I'm offering a four-part kitchen series at Partners in Health Care, Naturally featuring my own healthy renditions of some of the most delicious, decadent, damaging and addictive foods.
The classes are held every other Tuesday from 5:30 to 7:00 pm.
The first class featured seed-based yogurt cultured with HMF Replete probiotic from the Nature's Medicinary. Everyone enjoyed it and we had a really good time connecting over foods that are not "the regular." In other classes I'll be featuring cheese, ice cream, and coffee beverages.
I never realized how significant dairy was until I really started having conversations with people about their food intake. I found out that many people must have cheese on a salad, milk with coffee, and think that ice cream is just not ice cream unless it's "the real thing." Around this same time came the realization that dairy products can cause a lot of health issues.
The problem is that all of these foods cause mucus in the body. The tenets of nutritional therapy expressed this long ago, calling it dampness, and recognized that our metabolism does not do so well with processing these foods. It takes a lot of energy, leaves a waste product of mucus, and slows down the lymphatic system, which is similar to a sewage system--after awhile of slow metabolism and movement, we start to see and feel it. Bowel habits can change, and we get more colds, flues, allergies, headaches, cysts, tumors, cellulite or excess body weight. We become toxic because the sewage system is full and can't move.
It's no coincidence that the foods that create a lot of dampness are also highly allergenic according to modern nutritional theory. These are foods like wheat, gluten, yeast, beer, roasted peanuts and peanut butter, sweeteners, saturated fats, concentrated tomato and orange juice, and of course, dairy. There is a loophole with goat and sheep milks, as they tend to be easier on our human digestive system, but most people don't favor goat milk, nor is it that easy to find. I like to describe it as a continuum, with cow dairy being the most damaging, then soy, then sheep or goat, and nuts, seeds, and coconuts would be the least mucus producing. All of these foods are high in fat, so there is no escaping dampness, we can just change the quality of it.
A really neat perk to experimenting with these alternatives is that we can tweak the recipes and make the foods "superfoods" that can satisfy some of our own unique nutritional needs. For example, using a high-quality probiotic like HMF Replete cultures the yogurt and cheese and can increase the number of gut-friendly bacteria in the body. Seed yogurt can be made in such a way that it works to harmonize the endocrine system or detoxify the liver, and it heals the gut at the same time. The coffee drinks are a really good way to incorporate healing herbs into an enjoyable and elevating beverage. All of the demonstrations involve raw foods whenever possible to enhance the use of the vital energy in the ingredients.
The next class is Tuesday, April 30 from 5:30-7:00 pm at 347 S. Montezuma St. There will be a short lecture and discussion when we address the addictive nature of cheese, then a demonstration and tasting of nacho cheese and a fruit cheesecake.
We will take a break from the topic of dairy for May and have classes on "Eating for Hormonal Balance" (5/14) and "The Biophoton: The Most Important Nutrient Is Not On Any Label" on (5/28). The "Ditch the Dairy" series resumes in June with "A Nice Cream Alternative to Ice Cream" and "Herbal Tonics to Start the Day."
Classes are $5 per person, which includes samples and recipes for everyone. Please call the clinic at 928-445-2900 to register so we know how many people to expect.
I look forward to seeing you in the kitchen!
