It doesn’t take much to vary the diet until it becomes second nature.
Wheat is present in a wide variety of foods, from the obvious sources such as bread, cakes and biscuits to sauces, seasonings and many processed foods, and it is one of the most commonly eaten allergens in the UK.
An intolerance or sensitivity to wheat is a common cause of tiredness, loss of concentration and digestive problems. Stop to consider how often it is eaten, possibly at every meal; wheat-based cereal or toast, sandwich for lunch and pasta in the evening, and that’s not including any biscuits, cakes or snacks during the day.
Gluten contained in wheat is a sticky substance that is capable of reducing the absorption of nutrients in susceptible people. In fact, the mixture of processed white wheat flour and water is sticky enough to be used as wallpaper paste—this is certainly not the effect that we want to be happening in our stomachs. In some individuals, wheat gluten can act as a brain irritant.
It is this glue-like property that makes wheat so difficult to digest, requiring a great deal of energy to do so. For this reason, it is often found that by eliminating wheat, energy levels increase dramatically, thus leaving more energy for the body to repair and heal itself. Remember that wheat-free does not always mean gluten-free.
Alternative grains
Flours: Barley, buckwheat, chickpea, maize, potato, rice, quinoa, rye, tapioca, millet and chestnut flour and soya
Crackers: Corn cakes, oatcakes, rice cakes, rye crackers or crispbreads, savoury biscuits (Village Bakery make gluten-free ones)
Pasta: Corn, millet, spelt, buckwheat, kamut or vegetable varieties. Try Mother Hemp Spelt and Hemp pasta, it tastes like regular pasta (go to www.motherhemp.com)
Whole grains: Barley, buckwheat, kamut, millet, rye, quinoa, brown rice, oats and corn
Lunch alternatives
* Jacket potato with a protein filling (cottage cheese, tuna, egg) and some salad
* Soup (check the ingredients if not home-made) with crackers or wheat-free bread and tuna or beans for some protein and more substance
* Mixed salad with nuts, seeds, apple and avocado
* Bean salads with olive oil, lemon and herbs—try parsley, coriander or chives
* Corn, oat or rice cakes with hummus, nut butter, vegetables, fish pâté (check for wheat content), avocado, cottage cheese
* Bean burgers, tofu sausages (check the ingredients), grilled or poached fish with salad
Rule 3: Vary your dairy
This is the same story really—we can tot up a huge amount of dairy points in a day if we are not careful; just remember to vary the type of dairy you have so that you get a broad spectrum of nutrients. Think how many cappuccinos some people main-line. Relying on one or two types of food is not a good definition of a varied diet.
There is also a lot of chat and beating of the nutritional bongo drums about dairy generally. Is dairy food the super duper wonder food that we were led to believe, even if we were all brought up on it? The comfort of the milk moustache with the large glass of milk before bedtime? We are the only mammals, as far as I am aware, to suckle another big mammal’s milk into adulthood and the more milk you drink, the higher the level of a hormone called IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor) there is in your blood. The higher the IGF-1, the higher the risk for breast cancer. In rural China, breast cancer is a relatively unknown, while in the UK, the rates are one person in eight. Makes you think? And before you say it, there are plenty of other good sources of calcium—leafy green veg for one (see the box, right).
Alternative sources of calcium
* Dark green leafy vegetables—spinach, kale, cabbage, watercress
* Nuts and seeds (especially sesame)
* Soya
* Sardines
* Parsley
* Pulses
* Prunes
Rule 4: Eat breakfast
Breakfast means breaking the fast. Over night the levels of sugar in the blood drop—so if you have a sugary, sweet, light or fluffy breakfast, the blood sugar rises steeply for that inevitable crash. Normally at around 11am. Masses of people say to me that when they eat breakfast they actually feel more hungry and not less—so they are often tempted to skip breakfast altogether. The reason that you feel hungrier is because you are eating all the wrong foods! The sweet, fluffy and white types of food will make you feel starving. The fluffy foods are white toast with jam and orange juice, Rice Crispies, cereal with loads of sugar, etc.
Instead, you need a dense, thick fibrous breakfast and the best choice would be:
* Porridge (proper jumbo oats) with rice milk and berries, but be careful that you don’t compensate by scattering on a mound of sugar to make it taste better.
* Wheat-free muesli (only wheat free because they tend to be made without sugar and also have a variation of grains).
* Eggs: boiled, scrambled (you don’t need butter or milk, just scramble the eggs in a non-stick pan), poached, omelette—with spinach, tomatoes, asparagus or sugar snap peas.
* Kippers.
* Kedgeree made with brown rice.
* Sardines on toast with tomatoes (even from a tin)—I know this one is a big ask!
* Pasteurised goat’s cheese/mozzarella and tomatoes on toast with watercress.
* Cashew nut butters with rye toast.
Rule 5: Eat like a caveman
I don’t really mean eat like an actual caveman—all those hairy mammoths and scurrying around looking under rocks for worms. Think of your nails, for a start. I do, however, mean the idea of eating real food that hasn’t been processed. Cavemen had to hunt for their food, fish for it, kill it, skin it, build a fire, cook on it. Or they had to grow it, wait a really long time and then harvest it, grind it up, cook it, mash it. What an adventure food must have been way back then.
Think how easy it is to get our hands on food now. We just have to head up the road to the local supermarket and fill the trolley. It is tempting to stack the trolley full of all sorts of ‘treats’ (after all, we have had a hard time at work and surely must deserve one of Mr Kipling’s ‘delicious’ cakes?). We may think that a Kipling’s cake will hit the spot, but our bodies disagree—they haven’t evolved much. In fact, our bodies’ reaction and requirement of food hasn’t changed since we were swinging through the trees, but our modern food has dramatically changed—and to think this has more or less happened in the last 40 years or so. Even when I was a kid in the Seventies there really wasn’t that much junk food—Frey Bentos Pies (delicious by the way, but I can’t think what can be in them), and peas and fish fingers. Oh, and Angel Delight. Sheer poison.
I am sure after the depravation of the war years, all this instant, cheap food must have seemed too good to be true. The truth is, it is too good to be true. Our bodies, although jolly clever, haven’t adapted to eating all the rubbish we throw at them. They are not used to eating the sweet, white and fluffy foods that most junk foods consist of—and everyone is scratching their heads trying to work out why the Western nations are turning into huge, lardy fatty-puffs—eating food that is not real food, that is how it’s happened. We have turned our bodies over to food scientists who want to prolong shelf life, or the advertisers who want to make money out of us. We are no longer making our own decisions. When you eat real food, it is really difficult to eat a highly calorific diet—vegetables, fruit, whole grains, fish and chicken and