provide ready-made vitamin A but also stimulate the secretion of bile. Polyunsaturated oils also stimulate the secretion of bile salts but they can destroy carotene unless sufficient antioxidant vitamins are present.
and other carbohydrates, you can fill up on liquid and on masses of fruit and vegetables. This will both prevent dehydration and help to control your acidity levels. Soup provides both liquid and vegetables, so you can gain all the benefits of a low-carb diet while minimizing the side-effects.
In this book you will be consuming mostly healthy forms of protein: fish, organic poultry and dairy products, lentils, beans and tofu. Nuts and seeds such as sunflower and sesame seeds are also included—for both their protein and the beneficial oils they provide. Very few of the soup recipes contain red meat. This is because the fat associated with red meat is not healthy. Also, the World Health Organization has found that people who consume red meat more than twice a week have a higher risk of developing cancer.
It is much better to eat white meat and to supplement this with olive oil, nut oils and with retinol—and vitamin D-rich fats from milk, cheese and cream.
Soluble Fibre
Dietary fibre absorbs liquid and so helps to bulk up the contents of your intestinal tract. This keeps you feeling full for longer after a meal. Adding bran to your food was one of the features of the F-Plan diet, which became popular in the 1970s. ‘F’ stood for fibre, and the diet involved consuming as much fibre as possible because this would reduce the calorie content of your meal while still keeping you satisfied.
But bran is not an ideal fibre for this purpose. It contains a lot of phytic acid, which forms complexes with minerals in your food and prevents their absorption. In large amounts, bran can also be quite irritating to the intestines, and is prone to causing gas. Nowadays we are more likely to recommend soluble fibre as a dieting aid. Soluble fibre is found in seeds, lentils, beans, seaweed extracts, fruit and vegetables. Like bran, it is indigestible, but unlike bran, it can be consumed by bacteria in your intestines and turned into useful fatty acids, which maintain an ideal acidity balance in your colon and support the health of your colon walls.
One of the best forms of soluble fibre is pectin. Found mostly in apples, cabbage and the white part of citrus fruit, pectin holds up to 100 times its weight in water. This excellent bulking action is very helpful for controlling appetite, especially if the pectin is in warm foods such as cooked fruit soups and cabbage soup.
PECTIN-RICH FOODS
Apples
Apricots
Cabbage
Carrots
Citrus fruit
Peaches
Plums
Prunes
Several research studies have also shown that consuming a lot of pectin can lower your cholesterol levels. Pectin binds to bile acids (released by your liver into your intestines when fats and oils are consumed) and prevents you from reabsorbing them and turning them into cholesterol. Pectin also helps to keep bile flowing, and this is beneficial as it means your gall bladder (which stores bile) is regularly flushed out.
The success of the Cabbage Soup Diet may be partly due to the pectin content of cabbage. In this book you will find several soup recipes containing cabbage. These recipes help to make cabbage more interesting, and some of them use spices which enhance the weightloss potential of this vegetable.
Psyllium husks (see Resources, page 277) can also be added to soup, and are a good thickener for soups such as Chinese Hot and Sour Soup (see page 224). These seed husks are an ancient Ayurvedic treatment for cleansing the intestines, and are extremely rich in a type of soluble fibre known as mucilage. Mucilage is also found in seaweed, and many commercial vegetarian gelling products such as agar-agar consist of mucilage extracted from seaweed. (Adding mucilage to liquids thickens and gels them.) Psyllium husks can do a similar job and are cheap and easy to use. Owing to their huge capacity for absorbing water in the intestines, and so helping to bulk out the stools, psyllium husks are used as the basis of many anti-constipation remedies. One tablespoon a day whisked into a large glass of water encourages regular bowel motions without causing discomfort or diarrhoea. Combined with soup, psyllium husks will absorb and gel much of the liquid, so to your stomach they will feel more like solid food and will help you to stay full for longer.
OTHER POWER FOODS TO AID WEIGHT-LOSS
In Ayurvedic and Oriental medicine, overweight is said to be caused by an excess of ‘dampness’ in the body. The dampness (fluid) quenches the body’s fire (metabolism) and so encourages the laying down of fat. The Oriental treatment for obesity consists of drying out the dampness, using special foods that ‘soak it up’ or alternatively drive it out by boosting Yang energy to heat up the metabolism (see panel below).
YIN AND YANG
These are important concepts in Oriental medicine. Yang represents male qualities (such as hard, dry, dense, hot, pungent) and Yin represents feminine qualities (such as soft, damp, loose, cool, sweet). For good health these should always be in balance. If they become out of balance, eating the right foods can help to correct any associated problems.
Excessive dampness leading to overweight suggests that there is too much Yin energy in the body and not enough Yang, so eating aduki beans (which are hard, dense and dry before cooking) or pepper and garlic (which are respectively hot and pungent) helps to correct the imbalance.
Always bear in mind that Oriental medicine is about balance. So don’t overdo the pepper and burn your insides thinking that this will help you lose weight faster. It won’t!
Aduki beans and broad beans are considered good for soaking up dampness. The best part of the broad bean is the pod, and soup can be made with water in which the pods have been boiled. Mung beans and bean sprouts are also recommended if your weight problem is accompanied by an excessively hot constitution—that is to say if you feel the heat easily and suffer from skin eruptions.
To increase the Yang energy on which metabolism depends, Oriental medicine recommends the regular consumption of kidneys, liver (preferably from organically-raised livestock), shrimps and mussels.
Oriental medicine includes a great deal about increasing ‘fire’ or ‘heat’ in the body. Ayurvedic medicine also emphasizes the importance of supporting the ‘digestive fire’ in order to improve digestion and reduce unhealthy sedimentary deposits in the body’s tissues. Is there a Western equivalent? Indeed there is. Many so-called warming herbs and spices create the sensation of warmth in the body (ginger and pepper in particular). They are well-known circulatory stimulants and can
FOODS AND SPICES THAT REDUCE DAMPNESS
Aduki beans
Basil
Black pepper
Broad beans
Caraway
Cayenne
