This post is dedicated to all the brave people suffering from neurological disorders and their families and caregivers struggling for solutions.
Ketogenic Bone Broth starts with a quality homemade bone broth. A sign of quality bone broth is a jelly-like texture when refrigerated.
Sally Fallon Morell of the Weston A Price Foundation states that bone broth is: “A cure-all in traditional households and the magic ingredient in classic gourmet cuisine, stock or broth made from bones of chicken, fish and beef builds strong bones, assuages sore throats, nurtures the sick, puts vigor in the step and sparkle in love life?so say grandmothers, midwives and healers. For chefs, stock is the magic elixir for making soul-warming soups and matchless sauces.”
Over the years, I have learned how true these words are. I first started using bone broth as a way to be frugal. Bone broth was a way to use parts of the animal normally discarded in modern households. I quickly learned that bone broth was an amazing addition to soups, stews and sauces. It was much later that I realized the health giving quality of bone broth.
Ketogenic Bone Broth is a nourishing drink for the sick or injured. It’s a great way to get more coconut oil into the diet of a sick person. Ketogenic Bone Broth can be used during a modified fast or during every-other-day fasting for weight loss. It can be used as a coffee substitute or as a way to reduce coffee intake. In the case of neurological problems, Ketogenic Bone Broth may slow cognitive decline. On the day of the injury, I was only prescribed analgesics at the emergency room. But after a couple of days at the appointment with the orthopedic traumatologist, I received a list of drugs more serious. Among them, Soma capsules is a muscle relaxant that does not contain any hormones. It is best to take the drug on an empty stomach, but the drug is not clearly tied to food intake. Soma is prescribed both for chronic joint diseases and temporarily, for example, as for me – joint damage. The drug helped me. The edema began to subside, the pain slowly goes away. It is difficult to recommend this drug, as a doctor should do it. One thing I can say is that the drug helps well with joint problems. Read more at https://icord.org/soma-carisoprodol/.
Add the best quality ingredients you can find. If possible freshly grate the turmeric root and use a finely creamed coconut. Make your own mushroom powder; see the link below for the recipe.
Turmeric root will turn the bone broth yellow and the added fats will make this a very nourishing broth. Fresh turmeric gives the broth a rich, complex flavor.
Ketogenic Bone Broth
2c homemade bone broth
1tsp organic turmeric root, finely grated
1tsp organic creamed coconut
1tsp homemade mushroom broth (optional)
1-3tsp organic butter, organic coconut oil, or medium chain triglycerides (MCT) oil
sea salt and freshly ground organic black peppercorn to taste (optional)
In a sauce pan warm the bone broth. Add the freshly grated turmeric root, mushroom broth and creamed coconut. (In a pinch, use dried organic turmeric powder but the fresh turmeric has a richer, complex flavor.) Bring to a light simmer. Add the butter, coconut or MCT oil just before serving. Add the sea salt and freshly ground peppercorns, if desired. Putting the Ketogenic Bone Broth in a stainless steel travel mug will keep the broth hot longer making sipping the broth more pleasant.
In the case of someone with neurological problems such as Alzheimer’s Disease replace the coconut oil with medium chain triglycerides (MCT) oil. Presently, there are clinical trials using two tablespoons of MCT oil each day with Alzheimer’s patients. The results seem promising. If you would like to read more information about dietary treatments for Alzheimer’s disease please read Type 3 Diabetes: Metabolic Causes of Alzheimer?s Disease.
“Bone broth is rich in protein, collagen, gelatin, glucosamine, chondroitin and key minerals often missing in the diet. These vital nutrients support a wide range of health benefits and body systems including: gut and immune system, joints and lean muscle mass, skin, hair, nails, metabolism and a healthy weight.” Dr Josh Axe
A stainless steel travel mug will keep the broth hot longer making sipping the broth more pleasant. A go-anywhere drink!
This recipe makes a soft, chewy cookie with a fragrant taste. Top the cookie with some honeyed ginger or dried fruit pieces.
This recipe is safe for someone on the SCD/GAPS program. Just eliminate the optional blackstrap molasses.
This recipe is based on Ginger Snaps from Living Cuisine: The Art and Spirit of Raw Foods by Renee Loux Underkoffler. Renee’s cookbook has an amazing section of raw desserts based on nuts and she has a special gift for balancing flavors with spicing.
Living Cuisine was a gift from my sister many years ago. I was new to the SCD/GAPS program at the time. I was frustrated because I had no recipes for making a birthday cake for my youngest daughter that was “SCD/GAPS legal”. After reading Renee’s book, I never had problems with making SCD/GAPS legal desserts again!
2c boiling filtered water
18-20 organic dates, soaked and pitted
1/4c organic ginger, freshly grated very finely
2tsp organic nutmeg, freshly grated very finely
1T organic cinnamon stick, freshly ground
1/2tsp organic whole cloves, freshly ground
1/2tsp sea salt
2T organic blackstrap molasses (optional)
2c organic white beans, soaked, cooked and rinsed
2T organic whole yellow flax, freshly ground
organic raisins or homemade Honeyed Ginger, topping (optional)
Soak the white beans overnight in filtered water. Rinse the beans well before covering with fresh water and cooking for 1-2 hours until very tender. Remove any scum or hard beans during the cooking. Rinse the cooked bean well in cool filtered water before using.
Place the dates in a bowl and pour the boiling water over them. Cover and let the dates soak for 20-30 minutes. While the dates are soaking, finely grate the ginger and nutmeg and freshly grind the cinnamon and cloves in a spice grinder. When the dates are cool remove the pits and put the pitted dates into a food processor.
In a food processor, blend the dates until very smooth. Add some date soaking water, if needed. Add all the spices, ginger, molasses and sea salt and mix very well. Add the cooked beans and process until very smooth. Add the ground flax seeds last and grind again very well. Refrigerate for a few hours until the dough thickens.
Drop the cookie dough onto the dehydrator sheets in teaspoon amounts. With a wet spoon lightly press down the cookie dough into a round shape. The trick with the cookies to have the cookie dough thick enough not to drip through the dehydrator screen. The cookies are nicer if not over-dried. This produces a moist, chewy cookie.
Try topping the ginger snaps with raisins or small pieces of honeyed ginger. See the link for a recipe for homemade Honeyed Ginger.
Renee is a raw food vegan and she has developed some delicious nut-based desserts. The Weston A Price Foundation does not consider a vegan diet healthy. In contrast to this view, many WAPF health practitioners use short-term vegan diets for a cleanse. These practitioners just don’t think veganism a good diet for long-term use or if you are planning on have children. Regardless of the WAPF views on vegetarianism, Renee’s desserts are fabulous!
“The Foundation believes that strict vegetarianism (veganism) is detrimental to human health. Vegetarianism that includes eggs and raw (unpasteurized) dairy products, organic vegetables and fruits, properly prepared whole grains, legumes, and nuts, and excludes unfermented soy products and processed foods, can be a healthy option for some people.” Weston A Price Foundation: Vegetarian Tour
Adding more ground flax will give a hard, crunchy cookie which may be better for travel food.
I know this recipe sounds strange but I hope you will give it a try. This recipe is great for people who cannot eat grains.
This recipe is based on Ginger Snaps from the Joy of Cooking. I heavily altered the recipe to make it grain-free and for production in a dehydrator. The trick with the cookies is to have the cookie dough thick enough not to drip through the dehydrator screen but thin enough to have a light, crunchy cookie.
Soak the white beans overnight in filtered water. Rinse the beans well before covering with fresh water and cooking for 1-2 hours until very tender. Remove any scum or hard beans during cooking. Rinse the cooked bean well in cool filtered water before using.
Grind all the spices in a spice grinder. In a food processor, add the cooked beans, molasses, honey, coconut oil, freshly ground spices, sea salt, lemon juice, and lemon peel. Mix until very smooth. Add 2 tablespoons of the ground flax seed and mix well. Refrigerate for a few hours until the dough thickens. If the dough is still too soupy add a bit more ground flax seed. Mix well and refrigerate again.
Drop the cookie dough onto the dehydrator sheets in teaspoon amounts. With a wet spoon lightly press down the cookie dough into a round shape. The cookies will dry very quickly in the dehydrator. The trick with the cookies to to have the cookie dough thick enough not to drip through the dehydrator screen. This produces a light, crunchy cookie. Adding too much ground flax will give a hard, crunchy cookie.
The ginger snaps have a nice crunchy, creamy texture with a spicy aftertaste and are a great travel food.
While the cookies dry in the dehydrator your home with be filled with the most amazing spicy smell! Yum!
Eating well on the SCD or GAPS is easy and doesn’t need to take a lot of time. Here is some buttered scrambled eggs, topped with homemade winter salsa. What looks like bacon is salted pork belly. The side is a seasonal winter salad with homemade mustard seed dressing.
“People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are healed by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.” Wendell Berry
Over the years I have been asked to compile a recipe cookbook for the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. This post is an index of all the recipes on eatkamloops.org. Some of the posts have many recipes not described in the title. I hope to better organize the recipes at a later date. Nevertheless, these recipes will be good for anyone on the SCD, GAPS or the modified paleo diet.
There will be a few recipes that are not safe for someone on the SCD or GAPS. I have put most of these recipes in an area called Transition, but use your good sense. Remember what my great grandfather used to say: “If the food doesn’t agree with you, leave it alone.”
When people come off the SCD or GAPS, the types of foods they can tolerate is very individual. It is important to slowly introduce a new food and watch carefully for negative symptoms. Sometimes it takes awhile for the old problems to come back. If old symptoms come back, simply remove the irritating food again.
The best advice is to go slowly with one new food and watch carefully for old symptoms. Compulsive eating can be another dangerous sign to remove the food. Here are two posts with more details on how to home test for food tolerance: Coffee Substitute Taste Test Food Intolerance Test: What NOT to Do
Some of us can never go back to the old foods. We have to move on from where we are. I would like to give just a few personal examples. Raw dairy was the first food I was able to reintroduce. It was a great surprise to me that I could consume raw dairy, since dairy is considered very hard to digest. I still cannot consume pasteurized and homogenized dairy. Everyone in the family can consume raw dairy products without problems.
Over a number of years, I have been trying to find safe sources of starches to increase my family’s carbohydrate intake. Partly, this is because half of my family needs more carbohydrates in their diet for optimum health. I tried potatoes, which appeared to be okay for me, but after about a month I would wake in the morning with totally numb hands. Everyone else in the family was okay on potatoes. I have found sweet potatoes agree with me and everyone in the family.
Many times I have tried to reintroduce grains without any success. Even using nourishing traditional preparation methods, grains are poison for me and I get immediate feedback that this food is not for me. After numerous trials, I am at the point of being off grains for life. My daughter can tolerate some grains but she can get into trouble if the amount of grains goes above some unknown tolerance point. Everyone’s reactions will be different so transition is a very personal journey.
Please remember that during transition the foods that will agree with me may not agree with you. If your child is on the SCD or GAPS, they will have an individual response to food too. So your child may be tolerant of a food that you cannot tolerate. In general, children heal better than adults. Always keep this in mind during transition. Go slowly and be careful. If you get into trouble, go back to safe foods and try again in four to six months.
With the Paleo Diet, you’ll be restoring the diet you are genetically programmed to eat. You’ll be eating the diet that every single person on the planet ate only 500 generations ago. It is the diet the modern world has completely forgotten. The Paleo Diet is simplicity itself. Here are the ground rules:
All the lean meats, fish and seafood you can eat
All the fruits and non-starchy vegetables you can eat
No cereals
No legumes
No dairy products
No processed foods
The Paleo Diet is not a fat-free diet, it’s a “bad fat” free diet. It has few of the artery-clogging saturated fats found on the low carbohydrate, high fat fad diets, but there is plenty of low fat protein and good fats – such as those found in salmon and other cold water fish, as well as in nuts and olive oil.
The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain
Recently, I have had a number of people ask my opinion about the Paleo Diet. If you put the three programs on a continuum from least restrictive to most restrictive, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) would be first, followed by Gut And Psychology Syndrome (GAPS), then the Paleo Diet (PD). The only area that the PD is less restrictive then the SCD and GAPS is the PD allows starches. All these diets are very healing and can cure the incurable. All these dietary programs want you to get off industrial processed foods which may be the major reason why these dietary programs work so well. These dietary programs restrict many of the same foods but the diets have some major philosophical differences. The saying, “the devil is in the details,” is true for these diets.
Here is a tongue-in-cheek book review by Sally Fallon written in 2002 about The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain. I found Sally Fallon’s humorous description of the PD very enlightening. In the past, I used to eat a low fat diet and was very worried about all fats, especially saturated fat. I used to skin my chicken, chop off all signs of fat from my steak, and ate only egg whites. The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain would have agreed with my saturated fat phobia. When I read Sally Fallon’s description of “Peter Paleolith”, I laughed and laughed. After that description I knew the truth was our ancestors would have done anything for fat including cracking bones and skulls for marrow and brains! Sometimes, humor is the only way to break through closely held beliefs.
Loren Condain also does some interesting mental gymnastics in The Paleo Diet. He states, “lean meat is brain food” and follows up this statement with: “At first, humans were not terribly good hunters. They started out as scavengers who trailed behind predators such as lions and ate the leftovers remaining on abandoned carcasses. The pickings were slim: ravenous lions don’t leave much behind, except for bones. But with their handy tools (stone anvils and hammers), our early ancestors could crack the skulls and bones and still find something to eat – brains and fatty marrow. Marrow fat was the main concentrated energy source that enabled the early human gut to shrink, while the scavenged brains contained a specific type of omega 3 fat called “docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which allowed the [human] brain to expand.”
So which is it? Does lean meat build brains or does fat build brains? Loren Condain likely believed the low fat dogma of his day like many other intelligent people. But he becomes disingenuous when he states the PD is a return to our ancestral diet while manipulating the diet to fit modern tastes and quoting current dietary dogma. I would image it was an easier sell to base a diet book on lean meat and vegetables rather than bone marrow and brains.
When I started eatkamloops.org, I had to decide which dietary program best illustrated my dietary approach. The SCD/GAPS program was the best fit but I always used some elements of the PD. I used many PD recipes and found PD resources to be very helpful. I just ignored the fat and salt phobia. I did not eat starches that are restricted on the SCD/GAPS program. At the time, a large segment of the Paleo movement were thinking some strange thoughts, like believing our ancestors ate skinned chicken breasts, didn’t use salt, and ignored the use of raw dairy in numerous traditional cultures.
The PD condemns all grains, legumes and beans. Grains, legumes, and beans are “poisons” for me, but I know many people do very well on these foods if properly prepared. Even though I do well on a low carbohydrate diet, low carbohydrate diets do not work well for all people. Some people need more carbohydrates to function optimally. Micro-nutrient needs are very individual and can change for the individual if activity levels change or as we age. The PD allows starches but both the SCD/GAPS restrict these foods because the people that are helped by the SCD/GAPS cannot digest complex starches.? Finally, the PD had many views that counter the opinions of the Weston A Price Foundation, an organization I have great respect for. The WAPF got me on a high fat diet, a change I will forever be grateful for.
All three dietary programs completely restrict all grains and their products. The SCD/GAPS does allow a limited amount of beans and legumes. Since I do not eat either of these food groups, I am more of a PD follower in this one area. In the past, I avoided all dairy which is one of the restrictions of the PD and the extreme version of GAPS. Since I found a source of raw milk, I have been able to re-introduce raw cheese, fermented dairy products, and even liquid raw milk. Liquid milk is restricted on all three dietary programs.
I was still scared about eating more fat. It was this book review and other WAPF articles about traditional diets that made me brave enough to take the chance and go high fat with my diet. My experience going high fat was very positive. I “cured” my health problems which included: asthma, allergies, chronic sinus infections, yeast infections, osteoarthritis and epilepsy. For more details please read: Specific Carbohydrate Diet: A Personal Story.
Over the last number of years more research has come to light about the importance of fat in the diet. If you read the link above you will know I identify with the SCD/GAPS but really I am on a combination of all three dietary approaches. In the past, I could not identify with the PD movement because of the Paleo dogma around low fat/high protein, salt, and dairy. Well now I can identify with the PD movement, because the PD movement is realizing that raw dairy, especially fermented dairy, high fat cream, and butter, can be good for many people. Of course, even the best quality dairy is not for everyone.
This is a modified paleo burger. Loren Cordain would be horrified to see raw cheese on this burger. Many paleo diet followers are now including raw dairy, if they consume dairy at all. In the Paleo Community the term "Swiss Paleo" is used to describe people consuming raw dairy.
The dogma about low fat diets being better is finally being seen as erroneous. I just found a great website about the “modified” PD called Paleo Diet Lifestyle. I have read most of the website and I agree with everything I have read. I also really like Mark’s Daily Apple for great PD recipes and “Paleo lifestyle” information. He has free ebooks for PD recipes and body weight exercises that can be done anywhere without any equipment. Even though I really like Mark’s Daily Apple, I do not endorse his use of supplements. These are not real foods but industrial nutraceuticals.Guidelines from the Weston A Price Foundation recommend eating real foods from a quality source first, and then the use of superfoods, if necessary. Here is my use of superfoods.
Finally, what I like about SCD/GAPS philosophy is that after the person heals their gut the person may be able to go back to eating ?some? of the restricted foods. For those people that can tolerate these foods, the WAPF gives good advice on how to properly prepare these sometime troublesome foods. Of course, many of us do not go back to eating these foods because if we do, we get sick again.
The PD would state that these foods are bad for everyone and if we value our health and longevity we should never eat these foods again. The WAPF states many traditional cultures used ?properly? prepared dairy, grains, legumes and beans. For many of us, we are too damaged to consume these foods. The question each of us must answer for ourselves is, which of these foods made us sick? My great-grandfather used to say: ?If the food doesn?t agree with you, leave it alone.? Good advice for all of us.
One last word about the PD. What I really like about the PD philosophy is trying to image the food and lifestyle of our ancestors. No one can doubt the vitality of these primate people nor that our modern food and lifestyle is not working for many of us. The PD has come a long way from its original form and the lifestyle of our ancestors might hold the key to functional longevity and a sane habitation of our planet.
Sorry, but the 55 Theses are a total grind, but if you live a longer functional life, you will have the time! The author of the 55 Theses is Rob Paterson who maintains a website called Missing Human Manual. Give yourself a few days to read the material. It will be a wild ride. I guarantee it!
