Authors: Mary Enig
In the “good old days,” your grandmother purchased meat differently than you do today. The neighborhood butcher sold her meat on the bone rather than as individual fillets. She bought whole chickens rather than boneless breasts. Our thrifty ancestors made use of every part of the animal by preparing stock, broth, or bouillon from the bony portions. Almost all traditional cuisines—French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, African, South American, Middle Eastern, and Russian—use meat and fish stocks to produce nourishing and flavorful soups and sauces, but this practice has almost completely disappeared from American cooking.
Bone Broth or Stock
Properly prepared, meat stocks are extremely nutritious, containing the minerals of bone, cartilage, marrow, and vegetables in a form that is easy to assimilate. Acidic wine or vinegar added during cooking helps to draw minerals, particularly calcium, magnesium, and potassium, out of the bone and into the broth. Dr. Francis Pottenger, a doctor and researcher and author of
Pottenger’s Cats,
wrote extensively on the benefits of gelatin; he once stated that the stockpot was the most important piece of kitchen equipment anyone could own.
Gelatin in meat broths can help treat many intestinal disorders, including hyperacidity, colitis, and Crohn’s disease. Although gelatin is not a complete protein, it allows the body to more fully utilize proteins from other foods.
Many people today fear that bones—or even gelatin, for that matter—might be a source of mad cow disease. We have reviewed the evidence, and we do not believe that mad cow disease can be transmitted to humans by using or consuming either meat or bones. Mark Purdey, a British farmer and researcher, published studies in
Medical Hypotheses
in 1996 and 1998 indicating that the most likely cause of mad cow disease is the use of neurotoxic pesticides and overload of certain neurotoxic minerals such as manganese, both of which occur in today’s confinement animal facilities. Avoidance of these unhealthy procedures is one of the reasons we recommend pasture-fed or at least organic meat. But while there are many problems with today’s industrial animal foods, we believe that they pose no risk of causing mad cow disease in humans. Purdey notes that there have been no cases of the human variant (Creutzfeld-Jakob disease) in the Shetland Islands, where the volcanic soil frequently causes scrapie in sheep (scrapie is similar to mad cow disease) and where the national dish is raw sheep brains!
MSG: A Surprising Cause of Weight Gain (and Worse)
Since making broth is a time-consuming process, the food industry instead uses MSG (monosodium glutamate), along with synthetic flavorings, to give a meatlike taste to soups, sauces, and gravies.
You probably know that MSG can cause all sorts of neurological problems, from headaches to seizures, the so-called Chinese restaurant syndrome. But you may not realize that MSG can also cause weight gain! In animal studies, rats fed MSG became obese (and also blind). In fact, the way scientists induce obesity in laboratory animals is by feeding them MSG! It appears that MSG causes injury to the hypothalamus, an area of the brain that controls appetite, thyroid function, and the endocrine system.
This is yet another reason why it’s crucial to avoid processed food: nearly all of it contains MSG, even though the label may not say so. In fact, if the label lists “spices,” “flavorings,” “natural flavorings,” citric acid, or anything “hydrolyzed” or “autolyzed,” the food probably contains MSG. Canned and dehydrated soups, frozen dinners, bottled sauces and sauce mixes, soy foods, commercial salad dressings, and even many spice mixes are loaded with MSG.
The Magic of Broths
The wonderful thing about fish and meat stocks is that, along with conferring many health benefits, they also add immeasurably to the food’s flavor. In European cuisines, rich stocks are the base of delicious sauces that add flavor to so many dishes. This flavor comes from the stock, made with as much care as the final dish.
Visiting the kitchens of fine restaurants in France, you will always find pots of pale broth simmering on huge cookstoves. When this liquid is reduced by boiling down, the flavors are concentrated, resulting in a sauce that is both nutritious and delicious. Making meat stocks on a regular basis will confer innumerable health benefits (and earn you a reputation as an excellent cook). You’ll find complete recipes for stocks in Chapter 10.
Chicken Broth
In folk wisdom, rich chicken broth—the famous “Jewish penicillin”—is a valued remedy for the flu. The 12th-century physician Moses Maimonides prescribed chicken broth as a treatment for colds and asthma. Modern research has confirmed that broth helps prevent and moderate infectious diseases. Using gelatin-rich broth often, or even every day, can protect you against many health problems.
Fish Broth
Stock made from the carcasses and heads of fish is especially rich in minerals, including all-important iodine. Even more important, stock made from the heads, and therefore the thyroid glands, of fish supplies substances that nourish your thyroid gland. Four thousand years ago, Chinese doctors rejuvenated aging patients with a soup made from the thyroid glands of animals. According to ancient texts, this treatment helped patients feel younger, gave them more energy, and often restored mental abilities. Another traditional belief is that fish-head broth contributes to virility.
In the Victorian age, prominent London physicians prescribed special raw thyroid sandwiches to failing patients. Very few of us could eat such fare with relish, but soups and sauces made from fish broth are absolutely delicious.
According to some researchers, it’s possible that up to 40 percent of Americans suffer from (often undiagnosed) thyroid deficiency, with its accompanying symptoms of fatigue, weight gain, frequent colds and flu, inability to concentrate, depression, and a host of more serious complications like heart disease and cancer. We would do well to imitate peoples from the Mediterranean and Asian regions by consuming fish broth as often as possible. We’ve provided a recipe for
Quick Fish Stock
(for recipe) so you can make fish soups and sauces with little effort. If you don’t have time to make your own stock, some excellent brands of traditionally made stock are now available (see Resources).
Salt
With few exceptions, all traditional cultures use some salt. Isolated peoples living far from the sea burned sodium-rich marsh grasses and added the ash to their food.
Today, however, medical orthodoxy advises restricting salt intake, claiming that salt raises blood pressure. Some early research did correlate salt intake with high blood pressure, but a large 1983 study conducted in Japan found that dietary salt did not significantly affect blood pressure in most people. In some cases, salt restriction actually raised blood pressure. A similar study in Connecticut, published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association
that same year, concluded that “dietary salt intake has a clinically insignificant effect on blood pressure in the majority of individuals….”
Refined or Unrefined? How Salt Is Processed
Most salt is highly refined through an industrial process that uses chemicals and high temperatures to remove valuable magnesium salts and natural trace minerals, while putting in several harmful additives, like aluminum compounds and potassium iodide in amounts that can be toxic to some people. Processors also add dextrose, which turns the salt a purplish color, and then must add a bleaching agent to make it white again.
Although sun-dried sea salt is best, some brands labeled “sea salt” are produced by industrial methods. The most health-promoting salt is extracted by the action of the sun on seawater in clay-lined vats. Its light gray color indicates a high moisture and trace mineral content. This natural salt contains only about 82 percent sodium chloride; it also contains about 14 percent magnesium and nearly 80 trace minerals.
The best and purest commercially available source of unrefined sea salt is the natural salt marshes of Brittany, where the salt is “farmed” according to ancient methods (see Resources). Unrefined salt mined from ancient sea beds is also acceptable. You can find it in many health food stores.
Salt is essential to health, activating enzymes needed for brain development and enzymes needed to digest carbohydrate foods, as well as helping your body produce hydrochloric acid for the digestion of meat. Salt also supports adrenal function.
Different people do need different amounts of salt. Those with weak adrenal glands lose salt in their urine and must replace it, but for others, excessive salt causes the excretion of calcium, contributing to osteoporosis. Excessive dietary salt also depletes potassium.
Let your taste buds be your guide as to how much salt you need, but it’s also important to pay attention to the kind of salt you use. Though we’re advised to consume iodized salt to prevent thyroid problems, Americans are plagued with thyroid problems despite its universal availability. That’s because the iodine added to refined salt is harder to absorb than natural iodine in unrefined salt. A further danger of iodized salt is iodine overdose, since too much can be as harmful as too little.
Natural Vitamins
Vitamins found naturally in foods differ from vitamins in pill form. When vitamins occur naturally in whole foods, food concentrates, and superfoods like nutritional yeast, desiccated liver, bee pollen, and cod-liver oil, they come with many cofactors—such as related vitamins, enzymes, and minerals—which ensure that the vitamins are absorbed and properly used.
By contrast, most commercially produced supplements contain vitamins that are either crystalline or synthetic.
Both types are fractionated concentrates that act more like drugs than nutrients, disrupting body chemistry and causing many imbalances. An additional danger is that synthetic vitamins often occur as the mirror image of the natural vitamin, thereby causing the opposite effect. Synthetic forms of fat-soluble vitamins can be especially dangerous.
For example, synthetic vitamin B
1
derived from coal tar did not cure beriberi in Korean prisoners-of-war, but rice polishings containing natural vitamin B complex did. In scientific studies, synthetic vitamin C is not as effective in curing scurvy as fresh citrus juice, and synthetic beta carotene given to smokers actually increased their risk of cancer. And finally, research indicates that synthetic vitamin D
2
has the opposite effect of natural vitamin D, causing softening of the bones and hardening of soft tissues such as the arteries. The dairy industry used to add D
2
to milk but quietly dropped it in favor of the less toxic (but not completely natural) D
3
when they realized how dangerous it was. Yet D
2
is still added to many products, including soymilk and rice milk.
Why Eat Sweets?
Surprisingly, most traditional diets included some sweet foods. Many traditional people ate honey. Native Americans ate maple syrup and maple sugar. Residents of the tropics dehydrated cane sugar juice in the sun to make a mineral-rich sweetener. Naturally sweet sap from coconut flower buds can also be turned into a sugar.
These sweet foods were quite different from the refined sugars we eat today, for two reasons:
Our natural taste for sweets can be satisfied with sweet foods that also provide nutrients. If we restrict sweets entirely, cravings develop.
So although we urge caution, we don’t forbid sweeteners in our food plans, unless you’re trying to lose weight. But on Everyday Gourmet, you can enjoy small amounts of natural sweeteners such as Rapadura or Sucanat (dehydrated cane sugar juice), raw honey, maple sugar, or maple syrup, coconut sugar, and molasses (the mineral-rich residue of white sugar manufacture). And one of the wonderful things about coconut is that it can be made into such delicious desserts! The naturally sweet dessert recipes we provide are great for children—they won’t feel deprived of sweet things on this diet. Several recipes in Quick and Easy Weight Loss contain stevia powder, made from the leaves of a naturally sweet South American herb. This non-caloric sweetener is perfectly safe in small amounts.
Important note:
Even worse than refined sweeteners (which actually use up the nutrients we take in from other foods) are the artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame (sold as Equal or Nutrasweet), used in so many “diet” foods. Like MSG, aspartame is toxic to the nervous system and can cause weight gain. Sucralose (Splenda), xylitol, and other newfangled sweeteners have caused digestive problems and immune system dysfunction in laboratory animals. Avoid them all by preparing your own desserts as occasional treats.
We believe that synthetic vitamins are not necessary. If you follow our diet plans and also use the superfoods described below, you will be getting all the nutrients you need.
Superfoods—Better Than Vitamins
Superfoods—as opposed to vitamins or supplements—are whole foods that naturally concentrate important nutrients. Unlike dietary supplements or vitamins taken in isolation, superfoods provide many nutrients that support each other and work synergistically, preventing the imbalances that often occur when vitamins are taken singly. Superfoods are real foods. The body recognizes them and more readily incorporates their important nutrients.
Do you need superfoods? In theory, if your diet is good, you should need nothing more; but in actuality no one has a perfect diet. First of all, most foods today are grown in soil depleted of minerals and other vital nutrients. Furthermore, at one time or another, you, like most other Americans, have consumed harmful ingredients like artificial additives, sugar, refined carbohydrates, and rancid vegetable oils. Superfoods can help redress whatever deficiencies these unhealthy foods may have created. And for those unwilling or unable to give up bad habits like caffeine, alcohol, or smoking, a daily supply of superfoods is essential.