An Interview On Spices, Vegetarianism, and Carbohydrates

The blogger Greg Davis, AKA Modern Forager, has published part one of an interview with Lorette Luzajic, described as the website Gremolata's "resident Spice Girl." This has nothing to do with the 90s girl group, though, much to some people's disappointment I'm sure. She is an expert on spices, which is interesting to anyone who loves to cook with them or eat food seasoned with anything other than salt (not including MSG of course). One of her initial points is that spices are much cheaper in bulk, and that you should only buy the amount you need, since they lose their flavor pretty fast.

She also has talked about life after bread, and eating meant. She was an unhealthy vegetarian because she was led to believe that all meats and animal fats are bad and that all plant-sourced foods, especially things like fake meat made from soy protein isolate, are life-giving. It turned out that gluten was toxic to her, and cutting it out was one of the best things she could do for her health. I had a similar experience -- when I was a strict vegetarian, especially when I was following a low-fat, calorie-restricted vegetarian diet, I had the worse mood swings, cravings, and began binging on (vegetarian) junk food (in secret, most of the time I ate vegetables, fruits, low-fat dairy, whole grains, and nuts).

She mentions how the soy industry made it near impossible for her to publish anything that was anti-soy, which was surprising to her, since she'd heard mostly about other powerful lobbies (for example the meat industry). This isn't surprising anyone who has read up on the soy deception all over the place. It is mostly controversial because the soy lobby is so powerful. It is controversial also because so many studies show areas in Asia where soy is a part of the diet have lower rates of certain diseases. However, for the most part, soy is a much smaller part of diets in Asia than it has become here. And usually it is consumed in fermented forms, such as miso, tempeh, and natto. In addition, with any food that has been eaten for a long time, the people who have that diet have adapted to it, so that trying to introduce it to people who have not had it in their diets, like most of the rest of the world, may result in problems.

Overall, this was an interesting and timely interview.