Pillars of the Diet
A core selection of healing foods supply the nutrients your gut needs. Some require special preparation ahead of time so they’re ready to eat when you reach the later diet stages and you can tolerate them.
Ghee is a healthy fat you can use for cooking.
Healthy Fats
WHAT Lard, tallow, duck or chicken fat, responsibly and sustainably sourced coconut oil and palm oil, and ghee.
WHY Healthy fats are integral to gut healing. Although fats have been demonized for decades, research has started to catch up with the traditional viewpoint of fats as nutrient-dense, health-building foods.
HOW If you’ve been eating a low-fat diet, you may have difficulty digesting fats because your gallbladder and liver have become lazy at bile production. Start with a small amount, add beets to your diet to support the production of bile, and temporarily supplement with ox bile as your body adjusts.
Stocks and broths provide healing gelatin to repair intestinal damage.
Stocks and Broths
WHAT Stocks and broths.
WHY Stock and its longer-cooking cousin, bone broth, are exceptionally healing to the gut lining. Gelatin, which comes from the collagen in bones, soothes inflammation and helps the gut repair more quickly. Stocks and broths also are excellent sources of amino acids and protein and help stretch your budget.
HOW Add meaty bones and stock to purified water. An acid, such as apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, helps bring out the minerals from the bones.
Red meats are a diet staple, and provide key vitamins and minerals.
Meat
WHAT Meat, poultry, seafood, and animal fats.
WHY Animal products are incredibly dense in the vitamins and minerals your gut needs to heal properly.
HOW Choose grass-fed, pastured, or wild-caught animal products when possible. Animals are healthiest when they’re eating the diet they were designed to eat, and the healthier the animal is, the healthier it will be for you. Always try to buy animal products free of extra hormones, which interfere with your endocrine system or cause allergic reactions.
Fermented vegetables such as sauerkraut support beneficial bacteria.
Fermented Vegetables
WHAT Sauerkraut, cultured vegetables, and pickles.
WHY Fermented foods are heavy hitters in the battle to heal your gut. The fermentation process allows beneficial bacteria to multiply, and eating the vegetables transfers the healthy microbes to your digestive tract. Fermentation also boosts the vegetables’ vitamin and mineral content.
HOW You can ferment with just vegetables, salt, and filtered water, or you can add a starter culture. In the first few stages of the diet, you add the juice from cultured vegetables to soup. In later stages, as your gut heals enough to handle more fibrous foods, you consume the vegetables themselves. For long-term balance, plan on consuming fermented foods with every meal.
Cultured dairy such as yogurt adds back beneficial probiotics.
Cultured Dairy
WHAT Yogurt, kefir, cultured cream, cultured butter, and crème fraîche.
WHY Cultured dairy is another easy and delicious way to get beneficial probiotics into your gut. Many people who have trouble eating dairy can tolerate cultured dairy.
HOW To make cultured dairy, you need the appropriate starter culture, which you can find at health food stores or online. After you culture for the first time, you can use the finished product to start your next batch, making it very affordable. Use raw milk from an experienced farmer, or look for organic, grass-fed dairy that’s been minimally pasteurized and homogenized.