Energy food

maximus44, Feb 13, 4:20am
My daughter has fibromyalgia and gets very tired. She is starting a part-time degree course on Monday. 2 days a week she will be taking her lunch. Any ideas for "energy food" perhaps withou too much sugar would be appreciated. Thank you.

mvr, Feb 13, 4:40am
What about some nuts and pumpkin/sunflower seeds? :)

buzzy110, Feb 13, 4:48am
The current belief is that grain style foods with sugar will provide you with heaps of energy when the opposite is true. Sugary, grain based and highly processed foods do nothing for your energy and will often make the consumer feel drowsy and bloated for hours.

The foods that provide a constant and steady output of non-sleep inducing energy are the very ones that current ideology says we must not eat, or at least keep to a minimum. There is excellent evidence and research to back up this statement. Maybe you would like to look at the Food Lies Thread one day.

That being said, it is difficult for lay people like us to know exactly which foods would be detrimental to someone with fibromyalgia so please understand that any recommendation I may make is purely based on what is fine for a healthy person. Here goes:

buzzy110, Aug 7, 5:02pm
Animal protein is a high quality food providing many nutrients, minerals and saturated fats that nourish and energise the consumer whilst leaving them feeling fresh and alert all day long. Not only that, but there is no bloating, no drowsiness. Meat and saturated fat need to be combined with fresh vegetables.

As it is summer there are many salad vegetables to choose from, plus you can cook up beans, carrots, broccoli and cauliflower and make them into a salad with olive oil, cold liver oil, cider vinegar, red onion, red capsicum (green capsicum are just that, unripe fruit so avoid) and garlic (optional). YOu could use marinated garlic - yum.

As it is summer you could start making lacto-fermented vegetables such as sauerkraut, mixed vegetable sauerkraut, cucumbers, fresh beans and carrots. I make up stacks of these and during winter I eat them with tinned fish, left over cold meats, smoked chicken and any other protein that takes my fancy. The vegetable component of our entire winter lunches for 2 comes to approximately $30-$40.

During the winter you could also consider thermos of soups made with lots of fresh or frozen vegetables and meat bones or chicken.

That is just a small sample of some of the things you could provide your daughter if they don't upset her digestive system.

One other thing. I make sour-dough bread as opposed to buying bread. There is an excellent reason for doing this. Sour dough turns out bread that has already pre-digested the gluten and anti-nutrients within the grain that is so hard on the human digestive system.