http://www.thekindlife.com/post/taylor-kicks-ibs-to-the-curb

My take on Taylor’s success has to do with acid/alkaline balance in the blood.  The modern diet today is full of acid forming foods (protein, dairy, refined sugars/carbs, artificial sweeteners, caffeine)  and a lot of times lacking in alkaline foods (fresh vegetables, good quality sea salt, sea vegetables, seeds).

The blood’s pH level should be at or around 7.4 at all times.  The body works as hard as it can to maintain this pH level, even if we are feeding ourselves lots of foods that make this very difficult.  Over a period of time, if the body is consistently working in overdrive to try to maintain a healthy pH level, it will eventually start malfunctioning due to the blood acidity (e.g. screwy digestive system). Some common symptoms of blood acidity are toenail fungus, candida, athlete’s foot, and all other infections.  Blood that remains slightly acidic allows bacteria to grow, thus causing infections.  Much more serious problems will develop if the blood remains this way for many years, including clogging up the digestive system so that it can’t digest foods properly.

With all that said, why would a vegan diet help this acidic situation?  Well, a couple of the obvious points are protein and dairy.  Whilst vegans will still get protein from things like tofu, beans, and whole grains, these foods are not nearly as concentrated in protein as meat or poultry.  Vegans also won’t have any dairy.   Leaving meat and dairy out, hopefully this person will simply add lots of fresh vegetables, some fresh fruit, a few sea vegetables, and some alkaline seasonings (sea salt, miso, shoyu) to their meals and voila, you’ve got a really balanced diet, one that supports the body’s desired pH level.  In fact, this is what you would call a macrobiotic diet.

Now, I realize there any many vegans and/or vegetarians who do not get a balanced diet.  There are many people who end up eating lots of refined foods, like packaged vegetarian meals, low quality bread, white rice, non-dairy cheeses/milks, and sugary “health foods” that are plentiful at any health food store.  This kind of a diet does not support your body.  If you eat this way, you can’t think that you are treating your body well just because you’ve cut out meat and dairy.  You need to get the whole foods like grains and vegetables.

If you’re suffering with IBS or other digestive ailments, try a vegan diet for a few weeks and see how you feel.  Or if that seems out of the question, at least try substituting some of your meat meals for a plant source of protein like lentils.  You might find you feel wonderful!

If you have any experience with IBS, things that have helped your IBS, being vegan or vegetarian, or anything similar, I would love to hear about it!

To your health,

Kimberly

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my immediate family and all of my sister-in-law’s family.  We saw the maternal side of her family for lunch and then the paternal side for dinner (just for clarification I only ate once!) It was a really fun day, but what made it ultra-unique was the vegetarian food we had.

One of the cousins in the family was vegan, so she had brought all vegan food to her grandmother’s house – her grandmother had asked her to do this, as she didn’t want to have to make two different dinners to feed the meat-eaters and vegetarians…rightly so.  Anyway, as my husband is really trying to be vegan and I rarely have any meat these days, we both had the non-meat Thanksgiving meals.

We had vegan stuffing, some kind of soy roast (a soy based stuffing inside of a pastry crust), mushroom gravy, and cauliflower mash.  All items were vegan apart from the mash which had ricotta cheese.  Did I miss the turkey?  Not a bit.  Did I miss the sour cream laden mashed potatoes covered in turkey gravy?  Definitely.  But, I woke up the next day and didn’t feel totally bloated.  And I didn’t suffer from the normal post-meal fatigue caused by tryptophan.

All in all, this Thanksgiving was no less special than previous years, even without the traditional turkey.  I’ll try to get the recipe for the mushroom gravy to share with you guys. It was a real hit!

To your health,

Kimberly

Before I left England (less than two weeks ago now) I just had to have afternoon tea somewhere in London.  I had never done that and it seemed a shame to not try it at least once.

So many menus to choose from!

I ended up taking my mother-in-law to Fortnum and Mason for tea.  While there are many beautiful places to choose from for tea (the Ritz was the first one that came to mind) I ended up choosing Fortnum and Mason because of their vast choice of “special dietary” menus.  I was surprised to see that they had a dairy-free menu, a gluten-free menu, an egg-free menu, a vegetarian menu, a diabetic menu, and even a vegan menu.

As my mother-in law is a vegetarian, I eat mostly vegetarian and sometimes try for vegan, and I also do best when I don’t have a lot of gluten, this was the perfect place for us to go.  I did check around at the Ritz, Claridges, and a couple other places, but I didn’t see anyone with these same choices.  If I had called to ask whether the other restaurants offered vegetarian or vegan menus, they might have said yes, but it wasn’t obvious on their websites, so I just went with Fortnum and Mason.

We had our tea in the St. James restaurant, which is very traditional – just what I wanted in the last few days of English experiences.  We ordered one vegetarian and one vegan meal just to see what the difference would be and to get to try both.  Let me say, they were both delicious, and not actually that different.

What They Served

For canapes, we had a red pepper based soup with some marinated artichokes and a tiny bit of salad on the side as the vegan choice.  The vegetarian choice was a carrot based soup with similar sides.  (They were very small portions by the way.)

For sandwiches, both menus had grilled vegetable sandwiches (red peppers, eggplant, yellow peppers), artichoke and hummus sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches, and one other selection I can’t think of.  The vegetarian menu also had an egg sandwich and one wensleydale cheese sandwich.  These were all small finger sandwiches so that you could have one of each.  And some of them had gluten free bread.

Next was scones with jam, butter, and clotted cream.  These were scrumptious!  Even the vegan one, which was made without milk, was great.  We had soy butter and soy cream instead of dairy.

Finally, the vegan serving had fresh berries as dessert and the vegetarian menu had a choice of cakes.  Again, they were all delicious, but clearly the vegan option didn’t get any special cakes.  To be honest, we didn’t need any of them anyway (I mean, we ate them of course, but we were full before that.)

Other Info

The service in St. James’s was exceptional.  There were seconds of anything you wanted.  The tea was bottomless.  Overall, it was a fantastic (but indulgent) experience.

I’m so pleased I got a chance to do that before moving back to the US and I will certainly try to get my parents in there whenever we next visit.  It is a pricey afternoon (£34 each), but as a special afternoon treat, it was well worth it.  Additionally, as you can stay in there as long as you like, you can actually make an event out of it.  We ended up being in there for almost 4 hours!!  And I do remember seeing a couple of other Americans in there who had their maps out planning what they were going to do while in town.  What a great idea!

Afternoon tea couldn’t be an everyday occasion (as I easily consumed 1,500 calories over the course of the meal), but it was still fabulous.

Be sure to leave some time either before or after your meal to look around the various floors in Fortnum and Mason.  You’ll find exquisite jewelry, handbags, holiday decorations, tea, chocolate, and lots of other goodies.

You can make a reservation at:  http://www.fortnumandmason.com/stjames-restaurant.aspx

To your health,

Kimberly

So…I’ve been looking at what the top sources of protein are for non-animal/non-animal product eaters.  For the most part they were pretty much what I would have expected, but a couple were a surprise.

Here are the Top 10 –

1. Tempeh (a soybean based food)

2. Seitan (wheat based, but not starchy, supposedly a good mock meat)

3. Soybeans

4. Other types of beans

5. Tofu

6. Quinoa (this is a grain, but when cooked has a similar consistency to rice or couscous)

7. Peas

8. Peanut butter/almond butter (or just the nuts themselves, seeds are good as well)

9. Brown rice

10. Spinach

I haven’t actually tried either of the first two on the list, but everything else I have.  They all make for delicious meals or snacks.

One thing not to forget is that vegetables are a great source of protein.  Peas and spinach (as listed above) are two of the most protein rich vegetables, but many other vegetables have protein as well.  So, as a vegan (or vegetarian, or even a meat eater), just by including lots of vegetables in your diet, you ARE getting protein.  It is easy to forget this.

I’ll be posting some great recipes using the above ingredients, so make sure to check back with us.

To your health

Kimberly

I found a recipe for a vegan burger on http://www.simpleveganrecipes.co.uk, which I thought was worth sharing.  The great thing about this recipe is that it uses no animal products and has beans in it for that extra protein and fibre content.   And you can change up the spices a little bit to suit your preferences.

For you vegetarians out there who feel like you miss out on barbeque season, I would imagine you can take this same recipe and grill the burgers rather than frying them.   I’m certainly going to try it…once some barbeque weather is here.

Butter Bean Burgers

1 onion, chopped finely

1 red or green pepper, chopped finely