Brain Food: Healthy Fats for Cooking and Dressings

Fats are confusing.   Which fats are healthy for cooking and baking with and which are good for salad dressings and drizzling?

Let me lay it our for you: 

Not what you've heard before, right?  I had to completely change the oils my family eats after reading Dr. Wahls' book Minding My Mitochondria.  We ditched the canola oil and started to buy organic butter, clarifying what we needed for cooking.  I was so excited to find lard for $5 a pound at my local farmer stand.  We now only use walnut and olive oil for dressings and uncooked foods.

You will find my recipes for this series, Brain Food, have the correct oils.  Use the 'Wahls Paleo Diet Recipes and Ideas' link in the header to find all the posts in this series.  If you dig back into my blog you will find some that don't comply.  By the way, I can't believe this blog is going on eight years old!

Are you ready to change up your fats or if you are already working on the Wahls Diet, fine tune your knowledge?

Here are some good basic rules.

Always choose vegetable oils that:

• Have been processed and heated the least to reduce the amount of volatile trans fats.  Cold pressed is almost always a good option.
• Are from organic vegetables or seeds to reduce toxin exposure
• Healthy vegetable oils include: olive oil, nut oils, avocado oil, grape seed oil, flax seed oil and hemp oil

Always choose animal fats that:

• Are from grass-fed or wild animals to get a better ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats
• Healthy rendered animal fats include: lard (pig), tallow (beef), fish, chicken and other poultry, and ghee (clarified butter)

Coconut Oil

Coconut oil is the only vegetable fat I've seen Dr. Wahls say is okay to heat.  This was on her FaceBook Page in March:  "Coconut oil is ok for heating, clarified butter (removes proteins) and rendered animal fats all okay for heating. All others cold. Heating food at high temps damages vitamins, antioxidants, takes away compounds your cells wanted to use."

Omega-3 and Omega-6 Fat

What's the big deal about omega-3 and omega-6 fats?  Our bodies need both.  It turns out grains like corn and soy beans are very high in omega-6.  Industrialized cultures like ours eat a lot of grains.  We are don't eat enough omega-3 fats.  For many Americans the ration of omega-6 to omega-3 is 30:1.  For coastal communities with seafood-based diets, the rations is 3:1.  The best ratio of omega fatty acids for disease prevention is between 10:1 and 3:1 [source]

If our bodies and brains don't get a good ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 then substitutions start happening.  Substitutions are almost never a good thing.  Too much omega-6 can cause rewiring of the brain causing misfires and generally more inflammation.

If the diet is rich in omega-3 fatty acids then  the levels of inflammation molecules are lower and autoimmune diseases like arthritis, MS, Parkinsons, diabetes, heart disease and dementia are significantly less common.

As Dr. Wahls puts it, "Having a healthy mitochondria or not having a healthy mitochondria is the difference between having two miles to the gallon verses having 38 miles to the gallon.  We have hundreds, thousands of mitochondria per brain cell.  So it is the difference between being a snail and a jet liner." [from Food as Medicine Brain Health video]

Here's more information from Dr. Wahls.  In this short video she's talking about oils and fats:

Transcript of video: 

Oils are very important for our body as our fats.  My brain is 60-70% fat. Therefore it is important that I consume healthy appropriate fats so that my brain can make insulation, the myelin, on the wiring of the spinal cord and the brain.   

It is important to have omega-3 fats as you would find in wild fish, grass-fed meat.  And non-processed fats.  The processed vegetable oils are high in omega-6.  And when you heat those vegetable oils you'll increase the production of trans fats.  Trans fats are particularly unstable and will do a lot of damage to your blood vessels. 

For that reason, I encourage the use of omega-3 fats only for salad dressing.  If you are going to heat a fat use something such as bacon fat, lard or coconut oil.   

This just went up on the Wahls Foundation Facebook Page March 22, 2013:

The processed fats are high in trans fat to make the fat last long on the shelf (and are very toxic to brain cells). Add all the tasty carbs that quickly turn to blood sugar and you get damaged blood vessels, strained brain cells and steadily declining health.

How are you feeding your family? Fast processed food (trans fats), high carb diet that is tasty, convenient, and destroying our health and our economies world wide?

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One Month Following the Wahls Diet - Plus a Free to Download Food Journal

I read Dr. Terry Wahls' book, Minding My Mitochondria in November of last year.  This is the book about how Dr. Wahls, a research and primary care physician, changed her approach to medicine reversing her own symptoms from Multiple Sclerosis.  She stopped taking pills and started feeding her body to optimize the up-take of nutrients healing herself by healing her mitochondria.  She went from a tilt recline wheelchair to riding a bike in under a year.

Mitochondria are the power houses of our cells.  If they don't function properly, our bodies will not function properly.  The Wahls Diet aims to increase our micro and macro nutrients and prescribes a way to eat them that allows the body, specifically the brain, to get everything it needs to be its healthiest.



This is what you should eat on Wahls diet in a nutshell:

This is what you shouldn't eat:

Dr. Wahls advocates eating fresh, organic, local meats and vegetables in large quantities.  The Wahls Protocol also includes reducing toxic load, exercising the body and brain.  

Phase 1 = Eating 9 cups of non-starchy vegetables and berries each day (greens, sulfur, color).
Phase 2 = Going gluten free, dairy free and soy free to reduce the risk of food allergies.
Phase 3 = Going Paleo by reducing/eliminating grains, legumes and potatoes.
Phase 4 = Getting evaluated for potential food allergies, toxic load issues and more personalized nutritional needs by a practitioner of functional medicine. The Institute for Functional Medicine can help you find a provider in your area. 

Source

Right after reading her book, I started adding more veggies, especially leafy greens to my family's meals.  In January, I decided to follow her diet as best I could for one month.  I wound up doing phase one and two completely, I tried to follow phase 3 as much as a could, but I didn't fully understand what was required.  And the book was vague in some areas and gave conflicting advice in other places.

I didn't find this four phased approach until my month was over.  I spent a lot of January figuring out exactly what I was supposed to be doing.  I filled in the gaps from Minding My Mitochondria by reading online and watching several videos of Dr. Wahls on YouTube.  Hopefully my posts will help clarify for others interested in trying this out.

The Wahls Foundation has said that the release of Dr. Wahls' next book will be in Summer 2014 and hopefully that will present a clearer path.

Minding My Mitochondria made me aware of how diet affects health.  Before I had been very aware of how portions control, fats, proteins and carbohydrates contribute to a "balanced diet".  As someone who has struggled with weight gain and as a pregnant gal who had gestational diabetes these are things I consider every day.  However, no doctor or diet had ever laid out how the quality, processing and trace nutrients in food are equally as important.

Most weight loss strategies focus on severely restricting calories without addressing the starvation [of nutrients] that is co-occurring with the obesity. Although severe restriction of calories can lead to weight loss, it is very difficult to keep the weight off. - Dr. Wahls' Blog

The Wahls diet is a more complete approach.  It's also a more complicated approach. Many people get lost.  It's hard to keep all your ducks in a row.  On forums and around the internet I have seen folks having problems with losing too much weight or ironing out if coffee, wine or honey fit into the Wahls Diet; finding some of the odder dietary requirements like seaweed and grass fed organ meat can be tricky.

Part of these difficulties are because Dr. Wahls continues to do research and so her approach is evolving.  There are also inconsistencies in the book.  Most notable is that the Wahl's diet is grain-free and dairy-free yet some of the recipes included are gluten-free not grain-free.  It sends mixed signals.

The Wahls Diet does require a drastic change from how most Americans eat.  It takes time to learn how to prepare and eat food differently.  And cheese, cheese is hard to give up.

As I have discovered recipes and ways to incorporate the Wahls Diet into my life I have been recording them on this blog.  You can find all of them on my Wahls Paleo Diet Recipes and Ideas - Pinterest Board.

I developed a spreadsheet to help me check off the requirements each day.  I found the one in the back of Minding My Mitochondria was for different requirements then her current recommendations.  Plus the one in book is four pages long and rather bulky.  If you'd like to give it a try, I've shared it on GoogleDocs.  You can cut and paste it into your own files and customize however suits you.

Wahls Diet Log - 2 weeks

It's now March and I have had time to ruminate on my month of eating the Wahls way.  It was hard work and honestly I didn't feel any different.  I'm a healthy person so this is preventative for me and my young family. I've been steadily shifting how we eat over the last couple years.

We eat very well.  We already had stopped eating processed foods and found a local source of high quality meat.  The big changes for us were eating more of certain vegetables, going gluten and dairy free.

I did lose a couple pounds in the beginning, but once I found recipes I liked, I actually gained a couple pounds. Calories still count!

I had a couple mornings were I felt nauseous   I didn't understand.  Shouldn't I be feeling better, more energetic?  Turns out a cup of high quality gun powder green tea in the morning was the cause. The tannins on an empty stomach made me feel sick.   The cheaper green teas from brands like Tazo, Stash or Yogi are easier for me to drink.  Ironically, they probably have fewer antioxidants which is why we should drink green tea in the first place.

I continue to eat lots of vegetables.  Most days I even manage to make sure me and my family get enough from every category.  The one cup of blue/black vegetables or fruit are the most difficult.  I plan on growing blue potatoes, blueberries and beets this year to make it easier.

It wasn't too hard to go gluten-free but much more difficult to go grain-free.  I have started to experiment with soaking, sprouting and souring grains and legumes to make them more digestible to keep them in our diet. Something more in the line of Nourishing Traditions or the Weston A. Price Foundation.   It is perhaps not the best solution or the Wahls way, but it is better than what we were eating before.

Have you run across this new thought that if we do eat grains they should be the milled white variety? The argument being that fiber from bran has lots of phyto nutrients that block the uptake of vitamins and minerals.  We should get our fiber instead from whole fruits and vegetables.  The Healthy Home Economist recommends eating white Basmati rice because it is more nutritious than plain white rice.  There is a whole new post worth of information to sort through on that topic!

In the end, I learned a lot.  I enjoyed the challenge. I do believe my family will eat better because of Dr. Wahls.  Will we follow every single recommendation? No, but we will keep it in mind.  I plan on buying her next book.  I will be an active student.

I will continue to share recipes and ideas that work with the Wahls Diet here on my blog.  You can find more about the Wahls Diet here:




I'd love to hear about your experiences or thoughts.  Please share in the comments!

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Brain Food: Butternut Squash Curry - Wahls Paleo Recipe

I adore a spicy curry any time the temperature is less than fifty degrees.  Butternut curry is one of my favorites to make at home.  Your whole place will smell like an Indian restaurant.  

A warm bowl of this curry is loaded with healthy ingredients including some leafy greens and grass fed pork making it a Wahls Paleo and Whole30 powerhouse meal. Not to mention it has a rich, sweet and savory flavor perfect for these windy March days. 

I pulled many of the ingredients from the produce we put up last summer; including the dehydrated tomatoes and frozen bell peppers.  I was able to take advantage of my local farmers to get the rest. 

For those of you eating rice, basmati is an excellent paired with this meal.  

Not everyone will have dehydrated cherry tomatoes or mustard green available so I've included some alternatives in the recipe below.  As you can see there are lots of bright colors.

There are quite a few ingredients, but every single one counts.  Since I'm following the Wahls Diet, which is a nutrient dense paleo diet, I used turnips instead of potatoes because they count towards your three cups of sulfur rich vegetables a day as do the garlic and onion.  The butternut counts towards your one cup of yellow/orange.  The tomatoes count towards your one cup of red.  

I was recently excited to find Hawkin's Family Farm is now selling lard!  Lard is one of the Wahls approved cooking fats. It is excellent because it can withstand high temperatures. Here's a link to her discussing fats if you are interested: Dr. Wahls on Oils and Fats.

Lard is having a bit of a Renaissance.   You should check around, you might find a quality local source near you!  Or if you buy a half or whole hog, you can render your own in a crock pot or on the stove.  

To up the nutrient dense anti, the base of this curry is bone broth.  Then I included a tablespoon of nutritional yeast, a tablespoon of dulse seaweed and a teaspoon of sea salt   I do believe this is the only recipe I have come across to use all four of the mineral sources recommended by Dr. Wahls!  Are you feeling healthy yet?

By my count the only thing this curry is missing to contribute to all the daily Wahls Diet goals is something from the black/purple category.   So have some blueberries for dessert.  

Butternut Squash Curry

1 tablespoon of fat (lard, tallow, ghee or coconut oil)
2 onions, chopped
2 cups of mushrooms, sliced
1 thumb of fresh ginger, about a tablespoon, minced
5 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tablespoons of curry paste or powder
2 cups chicken stock (or whatever bone broth is on hand pork, beef, fish all work too)
1 14-ounce can of full fat coconut milk
2 medium turnips, peeled and cubed
1 large butternut squash, peeled and cubed
1 cup dehydrated tomatoes (or 14 ounces of diced tomatoes)
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 bell pepper, chopped
2 tablespoons of fish sauce (optional)
1/2 pound of shredded pork, precooked (I buy mine from Hawkins Family Farm)
2 large handfuls of mustard greens (or a hardy green like kale, chard or spinach), chopped
1 tablespoon of dulse or other seaweed flakes (optional)
1 tablespoon of nutritional yeast (optional)

1 1/2 cups basmati rice, uncooked
3 cups water
1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Yields six servings
Takes about an hour and a half to prep and cook.

1. In an 8 quart or larger pot sautee the onions and mushrooms in the fat.  When the onions become glassy add the garlic, ginger and curry paste and cook for another minute or so until fragrant.  
2. Pour in the chicken stock and coconut milk.  Add the turnips, butternut squash, tomatoes and sea salt  If needed add a little water to make sure all the vegetables are covered.  Bring to a simmer, cover and let cook for 45 minutes.  Stir every so often to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom. The butternut squash will start to fall apart.  
3. Meanwhile if you would like rice with your curry start making the basmati.  In a sauce pan add the rice, water and salt.  Cover and bring to a simmer.  Allow to cook for 20 minutes and then remove from heat.  Cover and set a side to serve with curry.    
4. Mix in the bell pepper, fish sauce, and pork to curry and cook for an additional 15 minutes.  
5. Stir in the greens, seaweed and nutritional yeast.  Cook for 5 minutes or until the greens have wilted.  Adjust the salt; taste a bit and if needed add more.  
6. Serve alone or with rice.  

This makes excellent leftovers!  

For more recipes and ideas visit my Wahls Paleo Pinterest Board.

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Eat Make Grow Blog Hop - March Spring

Welcome to March's Eat Make Grow Blog Hop where you share what you have been eating with your family, growing in your garden or making with all your creative impulses. Eat Make Grow is a collective link party that is shared across three blogs and runs every first Thursday and goes for 20 days. Whichever blog that you choose to link up your post, it will show up on all three sites!

Eat Make Grow is a way to share with many people posts about your domestic doings, whether that’s gardening, crafting or trying out a new recipe. We want to learn about it!

Every month, we will feature the most popular link, one chosen by the the host and a group favorite.



Your Hosts:

Miranda from Pocket Pause

Marigold from Hideous! Dreadful! Stinky! 

Foy from Foy Update (That's me!)

We’re not big fans of rules so there are just two of them:

1. Link up posts telling us how you cooked it, made it or grew it with your own hands. Eat Make Grow is about sharing our projects. Please no advertising, propaganda, corporate giveaways or information-only articles. We may remove links if they aren't on topic.
2. Please link your posts back to one of the hosting blogs.This is a common blog hop courtesy. This link helps build the Eat Make Grow community by sending your readers to all of the other participants' posts.We will feature three posts each month and we will only consider posts that have a link back. A text link is fine, or you can grab our button and put it anywhere on your blog (html in my sidebar):

<a href="http://foyupdate.blogspot.com/search?q=eat+make+grow/" target="_blank"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJRQLW8gfVLqmV2RWQZRmcgp7cvbbQXtcLC1AqPaZRIGod7aeXWdghJO2s1Kl5RBQPZR5RLbHF0rXrY-8eOmIyBEBHYQm0QU7pXoupGmR9WGyN98Uc8srsHdcEqkGksa1aFd8IqzshhgNT/s190/eatmakegrow125x125blue.foy.jpg"></a> 

This month your host is Miranda from Pocket Pause.

The theme for March is SPRING! The robins are out which means it's time for planting asparagus, planning your spring wardrobe and sewing projects and cooking up fresh veggies again - or at least planning for them!

It has really been feeling like spring the last few days at my homestead with balmy days and lighter misty rains. I've been out planting shrubs and am sketching up a storm getting ready to build some mobile tractors for my chickens and rabbits.

I can't wait to see what you're up to in anticipation of spring! Link up with your favorite spring-themed posts, new or old and be sure to visit some of the other posts for inspiration. You can also visit our Pinterest boards to see past Featured Bloggers and Posts That Inspire to see our favorites. Just scroll down to the Linky tool at the bottom of this post and enter your info!

Link up with YOUR spring projects - What have you been eating, making or growing in anticipation of spring?

I certainly enjoyed reading everyone's "No Buy February" posts last month. I for one was a spending fool with the new homestead and all, but it was great to see all the wonderful things you can make with 'stuff' you already have on hand. Last month's featured bloggers are:

Brown Thumb Mama with her "Five things you should be making (and not buying)" post was a hit with our readers! I love the looks of that taco seasoning mix.

Taco Seasoning by Brown Thumb Mama

She may be a contributor here at Eat Make Grow, but I'm not biased! This project is absolutely the BEST re-use tutorial on the web. Here's to Marigold and her "Making a Boy's Tie from a Man's Tie" post and tutorial.

It does NOT get cuter!

And finally our Group Choice post was Plain Jane's camping seats made from milk crates. I want to make some of these!

Were you featured? Be sure and grab our Featured Blogger badge and display it with pride!

<a href="https://pinterest.com/marigoldhaske/eat-make-grow-blog-hop-featured-posts/" target="_blank"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt9LfkOaqAop3L5znjZrI7jDkHehEnDWPu_L3cQC0kg3exeFZeZacf6hyphenhyphenQVF9liJsU_Shng6Qz9bHrjncbPMeMnnj3zKQ7ZHgnMMWeYhZk8n-OaIgR5hgencNEqXgJxJ8onX8E_G26Iaix/s1600/featured125x125.jpg"></a>

Bring on your spring themed posts - new or old and be sure and visit other bloggers' posts to see what they've been up to and maybe find some inspiration!

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Perfect Coconut Macaroon Cookies - Naturally Sweetened, Gluten Free, Grain Free, Paleo Recipe

The ideal macaroon is a light ball of toasted coconut goodness with a slightly chewy center.  It took seven tries but I finally got a recipe and technique for the perfect  macaroon.

Macaroons are a great option for gifts because they fit into most diets.  This macaroon recipe is gluten free, grain free, vegetarian, naturally sweetened, and paleo!  If you are following along on my Wahls Diet journey these macaroons also follow her diet.  But are they delicious?  Yes, I wouldn't put them in my Christmas cookie tins if they weren't.



I started with the Cook's Illustrated Coconut Macaroon recipe and then made some upgrades to whole ingredients.  Cook's Illustrated's (CI) recipes are all about taste and ease so often they include things like corn syrup.  Why use corn syrup when an equal amount of raw honey would be so much better?

To get more coconut flavor CI uses coconut cream which is a processed product for making pinacoladas.  I opted for the equally coconut-y coconut butter which is just raw coconut pureed until smooth-ish.

Artisana Raw Coconut Butter

I bought the jar of the coconut butter above, but if you have access to fresh coconut you can also make you own DIY coconut butter.

I did like the suggestion from CI to use a combination of sweetened and unsweetened coconut.  Unsweetened coconut is rather dry where as sweetened has some moisture and flexibility.  Together they offer a nice blend of the two that allows the outside of the macaroon to brown up while the inside stays chewy.

Once I had the ingredients set my next hurdles were getting the right texture and size.

The first time I made the macaroons I rolled the dough into balls with a heavy hand and they were too dense.  A gentle scoop and shape with my fingers was all I needed to get the light texture I wanted.  Also all the little bits of coconut flakes that stuck out browned nicely adding that crusty exterior to the macaroon.

Macaroons of different sizes with a quarter for reference.

For a comparison the macaroons on the left were packed densely, the two on the right were packed lightly, all were baked for the same amount of time.  You can see the lightly packed on the right have better color.

Next I tried different amounts of dough.  I tried one teaspoon, two teaspoons and a tablespoon of dough.  However, using a measuring spoon packed the coconut too much.  So I switched to measuring by weight.

I tried one ounce and a half ounce of lightly packed dough; wetting my finger tips helped keep things from getting too sticky.  I preferred the half ounce because it had a better ratio of crusty outside to soft moist inside.  The best macaroon turned out to be a lightly packed half ounce of dough.

I also tried baking directly on the cookie sheet or on parchment paper and I found parchment better because the bottoms didn't get too dark.

Coconut Macaroons

yields 48 cookies

1 cup of coconut butter
2 tablespoons raw honey
4 large egg whites
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (gluten free if you are sensitive)
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
3 cups unsweetened shredded coconut
2 cups sweetened shredded coconut

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Line baking sheet with parchment paper.
    
2. Use a food processor, mixer or, if you want an arm work out, a whisk to combine the coconut butter, honey, egg whites, vanilla extract, and salt until smooth.  The mixture will be the texture of warm peanut butter.
    
3. Next fold in the sweetened and unsweetened coconut so it is evenly moist. The goal is to mix everything together without compressing to keep the batter light.
    
4. Using a scale measure out half ounce increments of dough and use wet fingertips to shape into loose balls.  If you don't have a scale you are aiming for about a tablespoon.
    
5. Place each ball onto the parchment paper.  Macaroons don't rise, so you can place them close together.  Bake for about 15 minutes, or until golden brown, rotating the cookie sheet at 8 minutes.  
6. Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet a couple minutes so they set before moving them to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.  

Optional Dark Chocolate Dipped Macaroons 

10 ounces of Dark Chocolate Chips at least 60% cacao

Wait until the macaroons have cooled for at least a half hour.  Lay out a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet.  Melt the dark chocolate in a Pyrex bowl in the microwave using 45 second bursts, stirring between each burst until the chocolate falls smoothly from the spoon. Do not over heat.  Holding the top of the macaroon dip half of it into the melted chocolate.  Allow the extra chocolate to stream off then place the cookie on the parchment.  Refrigerate the dipped macaroons for 15 minutes until the chocolate has set.



For more recipes and ideas visit my Wahls Paleo Pinterest Board.

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