Before the large supermarkets became established in the 1960s, most Australian families lived on their quarter acre blocks, and planted fruit trees, and grew seasonal vegetables and salads. Many families also had chickens, and near the country towns it was not uncommon to see a cow in the back yard or adjoining paddock, to provide milk. Most families supplemented what they could grow with fresh seasonal foods from the local corner store and the local butcher.
The large supermarket chains introduced a huge variety of packaged fast foods as well as vegetables and fruits (frozen, fresh, and delayed ripening) that could be obtained all year—strawberries in Winter. They provided variety, ease of shopping, and cheaper products, which was impossible for the local corner stores to do, and almost all went out of business.
The global food market was developing at a rapid pace, and supermarkets were an essential part of this. Junk foods, fast foods, packaged long shelf-life foods became desirable, and normal in every household. They were promoted on the radio and television by celebrities and doctors, and initially were believed by many to be healthy as well as entertaining. The Australian population didn’t need the quarter acre block any more.
By the mid 1980s, more and more of the public were waking up to the health problems that continually eating fast foods (fresh and packaged) tended to promote—obseity, heart conditions, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune diseases had been on the rise for 20 years. Today, it is being confirmed that continually eating the same commercial plant-based foods all year round without a break promotes the occurrence of non-communicable chronic diseases—which currently are responsible for 75% of the world’ deaths, according to the World Health Organisation.
People need a break from eating packaged fast foods and bakery products made from grains to let their bodies detox and recover health. By the mid 90s, the average person was understanding this, so when family members or friends were not well, the anecdo- tal health advice was for the sick person to cut down on junk foods, and eat more fresh produce—and this usually made them feel healthier.
By the early 2000s, anecdotal health advice included reducing sugar (and in some cases salt). It seemed the general public were changing in their understanding of which foods gave better health (probably because of the internet). Today we all understand the health problems associated with eating high sugar, high salt, trans-fat, junk foods—and most people have a break from them, every now and then.
By 2010, many of the public, as well as many health practitioners, were questioning the value of eating gluten. Gluten was the ‘trigger’ for coeliac disease, atypical coeliac disease, silent coeliac disease, pseudo coeliac disease, gluten intolerance syndrome, and the spectrum of non-coeliac gluten sensitivity symptoms. People were talking about feeling healthier when they removed gluten from their diet. In the public domain, general health advice included removing junk foods from their diet, reducing sugar to low levels, and removing gluten from the diet. Now the manufacturers of fast foods have been followed along, and there are more and more gluten-free products on supermarket shelves. Also the medical profession is slowly starting to agree with popular public opinion.
Also in the early 2000s, a health movement started due to a publication of a paper entitled, ‘Cereal Grains: Humanity’s Double- Edged Sword’ by Loren Cordain (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12810032_Cereal_Grains_Humanitys_Double-Edged_ Sword). Embracing a grain-free diet has now become an established way of eating for health, for an increasing percentage of the public, and 15 years after the movement started it is still growing in popularity.
There are also more and more people removing all grain foods and going Paleo for a few weeks, as a type of ‘detox’. This appears to have stemmed from the growing popularity of intermittent-fasting proving to be a lifestyle health benefit for most who try it. So a push by growing numbers of the public when they want to improve their mental and physical health naturally (as well as to look and feel younger) is to undertake a detox for a couple of weeks by removing junk foods, lowering sugars to a minimum, go-ing totally grain-free, and practicing some form of intermittent fasting.
Deeks provides a range grain-free balery products that can make it easier for you during your detox.
If you want to know more about grain-free detoxing, click this link and register to participate in a Deeks closed podcast explaining this Detox in detail, with me. It is free—and you can ask your questions.
Try a Grain-removal Detox—a quick and easy method to improve your health Part 1
When we eat our foods we make sure they are free of pathogenic microbes and free of toxins that could poison us. So we inspect our meats, dairy and eggs, smell them, sometimes feel for bacteria slime, and decide whether cooking will make them safe to eat. Determining if plants are too poisonous to eat is more difficult. We know that plants will be more poisonous if we can see mould growing, and sometimes if they are wilting, or changing colour. We have to decide if peeling, de-seeding, soaking, boiling, bak- ing, cooking or fermenting will render those plants safe to eat.
We also know that we can be poisoned if we eat the wrong plants, such as most varieties of wild mushrooms. We can also be poisoned if we eat the wrong parts of plants, such as the leaves of rhubarb, or the green skins of potatoes, etc. Most of the plant- derived foods and drinks have naturally occurring low-grade toxins that our bodies can denature and excrete if necessary though our stools, urine, and sweat. It is important to understand that if our bodies can denature and excrete particular toxins at the same rate (or better) as we consume them through our foods, the toxins will not build up in our tissues, or compromise the immune- nervous system to cause health problems.
What I am bringing to your attention is that as we age (or go through stressful periods), our bodies can become less efficient at denaturing and excreting (detoxifying) certain toxic plant chemicals. When this happens, some plant toxins can accumulate, cause poison responses and trigger immune-neurological dysfunctioning— and this causes illness (mostly chronic). And if we continu- ally eat the same plant foods day after day, week after week, month after month, year in and year out, we increase the chances that our bodies will eventually have a problem with the naturally occurring toxic plant chemicals in our foods.
Over the last 50 years, Australians have stopped eating seasonal foods, which gave their bodies a break from these plant toxins entering their bodies, and this allowed them to regain better health. Today most people continually eat the same group of foods, day after day, with no thought of the ill effects this can have on their health. Our staple bakery products made from wheat, rice, corn, oats, barley, rye, etc, are the cause of much ill-health as we age. After 30 years of undertaking tens of thousands of food trial case studies as a clinical immunobiologist, my conclusion is that, the plant foods that will eventually cause debilitating chronic illnesses and quicker ageing, are bakery grain foods—if you eat them every day (or few days) throughout the years.
Most people in Australia have grown up with a cultural heritage of eating bakery products made from grains. We start about the age of two, and then almost every day without fail for the next several decades, we eat grain-based foods—breads, pasta, cakes, biscuits, and fast foods. In my understanding, a time eventually comes when grain toxins begin to accumulate in a person’s body, overload the immune-nervous systems, and keep triggering chronic symptoms.
In order to prevent this, you should consider undertaking a Grain-removal Detox for two or three weeks, and do this three or four times a year—just as a health precaution. This type of thinking is similar to the now popular idea of regularly undertaking intermittant fasting, to improve general health. However intermittent fasting, is carried out for one or more days every week and becomes a lifestyle. Undertaking a Grain-removal Detox is an occasional change to lifestyle. You simply have to change from grain-derived bakery products and commercial foods to grain-free. Deeks can help you with this.
If you want to know more about grain-removal detoxing, click this link and register to participate in a Deeks closed podcast ex- plaining this Detox in detail, with me. It is free—and you can ask your questions.
Try a Grain-removal Detox—a quick and easy method to improve your health – Part 2
Most human plant foods can be eaten by most people as full meals and not cause any illness—for example pasta, potatoes, pump- kin and carrots. Some human plant foods can only be taken in small amounts. Herbs and spices are examples of condiments that add flavour and smell to other foods, but if they are taken as whole meals they will quickly cause serious illness and possibly death—they have naturally occurring toxic chemicals. How do you think you would feel if you ate a whole bowl of pepper as a meal?
Hundreds of plant toxic chemicals have been used as medicines throughout history—for example the hundred of herbs currently used in herbal medicine. These can be beneficial for health, as long as they are not overdosed; for example the bark of the willow tree has been used for centuries as a pain reliever. The active chemical in willow bark is called salicin, which has been converted into the drug known as Aspirin. Overdosing of either will lead to illness.
One real concern about plant toxins that is often overlooked is the weakening effect they have on the body if they are regularly eaten. For example, if you eat grass-pea seeds as a substantial part of your diet for a few months you will experience a neurologi- cal disease called lathyrism. This is what Jewish inmates in one Ukrainian concentration camp experienced in 1942. The camp’s Nazi officers provided inmates with flour made from grass-pea seeds. It was ‘death by bread’. It only took a couple of months of eating these seed breads for most inmates to become paralysed.
How much plant toxin is too much? It depends on the relationship between the individual plant toxin, the immune-nervous health and genetic predispositions of the person who is eating the plant (and often the microorganism flora of their individual bodies). If you decided to eat meals composed of onions as your only food source over a period of a week you will experience acute ill- ness. If you eat them in small amounts as a garnish, you will not experience illness, because you give your body time to detoxify. If you fully cook them it will be safer for you, because you will be denaturing some of the toxins. However if you ate a small amount of onions with every meal for months or years, you increase the chances of developing immune, nervous or organ dys- function, in a very specific way to your body. They could even trigger epigenetic gene changes.
For the average healthy person to develop lathyrism for example, requires that they eat grass-pea flours as a third of the total diet for a couple of months. However if grass-peas are continuously eaten as a tenth of the diet, most people would not develop obvious symptoms. They would however, slowly develop chronic low-grade ill-health symptoms, and it would take a couple of years or longer for the symptoms to develop. Eventually each individual would experience increasing bouts of muscular stiffness, weakness, and ongoing cramping of the leg muscles, general muscular-skeletal rigidity, chronic bladder irritation, osteoarthritis, and other chronic symptoms.
In general, if we continually eat the same plant foods day after day, week after week, month after month, year in and year out, we increase the chances that our bodies will eventually have a problem with the naturally occurring toxic plant chemicals in our foods.
Before the 1960s, Australians ate the plant foods that were only available in the different seasons. This gave their bodies a break from accumulating plant toxins. The last three generations of Australians have been regularly eating the same array of plant foods, day after day, with no thought of the ill effects this can have on their health. Eventually these accumulated toxins will cause chronic ill health in most people. Our staple bakery products made from wheat, rice, corn, oats, barley, rye, etc, are the cause of much ill-health as we age, particularly if we additionally eat other plant chemicals, such as sugar, continually with these bakery products.
In order to maintain mental and physical health, you should consider doing a Grain-removal Detox for two or three weeks, during which you remove all (100%) grain-derived foods and drinks. If you do this three or four times a year you would find that you feel mentally and physically younger. This type of detoxing is similar to the now popular idea of regularly undertaking intermit-tant fasting, to improve general health. To undertake a Grain-removal Detox simply change from eating grain-derived bakery products and commercial foods to those that are grain-free. Deeks can help you with this.
If you want to know more about grain-removal detoxing, click this link and register to participate in a Deeks closed podcast ex- plaining this Detox in detail, with me. It is free—and you can ask your questions.
Try a Grain-removal Detox—a quick and easy method to improve your health – Part 3
There is a popular trend these days to adopt a gluten-free diet as a way to improve mental and physical health—and it works to a degree, because it removes a toxic lectin (gluten) from causing stress for the immune system and gastrointestinal tract of the person eating it. But glutin is not strictly the real problem with these grain foods. The real problem involves prolamins, which are sub-chemicals of lectins such as gluten. Prolamins are plant storage proteins, which also are associated with defence and seed germination. Gliadin is the best-known and most thoroughly studied example of a prolamin occurring in gluten.
When people adopt a gluten-free diet, they still eat rice, corn and oat grain products because these grains don’t have gluten. How- ever they do have toxic prolamins such as zein in corn, kafirin in sorghum, orzenin in rice, and avenin in oats. These can cause real health problems for many people. And these non-gluten grains also contribute to poor health in other ways.
For example, if large volumes of rice are regularly eaten by people who are not able to efficiently excrete heavy metals from their bodies, these heavy metals can build to toxic levels by eating rice. Heavy metal toxicity is linked to several epigenetic driven, chronic diseases.
It is easy to understand that like animals, plants have systems for absorbing necessary micro-nutrients. In plants, these transport systems accumulate minerals such as iron, calcium, zinc and manganese from the soil. Rice is one of the most widely consumed foods in the world. It is also one of nature’s great scavengers of metallic compounds—notably arsenic and cadmium. Chronic exposure to arsenic, even at very low levels, will cause chronic ill health. The rice plant is very efficient at selectively accumulat- ing toxic metals from the soil and storing them in the seeds, rather than in the leaves, stems or roots, as other plants do.
Today we have more and more industrial by-products accumulating in our soils, and rice is extracting metals such as mercury, selenium, tungsten and other metals. The highest levels of heavy metals often occur in brown rice, which also accumulates in the bran and husk. Constantly eating white rice takes longer to build up heavy metal toxicity, because the bran and husk are polished off in the processing.
The highest concentrations of arsenic and cadmium in rice-growing regions are mostly found in parts of Asia, where the underly- ing arsenic-rich bedrock filters into the groundwater that is used for both drinking and irrigation of rice fields. The cause of ‘Itai- itai’ (ouch-ouch) disease in Japan was clarified during the 1960s in association with the volume of rice being consistently eaten as the main ingredient in meals. The name ‘itai-itai’ is associated with the pain that occurs with bone fractures, one of many health problems related to cadmium exposure.
The slow accumulation of arsenic over years, initially contributes to drowsiness, headaches, and mental slowness and progresses to stomach, colon and liver dysfunction, diabetes, nervous system degeneration, and loss of hearing. Slow accumulation of cadmium through rice, eventually contributes to general organ dysfunction mainly in bones, bladder-kidneys, reproductive and cardiovascular organs, central and peripheral nerves, as well as the lungs.
Selenium toxicity (called selenosis) is common in regions in China. The most common general symptoms of selenosis are loss of hair, deformity, and loss of nails. Individual minor symptoms include: diarrhoea, fatigue, a garlic-like odour of the breath and bodily secretions, irritability, peripheral neuropathy, skin lesions and others. If you eat a lot of rice you should consider stopping for a period of time (two to four weeks) to allow your body to naturally de- toxify from these heavy metals. You will be able to increase your detoxification rate if you remove all grain-derived foods (100%) by doing a Grain-removal Detox for two or four weeks. If you do this three or four times a year you would find that you feel mentally and physically younger and not suffer the symptoms of specific heavy metal toxicity.
This type of detoxing is similar to the now popular idea of regularly undertaking intermittant fasting to improve general health. To undertake a Grain-removal Detox simply change from eating grain-derived bakery products and commercial foods to those thatare grain-free. Deeks can help you with this.
If you want to know more about grain-removal detoxing, click this link and register to participate in a Deeks closed podcast ex- plaining this Detox in detail, with me. It is free—and you can ask your questions.
