip strength, and couldn't cut straight. The soreness in my toes and hips and shoulder blossomed into serious arthritis. My digestion went from finicky to downright failing. I started eating more cooked foods, a few animal foods, a little more food overall. I became less orange, despite eating a least the same amount of carotenoids, often more. The anxiety and some of the neuromuscular symptoms started to improve as I ate more, but the arthritis slowly started to get worse.

The GI doc found not a whole lot. Primary care found some slightly wacky numbers, but nothing crazy. Finally got the feet looked at, and I have a whole bunch of things going wrong including at least two different forms of arthritis. Then my health insurance paperwork got lost and I'm temporarily not covered because the forms are completely overwhelming. So I haven't seen the rheumatologist in a couple months.

Over that time period, I tried a bunch of fads - I did a Whole30 in January, or was it February? I tried low carb for a little while. I actually gained while eating low carb. How is that even possible?  That didn't last long for me, thank goodness, because I felt like shit and I LOVE FRUIT AND SWEET POTATOES! Any diet that says I can't have fruit or sweet potatoes is straight up lame.

I found Intuitive Eating, then Matt Stone, then Go Kaleo, and Eating the Food. Not sure how long I've been ETF, but it is helping a lot. Three months? Longer? The principle is simple: Eat the correct amount of food to support a healthy metabolism, move your body as appropriate for you, and stop all the restrictive dieting. I have a lot of allergies and sensitivities, which is a challenging balance to strike. But not impossible.

At first, I got belly bloat. That's normal, coming out of a restrictive eating disorder, or excessive dieting, or whatever you want to call it. I got that tummy overhang thing everyone talks about. They both went away. The more I eat, the more I can digest. It's amazing. My intestines mostly usually remember how to work again!

I stayed off the scale and the tracking sites for a while, because they just make me crazy. But I finally stepped back on the scale recently, and I've lost several pounds! Like, not just the initial ETF puffiness, but I'm a few pounds lower than my immediately pre-EFT weight! Not as low as I was before the gain started, but I hadn't had my period in six months then so perhaps I was a little too thin. My metabolism is getting back on track. My libido is starting to return. Things in general are improving. I still have joint pain and migraines, but my feet especially are SO much better!

Interestingly, my scale has a function where it measures body fat and muscle. I have not been able to work out often over the last few months, but even so, I'm experiencing a slight recomp in the positive direction. That was a surprise! More carbs, more rest, and more sitting around watching anime have actually led to more lean mass, and a little lower fat percentage. Hooray!

Also interestingly, when I have been able to work out, I'm lifting as heavy as I was when I was dieting and working out consistently. Dieting makes you weak! Eating food makes you strong. Who knew?

I've been getting acupuncture, and that has helped a lot with everything. I have a whole bunch of things going on. In the western terms that I understand, I've got chronic inflammation, autoimmune weirdness, exhaustion, overwork, stress, migraines, fatigue, the works. All those symptoms of starvation (a.k.a. what the internet calls "adrenal fatigue") and then some. According to my acupuncturist, I'm like a tangled ball of yarn and we need to tease out problems in layers. One of the underlying things is what TCM calls spleen qi deficiency. That is roughly equivalent to a depressed metabolism, in western terms. It has a lot of potential root causes/symptoms, but anorexia, too much cold raw food, overwork, and excess stress are pretty common ones. So, basically, my acupuncturist, my experience, and the ETF philosophy are right in line here.

I'm to eat more, especially more carbs from rice and GF oats. I love rice and oats so much! I'm to eat lots and lots of veggies, especially cooked. I'm happy to live almost entirely off veggies, so that's cool. No more living entirely off of salads though, as much as I absolutely adore salads. Raw vegan was convenient for me. I'd cook for others all day, and be so exhausted that green smoothies and salads were all I wanted to make for myself anyway. 

There are a few other recommendations too - I don't have to feel obligated to eat all that protein. My acupuncturist recommends less or no meat. Thank goodness. I am allergic to legumes, so I have found I do need to eat some animal foods, but I don't have to feel obligated to meet some kind of protein target like I did on or after Whole30. A little fish or egg is plenty.

I am to avoid dairy, which I've found recently makes me feel slow and gives me acne. I'm to avoid gluten, which I already do because I am seriously intolerant and it makes me feel horrible for days. I'm to avoid very spicy food, which makes me sad, but it's temporary. Also caffeine which I gave up years ago, alcohol which makes me feel tired and shitty lately, and chocolate which I had mysteriously stopped craving anyway.

As much as I am upset and inconvenienced by the knee prohibiting much movement this weekend, things are generally improving. As long as I use eight or twelve months ago as the starting point, when all the fallout from heat stroke and malnutrition were at their peak, I'm definitely improving overall.

Three and a half years ago I was feeling great. I was eating, getting plenty of sunshine, and working only five days a week.

I choose to look at that as more of an inspiration of how I can feel again, not to measure how far I've fallen. Three and a half years ago I ate so much and stayed so slim that my co-worker said I must have a tapeworm. I was thin, strong, not feeling the old injuries so often. I was enjoying movement and food. I was doing a lot of creative work - knitting, sewing, and/or drawing just about every day. I danced, I ate, I walked on the beach because we lived near one then. Life wasn't perfect, certainly, but I was doing OK.

Getting back in balance, resting, and eating are all journeys.

Now I'm heading down to the gym. The knee and hip don't allow pushups or planks when they're acting up, but I just checked, and today I can do a few sloooooow careful squats to just above 90 degrees. Huge improvement over yesterday!

Time to stop typing and start moving!

How to Avoid GMOs in Your Food

There has been a lot of press lately about GMOs (genetically modified organisms.) There is also a lot of confusion about what they are, and how and why you might want to avoid them.

 

Here's what they are: Genetically modified organisms have had their genes spliced with those of other species. The term GMO does not apply to selective breeding, natural or artificial selection, or any other practice or genetic combination that Mother Nature might have come up with on her own. The term refers only to organisms that have been subjected to gene splicing. Whether this practice is safe or beneficial is not actually what I'm going to talk about today. That is way too big and complex a question for one little blog post!

 

I'm going to talk about why you should think twice about the GMO crops that are already in the food chain. It's not because of the crops themselves - it's because of how they're grown.

 

Monsanto, the world's biggest producer of pesticides and herbicides, takes genes from organisms that resist their toxic products and splices genes from them into food crops. Those GMO food crops are grown with an extra huge dose of toxic chemicals. 

 

Most of Monsanto's seed is called "Roundup Ready" - that means that the crops won't die from being sprayed with hefty doses of Monsanto's herbicide called Roundup. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, has been linked to kidney damage, liver damage, infertility, and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Monsanto has blocked in-depth study of the effects of its products.

 

Those Roundup Ready, heavily sprayed crops are used as animal feed and wind up in most of your food.

 

There has been a lot of controversy about labeling GMOs, and a picture of an apple is often used as an illustration. That is confusing, because there are no GMO apples on the market - yet. You can bet they're in the pipeline, but they are not yet in stores.

 

Most veggies and fruits are not currently GMO. If it is not local or certified organic, you can bet it is heavily sprayed with pesticides and other potentially dangerous, unstudied chemicals. But with the exception of some zucchini, papaya, and most corn, the produce isn't GMO.

 

If you eat animal products, be extremely careful about where your meat, dairy, and eggs come from. The animals themselves are not GMO, but most of their feed is. I'll say that again: There are not yet GMO animal products on the market (though there will likely be GMO salmon in stores very soon.) But a huge portion of the GMO corn and soy grown in the U.S. goes into animal feed.

If you want to avoid GMOs, avoid soy, corn, and canola unless it is certified organic. That means pretty much all processed food, and almost anything that comes in a package. The word "natural" on a label is meaningless unless it also says Certified Organic. The word natural is not regulated, and manufacturers are allowed to write it on anything they want.

Avoid non-organic canola and soy oil. Both are sometimes called vegetable oil. Avoid soy protein, vegetable protein, tofu, fake meats, and all other soy products unless they are marked as certified organic. Avoid corn meal, corn flour, corn starch, corn syrup, and popcorn unless it is labelled as certified organic. Avoid processed foods including cereals and baked goods that contain any corn or soy ingredients. Doing that, you will eliminate the majority of the GMOs in your diet.

There are also Roundup-ready GMO sugar beets. Avoid non-organic sugar, or choose sugar that is labelled specifically as cane sugar, to be safe. Sugar beets are not the beets sold as veggies; they're a specific variety that is processed for sugar. You don't have to be concerned yet about the beets you buy as vegetables.

Also avoid meat and other products from animals fed GMOs - that is ALL so-called conventionally raised beef, pork, poultry, eggs, and dairy. The animals themselves are not genetically modified, but their food is. Most of the corn and soy raised in the U.S. actually goes into animal feed.

Animals on so-called conventional farms are fed genetically modified corn and soy that is sprayed with all sorts of toxic chemicals, including a toxic herbicide called Roundup. The animals eat the chemically sprayed food. The chemicals concentrate in the animals' fat tissue. You eat the animal, and now you are full of those chemicals.

To avoid GMOs, eat more fresh fruits and vegetables. Buy as much as you can from local farmers you trust at farmers markets. What you can't get locally, get the cleanest you can. Be even more choosy about your meat and other animal products than you are about produce. For beef and lamb, grass fed is best. Pasturing animals is important for their health and yours.

This is not where you want your food to come from

 

If you can't afford organic/grass fed/pastured for everything (and who can,) be most selective about animal products. For produce, follow the Environmental Working Group's recommendations to buy organic for the most highly sprayed produce, and get conventional for the rest. Buy organic or local apples, celery, peppers, and lettuce. Buy strawberries in season from local farmers who don't use toxic sprays. You know the ones from California don't taste like anything by the time they get here anyway! It's okay to buy conventional avocados, mangos, and other produce that is not sprayed as much.

The current guide can be found here:

http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/

Iodine

Today I want to talk about a super important trace mineral: iodine.

Iodine is critical for the health of your thyroid, and therefore the health of the whole body. The thyroid is a tiny gland in the throat that has the big job of coordinating your metabolism. Two key hormones it produces (T3 and T4 in the diagram below) contain iodine. If you become deficient, you run the risk of all sorts of disorders from hypothyroidism to hyperthyroidism to goiter.

Iodine is also considered important for detoxification, and clearing of radiation. Once, I had a client who was undergoing very aggressive radiation therapy. Iodine is a very powerful element for removing radiation from the body. Because her therapy required that she keep the radiation in her body as long as possible in order to battle cancer, she was not permitted to consume anything containing iodine. During her treatment, she could not have anything containing fish, seaweed, or iodized salt! (Since completing her treatment, she is again encouraged to get plenty of iodine.)

Many of us are most familiar with iodine from the yucky iodized salt in the supermarket. Here's the thing about the yucky salt: you don't have to eat if you get enough iodine in your diet. You can use better-tasting, non-iodized sea salt. In fact, you can get all the iodine you need from a healthy, balanced diet. You just have to know how to get it!

Iodine is abundantly available in all seafood, especially seaweed and kelp. So even if you avoid fish and shellfish, you can get plenty of iodine from sea vegetables. It also naturally occurs in soil, but we can't count on most produce as a significant dietary source because the amounts vary so widely from region to region.

Once upon a time, people living in the middle of the U.S. didn't have access to ocean fish. Lake fish is not a good source of iodine; it must come from salt water. On top of that, the soil in the Midwest is very low in iodine. In the 19th century and into the start of the 20th, many Midwesterners developed thyroid disorders. Then the U.S. government started adding iodine to table salt, and that problem was solved.

Unfortunately, now many people think that supplements (either pills or iodized salt) are the best or only ways to get iodine. But we didn't evolve to have to take supplements. How did people maintain healthy thyroid glands before supplementation? Easy: through seafood.

If you eat sea vegetables or salt water fish once or twice a week, you are likely getting enough iodine in your diet. It is abundant in fresh, frozen, dried, and canned products. So if all you can afford is dolphin-safe, low-mercury skipjack tuna in a can and packets of dried seaweed from Super 88, you can still meet your iodine needs that way. There will be recipes for grain-free "sushi" rolls and seaweed salads on this blog in the future.

If you find yourself craving seafood, one reason may be that your body is looking for an iodine boost. If you live in the Midwest and don't have easy access to ocean fish, or if you hate all seafood including seaweed and kelp, then you are a candidate for supplementation. Otherwise, just get it from food!

In my next post, I'm going to give you a wonderful, easy iodine-rich recipe for salmon with crispy skin, with a balsamic glaze. Yum!

Happy New Year, and a Happy Healthy New Approach!

Happy New Year!

This year, our dietary path has shifted from where it was the last couple years. I thought it was only fitting to move over to a fresh, new blog to celebrate the new focus!

Today is not just the first day of a new year. It is also the day Earnest and I begin a new sort of challenge: We are doing a Whole30 together. What's that? Well, the rules are here: http://whole9life.com/2012/08/the-whole30-program/

For one month, you eat only vegetables, fruits, healthy fats, and high quality, non-dairy animal proteins. It's a particularly strict version of the currently-fashionable paleo/primal diet. Personally, I'm not so much one for labels as for just making Good, Solid Choices.

The restrictions you choose to follow when doing a Whole30 are: No grains, legumes, dairy other than ghee, alcohol, white potatoes, certain additives, or sugar (even maple and honey.) That's not all that far from how I've been eating lately, but I have been using some honey, maple, cheese, and homemade yogurt from raw milk. I've been making good progress with this approach so far. We've been gluten free for quite some time, and in fact GF has been an area of focus in my work as a personal chef. (The other primary focus for me has been delicious, wonderful veggies! Even though I'm not vegan anymore, I will always love veggies! I'll talk about them a lot more in future posts.)

From my own diet, I have already eliminated most grains and all legumes, because my body was responding to them with a range of reactions including true allergy, digestive upset, and inflammation. I was occasionally eating rice and just tasting the other gluten-free grain foods I cook for others whose digestion handles them better. By eliminating even those tiny amounts of grains, I hope to reduce inflammation in my body further, and continue my path of healing my gut. Later, I'll talk more about how far I've already travelled in search of a happy belly! I'll also talk about the challenges I run into on the way, as a professional cook with dietary restrictions.

Earnest has relied a lot more on grains and legumes, and he loves his sweets. This challenge will be harder for him, and I'm going to do my best to support him and make his experience positive and easy. There's nothing like having your own personal chef to make positive choices easier!

Those of you who have known me for a while know that I love raw veggies and fruits. I was vegan for two years, and ovo-lacto vegetarian for over ten years, split between two different times in my life. While I was vegan, I followed a very high raw approach most of the time. This was great for me at first. For the first year, I experienced high energy and abundant health.

Later, and whenever I ate too many grains or legumes, I started to experience a lot of strange symptoms, mostly of inflammation, digestive upset, and radical weight fluctuations. I started to feel fatigued and brittle, and knew I needed to make some changes again.

On top of these experiences, sensitivities, and restrictions, I have true allergies. I'm allergic to peanuts, soy, and some other legumes - and we're talking throat-closing anaphylaxis here. I actually had to quit a job once because of all the peanut and soy products on the menu. I am also sensitive to wheat and other gluten-containing grains. I have one of the genes that can cause celiac disease, and I experience lots of symptoms when I consume gluten, but I haven't received a conclusive diagnosis of celiac disease. Interestingly, Earnest experiences many of the same symptoms with gluten that I do. In fact, we stopped using gluten at home because of his sensitivities, and I only realized I was also sensitive later.


My new goals are to continue healing my digestion, tame inflammation in my body, and have abundant, glowing energy again. I am already well on my path toward meeting these big goals, and lots of little ones along the way.

I also plan to continue eating tons of fresh veggies, mostly local even in the New England winter. I will share with you tips and tricks for choosing the best produce and getting good deals. Just as importantly, I will help you navigate the different meat choices out there. Are they all healthy or ethically raised? Not by a long shot. But are there sustainable, environmentally-friendly, affordable options out there? Absolutely. I can help connect you with your local farmers, find grass-fed beef and truly, honestly free range eggs, and choose seafood that is safe for your family and sustainable for the environment.

Local Chioggia Beets

The Littlest Carrot!

If you have just found me, maybe you also have a goal. Do you want to lose weight? Get stronger? Run faster? Flush away inflammation? Learn great recipes, tips and tricks for cooking and eating great food? Ways to incorporate lots more veggies into your (or your kids') diet? Gluten free substitutions and fantastic recipes? Leave me a comment and ask me anything! I've been cooking and baking for a very long time, and I love a good challenge!

I look forward to writing for you and cooking for you a lot more soon!

Much love,
Chef Mary