Kickas.org Forums Treatments, Drugs and Alternatives NSD and diet-related; Zampieron book questions

Hey John, glad to see you back!

I'm still confused though. Do you consider okra and V-8 as marginal foods? I think I know what happened with the cabbage-broccoli thing. I had a friend tell me that Sally Falon says that all cabbage family vegetables should be cooked lightly for some reason or another, but I forgot to take into consideration that Sally Falon isn't basing her recommendations on a NSD.

Maybe, I am just taking this all too seriously, but when I am in pain, I just want to make sure that I'm not eating something that could be the culprit. So I had to step back and re-evaluate. Okra turned black. I have often wondered why V-8 is okay. I thought anything with cooked tomato would be starchy. I really don't want to cut anything else out of my diet so I need an objective, more experienced opinion. Carol and Zark's blog don't mention okra or V-8. I only heard about it from you.

Thanks for listening! Be sure to check in from time to time. You might not be in the heat of fighting the battle currently, but the rest of us sure appreciate your input.

~Shelli

Hey, Shelli:

V8 not so much because although it is cooked and somewhat nutrient, it has low Kp food potential, since most of the pulp is tomato and not very starchy. Most vegetable and fruit juices are safe, in fact, because they do not contain much of the pulp--but orange juice can, for example, be bad if too much of the pulp is left in. I don't think V8 turns iodine dark and I believe that I tested it more than once...

Carol has suggested that okra is in the marginal 'third group.' I have not ever had any trouble with okra, and I consider this to be a very important food for us for the glycine content that helps us heal. Even Brussels sprouts are in this category, and I don't think that many of us have had to eliminate these. I did test cooked okra, and it only turned black around the broken margins. I'm not a good study with this, since I was taking antibiotics while eating it in earliest experiments, so I can only refer you to Carol's data.

It is really a matter of first getting enough time between you and major starches to heal, and perhaps you will not later need to be so strict, but the key is being strict enough at first. I know how it goes while learning what we can and cannot eat, and I had to go 'by the book' at first, since I did not have reliable feedback from my body. I corresponded with Carol about some of the foods she covers better in the newer book, and she said that she was not able to rely upon the McCance and Widdowson information so much, but it is a good start.

Interesting, I had a friend with 'RA' (well, he thought it was some kind of RA...) and he could not eat fresh tomatoes, but could eat them well-cooked. The idea might have been that some solanine is in the fresh that gets volatilized out when cooked, but all the nightshades have lectins that can increase intestinal permeability, according to some sources. Certainly, I would not cook cabbage at all, or especially cauliflower, but raw these things have never bothered me, even when not taking antibiotics. I'm careful about cole slaw, however, since some of the 'mayonnaise' used may not be the real deal (Best Foods). I've never liked Miracle Whip at all, so I react to this early enough to avoid a flare...

bon appetit
John