Article: Is This Food Legal?

[Guest guest]

Is This Food Legal?

From SCD Made Easy, forthcoming,

© Marilyn L. Alm

is a common cry among newcomers. Appendix A [not given in this article],

although not utterly exhaustive, may help. Page numbers for

reference to Breaking the Vicious Cycle are included [and have to

be updated when the new version of BTVC comes out]. If a food’s

legality has been discussed on one of the lists, it will be noted with

(list) after it. (E/list) means it is something which was approved by

Elaine Gottschall via email. It should be noted that most foods listed

are North American in usage.

If you

are dealing with a food which is not listed in Appendix A, “Is This Food

Legal?”, and you are unable to find anything on it in BTVC, then

the first thing is to learn more about the food. As an example, the

question of agave syrup, not mentioned in BTVC, comes up

frequently on the SCD list so I wanted to include an entry on it in the

Appendix. I knew nothing about it.

I

first checked a large book of food counts, but while I was able to

determine that the syrup had carbohydrates (quite a few of them!), I was

unable to determine what kind, and of course, that is what SCD is

all about: specific carbohydrates.

So I

turned to the Internet. Doing a search on “agave syrup” and

“composition,” yielded “Agave syrup is a potent

natural sweetener and good source of inulin, a probiotic

(sic).”[1],[2]

Oops.

Inulin

is the same as FOS, and it is illegal on SCD, per BTVC p 59,

where we learn that we should not use any product containing inulin or

fructooligosaccharides or FOS. It should be noted that foods

containing natural inulin, such as onions and turnips, may be tolerated

by the SCDer. (Or they may not.). Products containing added refined

inulin, or which have it concentrated, as in the case of a syrup, are

illegal.

Although FOS is highly touted as feeding ‘good’ bacteria, it is a form of

starch which may also feed the bad bacteria, and taking it may defeat the

purpose of the diet.

In

addition, another web site[3] advised that much agave syrup is produced

by corporations which also produce malt syrup, molasses, and other

illegal sweeteners, so there is too great a possibility that it is

contaminated by those other sweeteners.

End of

story.

I have

now determined for myself, by the same process Elaine used, that agave

syrup, although touted as a natural sweetener, is not SCD

legal.

And,

if I had not had the Internet to assist, a visit to any good library

ought to yield the text books necessary to make the determination. It

won’t be as fast or efficient as using the Net, but it can be done.

Stubborn, after all, is what SCDers are all about.

This

kind of process can be used to validate – or eliminate – any food or

additive.

A

slightly more complicated example might be a specific product, such as

McCormick’s® Mild Taco Seasoning, which comes in a foil packet. I used to

use this, pre-SCD, because it was convenient.

Let’s

take a look at the ingredients.

Onion, potato starch, whey solids, salt, spices (including

chili pepper, oregano, and cumin), paprika, sugar,

garlic, and citric acid.[4]

Commercially dehydrated onion is a problem because starch is often added

during processing. This becomes moot with the very next ingredient –

potato starch – because no starches of any kind are permitted on SCD.

Whey solids are another killer. Whey is the waste product from the

production of cheese. It used to be thrown out. Now they’re drying it and

sticking it in just about

everything[5]. Salt is legal. Then

comes the secret “spices”, which says “including chili pepper, oregano,

and cumin”. The key word here is “including”. What they didn’t bother to

put on the label was that this actually should read, “including, but not

limited to, chili pepper, oregano, and cumin.” Very often, generic

“spices” may contain MSG (monosodium glutamate) and sugar. Paprika, the

next ingredient, is legal. Sugar is not. Commercially dehydrated garlic

is not, because of the possibility of added starch.

Clearly, even if the second ingredient wasn’t potato starch, this product

would not be legal.

Before

we started SCD, we used such products because they were convenient. In

another section, I’ll comment on how you can re-create the convenience

without the health hazard.

Breaking the Vicious Cycle does not provide you with an absolute

guide book to health. What it does do is provide the map and the compass,

in the form of guidelines. It tells you why. Implementing the

how depends on your body, your health, and your personal

situation.

One

example is the fact that Dr. Haas specifically eliminated any

commercially canned vegetables from the SCD. He also specifically

excluded canned tomato products, with the exception of tomato juice not

from concentrate. Why? Because if these products do not have a certain

natural sweetness, the processors automatically add a squirt of sugar

syrup to the cooking vat to bring the product up to whatever their

determined standard of sweetness is. Because the sugar isn’t always in

the product, the manufacturers see no reason (and are not required by

law) to list it on the label. As a consequence, one batch might be safe,

and another from the same company might not.

It is

the manufacturers’ additions which make canned food illegal, not the

process itself. If you can your own, with no illegal additives, then the

canned food would be legal.

Yet

time, and time again people say, “But this commercial canned food must be

legal. It says…”

And

the answer, inevitably is, canned food, with the exception of fruit

canned in its own juice, or fish packed in water or oil, is not

legal.

BTVC tells you categories of foods; it does not try to cover every

human edible product in the known world. In addition, it was written

based on the author’s experiences in the United States and Canada, and

may not address every detail of Israeli, English, French, Indian, or

Chinese cuisine. Yet the principles it contains can be applied,

regardless of where in the world you are.

[1]

http://www.preparedfoods.com/archives/1998/9812/wg-whol.htm

[2] Inulin is a prebiotic,

which bacteria feed on readily, rather than a beneficial bacteria

(probiotic).

[3]

http://www.okkosher.com/kfgProducts.asp?ir= & C=SYRUP

[4] Italics mine, indicating an illegal

item.

[5] Cheese whey is almost 5% pure lactose[5]. Since

we go to the trouble of fermenting all our dairy to remove the lactose,

why in the world would we want to use a product which contains almost all

the lactose in the milk?. 93.1% water, .3% fat, .9% protein, .6% ash, and

4.9% lactose is the breakdown, according to a website about profitable

dairying

http://www.indiaagronet.com/indiaagronet/DAIRY/CONTENTS/Dairy%20by-products.htm

.. If one were inclined to paranoia, one might wonder if the inclusion of

such profitable waste in our food might be related to the modern epidemic

of gut disorders.

—

Marilyn

New

Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Undiagnosed IBS since 1976, SCD since 2001

Darn Good SCD Cook

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