Food Intolerances
1. Listen to your body - if you feel tired or other symptoms after consuming something in particular, take note! Try cutting it out of your diet and see if you feel difference!
Sometimes after certain foods you feel bloated, tired, find it hard to focus even angry! See if you can connect these reactions to a particular food.
2. Go on a mini-cleanse – doesn't have to be radical. Simply remove what you think is affecting you, out of your diet! Do this for around 4 weeks for best results.
The cool thing about doing a mini-cleanse is that you realise how amazing you feel when you pull allergens out of the diet. Until you’ve experienced feeling great you don’t really know what you’re missing out on! So give it a crack!
Doing a mini-cleanse sounds hard but it’s actually really easy to do with a busy lifestyle. See below for how to do a cleanse.
3. The fun part - discovering the incredible tasting variety of alternatives. It almost makes it fun trying products that so many people may never come across! Any if you’re not used to the flavour, remember it takes 14 days for your taste buds to adapt. Remember the gut is the king of our immune systems, if your gut is happy then your immune system will be in tip-top shape! When we have an allergic reaction its often caused when specific allergens pass through the gut wall and the body finds this potential pathogen and attacks it. This is the “auto-immune” response! So if the gut is happy pathogens cannot pass through the gut wall and cause a reaction. That’s why it’s great to eat foods, which feed the gut flora like sauerkraut, olives, miso and tempeh, or a good organic yoghurt!
Gluten-free Alternatives:
• Buckwheat
• Amaranth
• Rice
• Quinoa! (three varieties; white, red & black… makes for great salads or a replacement to rice) Quinoa is the highest protein containing grain and it is gluten free so very easy for us to assimilate, it’s an ancient Aztec grain so its been used as a major food source in South America for yonks!
Meal Suggestions:
• Quinoa salad (See recipe below)
• Quinoa and amaranth porridge
• Buckwheat blueberry pancakes
• Go for gluten free breads
• Rice instead of pasta or gluten free pastas
Diary-free Milk Alternatives:
• Rice
• Almond
• Soy (non-GMO)
• Oat, quinoa, millet, hazelnut
The benefit of removing potential allergens is that you will simply feel so much better and function better. You simply feel cleansed and you feel like you’re running on full steam!
Quinoa Salad
1 cup red quinoa wholegrain, rinsed
6 Roma tomatoes, finely diced
100g baby spinach leaves, shredded
¼ Spanish onion, finely diced
1 large beetroot, peeled and grated
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
Dried cranberries, small handful
1 tbsp sunflower seeds
1 tbsp pepita pumpkin seeds
Pinch sumac
Take one cup of red quinoa and cook the same way you would cook rice or according to packet instructions. To do this, simply put your quinoa into a pot and cover it with
1½ cups of water. As the quinoa cooks you’ll notice they look like they grow little tails, this is completely normal. The quinoa gets to about triple its size. When it’s ready, the quinoa will look light and fluffy and there shouldn’t be any leftover water. This cooking process takes me about 15 minutes, leaving 5 minutes to let the quinoa stand and fluff with a fork, but you can soak the quinoa beforehand - this will decrease its cooking time.
Add the tomatoes, baby spinach, salad onion, grated beetroot, dried cranberries and sunflower seeds.
Toss and add agave dressing. Finish with a sprinkle of pepitas and sumac.
Agave Dressing
Juice of 1 small lemon
3 tbsp tamari (wheat free soy sauce)
1 tbsp agave
Splash of apple cider vinegar
Combine all ingredients and use with your favourite salads and vegetables.
From Lola Berry's Book, Inspiring Ingredients. Out July 2010. For more, visit: www.lolaberry.com
