Kia ora,
It’s time I admit something. People who have seen me around food already know this; I don’t eat vegetables. It’s been a pain for both myself and others going on near my entire life. Before we begin please note I’m not a nutritionist or medical expert, so if you need advice please consult a professional. I just wanted to share my journey or at least the beginning of one.
For someone who doesn’t like to attract attention, being a fussy eater certainly puts a target on your head. At Intermediate school, I have a distinct memory of Food Technology (a fancy name for cooking) where I had to prepare a meal, complete with vegetables.
After cooking to a specific brief we would sit down at our cooking stations in our aprons and be made to eat what we had just cooked. I was ready for this. I forked a veggie and quickly swooped it down into a small plastic bag on my lap. One by one, the veggies vanished and soon my plate began to clear.
I thought I had mastered the art of spycraft when halfway through my so-called cooking mate dobbed me in and I was lectured by the teacher in front of the whole class. Social anxiety struck. I couldn’t hold back the embarrassment. “Don’t give me those crocodile tears,” the teacher sneered. Needless to say, I still don’t eat veggies today.
I can’t handle salad or anything green. The most vegetables I eat are potatoes, kumara, sweetcorn and sometimes carrot. Only in recent years have I found the joys of onion. And like anything that makes me anxious I’ve stubbornly refused to explore the wider culinary world, which has left me with, well, a lot of meat and a high carb diet of bread, pasta and rice. Some call it the “beige diet”.
And let’s just say that diet is catching up with me.
A few years ago I began noticing issues with dairy. So I swore off that stuff where possible, switching milk for one of the newfound ‘mylks’ based on nuts, rice or oats (I’ve dabbled), eventually learning to enjoy black coffee. I found alternatives for cheese too and went to town on dairy-free baking. But this all still employed my high carb diet.
Then the burping started. Driving in the car, or at home in the evening, I would belch. Loudly. I didn’t know why. I would feel a sudden rush of fatigue and start yawning. I became a cacophony of burps and yawns. And then it would go away. So I would let it be. But it came back. It always came back.
I went to the doctor. They recommended I stop having so many acidic foods like tomato (I do enjoy a tomato pasta sauce on my spag bol). But the burps would still happen whether I had tomato or not. I decided to let it be. It was still present, still annoying but infrequent enough so I brushed it off.
Recently, the burps have increased in their frequency. Now it’s daily, where in the past it would’ve been one night a week. I tried going gluten-free, swapping out my usual staples of bread and pasta with gluten-free versions. That helped, but only so much. I gave the doctor another call. This time I found a doctor with experience in nutrition. I wanted to be tested for food allergies. The thing is food intolerances aren’t an easy thing to test, as I’ve discovered with my son. The best way is to cut something out of your diet and reintroduce it to see if that is the cause. The doctor explained about the microbiome of the gut and that my “beige diet” wasn’t doing it any favours. That perhaps a past infection had hurt my gut and it had never properly recovered. They advised me to go on a low-carb, low sugar diet to stop the fermenting process in my gut and to keep a food diary for the next few weeks. They also said to stop the baking, at least for now.
I was on board. Almost. Something they said threw me off guard when they mentioned disgraced Australian chef, Pete Evans. The same Pete Evans who had his Instagram page removed after peddling conspiracy theories and misinformation about vaccines and COVID-19. Needless to say, this is just his most recent controversy. Back in 2015, he published a cookbook for babies and toddlers called “Bubba Yum Yum: The Paleo Way” that contained a DIY baby formula bone broth that experts said could kill a baby. When your Wikipedia page has sections on criticisms and controversies, maybe you need to take a step back and look at yourself. Needless to say, that comment from the doctor gave me some pause.
But I’m still going with the spirit of helping out my microbiome. Instead of going back to that same doctor, I am hoping to save enough dosh to see a nutritionist with knowledge of the FODMAP diet. After seeing several recommendations I have since purchased The Monash University FODMAP diet app for help with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). Monash University is a public research university based in Melbourne.
I had started a food diary in the past but quickly fell off it. Who wants to do additional admin for their tummy? I have picked it up again, employing the Notes app on my phone explaining what I ate and when and any symptoms after the fact. I’m now using the Monash app’s diary function. I still don’t feel any clearer on what my triggers are, because I slip up and eat something I shouldn’t. These last few days I haven’t had a burping episode though I’ve hit some tired spells. But it’s hard to tell if that’s something I ate or just me adjusting to Daylight Savings Time.
At the library while picking up the next truckload of picture books for my son I wandered over to the cookbooks. There was an impossibly white-toothed Pete Evans grinning back at me as he graced the cover of “The Complete Gut Health Cookbook”. Reluctantly I leafed through its pages and almost considered checking it out when another book caught my eye, “The Clever Guts Diet Recipe Book” by Dr Clare Bailey. It said it was “a companion to the No.1 bestselling Clever Guts Diet.” I’m a sucker for such declarations. But the library didn’t have the actual book written by Dr Michael Mosley, so I had to make do.
Eventually, I got my hands on a copy of the book. Its first line reads, “Although this book has ‘diet’ in its title, it is not really about losing weight.” I breathed a sigh of relief. Although I would like to shed some kg’s I’ve always been wary of new-fad diets. The closest I’ve come to is Sarah Wilson’s “I Quit Sugar”.
As well as having a penchant for repeatedly sticking a pill cam down his gullet (I won’t kink shame here), Dr Mosley explains our gut is home to ‘Old Friends’, trillions of microbes and hundreds of species. The “diet” part of the book is split into two phases; Remove & Repair, where you reduce or avoid things like gluten and dairy products and is good for testing intolerances while focusing on protein and plant-based foods (i.e. the dreaded vegetables). Reintroduction increases fibre, prebiotics, probiotics and reintroduces food to test intolerances.
I’ve made small steps so far. I’ve been gobbling omelettes for breakfast, switching it up for greek coconut yoghurt with blueberries and assorted goodies like chia seeds and pecans. Lunches are typically tuna on corn crispbread or low carb wraps. Dinner is another story. I swapped out white rice for brown rice, experimented with cauliflower rice and am looking to try out quiona.
Pasta is the hardest to give up. I tried spiralized carrot with limited success. People rave about spiralized zucchini, but I’m hesitant. Right now I’ve gone for gluten-free spaghetti made out of brown rice, which in a cruel twist of fate, has more carbs than regular spaghetti so I’m not really winning there.
Recently I've discovered the joy of sweet pickles, usually accompanying fried chicken but it's a start. Who knows, by the time I'm 40 I could be devouring brussels sprouts by the bushel. Probably not, but one can dream.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, start a controversies section on Wikipedia.
Michael.