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People continue to be sick even after following the gluten free diet scrupulously. Problem for those who are celiac can lurk in unexpected places, like the glue used on the envelopes and mailing labels, which is made from the wheat. You can use a damp sponge, self sticking envelopes and stamps, or simply let somebody else in the family do this job.

Some celiacs  are sensitive to gluten as well as to some chemicals. Those with dermatitis herpetiformis, a skin reaction to gluten, should be careful while using craft kits, paste and spray waxes and cleaners. If you cannot avoid using these, only do so wearing a mask and in well ventilated area. Celiacs with highly sensitive skin must avoid wheat germ oil in cosmetics and in personal care products like skin creams and lotions, toothpaste and false teeth fixatives. Ask your dentist which is the best toothpaste for you.

You should also watch out for the imitation seafood available in many take out food stores, salad bars and restaurants. These products often start out as gluten free but gluten-containing binders help mold the product into shrimp, lobster or crab shape. Don’t forget to ask, whenever you buy seafood products, if the food is mixed with imitation seafood.

Wine can also be added with some additives made from wheat. Pure wine like sherries, ports, cognacs, brandies and Japanese rice wine are a special joy for gluten impaired because it is gluten free, but do watch for fortified and flavored wines because companies use wheat in manufacturing processes. Beer – a big no.

How Can You Find Hidden Gluten?

Read the labels carefully. Never eat a meal or packaged food if you don’t know the ingredients. If you can’t see the label, ask for it. If chef is not available for consultation, or the ingredients are missing, you can be in danger of consuming some hidden gluten. Never take a risk, if you can’t gather information about the food product. You can face these kind of problems in cafeterias, airlines, fast food joints, schools, colleges and the weight management programs that sell their frozen foods. This frozen food is directly sold to the clients, and they are not required to disclose the nutritional information, calories, fat contents etc to their costumers, by law. Thus, you have to keep your eyes open every time and everywhere. Eat before you fly, and carry fruits and bag of nuts.

Always use your wisdom. If the label says no wheat or gluten, there probably is not any. If you have a reaction, stop using that product.

If you really like a food product and are not sure of the ingredients, call or e-mail the manufacturer’s customer support cell and find out. Don’t forget to call after a few months, since the manufacturing standards and formula keep on changing. Labels are expensive to reprint and thus they lag behind.

Now that I know what tomatoes grow well in my garden and that my family will eat, I save the seeds from one year to plant the next, sparing me the temptation of the seed catalogs and garden center displays. Seed saving is as old as agriculture. While most seed saving is as easy as letting a plant produce mature seeds and collecting them, tomatoes are a bit trickier. Although I’ve grown tomato plants from seeds that I saved by simply spreading the seed glop out to dry, rinsing and fermenting the seeds using the process detailed below produces a much higher germination rate with just a little bit of work.

Conventional gardening wisdom is that you can only save open-pollinated or heirloom seeds. Open-pollinated tomatoes are more consistent from generation to generation and provide the most reliable seed saving. Hybrid tomatoes are a first-generation cross between two other varieties, and seeds won’t necessarily produce a tomato the same as the one you saved the seeds from. Saving and planting hybrid seed does make an interesting long-term science experiment to teach older kids about genetics and heredity. The tomatoes that grow from saved hybrid seeds will often exhibit characteristics of the hybrid’s parent varieties that weren’t expressed in the tomato that the seed came from.

Step 1: Choose A Good Parent Tomato

The tomato you choose to save seeds from should be a high-quality specimen with all of the characteristics you want in next year’s tomatoes. It’s tempting to want to eat the best fruits and relegate the misshapen ones to seeds, but that just propagates the undesirable characteristics into next year’s tomatoes. Even if you’re trying to bump up the first harvest date, don’t choose the very first tomato off a vine if you have more than one vine. Wait to see which plant has the best flavor. Tomatoes should be ripe, preferably vine-ripened, so the seeds are mature. The tomato pictured is a purple calabash. I got the original set of seeds from the gift shop at Monticello.

Step 2: Get at the Tomato Seeds

Slice the tomato across the equator, so one half has the stem end and one half has the blossom end. Seed cavities run vertically through a tomato, so the equatorial slicing exposes the maximum number of seed cavities. Paste tomatoes may only have two or three seed cavities, while slicing tomatoes like the purple calabash have many smaller cavities.

Step 3: Extract the Tomato Seeds

Using a spoon or the tip of a blunt knife, pull the seeds out, trying to avoid as much of the tomato flesh as you can. Scoop the seeds into a clean cup or glass jar. If the seeds are extracted carefully, you may still be able to use the tomato, especially for a stuffed tomato dish.

Step 4: Prep the Tomato Seeds for Fermenting

I like to give my tomato glop a good rinse, but as long as the seeds are floating in liquid, the rinse isn’t necessary. If the tomato seeds aren’t free-floating, add a bit of water to give them some wiggle room. During fermentation, the seeds will need air, but you’ll also want to keep the cup or jar covered so fruit flies and other insects don’t get in. Some seed savers use plastic wrap with a slit cut in it. My favorite setup is a canning jar with a paper towel held on with the screw band. I write the variety directly on the paper towel to avoid confusion over which variety of seed is which.

Step 5: Ferment

A 2-4 day fermentation period eliminates the pulpy sac around the seeds that contains growth inhibitors. The fermentation process has a distinctive odor that some may consider unpleasant. You are, after all, fermenting something. I strongly recommend aging the seeds in the garage or somewhere that doesn’t share a lot of air exchange with the living quarters. The seeds are properly fermented with the scum layer covers the surface or bubbles start coming up from the seeds. The seeds should settle down to the bottom of the jar. Any longer than four days, and the seeds may start to germinate.

Step 6: Clean the Tomato Seeds

Take the seeds, some extra water and a fork to the compost pile and lift the scum layer off the seeds with the fork. While you could put the scum down the sink, this is NOT a process you want to do in the house. Add a bit of water to the jar of seeds and give it a good swish, then pour off most of the water into the compost pile. Any floating seeds are probably duds, but try not to dump any of the seeds at the bottom. With the first rinse done, the smelly part is over. Take the seeds inside, strain through a fine mesh sieve, and rinse well under running water.

Step 7: Dry and Store the Tomato Seeds

Spread the clean seeds onto a glass plate and let them air dry for a few days. Be sure to label the plate so you remember which variety of tomatoes you have. When the seeds are thoroughly dry, store them in a labeled envelope or plastic bag, away from heat or humidity, until late winter when you can start the seeds indoors for next year’s garden.

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Last week, I addressed myths about whole foods. While some misinformation surrounds whole foods, they provide the foundation of many healthful ways of eating, and have plenty to recommend them as a clean food source.

No Additives

It’s there. It’s a chunk of food, just the way it came out of the field, orchard or barn. No hidden ingredients, nothing added or taken away. You can look at it and know exactly what you’re getting. Anything added to whole foods, you add yourself.

Allergy and Intolerance Friendly

The lack of additives makes whole foods a safer bet for those with food allergies and intolerances. Of course, people can be allergic to whole foods; peanuts and eggs are both whole foods and are among the most common allergens. However, when eating and cooking with whole foods, you can more easily eliminate the allergens lurking in the added ingredients of processed foods.

Complete Nutrition

It seems like every week, another study comes out hyping this or that miracle ingredient. Resveratrol, found in green tea and red grapes, and lycopene, found in tomatoes, are two trendy nutrients. However, few nutrients work in a vacuum, independent of any other compound in the diet. Getting nutrients from whole foods rather than supplements allows the other, possibly yet-undiscovered, phytonutrients work together. That lycopene-rich tomato also has fiber, potassium and vitamin C that the lycopene-enhanced beverage may not.

Supporting Local Agriculture

Although you can certainly get mass-farmed whole foods in chain supermarkets, you can also get them from local farmers and farmer’s markets, to support your local economy and the small farmers who really are small farmers, not agribusinesses with smart marketing departments.

Endless Possibilities

With a box of cake mix, I can make a cake. Maybe cupcakes, or cakes with something baked into the mix. With a zucchini, a cake is only one of the dozens of possibilities.

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More after the break…

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If you have an exercise program you follow, you should know that when you exercise, you use up more nutrients and therefore, will need more nutritional supplementation than those who don’t.

Exercise makes people healthy, but that’s only half the picture. The recovery period after exercise is what ultimately makes you healthier. You do not improve your health during the exercise, nor do you burn significant amounts of fat during exercise. Virtually all the health benefits associated with exercise are created during the recovery period after exercise, which can take anywhere from 24 hours to several weeks, depending on the intensity of your exercise.

During that time your body is using nutrients to adapt and rebuild. If you do not have the proper nutrients available during that recovery period, then you are not going to recover fully, and you won’t get the full benefits of all the effort you put into exercise!

Why supplement?

Nutritional supplements are extremely important during any kind of exercise program. Even if you only exercise three days a week, you need to supplement every day of the week.

Protein is important to supplement if you are not already eating a high-protein diet, but it is far more important to supplement trace minerals, macro minerals like magnesium, zinc and calcium; various vitamins including all the B vitamins; plus vitamins C, D and K. In addition, you need to supplement numerous phytonutrients, which means the medicine that comes from plants. Those include various carotenoids like beta keratin or zeaxanthin, lutein, anthocyanidins, proanthocyanidins like those found in grape seeds or even resveratrol found in grape skin.

There are hundreds, actually thousands, of different phytonutrients found in foods and nutritional supplements.   These are also very important to get into your body when you follow an intense physical exercise program. Eating raw nuts and seeds are also extremely important and needs to be present in your diet at least once a day.

It is only through this superior supplementation that your body can adapt to the physical stresses you have placed upon it through exercise. In terms of bone density, for example, you already know that subjecting your bones to stress causes  your body to build stronger bones. This does not happen in a matter of hours. It takes days, weeks, even months to rebuilt bones, especially if you start out with very low bone mineral density. During this period, your body is rebuilding bone mineral density by depositing nutrients, mostly minerals in this case, into the bone structure of your skeletal system.

Obviously, if you do not have excess nutrients available in your body, then you are not going to build strong bones. The best results would come from adding in some good supplementation on top of your physical exercise.

What type of Supplements do I take?

Try Superfood nutrients and high-quality nutritional supplements that have a combination of food-based and supplement-based nutrition. I start each morning with a green superfood smoothie that contains various superfood concentrates. This preps my body for the day, allowing me to have the nutrition and energy I need to exercise and keep up with my demanding schedule.

Another great source of supplements can be found in drinking fresh organic fruit and vegetable juices. These juices provide live enzymes, minerals, carbohydrates and vitamins. You will also have feel additional benefits such as increased immunity, healthy complexion and good digestion.

Remember when you exercise, you place a much higher nutritional demand on your biochemistry. If you do not supplement, then you are not going to get the results you expect from your exercise program.

So on a final note, exercise all you want, but make sure to supplement your nutritional needs to achieve great health.

As a reminder…

Make sure to drink plenty of water a day and especially during a work out.  It’s the best way to keep your body fresh and move toxins out of the body.  In general, you should be drinking 10-12 glasses of water, 8-10 oz each a day. In addition, try to drink filtered water and put it in a toxin-free bottle rather than drinking water from plastic bottles found on a store shelf.  Those bottles could have been exposed to excess heat from the sun before you get your hands on them.

ⓒ iStockPhoto - kcline

This recipe evolved from huevos rancheros, a Mexican dish with a fried egg served over a tortilla with tomato-chile sauce, and sometimes beans, cheese, sour cream and whatever else Tex-Mex cooks decided to throw in.

Some healthy modifications make the vegetables an equal partner in the meal, rather than a flavor accent, and poaches the eggs in the juice from the vegetables instead of frying them. Eliminating the tortilla makes it suitable for gluten-free or low-carb diets, with a bed of lightly wilted spinach serving as a base for the eggs and sauce. Low carbers may want to reduce the number of tomatoes and increase the mushrooms, zucchini and green pepper; however, much of the poaching liquid comes from the tomatoes, so a few are necessary.

1 onion, chopped
4-6 cloves garlic, minced
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
8 large plum tomatoes
2 cups finely diced zucchini
1 cup fresh chopped mushrooms
4 eggs
8 cups fresh spinach
Fresh cilantro or basil

In a heavy 12-inch skillet, brown onion and garlic over medium heat. Add peppers and saute until soft, then add zucchini and mushrooms. When zucchini is translucent, add the tomatoes and turn heat to medium-high. When the tomatoes release some liquid, and the liquid comes to a boil, use a spoon to push aside the vegetable chunks to create four holes in the veggie mixture, about two inches around apiece. Crack an egg into each hole to begin poaching in the vegetable juices. Some may find it easier to crack each egg into a 1/3 cup measuring cup and tip it into the skillet instead of cracking the egg directly into the pan.

The liquid from the vegetables starts at a level almost covering the vegetables, but reduces somewhat while the eggs are poaching. When the liquid gets about halfway down, cover the pan while the eggs finish cooking. In light of the recent salmonella scare, I recommend poaching hard, just to be on the safe side.

While the eggs are poaching, lightly wilt the spinach. Divide the spinach among four plates and top with an egg and one quarter of the vegetable mix. Garnish with fresh cilantro or basil.

Serves four. The eggs and vegetable mix may also be served over steamed rice or a warmed tortilla.

ⓒ iStockPhoto - CagriOner

The recall of eggs potentially tainted with salmonella has been expanded to affect more than 500,000,000 eggs. Aside from the health hazards of salmonella poisoning, half a billion eggs is a lot of wasted food. The recalled eggs, out of their shells, could:

• Fill 11.8 Olympic-sized swimming pools
• Cover about nine city blocks 1 foot deep
• Fulfill the caloric needs of the entire state of Florida for a day

With raw leafy greens, fresh produce implicated in foodborne illness outbreaks alongside eggs, dairy and meat, avoiding the foods that may carry pathogens doesn’t allow for a healthy diet. Paying attention to where your food comes from, not just what you’re eating and feeding your family, can greatly reduce the risk of exposure to foodborne pathogens.

The eggs in the recent outbreak came from two farms, if “farm” is still the right word for an operation capable of putting out eggs at that volume. There is a time and a place for large-scale food production, but if you have the option, finding sources of local foods that treat both the animals and the farmhands humanely can greatly reduce your risk of foodborne illness, since many outbreaks, especially of minimally processed foods like eggs or raw leafy greens, trace back to poor barn or field hygiene, or contaminated packaging facilities. Buying straight off the farm, when it’s an option, completely eliminates contamination at the packer’s.

These small-farm foods can be more expensive, since smaller farmers who don’t use CAFO practices have higher overhead per animal. I pay $1.70 per dozen for eggs, raised by an Amish farmer, which is about 50 cents more than the typical price of supermarket eggs in my area. However, I know that the hens laying my eggs are kept in conditions that keep the risk of salmonella minimal.

There are other benefits of local foods, too. While the nutrient content of foods depends on several variables that confound the analysis between local and non-local foods, I have a noticed a visible difference between supermarket eggs and small-farm eggs on the few occasions when the hens can’t keep up with the local demand for eggs and I do turn to the mass-produced supermarket eggs for a few days. The yolk contains most of the vitamins in an egg, and the yolks of my locally-grown eggs are almost orange from the carotenoids, but the supermarket egg yolks are pale, indicating lower vitamin levels. This probably has less to do with the location of the hens relative to my refrigerator, and more to do with the better, more individualized care that the local hens receive and the more varied natural diet they eat.

The farm where I buy my eggs also raises beef cattle, and to the extent that I eat meat, I source it from this farm, which raises the cattle without antibiotics or hormones, and has each steer individually butchered at a locally owned and operated slaughterhouse that processes only a few animals a day using a small crew, again reducing the risk of contamination by not overworking the people handling the carcasses. The end result is burger that contains the meat from a single animal, butchered with care by people who live in my community.

It’s not just eggs and meat, though. This time of year, farmer’s markets are in full swing, with plenty of opportunities to stock up on a freezer and pantry full of fruits and vegetables from small, local growers.

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It’s a school night and you are cleaning out your child’s lunchbox so it’s ready to go in the morning, only to realize that almost none of it was eaten. Some days it may feel pointless packing your child a lunch at all. The problem is that lunchtime is also playtime at school. Lunch needs to be a non-fussy affair so kids can get on with the business of playing with friends. Really, they don’t eat; they graze. Therefore, the lunches that get eaten are both appealing and easy to eat. Think “quick, healthy eats”, and offer a variety each day, and you will see a difference. Your success rate will be even higher if you go shopping with your child and have them help in the selection process. They will be emotionally invested in the choices they make, and the lunchbox will come back emptier (if not completely empty).

Finger food is king in the lunchbox world. Begin with a hearty main dish, such as a wrap. The outside wrapper can be a tortilla or flavored wrap, or try an Asian Fusion version, using a rice wrapper to hold the ingredients together. Fill with your favorite protein option, such as tofu strips, shrimp or chicken strips, topped with thinly-sliced cucumber, carrots, chopped lettuce and sprouts. Another easy option is a burrito filled with beans and cheese and topped with extras, such as avocado.

Finish your healthy, well-rounded lunch plan by adding additional finger foods. Fresh fruit is always a hit, so add berries, grapes, or slice up your child’s favorite fruits (they are much more likely to get eaten). Seaweed strips are a great source of minerals, and sprouts of all kinds are usually well received. Pea sprouts became all the rage this summer in the local seven-and-under crowd. Other kid-friendly sprouts include alfalfa, sunflower, bean and lentil. Nuts of all types or trail mix will keep your child’s energy going strong. Lastly, consider chopped veggies with humus.

Pack your smorgasbord in small, reusable containers. Be sure to pack a water bottle, so kids stay hydrated. This is extremely important at the beginning of the school year when it’s hot outside, and it doesn’t hurt to remind your children to drink frequently throughout the day.

Packing the right kind of lunch will not only make your child happier at lunchtime, it will make your life easier, and cut down on prep time. Get ready: the taste of success is going to be sweet.

While it’s nice to have a can of beans in the pantry, I find them to have a metallic taste and too much salt. In addition, most brands of packaged beans (the notable exception being Eden Foods) have BPA in the lining of their cans. To avoid all of these problems I like to cook a huge pot of dried beans at once then keep some in the refrigerator and some in the freezer. There are many variations on quick-soaking methods, crockpot beans, and pressure cookers. Here is my preferred and simple method using only a bowl, a pot, and the stove.

Take 2 cups of dried beans and place them in a large bowl. Pick out and discard any discolored, misshapen, or broken beans. I don’t usually measure too closely, but beans expand 2-3 times their size when soaked, so you’ll need some room. Add about 6 cups of water, making sure that all the beans are covered. Now leave them alone for 6-8 hours. The two easiest options are to soak the beans before bed and cook them in the morning, or soak them in the morning and cook them after work.

If you don’t have time to cook them immediately you can change the soaking water and leave them soaking for another day in the fridge.

When you’re ready to cook then, drain and rinse your beans until the water runs clear. Black beans in particular end up with some sludgy purple water. Reports vary, but it’s said that soaking and rinsing beans make them easier to digest and helps your body absorb their nutrients.

Combine the beans with 8 cups of water in a large pot. For plain, neutral beans that can be used in any application just cook the beans in water. My preference is to add some aromatics: half an onion, a few small cloves of garlic, and 2 bay leaves. It makes the whole house smell delicious.

Bring the contents of the pot to a boil then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes, taste a bean and see how it’s doing. Older beans take longer to cook, so that bag you found shoved in the back of the cupboard could take up to two hours. After 45 minutes if the beans are not tender, set the timer for 5-15 more minutes and check again. When the beans seem just slightly undercooked add a teaspoon of salt for the last 10 minutes of cooking.

When finished, discard the onion, garlic, and bay leaves. If the beans are for immediate use, drain and rinse them. Any unused beans can be left to cool in the cooking liquid and then frozen covered with the cooking liquid. When I want to use some beans I just grab a bag from the freezer and run it under warm water until the whole block slides easily out. Then they can be heated on the stove or in a microwave.

Cooking Dried Beans

1. Soak dried beans 6-8 hours (1 part beans, 3 parts water)
2. Rinse and drain beans
3. Bring beans and water (1 part beans, 3 parts water) and spices if using, to a boil in a large pot
4. Reduce heat and simmer, 45 minutes to 2 hours, testing beans occasionally
5. Rinse and drain beans before using, or store covered in cooking liquid in fridge or freezer

ⓒ iStockPhoto - feverpitched

Whole foods - the general idea of eating close to nature, not the supermarket of the same name - provides the foundation for many healthful dietary styles. At the core, whole foods are basically foods that you could identify from your fridge or pantry if you went out to a garden, orchard or farm. You could go to a barn and pick up an egg, but not a chicken nugget. In a field, you could see tomatoes, but not ketchup, beans but not a burrito.

As with so many food styles that have advocates, whole foods have some fuzzy borders. Depending on who you ask, certain grains like oats may or may not be whole foods, since they require milling to be edible. Entire websites are devoted to what extent animal foods can be whole foods, like whether a boiled lobster is whole food while a grilled chicken breast isn’t. With the fuzzy borders comes myths about the nature and capabilities of whole foods.

Myth #1: Whole Foods are Better Because They’re Whole

Even with whole foods, we rarely eat the entire thing. Beans are considered a whole food even though the pods and vines go to compost. Apples are a whole food even though the tree is still in the orchard. The part of a food that we define as being the “whole food” varies from item to item. Some foods, we eat the fruiting body, while others we eat the leaves. Beets have edible leaves and taproots, but beetroot and beet greens are generally accepted as whole foods separate from one another.

Myth #2: Whole Foods are Living

This myth is primarily applied to fruits vegetables, since whole food animal products like shellfish have much clearer life signs. You can’t hook up electrodes to a head of lettuce to look for brainwave activity, or feel for a pulse. The simple biological fact is that once a fruit, leaf or fruit is separated from the plant, it’s dead. Picking a fruit or vegetable triggers a release of enzymes that cause the plant to decay at a faster rate than if left on the plant, though even left on the plant, fruits rot and leaves wither.

Grain of truth: The one exception to this is sprouts. If uncooked, fresh sprouts generally are alive, inasmuch as they would continue to grow if left uneaten.

Myth #3: You Have to Eat 100% Whole Foods to be Healthy

Whole foods provide the foundation for many healthy eating styles. A raw food diet is basically whole food vegan. Because whole foods contain all of the fiber, protein, fats, carbohydrates and phytonutrients in the

Grain of Truth: In general, a diet heavy on whole foods is healthier, since it provides less opportunity for junk food or nonfoods, but there is room in a healthy lifestyle for a range of foods, depending on your nutritional needs and digestive capabilities.

Myth #4: Whole Foods are Healthier Because They’re Closer to Nature

This isn’t entirely a myth; however, it does demonstrate faulty causality. The reliance on nature as the final arbiter of what is and is not healthy fails to recognize that nature is not wholeheartedly committed to our survival as a species or individuals. Plenty of natural things are also quite toxic, or at least not health-promoting. Poison ivy grows rampant in nature; I’m not going to make a salad of it.

Grain of Truth: The less processing something undergoes, the fewer opportunities there are to extract healthy elements of the food or add in something less healthy.

Myth #5: Preservatives are Bad

Preservatives are a whole family of ingredients, and although many of them are the product of food science and have some alarming origins, not all preservatives are detrimental to health. Vitamin C is a common preservative, as is salt; insufficient amounts of either can be bad for one’s health. Moreover, preservatives are what let us eat in winter if we live in a climate without a 12-month growing season.

Myth #6: Processed Foods are Poison/Toxic

Processed foods aren’t generally as good for health as the whole food counterpart - I’ll take fresh berries over jam any day of the week - but let’s get rational. There’s a lot of room between “Not good for you” and “Poison.” On the other side of the coin, there is also a lot of room between “Healthy” and “Will cure (insert disease here).”