THE FUNDAMENTALS

EIGHT ESSENTIAL PROPERTIES OF CLEANSING FOODS

The realities of modern living require anyone who wants to escape the quicksand of cellular deterioration to eat a clean diet. That means reaching for whole, fresh, unadulterated foods with natural healing powers. By our estimation, there are eight properties that qualify foods as cleansing and revitalizing for the body. Every recipe in this book seamlessly incorporates all of these properties, so you don’t have to try to keep track of them unless you want to. In previous books, I have written extensively about each of these properties in the context of larger detox lifestyle principles. For our purposes here, I will briefly list and define them in the context of Chef Doris Choi’s masterful creations. Ready? Here we go.

1. Easy to digest (aka “quick exit”)

The less time a food or combination of foods spends being broken down in the stomach and moving through the length of the alimentary canal, the better. Substances take more or less time in the digestive tract based on several factors, such as how water-containing or dense, how alkaline or acidic, and how gluey and mucus-forming they are.

Another very important factor in determining digestive transit times is food combinations. For example, combine a baked sweet potato, which is very easy to digest, with other cooked and raw vegetables, even add an avocado to that meal, and it will take about three hours to exit the stomach. Now, take that same sweet potato and combine it with fish, and that combination could well stay in the stomach for over eight hours. You might think: What’s the big deal if it’s in there for three hours or eight? Isn’t it just the calories and fat grams that matter at the end of the day? Not remotely! What actually matters most is how efficiently the body is able to assimilate energy from the food and then eliminate what it can’t use. (We will discuss proper food combining further in the next chapter.)

Foods that sit in the stomach for too long require a tremendous amount of energy to digest. This is why you will feel exhausted after an overly large and/or poorly combined meal. Now, imagine that slow-moving food being baked at the body’s internal temperature of about 98.6°F. The longer it takes to digest, the more dehydrated it becomes, making it slower and denser still. The dryer it gets, the less likely it will ever fully exit the body. Meanwhile, more food is being tossed down the hatch. This is how meals really start to pile up in the digestive tract, as excess food and miscombined meals rarely exit the stomach before the next one enters. This generates a lot of carbonic gas and reverse pressure in the stomach and the rest of the digestive tract. Acids in the stomach are often pushed up into the esophagus, a condition commonly known as acid reflux. There are countless medications for indigestion, but it is entirely preventable.

Poor food choices, overeating, and miscombined meals are the harbingers of great intestinal havoc—not to mention embarrassing gas, bloat, and putrid bacterial growth. By contrast, easy-to-digest foods and smart food combinations move through the body smoothly and quickly, energizing the body rather than slowing it down. Are you prone to indigestion? Well, you can put an end to the embarrassment and discomfort. Fix it with quick-exit foods!

2. Non-yeast-feeding

We are far more vulnerable to yeast overgrowth today than we’ve ever been before, thanks to higher levels of acidity (both in and outside the body) and constant exposure to environmental estrogens. The combination of acidity and excessive amounts of estrogen creates the perfect breeding ground for yeast and fungus (yeast is a single-celled fungus). So all of us, but especially women, need to be vigilant against developing and feeding an overyeasted system.

For many people, this means creating a very yeast-sensitive diet—by eliminating almost all sugars and starches. This may sound really daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. First of all, you can start starving off your yeast colonies immediately just by consuming fewer sugars and starches than you typically consume. However, if you are really struggling with yeast-related symptoms (such as excess weight, bloat, moodiness, and skin issues), you will want to cut way down on sugars and starches until you’ve eradicated those yeast colonies.

Unfortunately, fruit is a yeast feeder, because as far as yeast is concerned, sugar is sugar. In an ideal environment, fruit would be an ideal food for humans; but in the modern environment of high acidity and excess estrogens, fruit can perpetuate the yeast problem. Also, the way fruits are grown and prematurely picked today, they are often more acidic than they should be for human consumption, and many fruits are becoming yeasted themselves due to soil imbalances and pesticides.

The recipes in this book have been created for yeast-minded individuals. With very few exceptions, Chef Doris’s creations are grain-free and use only stevia as a sweetener. So welcome to the easy way to slay yeast and keep them away forever.

3. Alkaline and water-containing

You’ve probably heard a lot about the virtues of an alkaline diet. Well, have you ever paused to think about why? As you might recall from high school chemistry (don’t worry, we’ll keep this lesson review short!), alkaline substances carry a negative ionic charge, and acidic substances carry a positive ionic charge. What determines whether a substance is alkaline or acidic depends on whether there are more or fewer electrons in the outer shell of the atom than there are protons in the nucleus. Believe it or not, cleansing the body is all about harnessing the electromagnetic energy of negatively charged atoms. Substances made up of these healthy, electron-rich atoms have the power to magnetize acidic, positively charged substances (waste) up and out of the cells and intestines for removal. This makes them essential little helpers when detoxing.

By contrast, when there are more protons in the nucleus than electrons on the outer shell, you have an acidic substance, which sticks magnetically to alkaline human tissue—in this case, the intestines. Too much acidity in the intestines leads to an overaccumulation of waste, which leads to obstruction of the body’s vital pathways and eventually to major physical problems. Practically all our modern diseases start in the digestive system due to all the acidic substances we typically consume.

Alkaline foods are also water-containing. Their electromagnetic power and the high water content combined creates the best possible biochemical scenario for lifting up old intestinal waste and keeping it hydrated enough for removal. Thus, the electromagnetic power tools that are the most cleansing for the human body are raw vegetables, raw fruits, and their juices. However, because of the yeast-feeding property of fruits and fruit juices, we reach mainly for raw vegetables and raw vegetable juices—the greener and more water-containing, the better. (As you’ll notice from the Food Combining and Alkalinity Index on page 34, the most water-containing substances are also the most alkaline, so these two factors almost always coincide in the same foods.)

4. High-vibration (rich in life force energy)

In the modern age, with so much conflicting information, it can be misleading to categorize foods as either healthy or unhealthy. What truly determines whether a food has a high health quotient is how much natural vitality that food has, combined with how it reacts once it enters the body. A food’s vitality is equal to its life force energy quotient, measured by how harmoniously and rapidly it vibrates on the subatomic level.

Typically, the more water-containing the food, and the more directly it derived its energy from the sun, the more life force energy it contains. So what are the most high-vibration foods that work in harmony with the human body? For the committed detox dieter who is no longer acidic, yeasted, or intestinally impacted, organically raised fruits grown in full sun are extremely high on the life force scale and the ideal high-vibration food. For the rest of you, whose acidity and yeast levels are high, the ideal foods are organic leafy greens and other organic raw vegetables. (However, if you have serious, chronic intestinal imbalances such as diverticulitis and Crohn’s disease, you should have cooked or blended vegetables until you are healed enough to digest raw vegetables normally.)

Organic raw vegetables are our greatest catalysts to healing. Notice that I say catalysts, because foods in and of themselves are not healers; rather, it’s the body that does the healing. All we can do is cultivate the right environment—that is, a healthy internal ecosystem—with high-vibration alkaline foods to help continually remove blockages and infuse our blood, cells, tissues, and organs with life force energy.

When we give the body the chance to rebalance and heal itself, it begins the work of cellular renewal, and it will continue to do so for as long as we let it. That’s why a detox diet, for Chef Doris and me, is not merely a stopgap for short-term weight loss. Rather, it is a way of life that continually heals and reenergizes the body, as the body has been designed to do all along.

Never forget that all life is an energetic system. That’s why the body responds so well to living foods with harmonious high vibrations. So the next time you eat a scrumptious raw salad, savor the sensation of supercharging every cell in your body.

5. Organic (free of hormones, antibiotics, chemicals,
and genetic modification)

There are not many things in the modern world as acidic and poisonous to the human body as artificial hormones and antibiotics, which are commonly used in animal farming today to ramp up production. These alien hormones and antibiotics create imbalances great and small, depending on source, quality, and quantity. They are used because the animals’ internal systems and external environments are rife with horrific bacteria. When you consume inorganically farmed animal flesh, you may as well be injecting yourself with these hormones and antibiotics.

Here’s how it works. Whatever an animal is exposed to becomes part of its biomass—the biochemical substance of all its cells, tissues, and organs. When you consume this animal flesh, its biomass becomes your biomass. Hence, we can understand the adage “You are what you eat” to be literal. These alien hormones wreak havoc on your hormone balance and contribute to an already overly estrogenic system (which, as you’ll recall, is the foundation for yeast overgrowth). The antibiotics, meanwhile, kill off your good bacteria, which are already dramatically weakened by preexisting microbial imbalances. In short, continuing to consume inorganic animal products makes a bad situation exponentially worse.

I’m not saying that you must become a vegetarian; you can still eat carefully cultivated animal products and avoid these dangerous hormones and antibiotics. I’m merely pointing out that the substances used in the majority of animal farms are hugely detrimental to your health. I believe it’s possible to consume some animal products if desired and maintain a great level of health if they come from trusted organic sources that comply with honorable farming practices (for example, grass-fed cows, free-roaming chickens, and organically fed fish). Just don’t confuse animal products with essential or ideal human food. Even the highest-quality ones are acidic, mucus-forming, and hard to digest.

Genetically modified foods come from genetically modified organisms, which are created by transferring genes across species through genetic engineering. This is how viruses and bacteria are often introduced to foods that would not normally contain them. Nature has structures in place to prevent such “infection” from another species’ DNA. Science uses highly questionable methods to override these protections, methods that are largely unregulated, despite what the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and food industry giants would like us to believe. Instead of waiting for an official research paper to report on the full depth and breadth of damage that such practices are causing our internal and external ecosystems, I recommend using common sense before it’s too late. We can bet that GMO (genetically modified organism) foods trigger frightening mutations, cellular damage, and energetic dissonance in our bodies. Avoid these foods at all cost.

The use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is commonplace in industrial farming. However, we humans have only been exposed to them since about the mid-nineteenth century and know very little about how they may be affecting our physiology over the long term. What we do know is that these manufactured, synthetic chemicals are foreign to our systems, making them difficult, if not impossible, to metabolize. This means they are accumulating in our cells and tissues. We must consider the accumulation of these industrial chemicals over decades to be a contributing factor in degenerative diseases, autoimmune diseases, infertility, and chemical imbalances in general.

6. Non-gluey and non-mucus-forming

Foods that are of a gluey consistency or generate lots of mucoid matter when consumed should be avoided. The body creates mucoid matter (not to be confused with the mucus of a healthy mucous membrane) to line its intestinal tract and defend itself from highly acidic alien substances. Consuming gluey, mucus-forming substances increases acidity and slows digestion. These include all packaged processed foods, pasteurized cow dairy, animal flesh, inorganic poultry, soy products, and all manner of fake meat products.

7. Grain-free

While grain has been heralded in our culture as a key food group, even the whole-grain variety is not very good for us. With a few exceptions (which I’ll get to in a moment), most grains are inflammatory in the body, acidic, gluey, yeast-feeding, and difficult to digest. They agitate the intestine, resulting in inflammation, bloating, and fluid imbalances, and contribute greatly to weight gain. They also reduce mental clarity.

how long do i detox?

THIS WAY OF EATING IS AN AFFIRMATION OF LIFE, NOT A CRASH DIET OR A QUICK FIX. WE EAT THIS WAY BECAUSE WE LOVE IT! WE BELIEVE THAT HARMONIZING THE BODY WITH ITS OWN NATURAL RHYTHMS AND WITH THOSE OF THE NATURAL WORLD IS THE MOST PROFOUND AND EFFECTIVE WAY TO ATTAIN BALANCE, ENERGY, AND JOY. HOW COULD ANYONE PUT AN END POINT ON AN EXPERIENCE LIKE THAT? IF THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DETOX DIET APPEAL TO YOU, AND IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO UNDERTAKE A MORE STRUCTURED, WEEK-BY-WEEK DETOX, CONSULT MY PREVIOUS BOOKS. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO UNDERGO A FAST TO HELP CLEANSE AND RESET YOUR BODY MORE DEEPLY, I RECOMMEND A GUIDED THREE-DAY JUICE FAST, EITHER WITH OUR TEAM AT DETOXTHEWORLD.COM OR WITH ANOTHER TRUSTED DETOX GUIDE. BUT WE DESIGNED THIS COOKBOOK WITH AN EVEN LOFTIER GOAL IN MIND—TO INSPIRE YOU WITH KNOCKOUT RECIPES AND SET YOU UP FOR A LIFETIME OF CONTINUAL DETOXIFICATION AND REGENERATION.

Thus, generally speaking, grains are not an ideal go-to food in the modern diet. If you love grains and must have them, that’s okay. But if you want superior health, energy, and weight loss, you should avoid a grain-based diet. Also, keep in mind that sprouted grains are far superior to regular whole grains. The highest-quality grains are the ancient pseudo-grains, which are gluten-free and easier to digest than cereal grains but do have a similar nutritional profile. These include millet, quinoa, buckwheat, and amaranth. Typically, some grains can be included with successful detoxification results, but it is best to avoid them whenever possible and to find nongrain options for your favorite grain-based foods. Fortunately for all of us, Chef Doris has discovered many brilliant and satisfying ways of doing this in her recipes.

8. Low-density

People often confuse dense foods, such as oatmeal, nuts, and chicken, with being nutritionally dense and more satisfying. Well, I’m here to say the opposite is actually true. We gain the most nourishment from high-vibration, life force energy−rich foods, not heavy, dense ones that move sluggishly through the body.

With so much accumulation in the typical modern intestine already, it is unadvisable to consume dense foods (even raw ones, such as raw nuts and cold-pressed oils) unless used only occasionally in small quantities, and then ideally consumed with leafy greens or other water-containing raw vegetables to ease their passage. Many meats, grains, processed soy products, and nut-and-seed-based foods (even raw and organic ones) are very dense. You will find some egg and fish recipes in this book because eggs and fish are the least dense and the easiest to digest of the flesh foods. There is room in the modern detox diet for nonvegan foods. In fact, foods such as fish and eggs are much less dense and more detox-diet-friendly than many vegetarian, vegan, and raw food staples, such as wheat, soy, and nut-based foods.

SIX PRINCIPLES OF PRACTICALITY

Professional and personal experience has taught me that as vital as the Essential Eight are, they will not have a fighting chance in our daily lives if we cannot recognize them as also practical and enticing. There are just too many competing health messages, programs, temptations, and addiction traps in our world. So, for any diet to work for more than just a fanatical few, it must adhere to these principles.

Fortunately for us, the modern detox diet is all of these. Let’s take a moment to look at these additional factors and the role each one plays in a cleansing diet.

1. Emotionally satisfying

In our desire for a lean, energized, clean-celled body, we cannot ignore the main reason many of us eat—for emotional reasons. If we were only eating for nourishment, we would eat far less frequently and copiously, and then reach for only the simplest foods. But even the most devout health enthusiasts among us eat for another level of satisfaction.

As you undertake a cleansing diet, it’s important to honestly consider your inclinations around food. You’ll fare better and give longevity to the process if you acknowledge your desire to eat foods that soothe and comfort you. Eventually, as your body heals, and as you become less chemically and emotionally addicted to certain mainstream foods, the intensity of these inclinations will dissolve. When this happens, it feels wonderfully freeing—but it cannot be forced. Allow yourself a gentle transition to a more cleansing diet, taking care to satisfy yourself deeply with the foods you eat. You can rest assured, we have created this book with your emotional satisfaction in mind.

2. Lifestyle friendly

In an ideal world, we wouldn’t be running to lunch, dinner, and drink meetings, eating under stress or out of boredom in cubicles, and grabbing something on the go in airports or on the road. But these are all factors of our daily routines. I’m hopeful that with the growing consciousness of true health seekers everywhere, we will collectively, as a society, revise our values and enact deep cultural shifts that serve our greatest good. Little by little, we are starting to feel the changes already, but we still have a long, long way to go. In the meantime, we can successfully weave all the principles of clean living into the fabric of the modern world as we currently know it.

If you don’t own a juicer, getting raw vegetable juices has never been easier, as more and more juice bars and fresh-pressed juicing stores are opening up around the country. Food combining (as you will see in the next chapter) is a cinch. Raw salads can be incredibly delicious and satisfying, not to mention fun to make (for creative inspiration, try any of Chef Doris’s salad ideas). You can almost always find great options when you eat out (how does arugula salad with goat cheese and lemon dressing, grilled fish with veggies, and a glass of your favorite wine sound?). And preparing snacks and meals to go is easy (just invest in some containers for those chopped veggies, dips, and sandwich wraps). We know that if the modern detox diet is to have any staying power, it must harmonize with the modern lifestyle.

3. Affordable

Everyone has a different bottom line, but most of us have to work within a pretty tight food budget. The great thing about this way of eating is that it celebrates fresh, local, seasonal produce, which delivers the most nutritional value at the most reasonable prices.

If you are on a tight budget, seek out local co-ops and in-season produce. For example, in the colder months, yams, apples, avocados, romaine lettuce, carrots, and winter squashes are very affordable. My splurges are on raw goat cheeses, but I find that a little goes a long way in making my veggies savory and satisfying. I also recommend making lots of homemade vegetable soups to store, and making or buying your own organic marinara sauces—these are very inexpensive way to keep your diet vegetable-centric and delicious.

If you plan on juicing often, I would recommend investing in a juicer. While some die-hard juice aficionados insist upon the masticating juicers because they maintain the enzymatic integrity better than their centrifugal counterparts, in my experience these masticating juicers are too cumbersome for most people to use daily—and daily use is the goal. The masticating juicers are also usually much more expensive than the basic centrifugal juicers, so the latter are the ones I recommend most widely. The most important thing I look for in a juicer is its ability to juice leafy greens, since some juicers juice carrots, beets, and fruits seamlessly but cannot manage leafy greens. The Breville and the Jack LaLanne are easy to use, easy to clean, very reasonably priced (with the exception of the more costly Die-Cast Breville model, which is a design choice, not mechanically superior). You cannot go wrong with these.

For further convenience and cost efficiency, consider doing all your produce shopping once a week at a local farmer’s market, organic co-op, or farm.

4. Easy to prepare

There are many cookbooks out there for people who enjoy creating rarified, complicated dishes, but this is not one of them. Simple is best not only for our busy lives but also for our bodies. The fewer ingredients in a recipe, the healthier and more easily digestible the dish. The ideal modern diet calls for minimal effort in the kitchen and relatively few appliances and tools, so keep it simple.

5. Ideal for all ages and stages alike

When people ask me what the best diet is for kids or their elderly parents, I can say with all honesty, “This is!” The only tweaks I would make for kids, assuming they are not exhibiting symptoms of systemic yeast (such as thrush for babies, eczema, and psoriasis) or taking antibiotics, would be to add organic fruit liberally and include sprouted-grain products and raw nuts, seeds, nut and seed milks, and dried fruits as desired. Some honey, agave, and maple syrup can also be used to sweeten items such as homemade cookies, homemade ice creams, pancakes, and toast.

In the case of seniors and the elderly, I suggest preparing juices that focus more on mild, watery greens, such as cucumbers, celery, and romaine lettuce (at least at first), and less on the darker greens, such as chard, collards, spinach, and parsley (which may be introduced to the juices in small amounts, as desired). Blended foods and cooked vegetables should be the centerpiece of the over-sixty-five cleanser because they are easy to digest and will not overly awaken waste in their blocked systems. Blending foods makes digestion even easier, which helps more energy go where it’s needed to regenerate the blood and organs.

6. Delicious and widely varied

You should be able to enjoy a vast spectrum of flavors and textures that cross cultural and international divides. The only thing that would ever make me feel deprived where food is concerned is if I were denied a certain palate experience. I’ve always loved a variety of ethnic foods, but most of it is cooked with ingredients I no longer eat, such as lots of cooked oils and grains served in unfavorable combinations.

Doris and I have learned that all the amazing international flavors we love can be achieved using alternative vegetable-based ingredients, filled with the spices, herbs, flavors, and textures that make certain dishes so irresistible. You will find great ideas in this book for creating Indian and Southeast Asian curries, Italian and Mediterranean flavors, Mexican and Tex-Mex salsas, guacamoles, and so much more. Sometimes you don’t want a salad but a hearty soup or a Moroccan stew; or you might not want to eat restaurant sushi anymore, but you still want the unique experience of sushi—all this can be arranged, using superior ingredients.

Every day, you can ask yourself, What type of food am I craving? Run the variety of choices through your mental palate until the one you really want makes itself known. Then find it in the book, or interpret one of Chef Doris’s recipes to satisfy your craving, or invent one of your own dishes using any of her tricks of the trade. The modern detox diet celebrates the full spectrum of world flavors that humankind has spent thousands of years cultivating. Now is the time to bring all those flavors to the next level of our culinary evolution.

SUMMARY

The masterminds behind most diet fads have overlooked two major factors: the natural laws of the human body, particularly how it digests and assimilates food, and our current state of toxicity, which not even the most health-conscious among us can ever fully escape in the context of the modern world. If only it were as easy as saying, “All we need to do is cut down on carbs and eat more lean meats” or “We must eat only raw fruits and vegetables, to the exclusion of everything else.”

In essence, every recipe in this book was thoughtfully and lovingly created as a direct answer to this basic question: Why do we eat? The most basic answer is: We eat to energize our bodies. But in an age of environmental dissonance, this means we must take extra care to eat foods that will work with our bodies, meeting them at our current levels of toxicity in order to restore balance and vitality. We do this by basing our diet on foods with the fundamental properties we’ve just outlined.

This cookbook is not about shortcuts, restrictions, or cultish dietary dogma. Rather, it is all about meeting our most fundamental dietary needs and, at the same time, fulfilling our highest physical potential as real human beings living in the real world. It is a call to simplicity in an age of accelerating complexity. It is about honoring the body and the spirit with the most cleansing, healing, and nourishing foods available to us. Granted, in the jungle of modernity, it’s not always easy to find our way to health and vitality, but with this book, we seek to shine a bright and hopeful light into your dietary future.