Grains

[Stumpich]

I eat mostly rice -- in fact rice is almost all I eat 

I  eat rice all day every day 

I keep getting the warning about Arsenic in rice & they say you should use other grains often so that you don't consume so much rice 

I try to avoid breads because of sugar & other added ingredients & I am highly allergic to oats 

 

So my question is what other grains can you use without a lot of added ingredients such as sugar etc. ?

[Kar3n]

I like quinoa, a lot. Barley is another one, but I really only like it in soup. I was just thinking that a quinoa and wheat berry salad sounds pretty good. I am going to test that today. I'll post a pic later.

[blue eyed snake]

I use buckwheat often, I think that's not properly a ' grain' but it serves me well.

 

I cannot use any  grains containing gluten and also react badly to oats.

 

so for me it is rice, buckwheat and ( organic) corn. But happily there are other filling foodstuffs, I especially like lentils, when you make lentils with vegetables there's not really need to add grains

[Marblehead]

Ah!  Buckwheat!

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Stumpich]

On 8/29/2017 at 4:18 AM, blue eyed snake said:

I use buckwheat often, I think that's not properly a ' grain' but it serves me well.

 

I cannot use any  grains containing gluten and also react badly to oats.

 

so for me it is rice, buckwheat and ( organic) corn. But happily there are other filling foodstuffs, I especially like lentils, when you make lentils with vegetables there's not really need to add grains

I react badly to lentils & beans 

I think they are supposed to used in moderation

I read somewhere that gluten is only bad when mixed with sugars & fats & milk

It was in a Mantak Chia  book ---cosmic nutrition

still unsure as I seem to be having problems with gluten as well

I've heard that some Taoist practice grain avoidance

& some people can't eat beans because they have arthritis 

Edited August 31, 2017 by Stumpich

[Taomeow]

 

I've studied this particular subject exhaustively.  Probably wrote about it somewhere more than once, but don't remember where, so to OP's question, briefly:

 

1. Grains (and grain-like non-grains) that neither contain gluten nor provoke cross-sensitivities to same (in most cases -- see below) are rice, glutinous rice (yup -- despite the name, there's no gluten in it), millet, quinoa, buckwheat (yup -- despite the name, not related to wheat), teff.  

 

2. Grains that do contain gluten, besides wheat, are rye, barley, oats, amaranth, spelt.

 

3. The grain that doesn't technically contain gluten but in many cases causes similar problems due to cross-sensitivity provoked by proteins in it similar enough to gluten is corn.

 

4. Cross-sensitivities in some gluten-intolerant people can manifest in response to all grains -- and strangely enough to dairy which also contains similar enough proteins. 

 

5. Legumes were introduced into the human diet as a way to survive a catastrophic event in our history that wiped out many primate species (in particular, on the North American continent, 150 of them -- that is to say, all of them).  We would never eat this if we weren't starving, because there's a plethora of antinutrients present in legumes, from enzyme inhibitors to highly reactive lectins (ricin, which folks may have heard about in conjunction with political murders, is one of them -- and one of the most toxic substances known) to digestive difficulties to brain damage (soy specifically -- according to a 30-year study of Japanese men in Hawaii eating tofu vs. those not eating it, the largest ever and mighty convincing). 

 

So, if you stick with (1), you have six grains and grain-alikes to choose from, and don't have to eat just rice all the time.  I am very partial to teff.  This African grain-alike is not very well-known, but worth discovering.  I was very grateful when I did.

 

Abstaining From Grains is ideal, IMO, but not easy to pull off.  I fall off the wagon from time to time.  Typically, I don't eat grains every day, and when I do, they are from the (1) list.  But since I don't have any explicit symptoms of gluten-related difficulties,  except I start losing my far-better-than-average flexibility if I eat gluten-containing grains, occasionally I yield to the temptation.  Usually short term, then back to gluten free.  My litmus test is the Chen taiji move that asks for all you've got in terms of flexibility, Snake Creeps Down.  It requires open "unglued" joints and vertebrae, rather than stretched-out ligaments (which can work for the yogic kind of flexibility, but not for the taiji kind.)   It's like night and day, Snake on gluten and off. 

Edited August 31, 2017 by Taomeow

[blue eyed snake]

6 hours ago, Stumpich said:

I react badly to lentils & beans 

I think they are supposed to used in moderation

I read somewhere that gluten is only bad when mixed with sugars & fats & milk

It was in a Mantak Chia  book ---cosmic nutrition

still unsure as I seem to be having problems with gluten as well

I've heard that some Taoist practice grain avoidance

& some people can't eat beans because they have arthritis 

 

 

if that seems to be I would strongly advice you not to consume them anymore.

Furthermore, about cowsdairy, the same enzyme is needed to digest gluten as dairy from cows. When you've a shortage of that enzyme both products will lead to problems, those problems tend to worsen with time. Many ( but not all) people who cannot endure gluten also do better to stop using dairy from cows.

 

take a break from gluten for about 6 weeks and jot down how you feel, how your cognition is working, how you sleep and  what your belly does

 

I may one day create a thread about it

[Gerard]

Eating rice alone is not healthy and a sign of a balanced and nutritious diet.

 

Very generic advice:

 

http://www.livestrong.com/article/364649-taoism-diet-nutrition/

 

Congee recipes:

 

https://www.thespruce.com/basic-congee-recipes-4065244

 

Thai and Indian curries are very good for the spleen  when taken as breakfast. Type this in in your browser's URL bar:

 

http://bit.ly/2gC4I91

 

And this in Google search box:

 

thai vegetarian recipes

 

bon appetite

 

Edited September 3, 2017 by Gerard

[beingnature]

Very interesting topic! Somehow my practices forced me to go on grainfree diet.I was happy with grains and legumes for years then suddenly i noticed a bad smell when cooking them and when eaten i got a really strange feeling in my stomach so at first i changed to buckwheat and potatoes with salads and wildherbs and after maybe 3 months on this diet i felt like my body became very light (i didnt loose a pound ) then it went on and i was forced to rawfood its a longer story but it changed my practices so hard and everything got so intense that i now eat food again that grounds me... i am still a little confused about all of that...

[Gerard]

Bear also in mind the Yin and Yang (and gray areas) body types. One diet suits all doesn't exist.

 

Also limit raw food intake as it damages the Earth element and promotes intestinal worms and other parasites. 

[beingnature]

Ah i think its a common misconception because lots of raw foods are neutral or even warming in nature ( nuts, seeds even apples) while cooked foods eaten warm can have a cooling effect.while on raw food i didnt feel cold in the winter or under cold showers... after reintroducing potatoes (cookes or baked ) i felt the cold again.i am not saying that raw food is optimal for everybody i think if intuition gets you to it then its just right.

[Stumpich]

18 hours ago, Gerard said:

Bear also in mind the Yin and Yang (and gray areas) body types. One diet suits all doesn't exist.

 

Also limit raw food intake as it damages the Earth element and promotes intestinal worms and other parasites. 

raw vegetables make my skin crawl literally --- it must be pesticides in the products from the grocery stores because I never had this problem with food from my grandpas garden

16 hours ago, NATURE BEEING said:

Ah i think its a common misconception because lots of raw foods are neutral or even warming in nature ( nuts, seeds even apples) while cooked foods eaten warm can have a cooling effect.while on raw food i didnt feel cold in the winter or under cold showers... after reintroducing potatoes (cookes or baked ) i felt the cold again.i am not saying that raw food is optimal for everybody i think if intuition gets you to it then its just right.

this is the opposite of what I have been taught raw uncooked foods have a cooling affect on the body & are more warming when cooked --- if I eat a raw carrot - I'll literally freeze to death 

I am prone to cold to the point that I have to live in the hot dry desert 

[Stumpich]

On 9/2/2017 at 8:59 PM, Gerard said:

Eating rice alone is not healthy and a sign of a balanced and nutritious diet.

 

Very generic advice:

 

http://www.livestrong.com/article/364649-taoism-diet-nutrition/

 

Congee recipes:

 

https://www.thespruce.com/basic-congee-recipes-4065244

 

Thai and Indian curries are very good for the spleen  when taken as breakfast. Type this in in your browser's URL bar:

 

http://bit.ly/2gC4I91

 

And this in Google search box:

 

thai vegetarian recipes

 

bon appetite

 

maybe it just depends on who you ask -- a lot of books are full of disinformation - I really don't understand how they were ever published - must be an evil cult trying to ruin everything good in the world & make a mess of everything 

 

I have heard on a more reliable note that rice is one of the worlds most perfect foods & I tend to agree with this

rice is easy for me & doesn't require any recipes it is also affordable - who knows , maybe it isn't even full of Arsenic

 

different Taoist do things differently some diet like this some diet like that 

I like rice

Edited September 5, 2017 by Stumpich

[Stumpich]

On 9/3/2017 at 1:20 PM, NATURE BEEING said:

Very interesting topic! Somehow my practices forced me to go on grainfree diet.I was happy with grains and legumes for years then suddenly i noticed a bad smell when cooking them and when eaten i got a really strange feeling in my stomach so at first i changed to buckwheat and potatoes with salads and wildherbs and after maybe 3 months on this diet i felt like my body became very light (i didnt loose a pound ) then it went on and i was forced to rawfood its a longer story but it changed my practices so hard and everything got so intense that i now eat food again that grounds me... i am still a little confused about all of that...

I really don't think I could afford to eat grain free without my own garden

rice &  vegetables feels pretty light to me - I just started using a little bit of protein powder because I don't eat any meat & I cut out the little bit of egg whites & I'm trying to cut out milk -I actually don't believe your body needs that much protein but I have been wrong before many times about many things I'll try a little & see how it feels 

Edited September 5, 2017 by Stumpich

[Andrei]

Bi Gu means : No Grains

 

Grains have starches and starches are carbohydrates (carbs).

 

Carbs produce inflammation of the tissues, sooner or later.

 

If you have inflammations or pains of any sort in your body is because you consumed grains/starches for too long.

 

A normal "taoist" died should be anything and everything but following the rules of the seasons, directions, locations etc according to the five elements.

 

Fasting is one the most important part of a diet, because by fasting you switch from carbs to ketones and start burning the fat deposits.

 

A "taoist" approach should be fasting alternating with feasting just like Yin-Yang, periods of gaining weight and periods of loosing the weight, every season has 3 months so each 3 months should have a fasting and a feasting period.

 

But if there is something "taoist" in a diet, that should be Bi Gu

[Andrei]

Grains grow in sunny areas, so they are associated with the fire element.

But actually they are Yin part of the Fire element, the only way to balance the grains is the Yang energy of the sun.

 

 

The only exception to that is rice which grows in humid areas, rice needs wetlands to grow, it needs water.

But even so rice is associated with metal element, with Dryness because rice is a desiccant, it absorbs the water or the humidity and makes it dry. So rice is just the opposite of wheat. Rice regulates the colon if there is too much internal dampness and produces constipation in people who have already a dry or fire metabolism.

[beingnature]

What i dont understand... all animals eat raw so they should be sick and shivering all the time... just food for thought... i also want to say that i am not promoting raw food for everyone! Whats funny is that rawfoodist say the cold symptoms are actually detoxification and it can last for up to one year for every decade you are living on this planet... so it can be really hard.i can defonetly say that my skin never looked better since then and i also never got sick, but it also had some difficult effects like being oversensitve to smells.going into citys was nearly impossible.i also think fasting is even superior to that.when i was on raw food for maybe one year with lots of meditation and qigong i had to fast once a month and it felt so great i literally couldnt eat anymore because i was so full.i wouldnt advice anyone to do it like that, i am just sharing experiences so that maybe one who gets into the same situation can benefit from it.

[Taomeow]

1 hour ago, NATURE BEEING said:

What i dont understand... all animals eat raw so they should be sick and shivering all the time...

 

Excellent question, and I would encourage everyone considering a raw diet to get that answer -- it may help avoid damaging their health and muddling their cognitive powers with a logical fallacy.

 

 Animals have digestive systems that "cook" their food inside their bodies which we humans don't have.  Why we are so different is a separate question, and I tend toward a very sad hypothesis that might explain it, but for now let's stick to the facts.  Not hypothetically but factually, animals are far, far better equipped to eat their food raw than we are.  E.g., the stomachs of cats and dogs produce hydrochloric acid in the amounts (per lb) far exceeding what we produce, and far more concentrated --  10 times more concentrated than that of humans in dogs, even higher concentrations in cats, even higher in wild felines.  This lets them dissolve not just meat but even bones inside their bodies. 

 

If you want to observe for yourself how that works, you can do a little experiment.  Purchase some HCl of the concentration a cat's stomach manufactures, and pour it on your raw food, see what happens.  (Warning: don't eat the results, just observe.)  It cooks every bit as well as fire -- they don't use the term "chemical burn" for nothing.  Animals have chemicals inside that work for them the way our external fires work for us.  (This is not the only thing we've externalized that other species keep internal.) 

 

I gave just one example, but whichever species you look at, except humans, you'll find that they have something -- super concentrated HCl, super powerful liver and pancreatic enzymes and bile...  a snake swallows whatever it eats not just raw but whole -- a large anaconda can swallow a whole calf or deer, and the bile will dissolve not just meat and bones but the fur, the hooves and the horns -- it's stronger than our cooking, which won't!

 

Whether humans have ever been bona fide animals or the outcome of some genetic messing around from the get-go is anyone's guess, but civilized humans are not, physiologically speaking, equipped to eat like wild animals.  Not by a long shot.  Even mice who have been born in labs are vastly different from -- and a whole lot wimpier than -- their peers born in the wild.  If the former are released into the wild to live as the latter, they fail at that and promptly die. 

 

Food for thought, eh? 

Edited September 6, 2017 by Taomeow

[beingnature]

Hmm you are mostly speaking of meat eating animals and it doesnt explain why i gained weight , health and was never sick while  being on rawfood... but maybe lots of qigong got me wild again

[Taomeow]

I didn't have to talk about meat-eating animals, I could use the example of herbivores who have four stomachs...  but I figured since we don't, nor have any capabilities for digesting cellulose unlike e.g., deer and goats and rabbits who have large colonies of cellulose-digesting bacteria in their guts, which is not the case with humans, I thought it's a good idea to use the example of animals with which we share our digestive peculiarities to a greater rather than lesser extent.   

 

Lots of qigong may definitely be a factor.  Also, one year is something most people can pull off on any diet.  There's a reason most of them stop though.  Not one reason fits all, but there's usually a reason.  And then there's rare individuals who are not harmed by any diet for reasons I would like to know but nobody does.  There's a guy who ate his car, e.g., little by little, grinding parts of it into powder and consuming it, metal and glass and rubber and plastic, with battery acid for the dressing.  True story. 

[blue eyed snake]

sometimes it is not so much what one eats when going on a new diet, but what one does not eat anymore.

 

Like transfats, chemical additions, gluten, dairy and some other stuff that is not that well suited for the digestion of of some people.

[silent thunder]

4 hours ago, blue eyed snake said:

sometimes it is not so much what one eats when going on a new diet, but what one does not eat anymore.

 

Like transfats, chemical additions, gluten, dairy and some other stuff that is not that well suited for the digestion of of some people.

Good point. 

 

I've never been one to diet.  However, as sensitivity to signals increased, I became more aware of how certain foods were affecting my body and awareness and these foods were dropped from my diet naturally.  

 

Most striking has been the body's steadily increased craving for emptiness.

 

Regularly and increasingly over the last few years, my body will emphatically communicate... let's consume only breath and water for a few days.

 

Fasting is beautiful in these times.  No missing food, no hunger pains.  Clarity, lightness and bliss.  It's very natural, not a struggle at all and the energy shifts are... potent.

 

 

[gendao]

Well, the 'Big Switch' from hunting/gathering in the forest...to deforesting to farm cereal grains - caused a massive decline in both human and ecological health:

Quote

The diet of our forest ancestors was a rich mixture of leaves and fruit. Each element of this diet contained thousands of unique chemicals. Whole groups of these chemicals are known to affect neural biochemistry and some in similar ways to anti-depressant drugs. Both elevate the activity of neurotransmitters. For perhaps millions of years a diet of several kilos of plant material, loaded with thousands of chemicals, [was] eaten every day.

Hominid brains appear to have remained fairly constant in size for a long period from some 1.8 Million years ago until about 600,000 years ago. But then, from 600,000 years to 150,000 years before the present, fossils show that the cranial capacity of our ancestors skyrocketed. Brain mass peaked at about 1,440 grams. Since then brain mass has declined to the 1,300 grams that is typical today. [...] The very period of brain shrinkage coincides with a major dietary change, for it was around this period that cereals and grain came to the fore. [...] Indeed studies of skeletons from early agricultural societies show ill health accompanies the initial transition to eating more grains and cereals. [...] just about anywhere that this transition to cereals occurs, health declines.

So, it's all relative.  Sure, some grains may be healthier than all the artificial crap being manufactured by WEIRDos now...but are still not as healthy as wild forest food (our original diet).

Edited September 6, 2017 by gendao

[Taomeow]

 Those are two sides of the same coin -- civilization IS deforestation, and I've come to believe that grain agriculture is the method, deforestation is the goal, not vice versa.  Just look at the coins of hundreds of countries depicting bundles of wheat, corn, rice, what not -- all the way to antiquity.  They encircle whatever else the coin signifies -- the head of the dominant baboon, the seal (they seal cages so the prisoners don't escape), the spell...

 

However...

 

"The diet of our forest ancestors was a rich mixture of leaves and fruit."  The diet of our forest ancestors procured in the periods specified above which coincide with the great ice ages could not possibly rely on what wasn't there.  Fruit edible for humans appeared at around the same time grain agriculture did, and were the outcome of manipulation, cultivation, in short sedentary agriculture all over again.  Unlike me, the author of the article you quoted must have never set foot in a wild forest.  Wild apples you can find there are small, hard, and very bitter.  Some are bitter-sour.  None are edible.  Same deal with pears -- you can break a tooth on a wild pear but aside from an "eeewww" it will yield little else, it's woody, not juicy.  The wild grapes are outright poisonous.  The wild berries are delicious, but don't grow in Ice Age conditions.  Neither do "leaves' of which we are supposed to have consumed "several kilos" daily -- with an 80,000 year break here and there while we waited for them to become available during the next (short) interglacial. 

 

My favorite philosopher (nodding to another recent thread, from which he was unjustly absent) is Karl Popper.  "Scientific=falsifiable" is all one needs to know about the source of articles as the one above.  It's simply made up.  A fairy tale... 

 

We developed big brains because we ate super high fat animals -- the fattest in the environment, mammoth, whale, seal were our first choices -- 60% of the human brain is made of saturated fat, and that's something not obtainable from "leaves and fruits" even if they were there, which they weren't.  Prolonged nursing (several years) is what allowed the human brain to develop its bulk and brawn, and whatever one eats after the first 5-6 years is irrelevant for the size of the brain whose formation is completed by that time.  We're not losing brain power to not eating enough leaves.  We're losing it to not using them, and letting someone else (who does not strike me as human at all) educate us as to which soy-fluoride formula is best for our young. 

[gendao]

3 hours ago, Taomeow said:

"The diet of our forest ancestors was a rich mixture of leaves and fruit."  The diet of our forest ancestors procured in the periods specified above which coincide with the great ice ages could not possibly rely on what wasn't there.  Fruit edible for humans appeared at around the same time grain agriculture did, and were the outcome of manipulation, cultivation, in short sedentary agriculture all over again.  Unlike me, the author of the article you quoted must have never set foot in a wild forest.  Wild apples you can find there are small, hard, and very bitter.  Some are bitter-sour.  None are edible.  Same deal with pears -- you can break a tooth on a wild pear but aside from an "eeewww" it will yield little else, it's woody, not juicy.  The wild grapes are outright poisonous.  The wild berries are delicious, but don't grow in Ice Age conditions.  Neither do "leaves' of which we are supposed to have consumed "several kilos" daily -- with an 80,000 year break here and there while we waited for them to become available during the next (short) interglacial.

Well, it can be tough to even find some of the wild progenitors of cultivated plants today (as what's growing wild now are actually often hybrids).  But yes, they were generally smaller, less sweet, more sour, maybe more astringent, etc...and so perhaps actually healthier?  No way to OD on fructose and get many cavities when you're munching on crunchy sand pears?!  Although, I have tried "wild" grapes that were relatively sweet...much less "poisonous."  Not to mention, there's also a lot of wild produce out there that was never really cultivated and remain very tasty even in their natural forms.  For example, American persimmons are actually the sweetest persimmons out there!

But this is a whole 'nother topic and I digress...  Thing is, none of this makes much difference, anyways.  Because fruit trees (cultivated or not) or vines DO NOT REQUIRE DEFORESTATION - LIKE GRAINS.  They are all actually PARTS of forests.  Whereas, grains require deforestation to grow them (unless in natural grasslands due to low rainfall).  Which in effect is the intentional reversal of natural forest succession...

Which = cutting down TREES to grow GRASS (or pavement)???  I.e. W-T-F???

 

PS - periodic cataclysms like volcanoes, Ice Ages, and floods were ways to cleanse the planet of humans after they strayed too far from Mother Nature - as we are doing yet again. 

Quote

    The first world was destroyed by Fire. The first world was made by the Creator and the deities Sotuknang and Spider Woman taught the Hopi to revere the creator, but the Hopi forgot and the first world was destroyed by fire and the people who had remembered the Creator took refuge underground with the Ant People
    The second world was destroyed by Ice. The Second World was created for their emergence from the underworld, it was beautiful like the first world but in the Second World the animals no longer trusted the Hopi. The Hopi once again forgot the Creator and the world was frozen into solid ice and destroyed.
    The Third World was destroyed by floods
    The Hopi were guided by the deities and emerged from the underworld to the Fourth World, present day earth
    The end of the fourth World signals the start of the Fifth World according to the Hopi Prophecy

Quote

The “zig-zag way” refers to a line found on Prophecy Rock, a panel of ancestral Hopi petroglyphs (rock carvings) in northern Arizona. The zig-zag is the upper of two parallel lines. It supposedly represents the path of the Two-Hearts, who are wreaking havoc on our Earth Mother and living contrary to ecological principles and the laws of Nature.

The upper path is divorced from the natural world and totally immersed in the synthetic, manufactured reality of iPhones and Xbox 360s. In essence, it is a lifestyle that the Hopi call koyaanisqatsi, which means “world out of balance,” or “life of moral corruption and turmoil (regarding a group).”

The lower line, on the other hand, is the path of the One-Hearts, who are close to soil and the growth of corn, beans, squash—that is, adhering to the true Hopi way.

The lower way, rooted in earth-based rhythms, finds solace and spiritual sustenance from corn pollen, sunlight, soaking rains, and vast desert vistas—a life in accordance with the Creator or the Great Spirit.

So, most people weren't supposed to survive these massive exterminations...  I think only those who clung very close to Mother Nature and trusted Great Spirit, did.

Quote

The Hopi believe that we have suffered three previous world cataclysms. The First World was destroyed by fire—a comet, asteroid strike, or a number of volcanic eruptions. The Second World was destroyed by ice—a great Ice Age. As recorded by many cultures around the globe, a tremendous deluge destroyed the Third World.

 

Edited September 7, 2017 by gendao