The Paleo Diet; Osteoporosis

Over the past few years, I’ve been reading about what we are meant to eat. The 80/10/10 Diet book first looks at what we would eat in nature without the use of fire, containers, tools or refrigeration and reaches the conclusion that we would be frugivores, living primarily on fruits with the addition of tender greens. Another book that I’ve had on my shelf for years is “The Yeast Connection” which mentions the “cave man diet” as a basic elimination diet that avoids any and every food eaten more than once a week.

An interesting take on the question of what we eat has been to compare us with our next closest living relatives being two chimpanzee species and gorillas, with the DNA of gorillas being 98% to 99% identical to that of a human. After writing the international bestseller “Easy Way to Stop Smoking”, Allen Carr later followed up with his book “Easyweigh to Lose Weight” in which he considers what wild animals including gorillas eat.

Now I’m reading the book “The Paleo Diet” by Loren Cordain which looks at what our Stone Age ancestors ate. The book recommends eating lean meats and fish, fresh fruits and non-starchy vegetables. I like the fruit and vegetable focus of the diet, particularly considering my interest in the 80/10/10 diet which has a high fruit and green salad focus.

I’ve only just started reading this book and already I’ve found information relevant to me. There’s a helpful discussion on osteoporosis. It seems that one of the greatest benefits of fruit and vegetables is their ability to slow or prevent osteoporosis. A group of scientists found that the people who ate the most fruits and vegetables had the greatest bone mineral densities and the strongest bones. This is good news for me as I’m currently eating lots of fruit and vegetables which will help my bones after being diagnosed with marginal osteoporosis in recent years.

The author then makes the point that it is not only how much calcium we take in that is important, but also about how much calcium we excrete. If we take in a low amount of calcium while excreting a low amount of calcium then it is possible that we will be in what is called “calcium balance”. But if we load up on foods or medications high in calcium but lose more calcium than we gain, then we will fall out of calcium balance. From what I’ve heard on a number of occasions, the more acidic our diet is, the more calcium we’ll lose from our bones in order to balance our body.

I can see good points in the Paleo diet, particularly with the focus on vegetables and fruit. But I can’t help wondering about the sustainability of a diet that includes a significant amount of lean meats and fish. Plus overall I feel much more comfortable focusing on fruits and vegetables with a small serving each day of brown rice or quinoa with my breakfast along with some chick peas with my salad while eating an egg or some fish perhaps once or twice a week.

I’m so glad that I continue to examine alternative ways of eating as all of this input helps to finetune how I’ll structure my meals into the future. However I suspect this is an ongoing journey that I’ll be on for a long time to come.

The 80/10/10 Diet

I’ve almost finished reading the book “The 80/10/10 Diet” by Douglas Graham and have trialed the diet today by eating according to the 80% carbohydrate, 10% fat and 10% protein rule.

I like this way of eating. I’ve had a sweet tooth since I was a young child and I’m finding that I have no noticeable sweet cravings when I eat a significant amount of fruit. Who would have thought it would be so easy to fix that problem!

If there’s any downside it is the huge volume of food that needs to be eaten from fruit and vegetable groups in order to fulfill the 80% carbohydrate requirement. Fortunately, it makes it easier that foods that we call vegetables such as tomatoes and cucumbers are actually fruits so they and others like zucchini and squash can be eaten as often as preferred. Greens are also very important for their mineral content and I need to ensure that I have a significant amount of greens each day.

So here is what I’ve had today:-

Breakfast

5 prunes

300g pears with 105g bananas

Morning tea

Rice Milk Cappuccino

Lunch

190g pineapple, 75g tomato, 320g pears

Snack

100g bananas

Dinner

170g pineapple and 180g grapes

135g pineapple, 180g cos lettuce, 150g tomatoes and 150g capsicum

This amounts to over 2kg of food which is a phenomenal amount for me, however, I must remember that this volume is replacing the bread, cooked grains, beans and chick peas that I have been eating.

I have tallied all of this on the Nutridiary web site which tells me that that the foods that I have eaten today fall within the 80/10/10 guidelines, even including the rice milk cappuccino. However, drinking the cappuccino has meant that what I have eaten today hasn’t been entirely raw.

I do wonder how I’ll go eating this way into the longer term. This week I ordered a fruit box from Food Connect rather than a combined vegetable and fruit box, and I placed additional orders for some lettuce and tomatoes. Next week I’ll do the same again and also request some celery and cucumber. But what I receive from Food Connect won’t keep me going the whole week so either I’ll need to buy extras from organic food stores or else increase the size of the fruit box. There will be heaps more food scraps going into my worm farm and I’m wondering whether it will get swamped.

But overall I feel pretty good after a day of following the 80/10/10 diet. And being 91% raw – it’s a pity about the cappuccino! It will be interesting to see if I lose interest in this daily habit of cappuccinos as I continue playing with eating this way.

I’m having lunch with friends tomorrow and will aim to have a salad but won’t be too worried about whatever I end up eating. I still consider that I’m transitioning into this way of eating and even if I adopt it as my preferred eating regime there will always be times when I lapse. However from what I’m reading, my body will let me know what it thinks about the lapse, so perhaps it won’t happen too often.

Chicken and Sweet Corn Soup, Simplified Soup and Jam

My Mum isn’t well. She has overdone things for not the first time. After pulling out sliding wardrobe doors to put some new shelves inside, an annoying pain developed in her hip. Just to confuse matters, some blisters developed on her left foot which happened to be the same side as her hip pain. Perhaps something had bitten her on the foot while she was outside. As a result her foot was throbbing. She was able to move around her home on a pair of crutches, but even then her speed was snail’s pace.

In the past similar problems with her back have been easily fixed by her chiropractor. But after getting an all clear from a back x-ray and as the pain became unbearable, she finally agreed to visit the doctor. After a brief examination the diagnosis was shingles in her foot with referred pain moving up to her hip. Unfortunately the diagnosis came long after the 72 hour time frame within which anti-viral medications can be taken to help clear up the disease.

So my Mum went into hospital for just over a week and has now returned home. While she’s a little more mobile than she was, she is still dealing with the pain – particularly just after she’s been on her feet too long. She’s starting to hear this as a message to slow down.

One way I can help my Mum is to provide some meals and fortunately I have the Thermomix to help me. So I trolled through my recipe books and some blogs that I often visit and found the perfect comfort food – Chicken and Sweetcorn Soup a la Thermomixer.

This time around I have been very obedient and made it according to the recipe, well, with just one variation. I’ve made a note to self to not add any additional salt as I have used Thermomix Stock Concentrate with its strong salt content in lieu of the chicken stock. This soup tasted delicious, in fact enough for me to chow down a second small helping, and I’m sure my Mum will like it as well.

But I had a remaining dilemma. Last week I made some soup which Mum really enjoyed. I modified the pumpkin soup recipe from the everyday cookbook by replacing carrot with potato.

When she heard that I had some cabbage she decided that next she’d like some cabbage soup. So again I trolled through the books and blogs and found a recipe in the "Taste of Life" book by Julie Stafford for a cabbage casserole. Since I still wanted to make a soup, I borrowed the main ingredients of cabbage, onion, apples and potatoes and used them in a simplified version of the pumpkin soup recipe.

Simplified Soup Recipe Ingredients:
700g preferred vegies/fruit peeled and chopped ie cabbage, potatoes, apples
1 onion peeled and chopped
1 tbsp oil
1/2 tbsp stock concentrate (full tbsp of concentrate makes the soup too salty for me)
500g water
pinch of sugar

Instructions:
Add onion and vegies/fruit into Thermomix and chop for 15 seconds on speed 7.
Add oil, stock concentrate, water and sugar and cook for 20 minutes at 100 degrees C on speed 1.
Blend the mix for 15 to 20 seconds by increasing slowly from speed 1 to 9.

The resulting soup was an unusual consistency and equally unusual but very appealing taste. My Mum says she has made cabbage soup in the past so it will be interesting to hear her comments after she has tried it.

I’m going to keep trying different ingredients using this simple soup recipe. I have a feeling that when the different vegetables or fruits complement each other then the soup will work, which is why I borrowed this cabbage combination from an existing recipe.

I also use a similarly simplified jam recipe which has produced tomato, apple and now peach jam. To be honest, what I make is probably more like a sauce than a jam as I’m not concerned about whether the jam has set. I tend to put it onto my salads or waffles when I make them, so the consistency isn’t a major issue.

Simplified Jam Recipe Ingredients:
Equal quantities peeled/deseeded fruit and sugar

Instructions:
Weigh the fruit as it is placed into the Thermomix.
Puree the fruit for 30 seconds on speed 7.
After scraping down the sides, add an equal weight of sugar and then blend the mix for 10 seconds on speed 7.
Cook the mix for 40 minutes at 100 degrees C on speed soft.

After it has cooled, the jam goes into the freezer. Because I have used equal quantities of fruit and sugar I can take spoonfuls out of the container straight out of the freezer. So I never have any concerns about the jam going mouldy.

Making jam like this might not be to everyone’s liking, but it certainly works for me.

Oil Pulling

I recently started a daily practice called Oil Pulling. The originator of the practice Dr. F. Karach, M.D., suggests that Oil Pulling (OP) can assist with a number of conditions such as headaches, tooth pain, eczema and chronic sleeplessness.
When I do oil pulling, I swill half to a full tablespoon of cold-pressed sesame or sunflower oil around my mouth for 15 to 20 minutes without swallowing it, then spit it out and rinse my mouth out a few times.
I do this first thing in the morning as per the recommendation and have found that it lessens the impact of a sinus condition, and used along with brushing my teeth with salt has meant that I no longer suffer from mouth ulcers - regardless of how often I chomp on my tongue - which is often!
This is an easy process with the only cost being to purchase some cold-pressed sesame or sunflower oil - or other preferred cold-pressed oil. I've certainly found it beneficial.