Using Natural Beef & Organic Meats: The GAPS Diet

The weeks have been flying by and the blog posts have been definitely lacking! I have so many things I'd like to blog about. I've gotta get back into the routine of scheduling blog posts, so we'll see :).

Some of my family is on what is called the GAPS diet, or the Gut & Psychology Syndrome Diet. This diet was developed by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. My 19 year old brother has a lot of food allergies and he seemed to just keep getting more. He would cut out one thing, then be good for awhile, then something else would bother him. We've known about the GAPS diet for a few years now, because a lot of people who have kids with DS and/or Autism use it.

The whole focus of the GAPS diet is to heal the gut and restore good gut flora & functioning. We've tossed around the idea of doing it with O for a few years because of his reflux problems. But, each time we think about doing it, we end up finding out what is causing his reflux problems. As of right now that's just gluten & cow dairy, so he has not gone on it yet. At some point, he may, but we don't feel it's absolutely necessary right now.

But, it is for my 19 year old brother, Norayah. He finally said, "Put me on the GAPS diet." It's been almost 2 months now since we started the diet. The diet starts out slow and goes through a series of introductory stages before going onto the full diet. It is recommended to stay on the whole diet for at least 2 years.

A LOT of the diet is meat and it should, ideally be organic meat. For us, this has been pretty easy, as we raise and butcher our own animals for meat.

We had already started doing this, because so much meat has been washed or "contaminated" somehow with corn and Norayah has an intolerance to corn. So, that left us with raising our own sheep, goats, pigs, rabbits & natural beef from cows my cousin raised.

You can buy organic beef online or find other organic meats at local farmer's markets or sometimes a grocery store, but we prefer to just raise our own.

And it has proven very beneficial and helpful in this diet. Another large part of the diet is vegetables and it all has to be cooked. The first stage is just meat broth (soup) with a few select veggies on it. As you change through the 6 stages of the introduction diet, you slowly add in more vegetables, eventually fruits, casserole dishes, etc.

The diet is pretty strict, but it works to heal the gut. Anyone with a family member or kid who has food allergies, candida gut issues, or pretty much any other major health problem or gut issue, should try the GAPS diet. It's helped a lot of people! We've seen some changes from it and the "die-off" effects of the diet thus far.

One good thing out of it so far: Norayah used to get heartburn from lemon juice. Well, we introduced it in the diet last week and he has not had any heartburn yet! That is very promising.

A few good helpful links for the diet:
gapsdiet.com
gaps.me
GAPS Guide
GAPS help Yahoo! Group

I will share more information as time goes on, Lord willing, with recipes and more information.

Disclaimer: This post is compensated by a blogger campaign from Bucks2Blog. This has no affiliation or compensation from those who developed the GAPS diet, it is strictly compensated by those who want to encourage using natural beef.  All the views & opinions are my own.