Wow!.. I like avocados and walnuts.
The restrictive diets such as LCHF, and HCLF are very limiting! How can a person avoid oils? I don’t want to offend anyone, but LCHF and HCLF seem unbalanced. Food groups are restricted. I would be concerned about missing nutrients, and food variety 
.
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I just read an interesting article today about the gut microbiome and how they’re starting to be able to tailor personal diets to people’s individual needs. The article mentioned that blood sugar control was better, too (in non-diabetics wearing a CGM). I’ll have to see if I can find it.
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I think these are the main arguments against them—restricting variety could have negative health effects (think of all the random foods discovered to be beneficial in some way) and the diet only works if its sustainable, which it isn’t for many. In addition to cutting out foods you may love, you have to be willing to forgo or significantly rework many aspects of eating as a social activity, which is a big part of eating for many. As someone with a set of weird non-negotiable food restrictions (avoiding high histamine foods or I get really sick), I can say the social part is super frustrating—it makes it hard to allow others to cook for me (they often want to try but still get it wrong) and often hard to eat at restaurants that other people choose. I’ve only had to follow this diet for about a year and a half, so I very much miss the days of being a highly flexible and variable eater, and personally don’t think I would commit long-term to a strict diet voluntarily, no matter the blood glucose results.
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I agree, this is the part I hate most about having food allergies. I don’t mind them when I’m at home, or even having to contact almost every company I buy products from, but when it comes to social events, not being able to eat out or participate in potlucks or eat at someone’s house or all the myriad other ways food comes up during social events (which it does at virtually every social event, there are almost none that involve no food or eating at all), I really hate not being able to participate.
When I was following a low-carb diet, one of several things that really got me thinking about whether it was the right way to go was my allergist saying that if I could eat an apple without symptoms I should eat them and be grateful (he clearly thought eating low-carb was ridiculous for someone with multiple food allergies at high risk of developing more). I suspect that most who do choose to restrict themselves either break from their self-imposed restrictions sometimes, or else are able to at least partially partake in social eating (such as ordering a low-carb meal at a restaurant or picking out the low-carb foods and just leaving the high-carb foods behind), which is something I can’t do…
I do find that many vegan folks or keto folks are much more outspoken about their diets and needs than I usually am about my actual health needs. And it really annoys me when these folks say they “can’t” eat something. They can eat it, they just choose not to. Which is fine, I respect that. But please say “I don’t eat” rather than “I can’t eat” whatever it is…
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Yes to all of that!
My sensitivities are hard to explain to folks because many are variable vs absolute restrictions. There are some foods I can pretty much never eat (e.g. balsamic/wine vinegar, fish sauce, miso, heavily fermented anything, walnuts, strawberries, some aged/cured meats/cheeses, beer), but many foods on my list I can have small amounts of (e.g. avocado, tomato, citrus, chocolate, other cured or aged meats/cheeses, distilled spirits) depending on how much histamine load I’m currently already under and how much histamine is in all the other food I’m also eating. So that also means there’s a ton of seasonal variability—my most flexible eating happens during the winter when environmental allergens are at their lowest, but right now during spring/early summer, I have to be much stricter. Also some foods are ok when fresh/freshly cooked or when less ripe but not if they’ve sat in the fridge for a while or are riper. Explaining that moving target to people makes me just come off as finicky (I’m not! I miss fermented food so much argh) or not credible, so I usually prefer not to get into the details if at all possible unless the person has some understanding of the issues involved.
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Do you have to stay away from all vinegar’s or just wine based ones? That would be hard. Without vinegar or citrus my cooking would be a hot mess.
I can do white vinegar and apple cider ok, and I can tolerate citrus enough to use it to flavor cooking most of the time, thankfully, since often you don’t need that much of it to have an impact. When I’m in a more tolerant state, I can tolerate citrus fine in larger amounts too. I have that exact fear though, since some folks with more severe MCAS (mine is not that bad relatively, at least not right now) can’t use any of those, which really sucks. Some spices are also problematic—I can handle small amounts of cinnamon but it can be an issue when I’m more sensitive, and some folks can’t do that, chili, or black pepper. Thankfully, onion, garlic, and ginger are all ok, as is my username namesake!
whew, because I could survive just fine with Onion, Garlic, Ginger, and Cardamom as long as a little citrus or vinegar could be used to balance the dish. But take that away and hmm, it would be more challenging. We do just fine with our current allergies which include all yeast (bakers and brewers), strawberries, and dairy unless in a hard cheese. That is plenty to work around.
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Yeah my partner and I were super relieved to figure out that some vinegars and citrus are still ok. In general, home cooking has been ok, since plenty still to work with and alternatives we can figure out. Last year we bought tons of yellow tomatoes from the farmers markets (yellows are lower histamine than reds), and she made a ton of sauce, most of which we froze and are now finally almost out of. She’s Italian, so figuring out a way to have tomato sauce and for her to be able to make her fabulous homemade lasagne (which in our household is also with gluten-free pasta, because of her) was a must. This year we are growing lots of our own yellow and green zebra tomatoes, and will supplement as needed.
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I saw a reference to that in this report:
https://diatribe.org/day-2-highlights-ada-80th-scientific-sessions#gut-microbiome
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Interesting! I know at some point there was also discussions about worms in the gut and how their eradication may be in part why we have higher levels of auto-immune disease in modern society, given that our immune systems co-evolved with the presence of the worms that do things to inhibit it. People were talking about the potential for worm therapy even. Not sure what happened to that line of inquiry…
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I usually start with Julia Child’s recipe in The Way to Cook – page 335 at The Way to Cook - Julia Child - Google Books – but modify it, maple syrup instead of molasses, ham or ham hock instead of bacon (I never use the salt pork), chorizo, some tomato paste or ketchup, some coffee or hard cider, a splash of bourbon at the end. I start this after dinner and leave it to cook overnight. I find I usually have to top up the water a few times in the night, which is actually nice on a snowy night, and the house smells amazing.
Julia’s recipe is 120 g carb and I find it makes 5 to 6 cups.
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Wow! 100- 150 g of fiber daily is lot. I wonder what they eat?
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I think this is a group of people who eat some kind of baobab tree fruit as well as tubers, per the NPR article. They also eat lots of honey, but obviously that’s not a great fiber source.
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