In this episode Clint explains how his rheumatoid diet has evolved through the years, from the early stages of the Paddison Program to his current state where he has added lots of different foods to the baseline, and how the process of adding a new element can work, sometimes even by accident. More variety in the diet can help feel more satiated but can also have a beneficial effect on the microbiome.
Ana Clint before we go, I have a question. All these years, have you managed to add lots of foods to your everyday life or you’re still on the same short, short listed amounts of foods choices that we can have?
Clint Yeah, thanks for asking. I now eat a ton of different foods compared to the sort of early stages of the Paddison Program. In fact, I had someone on Instagram asked me to continue to post more foods of what we eat because they look so different to the ones that are in the early stages. So in our early stages of our plan, of course, we like to keep to the really, really nutrient dense whole Foods, low fat. And then as time goes on, at least in my case, and for people who’ve been at this for a very long time. You make these discoveries sometimes by accident, that you can actually eat this other food that you’ve been scared of for years and find that not only does it not have any negative effects, but you feel more satiated. You feel, I guess, more normal, for want of a better word, that you can snack between meals and enjoy a whole bunch of different things. So depending on where you’re at, there might be a discovery just around the corner.
Clint So just to give you an idea of what we eat. Gosh, so Melissa, I’m hopeful that remembering these things, but we have around seven or eight different evening meals that will rotate through and I’ll just go through my short-term memory. So for lunch, I just had before now some black beans and rice, very simple, with orange juice on the side and baby spinach. So that one’s real simple, it’s about as simple as I eat these days. We’ll do another one, we’ll two others that are as simple as that in the same sort of category. We’ll do just a brown lentil that Melissa will cook with some onions and garlic, and we put some salt on those and I put some hot sauce on that. Some, you know, some of the sort of classic kind of peppery hot sauce in a squeeze bottle. And then also add a different lentil dish, which is a yellow moong dal, and that is absolutely delicious. So it’s creamy consistency moong dal and that one’s listed in our Paddison Program recipe book, and we love that and the kids really like that too. So black beans and rice are very simple with tomatoes, I forget we’ve put tomatoes on there and some hot sauce, the lentils, garlic and stuff with beans, with rice. And then the yellow moong dal. So there’s sort of lentils, beans, legumes and rice kind of meals. Then she’ll do a pasta for Jewel on a different night, which is a mixture of and she’ll just find this incredible that I don’t know what the ingredients since we have it a lot, but it’s got potatoes, it’s got small pasta in there. So it’s got like circular rings of pasta like the Kitty. So we’ve got the carbohydrates in the dishes, the pasta and the potatoes. And then there’s onion, a tomato flavour and it’s a soup.
Clint And so it’s a soup with carbohydrates like potatoes and the pasta in it again. So and we love that and sometimes have some bread with that, like some sour dough bread with that so that’s another meal. The other night, we’ve started doing pizzas again and we haven’t been able to do them in Australia because we haven’t had the right pizza basses. But here in the states there’s a brand called Engine 2, which is Rip Esselstyn, part of the Esselstyn famous family, and his company makes these and they’re exclusive to Whole Foods. And so they are just absolutely delicious basses, and we copped some criticism on Instagram from some people thinking that we were promoting gluten. We don’t promote gluten, if you can eat gluten and you want to eat it and you have no reactions to gluten, I don’t see in the scientific literature a terrifying outcome of eating gluten. If you’re celiac, obviously, but if you’re not then show me the science that it’s going to actually cause a problem. I read a book called Eat Wheat. John Juilliard wrote a book Eat Wheat, all the science behind the improvements that can occur to you microbiome by adding a little bit of a challenging protein to your diet which is gluten. It’s like your immune system develops a bit more strength, your digestive system also builds a bit more strength. But again it’s like one of these, this is an advanced meal is not something that is in the early stages of the program. So on that pizza, the pizza base from Engine 2. I then have, there’s an engine 2 pasta sauce that Melissa’s spreads over it, which is completely oil free. And then on top of that, just a whole bunch of different vegetables, including olives, which are high in fat, but no problem. Some artichokes, onion, garlic, I mean, it is just delicious. So that’s been a new addition to our family evening meals.
Clint She makes a coconut curry. Okay. So, the coconut milk in that is not again part of our first couple of years of our program. But the coconut milk in there contains no added oil, so it’s just coconut or coconut milk. And I checked the ingredients that it has no oil in it. And she doesn’t use a lot of it, but it’s in the in the recipe. And in that, you know, it’s kind of a cauliflowery, heavy kind of vegetable heavy that you then put on top of rice. So if you’re having a coconut sort of flavoured almost like a Thai meal kind of flavour that we have from time to time. Let’s see. Oh, just classic spaghetti, so we’ll use the engine 2 pasta sauce and regular pasta. I like the big spaghetti long things, the long style spaghetti. But sometimes we’ll have the spiral type spaghetti and so pasta. And so we’re just doing pasta with a whole bunch of pasta sauce on top. And Melissa puts a little bit I think of cilantro just on top of that. But I don’t have any parmesan cheese or anything, but I find that that it’s just delicious as it is.
Clint We have an air fryer where we do air fried potatoes. So I’ll have potatoes on the side with any one of those meals, depending on just how I feel about, you know, the merely (inaudible) black beans and rice. I just think, I had that for lunch as well today because it was leftover or something. If I’d just, then I’ll have some potatoes as well and it makes it, you know, just taste better because I love potatoes. Let’s see.
Clint There are probably a couple that I’ve left off that I just can’t remember. There’s a pasta to bake that she sometimes does that, the ingredients, though, eludes me. We haven’t had it since we’ve been back in the States, which has been four months. So but she was doing that back in Australia, which is a really nice oven baked in a big glass dish kind of meal that’s absolutely delicious. That has actually cashew sauce in it, cashew nut sauce is absolutely delicious. Right. So giving you some examples of the diversity of out of the main meals we have. I have oatmeal for breakfast, and with a glass of orange juice. The oatmeal does not necessarily have to be, you know, like it’s just sometimes it’ll be sort of have some sugar in it, pre-packaged sort of stuff. And other times it’s just a hundred percent pure oats too which I’ll add often some honey or a bit of brown sugar or something like that. And that’s breakfast and then the meal, the lunchtimes, You know, sometimes I’ll eat out at Mexican restaurants here. There’s a place called Tijuana Flats, which is a fast food chain here in Florida, and I’ll eat at that quite a lot. In fact, sometimes I’ve eaten there several days in a row. And then, of course, we had Indian, we ate out at Indian restaurant the other night. And I had their Tarka Dal with rice, with the naan bread, with no ghee, no oil and a little. They do this interesting little salad thing where it’s onions and tomato that are all chopped up into really small pieces and its pretty strong taste, but I like that as well.
Clint So, there’s my answer. You know, you asked the question and that and I think there’s my full answer of all the things that we eat. And I snack on nuts frequently in between meals, I eat all the fruits. So, yeah, there’s as a lot of different foods there.
Ana Yeah, well, I have added as several things as well, like jackfruit, which I am not always able to find here or even in Finland. But, you know, I found that jackfruit works very well, and it just gives you a sensation that you’re having some sort of meat.
Clint Well, fantastic. Well, hope that covers that off. And thanks for asking question.
Ana Yeah, I think that if you have a little broader variety of foods, you know you feel much better. I think it has to do with the with the mind you know.
Clint Yeah. And I encourage and want people to create that kind of diversity, we shouldn’t be deliberately trying to stay restrictive if we don’t have to. Because diversity of the microbiome comes from diversity of the plants that we eat. So we want a greater diversity and the best way to go about it is just eat different things. So it’s this balance between keeping the inflammation as low as possible, as long as possible, whilst also always dipping our toe in the water and looking for what else might we be able to eat that we can enjoy. It’s convenient and we can have frequently that can also help us to add some more diversity. So, yeah.
Ana Yeah. OK, well, thank you Clint.
Clint Thank you.