- Use whole foods.
- Use fresh fruits and vegetables. Commercially canned products often contain yeasts and added sugar. Buy flesh organic vegetables when possible.
- Avoid foods labeled "enriched" if you're allergic to yeast.
- Since many, and perhaps most, canned, packaged and processed foods contain hidden ingredients, including sugar, dextrose and other carbohydrate products, avoid them.
- If you must use canned or packaged foods, read labels carefully.
- If buying frozen vegetables, select those without added sauces or ingredients.
- Avoid processed, smoked or cured meats, such as salami, wieners, bacon, sausage and hotdogs, since they often contain sugar, spices, yeast and other additives. These foods also are loaded with the wrong kind of fat.
- Avoid bottled, frozen and canned juices. If you want juice, buy fresh fruit and prepare your own.
- Buy nuts from a natural food store, and make sure they are fresh and not rancid or contaminated with molds. Store them in your refrigerator or freezer. Avoid peanuts if you're allergic to yeasts or molds.
- All commercial breads, cakes and crackers contain yeast. If you want yeast-free breads, you'll have to obtain them from a special bakery or bake your own. Word of caution: Many people with yeast-related problems react adversely to wheat. So, if you continue to experience symptoms, you may need to avoid breads and similar products. Hain and Chico San or Golden Harvest Rice Cakes contain no sugar or yeast. Most rice cakes contain no sugar.
- Use expeller-pressed vegetable oils, such as sunflower, safflower, flaxseed and corn. Flaxseed oil is a superb source of the important Omega 3 essential fatty acids. To make salad dressing, combine the oil with fresh lemon juice to taste.
- Buy whole grains (barley, corn, kamut, millet, oats, rice, spelt, teff and wheat) from a natural food store. Grains can be an important ingredient of a nutritious breakfast. Barley, rice and other grains can also be used in various ways at other meals. Barley or rice casseroles are especially tasty.
- For convenience, you can get excellent bagged organic salads.
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| Yeast Free Diet |
Eating Out - If you're like most people, you "live on the run" and eat foods away from home. What's the answer? Do the best you can. And during the early weeks and months of your candida-control program, you may need to do a lot of brown-bagging. And when you eat out, you'll need to make your selections carefully to avoid foods that trigger your symptoms.
When eating on the run, plan ahead. Don't wait until you're rushing off to work. Make sure that you can fill your "brown bag" with nutritious foods, including raw vegetables, nuts and rice cakes. You also may get some of the nutritious vegetable-based burgers from your health food store.
Vegetarian - Vegetarian or modified vegetarian diets may lessen your chances of developing osteoporosis, heart disease, diabetes and other degenerative diseases, which affect tens of millions of Americans who consume high-protein, high-fat diets.
Although I included meats in the menus for the early weeks, I urge you to improve the quality of your diet in the months ahead by eating less meat. Here's one reason: Animal foods are loaded with pesticide residues. So eat more plant foods, including vegetables, fruits and whole grains. If you eat meat, make it organic.
Tempeh is an excellent source of vegetable protein that can be prepared in a wide variety of appetizing ways ranging from stir-fries to barbecued tempeh steaks. It's a fermented soy product and the safest way to consume soy.
Dry Cereals - These cereals, which you'll find in your supermarket ... even the best of them ... have been processed and subjected to high heat. Accordingly, they're much less desirable than hot cereals you prepare at home made from whole grain. Moreover, most of these cereals are loaded with sugar and contain malt and added yeast-derived B vitamins. So if you're allergic to yeast, you'll need to avoid them.
If you like dry cereals, you can find some nutritious ones at a health food store. Many of them are organically produced, some contain a mixture of grains, and most are fruit-sweetened. (I like Health Valley cereals.)
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| Yeast Free Diet |
If you purchase a dry cereal at your usual grocery store, I suggest sugar-free, yeast-free Shredded Wheat. Other cereals that may be suitable include Cheerios, Puffed Rice, Wheat Chex, Puffed Wheat, Post Toasties, Product 19, Kashi and Special K. All have less than 6 percent added sugar. I don't recommend them for the early weeks, but as you improve, you may be able to tolerate these cereals in limited amounts.
You can find menus and suggestions that will make carrying out your diet detective work much easier in The Yeast Connection Cookbook. This book contains more than 225 recipes that will help you with your meal planning, and it has excellent recipes using gram alternatives. To find out more, you can check out Yeast Free Diet.