The Big Healthy Soup Diet
Linda Lazarides

Nourish Your Body and Lose up to 10 Ibs a Week

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

INTRODUCTION:

PART I LOSING WEIGHT AND LOOKING GOOD

WHY SOUP?

PART II STAYING HEALTHY WITH SOUP

We all know that you are what

PART III FEELING GOOD WITH SOUP

As we get older

1 BOOSTING ENERGY WITH SOUP

2 SOUP FOR A HEALTHY IMMUNE SYSTEM

3 SOUP FOR A HEALTHY CIRCULATION

4 SOUP FOR HEALTHY BONES & JOINTS

5 SOUP FOR HEALTHY HORMONES

PART IV SOUP RECIRES

FRUIT SOUPS

SPECIAL SOUPS

CABBAGE SOUPS

COLD SOUPS

STARTERS

SUBSTANTIAL SOUPS (ONE-POT MEALS)

PART V RESOURCES

INDEX

Other books by Linda Lazarides

Copyright

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION:
HEALTH IN A BOWL—LOOK AND FEEL GOOD WITH SOUP!

Whether you’re trying to lose weight or just to get more healthy, soup is the ultimate convenience food: easy to make, filling and low in calories. Soup is never boring. It can be thick or thin, smooth or chunky, or a combination of the two. Healthy ingredients and power foods can be combined easily and deliciously to maximize weight-loss or combat ailments. If you want to lose weight, soup can help to release hidden water retention, control appetite, stimulate metabolism and promote fat-loss. You can add ingredients to promote the good health of arteries, bones, skin and hormones; or others to reduce blood pressure and cholesterol and fight the causes of arthritis. What more could you ask for from a meal? Is there no limit to what soup can do?

So how does it work? The Big Healthy Soup Diet is the ultimate food-combining system. It’s all about putting in the right ingredients and power foods for what you want to achieve, and then waiting for the results. If you want to lose weight there’s no need to choose between low-carb, low-calorie, detox, food-combining, glycaemic index, water-release or cabbage soup diets when you can have them all rolled into one. As a nutritionist, I find that soup gets you to your target weight faster and more easily than anything else The ancient food-combining wisdom of Oriental and Ayurvedic medicine can also be applied to soup—it is so incredibly versatile. The recipes are all here for you. With the Big Healthy Soup Diet you will learn how to lose not just excess body fat, but also hidden water retention, a common cause of excess weight that cannot be shifted with normal diets. The result is maximum weight-loss for minimum effort!

Many of the soups in this book make satisfying one-pot meals. Best of all, you can return for second helpings as you won’t be piling on the calories. The warmth and liquid of soup fill you up quickly, and the recipes make extensive use of ingredients rich in soluble fibre. This means you get minimal calories while slowing down carbohydrate absorption, helping to prevent surges in the hormones that stimulate appetite.

If you are currently following a diet and don’t feel ready just yet to make a change, don’t worry—the Big Healthy Soup Diet has lots of recipes suitable for conventional low-carb and detox diets.

On the other hand, if you’ve bought this book just to be healthy, and don’t need to lose weight, then simply add the soup recipes to your normal diet. A large bowl of soup can provide the recommended three servings a day of fresh vegetables, which help to prevent cancer and heart disease. And there are fruit soup recipes too. The recipes are full of power foods to help rejuvenate your body systems, balance your hormones and combat the effects of stress.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

The Big Healthy Soup Diet can help you to

 Reach your ideal weight and keep it there

 Prevent future illness

 Combat ailments or health problems

 Enjoy eating healthy foods

Losing Weight and Looking Good

Read Part I to find out how soup and its power ingredients can help you to lose weight. This section also gives two special health programmes. Programme 1 is a four-day mini-detox to help you clean out your system, shed some water retention and start getting into a more healthy state. Programme 2 is the 10-day Big Healthy Soup Diet to help you reach your ideal weight. Designed to help you shed both fat and water retention (a common cause of excess weight), this 10-day diet could enable you to lose up to 10 lbs

Staying Healthy with Soup

Read Part II to find out about soups that can help you and your loved ones reach a ripe old age without too many visits to the doctor. We all know that you are what you eat, and how important it is to consume lots of vegetables. That’s not always as easy as it sounds. But eating lots of delicious soups with the right ingredients makes it so much easier to cut down on foods with the wrong ones! This part of the book tells you about soups that can help to prevent high blood pressure, gallstones, memory loss and even breast cancer. It also reveals the latest amazing discoveries from the world’s top research establishments.

Feeling Good with Soup

Part III is about using food as medicine. Thousands of doctors all over the world now specialize in this very effective way to treat problems with hormones, energy, bones, joints, nervous system and blood pressure. Eating the right soups could make all the difference. Soup can actually help to rejuvenate your glands, organs and other systems. It provides the intense nourishment needed in order to combat ailments more effectively. And what could be a more mouth-watering way to take your medicine?

Enjoy Eating Healthy Foods

Part IV of the Big Healthy Soup Diet is the delicious recipes. Turn straight to this section if you are just looking for a tasty starter or a one-pot meal. You are sure to find something tempting, and all the soups are bursting with goodness. Some are so quick and easy to make that you may never again buy soup in a can!

PART I LOSING WEIGHT AND LOOKING GOOD

WHY SOUP?

Although some weight-loss plans involve special techniques like cutting out carbohydrates, most people still tend to think of eating fruit and salads as the best way to lose weight. Apples, lettuce, cucumber and tomatoes are very low-calorie foods. You can fill up a whole plate with these items and still consume only 100 Calories. It seems logical that if you eat only 100 Calories for lunch, you must lose weight…right?

Well, maybe. The big problem is that most people who use this approach can’t stick with it for very long. After bingeing on chocolate a couple of times and giving up the diet in despair, these individuals (and you are probably one of them!) usually blame themselves for their ‘weak willpower’.

In fact, we now know that there is a very good reason why this type of diet is doomed from the start. Salad foods are cold. Too much cold food can make you feel depressed, especially if you are a chilly individual and feel the cold easily. Depression is also a ‘rebound’ effect of excessive deprivation. It leads to an overwhelming desire for comfort

(1,000 calories = 1 Calorie or kilocalorie. Throughout this book the word ‘calorie’ refers to ‘kilocalories’.)

foods—most of which are, of course, loaded with excess calories. This is a physical desire. It has nothing to do with being greedy or weakwilled. Your body is desperate to get warmth and energy and it forces you to crave foods that will quickly satisfy those needs. Modern weight-loss science isjust beginning to recognize this problem, and to work with it rather than against it.

Traditional Oriental wisdom has understood the problem all along. In Oriental medicine, too much raw or cold food would be considered to encourage weight gain as it depletes the body’s ‘fire’ or Yang energy (metabolism). Hot chunky soups made with lentils and moderately flavoured with garlic, onion, cayenne, chilli and ginger are much more energizing. Oriental experts believe that such foods burn off excess water in our bodies, and this is of course very good news for sufferers of water retention—a common cause of overweight. Don’t overdo these spices—burning your insides would be counterproductive and unnecessary.

The warmth of soup makes you feel full as salad rarely can. Soup itself is a comfort food. But owing to its water content and healthy ingredients, this is a low-calorie comfort food and there is no problem with extra helpings. You won’t eat any more calories than in the average salad. But the results are far superior:

 Fewer cravings for sweet, starchy and fatty food

 Much improved ability to stick to the diet

 Faster, more successful weight-loss

SOUP RESEARCH

Even scientific researchers agree that soup has some very special properties. In 1999, Barbara J. Rolls and Elizabeth A. Bell of Pennsylvania State University discovered that feeling full doesn’t need to depend on the number of calories you eat. If you know how, you can feel full just by making each calorie more filling. How do you do this? By adding hot water to your food to make soup! In this study, 24 young women were fed a 270-calorie appetizer of chicken-rice casserole—first on its own, second with a glass of water, and finally by adding the glass of water to the casserole and serving it up as chicken-rice soup. Then the researchers measured how much lunch the women ate afterwards. The results were incredible. After the casserole or the casserole/glass of water they proceeded to consume 300 calories for lunch. But after a bowl of soup, they could only manage to eat 200 calories. That’s a one-third reduction! Nor did they get hungry earlier or eat a bigger dinner later! It seems that when water is incorporated into food the body becomes satisfied much more easily.

This is a whole new area of weight-loss research, and several more studies are summarized at the end of this chapter. It is another interesting fact that, according to the research, chunky soups are more effective in controlling appetite than smooth, pureed soups. All this helps to explain the success of the Cabbage Soup Diet made famous by Dolly Parton. But cabbage also has some special properties of its own, as you will find out later. The Big Healthy Soup Diet includes five new and delicious recipes for cabbage soup.

INGREDIENTS THAT KEEP YOU FEELING FULL

With the right ingredients, soup can be even more satisfying and keep you full for even longer. It can also help to balance your hormones, and this is essential when you want to burn off your body fat.

Three ingredients that help weight-loss when added to soup include:

 Fats and oils

 Protein

 Soluble fibre

Fats and Oils

It’s just so easy to say ‘Fats and oils are high in calories so cut them out and you’ll lose weight.’ This only makes people start cutting out the fats they can see: butter and margarine, cream, cooking and salad oils, meat fat and even the skin from chickens. In fact, eaten in moderation, none of these are a problem. It is hidden fats—the fats you can’t see— that really pile on the pounds. Foods with large amounts of hidden fat include:

 Biscuits and cookies

 Burgers

 Cakes

 Chocolate

 Creamy dips

 Creamy desserts

 Crispy snacks

 Deep-fried food

 Ice cream

 Pies and pastries

 Sausages and salami

For instance, have you ever read a recipe for making chocolate brownies? Most brownie recipes contain even more fat and sugar than they do flour. Every portion of pastry or pie-crust you consume probably contains at least two tablespoons of pure fat. You can’t see it, but just try pressing a few crumbs on a piece of paper and see the grease spots appear. Burgers can easily consist of up to 70 per cent invisible fat. Burger meat can quite legally be described as ‘lean’ even if it contains up to 30 per cent fat. Imagine how hard it is to lose weight if you keep eating too many foods like this. And imagine what they do to your skin—making it greasy and prone to blackheads as a result of clogged pores. Too much saturated fat also affects your blood circulation, and this is bad news for cells that make collagen. As you know, skin sags and shrinks when your collagen starts to deteriorate. You need to feed your collagen-making cells with the right food in order to stay looking young as long as possible.

High-fat foods also tend to make you feel sluggish. Vitality is attractive, but its opposite—sluggishness—is not!

The Big Healthy Soup Diet aims to make it easier for you to stop eating high-fat junk foods. One of its techniques is to include a healthy proportion of good quality oils, and occasionally even a little cream. When strictly controlled, these fats make weight-loss much easier.

They make your soups substantial, filling and delicious. If you find yourself craving junk food, have another helping of soup and the craving will be much less. It will cease to be a physical craving.

The hormone that makes you fat

Beware of trying to cut corners by cutting the oils out of the recipes in this book. It is tempting to think you might lose weight faster if you do, but there are several special reasons why you actually need these ingredients.

Fats or oils slow down your digestion and absorption of other food ingredients. This is why they help to control your appetite—food takes longer to get through your system when it contains a little fat or oil. Most importantly, fats or oils slow down your absorption of starches and sugars (carbohydrates). This makes you produce insulin more slowly. Insulin is a hormone that carries out many tasks in the body. It is essential to help you turn carbohydrates into energy, but you don’t want to have too much of it hanging around. High insulin levels occur when you eat too much carbohydrate. They

 Raise your cholesterol levels

 Slow down your loss of body fat

 Encourage your body to turn calories into fat

 Encourage water retention (by slowing down your excretion of sodium)

Can you see why it is positively beneficial to have some fat or oil in your diet? But if your thoughts are now wandering towards a bar of chocolate, try to stop them. It is your meals (soup) that must contain the oil. Your meals must be as satisfying as possible so that you won’t crave sugar and high-calorie snacks between meals. The fats or oils must also be nutritionally useful, providing monounsaturated or essential polyunsaturated oils, and the retinol (true vitamin A) and vitamin D that your body cannot get elsewhere. The meal must also be free of sugary items, since these will push up your insulin levels regardless of how much fat or oil you eat.

I hope it is becoming clear that there is a lot more to fats and oils than just calories. In fact, used in moderation as suggested in this book, oils should really be applauded because of their ability to control appetite and prevent excessive insulin surges. In moderation, some oils (such as olive oil) are also very healthy in their own right.

HEALTH BENEFITS OF OILS

Butter, cheese and cream provide retinol and vitamin D, needed by your bones, mucous membranes and immune system. It is difficult to get these nutrients elsewhere. Olive oil is known to have many health benefits and, like coconut oil, will combat harmful fungi which many people harbour in their intestines. Extra-virgin olive oil also contains an abundance of useful antioxidants. Soy and nut oils provide polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are vital for health. If you cut them out of your diet you can develop problems with your skin, hormones and water balance.

Protein

Protein as a weight-loss tool has been made famous by the Atkins diet. This diet cuts out carbohydrates and replaces them with protein, fats, oils and non-starchy fruit and vegetables. For a long time no-one really knew how the diet worked. Now that more research has been done, it is clear that people become full quite quickly when they eat mostly protein and fat, and they end up consuming smaller quantities of food and therefore fewer calories. By cutting out carbohydrates they also produce much lower levels of insulin and so avoid a major hormonal cause of weight-gain.

Protein is, of course, found in meat, fish and eggs. It is also a major ingredient of dairy and soy products, nuts, seeds, beans, chickpeas and lentils. Like fats and oils, protein takes quite a while to digest, so it keeps you feeling full for longer. But like carbohydrates, protein can also overstimulate insulin production if not consumed together with a little fat or oil.

Low-carb diets such as Atkins have gained a reputation that you have to eat a lot of protein. People are worried about this because too much protein dehydrates the body and makes it acidic. This acidity is harmful and stressful for your kidneys. In fact, low-carb diets don’t have to contain harmfully high amounts of protein. Instead of eating sugar

BUTTER, CHEESE AND CREAM? BAD IN EXCESS BUT GOOD IN MODERATION!

Retinol is the true form of vitamin A, and is found only in dairy products, eggs, liver and oils extracted from the liver of fish such as cod and halibut. Forms of retinol are also artificially added to margarine.

Fruits and vegetables are said to contain vitamin A but really they don’t. They do provide beta-carotene, which ideally should be converted to vitamin A in your upper intestines by the action of bile salts and fat-splitting enzymes. In fact, you have to eat quite a large amount of fruits and vegetables to make even your minimum vitamin A requirements, even assuming that all conditions in your body are ideal for the conversion.

Conditions are often not ideal. People with diabetes or an underfunctioning thyroid (a common condition, often not diagnosed until much too late) cannot make any vitamin A from beta-carotene. Children also make the conversion very poorly and babies not at all, which is one reason why they must not be given low-fat milk. Excessive consumption of alcohol, iron pills, recreational drugs and polyunsaturated fats can interfere with the conversion. Zinc deficiency is common and is also detrimental.

Carotenes are converted to vitamin A by the action of bile salts, but very little bile is released when a meal is too low in fat or oil. On the other hand, butter and cream not only provide ready-made vitamin A but also stimulate the secretion of bile. Polyunsaturated oils also stimulate the secretion of bile salts but they can destroy carotene unless sufficient antioxidant vitamins are present.

and other carbohydrates, you can fill up on liquid and on masses of fruit and vegetables. This will both prevent dehydration and help to control your acidity levels. Soup provides both liquid and vegetables, so you can gain all the benefits of a low-carb diet while minimizing the side-effects.

In this book you will be consuming mostly healthy forms of protein: fish, organic poultry and dairy products, lentils, beans and tofu. Nuts and seeds such as sunflower and sesame seeds are also included—for both their protein and the beneficial oils they provide. Very few of the soup recipes contain red meat. This is because the fat associated with red meat is not healthy. Also, the World Health Organization has found that people who consume red meat more than twice a week have a higher risk of developing cancer.

It is much better to eat white meat and to supplement this with olive oil, nut oils and with retinol—and vitamin D-rich fats from milk, cheese and cream.

Soluble Fibre

Dietary fibre absorbs liquid and so helps to bulk up the contents of your intestinal tract. This keeps you feeling full for longer after a meal. Adding bran to your food was one of the features of the F-Plan diet, which became popular in the 1970s. ‘F’ stood for fibre, and the diet involved consuming as much fibre as possible because this would reduce the calorie content of your meal while still keeping you satisfied.

But bran is not an ideal fibre for this purpose. It contains a lot of phytic acid, which forms complexes with minerals in your food and prevents their absorption. In large amounts, bran can also be quite irritating to the intestines, and is prone to causing gas. Nowadays we are more likely to recommend soluble fibre as a dieting aid. Soluble fibre is found in seeds, lentils, beans, seaweed extracts, fruit and vegetables. Like bran, it is indigestible, but unlike bran, it can be consumed by bacteria in your intestines and turned into useful fatty acids, which maintain an ideal acidity balance in your colon and support the health of your colon walls.

One of the best forms of soluble fibre is pectin. Found mostly in apples, cabbage and the white part of citrus fruit, pectin holds up to 100 times its weight in water. This excellent bulking action is very helpful for controlling appetite, especially if the pectin is in warm foods such as cooked fruit soups and cabbage soup.

PECTIN-RICH FOODS

 Apples

 Apricots

 Cabbage

 Carrots

 Citrus fruit

 Peaches

 Plums

 Prunes

Several research studies have also shown that consuming a lot of pectin can lower your cholesterol levels. Pectin binds to bile acids (released by your liver into your intestines when fats and oils are consumed) and prevents you from reabsorbing them and turning them into cholesterol. Pectin also helps to keep bile flowing, and this is beneficial as it means your gall bladder (which stores bile) is regularly flushed out.

The success of the Cabbage Soup Diet may be partly due to the pectin content of cabbage. In this book you will find several soup recipes containing cabbage. These recipes help to make cabbage more interesting, and some of them use spices which enhance the weightloss potential of this vegetable.

Psyllium husks (see Resources, page 277) can also be added to soup, and are a good thickener for soups such as Chinese Hot and Sour Soup (see page 224). These seed husks are an ancient Ayurvedic treatment for cleansing the intestines, and are extremely rich in a type of soluble fibre known as mucilage. Mucilage is also found in seaweed, and many commercial vegetarian gelling products such as agar-agar consist of mucilage extracted from seaweed. (Adding mucilage to liquids thickens and gels them.) Psyllium husks can do a similar job and are cheap and easy to use. Owing to their huge capacity for absorbing water in the intestines, and so helping to bulk out the stools, psyllium husks are used as the basis of many anti-constipation remedies. One tablespoon a day whisked into a large glass of water encourages regular bowel motions without causing discomfort or diarrhoea. Combined with soup, psyllium husks will absorb and gel much of the liquid, so to your stomach they will feel more like solid food and will help you to stay full for longer.

OTHER POWER FOODS TO AID WEIGHT-LOSS

In Ayurvedic and Oriental medicine, overweight is said to be caused by an excess of ‘dampness’ in the body. The dampness (fluid) quenches the body’s fire (metabolism) and so encourages the laying down of fat. The Oriental treatment for obesity consists of drying out the dampness, using special foods that ‘soak it up’ or alternatively drive it out by boosting Yang energy to heat up the metabolism (see panel below).

YIN AND YANG

These are important concepts in Oriental medicine. Yang represents male qualities (such as hard, dry, dense, hot, pungent) and Yin represents feminine qualities (such as soft, damp, loose, cool, sweet). For good health these should always be in balance. If they become out of balance, eating the right foods can help to correct any associated problems.

Excessive dampness leading to overweight suggests that there is too much Yin energy in the body and not enough Yang, so eating aduki beans (which are hard, dense and dry before cooking) or pepper and garlic (which are respectively hot and pungent) helps to correct the imbalance.

Always bear in mind that Oriental medicine is about balance. So don’t overdo the pepper and burn your insides thinking that this will help you lose weight faster. It won’t!

Aduki beans and broad beans are considered good for soaking up dampness. The best part of the broad bean is the pod, and soup can be made with water in which the pods have been boiled. Mung beans and bean sprouts are also recommended if your weight problem is accompanied by an excessively hot constitution—that is to say if you feel the heat easily and suffer from skin eruptions.

To increase the Yang energy on which metabolism depends, Oriental medicine recommends the regular consumption of kidneys, liver (preferably from organically-raised livestock), shrimps and mussels.

Oriental medicine includes a great deal about increasing ‘fire’ or ‘heat’ in the body. Ayurvedic medicine also emphasizes the importance of supporting the ‘digestive fire’ in order to improve digestion and reduce unhealthy sedimentary deposits in the body’s tissues. Is there a Western equivalent? Indeed there is. Many so-called warming herbs and spices create the sensation of warmth in the body (ginger and pepper in particular). They are well-known circulatory stimulants and can

FOODS AND SPICES THAT REDUCE DAMPNESS

 Aduki beans

 Basil

 Black pepper

 Broad beans

 Caraway

 Cayenne

 Chives

 Cinnamon

 Coriander (cilantro)

 Dried orange peel

 Garlic

 Ginger

 Ginseng

 Kidneys

 Leeks

 Liver

 Marjoram

 Mung beans

 Mussels

 Nutmeg

 Peppermint

 Radish

 Rosemary

 Shrimps

 Soybean oil

 Walnuts

induce sweating. When consumed, they warm the circulation in the digestive system and bring the blood to the surface of the intestinal wall where it can more easily absorb nutrients from the intestinal contents. This is highly beneficial for both good health and appetite control.

WATER RETENTION—AN IMPORTANT CAUSE OF OVERWEIGHT

The Oriental concept that overweight is caused by excessive dampness in the body is very interesting from a Western point of view. Not all excess body weight is fat. As pointed out in my book The Waterfall Diet, hidden water retention is extremely common and can add many pounds to the scales. From a Western viewpoint there are several causes of water retention, ranging from food intolerances (sometimes known as food ‘allergies’) to excessive salt consumption.

CAUSES OF UNEXPLAINED WATER RETENTION

 Food intolerances (allergies)

 Protein deficiency (usually in people on very low-calorie diets)

 Deficiencies of vitamin B6 and/or magnesium

 Lack of fruit and vegetables

 Lack of exercise

 Excessive salt consumption

 Anaemia

 Some medications

 Inflammation due to high toxin levels

Unexplained water retention can account for 10 lbs or more of excess body weight. If you eat the right foods all this water can be urinated away within a week!

The Waterfall Diet provides foods that help address these causes, and omits foods that could potentially contribute to water retention. Many of the soup recipes in this book are suitable for the Waterfall Diet (see the Index on page 131). If you want to see whether you need the Waterfall Diet, try consuming just these soups and nothing else for 10 days. If you spend a lot of time urinating and your clothes quickly begin to hang loose, then you definitely need to read more about the Waterfall Diet (see Resources, page 277) so that you can combat this problem on a more long-term basis.

If you have two or more of the following signs you may be suffering from water retention:

 You have worked hard to lose weight using conventional methods, and found that you cannot get below a certain weight even by persevering for months or years

 Pressing a fingernail firmly into your thumb-pad leaves a deep dent that won’t go away after a second or two

 Pressing the tip of your finger into the inside of your shin-bone leaves a dent

 Swelling of legs, feet or ankles

 Your shoe size seems to increase as you get older

 Rings sometimes seem not to fit any more

 You seem to have a major swelling problem in hot weather

 Your tummy is often tight and swollen

 Breast tenderness (in women)

 Premenstrual weight gain (in women)

 Your weight fluctuates by several pounds within the space of only 24 hours

FOOD ADDICTIONS

If you have a lot of weight to lose, the good news is that the Big Healthy Soup Diet is ideal to help you. But of course there is more to weight-loss than just eating the right diet. Exercise (see page 17) is equally important. And, due to the well-known problem of food

ADVICE TO COMBAT FOOD ADDICTIONS

Don’t miss meals. Missed meals lead to much greater cravings for addictive foods. Eat extra portions of soup for the first two weeks while you are going through sugar withdrawal.

Whatever happens, never, ever keep your favourite addictive foods (such as chocolate) in the home, not even for your children.

Have a treat every day. It should be something you like but are not normally addicted to. For instance, if you used to eat chocolate bars every day, replace them with home-made hot chocolate drinks. The ‘comfort factor’ won’t be anything like 100 per cent at first, but after about two weeks it will reach the 80-90 per cent level. Commercial hot chocolate mixes are very high in sugar, so make your own by whisking cocoa powder and a little raw sugar into hot low-fat dairy milk or rice milk. Add a dash of vanilla for extra flavour. Every time you find yourself craving chocolate, take your mind off it by going to make yourself one of these drinks. Or eat a bowl of soup!

If you have consumed a lot of sugary foods and drinks in the recent past, you should take a good quality daily multivitamin with minerals (including chromium). This will help restore and rebalance your system and give your hormones the best chance of maintaining your blood sugar on an even keel, which will help control physical craving sensations.

addiction, not everyone finds it possible to cut down or stop eating comfort foods straight away, even if they follow a diet that leaves them never feeling hungry.

Food addictions can be as difficult to overcome as addictions to alcohol, tobacco and drugs. Chemical changes—perhaps the release of endorphins—occur in your body on eating the addictive food. These changes are experienced as pleasurable and comforting sensations, and the addiction comes from associating the food with these sensations. You can even begin to feel mildly depressed when the pleasant sensations wear off, and this can cause insatiable cravings that keep you eating the problem food, just as nicotine withdrawal symptoms—no matter how mild—keep people smoking.

Since most addictive foods are high in sugar, the depression may be due to the strong dip in blood sugar that occurs in some people a few hours after eating sugary foods. Eating or drinking something sweet provides an instant boost, but it starts the vicious circle all over again. A deficiency of the mineral chromium substantially aggravates blood sugar problems. Chromium is mostly found in whole-grain foods and gets very depleted when you consume a lot of sugary foods and drinks.

EXERCISE

The more accustomed your body gets to hard exercise, the faster your cells will use up and burn calories. But your cells do not just step up their metabolism during the period of exercise itself. Your metabolic rate remains high for up to 15 hours afterwards—so your calories will be burned up faster even while you are asleep.

To help you lose weight, exercise must be regular, and hard enough to make you sweat or breathe faster for at least 20 minutes, about three times a week. Examples are weight or circuit training, hill-walking, jogging, swimming and aerobics. You should also walk briskly or cycle whenever you can, use stairs instead of lifts and elevators, walk up escalators, do the housework twice as fast, and go dancing instead of sitting in pubs and bars. Try to park your car a few minutes’ walk from where you’re going. All these things make a difference.

Experts in physiology have known for years that a body with more lean tissue (also known as muscle) makes for a more rapid metabolic rate. But both men and women start to lose muscle in their 20s, which is why, by middle age, it can be so hard to lose weight. Muscle can only be regained by exercising. In a study carried out by Tufts University, eight men and four women aged 56 to 80 carried out strength-building exercises for 30 minutes three times a week for 12 weeks. This boosted their resting metabolic rate by an amazing eight per cent, and they had to consume an extra 300 calories a day to keep their body weight at the same level. Their muscles did not grow any larger on this programme, but they did become stronger and more metabolically active.

Strength-building exercises involve sustaining a muscle’s effort—holding the muscle in its position of maximum tension for as long as possible. Weight-lifting is the best-known but not the only form of strength-building exercise. The body’s weight itself can be used to sustain maximum muscular effort—for instance in sit-up exercises which involve remaining in the stomach muscles’ position of maximum effort for a count of 10.

Most people live within reasonable distance of a local health club with a gym. An instructor is always available to give a supervised training programme to meet personal requirements, and teach clients how to follow it.

Women please note that a few hours’ strength-building a week is very unlikely to result in hard muscles! On the contrary, improving the lean-to-fat ratio gives a woman a great shape and makes her feel lighter and more energetic for the simple reason that her muscles will find it easier to carry her around.

Strength-building exercises are best combined with exercises designed to build cardiovascular fitness. You can tell roughly what your level of cardiovascular fitness is by how easily you get out of breath. Cycling, swimming, running, aerobics and rowing are all suitable forms, and it is surprising how quickly your fitness improves if you practise any of these a few times a week, even if only for 20 minutes.

If you find it hard to motivate yourself to exercise alone, try finding an exercise partner who agrees to meet up with you on a regular basis.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BREAKFAST

Some people try to lose weight by skipping breakfast, but this isn’t a good idea. Breakfast stimulates your metabolism to wake up after an overnight fast. The speed of your metabolism determines how quickly you burn calories, so if you don’t eat breakfast, your metabolism may remain at its night-time rate—slow!

Some people say they feel less hungry throughout the morning if they do skip breakfast. However, this is because several hormones are working to conserve your blood sugar and slow down your metabolism. The hunger you may have experienced after eating breakfast was probably caused by eating the wrong kind of breakfast. A bowl of cereal or toast and coffee for breakfast is mainly carbohydrate. It will raise your blood sugar levels quickly, but the faster they rise, the faster they will also fall and the sooner you will feel hungry again. On the other hand, if you eat a more substantial breakfast which includes more protein and a little good quality oil or fat, you should feel satisfied and energetic until shortly before lunchtime On the Big Healthy Soup Diet you may find you need a little top-up mid-morning, but that doesn’t matter; you can eat as often as you like as long as it’s only soup!

SUPPLEMENTS TO AID WEIGHT-LOSS

Supplements of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA)—a substance found in dairy fat—have been found in clinical trials to help improve body composition. After dieting, the test subjects who were taking CLA supplements put weight back on mostly in the form of lean tissue, whereas the control subjects (those not taking CLA) put weight back on mostly in the form of body fat.

Another useful supplement is the amino acid carnitine. This regulates the rate at which the body burns fat. Your body makes carnitine from lysine and methionine, with the help of vitamin C and iron, but if you are not making the maximum amount which your body can use to aid fat-burning, it will do you no harm to get a little extra in the form of supplements.

As with all other supplements. CLA and carnitine should be taken in accordance with the directions on the product label.

POWER SOUPS TO AID WEIGHT-LOSS

SOUP DIET PROGRAMMES

The two soup diet programmes in this book have been devised for you depending on your needs. If you want to clean out your system, shed some water retention and start getting into a more healthy state, Programme 1: the four-day Mini-detox, is for you.

If, on the other hand, you have some weight to lose, you can go straight to Programme 2: the 10-day Big Healthy Soup Diet. (This starts off with the same four-day Mini-detox.) You can repeat the diet as often as you like until you have reached your target weight. Alternatively, after the 10 days just begin to sample the other delicious soup recipes in this book. They are all designed to help you shed pounds.

Programme 1: Mini-detox

This is designed to

 Cleanse and begin to regenerate your digestive system

 Balance your blood sugar

 Reduce stress on your adrenal glands

 Re-hydrate your blood after too much alcohol, tea and coffee—but at the same time release unhealthy water retention from your tissues

 Eliminate excess acidity caused by too much meat, fat and sugar

 Provide extra antioxidants to combat toxins

 Start off the fat-burning process

The most essential part of any detox diet is to consume plenty of liquid. While cold liquids can actually cool and slow down some people’s metabolism, warm liquids and hot soup can energize you and provide all the special ingredients that help to clean out your system. Unlike most detox diets, this one provides protein in the form of nuts, tofu, beans and avocado, so it is also safe to follow for longer periods and can be repeated up to four times (a total of 16 days).

FOUR-DAY MINI-DETOX

IMPORTANT

Since you should not eat any other foods during these four days, make extra quantities of soup to eat as snacks. But don’t overload your stomach! Part of the detox process involves not giving your stomach so much food that it has difficulty digesting it. Never continue eating beyond the point of feeling satisfied. You should also drink plenty of plain water (2 litres/4 pints a day) to carry away the dissolved wastes in your blood. This water must be plain and unflavoured, otherwise it will have a reduced capacity to absorb wastes and toxins. In addition to plain water, you may also drink fresh fruit juice diluted with water, and the herbal teas listed in the box on page 25.

HERBAL TEAS FOR USE WITH THE MINI-DETOX

Chamomile: Promotes good digestion and helps you sleep

Dandelion root coffee: Helps to drain wastes from the liver

Fennel: Promotes good digestion

Ginger: Aids digestion and warms the circulation

Ginseng: Boosts vitality in older women during and after the menopause

Peppermint: Aids the flow of bile and promotes good digestion

Sage: Helps to relax blood vessels and promote circulation

If you have ajuice extractor, try making juices from a mixture of carrot, radish, broccoli stems and celery. Drinking a wine-glassful of this juice twice a day will help to rejuvenate your liver and aid the release of unhealthy water retention. You can flavour the mixture with lemon juice, which contains ingredients that help to dissolve gallstones. Whizz in some parsley for extra benefits. Better still, dilute the juice with a large glass of water and whisk in a level tablespoon of psyllium husks. Drinks made in this way will help to sweep out your intestines, where toxins can become embedded if you don’t normally have regular bowel motions.

You can stop at the end of the four days if you feel you have achieved the desired results. But if you feel good on this detox it will do you no harm to continue for longer.

Detox effects

All detox diets have side-effects, and this one is no exception. Be especially prepared for a day or two of headaches caused by withdrawal from caffeine. You may also feel a little tired and nauseous. These symptoms should pass as your body adjusts.

THE 10-DAY BIG HEALTHY SOUP DIET

IMPORTANT

During the 10 days, eat only soups as directed. If you feel hungry between meals, snack on soup, if necessary taking one or two vacuum flasks of hot soup to work with you, or a container of ready-made soup which you can heat up at work if you have a kitchen.

If you wish to carry on losing weight after the 10 days, just continue on a soup-only diet, using the recipes in this book. Provided that you eat a soup from either the ‘Cabbage Soups’ or the ‘Substantial Soups’ sections at least once a day, you should not go short of protein. (Alternatively, to protein-enrich any of the soups in the ‘Starters’ section, add a portion of tofu or some poached fish or chicken.)

Since cow’s milk products can cause water retention in some individuals, select the ‘soy milk’ and ‘soy cream’ options where they are offered as an alternative. If you appear to lose a lot of water retention during the 10 days of this programme, you will need to test yourself to find out which foods could be involved. Waterfall Diet publications (see Resources, page 277) are specifically designed to help you do this.

Programme 2: The 10-day Big Healthy Soup Diet

This is designed for longer-term weight loss. It starts with the four-day detox and continues with a further six days of soups to warm your metabolism and help you continue shedding water retention. If you do suffer from water retention, this common problem can easily add 8 lbs to your weight. So you could lose 2 lbs of fat and as much as 8 lbs of retained water by the end of the 10-day programme. That’s a total of 10 lbs!

OTHER WAYS TO DIET WITH SOUP

Research shows that starting a meal with hot soup helps you to reduce the amount of food subsequently eaten. So if you find a soup-only diet a bit too difficult, you can start any meal with a bowl of soup, and you should feel satisfied much more easily. You could also try an occasional ‘soup-only day’.

As you will see from the research at the end of this chapter, you cannot get the ‘soup effect’just by drinking a beverage with solid food. The body seems to be able to tell the difference between liquid that is consumed separately, and liquid which forms part of the food itself.

MAINTAINING YOUR IDEAL WEIGHT

Reaching your target weight is often not the biggest problem with weight control: keeping it is. Yo-yo dieting is common, and is caused by relaxing your eating habits too much for too long once you have got rid of the excess pounds. We are all guilty of throwing caution to the winds after weeks or months of deprivation, and indulging in some ‘well-deserved’ binges. The problem is that we enjoy the binges so much that we can’t stop them, and all our old habits creep back again! After reaching your target weight it really is important to be especially vigilant. If you are longing to binge, then by all means do so, but set yourself a programme and ration your high-calorie binge foods on a weekly basis. Decide in advance how many treats you will buy per week and when you will eat them. Whatever happens, do not keep treats in the home. Even if the treats are for other members of your family, you must make sure that they are not available to you at times when you are not allowed to eat them, as you will be far too tempted to raid the cookie jar when you are a little bit bored, depressed or peckish. The only safe way to ration treats is to buy them as and when you are allowed to eat them, in the exact quantities you are allowed.

Another pitfall is to promise yourself that you will make up for unscheduled binges at a later date. Believe me, you won’t! The reason why you got overweight in the first place is that your favourite foods (usually sugar-rich foods) were just too addictive. Addictive behaviour is a slippery slope, and few people recognize it in themselves. If you understand this right at the start, you will have a better chance of keeping your beautiful new figure.

Soup is a fantastic aid to keeping your target weight. To help maintain your ability to resist snacking between meals, just continue to start each meal with a bowl of soup.

SKIN HEALTH

I have already mentioned that eating too many foods high in visible and especially invisible fats plays havoc with your skin (see page 6). Not only do pores get clogged, but blackheads form and greasiness develops. Fat slows down your blood circulation, and this reduces the supply of vitamins and oxygen to cells that make collagen. These cells may lose their efficiency and slow down collagen production. The less collagen you make, the more likely is the appearance of premature ageing. Not only does the Big Healthy Soup Diet have a carefully controlled fat and oil content, it is also very rich in nutrients which nourish your skin cells.

Dehydration from drinking too much tea, coffee and alcohol also harms your skin. Another benefit of soup is to give you plenty of liquid to help hydrate you.

Rich in dietary fibre, the Big Healthy Soup Diet also encourages regular, healthy bowel motions. This helps you eliminate toxins and soluble wastes, which could otherwise be absorbed from your intestines into your blood. Such toxins overload your kidneys and cause the typical sallow complexion of people who suffer from long-term constipation.

AMAZING DISCOVERIES ABOUT SOUP

2005 Study at Purdue University, Lafayette, USA

Solid and liquefied versions of identical foods high in protein, fat or carbohydrate (containing the same number of calories) were given to 13 male and 18 female volunteers. Beverages were also tested. The participants completed questionnaires on mood, appetite and psychological state. Eating soup led to reduced hunger. Overall calorie consumption tended to be lower on days when soup was eaten compared with days on solid foods and beverages. Beverages had the least effect on hunger reduction. The researchers concluded that soup may help to reduce appetite.

Mattes R. Physiol Behav. 2005 Jan 17;83(5):739-47.

2003 Study at the New York Obesity Research Center, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, New York, USA

Cholecystokinin (CCK) is a gut hormone that plays a role in satiety (feeling full). Levels of CCK rise after a meal, and this helps us to feel full. The researchers wanted to test whether soup quenches appetite by stimulating higher levels of CCK. They measured plasma CCK levels in eight healthy, non-obese men and women before and after eating 800 grams of tomato soup, followed 30 minutes later by 300 grams of a yoghurt shake. Appetite ratings were compared with CCK levels. It was found that eating soup significantly increased plasma CCK levels within 30 minutes in all subjects combined. Interestingly, the women’s average CCK levels were significantly higher than the men’s. The researchers concluded that eating soup may be especially beneficial for women who want to lose weight.

Nolan L.J. and colleagues. Nutrition. 2003 Jun;19(6):553-7.

1999 Research at the Pennsylvania State University, USA

Research has shown that adding water to foods can lead to reductions in the number of calories consumed. This study aimed to find out how water affected appetite when served separately with food or incorporated into food. Seventeen minutes before lunch, 24 women were fed one of three starters: (a) chicken-rice casserole, (b) chicken-rice casserole served with a glass of water, (c) chicken-rice soup. All the starters contained the same number of calories. The soup contained the same ingredients (type and amount) as the casserole that was served with water. The researchers found that turning the casserole into soup by adding water to it greatly increased fullness and reduced hunger. The equivalent amount of water served in a glass with the food did not aid fullness. Calorie intake at lunch was much less after the soup compared with after the casserole, whether water was served with the casserole or not. The test subjects did not compensate at dinner for eating less lunch.

Rolls B.J. and colleagues. Am J Clin Nutr. 1999 Oct;70(4):448-55.

1998 Study at the Nutritional Neurobiology Laboratory, EPHE, Paris, France

Twelve lean and ten overweight young men were given a starter consisting of (a) vegetables and water, or (b) pureed and strained vegetable soup, or (c) chunky vegetable soup. The soups were of the same composition and volume; only the size of the solid pieces and the distribution of nutrients between solids and liquid were different. All the starters were found to reduce hunger and subsequent food intake, but the chunky soup had the most pronounced effect. The researchers concluded that there may be special benefits in using chunky soups as part of a weight-loss programme.

Himaya A. and colleagues. Appetite. 1998 Apr;30(2):199-210.

1994 Study at the Centre for Human Nutrition, University of Sheffield, UK

The consumption of dietary fibre is known to prolong the feeling of fullness, but it was not known how. In this study on eight male volunteers, three per cent guar gum (a type of mucilage fibre similar to psyllium husks) was added to high-fat and low-fat soups. Guar gum delayed the emptying of the stomach for both types of soup, but the delays in the return of hunger and decline of fullness were far greater for the fatty soup. The fibre appeared to work by slowing absorption and prolonging the presence of nutrients in the intestines.

French S.J. and colleagues. Am J Clin Nutr. 1994 Jan;59(1):87-91.

1990 Study at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA

Three different starters—tomato soup, melon or cheese on crackers, all with the same number of calories—were served just before the main course. Soup was found to reduce the amount of food eaten in the second course much more than the other starters. The researchers concluded that eating soup could be beneficial in weight-reduction programmes.

Rolls B.J. and colleagues. Appetite. 1990 Oct;15(2):115-26.

PART II STAYING HEALTHY WITH SOUP

We all know that you are what you eat, and how important it is to eat vegetables. But that’s not always as easy as it sounds. Some people find vegetables too bland, and children may refuse them altogether. But do you know anyone who doesn’t like soup? Soup can help you and your loved ones reach a ripe old age without too many visits to the doctor. A single portion of soup can hold a lot of power foods which protect you with antioxidants, flavonoids, essential fatty acids and dietary fibre. For instance, a soup made with tomatoes, beans, garlic, onions, parsley and shredded dark green leaves (cabbages, collards or spring greens, Brussels tops etc.) can:

 Help to prevent heart disease and cancers (tomatoes, parsley, green leaves)

 Lower cholesterol (beans and garlic)

 Fight viruses (onions)

As regards preparing such a soup, the only limit is your imagination!

 Add lemon juice if you like your soup tart and zingy

 Or some Tabasco sauce or cayenne pepper if you prefer it spicy

 Or purée the soup and add a teaspoon of cream and some Parmesan cheese

Can something so delicious really prevent ill-health? Don’t take my word for it; have a look at the research summaries at the end of this chapter (page 46). They are just a few examples of the many scientific studies that prove the tremendous health benefits of eating fruit and vegetables. They’re so much easier to eat when you make them into soup! All the studies come to the same conclusion: the more fresh fruit and vegetables you eat, the less likely you are to get clogged arteries, high blood pressure, heart attacks and cancers. It’s as straightforward as that. Once we had to take it all on trust that these major health problems (and the disabilities they bring) were food-related. Now it is no longer just naturopaths and alternative medicine specialists who are telling us these things, but doctors and scientists as well.

Next we need to ask ‘How much is enough?’ When I mention green vegetables, for instance, so many people say ‘I do eat greens so I must be okay.’ Then I discover they last ate them several weeks ago. This is actually a low frequency and puts the person in a high disease-risk category. If you really want these power foods to protect you, consider eating them every day. As you can see from the summaries on page 46, researchers recommend consuming 400-600 grams (1-1 ½ lbs) of fruit and vegetables per day. It’s so easy when you add them to soup!

Good soups to start with are Soup 1: Apple, almond and cardamom soup with sheep’s yoghurt, Soup 13: Traditional Ukrainian borscht, and Soup 34: Brown lentil soup with roasted sweet peppers and apricots. Or just work your way through the whole book to discover your favourite recipes, and put them on your daily menu!

POWER SOUPS FOR STAYING HEALTHY

Of course if you smoke, take no exercise, eat too much salty, fatty or sugary food and drink too much alcohol, then it is much harder for good foods to protect you. After all, no matter how much good quality engine oil you put in your car, it will still break down if you put the wrong fuel in the tank!

FOODS THAT NEED TO BE RATIONED

Don’t be dismayed at this long list. Of course you can still be healthy without giving up all these foods! Some people even feel guilty if they buy butter for their children and eat some of it themselves. That is a natural reaction, but it is actually a huge over-reaction. Rationing is recommended – total deprivation is not! I eat most of these foods myself, but as occasional treats rather than as staple parts of my daily diet.

The easiest way to ration is to consume so much of the right foods that you don’t feel as much need for the wrong ones. If you have a big problem with craving sweets, chips, fries and pastries, try eating a bowl of home-made soup first. It is one of the best ways to take the edge off cravings.

WE DO NEED TO EAT SOME SUGAR EVERY DAY, DON’T WE?

This is not at all true as all the carbohydrate you eat gets turned into sugar by your body. If you still need more you can turn protein and parts of the fat molecule into sugar. To get enough energy there’s no need to consume any sugar or sugary foods at all.

AMAZING FOOD AND HEALTH DISCOVERIES

2003 Article from the Division of Preventive Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Heart disease is still the leading cause of disease and death worldwide. Statistics show that populations who consume more fruits and vegetables often have a lower risk of developing heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. Recent large research studies show that the higher the fruit and vegetable intake, the lower the rate of heart attacks and strokes. Many nutrients in fruits and vegetables, including fibre, potassium and folic acid, help to reduce the risk. The low glycaemic index and calorie content of these foods may also play a part. In view of these benefits, the researchers believe that not enough effort and resources are currently being devoted to encouraging dietary changes in Western society.

Bazzano L.A., Serdula M.K., Liu S. Curr Atheroscler Rep. 2003 Nov;5(6):492-9.

2004 Article from the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition, Los Angeles, USA

An intake of 400-600 grams (1-1 ½ lbs) of fruits and vegetables per day brings lower rates of many common forms of cancer. Diets rich in plant foods also bring a lower risk of heart disease and chronic diseases of ageing. Red foods such as tomatoes contain lycopene, which has special benefits for prostate health. Green foods, including broccoli, Brussels sprouts and kale, contain glucosinolates, which protect against cancer. Garlic and other foods in the onion family contain allyl sulphides which may inhibit cancer cell growth. Substances in green tea and soybeans also have health benefits. Everyone would potentially benefit from consuming one serving of each of the seven colour groups daily. The United States National Cancer Institute and American Institute for Cancer Research already recommend five to nine servings of fruit and vegetables per day.

Heber D.J Postgrad Med. 2004 Apr-Jun;50(2):145-9.

2004 Article from the Department of Cardiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India

The role of diet and nutrition in heart disease and stroke has been extensively researched. Enough evidence is available from population studies to show that the right diet can reduce the risk of heart disease. Trans-fats and saturated fats increase the risk, while polyunsaturated fats are protective. Sodium raises the blood pressure, while foods rich in potassium reduce the risk of high blood pressure and stroke. Regular frequent consumption of fruits and vegetables protects against high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke. It is time to translate this knowledge into government policies that promote healthy diets and discourage unhealthy diets.

Srinath Reddy K., Katan M.B. Public Health Nutr. 2004 Feb;7(1A):167-86.

1994 Article from Loma Linda University, California, USA

Recent research shows that frequent consumption of nuts offers protection against heart attacks. Nuts help to lower cholesterol, and also contain nutrients which protect in other ways.

Sabate J., Fraser G.E. Curr Opin Lipidol. 1994 Feb;5(1):11-6.

2004 Research Study from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK

South Asian women from India eat a diet rich in phyto-oestrogens (plant) – not from soy foods but from beans, lentils and vegetables. The dietary intake of phyto-oestrogens was compared between 240 South Asian women living in England with breast cancer, and 477 similar women without breast cancer. It was found that among the women with the highest intake of phyto-oestrogens there were only half as many cases of breast cancer as among those with the lowest intake. The researchers concluded that phyto-oestrogens help to protect against breast cancer.

dos Santos Silva I., Mangtani P. and colleagues. Cancer Causes Control. 2004 Oct;15(8):805-18.

2004 Article from the Hallelujah Acres Foundation, Ellensburg, Washington, USA

Scientists estimate that 30-40 per cent of all cancers can be prevented by lifestyle and dietary measures alone. Consuming too much low-fibre food and red meat, and a poor balance of essential polyunsaturated fats, increases the risk of developing cancer. Consuming abundant fruits and vegetables lowers cancer risk. Garlic, onions and cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and Brussels sprouts are especially beneficial. Nutrients that protect against cancer include selenium, folic acid, vitamin B12, vitamin D, chlorophyll, and antioxidants such as carotenoids. Taking supplements of digestive enzymes and probiotics is also helpful. Individuals who follow these guidelines are likely to have a 60-70 per cent lower risk of developing breast, colon or prostate cancer, and also a reduced risk of contracting other forms of cancer.

Donaldson M.S. Nutr J. 2004 Oct 20;3(1):19.

2005 Research from the American Cancer Society, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

In this study, 148,610 adults aged 50-74 were asked to provide information on their consumption of meat in 1982 and again in 1992. They were observed from 1992 to 2001 and, during this time, 1,667 of them developed cancer of the colon or rectum (colorectal cancer). Those with colorectal cancer were found to be the highest long-term consumers of red meat and processed meats. The researchers concluded that prolonged high consumption of red meat and processed meats may increase the risk of cancer in the lower part of the large intestine. These findings have also been confirmed by other researchers.

Chao A., Thun M.J. and colleagues. JAMA. 2005 Jan 12;293(2):172-82.

2004 Research from Clemson University, SC, USA

Plants are known to contain anti-cancer compounds. The initial step in the formation of a cancer is damage to a cell, which leads to a mutation in one of its genes. Fresh juices and extracts from strawberries, raspberries and blueberries were evaluated for their ability to inhibit mutations induced by mutagens such as benzopyrene – a mutagen found in charred meat. The researchers found that juice from strawberries, raspberries and blueberries significantly inhibited the action of mutagens.

Hope Smith S., Tate P.L. and colleagues. J Med Food. 2004

Winter;7(4):450-5.

2004 Research from Michigan State University, USA

Anthocyanidins are pigments found in bilberries, blueberries, black grapes and other dark blue, dark red and purple fruits. On testing, these researchers found that they have a significant anti-cancer effect.

Zhang Y., Vareed S.K., Nair M.G. Life Sci. 2005 Feb 11;76(13):1465-72. Epub 2004 Dec 13.

1997 Research from Andrews University, Michigan, USA

A diet rich in plant foods contains many substances with health-protective benefits. Nuts, whole grains, fruit and vegetables contain phenolic compounds, terpenoids, pigments and other natural antioxidants that help to protect against and/or treat chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure. The foods and herbs with the highest anti-cancer activity include garlic, soybeans, cabbage, ginger, liquorice, and cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and cabbage. The phytochemicals in whole grains reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. In addition to providing an ample supply of vitamin C, folic acid, potassium and pectin, citrus fruits also contain a host of active phytochemicals.

Craig W.J. J Am Diet Assoc. 1997 Oct;97(10 Suppl 2):S 199–204.

PART III FEELING GOOD WITH SOUP

As we get older , the vitality of our digestive system often decreases. Food is less easily digested, absorbed and assimilated into cells. Your whole body is made from cells. While the vitamin and mineral levels in our food remain the same, amounts of nutrients getting into our cells may decrease. Depending on which types of cells are affected, problems can start to develop with hormones, energy, bones, joints, nervous system, immune system or circulation. These problems are often put down to the ageing process. But the good news is that ageing cells can be rejuvenated.

Cells are very much like miniature plants. Give them enough oxygen and nutrients, and help them to get rid of their waste products quickly, and they will be able to regenerate themselves and work more efficiently. The result is better energy, more balanced hormones, stronger bones and joints, and a healthier circulation and nervous system.

If by now you’re guessing that the best way to rejuvenate your body is with soup, you are not far wrong. With less efficient digestion and absorption, it’s important to reduce the load on your digestive system while increasing the nutrient density of what you eat. That means eating foods with a high ratio of vitamins, minerals and flavonoids compared with the total number of calories.

The most high-calorie foods are those high in sugar, fat and starch. Soup, on the other hand, quickly fills you up without containing added sugar, and with only a little fat (oil) and starch in the form of rice or potatoes. The rest is water, fibre, vitamins, minerals and protein. The fibre content helps to sweep out wastes which might otherwise be absorbed into your blood and end up burdening your kidneys. All these qualities make home-made soup a naturally rejuvenating food.

To increase the nutritional value of soup even more, you can enrich it with juice extracted from vegetables such as broccoli stems, carrots, tomatoes, radishes and celery. Consumed on a regular basis, soup made in this way helps your brain, nervous system, liver, kidneys, circulation and glands to work better. With a healthy circulation, your memory, energy, eyes and ears stay youthful, helping you to continue enjoying life well into old age. Cells discharge their wastes more easily, water retention recedes, and all sorts of ailments begin to disappear. Add home-made chicken or fish stock or broth and you can even help to rebuild joints and cartilage. Stock from boiled chicken and fish bones is rich in glucosamine, which scientists have successfully used to treat long-term arthritis and other inflammatory conditions.

MEDICINAL FOODS

Countless other ingredients with medicinal effects can easily be added to soup in truly delicious combinations. Ranging from coriander leaf (cilantro) to ginger, radishes, garlic and Brussels sprouts, these mouth-watering ingredients will make you feel as if you are in a top-class restaurant rather than taking your medicine. In this section we will look at how different soups can treat as well as prevent problems relating to the following body systems:

 Energy

 Immune system and detoxification

 Circulation (including brain, nerves, eyes, ears)

 Bones and joints

 Hormones

If you are feeling sceptical, and believe that only powerful medicines can reverse health problems, think again. How many people do you know who are taking prescription medicines for long-term health conditions? Are they being cured? Prescription drugs can make you feel better while you are taking them; in fact some drugs, including those for high blood pressure, are essential for your own safety. But drugs do not usually cure long-term problems. If they did, the problems would not be long-term! Over many years, a combination of genetics, stress and faulty lifestyle silently changes a person’s internal environment and body chemistry to produce ailments and ill-health. No drug has ever been able to reverse this process. Food and nutrition are the real key not only to preventing ill-health but also to reversing it.

There’s plenty of scientific proof too, although it’s widely scattered and the work is poorly funded. My book Treat Yourself with Nutritional Therapy (see Resources, page 277) lists hundreds of scientific research studies written up in many different scientific and medical journals ranging from the Lancet to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Some doctors do pay attention to this research, and treat their patients using a nutritional approach. Some of the organizations to which these doctors belong are listed under Resources on page 277.

I’VE ALREADY CHANGED MY DIET FOR THE BETTER!

If you are still sceptical because you have already made some healthy changes to your diet without feeling any better, this could just mean that you haven’t yet found the right changes you need to make. With so many books bombarding you with different opinions about nutrition, it has become a very confusing subject. Bear in mind also that curing a health problem requires a lot of extra effort compared with just preventing it. For instance, take one of my cases, whose name was Richard.

CASE HISTORY:

RICHARD

Richard packed shelves in a supermarket and was 32 years old. For eight years he had had what appeared to be a huge scab measuring about two inches in diameter on his slightly balding head.

Richard had consulted many doctors with this problem. ‘They just dab at it with stuff and then send me away,’ he said in desperation. ‘They won’t tell me what it is and nothing they’ve given me has ever stopped it.’ His self-confidence had been destroyed by this problem. He confessed that he couldn’t stop thinking about it and imagined that other people were always looking at the scab. He really wanted a girlfriend, but believed that no-one would want him with this unsightly problem.

Richard had worked hard at his diet. He had grown up on a diet of very ordinary food: ‘meat and two veg’, chips, fries, lots of sweet tea and coffee. He had never consumed excessive amounts of sweets, chocolates or soft drinks, and his saturated fat consumption was no higher than the average. In the last year he had made efforts to eat more vegetables and salads, and had given up most fried foods as well as biscuits, cookies and the occasional bar of chocolate. There was no improvement in his scalp condition.

I explained that like his doctors I did not know what could be causing his problem, but that skin conditions usually responded quite well to making more drastic dietary changes. These were often only required temporarily until the condition cleared up. Richard was prepared to go ahead and see what could be achieved on that basis.

I gave Richard a diet that completely excluded saturated fat, dairy products and red meat, which contain arachidonic acid, a pro-inflammatory substance found in animal fats. Arachidonic acid can also be made within the body, but if excluded from foods eaten in the diet, the overall body load will be decreased. The diet also excluded tea and coffee, artificial food additives and alcohol. I asked Richard to make lots of home-made soups and to throw every vegetable he could think of into them. He did this with pleasure. I also asked him to take vitamin A and zinc supplements, and fish oils, plus some herbs which would help to rejuvenate his liver.

Nothing much seemed to happen for the first few weeks, then we noticed that as Richard’s hair grew, the scab seemed to be gradually lifting off with it. By the 10th week it had grown out completely, and the skin underneath was normal.

Cases like this are not unusual. It seems so sad that more people don’t realize just how much can be achieved with dietary therapy. Richard’s confidence and sense of self-worth had been severely scarred by so many years of enduring this unsightly problem.

1 BOOSTING ENERGY WITH SOUP

Energy problems can range from getting easily tired after exertion to feeling exhausted almost all the time, no matter how much rest you have had. (This extreme condition is known as chronic fatigue syndrome or CFS.)

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