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Transcript
- 07:43 About Jennifer Fugo
- 18:34 What is gluten and where is it found?
- 26:00 Factors that make the gluten-free diet expensive
- 36:05 How to be a “savvy” shopper
- 46:34 Jennifer’s favorite tips from her book
- 48:51 Best 3 tips for going gluten free today
- 53:00 The most pressing health issue in the world today
- 59:26 Find Jennifer’s Book: The Savvy Gluten Free Shopper
Wendy Myers: Welcome to the Live to 110 podcast. I’m your host Wendy Myers and you can find me on myersdetox.com and here is my co-host, the General Leigh Lowery.
Leigh Lowery: Hi, everybody and you know you can find me at generalleigh.com .
Wendy Myers: Today we are going to be interviewing Jennifer Fugo of glutenfreeschool.com . She is going to be talking about her new book, The Savvy Gluten Free Shopper: How to Eat Healthy without Breaking the Bank. It’s all about why you may want to get rid of the gluten in your diet and how you can go gluten free on a budget. But first we have to do our little disclaimer.
Leigh Lowery: Yes. So here we go. Please keep in mind that this program is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or any health condition, and it is not a substitute for professional or medical advice. The Live to 110 podcast is solely informational in nature. Please consult your healthcare practitioner before engaging in any treatment or diet or even fitness regimen that we suggest on this show.
Wendy Myers: So how is your newsletter coming along?
Leigh Lowery: Well, it’s just starting so I’m gearing up. My first newsletter is going to go out this week which I am very excited about. And as you know I do online training for those who are not able to be here locally in Los Angeles, where I consult on both online training that is personalized to each client; as well as nutrition. And it is going awesome, I have ten clients and I’ll be starting up my next group on March 16.
Wendy Myers: Oh nice. I might have to be one of your groupies. Ha ha.
Leigh Lowery: I know. You know I’ll take you for free. I’m excited to work with you. We are going to do some great stuff online. We are going to showcase different exercises and things that you can do at home. And what about yourself, what is going on with you?
Wendy Myers: Well, I’m excited. I started my Modern Paleo cooking show. I have the first segment. It is going to be going out very soon. Probably by the time this podcast airs, it will be up on my YouTube channel which is wendyliveto110. It’s all about Modern Paleo cooking, my version of Paleo. It’s not so strict. I believe that if people can tolerate grains, legumes, potatoes and dairy, then they should very well eat that.
Most of them are very nutritious foods. So on my take, I feel like people should be trying to figure out what foods they are sensitive to and include them in their diet if they find they are not sensitive to them. So that is what my cooking show is all about: cooking super healthy, nutrient-dense foods. And I’m excited because on Wednesday I’m shooting four episodes of it. I’m very busy shooting all about how to make some mushroom marinara on top of spaghetti squash. And yummy little dishes like that.
Leigh Lowery: Delicious. That sounds amazing.
Wendy Myers: And I’m stocked! Sorry, I’ve got so much Californication going on. “I’m stoked, man”. Ha ha. I have some horrible words I need to exclude from my vocabulary. Argh.
Leigh Lowery: Ha ha.
Wendy Myers: But I do have a new website going up. There is going to be a brand new facelift going on over at myersdetox.com. Hopefully it is going to be up in the next couple of weeks by the time this podcast airs. I thought it was time for a facelift.
Leigh Lowery: That is so awesome. I can’t wait. I know I saw a little bit of the “behind the scenes”; it looks very good. And I know you’re doing that series on the thyroid. Tell me a little bit about what’s going on with that.
Wendy Myers: Well, Sean Croxton has asked me to participate in his Second Opinion series called The Thyroid Sessions. There is going to be about ten experts on the thyroid: Chris Kresser and many other people in the health field, like Christa Orecchio. I’m going to be talking about how to heal your thyroid naturally so that you don’t have to take natural or synthetic hormones and basically using Nutritional Balancing and re-mineralizing your body and detoxifying it so that your thyroid can work again on its own.
Leigh Lowery: Very cool. Well, today is really an exciting show for me because we were talking about gluten and gluten free. I don’t know about you Wendy, but from my perspective one of the things that my friends always ask me is, “Do you do anything about gluten?” “What should I do about gluten?” And it’s funny, I never thought about eliminating gluten from my diet. And recently I just started to pay more attention to how I feel. I was realizing I felt a little bloated and lethargic at times, but I never really looked back to my diet.
Recently, I made the decision to buy gluten-free oatmeal because I’m a big oatmeal and bread fan. What I’ve noticed was, I didn’t feel the bloat and that kind of stomach pain that I had felt, nor the lethargy. I don’t know what your experience with gluten is, but I typically have never paid attention to it. I felt bloated, I felt tired and I didn’t know why and I didn’t really think about it. It’s funny. I feel like it has already started to help me. What about yourself? Have you had any experiences about gluten?
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I think a lot of people have the same experience as you do. I think gluten containing foods like mainly wheat, barley, and rye; many people just eat these foods morning, noon, and night at every meal. So they never made the connection to how they feel to gluten containing foods that they are eating in their diet. For me, I’ve been sensitive for a long time. I used to have stomach pains when I was a teenager. My stomach just ached and sometimes I would just wake up in the middle of the night and vomit over and over and over and be up all night.
So of course I thought oh my God, I’m dying. So I went to my doctor, several different doctors. All of them said I was stressed. I was nineteen. What stress did I have? One doctor actually gave me a card of a therapist. Ha ha. And I came to find out years and years later. It finally dawned on me that I was sensitive to gluten. No doctor told me it. I was reading an article and a light bulb went off. My favorite dish in college was a big plate of spaghetti with garlic bread. And I have a feeling, on the nights that I ate that, that was when I was vomiting.
Leigh Lowery: It’s pretty funny.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Ha ha.
Leigh Lowery: I think today is going to be a great show with Jennifer just to find out like, do we have to walk around feeling bloated and lethargic anymore? This is going to be an awesome show.
Wendy Myers: And I think it is going to be great also to figure out how to be gluten free on a budget, because some of the gluten-free products can be really expensive. So I’m really interested to hear how she sidesteps the little potholes -so to speak- of gluten free diet. Which also with Modern Paleo, I definitely advise people to go totally gluten free. I think that the majority of people should not be eating gluten. So I’m really interested to hear what she has to say today.
Leigh Lowery: Alright.
Wendy Myers: So let’s get on with the show. Our guest today, Jennifer Fugo is the founder of Gluten Free School, a website that’s dedicated to teaching gluten-sensitive people simple and savvy steps to get healthy. She is a certified health coach known as the gluten free guru. She is a sought-after expert and speaker about healthy gluten-free living who has been featured on Dr. Oz —so jealous! — On CNN and The Huffington Post. She also hosts the popular Gluten Free School podcast about living a gluten free life. Jennifer, it’s so nice to have you on the show.
Jennifer Fugo: Thank you ladies. I really appreciate you guys and your welcome. It’s such a warm and welcoming invitation to come and share what I know about living gluten free.
Wendy Myers: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. I love having our fellow podcasters on the show.
Jennifer Fugo: I know. It’s great to finally talk to people when you have been listening to them and connecting with them on another platforms. It’s nice to finally be together. It’s really cool.
Wendy Myers: So what’s your story? Why did you make going gluten free your main focus and platform?
Jennifer Fugo: The reason is that back in 2008, I discovered that I was gluten, casein, and egg intolerant. It sounds a lot like your own story. There was this history of feeling sick for many, many years. I traced it back to high school, taking tons of Tylenol because I had headaches all the time. Throughout my teens and into my twenties I had chronic digestive issues: diarrhea, gas, horrible bloating, and the clean curve of it all was that I put on almost 20 pounds. I came to learn after going gluten free, it was really inflammation in my system and not excess fat. But it felt like that.
At that time I didn’t understand what I was dealing with. The thing that I came to realize through my own journey is; as you have said, you went to the doctor and you sort of got this cockamamie answer: “Here is a business card. Go check out a therapist.” You get this going on around. And I think a lot of women; unfortunately, can relate to that because I also hear a lot of stories out there about women who have been blown off by countless doctors. And you can’t seem to find out any answers.
For me that was the same thing. My blood work was completely normal. Everything was fine except I couldn’t wake up after sleeping nine to eleven hours per night. That is ridiculous. At the age of 27 or 28 you should be able to get out of bed after eight, maybe nine, hours of sleep and feel relatively well rested. But I felt like I was completely drugged. And so, in going through this process I have had every nutritionist telling me, “Well, you have a problem with gluten.” And I should share this; I am from an Italian family so just like you and how your favorite meal was that plate of pasta with garlic bread, I was a total pasta-and-bread-aholic. That was my life. I had swapped it out for whole grains because I thought that was better but I was still eating a lot of gluten and I had no idea that could potentially cause some serious issues in my system.
After taking it out, within three days, it was as if I was a completely different person. And then I went to get blood work done and my nutritionist had said to me, “Well, avoid barley, rye, oats that have been contaminated, wheat and spelt”. “Here are three websites.” “I’ll talk to you in eight weeks”. If anyone has ever gone through this, you get some really shocking news you’re totally not expecting to get. It wasn’t just gluten, it was eggs and dairy. I had to take out three big ones. I didn’t know what to do.
Wendy Myers: That’s what most people are eating all day long. What do you eat?
Jennifer Fugo: Right. I said, “I’m Italian. What do you mean? I can’t… what am I supposed to do?” Ha ha. So I went back to the drawing board and I figured it out how to swap these things out one for one. The problem was that a year later, I ended up with Candida and adrenal fatigue. Granted, I don’t entirely blame me getting adrenal fatigue on gluten free food products because I think there was a long history of stress and obviously having intolerances for a long time puts stress on the body and can really attack your adrenals. And I am also a type-A personality type. And I’m sure all of that contributed to those problems.
But at the age of 29 I had adrenal fatigue and Candida. So I went back to the drawing board and figured out what to do now. I thought I was getting healthy, I went gluten-free to get healthy. But I wasn’t healthy, because the gluten-free products’ label is not synonymous with health. It’s just not. That’s where the idea of a Gluten Free School was really formulated. Okay, well. I have to live this lifestyle, I’m gluten-free for life. But how can I do it in an empowering way that I can still eat food that is still really delicious and nutritious? And then I can figure out whatever pieces to my unique puzzle that will help me heal and actually feel better.
Because look, all these gluten-free treats and stuff; might I tell you, if anyone has gone gluten-free more recently, they have come a long way in the last 6 years because they use to be awful. But at the time, I felt I had to take one for the team, you know I was like, “I got to try these brownies”. “I got to try these cookies”. I now know how detrimental that is to my overall system, and I really encourage people to take a hard look at their own unique circumstances and start to figure out what little changes they can make. Every little step matters, it all adds up to something. And that’s really the —I think— trigger point for where Gluten Free School came about and why I am so driven because it is from my own story. But now I have the opportunity to really help so many others to connect with information that helps them.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I think that’s really important, there should be a distinction to make regarding gluten-free products, because if you are just starting out gluten-free, your brain automatically thinks, “Okay, it’s time to buy gluten-free products now”. And my husband; he doesn’t really know a whole lot about nutrition, started buying gluten-free products for our daughter because we decided we should put her on a gluten-free diet. So, he goes to the store and comes home with two bags full of all these gluten-free cookies and gluten-free wafers, and it is full of sugar. And so I think it can really be confusing for people who are just starting out that maybe some of these gluten-free products aren’t so healthy.
Jennifer Fugo: Well, the other thing people forget —I also lead a gluten-free sugar-cleanse—and the piece that people forget, and this is the same thing with the “normal standard American diet” is that, if you’re diabetic you cannot go and have a plate of pasta, whole wheat or not. It’s not a great idea because it elevates your blood sugar. The same thing happens with gluten-free pasta. There might not be sugar in the pasta, and you might turn that nutrition label over and say, “Oh there are zero grams of sugar, or one gram of sugar. It’s okay. There is no added sugar in there”. The problem is, after you remove what little fiber there is in most gluten-free products, all those left-over carbohydrates pretty much turn to glucose. So you are ending up with very high glycemic starches that regardless of how much added sugar is in products, also affects your body. You have to take both of those pieces into account.
Leigh Lowery: It’s so funny. I was in advertising for years, and you just think about how, you know, when whole grain was the hit word in being healthy, it ended up on the most sugary cereals. And now gluten-free is the kind of thing that people are looking towards. But it runs the same game out there.
Jennifer Fugo: Yeah, and like I said, gluten-free is not synonymous with health. I think some food product companies like and love that a lot of people are confused by that. And listen, I was. I completely thought that gluten-free food was healthy, I don’t think it was the fault of any one particular person. I just figured when my nutritionist told me to go gluten-free that it must mean gluten-free products are healthy.
Wendy Myers: Right.
Jennifer Fugo: So I made that mistake and I feel very passionate about this topic because I got sick again, and I actually wrote a post on my website called “Gluten-free bread; why are you still eating it?” And it is the most commented-upon, shared, I get hate-mail from this blog post still. And people think I’m being rude or bossy or mean or cruel, and why should I say that gluten-free bread and gluten-free products are horrible… I don’t want you to get sick! I mean, you can totally eat those, that’s fine, that’s up to you. But just know what you are doing.
Because there is a long term consequence to consuming refined products like that. And you know, I’ve been around a lot of people with diabetes, severe, awful diabetes; where they got their legs amputated, and got kidney failure, and it is a big deal. I get the magnitude of what it means to eat too much sugar. I don’t think most people in America fully understand the consequence of it. Because we think of diabetes as, “Oh, I got to take a pill”. “I got to watch my blood sugar.” Yeah, that’s part of it, but we don’t really see what the end game looks like. And I think when your family members go through that and you know a lot of people in those positions, it does re-frame your relationship with food.
Wendy Myers: Why don’t you tell the listeners who may not know gluten, what exactly gluten is and where is it found? I think a lot of people are really confused about that.
Jennifer Fugo: Gluten is a spongy protein that is found in specific grains. The easy way that people can remember where gluten hides is, they use the acronym BROWS. It stands for barley, rye, oats which are contaminated, wheat, and spelt. So wheat does not inherently contain gluten. We can have a whole argument about all the grains that are also considered gluten free, but we will keep this simple for the moment.
Oats tend to be contaminated because they are grown next to and processed on the same equipment as wheat. So gluten is not a virus, so you cannot cook it away, unless you cook above 500 or 600 degrees Fahrenheit which most people do not. Nor will that happen on a grill by the way. And anything that touches it, so if you have a salad and the restaurant accidentally put croutons on your salad. The whole salad is contaminated. You can’t just pick them off and say, “Oh I’m fine; the gluten is gone.”
So gluten will hide in different spots in your kitchen. It will hide in wooden countertops, in your cutting boards, in your spoons. It will hide in your pasta strainers because you can’t fully clean them, on your Tupperware, on a lot of the Teflon coatings where they are scratched. It can hide in those little crevices. It’s microscopic and you can’t see. So gluten unfortunately is in a lot of places. It’s also in makeup, medication, Supplements, pet food. It’s all around us. And it is something that we would love to think that it is inherently harmless. But for some, if you are sensitive or for example you have celiac disease, it can cause major problems.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I feel bad for people who have celiac because it is so, so difficult to avoid. I mean, you basically can’t eat at restaurants because all of the cookware is contaminated and there can be just one little crumb that accidentally gets in your food from another patron’s order and you can have a reaction.
Jennifer Fugo: Sure. Or if someone forgets to wash their hands, or clean the cutting surface.
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Jennifer Fugo: You know I’ve had clients who have gluten themselves by preparing other family members’ meals. Like maybe making breaded chicken or something like that, and they forget to wash their hands and make their own food.
Wendy Myers: Oh wow.
Jennifer Fugo: And they get sick. A lot of people forget that rule of hygiene to wash your hands especially when you have Food Sensitivities and you’re involved in this whole preparation and cooking process. Is really important.
Wendy Myers: And another thing that’s really difficult when you are not well, when you are ill and you go to your doctor, and they try to diagnose what is wrong with you, 99% of doctors are not going to look or test for Food Sensitivities. And whether it be dairy or gluten or what have you, and most doctors know very little about nutrition and they know very little about food sensitivity testing.
Most doctors will test you for a celiac disease and then say, “Oh, you’re fine, and you can eat gluten now.” And this is something, a topic I discussed with Doctor Tom O’Bryan who had the Gluten Summit. I had him on the podcast awhile back. So, it can be nearly impossible to determine whether Food Sensitivities are causing your illness or mimicking your illness, because the doctors are just not aware of it, and there are so few companies that do very good food sensitivity testing.
Jennifer Fugo: And I think the other piece of this is that; you’re right, doctors receive very little training. My father is a physician and a surgeon, and he received one, he said it was less than one day of training or education about food in medical school. And honestly, until I went through my own physical transformation, my dad was really skeptical. He thought that it was crazy. But I have a really stunning before and after photo, and there was no way to deny that the food was causing a problem.
But the thing I think that’s important to remember; and I would like to clarify, you know, because I’m in Philadelphia and I tend to work with —and I’m sure you guys do as well— I work with people all over the world; and unfortunately, like in the US, it is very rare to get doctors who are going to say right off the bat, “Hey, let’s test you for celiac disease.” Most people are fighting with their doctors to get tested for celiac disease.
They’re trying to convince their doctors that they need this testing because there is this tendency with some physicians that they feel like it is a death sentence to have to diagnose someone with celiac disease because it’s like, “I’m sorry. You have celiac. This stinks.” It is not a death sentence! But it is important that people get the proper diagnosis so that they can heal their bodies, because the average amount of time that it takes a person with celiac to get diagnosed is ten years.
Wendy Myers: Wow. And there is so much damaged done by the time they are diagnosed.
Jennifer Fugo: Correct, correct. And the other problem; and this is where it gets controversial with Western medicine, it’s that there is no real definition in understanding the mechanisms of food sensitivity. And there are these ideas about “Well maybe it is FAUD MAPS”. That was the recent thing in the fall. They were talking about FAUD MAPS all the time and maybe that was the problem. But if you go to a functional doctor, or a functional practitioner, or someone who is more integrative, they look at this puzzle of the body in a much different perspective and they are more open to doing food allergy testing, food sensitivity testing.
And FYI, for everyone out there, if you go to your allergist and you get a skin prick test. That tells you nothing about Food Sensitivities. That is a completely different immune reaction in the body. I got a question today, “Can I just go to my allergist and get a skin prick?” No. It’s not the same. I can handle bread all I want. I can handle milk. I can handle eggs. I’m fine digestively, but if I ingest it, we have a problem.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I think I’ve heard of that. The skin test is really kind of just a starting point for maybe giving you an idea of what you want to do a food elimination diet with. I’ve heart that. That’s what Chris Kresser says. Say you test for 80 different foods like pineapple. It will come back with pineapple or green beans that you are sensitive to. It’s really just a starting point to make a food elimination diet to see if you really are reacting to those. Because sometimes with the skin tests, you could just be reacting to the ingredients that are in the actual fluid and not necessarily the food so that they’re not totally accurate.
Jennifer Fugo: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: So let’s talk about how to save money on a gluten free diet. So to start, what are a couple factors that make a gluten-free diet so much expensive?
Jennifer Fugo: I think one of the pieces that seems to elude the gluten free community and I don’t know why, but they are demanding food producers to make food that is safe for them. That requires a lot of additional steps. For food in general, when we think about why is processed food more expensive long term. You are asking someone to do the sourcing of materials for you, the prepping, the cooking, the preparation, they are packaging it for you and getting it to your local grocer. You are paying for all of that. Even the material, the box, the containers, and the plastics. You are paying for all of that. And so with gluten free food, you again are paying for that.
But then you have to go back to the process on how these foods have to be made. So the food companies themselves, when they go and source their ingredients, they have to ensure that all of those little minute ingredients, every little bit, is gluten free. So either the person that is providing the ingredients has to ensure that, but the food company may also want to as well.
Then when it’s shipped to the manufacturing facility, those ingredients, if it’s not a 100% gluten-free facility; and by the way, there are a very few of those facilities in the US and they are very expensive to produce products in, because of that. But if you are on a shared facility, it totally freaks people out. They are like, “Oh, my gosh”. “It’s made in a shared facility with wheat. I can’t eat this.” If a product is certified gluten free, it means that those ingredients are stored in an area where there is no wheat. There are ventilation systems especially put in to ensure that no dusts of grain, no little particles of gluten of wheat can come through the ventilation system and land in that room. Everything has to be segregated.
And then, you have got to process these machines that are only going to be dedicated to gluten free products. So they cannot run anything else on that line that has gluten in it. That means there are fewer products running on those lines. That is more expensive for the manufacturer. And then on top of it; a food company —if you want them to be certified— has to pay for the certification. They have to pay to get those lines tested, to make sure that they fall on their twenty parts per million. Plus, you are expecting them to get certified. They are going to announce it to you, so they are going to hire a designer to redesign their packaging and then get that to you and then redo all the products and everything.
So it is expensive for all of that stuff to happen and that is not something that the company simply eats up. They pass it on to the consumer. And then you go to the grocery store and you say, “Why don’t any of these gluten free products run in the circulars?.” “How come there are no sales?” “How come there are barely any coupons?” Because truthfully there are barely any coupons you will ever see for gluten free products. And part of the reason is it is not possible.
And the final little piece is that this is a niche market. We might think that gluten free market is huge, and that it is a multi-billion dollar industry but it is still so tiny compared to what else is out there. And all these realities combined, make gluten free products way more expensive. And actually I will tell you the source, there is a study out there that I cite in my book, The Savvy Gluten Free Shopper, that gluten free food is found to be 242% more expensive than a normal gluten-filled diet.
Wendy Myers: Well, it’s definitely becoming more popular. I love it, living in Los Angeles, we have a lot of healthy eating options and pretty much every restaurant I go to they have gluten free options where they make it a point on the menu saying, “Gluten Free.” But I know a lot of cities from the Unites States that is not an option, people are not aware of that or asking that in a restaurant.
Jennifer Fugo: I think that the other thing that really upsets people —and I’m with them— is that if I go to a restaurant they’ll go, “Oh well you can have this burger without the bun.” And “Oh, you can’t have that fries because they are fried in a shared fryer.” “Okay, what else comes with my meal?” “Well, just the burger.”
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Jennifer Fugo: Well, it still the same price. “Can you give me a side salad with that?” “Well, that is going to be an additional $3.”
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Jennifer Fugo: What? And this happens a lot. Restaurants have gotten in this habit where they feel that people with Food Sensitivities are asking the restaurants to do something different; unfortunately, now they can charge more. I went to a tea party in New York City. It was a five-course meal for tea, and whatever else, these little cakes and things that they have with tea. I have never been to a tea party before in my life. It was $60 per person and an additional $17 if you wanted the gluten free menu.
Wendy Myers: And with tea it’s all those little finger sandwiches. It is all gluten.
Jennifer Fugo: Right. Well, they gave me the inner of the sandwiches and a piece of gluten free bread. For $17.
Wendy Myers: Oh no.
Leigh Lowery: I was just thinking. Here, going into a restaurant and ordering, I went to a diner the other day that had gluten free picks but you also have to take into consideration; surely when you go in, some people might be using the ingredients of gluten but again, cooking it not properly and in a shared area. So you kind of take that risk I’m sure at the same time, when you order.
Jennifer Fugo: You might. If a restaurant has been certified, and there are certification process programs out there that will certify your restaurant. In Philadelphia, we’re really lucky. We have the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness here in the city and they have a program where they would certify restaurants locally. So, they’ve done a really great job at bringing awareness to restaurants in Philly.
But I have had a lot of instances where they would claim that the fries on their menu are gluten free but when you inquire, “Are they in a separate, dedicated fryer?” “No. but we don’t fry anything else.” “What about your onion rings?” “What about the mozzarella cheese sticks?” “Well it does not pass. It just cooks away.” Well, there is a lot of misunderstanding out there. But there are restaurants that do have a separate preparation stations, the cooking utensils that are dedicated only to gluten free customers that come into the restaurant. So there are some restaurants that will do things special for us and you just have to inquire. I love using Find Me Gluten Free. It’s an app on my phone, and then I call from there and ask a lot of questions to know whether I feel comfortable eating in an establishment.
Leigh Lowery: That is great.
Wendy Myers: So your book is called The Savvy Gluten Free Shopper. Why do you use the word savvy so much in your book?
Jennifer Fugo: The reason is I cannot stand that when people want to save money, it’s on a shoe string or it is super cheap and everything has to be cheap. We have to look for a deal. The problem is —I’m sure you both know— that very cheap food comes with a price tag. It might not be today. I mean, I don’t feel great when I eat cheap food in general. But when you eat cheap food, I mean really refined, processed, sugar laden, and awful fats. You don’t feel good. And that has a long term price tag of a reduced quality of health. And so, instead the idea is to become savvy.
You become really smart and begin to have little hacks in order to save money. To set yourself up for success in your kitchen. To have what I’d like to call a whole arsenal of fast food. But when I say fast food I don’t mean it in a traditional sense. I mean it from the sense that you could pull something out and put a meal together in maybe 10 or 15 minutes and it is safe food. You have already cooked, but you knew what you could put in your freezer and grab out of the pantry to combine a meal and get something on the table that everybody would love for dinner.
So the idea is becoming savvy, and smart, and intelligent about your choices instead of, “Well, can I save a dollar? Even though I don’t think it is quite gluten free.” “I have a coupon and it is 75 cents off.” I think people that fixate just on the price tag are not very savvy at all because they lose sight of the greater picture of one’s health down the road.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I love saying either pay for healthy food today, or you’re going to pay for doctors, medications, and nursing homes later. It is going to inevitably impact your health later. You have to pay somewhere at some point down the line so you might as well buy healthy food today.
Jennifer Fugo: Exactly.
Wendy Myers: So what is the first step in becoming a savvy gluten free shopper?
Jennifer Fugo: I think the first step is to take stock of what you have in your kitchen. A lot of people go to the grocery store and they have no sense. This is one of the things that I find with my clients when I first started working with them. They are not really sure what spices they have, what oils they have available, what it is on the freezer. You have to take stock of what is in your kitchen, what you have now.
And then the next step, is starting to become more aware of the foods that happen to be gluten free. I know you guys probably have a lot of varied audience, and even for people who are Paleo or a have a whole slew of Food Sensitivities, many of the tips that I share are completely applicable and usable because it is really about eating food that happens to be gluten free. Right, that’s the idea.
Let’s get away from the boxed and packaged products and get back to eating real food. Our bodies know exactly what to do with this stuff. They know it has the right nutrients and minerals, and all of these other things in it that the body knows like, “Okay. I’ve got everything I need in order to properly absorb this.” Let’s hope that we don’t have too much damage in the gut that we can’t do so, but you walk into the produce aisle and almost everything there is gluten free. I mean, I say almost everything because sometimes now they put protein bars, and another random items in the produce aisle, and some more things. But aside from that, the stuff that grows on the ground, that’s pretty much all gluten free.
Then you go to the poultry aisle, and then the meat aisle, and the fish area, and the seafood, and the nuts and seeds. I mean, all that stuff happens to be gluten free. You break free of focusing on gluten free food all this time, you’d realize you’ve got a whole world out there of really incredible, nutrient-dense foods that you can eat.
So what I suggest to people is, if you are going to the grocery store, start looking at your circulars and even Whole Foods, if you shop at Whole Foods, they have circulars to show you which of these foods that happen to be gluten free are on sale. And what I do is I don’t have a whole foods that is super close to me. I have another grocery store that is about five minutes away, and when I go to the grocery store I look for what is on sale like onions for example. You can get two bags of onions for the price of one some weeks. You go, you take those two bags, chop up those onions, put them into freezer bags, all of them, and then store them in your freezer.
And then on the course of the next two to three to four weeks, you have your chopped up onions, all ready to go so when you want to cook, you no longer have to prep those onions. It’s the same thing with all that produce. You start to get savvy with the ingredients that you use the most. And you start to look around you and say, “Okay. The thing that kills me the most is celery”. It has always bothered me. I buy a head of celery and use three stalks and the rest goes bad. And celery is expensive. Conventional celery is like $3, around where I am, and if it is organic you are looking at for $4.50 something like that. So it almost physically hurts me to think that “Oh my gosh. I’m wasting this much food, and it is money.” FYI. It’s money. What you throw in your trash can is your money.
Wendy Myers: I have rotting celery in my fridge right now. Ha ha.
Jennifer Fugo: Oh! So what I do is I chop it up, put it in a freezer bag, and put it in the freezer. So when I go and make my soups or stews especially the crockpot stuff, I just add in what I need from that bag and put the rest in the freezer. It stays good in there for about a month.
Wendy Myers: Wow.
Jennifer Fugo: And that way you are not throwing away fresh produce. The same thing you could do with fruit. I am a big fan of not throwing food away, because it is wicked expensive especially when you buy organic fruit. With bananas, you can peel them, put them in freezer bags, and put them in the freezer. It’s great for smoothies or making your own soft-serve ice cream if you have a Vitamix or one of those Unano machines.
Strawberries, various berries. I cut up peaches, pears. You can cut up pears and freeze them and they are excellent in smoothies oddly enough. So there are a lot of things that you can do with all different produce. And I was going to say watermelon too. I never knew what you could do with watermelon. If I’m going on vacation in the summertime and I have half a thing of watermelon left, you just chunk it up, put it in a freezer bag, put in in the freezer. Watermelon smoothies with just some water and mint are phenomenal.
Wendy Myers: Mmm that sounds good.
Jennifer Fugo: Again, the idea is, what you eat and what can you do, not necessarily to save up in this moment, but when you start seeing things go bad, how can we stop it from being thrown in the trash? Because a family of four in America on average throws away 25% of what’s brought into their home.
Wendy Myers: Especially when it comes to vegetables. People want to buy them with really good intentions and they end up rotting in the fridge.
Jennifer Fugo: Sure. You buy those bags of baby spinach; they look so beautiful. Two days later you open up your veggie drawer and it’s all slimy and gross. There are a lot of different instances where we buy things with good intentions and we don’t have a plan. One of my big things is trying to encourage people to get into meal planning of some sort. You don’t have to do this whole massive, one-month plan. But oftentimes we lack the structure. And to be honest with you, meal planning is a life skill. It is something that is so important to making sure we nourish ourselves but it is a tradition that is not passed on.
It is not something that we learn from our mothers and fathers who happen to cook. Especially for women who are very busy with a lot of kids, when do you have time to figure out your meals? Most people are doing it on the fly, opening up the fridge and going, “What can I throw together?” and that is not a practical nor healthy way to live. It’s incredibly stressful and it costs you more money long term. So I believe that if you create a plan, I’m sure if you’re a coach or a trainer of any sort, even someone who does consulting with businesses, you know that having a plan is so important.
It’s been my experience because one of the things I didn’t actually share earlier was when I developed adrenal fatigue and candida, and I couldn’t go back, I couldn’t just say, “I’m going to continue to eat gluten free products however much I want” My husband had gotten laid off from his job suddenly, and we were really shocked that he got laid off; we were not expecting it. So we lost two thirds of our monthly income instantly, and I had to figure out how do I eat well without going over what before was a sizeable budget. Now I don’t have very much. How do I do this? How do I make this happen?
And so a lot of these hacks and tricks that I figured out was a way to be able to eat healthy so that I would be able to continue to heal my body. Six months or a year down the road I would be able to get back on my road bike and feel energized and have I life. We can all eat organic or buy our wild caught fish, grass-fed meat; I think that’s fantastic. Do it. But if you don’t have the budget for that, and there are a lot of people who don’t. I think you have to prioritize. What is going to be most valuable to you? For me, I really think that if you’re going to spend more money on something, the first things to spend money on are your meat, your eggs, and your dairy.
Wendy Myers: I agree with you. I think these are some of the most nutritious foods that we can eat. They are the most nutrient dense and we have to fork over the cash to buy the highest quality we can get.
Jennifer Fugo: Yeah. And you don’t want all the contamination that’s lingering in the fat of those animals. In essence you’re eating a form of what those animals ate, so you really want to look for the higher quality. But when it comes to fruits and vegetables, organic is great but not everybody can afford it. So, look at the thirty dozen list and make judgments based off of that. Maybe you save some money on buying the onions. You save some money on buying our avocadoes, your bananas, and your sweet potatoes. Whereas other things are higher up the list, like berries and peaches. Peaches are number one for the pesticide-laden fruits. For people who cannot understand that, you can’t just wash them. It’s in the flesh of the fruit. So you’re eating pesticides. Maybe you splurge in those areas and buy the organic there if you can.
But if you can’t, just do what you can with what you have. I’d rather someone eat fruits and vegetables than not eat it at all because they say they can’t afford organic. And another great thing too, is frozen vegetables and fruit are a great way to go especially if you don’t have time to cook all week long. I really coach my clients on how to cook twice or three times a week and that’s it. Frozen vegetables are a huge helper in reducing the budget because again you’re not going to waste those foods. But if you’ve also got stuff you can just pull out of the freezer and add to meals. So maybe you have two or three servings of a meal but you have four people at the table. You ought now to add some frozen vegetables. You get some two or three sweet potatoes out and all this time you may have enough food now for everybody with a nice salad in the middle.
Wendy Myers: Well, can you tell the listeners what are your very favorite tips or strategies that you share on the book?
Jennifer Fugo: Ooh. I already shared the onion one. Well, as far as for non Paleo people, I freeze rice and quinoa. You can freeze them once they are cooked and they defrost very quickly. You don’t have to do much, you can just add it to anything. For people who are grain free or Paleo and you do the cauliflower rice, I just process the cauliflower and freeze it in freezer bags. So when I want to add it to a recipe or I want to make it, I just add it to the pan. It’s incredible, cauliflowers are such a versatile plant.
The other thing that I really like to do; which, I don’t think it is in the book but I think it is a really great tip. I don’t use nut or coconut milks in my smoothie. I like to make smoothies in the morning and I started using water with the realization that when I was making almond milk, I spent energy to make almond milk and I didn’t know what to do with the pulp that is leftover and frankly I am so over the dehydrating thing. It’s too much work for me, I don’t have that too much time. Ha ha. But I was throwing it away. So what I realized was why don’t I just use water and put the whole nuts into my smoothie? That way, I’m eating the whole nut. So I do that now.
Obviously everything is unsweetened but I’ll add ground up or flaked coconut or almonds or cashews, or whatever type of nuts, even sesame seeds. I have a Vitamix so it purees everything down to nothing and; honestly, I think that is the better way to go. You won’t spend money on nut butters as well. Nut butters are expensive and that way I can save them for having an apple. Or when I want to have some celery sticks with some nut butter. I’m not wasting my nut butter for putting in in the smoothie when I can just add a handful of nuts.
Leigh Lowery: It’s great. Like I was saying earlier in the show, I’ve just started thinking about paying attention to what is going on with my body when I’m eating things with gluten in it. For folks who are new at home, making a priority list will not only adjust your food, but in your life it is really important. What are the top three things for them to start to figure out how to eliminate gluten from your diet and where to go from there? So if you could name three things just to start this way of life, what would you say?
Jennifer Fugo: I would say first of all, if you are going to begin eliminating gluten, figure out a very simple breakfast. Something in the crockpot like maybe a frittata. A crockpot frittata of some sort would naturally be gluten free. And I suggest to people to check out Paleo recipes because they tend to have the less processed ingredients in them, because they’re generally more home food based. That’s always a good tip. That way you kind of deal with breakfast, in and of itself. If you want to have those couple of mini cheap breakfasts where you have some gluten free granola or smoothie, that is totally fine. But find something that is nutritious that you don’t mind eating maybe two or three days, maybe four days if you can go that far in a row. So it simplifies the morning process because that is usually what trips people up.
The second thing that I would suggest is to start using your crockpot. The reason is you could get probably six to eight servings depending on how big your crockpot is out of a recipe. And a crackpot recipe is something you can add a lot of vegetables to. If you eat legumes and grains, you can add them as well. So you can make that dish of six to eight servings of what is in that container go a lot further. So that way, you then have lunch. You have dinner for several days.
And lastly, I would say, you have got to plan your meal. Even if it is only that you pick five or six recipes to make that week, you have to plan your meals. I have found a lot of variations of elimination diets as well as shifting over to a Modern Paleo way of eating. But if you do not have a plan and you are not comfortable with that way of eating, it’s pretty much a recipe for failure.
Leigh Lowery: Yeah. Absolutely you know, just coming from being a trainer as well as providing nutrition plans, the first thing that I always do is talk to my clients about how we always have to have a plan in place. And that’s true with life because we are emotional creatures. We would grab for what our emotions tell us to grab for, unless there is a plan in place if we know what is on the yes and on the no list. We will grab for whatever that sugary food is really quickly just based on emotion.
Jennifer Fugo: Yes. And as you said, it is tha bad habit. You go back to what is most comfortable for you rather than reaching toward whatever snack. And it is usually where the downfall happens. It is a snack or some sort of dessert that will ruin your good intentions. So by putting a plan in place you can say, “Oh. You know what? I don’t have enough food for lunch this week. I actually need to make something else.” And you what? I will give you an extra tip. Tip #4: I always make leftovers. I’m not a big fan of cooking fish in the beginning of the week simply because you can only reheat fish and eat it the next day, if you even like reheated fish. So I really try on Sundays when I cook a ton. Those are the days when I’m doing meals that are going to last three to four days so that I can get to the end of the week and then maybe cook once or maybe twice but we tend to go out closer to the weekends. So I really give myself a lot of breathing room and I’m intelligent about what I choose to cook and when, and that makes for a lot less stress.
Leigh Lowery: It is great. Thank you so much.
Wendy Myers: Well Jennifer I have a question I like to ask all of my guests. It’s a really important question. What do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?
Jennifer Fugo: That’s a tough question. Ha ha.
Wendy Myers: I know, I tweeted it to you last night. Be prepared for this question.
Jennifer Fugo: I know gosh! We can talk about Monsanto, cows, and all sorts of creatures, the bees… I mean, what is the most pressing issue.. Global Warming? I think as far as for people who are gluten free; I’ll try to keep it to that, is that you have to start some place. If you stay in a space of feeling completely powerless and not making any changes at all, looking at all the people who write about gluten free —and a lot of them are my friends and I love them— but if you just look at what they put up in social media you are going to think that that people eat gluten- free sticky buns all day long. And that’s not reality.
You have to eat real food. It’s really important because your body cannot heal. Your gut cannot heal and you will not feel better until you make changes to your diet. And you have to start putting yourself first. If you don’t put yourself first and make yourself a priority and literally start to take care of your own needs, nothing will change. Nothing. It becomes very easy to cheat, to appease everyone else’s desires, you have an inability to say no to people. I have been there; I’ve done that. And I understand fully now that in order to get better, you have to make yourself a priority and take care of yourself.
Wendy Myers: I think that is a very good point because it is almost like since the majority of the world is not gluten free, that you do run up against a lot of obstacles with family members who are trying to offer you food or going to restaurants. It is just kind of everywhere. The stakes were against you with going gluten free.
Jennifer Fugo: Yeah I see it in relation to gluten free but I think it is anyone that is trying to make a change, whether it’s fitness, but especially with food, because food can either be thy medicine or can be thy poison. If you don’t put yourself first —and I think for women that’s really, really challenging to do. But if you don’t put yourself first, it’s not going to stick. There is no amount of willpower that will save you. So put yourself first.
I love this show, it is like my dirty little TV cheat during the week, I watch Scandal. I really love how Olivia pumped the main characters like, “Are you a gladiator?” And he was like, “Yes, I’m a gladiator and I’m ready to help!” Ha ha. I think that’s the most important thing. We have to realize. We have to be gladiators. We have to stand up for what we need, even if it’s controversial.
Even when you know that Uncle Bob is going to give you a hard time. It doesn’t mean you have to fight with Uncle Bob, but it is not really important to Uncle Bob if you eat pizza or not. But it is important to you. There was about a six-month period a few years ago, where I have gotten really depressed about the whole process and felt very isolated. I realized I was no longer taking care of me. So when you do take care of yourself, it is incredible the amount of things that can change and transform in your life.
Wendy Myers: Alright. Thank you so much for that, Jennifer. I completely identify with what you are saying because I live a very healthy lifestyle. I try. But my husband is not. So I’m constantly offered food that has gluten and is not healthy. Pizza Hut and hamburgers he loves to bring home and eat. It pains me to watch him eat it. It is constantly in my face tempting me and I have to make those little choices every single day to take care of myself and my daughter as well to keep her from eating those foods. It’s challenging for all of us trying to get gluten free.
Jennifer Fugo: Totally. I will tell you, with my husband. I asked him to watch the Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dad documentary with Joe Cross. It’s about juicing. And I’m not a big proponent of juicing fast diet or any of that stuff but I just wanted him to watch it because I had heard it was an interesting movie. My husband works in TV and he finds pretty much 95% of all those food documentaries to be utterly boring and he can’t stand watching them. He not only loved the movie, but at the end, said, I want to start juicing with vegetables. And he did.
We started with beets and carrots and the sweeter things, and he said, “You know, I don’t think I need so much sweetness in this.” “Can we have some romaine and celery and some things?” And my husband was asking me, and, mind you, we were still in the midst of winter so I’m not juicing him any veggies right now. But he asked me a couple of weeks ago what week are we juicing vegetables again. So that movie, because it’s very non-dogmatic, it really shows an incredible transformation not only that of Joes Cross, the main “character” of the movie but also of other folks in the movie. It really helped him change his mindset. And I actually had a lot of clients show that movie to their husbands, and it was awesome and helpful. So maybe you could get your husband to watch it.
Wendy Myers: My problem is that when we first met, I was this horrible fast food, terrible diet eater. And he was juicing and eating bean sprouts. We had just done a complete 180. This is the strangest thing I’ve ever encountered. So he knows how to do it, he just doesn’t want to right now.
Jennifer Fugo: Noooo!
Wendy Myers: I know it is hard. Jennifer, why don’t you tell our listeners how they can get a copy of your book? I’m excited to read it. I really identify with a lot of things you talked about today and I throw away a lot of food, I’m ashamed to admit. So I actually really need your book.
Jennifer Fugo: Well, I hope that you enjoy it. It’s called The Savvy Gluten Free Shopper: How to Eat Healthy without Breaking the Bank. It’s available on Amazon. If you want to get an easier way to get to the Amazon page you could go to my website. It’s glutenfreeschool.com and right on that front page I have an image of the book with the link to that landing page for the book on Amazon. So it’s a really easy way to get it.
Wendy Myers: Well, great. Thank you very much for being on the show, Jennifer. I love all of your tips and tricks that you talked about today, and I know that all the listeners out there are hopefully starting to think, “Maybe there’s something to this gluten free, and maybe it is something that I could start.” So thank you so much for coming to the show.
Jennifer Fugo: Thank you ladies I really appreciate it.
Wendy Myers: If you want to learn about detoxification, The Modern Paleo diet, or healing your health conditions naturally, go check out my site, myersdetox.com. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter @ iwillliveto110. I’m also on YouTube, wendyliveto110, home of The Modern Paleo cooking show. You can find me on Instagram, Google Plus, and Pinterest @ liveto110 as well.
Leigh Lowery: And if you want to learn more about me, you can find me at generalleigh.com. My Instagram to follow some of my pictures in fitness and in food, the IG name is genleigh. Or you can find me on Facebook at my Facebook page which is General Leigh Food and Nutrition. And again, I do online training and nutrition there.
And if you liked what you heard on the show please give the Live to 110 podcast a review on iTunes. We need the reviews. Make it a positive review and we will just really appreciate it.
Wendy Myers: Yeah and that will help us get higher up in the rankings so we can get our message out to as many as possible. I hope this podcasts gets you rethinking about eating gluten-containing foods like wheat, rye, and barley in your diet. Because I think that the gluten elimination is one of the best things you could do for your health. I’m totally anti-gluten. Thank you so much for listening to the Live to 110 podcast.
