Eating for a Better Brain

http://www.everydayhealth.com/digestive-health/how-gut-microbes-change-the-brain.aspx?xid=fb_EH_sf

How to Make the Transition to Paleo

The Paleo diet is easier for some of us than it is for others. If you are eating a diet which consists mainly of sugar and carbs, particularly the really processed ones, the Paleo diet may sound like Kill-Joy's perfect way to get you wound up. Paleo experts suggest dropping your current diet and switching to 30-day trials without every food you've been used to, or a 30-day Reset. But what if you need to function at your best and can't function when you're body has been thrown into a place it hasn't met in, say, 10,000 years? And what if you've never cooked a chicken in your life? Don't run away, and don't bark back at Kill-Joy, who means well. Instead, try a proper transition, slow and steady. 

A 30-day trial is fine if you want to start seeing results quickly or you want to be aware of the real difference between how you felt on your old diet and how you will feel in 30 days. But what if you actually need to function during those 30-days? What if you are pushing your limits of activity? What if you can't take the 'carb flu', as I hear it's called, and either you need to keep going or you become extremely agitated when your body won't let you stay awake through the afternoon? And finally, what if you've never cooked in the manner advised by many of the meal plans online? What if you don't know how much the average supermarket chicken weighs and you've never had to squeeze its slimy legs into the oven before? A recipe with a long list of weird food preparation guidelines may be seriously off-putting for the five-minute kitchen spender or the person who is more familiar with the identically sliced meats in the cooked food aisle of the supermarket than he is with a very long kitchen knife. 

So, for anyone who even slightly fits into this category, try making smaller changes to your diet. Try experimenting with one recipe one day and another on a different day. Try slowly replacing your poorly formed, energy-depleting, high-carbohydrate, passed through thirty hands in a factory meal with something which looks like you could have hunted, caught, grown, or picked, yourself. And then evaluate the results so far.

Here's my best idea for making the transition. See what you think.

1. Protein comes from poultry, eggs, and meat. Only. That's actually a massive variety of sources.
• Get your poultry and your meat from the relevant 'fresh' aisles in the supermarkets. Choose grass-fet or organic where possible, but if not just go for something which requires cooking. The chicken breast fillets or the beef pieces in packets are fine. What you're doing right now is increasing the amount of poultry and meat you eat and buying ones which haven't been prepared, cut into shape, and depleted of nutrients. Seriously, turn over the packet and have a read of the ingredients. What does it say? Chicken? Beef? As expected? Right, now walk over to the cooked meats section. Pick up a packet of chicken. Turn it over. Read the ingredients. More than one? Anything you don't recognise? How comfortable do you feel now?
• For eggs, choose ones which are organic or where the packet says that welfare of the chickens was good. Not only will it stop you feeling guilty, it will taste better too.
2. Replace all 'carby' meals with their equivalent veg sources. Let's break this down:
• Want pasta or noodles? No problem. Just replace the pasta itself with zucchini, carrot, spaghetti squash or other starchy vegetable source. Grind down until it resembles noodles, or you can play around to make pasta shapes, and then boil, fry, or think of something new. Now add the sauce. Great.
• Want pizza? Make the bread out of flax and almond flour. 
• Want bread? Ditto.
• Cereal? Porridge? Oh my gosh, you have just reached the amazing Paleo meals! Nuts can make porridge. Did you know that? Nuts can make milk. Bet you didn't know that either. Combine an apple (without skin) and a pear in a blender, add maybe five almonds, and you have the same magnificence. You can also use buckwheat to make your own fabulous cereal. Try fresh fruit with almond milk for breakfast. Yum.
3. What have I missed?
4. If you do eat all the crap you're not supposed to eat (ehem, crisps, sweets, etc...chocolate is debatable), make these instead:
• Sweet potato chips (dehydrated in the oven)
• Other vegetable chips
• Smoothies, sweet porridges, and dried fruit (limited!) to get your sugar craving sorted.
5. No fizzy drinks. N.O. Make fresh fruit juices instead. 

---> Get that sorted, and you're on Transition Road! --->

Next, reduce the amount of carbs you are eating and increase the amount of protein. 

---> How are we doing? --->

Finally, vary the types of protein you are getting. Ensure that you have veg with every meal, and protein with every meal. Vary the amount of veg, too. 

---> And that's a wrap for now! --->

Just keep going!

The Smoothie Test

This is my first proper smoothie. By proper, I mean I actually spent time on it. It's genius. I mean, it's so genius that it had me sqeaking in excitement. It made two whole glasses worth! What a reward for all that hard work chopping one apple, a few strawberries, shoving lots of frozen fruit in a jug, and hitting the stir button on the food chopper. It's not my recipe: it's from 'Superjuice: Juicing for Health and Happiness,' by Michael van Straten. I added two mint leaves, because I thought it looked cool. But does Rusty like it?

Here it is: the yummy looking smoothie in a glass.

Here he comes. I think that's a sniff. I think that's a definite like!

And why wouldn't he?

It's just yum. And it passed the test!

Recipe:

• The recipe called for one cooking apple, but there just happened to be a Pink Lady apple sitting in the fridge, so I stole that.
• I couldn't find a scale (I know, I know: how do I live my kitchen days?) so I just took some leftover strawberries, some frozen mixed fruit, removing the blackberries, and some frozen mango (the recipe called for one whole mango, but I was all out), and some pineapple from a tin. The amount fit into a 1 litre measuring jug (right)
• I tipped half into a plastic bowl and used the food mixer. Then I poured this amount back in and mixed it all at once. This way it all fit. The final amount made just under 1 litre, or 2 tall glasses.

Symptoms

If you're stuck with any of the following moans and groans or symptoms, this health blog may be a place to check in every once and a while: 

• regurgitation (not sick or acid reflux)
• having to eat little and often
• ensuring there are enough vitamins and nutrients in your diet
• motility conditions - in which you absorb foods at weird rates and can't take meals which have a large variety of ingredients in them, particularly if liquids are combined with solids.
• prepandrial bradygastria (my condition) or rhythmic disorders of the gut/stomach 

IBS and other bowl conditions may also share some - but not all - symptoms. 

My theory is that for those of us with these conditions/symptoms, there is no single cure, and thus no single theory of how to deal with it. Along with my own experimenting, I will be referring to some theories and books - the paleo diet, the hay diet and general food combining, and others - but I will be taking out bits from each one, and finding something which works for people who need the easily digestible foods on the paleo diet, but who also need easily accessible foods (i.e. from a supermarket) which are also affordable and do not fill up a fridge or a cupboard. 

The aim is always to find the ultimate 'perfect' diet which doesn't budge no matter how hard it's nudged. In reality though, this 'perfect' diet may need to change, or be redrawn, year on year due to a change in routine, activity level, the notorious 'H' for hormone, or even the weather which influences Vitamin D levels and, y'know, whether you want a hot drink or a cold one. The real aim then, most only be to find the most easily adaptable diet, or to understand your body/stomach well enough to know what you need and what you simply can't take.