You are here: Home / Archives for 2012

Archives for 2012

Soup stock
Jun 27, 2012

Soup stock

June 27, 2012 By

Every traditional system of medicine including Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, and Western herbal medicine maintains as a core principle the idea that heat represents the vitality of life. According to 19th century herbalist Samuel Thomson, this “heat is maintained in the stomach by consuming food; and all the body and limbs receive their proportion of nourishment and heat from that source; as the whole room is warmed by the fire which is consumed in the fireplace”. In this way, all the care required to restore digestion utilizes the same knowledge it takes to build and maintain a fire. And if you have ever built a fire, then you know that there is more to it than just holding a match to a log. You know that you need to ‘enkindle’ the fire, using light, easily combustible materials such as paper and thin strips of kindling. Only once you get this little fire going can you throw on progressively larger pieces of wood to build a nice big roaring fire.

In the same manner, the digestive fire is best enkindled by light, easily digestible foods, and for this purpose there is no better food than soup. To make such a soup, we need to have some base ingredients, and these can include anything and everything including vegetable trimmings and peelings, Chinese dried brown mushrooms, seaweed, and/or animal bones. Simply throw all these ingredients into a pot, cover with water, and let simmer for 12-24 hrs. Especially for stocks containing animal fats, make sure to avoid boiling the stock for any length of time as this will cause the fats to peroxidize and produce undesirable off-flavors.

Most frequently I use soups as a medium to build and restore the skeletal system, using ingredients such as chicken or turkey bones, lamb bones, and marrow bones. These bones contain valuable nutrients such as calcium, phosphorous, magnesium, glucosamine and chondroitin that our bodies can use to build and enhance bone health, to prevent and treat osteoporosis and arthritis. To render these constituents bioavailable, add in a little vinegar to create a slightly acid medium that will pull these minerals into the broth. Likewise, to make them more flavorful, you can roast the bones in the oven for 30 minutes. To boost the nutrient profile of these bone soups, I frequently recommend adding in seaweed such as kelp or dulse. Sea vegetables are truly one of nature’s super foods, not only as the single most abundant source of minerals compared to any land-based food, but also to boost metabolism and promote detoxification. In addition, there are any number of medicinal plants that can be added to boost the healing properties of the soup.

Ingredients (non-vegetarian option)
3-5 lbs. of bones
one handful crushed seaweed
vegetable trimmings and peels
2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar

Ingredients (vegetarian option)
one handful crushed seaweed
vegetable trimmings and peels
4-5 Chinese brown (shiitake) mushrooms

Directions
Place ingredients into a large stockpot and fill to the top with water. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and let cook for 12-24 hours for the bone broth, between 4-6 hours for the vegetable broth. When done, strain and then store in the refrigerator.

When the stock made with animal bones is cool, the fat will rise to the top and should be skimmed off, especially when using fatty bones such as marrow bones. The skimmed fat, however, can be used later as a cooking fat or added back to the diet as a nutrient, such as using marrow fat (majja) for vata disorders including immunodeficiency and weakness.

I frequently recommend soup stocks, especially for women to ensure fertility and to maintain bone density, and frequently include herbs that assist in this process including shatavari, peony, dang gui, rehmannia, American ginseng, codonopsis, ashwagandha, goji berry, astragalus, Chinese red date, horsetail, and nettle.

Filed Under: Ayurveda, Diet, Digestion, Recipes, soup
Spicy Saag – Nettle style
May 15, 2012

Spicy Saag – Nettle style

May 15, 2012 By

A few days ago on facebook I wrote little post on Nettle, and how it could be used as a substitute for a recipe in Food As Medicine called Spciy Saag. Well, yesterday I went into the forest and harvested nettle, along with some miner’s lettuce (Claytonia sibirica) and cleavers (Galium aparine) which all grew in the same area. It’s amazing how many wild edibles there are, probably growing in your backyard. For this recipe, any green vegetable can be used, although Nettles are particularly favored due to their high nutrient content.  Here’s a little history on Nettle, taken from my monograph at toddcaldecott.com.

Nettle has a long history of use all over the world as a food, medicine and textile fiber. Weiss properly calls Nettle a ruderale, meaning that it tends to grow around human settlements (1988, 261). Grieve states that the common name of Nettle is derived from the German noedl meaning ‘needle,’ possibly from its sharp sting, or in reference to the fact that it once furnished thread and cloth before the introduction of flax and hemp into Europe (1971, 575). ‘Net’ is stated as being the passive participle of ne, a verb that in many Indo-European languages such as Latin and Sanskrit, means ‘sew’ or ‘bind,’ respectively (Grieve 1971, 575). Nettle was at one time highly esteemed as a textile fiber, and is highly durable, once thought to be the only real equivalent to cotton, used by the third Reich during the second world war as a textile in manufacture of German uniforms (Grieve 1971, 575; Wood 1999, 482). Beyond its importance as a fiber however, Nettle has long been regarded as an important and nutritious green vegetable, one of the first edible green growing things of spring, picked young and eaten steamed or in soups, said to be a good corrector of the bowels. The body of the famous Tibetan yogi Milarepa is said to have turned green from consuming nothing other than Nettle during his meditations. Despite being classified as a weed in many parts of the North America, Nettle was at one time highly prized commodity in rural areas, where the English poet Campbell recounts of his travels, “In Scotland I have eaten nettles, I have slept in nettle sheets, and I have dined off a nettle tablecloth” (Grieve 1971 575). More recently Nettle has been used as a commercial source of chlorophyll, and Weiss states that this color has been used in Germany as a food coloring agent for canned vegetables (1988, 262; Mills and Bone 2000, 490).

Here is the recipe for Spicy Saag, from Food As Medicine:

Saag refers to any kind of stir-fried greens in Indian cookery, prepared with the characteristic Indian spices such as cumin and black mustard seed. While spinach is most commonly used nowadays, saag can be made with any kind of greens, such as amaranth greens found in Chinese markets as hin choy and Indian markets as chaulai. I frequently use the kale and chard in my garden. To boost the nutrient content, I also add in other herbs such as fresh cilantro and fenugreek (methi), or use curry leaf instead.

Ingredients
1-2 lbs of amaranth greens, chopped into 1 inch chunks
½ bunch finely chopped fenugreek (methi)
½ bunch finely chopped cilantro; or, 1-2 sprigs of curry leaves
one-thumb sized piece of fresh ginger, grated
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp black mustard seed
½ tsp hing powder
2 tbsp coriander powder
½-1 tsp turmeric
½-1 tsp black pepper
1-2 tsp pink salt (sanchal)
2-3 tbsp ghee

Directions
Melt ghee in a wok or large saucepan at medium heat, and when it begins to glisten add in fresh ginger, cumin and black mustard seed. If you are using curry leaf instead of cilantro, slide the leaves off the curry sprig and into the pan. When the mustard seeds just begin to pop, add in hing, coriander, turmeric, black pepper and pink salt. Stir for a half minute and then add in amaranth greens, turning the heat up a little higher. Cook veggies for about 2-3 minutes on high heat, then reduce it back to a medium heat. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, just until the leaves turn a bright, brilliant green. Serves 2-4 people.

For variations, use different herbs and spices. Have a little gas? Add some ajwain, crushed fenugreek seed or fennel seed. Maybe today the kapha is a little thick and heavy? Add in some red chili powder. Or instead of cilantro or curry leaf, try some Thai Basil instead.

Filed Under: Digestion, Food As Medicine, Meals, Recipes, Vegetarian, Wild Food
Raw Food Reality Hour
Apr 18, 2012

Raw Food Reality Hour

April 18, 2012 By

A few months back I addressed the issue of veganism in my blog, and provided a series of snippets and references from my book, suggesting that a long term vegan diet – especially in women and children – can be dangerous. This post generated a fair amount of reaction by vegans, but it also opened up the possibility of a more nuanced, well-reasoned approach to this issue. Today I want to continue this debate, by addressing the issue of raw foodism. The following is taken from my book, Food As Medicine, and is a compilation of my thoughts on this issue:

Today there are an increasingly large number of people claiming that raw food is the best way to eat most or all of your food, informed by the theories of early 20th century advocates such as Edward Howell, Ann Wigmore and Herbert Shelton.  Like veganism raw foodism has become a kind of underground social movement that equates social change with dietary choice.  Broadly speaking raw foodists usually lay claim to one or two camps: those that only eat raw vegetable foods such as raw vegans, fruitarians and sproutarians, and the other that also or exclusively eats raw animal products.

Historically there are very few examples of raw food cultures.  One notable example are the Inuit peoples, an aboriginal group of northern Canada called ‘Eskimo’ (‘eaters of raw meat’) by their southern Cree neighbors.  While it is true that the Inuit do eat some raw fish and meat, the idea that they traditionally ate raw food exclusively is contradicted by ethnographic reports.[i] Besides the Inuit the only other indigenous groups that regularly eat raw meat also live in circumpolar regions, where frigid temperatures prevent against microbial growth and food-borne illness.

Raw foodism maintains several arguments, central of which is the idea that raw food contains vitally important enzymes that aid in digestion, and that by cooking food we destroy them.  Taken at face value this theory seems to have a rational basis, but it doesn’t account for the fact that the body produces far more enzymes in its digestive secretions than are found in the food itself.  If it were true that these enzymes were necessary for digestion it would stand to reason that the body would not need to produce its own enzymes, when in reality the body produces up to five liters (1.3 gallons) of digestive juices on a daily basis.  Like all proteins, enzymes are denatured and digested in the gut into their constituent peptide fragments, rendering them devoid of any significant enzymatic activity.

Raw foodism suggests that raw food has a higher nutrient value than cooked food, but what this fails to take into account is the issue of bioavailability.  While cooking does reduce the nutrient content in some foods, it dramatically enhances nutrient bioavailability, offsetting any loss in nutrients by reducing the energy required for digestion and assimilation. According to anthropologists humans have been cooking food for more than a million years, and in the process have undergone both anatomical and physiological changes that reflect our reliance upon it.[ii] Compared to our primate cousins, humans have a much smaller gut and yet characteristically larger brains (i.e. a higher encephalization quotient).  Research suggests that cooking enhanced the efficiency of nutrient absorption, allowing for the evolution of a much smaller absorptive surface and hence smaller digestive tract, while at the same time boosting the energy intake required for the characteristically larger and more complex human brain.[iii]

Some raw foodists also believe that cooking destroys naturally occurring microbes such as Lactobacilli that support gut health and prevent disease.  Unless the raw food has been fermented to allow these “friendly” bacteria to out-compete other microbes however, raw food may also contain pathogenic bacteria such as Campylobacter, Clostridium, Salmonella and Escherichia coli. Other potential pathogens in raw food include pathogenic viruses (e.g. norovirus, enterovirus, hepatitis A virus), pathogenic fungi (Aspergillus, Fusarium) and parasites (Giardia lamblia, Entamoeba histolytica) that can cause both acute and chronic illness.  In contradistinction to the claim that raw food is healthy, there are an estimated 76 million food-borne illnesses each year in the United States, accounting for 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths, all from eating raw or improperly cooked food.[iv] This is not to suggest that raw food is necessarily unhealthy, but that there are certain risks that need to be taken into consideration.

The last of the major arguments put forward by raw foodists is that cooking food results in the formation of toxins including glycotoxins, heterocyclic amines, transfats and nitrosamines.  Here the argument for raw food finds its most strength, but much of this concern relates to specific cooking methods rather than cooking itself.  In some instances raw food does have apparent benefits over cooked food, but these theoretical issues need to be weighed against empiricism and traditional practices.  Although often couched in simplistic terms, the issue of raw versus cooked food isn’t as black and white as many believe.

From a traditional medical perspective raw food can be eaten as part of a healthy diet but always with an eye to the nature of the food and the capacity of digestion.  According to Ayurveda people that have strong digestion (pitta) can usually tolerate raw food on a regular basis, but consuming raw food all the time aggravates the quality of coldness in the body (vata, kapha), diminishing digestive activity and vital energy – a notion supported by anthropological evidence.[v]Although support for a raw food diet is weak in traditional systems such as Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, raw food has special therapeutic application in the treatment of disease and in particular to promote detoxification (p. 216).

[i] Stefansson V. 1913. My life with the Eskimo. New York: MacMillan p. 176-8.  Available online: http://openlibrary.org/books/OL6562100M/My_life_with_the_Eskimo

[ii] Wrangham R, Conklin-Brittain N. 2003. Cooking as a biological trait. Comp Biochem Physiol A Mol Integr Physiol. 136(1):35-46.

[iii] Carmody RN, Wrangham RW. 2009. The energetic significance of cooking. J Hum Evol. 57(4):379-91

[iv] Mead PS, Slutsker L, Dietz V, McCaig LF, Bresee JS, Shapiro C, Griffin PM, Tauxe RV. 1999. Food-related illness and death in the United States. Emerg Infect Dis. 5(5):607-25

[v] Boback SM, Cox CL, Ott BD, Carmody R, Wrangham RW, Secor SM. 2007. Cooking and grinding reduces the cost of meat digestion. Comp Biochem Physiol A Mol Integr Physiol. 148(3):651-6

Filed Under: Ayurveda, Diet, Digestion, Meals, Raw food, Veganism