Afraid to go against the grain? Here’s food for thought.
The starches in grains are packed for storage like pressed feathers. Soaking and sprouting, or cooking in excess water until thoroughly hydrated, lets the feathers expand so that the enzyme ptyalin secreted in saliva can access and break apart the starches during thorough chewing. Otherwise, the packed starches may ferment as mentioned below.
Some advisors recommend grains for minerals. However, unless soaked, rinsed and boiled or sprouted, grains contain phytates that inhibit zinc absorption.
Baking destroys more nutrients than boiling. Baking starches without water (chips) forms carcinogenic acrylamides. Hardened, baked grains may not get digested fully, tending to ferment in our digestive tract, producing toxins. While adults may get toxic fermentation with baked grains, young children handle them even less well, infants not at all. (Please see “It’s a gas! -Fermentation during digestion-”.)
Over-emphasizing grains or seitan (concentrated wheat gluten protein) can make blood slightly acidotic, contributing toward degenerative disorders over the long term. (Please see “Acid-alkali balance”.) Lots of baked grains can cause the onset of diabetes and/or hypoglycemic reactions due to sharp insulin response. However, I can eat a variety of boiled grains and veggies at each meal, even two cups of grains, and feel great.
The gluten in many grains is the adhesive used in Plaster of Paris. Gluten is allergenic. How much glue is good for the body? So limit the wheat and its relatives, emphasizing brown rice, quinoa, and millet.
Longer-term vegans who minimize wheat and its relatives experience fewer migraines.
Children who are unable to sit still may be suffering from an excess of dairy protein and/or wheat protein (gluten). Despite the name, the opioid (morphine-like) peptides in these foods result in such movement.
Grains contain very little calcium per calorie compared to other plant foods. This low calcium content may be a cause of osteoporosis in people who eat mainly grains. 5% of wheat bran is phytic acid, which binds the calcium and magnesium in other foods, preventing assimilation, worsening osteoporosis. Rice, millet, quinoa, and buckwheat contain less phytic acid and gluten.
Grains are low in Na. On a grain-based diet NaCl (salt) becomes an unhealthy substitute for oganically involved Na, unless sufficient greens and other plant foods get consumed. Excess salt (NaCl) has many detrimental effects. (Please see “Salting the wound”.)
Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder in which the body's white blood cells (T-lymphocytes) destroy intestinal cells causing malabsorption of many nutrients. This disease is caused by consumption of gliadin, a protein peptide component of gluten, found in wheat, rye, barley, and possibly oats. The immune system thinks gliadin is an invader, then tries to destroy it. The immune system confuses gliadin with a human protein that forms part of the lining of the intestinal tract, trying to destroy both. Avoiding gluten-containing grains enables remission of disease symptoms.
The macrobiotic diet places substantial emphasis on grains [The Macrobiotic Wayby Kushi www.kushiinstitute.org]. I’m feeling much more open to the macrobiotic diet now than when the first edition of this book was written, so long as legumes, whole grains and other foods get boiled not baked, and very well chewed. Soaking legumes and dark grains 24 hours then rinsing them before cooking, reduces the mineral-binding phytates and improves the flavor.
Powerful probiotics, vegan cheese
Dairy yogurt may retain residual disease-promoting hormones after fermentation. Even organic dairy yogurt does contain concentrated PCBs, since they’re ubiquitous in the environment. For anyone with a family history of heart disease, atheroschlerosis, cancer, with excessive fatty adipose tissue (that produces estrogen), or with allergies, a precautionary approach would be to avoid all animal-based foods, especially milk products. For those without such markers, the safest diet is still the strictly plant-based.
Aged cheese and yogurt are ferments, usually cured by bacteria as the health-promoting agent, although some cheeses get cured by fungi to produce a moldy crust. The probiotic bacteria such as acidophilus that are working in ferments provide digestive enzymes. As they work, probiotics also overwhelmpathogenic organisms in ferments and in the body.
The probiotic bacteria that are working in ferments provide digestive enzymes. (Please see “Enzymes help it happen”.) A controversial hypothesis: Since the pancreas may be depleted from overwork while supplying the body with enzymes to make up for those missing in the relative nutritional poverty of the SAD diet, ferments made with nuts can be healing, taking the place of dairy cheese and yogurt.
All dairy products, and cheese especially, even some misnamed “soy” and “rice” cheeses, contain casein, a protein that breaks apart during digestion to produce morphine-like opiate compounds, called casomorphins For fascinating information on steps to take to eliminate or reduce addictive chocolate and dairy products and the biochemical reasons for their addictive possibilities, as well as many useful suggestions for a moderate fat whole plant-food diet please see Breaking the Food Seduction by Neil D. Barnard, MD (ISBN 0-312-31493-0).
Antibiotics can destroy bacteria, as do chemotherapeutic agents, excessive salt or sugar (sucrose), excessive candida (yeast), pesticides used for conventional (non-organic) food, chlorinated water, and stress. Usage of laxatives can wash out beneficial probiotic bacteria from the digestive tract. For comments on usage of probiotics when taking antibiotics, please see “Curing the common cold and other acute infections, flu”.
The lactic acid produced by bacteria in ferments is very helpful for digestion in the stomach. Probiotics continue digesting food that arrives to the colon undigested, slowing or stopping any rotting. Lack of probiotics can make one more prone to diarrhea as well as weaken digestion.
Without probiotics present in the digestive tract, acid tolerant yeast such as candida may propagate. Probiotics can even help one dominate pathogenic bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, due to the natural competition between them for nutrients and the chemical agents such as hydrogen peroxide and acidophilin that probiotics use against pathogenic bacteria (Probiotics: nature’s internal healers by Natasha Trenev ISBN 0-89529-847-3).
Probiotics secrete enzymes and their vitamin cofactors to break down food.
Fermentation of soy such as occurs in tempeh or soy yogurt may well reduce or eliminate problems reported against soy, problems such as possible toxicity to the endocrine system resulting in hypothyroidism. The Chinese have eaten tempeh far longer than tofu, which is merely a precipitated soy curd, not fermented. Any bitter taste of tempeh leaches out when soaked in the refrigerator for a day. Bacterial fermentation of soy yogurt may reduce such toxicity problems just as well as the mold-fermentation of tempeh. Wildwood makes superb organic unsweetened soy yogurt (“Pleasantly Plain Soyogurt”) that I like better than any yogurt I’ve ever tasted, including dairy in bygone years, without any of dairy yogurt’s bitter aftertaste. Soyogurt is thick, smooth, and agreeably mildly sour, as a yogurt should be, due to the lactic acid produced during effective fermentation by probiotics. It works beautifully as sour “cream”. Since it contains active probiotics, it can take the place of dairy yogurt. As always with items I mention, I have no business association with the supplier, in this case Wildwood.
I’ve found that it’s easy to overeat ferments since they taste so great. If they are very sharp an excess can push the blood towards the acidic. Sharp dairy cheese would do the same. If a ferment becomes extremely acidic, the acid begins killing the probiotic bacteria, lessening the quantity of active bacteria and the benefit to the digestive tract. One could try mild but working ferments or probiotic supplements so that the problem of acidity doesn’t arise so easily.
For a non-dairy “cheese or ferment” spread that likely has more working probiotics and active enzymes than dairy cheese, please see “Appendices: Recipes- Super Easy Non-Dairy Nut Cheese Spread”.
Or one could take vegan probiotic supplements, improving digestion and relieving the pancreas, quite possibly reducing the craving for dairy cheese. Probiotic supplements from most companies need to be refrigerated, since the bacteria get packaged while still active. Even under refrigeration, active bacteria die off over time. At room temperature they die off rapidly. Wakunaga packages their “Kyo-Dophilus” probiotics in the dormant state so that they keep well at room temperature. They reactivate upon exposure to moisture after the seal gets broken (800-421-2998 www.Wakunaga.com). Therefore the bottle needs to return to room temperature before being opened if it was purchased refrigerated, since condensation begins to activate the moistened probiotics. Jarrow Formulas also advertises room-temperature stable “Jarro-Dophilus EPS” (www.Jarrow.com).
Wakunaga produces a “Friendly Trio” combination that works in the intestines as well as the colon. Jarrow Formulas also produces a combination. Wakunaga produces acidophilus alone, that works mainly in the colon. Acidophilus is particularly effective against candida yeast, but doesn’t produce much B12 (www.Probiotics.com). The other two of the “Friendly Trio” produce more B12, so the combination product may prove more useful so long as one is not experiencing problems with candida yeast. All of the “Friendly Trio” are human strains, which adhere more readily to the walls of the intestinal tract and colon than bovine strains. Given this advantage, they may well out-compete pathogenic bacteria more effectively than either bovine or soil strains.
If probiotics get consumed before eating, more beneficial bacteria would survive to pass through the stomach into the small intestine, since as one eats the stomach generally becomes more acidic with secreted hydrochloric acid, which may kill a substantial fraction of the bacteria.
Misnamed “Soy” and “tofu” cheeses often contain mostly casein from dairy for protein. Of the commercial 100% vegan cheeses, I prefer Follow Your Heart or Vegan Rella but pass up Soymage Vegan, except for the parmesan. Such cheeses probably do not contain significant probiotics.
