Cooking for Celiacs, Colitis, Crohns and IBS

How long before I can eat Normal Food again?

sandra — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 03:48:30 +0000

This is one of the most frequently asked questions? So please indulge me while I address this in a round about way.

Firstly what is ‘normal’ food in contrast to ‘abnormal’ food on the SCDiet? SCD promotes a healthy unrefined diet full of fresh fruits, vegetables and protein. The foods on the diet can be purchased at any supermarket. But if you mean foods such as bread, rice, pasta and potatoes than the answer is not so easily defined. Some people who have followed a rigorous SCDiet for years have found that they can easily incorporate these foods back into their diet occasionally. By occasionally I mean perhaps once a month or even once a week, but certainly not on a daily basis. Again, moderation is the key.

I have been on the SCDiet for three years now and am completely symptom free, but still follow the SCDiet.

At this point I have no desire for so called ‘normal’ foods as the diet provides such a variety of dishes and foods that can be eaten. Once you have experienced the abating of horrific symptoms such as constant diarrhea, cramping and sleepless nights and find yourself on the other end of the spectrum, a healthy and vital person; the risk of a relapse isn’t worth it.

That is not to say that on those occasions when my darling son (he has no digestive issues at all) has his weekly croissant, I do feel a little nostalgic. But when the time comes for me to have that croissant it better be the best croissant in the world. This I gather will be in some little french restaurant in France.

The results of eating on the SCDiet can be so significant for those who are willing to give it their one and all, and by that I mean 110%, that it is worth foregoing a little bread, rice, pasta or potato.

Happy Cooking
Sandra

Travelling with SCD

sandra — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 02:52:48 +0000

I am finally back home. My partner, his two small children and my teenage son and myself have just spent 9 days away on holidays. I had booked a three bedroom apartment with kitchen, as I thought I would be able to cook, make yogurt and generally keep my SCD routine happening. I was going to keep a daily journal via my posts here, but found that the hotel did not have internet connection and the nearest hotel that did, required travel. So instead I will give you a fairly good idea on how I coped in this one post.

I had prepared two dozen ‘Chewy Macadamia Nut and Date Biscuits’ and 1 liter of yogurt to take along. I had also taken my homemade ‘Dijonnaise” and some homemade ‘Sweet Chilli Sauce’. I had managed to forget the frozen ‘Crusty Onion Rolls’ in the freezer.

On arrival I checked the kitchen, which had everything I needed. As we arrived late we decided to order dinner in as there was a menu. The smaller kids are vegetarian, my partner and my son can eat anything, so there was no issue there. I managed to find a restaurant that was able to cater for all of us. I ordered a plain piece of grilled fish and a garden salad without dressing. The food arrived and it was, well you know what it would be like, after it had sat in a heating bag for half an hour. My dijonnaise and sweet chilli made my meal delicious. I had a cup of tea and one of my biscuits before I went to bed and felt great. I had worked out that if I had two biscuits a day I would have enough for 12 days. (These biscuits are generous and very filling) It was lucky I made more than enough as they came in handy on those mornings when we barely had time to have breakfast and the two youngest needed sustenance.

Now, my intention was to make yogurt as soon as I could, but every day ended up being so full of adventure and activities, the only time I ended up in the kitchen was to make a cup of tea and breakfast for the last two days of our holiday. But, you know, there was no need for me to be so concerned about keeping my SCD routine going. The 1 liter of yogurt I divided up into 1/4 cups and I had some every morning. We had breakfast mostly at a buffet, where the scrambled eggs were made simply with egg and water and grilled tomatoes, cheddar and fresh fruit was available in abundance. On the tours we took, lunch was always simple, either grilled fish or steak and salads you could mix yourself. My chilli sauce was passed around and admired by everyone (sold quite a few people on the book). I had a biscuit for morning tea and I usually saved one to have at the end of the day with my cup of tea. I ate plenty of watermelon and ripe bananas and generally found it very easy to eat simply and healthily. It was interesting to keep a mental record of the foods that the rest of the family ate. I guess they thought it was carte blanche, because they were on holidays. But the amount of ice cream, croissants, bread and grains, starches and sugars contained in the foods they ate, again made me aware how grateful I am for the SCDiet. That, even though motivated by a very restrictive disease, I was simply eating a very healthy diet. My family looked at me with sorrowful eyes as they were lapping up their sugar rich, carbohydrate rich foods, but I felt quite at ease. There is no use preaching to them about what is good for them and what isn’t. I can only simply give them the information and let them make up their own minds. And also my family is pretty good, they eat in moderation. On the whole they are the model of what healthy moderate eating is all about. I usually accompany my food preparation for the family with information on what each food can do for you. E.g. bananas are high in potassium and can increase your brain function, so you can study better at school. Blueberries are one of the highest antioxidant containing fruits, which keeps your body from getting sick…… etc. Or I might also point out the negativities of the junk food they eat. E.g. did you know that that lolly contains corn syrup, which can make your liver really sick and if you eat too many you will not be able to eat any lollies ever any more.

Generally kids are smart enough to work it out for themselves. Being a good example is the most important thing.

Anyway, I am glad to be back home. I made yogurt last night and the ‘Frittata Verde’ for dinner. I’m making the ‘Beef Lasagna’ and the ‘Vegetarian Shepherds Pie’ for dinner tonight. That will probably last a few nights. The family isn’t fussy, they don’t mind getting the same thing two nights in a row, as long as dessert is on the menu.

Sandra

Going on a Christmas Holiday

sandra — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 05:28:11 +0000

We are setting off on a Christmas Holiday. The whole family that is. My partner, his 8 and 9 year old children, who are vegetarian, my son who’ll eat anything, my partner who loves healthy food and me with my SCDiet requirements. I guess for anyone who is on the SCDiet this would sound like the ultimate challenge. And so it is! So I will keep you informed on how I cope with this. We will be away for 9 days. We have tours booked nearly every day, plus a Christmas lunch at a major hotel, offering buffet.

So two days to go and I am making a fresh batch of yogurt (1 liter) to take with me. I will stick this into a flask and put it into my stow away luggage. That will give me time to go shopping when we get to our hotel and get another batch going when we get there. I imagine I will find a cupboard in which I can place one of the night stand lamps and use that as my yogurt incubator (I’ll let you know how it goes). We have booked a three bedroom hotel unit with kitchen. Tomorrow I will make a batch of chewy macadamia nut buscuits. These I might have to hide from the horde, as they all love them. I have also frozen 3 crusty onion rolls, which I will take with me on the plane and store in the refridgerator at our hotel for sandwiches, when we go on our tours. I’m also taking my homemade dijonnaise and sweet chilli sauce with me (I have put enough into two small plastic water bottles and am putting them into a cooler bag into the stow away luggage as well).

*Note: must take 25 w light bulb for table lamp and must take my cookbook.

So stay tuned for the first installment which will be Thursday.

Sandra

Book Launch at the Sydney Gluten Free Food Show

sandra — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:19:05 +0000

It was great to be at the Gluten Free Food show and meet so many wonderful people who all understand the value of a healthy and alternative diet in regards to intestinal health. There were many who were going through what I went through a few year ago, when I was still suffering from Ulcertative Colitis. It’s wonderful to be able to have a little laugh about symptoms and embarrassing situations and know that your are not the only one suffering these debilitating symptoms. It’s of course also inspiring to be able to see that there are people who have fully recovered because of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.

Yet the most amazing thing was that I was approached by two major main stream super stores, who want to carry ‘Healing Foods’ ‘Cooking for Celiacs, Colitis, Crohn’s and IBS’ and include it into their new Health and Wellness Sections of the stores. This is great, because it means they are taking healthy foods serious. It means it’s not just an empty gesture to have a token sections which is labelled ‘Healthy’ because it carries a couple of ‘Gluten Free’ products. Which brings me to a major problem I have with so called ‘Gluten Free’ products. Most of these products are labelled ‘Gluten Free’, but contain twice as much sugar and fat. Also who is to say that refined rice flour or corn flour is any healthier than refined wheat flour? Non of this is a problem, of course, if you’re on the SCDiet, as you are simply just eating fresh foods and everything is made from scratch.

So the launch was a success and the book is flying off the shelves at the bookstores. The medical community is starting to embrace alternative diets as a complimentary treatment and I think we will see a much greater push towards Doctors and Specialists using diets in their treatments.

Sandra

Diabeties, Glycemic Index and the The Specific Carbohydrate Diet

sandra — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:58:31 +0000

Diabetes, Glycemic Index and The Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD)I was interviewed for a national Diabetes Magazine the other day. Of course they wanted to know how a diet such as the SCD would be for Diabetes sufferers, considering that in
Australia 10% of Diabetics are also diagnosed with Coeliac Disease. For Diabetics the all important factor is how carbohydrates effect their blood sugar level, and that these foods have a low GI (Glycemic Index). The Glycemic Index is a measurement of the type or quality of carbs in a particular food, and how fast 50 grams of this carbohydrate raises blood glucose levels, (and consequent insulin secretion and effects produced by the pancreas) as it is digested. But it is also important to consider the Glycemic Load of Foods. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the Glycemic Load was devised to make the Glycemic Index useful in the real world.

The problem with the Glycemic Index is that the tests use 50 grams of carbohydrate worth of the food being tested. On a practical level, that means they test a plateful of spaghetti, but a truckload of cucumbers! It doesn’t take into account how food is eaten in the real world, and makes foods seem damaging that really aren’t.

The Glycemic Index is the measurement of how rapidly a given carbohydrate food is absorbed, and therefore how fast and hard it spikes blood sugar. In general, a fast, sharp rise in blood sugar triggers a big insulin release . The Glycemic Load is defined as the Glycemic Index times the actual number of grams of carbohydrate eaten. Ten or below is a low Glycemic Load, 11-20 is medium, and anything over 20 is high.

Take carrots. Carrots have a high Glycemic Index for a vegetable - around 50. But do you know how many carrots you’d have to eat to get fifty grams of carbohydrate? More than fifty! So basically the carbohydrate content of say eating two whole carrots with a meal is too insignificant to cause a rise in blood sugar levels. But let’s say you take oatmeal, which has about the same GI as carrots, but one cup serving of cooked oatmeal has 25 grams of carbohydrate, for a Glycemic Load of 12.5 in contrast to say 5 baby carrots which has 4 grams of carbohydrate and a Glycemic Load of 2 - very low.

So how do the foods allowed on the SCD rate in regards to the GI and GL and is this a good thing for Diabetics and everyone else wanting to be healthier?

The SCD is based on ‘Simple Carbohydrate Foods’ or rather monosaccharides which are the single molecule carbs which need no enzyme to break them down to be digested. Carbohydrate foods naturally divide themselves into two groups: starches and refined sugars, and everything else. It’s the concentration of carbohydrates in the starches, and the artificial concentration of refined sugars, that makes them a problem to bowel disease sufferers and diabetics. So the specific carbohydrates allowed on the diet and used in the ‘Healing Foods’ cookbook are the ones that are represented in most low GI foods. These foods are simple fresh foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, some low starch pulses, nuts, meats, cheeses and yogurt. Even the baked goods which are sweetened with honey are acceptable as the almond meal used instead of the wheat flour contain monounsaturated fats which slows the absorption rate of glucose from the honey into the bloodstream.

So considering all these factors diabetics, digestive disease sufferers and generally everyone who wants to live a more energetic and healthy life should be able to benefit from the recipes in ‘Healing Foods’ ‘Cooking for Celiacs, Colitis, Crohn’s and IBS’.

Sandra

IBS Treatment - What Have Bananas And Apples Got To Do With IBS?

sandra — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 01:56:00 +0000

I was speaking to an elderly gentleman the other day who had just undergone life saving surgery to his heart and he mentioned that the doctor recommended that he should start eating lots of bananas “at least two a day”, he said. The Doctor said that the high potassium content helped to regulate the heart beat. So when I started investigating the health value of bananas I came upon a great article on how bananas help with bowel diseases. Keep in mind that it is important to eat bananas only when they are really ripe, with brown flecks appearing on the skin.

This article was written by Terence Oth, who also keeps a great site for tips for IBS sufferers http://www.ibs-relieftips.com/

When someone talks about bananas, one thing comes to mind – energy food. The reason for this is because we often see the tri-athletes gorging on this before and during their race events.

Well, it is a known fact that it contains three natural sugars - sucrose, fructose and glucose - combined with fiber. The sugars give us the instant and sustainable energy. Research has shown that just two bananas can sustain one for a vigorous 90-minute workout. But for an IBS sufferer, it is the insoluble fiber that we are interested in. The abundance of insoluble fibers helps in relieving constipation without the need for laxatives. So keep a banana or two in your daily diet. One banana has 16% of the fiber, 15% of the vitamin C, and 11% of the potassium we need every day for good health. Bananas are unique because it helps in both IBS constipation and diarrhea. A few (no more than 2) large bananas a day provide the fiber to promote bowel movement. Eating more bananas a day can help stop diarrhea. Bananas have other benefits as well.

For anemic patients, bananas are high in iron, which helps in the production of hemoglobin – the foundation of blood. This is especially important to women when they have their menses.

For high blood pressure and stroke sufferers, bananas are high in potassium but low in salt. Research, has shown that potassium reduces blood pressure. In one research, keeping bananas as a regular diet can reduce the risk of death by stroke by as much as 40%.

For heart burn patients, bananas have antacid properties. Gulping down a couple of bananas provide relief in heart burn patients.

For ulcer sufferers, bananas coat the lining of the intestines, thus providing relief for over-active ulcers. A banana’s antacid properties will reduce acidity in the stomach as well.

For mosquito bites and warts. Forget your creams, just use the banana skin and rub some on the mosquito bite. It not only provides irritation relief, but reduces inflammation as well. Keep the inside of the banana skin on the wart by using plaster and see the wart go away.

Tips: Do not take bananas late at night. When you take bananas, also take lots of water after that if you want to prevent constipation. Apples are also unique because they are both beneficial in the treatment of constipation and diarrhea. Uncooked apples are good for constipation. On the other hand, baked apples are good for diarrhea as the cooking process softens the cellulose and provides bulk to stools. For the best IBS treatment, apples should be peeled. The sugars in apples are harder for the body to digest. And what the body can’t break down, it pushes out. So apples are a natural laxative. Personally, I find combining bananas and apples into a drink is even more effective as a constipation relief, so here is a recipe for one IBS constipation relief drink. Banana, Apple Lassi (Yogurt drink) Combine two fruits with natural laxatives and digestion booster properties, and you get one of the best IBS constipation treatments. Yoghurt builds ‘good’ bacteria in the gut.

Interview with Dr. Ron Hoffman

sandra — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 11:43:32 +0000

Early Monday morning I received a phone call from the U.S. Dr. Ron Hoffman who wrote the forword for the book wanted to interview me about the book on his radio. It was a very well conducted interview. Dr. Hoffman was fun and easy to talk to and afterward I received an email from his office, saying the phones were running hot.

Here is the podcast for anyone who is interested to download: http://podcast.wor710.com/wor/695432.mp3

First Orders Have Gone Out!

sandra — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 03:04:44 +0000

Well the book has arrived. They are filling the warehouses in Australia and the U.S. Amazon is selling them by the hundreds and Australia is not far behind. The first orders were sent out yesterday and I am looking forward to getting some feedback. I hope everyone loves them.

We have an extensive publicity campaign planned for me. Hopefully you’ll be seeing me on the tv and hearing me on the radio soon. What I need now is to hear from people who have been on the diet and their experience with it. Your story could help others to realise how great the SCDiet is and how it can help. Send me an email with your story, I would love to hear from you: sandra@elephantpublishing.com

Sandra

Weekly Cooking Plan

sandra — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 21:47:12 +0000

A few days ago I posted on the Long Island SCD List Group that I am developing the “Ultimate Weekly Cooking Plan”. I spent two full days writing the plan and then cooked the food the following week. We ate like kings for that week. It is a great plan, but could be too involved for those who either do not have a family of four or are single. I don’t have a family of four and my partner eats out for lunch. So I just cooked it for my son and I mostly, and obviously had to adjust the recipes sizes for this. I realise that a simpler plan also needs to be developed and have enlisted the help of the Long Island SCD Group to help develop the comprehensive and simple plan. I think if newbies and oldies to the SCD were able to resort to these plans when the going gets tough, it might help to put people’s minds at ease that being on the SCDiet is easy, practical and incredibly healthy.

Sandra

Book arrives 7 September 2007

sandra — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 02:11:51 +0000

Not long now the books are on the boat and on their way to us and then we will ship them directly to all those people who have pre-purchased the book. This is very exciting and wonderful, a bit like giving birth, but a lot less painful.

Sandra