Book Review: Cooking For The Specific Carbohydrate Diet
Book Title:
Cooking For The Specific Carbohydrate Diet
Authors:
Erica Kerwien of Comfy Belly
What is The Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD)?
When I first started reading about Paleo, I kept hearing about SCD, and I was really confused about what it was. Erica’s book covers all the basics of SCD and provides the essential recipes and know-how to get you well on your way to healing your gut through SCD. (Steve and Jordan from SCDLifestyle.com first explained SCD to me, so a special shout-out to them)!
Basically, SCD is a diet publicized by Elaine Gottschall after it healed her young daughter of ulcerative colitis (back in 1955). Elaine Gottschall’s book, Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Intestinal Health through Diet, is still a seminal work for improving gut health. As Erica describes at the beginning of her book, “[t]he goal [of SCD] is to repair the injured intestinal lining, achieve a healthy balance of intestinal bacteria, improve absorption of nutrients from food, and quiet the immune system’s inflammatory response that occurs with many digestive issues and diseases.”
The diet eliminates the complex carbohydrates that requires digestion in your body (e.g. lactose in some dairy, polysaccharides in rice, sweet potatoes, grains, and some vegetables, processed sugars, and fiber in grains). However, unlike Paleo, some beans, pure fruit juices, and low-lactose dairy products are permitted on SCD (as described in Erica’s book). There’s a handy chart of allowed and not allowed foods on pages 4 and 5 of the book.
Overall, I think SCD is highly similar to Paleo, and I’ve heard of many people experiencing relief from digestive issues (e.g., Crohn’s disease, IBS, celiac, ulcerative colitis) by cutting out complex carbohydrates.
Make Your Own Milks
I love putting fresh almond milk into my black tea (it was really hard for me to give up cow’s milk because I was so attached to putting milk in my tea), and so I was really happy to see that the first recipe in the book is for making your own almond milk. If you have only tried store-bought almond milk (which pretty much always contains ingredients other than just water and almonds), then you’ll be shocked at just how much better fresh pure almond milk tastes. I couldn’t go back to store-bought almond milk after tasting it!
There are also recipes for coconut milk, cashew milk, as well as almond SCD yogurt, sweet cashew cream, and way more (that’s just the Basic Recipes chapter!).
The Coolest Recipe
Cauliflower Popcorn. Amazing! I’ve often wanted some popcorn at night as a snack, and now I know what I can make instead!
Treat Yourself
The Yellow Birthday Cake (on page 144) also looks amazing, and there are 3 different frosting recipes to try out with it. I’m sure it’ll be fantastic for any celebration!
You can get Erica’s book on Amazon by clicking here.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for free for review purposes. I received no other compensation, and this review is based on my own opinion. Note that some links on this page (and throughout this website) are affiliate links.