Food intolerances are usually less serious than food allergies, but they can still negatively affect your quality of life. That is why it’s important to take steps to identify food intolerances in order to prevent unwanted symptoms and health issues.
In reality you can have an intolerance to any food even if it is advertised as a health food. That is the reason I do not advocate any specific diet. Once you find your food stressors, you can get rid of the inflammation in your body and start healing your gut again. Individualizing is the key.
My recipes are always gluten free for two reasons.
- Gluten/wheat is the most common food intolerance
- My daughter has Celiac disease
Other common food sensitivities are dairy, eggs, peanuts, and the list just goes on from there.
Certain diets are great if you have an auto-immune problem like Celiac, Crohn’s, Hashimoto’s, etc. I like to address the food intolerance side, which can only be fixed by eliminating the offensive foods. Currently, the best food intolerance test on the market is the Cyrex test, but it is very expensive and not available everywhere. If you can afford it, do it. It is the most efficient way to fix your health and take the guess work out of the equation, instead of doing it the hard way with a food journal.
For the rest of you a food journal is a must, and start listening to your body, it tells you everyday if something does not agree with you. One of the problems is that we have stopped listening to our bodies by being to occupied with our daily lives or covering the symptoms with unnecessary medications.
Most people only think it is food related if their stomach hurts. This could not be any further from the truth. The symptoms are hidden in a lot of ways most of us never relate to food. It can be anything from bloating, gas, rash, body pain, headache, arthritis, runny nose, etc. Every person has different reactions to food intolerances. Food can heal or be our worst enemy.
Modern processed foods and highly sprayed pesticides on our food sources, in combination with antibiotic treated meats, sends our health in the wrong direction. The daily stressors of modern society also continue to push us to our limits.
Add in that a lot of people are on unnecessary medication, given out like M&Ms, and it’s no wonder we have a society with the fastest growing number of leaky guts, auto-immune issues, allergies, and food intolerances. These problems can only be addressed individually since your body picks and chooses what it thinks is offensive. For this reason, I’m creating recipes to teach you that a lot of the foods can be replaced with something else and you will never know the difference. On the bright side, if you heal your leaky gut, you will be able to eat most of your foods again. Not all of them, but a good portion.