0:00
Prior to the elimination diet, I was getting up every morning feeling like the tin man, like my joints just hurt so bad, and I had shrugged it off to Okay, I have a history of Lyme disease. I was a gardener for years, and arthritis runs in my family, so this is just going to be par for the course. Never mind the fact that I was 38, 39 years old, like it didn't add up. But you know, I am not, I'm not creating recipes. I want to, I want to help chefs create the recipes. I'm sick of my own cooking. I want--
0:39
that's their area of expertise, let them--
0:42
Yes, yes, and I can't tell you how just amazing, how cared for, how loved. It makes me feel, in my own experience, when someone takes the time to actually create a meal for me is like the greatest gift that you can give me.
1:06
And I'm not the only one.
1:51
Welcome to the lettuce loves you, the Podcast where we explore belonging and nourishment through the perceptions of body, Earth and community. I'm your host. Jeanell Innerarity. for over 25 years, I've been helping people come home to themselves through somatic or body based practice, dreamwork, nature connection and relationship with self, other humans, and spirit. I want to get beyond belonging as a buzzword and beyond nourishment as a fitness strategy, and get to the heart of what it really means to belong and what it really means to be nourished. Each of my guests has a unique take on these ideas, and I hope you'll take home a greater sense of what belonging and nourishment mean to you. I hope you benefit from listening to the lettuce loves you, and if you do, it would mean a great deal to me If you would like rate and share the show so that more people can discover it and get the same benefit. Now let's dive into today's episode. Hi.
3:07
So welcome. I'm really excited to be talking with Kelly Costigan today. Kelly is a recipe consultant, a certified holistic health coach and a food allergy advocate, which boy we really need a lot of. her company, Without Options, helps chefs create recipes that are free of gluten and the top nine food allergens--She'll tell us what those are--and allows people to accommodate dietary restrictions without catering to every individual person, just making it a really easily accessible thing. And particularly, she helps restaurants become inclusive of special diets by adding just one without option, without options recipe to their menu. So you can find her at withoutoptions.com or @without.options on Instagram. And I'm really excited to be talking to Kelly today. So Kelly, welcome. Thanks for being here.
3:59
Thanks for having me. Jeanell, yeah,
4:03
I so I would love to dive in and just talk about how so both of us are gluten free, and you have some more specific dietary restrictions as well. And I'd love to talk about how we both got there, how we realized that that's what we needed. And I think that's a journey that a lot of people can either relate to because they've been on it, or that they're trying to figure out what's happening in their health, and this is one question that they're asking. So how did you realize that you needed to make these dietary changes for yourself?
4:34
Well, I'll try to give you the short story.
4:39
Often a long story, yes, yes, I
4:42
struggled for years with health issues, especially after giving birth to my son. For some reason, I think it was just maybe more prominent then, because I saw my other mom friends kind of bounce back after giving birth, and I never really did. So with the encouragement of my doctor, because I had taken, like every test we were testing, you know, my my iron levels, my, I don't even know, all the things, all the tests and everything kept coming back negative, so my doctor encouraged me to do an elimination diet, which I got to admit, I wasn't psyched about doing, but I also like something was going on, and I wanted to find out. Because I wanted to be healthy, I wanted to enjoy raising my son. I wanted to have the energy like I was at the point where I was desperate for answers, so I did an elimination diet. And can you say a
5:51
little about what that is for people who aren't familiar with it. Oh, okay, so
5:55
an elimination diet, basically, is the gold standard for discovering if you have food sensitivities. So food sensitivities are a little different, because you can't take like a blood test to discover them. Right. Allergies show up in a blood test. Allergies also usually show up within your body within the first four hours of being exposed to the allergen, where sensitivities can show up like two days later. So really, the only way to discover these sensitivities is to eliminate, in my case, it was the top eight allergens at the time, and gluten. So eliminate those completely out of your diet for, I
6:50
think I did it for one month.
6:54
It was over 10 years ago. Now, that's why I don't remember exactly, but um, so eliminate all those for a month. Keep a food journal of how you're feeling, what you eat, what time as you introduce those foods back into your diet, slowly, one by one. And so like for gluten, for example. So I think gluten was the first one that I reintroduced because I was dying, oh my god. I wanted pasta. I wanted pizza, I wanted, like, all the good, you know, bread. And when I reintroduced the gluten, immediately I had my stomach was bloated like a balloon. I was so uncomfortable. my joint pain came back, which had disappeared. I was getting up every day, prior to the elimination diet I was getting up every morning feeling like the tin man, like my joints just hurt so bad, and I had shrugged it off to, Okay, I have a history of Lyme disease. I was a gardener for years, and arthritis runs in my family, so this is just going to be par for the course. Never mind the fact that I was 38-39 years old, like it didn't add up. But, you know, so that that totally disappeared. You know, after a month of eliminating gluten and when I reintroduced it, like the effect was so immediate, like it was, it was just dead on, like, oh my god, like, this all came flooding back.
8:43
Those symptoms.
8:44
Yeah also like brain fog--trying to think of what else, like I I'm really far removed from that now, like I know how it I know how it affects me. It's been over a decade living like this, and I know if I if I eat any gluten, now I know what's going to happen, but there are also all these other little nuances of how it affects me. It also, if I eat gluten, it seems to trigger my bladder and make me have to pee, like, like 10 times a day, which is just so bizarre. But like, every time I've tested it, these symptoms just keep coming back. It's like, so anyway, I'm sorry. Long story. Elimination Diet just helps you pinpoint. Gives you like, if I eat this, this is what happens. It gives you a clear understanding of what those foods do in your body, which is incredible information, because now, instead of being like, oh, you know, I think gluten bothers me, You know when, and you know how I was before, was like, I don't know if gluten bothers me. Me, but I really want that pizza, and you eat it, and you talk yourself into being able to do it. So knowing exactly what happens is incredible motivation to stick with the diet, because you know, if I eat that this is what will happen. So is it worth it?
10:20
Like it gets you get rid of all that vagueness, yeah,
10:23
so that's how you knew, right? So you did the elimination diet. It was very clear the foods that did not agree with you, and then you had to change your lifestyle around
10:33
that, yes,
10:35
which is easier said than done, because I had, like, I came up that I was sensitive to gluten, dairy, soy and eggs, which I then had to revamp, like mine and my entire family's, you know, our menus, our recipes, our go to foods that we ate all the time. So there was a definite learning curve too. But I do have to say, if anyone's thinking about doing that now, doing an elimination diet now, there are so many more resources than I had 10 years ago, and there are so many more options at the supermarket. Like it just is not the struggle that it was for me back then. So, like, don't let that put you off if you're considering doing it. But yes, it, it's, it was amazing. It, it literally changed my life and regained my health. Wow, just by eliminating the food, certain foods, I've regained my health, which still amazes me, because, you know, the doctors just want to throw pills at you, and no, no, no, I don't want to take any more pills. Thank you.
11:51
Like it just,
11:54
it just amazes me that food is medicine. It really is.
11:57
It's so far removed from the mainstream culture to think of food as medicine, as like the first intervention to see what you're eating, what are you putting into your body, before anything else. And it really stood out to me that that you have a Lyme history. I have been definitely diagnosed with Babesia duncani, which is a Lyme co infection, and suspected Lymes and and I do wonder about sort of the chronic inflammation that that causes increasing the sensitivity to certain foods over time. And I don't have any, you know, actual data around that, but I have questions. And that's a
12:33
whole other rabbit hole. That's a whole other
12:35
rabbit hole, yeah, but I like to
12:37
speak to it, because it's not,
12:40
it's not addressed, and it's so misunderstood or ignored or danced around in a lot of people's medical journeys. And so I like, I always find it really validating when people just speak to it, like, Hey, I have this thing. People don't really fully understand it. But I'm not alone. I'm not not crazy.
13:01
I will say that I've had Lyme disease or been diagnosed with it twice, okay, once in my 20s, which was horrible, and then again, I would say five years after learning about my food sensitivities. Second time was a walk in the park compared to the first, wow. Now I don't know if that was entirely due to changing my diet, you know, and not eating those inflammatory foods and supporting my health in that way, so much better than I mean, in my 20s, I was eating, you know, Kentucky Fried Chicken and thinking french fries was a vegetable, but, you know, just, you know, I don't know it, just, it really, I can't help but feel like a good part of that had to do with nutrition,
13:50
like your system was just bit better able to respond. Yeah, yeah. That makes a lot of sense, and that's really interesting. Like, as you're telling your story with the with the joint pain, and that, like part of my my Gluten Free Journey, was that I I had this chronic pain since I was very young, in my right lower abdomen and in my right hip, and I've been to all the doctors, and I mean, they were suggesting exploratory surgery, and it's just all of these wild things, and it's an injury that never healed, and we don't know how to fix it. And I'd had all this massage and all of this work, and I finally found this amazing physical therapist that I've been seeing for years, because I have hypermobility. So my joints are, are I say, I'm like a marionette on the inside, right? My joints are, like, very, very floppy and flexible on the inside. And so things get out of place. And so I go to physical therapy a lot for that and and diet absolutely, you know, supports that in a big way. But she was working on that, that pain in my right lower abdomen, she said, Oh, your cecum is is really inflamed right the beginning of the large intestine. It's really inflamed, and it's pulling on your hip. And do you eat gluten? And I thought, well, that's got Nothing to do with anything. And I really, I didn't want anything to do with that. But she worked on it. And then I was also seeing a naturopath who diagnosed me with hypothyroidism, and which I was very much clear that I had, and had been asking doctors to pay attention to for years, because it's one of those things that doesn't show up on certain blood tests, even when you have symptoms. And and she confirmed that that was what was happening and told me to go off of gluten, because the gluten protein sort of bio mimics the thyroid hormone and can cause the body to attack the thyroid when there's gluten in the system. And again, I was sort of like, Oh. Like, I think that's just sort of BS. Like, I really like pizza,
15:47
yeah. And it took me a year to accept those, those pieces of feedback,
15:53
because bread is good. And and i i Finally, I thought, well, I can at least let me try fermentation and ancient grains. And so I got these locally grown, organic ancient grains, and I was making this amazing sourdough. And I was eating all this amazing sourdough, which you have to eat a lot of when you have it, because if you've ever done sourdough, it just keeps replicating itself when you have to keep making bread. So I was eating all of this, like ancient grain fermented. I don't remember whether it was Emmer or what, what, what we I was what grain I was using, but I got really sick, and the the pain in my abdomen got really bad, and my thyroid issues inflamed. And I finally had to go, oh, like, this is, this is really what's happening. And now it's very, very clear, if I like, I don't eat any gluten, and if I'm exposed to it, I have pain and digestive issues, and it's instant, like in for several days.
16:57
And now, did you test for celiac prior?
17:00
I did and
17:02
I tested negative for celiac. And I know that sometimes people test negative when they do further testing later, and it actually shows up. So I don't know that's something that I'm willing to explore, and I feel like I have the information that I need.
17:19
No, no, I was just curious, because a lot of people don't realize that you really need to be tested for celiac before you go gluten free. Can you say more about that? Well, because otherwise, like if you do it the other way around, if you try it out, and you go gluten free, and, oh, my God, I feel amazing now when you go to test, to do the blood test to check for celiac, you have to eat gluten for it to show up. And if you really feel that amazing off gluten, you don't want to eat that gluten like you really want to get the test done first before you put in all that work, because also gluten, gluten is takes the longest to get out of your body, out of your system, depending on how sensitive you are, like, you could still have responses to it up to a month later, like, like, it just takes that long so again, test for celiac, before you dive into the whole, am I gluten free? And really, you know, really, hit it hard and for that, for that same reason, if you, if you do, question, is gluten free, you know, right for me, am I having an issue with gluten? If you do test yourself, you can't do the, oh, I'm just gonna lay off. I'm getting, you know, I'm not gonna have pasta, but I'm still gonna have sandwiches. And, like, you can't do that. Like, in order to properly test you have to remove everything, because your body can be so damn sensitive to it. And it's not forever, it's not forever, but if you really want to test it, you gotta avoid it like it's the plague, like your life depends on it, and you gotta do that for a month, a full month, if you really want the answer. So and then the other thing that happens when you do test it, sometimes you can have the reaction where you eat it, and you feel like Superman after having it, but that's really like a false reaction. I forget the specific name of it, but it's called something. I'll have to look at that. I'll have to get back to you on that. I'm spacing out on that right now, but, yeah, it's a whole you got to do your research when you test out. You know if gluten, if gluten free, is right for you, at least that's my experience from it.
19:57
Yeah, I resonate with that. And I really, um. I think you point strongly to the belonging piece when you say it can affect your body for up to a month. And I've even heard longer from some sources of how long it takes your body to recover if you're really sensitive to it. And that, I find that people don't understand that when I'm in a social setting, and I'm like, No, really, I'm not gonna touch that. And people feel understandably if they've cooked something or for a restaurant, they feel personally offended, or they don't understand why I'm so rigid around it and and it's that, like, no, I'll be feeling that for a long time. Yeah,
20:40
yeah. But I also,
20:44
I think a lot of that has to do with
20:48
everybody knows, somebody who's quote, unquote allergic but will eat some anyway, which kind of discredits those of us who know we really need to avoid these things. And
21:01
I was definitely that person. When I was in denial, I was just like, oh, well, maybe I'll just have this one thing because I really, really, really want it. And it took me a
21:09
while. Like, I think that's understandable. Like, why people continue to do that is just because they just, they don't understand. Because why can some people have a little bit but you can't?
21:23
Hey, y'all Jeanell here, and I just wanted to do a quick interlude and let you know that if you're hearing this conversation about the elimination diet, and you're struggling with these kind of things yourself, and you feel overwhelmed about what it would take for you to make these choices in your diet, and what it takes socially and emotionally, and how to choose the right foods and how to go about it. And if that just feels like something that you need, but something that's way too overwhelming to do by yourself, that is a way that I support people, I will walk you through the elimination diet on your own terms, either as part of a bigger health coaching package to look at lots of parts of your life and consult about nutrition herbalism, or as a standalone process where we just go through the elimination diet and you'll Get recipes and meal plans and emotional support, and really get to walk through it in a way that feels grounded and based in the science behind it. And you're not just shooting in the dark, but you actually can really see what your body needs. So if that's something that's meaningful to you. Head on over to my website, Ecospiritualeducation.com, click on the Contact page, and you can book a free phone consultation, and I'm happy to talk to you about it.
22:57
Do you have any
22:59
stories or experiences that are sort of comical or ridiculous or sad from from that piece of communicating around it or go. You've talked a lot about going to restaurants in your in your experience,
23:18
one time in particular comes to mind. We,
23:25
I was going away for a
23:29
seminar on Lyme disease, actually, so and my son had to come with, and I brought my sister and my mom along to help watch my son while I was taking these classes. And this was in upstate New York. I had planned the whole thing. I cooked my own meals at home, brought it with. We stayed in a place we could heat them up, not a problem. Well, the one night the Waiter took out the tray of whatever it was we were going to eat, and somehow it was contaminated with water, or, I don't know what happened, I just remember opening it and being like, uh, we can't eat this. So then we had to frantically search for some place to eat. We ended up at a restaurant that served, you know, typical American food. And at the time, I was still eating beef, and what I ordered, I asked for, okay, can I have just a plain hamburger? And I think the french fries were gluten free, or seemed to be, anyway,
24:39
just a plain burger and fries,
24:42
no bun, no cheese, no anything, just the burger. And I think I asked for a piece of lettuce and tomato on top to just it up a little bit. So first they brought out regular burger with the bun. Okay, that's okay, all right. Can we send it back? Okay. Then they bring it out, and it's a burger with cheese and all the stuff. Okay, all right, really, okay, so can we send it back? Third time they brought it out, and I had a charred hockey puck of a hamburger on my plate, and by this time, my entire family is eating. My son is squirmy, wanting to get out of there, and I'm just like, what I mean? I had no choice but to, like, try to eat the thing. And I was just, I was almost in tears, because I'm starving. I'm so frustrated. How difficult is it to just throw a burger on a plate? And I even had, there was a hostess that had nothing to do with us. She came over and was like, oh my god, I'm so sorry. I am horrified by like, I'm just watching this and what's happening to you, and I don't even know what to do. Like, I mean, they they took the they took the meal off of the bill, but was that really enough to kind of make up for the whole experience of, you know, like, come on, come on. And and I couldn't eat. I didn't eat. I don't even remember what I ended up doing, but like, I was just starving, like the whole night, I feel like, but that stuff happens kind of all the time. You know, at this point, I'm kind of used to it, and can pick and choose and siphon out places that may have better options for me. But, you know, it makes it very limiting, because, like, I was traveling when this happened, and I didn't have the forethought. I didn't look up places I could eat, you know, in in case of emergency. So I learned that lesson. But you know these restrictions, it's, it's frustrating too, because you can't just travel where you want. Everything is dependent on where I can find food.
27:10
Yeah, so what you do now in without options, is help restaurants solve that problem for people. Can you--Which is so innovative, because I think that it's, it's an easy problem to solve in so many cases, and like, we connected over my broccoli story, this Italian restaurant that was, like, the sort of place where you take, like a hockey team after a game, or something like when you have kids to feed. And it wasn't a place that I would have chosen, but I was with a large group, and I asked for broccoli, plain broccoli. And I said, why isn't it gluten free on the menu? Because they did have things marked and and the waitress said, I don't know. And I said, Can you find out why, why broccoli is not gluten free, like plain broccoli? She went back to the kitchen, and she said, Well, they they boil it in the same pasta water. They boil all the pasta at the beginning of the day, and then at the end, they like, Flash, like, quickly steam the broccoli in the same water as the pasta. They just like, dunk it cooked. And that's it for the whole day. And I said, Well, could you
28:15
bring me some broccoli that was cooked in the gluten free pasta water? She's like, No, we do all the broccoli at once. It's not possible to do gluten free broccoli. So, so you're providing a very important service and education. Can you say more about how you work with restaurants to make
28:33
this easier? Well,
28:34
when I when I first discovered that I had to avoid gluten, dairy, soy and egg, and went through all this research and the whole process during that time, I realized, okay, so I have to avoid half of the major food allergens, because at the time, there were eight. It was wheat,
28:55
soy, egg,
28:58
milk, peanuts, tree nuts, fish and shellfish, and now sesame has been added as the ninth major food allergen. But so I realized that, okay, I'm avoiding half of those.
29:11
Okay, so you weren't avoiding the whole list, but that, that is the list. You're saying. That's
29:15
right, that's the list of the major allergens. And I was avoiding half and I was getting so frustrated because I was looking online, trying to find recipes that I could eat. And it seemed like every blogger and and, you know, chef that posted stuff, if they if they gave the designation of being gluten free or egg free, or whatever, that it was very specific to them and what they are avoiding, which is great, you know, but it was also frustrating. So at that point, you know, if I'm already avoiding all four, I'm just going to go for. All eight, and help everybody you know, that's that is struggling like I am, because that way, it doesn't matter where you are on the spectrum, if you have one restriction, or three of those restrictions, or all eight, God forbid, you still could find a recipe that you like, you know, when that you could eat. And then I fell down the rabbit hole where I thought I wanted to create recipes and, like, be a food blogger that way. And then it just sucked all the fun out of it. It's a lot of work, you know, you got to give them credit, to all these people with the food blogging and the posts, and it's a lot of work, but anyway, so in doing in following that little breadcrumb, it also dawned on me, Well, hey, if I can do this at home, why can't restaurants do this? And all they would need to do is create one menu option that's made this way, and they can accommodate everyone you know, with nearly everyone you know, with gluten and top allergen issues. And if they want, you can even make it vegan, if you really want to be that inclusive. So that's how, that's all, how the whole idea came about. And then it just took me years to kind of tease out the whole process of how, how am I going to do this? How am I going to, you know, approach this package, this. How do we, how do we make this happen? Basically, so things need to happen. Yeah, so ultimately, where I'm at now is I created a guide for chefs to create a recipe that is free of gluten and the top nine food allergens, with the option to make it vegan as well. I am not, I'm not creating recipes I wanted to. I want to help chefs create the recipes I'm sick of my own cooking. I want
32:07
that's their area of expertise. I let them
32:09
Yes, yes.
32:12
And how do you do that from a
32:13
real food standpoint? Because a lot of gluten free options are just like a mishmash of chemicals, if you go to the store, it's it's like a bizarre, manufactured conglomerate of things that you would never have in your own kitchen. How do you help with guide people to use real food, avoiding a lot of real foods, right? Eggs and dairy and gluten are like wheat or gluten containing grains. They are real food. And if you're having if you're eating a whole foods diet, those are healthy whole foods, if your body tolerates them well, but when you're eliminating them and replacing them, how, like, how do you guide people to make something that's not just eat a salad with balsamic vinaigrette every day, the sad
33:07
salad salad.
33:10
I'm so sick of the sad salad. So
33:13
how do you help people make real food gluten free and free of the top allergens? Well,
33:21
my guide, it basically consists of Whole Foods. I don't have processed foods on there, with the exception of, like, you're probably not going to make your own vinegar or oil, or I do I make my own vinegar. It's so good.
33:36
Oh my gosh, okay.
33:39
But like, basic things like that are on there. And I don't recommend certain brands or manufacturers. I try not to, because manufacturers can change their recipes whenever they want, and they do, so I have to be careful with that. Um, so one of the mistakes I made when I first eliminated all these foods is I tried to replace my favorite recipes in the same way. So, like, I really missed pizza. Yeah. So I was trying to, you know, all the different processed pizzas that are made with all the chemicals and stuff I have since learned to move away from that, and I've found more satisfaction in finding recipes that aren't trying To mimic old favorites. Because, I mean, let's face it, nothing's going to compare to Grandma's meatballs, like, right, no matter what you replace like. So why? Why bother doing that? Nothing? That's bread. Like bread? Yeah, yeah. So instead, I kind of pivoted and I started looking through cookbooks. Regular cookbooks and dog earring every recipe that could be made without gluten in the top allergens, and started just creating lists of those and eventually sharing them. Like on my website, I have an inspiration page where if you click on one of the cookbooks, it'll give you a list of all the recipes in that cookbook that can easily be made without gluten, in the top nine food allergens, wow. And I have an asterisk next to everyone that can be vegan as well made vegan. It's like one of my favorite things to do is find quote, unquote, regular recipes that can be made this way, so that, you know, when you meet someone that's like, Oh, what do you eat? I'm like, Well,
35:50
you can try this, you know. But, um,
35:54
yeah, I would say, just hunt for those recipes. Just look for recipes that aren't you. Like you're gonna have to change your diet, obviously, like ingredient wise, but maybe if you explore, let's say Indian food, if it's not normally in your wheelhouse, or, you know, Mexican food, or whichever, like kind of pick a either a style of cooking like grilling, or
36:29
just something different than what you're used to,
36:33
and find recipes and experiment with recipes that can be made without the things you're trying to avoid. It's kind of an an easier transition, I would say. And you know, eventually you end up with an arsenal of, you know, of recipes that you really enjoy you and your family, so and if you're stuck, you can go to go to my website and under the inspiration tab, and you can check out some of those recipes. But, yeah, it's, it's an adjustment, for sure. But once you're on the other side of that adjustment, it's like, it's so worth it. I mean, I'm sure you'd agree, like there's, there's no bread in the world that I mean, yeah, I could fantasize about eating it, but I'm not going to, because I do not miss feeling like crap every single day. Yeah, it's just not worth it. Yeah? Yeah.
37:40
That's an interesting one that I joke with friends about. Where it's it's not hard for me to say no to gluten, because I will. I know how bad I will feel. So even though I'm like, Oh, I might like to eat that, there's nothing in me that at this point, wants to go over that edge because I feel bad. And it's funny, because I don't feel that way with sugar, where I'm like, I know that sugar is harming me, yeah, but if I see something with sugar that I want, it's much harder for me. And I will, I will eat something that I really want in because it's not a like an instant. I don't feel instantly terrible and but gluten, it's not hard at all, and I would love to talk about how culturally we got here, because a lot of the things that we're talking about again are real Whole Foods That cultures are based around, like talking about cheese and dairy and nuts and seeds and
38:37
And so I know that
38:41
there are lots of different ways that we got here where everyone suddenly has this awareness that these things that were staples become things that we need to avoid. And my background is in sustainable agriculture, and so I think of it as a lot as how our food system has changed, the way that the food is grown, the way that it's processed, the systems that it goes through, the lack of nutrient in it, the genetic modification that it's undergone, that our body recognizes it differently. And I'm very curious, because in the wheat realm in particular, there's conflicting information, where I've seen some information that says, oh, wheat has been bred to have more and more gluten over the last 100 years, and therefore it changes the amount of gluten that we're actually exposed to. And then I've read some scientific articles that say, No, that's really not true. And in fact, some of it has less gluten, and so that's a bit confusing, but I know that the way that wheat is harvested, sometimes in conventional agriculture involves broadcast spraying glyphosates, an herbicide, across the field as a way to kill and dry out the plant so that it's. Easy to harvest. And proponents of the practice say that, well, you remove the the the outside, the gloom that's outside of the seed, and so by the time it's processed, it's below the EPA residue tolerance, and it's fine. But I think that if your body is really sensitive to that. And I would argue that everyone's body is sensitive to poison, but some of us feel it more that glyphosate is known to erode the intestinal lining, and when you erode the intestinal lining, it's more permeable, and then gluten enters your bloodstream, and then your body reacts to it as a an invader, rather than something that you should just be digesting. And but there's really conflicting information out there, and so I'm curious just how you make sense of the fact that so many people suddenly can't eat food.
40:59
From my perspective,
41:03
I think it has to do with the quality of food. Because, I mean, you're talking about spraying wheat, they can spray it with that up to five times the same harvest sometimes. So it's not just like a single dose, and then what are you doing? You're just drinking or eating a concentrated roundup in your food kind of a thing. And you know, for some people, it's not going to bother them, but other people who are sensitive, it does.
41:35
So one of the things that you do not avoid that is very controversial, is cilantro. And love to talk about this, because I talk to every guest about their favorite herb, spice, medicinal plant, and I'm thrilled that you chose cilantro. I'm sure you have other favorites too, but it is, it is very controversial, and I'm also a huge cilantro fan. So what do you love about this controversial plant?
42:07
I don't know. I just, I love, like Mexican food and just I love, just, I love that part that it kind of hits in the back of your throat when you eat it. I don't know how to describe it, but it's just like that, like it just it packs a lot of flavor it i And also, okay, so since I have all these dietary restrictions, every year, I have an herb garden, just because it makes it easier to add flavor with any herb. You know, you walk outside, you grab some fresh, you know, sage or thyme or whatever, huge, huge benefit in the kitchen. But I can't grow cilantro every time, every year I'll like, I'll try to plant it, and it just either peters out, or if it grows nice and big. Then the, oh, is it the monarchs? There's some butterfly, some caterpillar that, like, I walk out one day and it's, like, totally gone. So I just, I just love cilantro. I think it's awesome. I use it whenever I can. And I'm so thankful that my family loves it too, because I just does not taste like soap to me.
43:27
Team cilantro, 100%
43:31
me too. And I feel very lucky to feel that way, and I've had the same gardening experience with it, and I've seen some people recommend succession planting it so like every week, or even every few days, planting a new set of seeds, so you have a constant new fresh crop coming in to deal with the because it's, it's this is fascinating to me. It's not heat tolerant. It really prefers cool and shade, and it's so popular in cuisines from cultures in hot places, and that's really interesting to me. So I haven't gone down the rabbit hole of how they're growing cilantro in Mexico, right? Like it's so intolerant of heat, but it's I found it challenging to grow as well and and so what you're talking about with the soap right? That some people might not be aware there's an olfactory receptor gene, the or six, a two, and it detects aldehydes, which are chemicals that are found in cilantro leaves, but they're also found in soap making. And so people who taste soap when they eat cilantro, and they don't understand how, how somebody could possibly like that, because I could eat it by the fistful, and it it's because of that gene, and it could also just be exposure, like some people just have more experience with it, and so they're familiar with it, and they like it better. But. Um, but some people have that gene that just makes it takes really bad,
45:03
yeah, but, but, speaking of olfactory, yeah, my, uh, when you were talking about, we were talking about cravings and, like, when, when someone has, like, a really awesome, like, piece of bread or whatever, and says, Oh, here, you know, have some, have some. That's usually, that's come to be my workaround, because I've learned that half of what you taste has to do with the smell. Yeah. So when there's something I'm really, really craving, I just go and I take a giant, you know, sniff of it, and, like, Ah, okay, I enjoyed half of it, so that
45:47
maybe more than half. I had
45:51
COVID for the second time this year, and like, not twice this year, but the second time that I've had it and and for about 24 hours, I lost my sense of smell. And it was the most terrifying experience, this feeling like the world had just suddenly gone flat and and I was upset. I was like, laying in bed, I couldn't do anything anyway, but I was just obsessing over all of the things that I love to smell and that I love to eat and had no appetite. And I was like, Oh my gosh. Like my world has so much to do with like, food and herbalism involves so many, you know, tastes and smells, and that's how you assess things. And I went down this really deep rabbit hole of what is life going to be like and and I was thinking about I had given my husband, like, a, I don't remember what you call it, but it's like a sniff kit so you can get better at assessing the subtleties in bourbon. So there's, like, all these little jars, and you smell them, and they've been using those for people who did lose their smell for an extended period of time in in COVID. I was like, imagining, oh, I'm going to have to use the bourbon sniff to, like, retrain my sense of smell. And then 24 hours later, I came back, and I was very relieved. That's
47:01
funny, because I had COVID for the first time, like, a month ago. And the only reason I thought to even test for COVID Because my my husband came home with a head cold, lasted a couple days, was gone. Then my son got it same head cold, same thing, and it was gone. Then I got it, same thing, except for that, this one night I'm eating dinner, I'm like, I can't taste my food. Is going on. Sure enough, it was COVID. But for like that, that day that I tested and couldn't taste anything like what am I gonna do? I can't smell brown anymore. So I relate to your panic.
47:47
It's so core. It's such a core piece of our sense of connection and enjoyment and nourishment, and we don't talk about it very much, the sense of smell. Yeah. So I want to share with folks a little bit more about cilantro, just because I am interested in people really getting to know these different plants and and how we engage with them. And cilantro is also coriander. And so the the plant itself is coriander, is the scientific name, and the seeds are coriander, and the leaf is cilantro. And medicinally, the leaf itself, the cilantro, is involved in something called chelation, which bonds heavy metals to organic molecules. So like arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, like things that you don't want any or much of in your body, cilantro actually bonds to those in your body and makes it easier for your body to detoxify them. But then the seed of the cilantro plant is coriander, which is awesome preparing with food sensitivities because it is a carminative it's really soothing to the digestion. So if you have bloating, if you have digestive upset, coriander, like making a tea out of it or a powder and including it in your food, is really soothing to your digestion. And it's also used to balance other herbal formulas or spice blends. But it's anti spasmodic, it's anti fungal, it's anti microbial, it's diuretic, it's antioxidant. It can lower blood sugar. People actually have to be careful if they're on medications, because it can really lower blood sugar. And it's this, like, beautiful, warming spice. So I really love that you chose this as something to explore in this concept of nourishment and belonging when we're looking at having to avoid really common foods, because it's even though it's a it's polarized. The leaf is polarizing. It's so deeply healing, and the the seed is so deeply healing and typically not offensive to people. So people who don't like the taste of cilantro also. Uh, are tend to be able to coriander the seed without any without any problems. So
50:08
I didn't realize coriander was so healing. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah,
50:12
that's one of the things that blows my mind
50:17
in herbalism, is that a lot of the things that, at least in mainstream Western culture, you know, you started talking about food as medicine. A lot of the things that we think of as, oh, it's just, I'm just put a little cinnamon on it because it tastes good, or a little pepper, or, like these common spices or common herbs that we just put in for flavor, or because when you make that dish, it always has that on it are deeply medicinal and so profoundly useful in the healing process and also taste and smell really good. What
50:55
is your favorite way to eat cilantro? Oh my gosh.
50:58
I really like to make cilantro pesto. Ooh, really good. And I've recently discovered for for the dairy free folks in the audience, that pesto made with nutritional yeast is really delightful instead of cheese. And I make it like pine nuts are so hard to come by and very expensive these days. That's the classic, you know, use in the in making pesto. But I make it with all kinds of nuts and seeds. So pesto for me is like, what green do I have access to? What Nutter seed do I have? I make it with sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds, or walnuts, or whatever I got. And then if I don't have I eat cheese, but if I don't have Parmesan available, I use nutritional yeast, and then olive oil and and lemon. And it's, it's very flexible. It's very fun. I made one last week that was dandelion greens cleavers, like the the weed cleavers. And carrot tops with nutritional yeast and
52:09
sunflower seeds, it was phenomenal,
52:11
and
52:14
totally healthy and safe for people with gluten free and the top allergens and vegan. Yes, you nailed it. You made it a without options, recipe, you didn't even know it,
52:26
yeah, and we ate it on rice instead of pasta. I ate gluten free pasta too, but see,
52:33
and you didn't even know it for dinner. Come
52:36
on, yeah, come on over.
52:40
We'll have fun. We'll have a lot of fun. Yes, good. Sounds good to restaurant? Yes,
52:46
oh, my God, that I would love to. I wish I had the energy, because I would so love to open a restaurant, or even a food truck, that everything in the restaurant was, was without options, was gluten and top allergen free. Oh, my, I think that would just be amazing to be able to step foot in a place like that and order, literally order anything off the menu. Because I, I remember a time before food sensitivities. I remember what it was like that the worst, oh, my God. The the hardest decision to make going out to eat was, well, where do you want to go? Because there were just so many options. You could do anything. What craving Do you have? What you know now, it's just trying to find somewhere safe. And I don't know about you, I know you. Is it just gluten that you avoid, or do you have other ones too? Yeah, it's
53:45
that's there are other things that I'm sort of, I'm careful about and dance around, but there's nothing like gluten that's just hard. No,
53:53
okay, well, see for me, there's like, a handful of places within a 20 mile radius that I can eat. And it's not like I can go there and eat anything off the menu. I have, like, one option.
54:09
So it's just it's very limited.
54:12
Come visit me out here, because I like, that's one of the things I really value. Living in the Pacific Northwest is not where I grew up, and I grew up in Texas, and it's much harder to find places there. It's getting better, but it's much harder to to explain myself, even in restaurants there. But there are a lot of places out here that are very conscientious about it, and I'm really, really grateful
54:39
I'm on the Jersey Shore. And it's really, it's not too bad there's more and more places, at least with, you know, gluten free options. We just need more options with, you know, dairy free and nut free and everything else. And think it was last year I, I was in California, and it was amazing. Were, like, two or three places out there that I could have more than one option on the menu, and it just felt like I won the lottery. I was like, oh my god, I'm ready to move to California. Like,
55:10
like, the epicenter
55:14
awareness. Yeah, it
55:15
was, like, the novelty of it too, you know, just, it was amazing. But anyway, but I love your idea of pesto. I'm gonna have to do that. I'd have to try that. Yeah,
55:28
oh, it's my favorite. It's go to all of, all of the herbs and weeds and plants and whatever I got. I'm like, That's pesto. Just put it, put it in the food processor.
55:38
Do you ever grow lemon balm?
55:40
I do, yeah, yeah.
55:44
It's not verbena, it's lemon balm. Yeah, yeah, lemon but
55:47
yeah, so yeah,
55:51
because I've made like a marinade with that, and it was really good, but I don't know what else to do with it. Yeah. Oh, that's
55:58
a lovely one. I'm a little careful with it, because there's some indication that people with hypothyroidism shouldn't have a lot of it, but I love the smell of it. I think an infused vinegar is a really nice thing to do with that one. Just like chop it up and let it sit in vinegar for a month and then strain it out, and you have this, like lemon balm vinegar, that's really delightful. It would be really nice in a pesto. I add it to salads. I just chop it up and add it to salads. The flowers are edible, and they're really nice to sort of put on as a garnish to things. And they have the the scent, because it's in the mint family. So and like you can eat the flowers of most of the mint family things.
56:45
That's a delightful one. Well,
56:47
is there anything else that you want people to know about how they can find you or work with you? And particularly, I'd love to know what kind of restaurants do you really want to work with. Like, is there a dream restaurant or a dream chain restaurant? Or, like, who,
57:06
where? What's your what's your big, big
57:09
vision? And how can people find you and help that happen?
57:15
There isn't one in particular restaurant. Like, right now, I'm focused on smaller Mom and Pop places that really, you know, only have the resources to add one thing to their menu, to become inclusive. It just makes the most sense to me, and plus the larger chains they can afford to do full menu audits. And you know, most places have all that nutritional information that you can look up if you need to online. You know that I really want to help the smaller places, but, I mean, ultimately, I would love to have without options, just everywhere. So, you know, selfish for selfish reasons. I want to be able to travel and go out and, you know, go to concerts and do all that stuff again, that that regular eaters take for granted. You know, if you're a chef, please check me out at without options com. If you're someone who has food sensitivities. You could find me there as well, and check out my inspiration page if you wanted to find some new recipes. And if neither of those things apply, I'm going to challenge you to consider your friends who have dietary restrictions, and the next time you invite them over, why not surprise them? And actually, you know, maybe go on the website, pull up one of those recipes and make it for them, because it really is such a treat to not have to make your own food. Those of us with dietary restrictions are just tethered to our own kitchens, and I can't tell you how just amazing, how cared for, how loved. It makes me feel in my own experience, when someone takes the time to actually create a meal for me is like the greatest gift that you can give me.
59:27
And I'm not the only one,
59:31
you know, so it really it doesn't take a lot of effort to make a dish that is gluten and allergen free. You just need the right recipe. Mm, hmm.
59:45
And it it invites people to think outside the box a little bit, and that's fun. You can explore different different ways of cooking. And it does. It means so much when somebody cooks something with that kind of. Thoughtfulness and that kind of care. And what you were saying made me think also about culinary schools. I would love to see you in culinary schools so that it's just the foundation, it's part of the education how to do this. And that'd be awesome. Yeah, amazing. And I love that invitation for people to make it easy for themselves and make it easy for their friends to share in a meal, because that's such a core piece of nourishment and belonging as humans, and not just the eating of the food, but the sharing of the food and the social aspect of eating together.
1:00:40
Yeah, and it's just such a small but really effective way to let someone know you care about them, yeah, that you love them and you're looking out for them and have their back. Because it's a lot, it's a lot to deal with, with the dietary restrictions,
1:00:58
absolutely well. Thank you so much. Kelly, it has been such a delight to talk with you and really appreciate this time.
1:01:20
Thanks for listening to the lettuce loves you. Don't forget to like, review and share this podcast so more people can benefit your one small action helps us get these reflections on belonging and nourishment to the people who need to hear them. And I appreciate it more than you know. I have more free offerings at Eco that's eco spiritual education, Ecospiritualeducation.com/freestuff. This podcast provides educational information about traditional edible and medicinal uses of plants. This should never be construed as medical or dietary advice. Always consult with a medical provider before making dietary changes. The music you've been listening to is tu bisfaat by bacha Levine, used with permission and a lot of gratitude. Until next time, remember the lettuce loves you, You belong to the earth, and Life really does Want to nourish You.
