Flavor Without Fat or Fad: Additional Reading on GenXXL

Brian Wainstein of GenXXL - Flavor Without Fat or Fad: We do the best we can to eat well, and that often means limiting the amount of fat we use in cooking. The problem is that fat equals flavor, and we need to replace the flavor that fat provides.

We often turn to exotic salts and seasoning blends in search of a replacement, but they can present their own set of problems. Let’s look at the importance of real salt, how to use herbs, and some easy recipes for homemade blends.

GenXXL Flavor Without Fat or Fad: The Chemical Problem. They’re cheap, fast and easy—what’s not to love? But, there are actually two major problems with what you can buy pre-made in the megamart.

First, there are all sorts of chemicals used to increase the shelf life of seasoning mixes, some less reputable than others. The most obvious chemical to avoid is one of the most potent neurotoxins ever created, monosodium glutamate (MSG).

While your local Chinese restaurant may boast that it doesn’t use MSG, you can’t be as sure with a seasoning you buy at the market unless you read the labels.

The laundry list of problems MSG causes are no surprise to many people, ranging from mild headaches to brain lesions.

Despite the fact that this substance is dangerous, you can find it on the shelf at your grocery store in the form of a product called "Accent." MSG is at the top of my list of things to avoid, it’s simply a "never" for us.

Even if MSG isn’t listed in a food’s ingredients, be on the lookout for things like autolyzed yeast, yeast food, calcium caseinate, and glutamate. Don’t be fooled by the industry’s attempts to keep you in the dark!

GenXXL Flavor Without Fat or Fad: The Salt Fleecing. Next, the salt contained in seasoning blends is sub-par. I don’t know about you, but after I eat restaurant food, I tend to wake up swollen like a sausage the following day.

I used to think it was because we use less salt than most people do, and that’s true, but it took a long time before I realized the real reason. We use Real Salt, not iodized kosher salt from the grocery store.

Now, I often talk about the importance of iodine, but I want to emphasize how much our bodies need the natural iodine found in natural salts.

Regular sodium chloride is bad for the heart. It deposits uric acid in the joints and the bones, causing kidney stones, gall stones, gout and arthritis.

Make no mistake, the body needs salt. When we don’t have enough good salt in the body, we get achy, irritable and crampy. The refined salt at the grocery store won’t help these conditions much, if at all.

What Are Real Salts? If there’s a "good, better, best" in terms of salt, sea salt would have to be my "good." The issue I have is that regular sea salt is often snowy white, meaning that all of the minerals have been bleached out.

"Better" would be Real Salt, which is what we use in our house. It’s mined in Utah, and has 55 trace minerals, including natural iodine. Using Real Salt and consuming sea vegetables will give you a perfect amount of iodine to nourish your body.

"Best" would be Original Crystal Himalayan Salt (OCHS), but it’s not cheap at almost $15 per pound. Real Salt is just less than $5 per pound.

Whichever salt you choose to use, you can make a solution of salt in water called "sole." Salt can only saturate water to a 27% concentration, so if you place a great deal of salt in water, it will only dissolve to that saturation point.

You know that your water is fully saturated when there is salt left in the bottom of the glass after being left to soak overnight.

What you’ve created is your saltwater solution, called sole. You should add 1 teaspoon of this solution to your first pint of water in the morning. It’s a fantastic way to restore your body’s alkalinity, as well as giving yourself a huge array of minerals right off the bat each day.

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