A Late Spring Detox: Remedy to too much Grass-Fed Meats and Biodynamic Wines

We are bursting with food even before setting foot into June and looking back at last year's photos, we are way ahead of the game thanks to high tunnels allowing us to plant beans, tomatoes and peppers in April and to planting things normally direct seeded like snap peas and English peas in soil blocks weeks ahead of time to get a head start.

It's been a tough month of May between our usual jobs but with the added stress of Charlie's hospital, St. Vincent's closing, 4 farmer's markets, an eco-house tour we participated in, planting our own farm, expanding another area to accomdate our next experiment (permaculture and edible forest gardens), me prepping for a talk on Food and Cancer at Donna Karan's Urben Zen and moving my private practice to Beth Israel's Center for Health and Healing, this Memorial Day weekend has been our first breather.

I've been wanting to do a "detox" or juice fast for a long time.  The closest I've ever gotten was during a Goenka Vipassana retreat in 2004 but I never found the time to actually buckle down and do it.  Then after getting married to a meat and bread lover, it became even tougher.  And since I guide people in food as part of my work, I've put myself through a variety of food challenges from yeast, gluten and dairy free diets to elimination diets to partly understand how difficult the process is, but to also be able to tell patients how to exactly navigate these sometimes difficult food modifications.  I mean, it's hard to give advice and conversely take advice from someone without a true understanding of what's it's like to embark on such a journey of food  that can be so emotionally charged.  I've had a variety of patients ask me about detoxing and the various different protocols and books written on the subject.  I have to say, they all have a very common thread plus or minus colonics (which I don't routinely advise), multiple supplements and herbs usually profiting the author's protocol (though there is sometimes rational use for them).  I have now decided to plunge in and go through a detox regimen.  Thankfully, it was suggested by Charlie who was ready to make changes as well.  So much easier when you have a partner in crime.  In this case, a partner in health.

We decided on following Natalia Rose's book The Raw Food Detox Diet for the next week rather than taking off days from work to do a juice cleanse.  Juice cleanses are fine if one has the time to rest and relax but Natalia's book allows for meals which makes working plausible.  What is most motivating for us is the availablity of our own food which has offered us access in abundance at the moment in kale, beans, snap peas, shell peas, chard, beet greens, celery, lettuces, fennel, leeks, garlic scapes, cabbage, mustard greens, bok choy, berries, and herbs galore (chervil, basil, sage, marjoram, oregano, savory, thyme, cilantro, vienamese cilantro, dill, parsley).

Wish us luck and we'll report back shortly with our findings!  Tonight we feast on wine, cider beer, pizza, Wagyu beef burgers, and BBQ'd organic chicken drumsticks.  You gotta hit rock bottom sometimes before surfacing to the top.