You’ve been collecting recipes for years and now you find out that you have a candida overgrowth and need to eliminate yeast from your diet. A cursory search of your recipe file and all those lovely cookbooks you’ve had for years will make you realize how many foods contain yeast. Not just yeast, but foods that quickly turn to sugar in the stomach, feeding the yeast that’s already there with what they love.
This makes high-carb foods a problem. So, here’s your favorite beef stew recipe with all that corn, potato, and carrot! Not to mention all the pasta made with refined white flour.
The first step in rewriting your recipes to support your candida diet is to become familiar with what foods to eat to eliminate the excess yeast in your system and what foods to avoid .
Here is the short list of what to avoid:
- bread products
- alcohol
- Sugar, high fructose corn syrup
- Vinegar and products containing vinegar
- Fermented foods – sauerkraut and apple cider
- “Mouldy” foods – such as cheese and dried or smoked meats
- Cured meats – bologna, bacon, mortadella
- Mushrooms
- peanuts
- soy sauce
- Canned tomatoes
Here is a short list of good foods:
- Vegetables, especially green leafy vegetables
- beans
- Beef, poultry and fresh, uncured pork
- fish and shellfish
- eggs
- seeds and nuts
Once you have the two lists above in mind, go through your recipes. I started with my favorites so I wouldn’t feel disadvantaged. I revised my beef stew recipe by substituting chicken for the beef, omitting the corn, using only half a potato and half a carrot, and adding green beans, zucchini, and cauliflower. I used arrowroot instead of flour to thicken the sauce. It was just great!
Another big favorite of mine is crab cakes. When I lived in Delaware, I lived right on the beach with a swamp behind me. I would go to the dock on the swamp and throw out my crab pot during the season and pull it up when I got home from work. It was usually loaded with crab and crab cakes became an obsession.
Trouble was, my favorite recipe used breadcrumbs to hold the crab together. So what did I use instead? I ground almonds. Yes, that’s right, almonds. Not only are they good for you, they really didn’t change the flavor, and I even started topping the crab cakes in almond flour before either baking or frying them. Delicious!
As you do this, one recipe at a time, and add more healthy foods to your diet, you may find, like me, that once my yeast overgrowth was gone, I was able to add yeasty foods back into my diet (slowly, as I felt afterwards felt) I noticed that I was liking my new way of eating and not responding as much to the heavier, carb-heavy meals I had previously.
It’s really easy to do this individually. Visit my website for more recipes and a mini-course, 10 Secrets to Yeast-Free Living, that will help you tackle this issue. Check out the links below.
Thanks to Annie Avants
