toxic

I will let my children eat coke and cake whenever they like, I said as a kid. Mum and Dad assured me that I would change my mind when I grew up, but I was certain that I wouldn’t. According to my baby book, I used to sit in front of the sweet food cupboard just fantasizing about the sugary delights within. In my childish mind there was no good reason not to eat these delicious things; I went on taste buds alone. When mum started to serve up healthy brown rice instead of white, I was furious. I hated the stuff.

I also thought food was about filling myself up. Eat enough bread to keep away hunger pains, and all will run fine. Anyway, the packets of food always boasted their great health benefits, and I believed the propaganda.

I went on the Candida Diet eleven months after I became sick. This diet is basically the elimination of yeast, sugar, wheat and cheese, because these things feed a fungus, Candida, which is toxic to the body. 

toxic.

What a scary word. We see it slapped across cleaning products, and glues, and dyes. We don’t see it written on coke, or white bread, but maybe it should be...

At first when I started to eliminate these trouble making food groups, I definitely saw it as ‘a diet’ - an extreme measure to take in the extreme circumstance of having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I was dying for the day I would come off my diet, and once again indulge in my favourite dessert, golden syrup dumplings and sticky date pudding. Oh, and creaming soda.

But while on this eating regime, I started to read about food. It was unpleasant and convicting to read these things, to remove the cotton wool which was securely fastened over my eyes. I mean, its hearty nutrition to have a couple of pieces of toast and a glass of milk in the morning isn’t it? I started to discover that all those beautifully, delicious, refined things...white sugar, white flour, white rice, white milk...they are not nutritious, but rather loading the body full of rubbish which it then has to deal with, using precious energy and resources it doesn’t have. It takes more energy to work through these processed foods than is gained by consuming them in the first place.

I began reading the labels on food. For the first time ever. I discovered that it wasn’t just ‘sweet’ food that was full of toxic stuff, it was savoury too. In fact, it was nearly anything which wasn’t in its raw form. Take a dinner staple, chicken stock:

Salt, sugar, flavours, maltodextrin (form of sugar), maize startch, onion, chicken (4%), sunflower oil, yeast extract, parsley, flavour enhancer, colours, anti-caking agent, wheat starch, spice extract, herb extracts.

So, chicken stock has 4% chicken in it. That’s all.

You wouldn’t think yourself unhealthy for eating hearty savoury meals, but once you start looking at what you’re putting in it, it’s frightening. The faster, the more refined, the more deadly and nutrition-lacking for the body.

And we wonder why our bodies develop all kinds of ‘mysterious’ illnesses and cancers?

I don’t consider myself to be on ‘a diet’ anymore. I have made permanent choices about how I’m going to eat, based on the huge blessing of no longer being blind to our dangerously processed food world. Even, and especially if I have great health one day, I will still say ‘no’ to those insidious processed foods which are clogging up bodies all over the western world. I haven’t loved being sick, but I am incredibly grateful for the way it’s shaken me up and forced me to care for my body the healthy way.

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Cooking healthily isn’t quite as ‘quick’ as grabbing a packet of preservative filled rot from the supermarket, but even with my husband’s business and my lack of energy, we’ve found ways. And dessert is still on the menu. Here’s my favourite recipe for a quick and delicious dessert:

Berry Crumble

• Grab some frozen mixed berries or fresh berries; put them in a ramekin or small dish, filling it 2/3 way up.
• Chop up some dates and sprinkle over the berries for sweetness.
• Make in a small bowl a mixture of almond meal, shredded coconut, rolled oats (if you like) and rub some Nuttelex into it.
• Sprinkle the crumble mixture over the berries and dates. Drizzle organic honey over the top of the crumble and stick in the oven.
• Take out once the top is light golden, and the juices of the berries are bubbling.