Truth About Grains: Yes, You Can Have Your Gluten-Free Cake and Eat It, Too! Podcast Episode 15

Natural Living Family Podcast, Episode 15
The Truth About Grains: Have your Gluten-Free Cake and enjoy it!
The contents of this presentation are for informational purposes only and are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This presentation does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.

[0:00 – 1:06] Prelude
Mama Z: I was like I’m going to get this down, okay. And so the very first time I made a loaf of gluten-free bread in the bread machine, the loaf was one inch tall.
Dr. Z: Epic fail. Hah, hah, hah.
Mama Z: Everything was in there for an entire loaf, and it was one inch tall. And so I had to start getting smarter than the bread. I’m like, no, you are not going to beat me on this.
Dr. Z: And you gave it to me, and I had to be like, yes, I love it. And I would like down it with
Mama Z: No, it was good. But you’re eating one loaf of bread in like two slices.
Dr. Z: It was so dense. One bite was a meal.
Mama Z: It was dense.
Dr. Z: Lord, help me.
Mama Z: But I think one of the times I had to make stuffing, okay. And all I needed was like a loaf of bread. And so I had to make like four loaves in order to like equal a loaf of bread, because I needed a certain amount of cups. And I kept making another loaf and another loaf.
And I’m like, no way, I’m going to figure this out. So like one stuffing had like six loaves of bread at least in it.

[1:07 – 1:36] Intro
Dr. Z: Hi! This is Dr. Z.
Mama Z: And this is Mama Z. And welcome to episode 15 of the Natural Living Family podcast.
Dr. Z: Each week we invite you to our home to talk about how you can master the art and science of natural living. And we share the very same tips our family uses every day to enjoy an abundant life. And you’re going to love today’s talk.
Mama Z: So come on in and get comfortable. After all, you’re one of the family, our natural living family.

[1:37 – 2:36] Sponsor Spotlight: Air Doctor
Mama Z: But before we dive into all the fun, we are excited to share a special note about today’s sponsor.
Dr. Z: Most people don’t realize it, but the air that they breathe in their home is filled with mold spores and visible gases and dangerous volatile organic compounds that are constantly being emitted by their furniture, carpeting, paint, personal care and cleaning products.
Mama Z: This is a recipe for a health disaster. And we can personally testify to how polluted air almost devastated our health.
Dr. Z: Thankfully, our friends at Air Doctor have a solution–their portable air purification system that anyone can afford.
Mama Z: As a special gift to our Natural Living Family podcast listeners, Air Doctor is giving you three hundred dollars off when you buy through our special podcast link.
Dr. Z: Simply go to NaturalLivingFamilypodcast.com to find this special link so you could redeem this deal on the show notes from today’s episode.

[2:37 – 4:10] Diffuser Reveal: Women’s Balancing Blend
Dr. Z: Hey there, everyone! Welcome to today’s show.
Mama Z: Hi, everybody! How are you?
Dr. Z: We’re so excited to be talking about the truth about grains. Yes, you can have your gluten-free cake and eat it, too. There’s so much we’re going to discuss, especially me being Sicilian, Italian food is a huge part of my life and culture and tradition. And when I realized that I needed to reduce my grain intake and stay away from gluten for a season, that was like mourning the loss of a loved one.
And many of you can experience that. Italian food is a big deal for a lot of us.
Mama Z: But before that, what’s in my diffuser today? Well, you know, it’s actually one of my favorites. It’s a woman’s balancing blend. And so it’s two drops of geranium, two drops of clary sage, and two drops of ylang-ylang. And it was actually really funny, because I put it in, and I came in and Dr. Z comes in and he’s like, “Ooh, what is this? I like it!” And I’m like it’s because ylang-ylang is in there.
Dr. Z: I love it! And the diffuser is right next to me when we’re doing this. It’s like right over my shoulder.
Mama Z: And Chris, our extraordinaire behind the camera and many other things, he’s like, “Yea, it smells really floral.” And I’m like, “Eric loves the floral.”
Dr. Z: I do. And you know what? That’s part of this whole helping you regain control of your life. It’s hormones. That’s a big thing of it.
Mama Z: Yes, it is. It’s huge.

[4:11 – 7:29] The Essential Oils Diet: Behind the Scenes
Dr. Z: And we do talk about hormones. We talk about detoxification, how to naturally balance your hormones through your diet, through exercise, through essential oils in our upcoming book, The Essential Oils Diet, which comes out next week.
Mama Z: Yea!
Dr. Z: Can you believe it?
Mama Z: You know, honestly people are asking me, “Well, what is it like to write a book?” I was like it’s kind of like birthing a baby. You know, there’s lots of prep and lots of this and that. And it’s a process. And when I told my girlfriend who is a writer and stuff like that, she’s like, “You guys did that in a year?” And she’s like, “Wow!”
Dr. Z: Yea, it was. And for me, my first book, and you mentioned like a baby. That’s a good point.
Mama Z: It’s like birthing a baby.
Dr. Z: My first book baby was last year, March. And then this new book baby in May, I could sense why people wait a couple of years to have kids, after they have kids year after year after year. Like you need a break.
I’ve got to say I know it’s going to happen. I’m going to forget about all that we’ve done and all of these long hours.
Mama Z: Just like labor and delivery.
Dr. Z: I’m going to go right at it again. It’s unbelievable. Anyway, folks, you are going to love this book.
Mama Z: Yes.
Dr. Z: And go to essentialoilsdiet.com. We created just a really, really special gift package. It’s a bonus. And when I say seven hundred dollars worth of free gifts, I mean it, because we have an hour and a half shopping tour, live shopping tour with Q&A. We have several hours of video when it comes to exercise demonstrations that Sabrina did, her cooking class demos. Like you get like a half an hour cooking class on how to cook gluten-free Italian food and how to cook simple, sensational salads. And we give you workbooks, and the most important piece–I love this piece. It’s a special golden ticket to join our sixty-day group challenge.
Mama Z: Yes!
Dr. Z: And that, I’m telling you, I kid you not, is a four-hundred dollar value, because Mama Z and I are going to walk you through a group challenge. And we have mentors, we have people, and we have resources. And we’re asking you, we’re giving you this opportunity. We’re asking you just to give us two months, sixty days. Why sixty days? We’ll talk about that later.
Mama Z: Yes.
Dr. Z: But that’s on average about how long it takes to form a habit, according to the research. So whoever says habits form in two to three weeks, they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Mama Z: You said on average it’s sixty-six days.
Dr. Z: It is on average. That’s what the research has proven, like without doubt. And so we want to set you up for success. If you give us sixty days, we can all but guarantee that your life will change. Now we can’t guarantee that you’re going to lose all the weight that you want to lose. We can’t guarantee that you’re going to reverse all the diseases you want to reverse. But your life will change.
Mama Z: Yes.
Dr. Z: Your taste buds will change. Your skin will start to glow. Your libido will boost. Your brain fog will vanish. Gut issues will start to be restored. It’s almost a guarantee that you will feel better.
Mama Z: Absolutely!
Dr. Z: And you will want to continue. So how do you get that? Simply, you buy the book. Go to essentialoilsdiet.com. And then sign up for the free bonuses. And we give you all of them.
Mama Z: Yes.

[7:30 – 14:29] Let’s Talk Gluten and Grains!
Dr. Z: And part of the book and part of the bonuses is focused on this grain/gluten issue, which is why I really want to talk about gluten and grains today in honor of your new Italian cooking class.
Mama Z: Yay! I’m so excited. I really am. And you know, some of these recipes were our family’s recipes. Others were ones that we got from friends over the years that I’ve adjusted. And I adapt all the recipes–some of them adding essential oils to them, doing other things, publishing recipes and showing how to do it from other friends as well.
And it’s so important because people think that when they go gluten-free that everything is going to taste like cardboard. And that’s just not the case.
Dr. Z: Nope. It was for me until I met you, though. It was really was. It was for me; like I mourned flavor. I buried flavor in the ground. I’m like, God, for You I’m going to do this. And I did rice cakes and veggies.
Mama Z: You did. You did do rice cakes. You knew how to do rice cakes.
Dr. Z: With almond butter. That was like my dessert.
Mama Z: Yea. You were like, “You want a rice cake with almond butter? It’s like a nice sandwich.” And I was like, yea, no.
Dr. Z: No offence to the rice cake people.
Mama Z: No. I mean rice cakes are good, you know; like they are. Like there are some that are really good; but not every day. And when I was on the elimination diet, that was one of the things they added back in as a little kit. But it was plain rice cakes, absolutely just plain. And the one thing I didn’t like about them is they dried out my mouth, because they were just rice like glued together with water, and that was it.
Dr. Z: Yea, it’s wild. It’s like you realize that you can have your gluten-free cake and eat it, too.
Mama Z: And when you realized that, you were like, “Wow! This is awesome!”
Dr. Z: It was.
Mama Z: And I literally remember at our wedding you looking at me, like this cake is amazing!
Dr. Z: Yea, it was.
Mama Z: It was, it was.
Dr. Z: And her carrot cake recipe is in our book.
Mama Z: It is–our wedding cake.
Dr. Z: That was our wedding cake. Our wedding cake recipe is in the book, the actual recipe.
Mama Z: It is.
Dr. Z: And it is lovely, by the way, if you love carrot cake.
Mama Z: Yep.
Dr. Z: Or if you don’t, it could be zucchini cake. I mean you can add any vegetable to it.
Mama Z: Absolutely.
Dr. Z: It’s a good spice cake. I like spice cake.
Mama Z: Yep, you can do your spices.
Dr. Z: Like cinnamon, clove, nutmeg.
Mama Z: Allspice. It all depends where you’re from, what pumpkin pie spice has in it. It’s like any of those, you know, dishes, that is just a guess what’s in there.
Dr. Z: So we wanted to celebrate our new book by coming out with two of Mama Z’s gluten classes, the first of which is gluten-free Italian. And we want to talk about wheat, like why? Like why did we have to do a gluten-free Italian class? It’s because so many people have found themselves sensitive to gluten.
Mama Z: Right.
Dr. Z: Now statistically speaking, less than one-percent of the human population has celiac; so not many people really at all are allergic to gluten. But millions of people have found themselves sensitive. And so what we want to do is we want to help you understand the truth about grains. We want to talk about gluten sensitivity and how to navigate this. And I’ll tell you something, like you really, you can have your gluten-free cake and eat it, too.
Mama Z: Right.
Dr. Z: And it’s something that I hope will just give much more inspiration to do what you need to do to make yourself healthy without feeling like, “Oh, I’m sacrificing.” We don’t sacrifice anymore. And that was something that maybe was a discipline that God wanted to teach me early on, where I abstained, like it was fasting from all the sweet breads, like the book of Daniel talks about.
Mama Z: Right.
Dr. Z: But you can enjoy flavor. You can enjoy foods. You should enjoy foods. That’s why God gave us taste buds. If God didn’t want you to have sex, why do you have a sex drive? If God didn’t want you to enjoy food, why do you have taste buds, right? When you start thinking about these just primal instincts that all animals have, we need to satisfy them in a proper way.
And that’s a big part of our book, The Essential Oil Diet. It isn’t a diet book at all. When we say diet, we mean the actual foods that you eat. What kind of diet do you have? We don’t talk about something that’s made to be broken.
So the reason why we came up with this cooking class, the reason why we have the recipes in the book, and the reason why we’re talking about what we are today is we want to help you navigate this stuff so you don’t feel like you’re losing out. That’s a horrible feeling to have. It really is. Like, “I can’t have this anymore.” No, we eat pizza every Friday. And we love it. It’s good pizza, though, pizza Fridays. And whoever invented pizza Fridays is a millionaire or a billionaire, by the way. Everyone around the country eats pizzas on Fridays.
Mama Z: Really.
Dr. Z: Oh yea.
Mama Z: That’s so funny.
Dr. Z: I was talking to someone on the phone from another part of the country.
Mama Z: We used to do that. Like our Friday tradition growing up, and I was just telling my mom this, my dad would take all of us girls out to ice skating on Friday nights. And, you know, if we got pizza, though, on a Friday night, which would sometimes happen. Sometimes we would do it Friday and sometimes Saturday. And I just remember I loved doing that.
And then we would go, and you know, of course, we’ve talked about my dad is very number oriented and stuff like that. So if we did a hundred laps before the first hour of skating, then he would buy us a pop. And if we did another hundred, then we would get nachos or whatever. And after we were done, if we were really good, then we could go to the video store and pick out a VHS that we watched.
Dr. Z: Whoa!
Mama Z: And then we would get to pick out a Faygo pop back in the day.
Dr. Z: Pop meaning soda, for those of you not from the Midwest, or a Coke if you’re from the South.
Mama Z: Oh my gosh, growing up, yea! And I remember, you know like when Indiana Jones was a new movie.
Dr. Z: Which one?
Mama Z: It was the first one.
Dr. Z: Was that Temple of Doom?
Mama Z: No, that’s the second one.
Dr. Z: Like Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Mama Z: Yep. So I remember that was the movie, okay. So it was in the new release section. So it was a couple of years ago, in the 1980s. And we would come back and we would watch it together. And you remember things around food and the things that you did. I mean that was so many years ago, and I still remember that. And it’s kind of cool that our kids like Indiana Jones, too. So that’s kind of fun, too.
Dr. Z: Yea. They have no choice, because you watch it every week.
Mama Z: Ha ha ha.
Dr. Z: You either watch it or they’ve got to go to bed.

[14:30 – 23:28] Grains, Chronic Disease, and Industrialized Farming
So what’s the truth about grains? Okay, here’s the thing. Ah, where do I start? All right, let’s go back a couple of thousand years, several thousand actually. And God walks through some recipes in the Bible. He actually tells Ezekiel to get some barley, get some rye, get some grains together. And we call it now Ezekiel Bread. God told Moses to make unleavened bread. It’s part of Passover. We know Jesus broke bread at the Last Supper. And obviously bread was a huge staple. He broke bread, and He multiplied bread to feed the five thousand the seven thousand.
So here’s something. Forgive just the obvious nature of this statement, but if wheat and bread were bad, I can’t believe that the Savior of the world would give it to thousands and thousands of people to feed them. Is that kind of safe? Can we trust that if God loves us so much that He sent His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not die but have eternal life, that that same love would then transfer over to not poisoning those same people?
Mama Z: Yea.
Dr. Z: You know what I mean? Bread isn’t of the Devil, y’all. I’m just telling you. The masses, the vast majority of the human population since the beginning of time have consumed grains as a main staple in their diet, primarily because of the longevity of grains. You could harvest wheat and you could store the grain, and they would last several weeks or months, even years, back in olden days. They didn’t have that luxury with fresh fruits and vegetables, which would go bad if they weren’t consumed within a few weeks or so after being picked.
Mama Z: Or if they weren’t pickled or whatever.
Dr. Z: Yea, if they weren’t fermented. So first of all, grains aren’t of the Devil. I think that’s really important to realize. But one thing we do have to worry about is something that our Lord didn’t have to worry about two-thousand years ago, and that’s glyphosate, aka Roundup. Jesus didn’t have to worry about genetically modified organisms. Jesus didn’t have to worry about pesticides.
Mama Z: Right.
Dr. Z: The water, the air, the food was pure. We’ve messed things up as a people.
Mama Z: Yea.
Dr. Z: And for a number of reasons—and trust me when I say it’s not because of the growing human population—we’re trying to feed starving people. It’s not because of that. It’s all greed. It’s cheap farming practices that can produce more profit. If we farmed the way that God tells us to farm in the Old Testament, we would not be in the situation that we’re in. And our Earth has the ability. God gave us a beautiful Earth. And he told us to be fruitful. He told us to multiply.
Mama Z: Yea.
Dr. Z: Our Earth can sustain us. We don’t need to bio-hack a system to feed with fake food. And so what’s happened is because of the spray, because of the chemicals, because of the genetic engineering, because these grains have been modified to have pesticide and herbicide in the DNA of the grain itself, to naturally ward off
Mama Z: Threats.
Dr. Z: Yea. That has caused a mass outbreak of disease, of food sensitivities, allergies. And we just started. We just started to touch the tip of the iceberg of the health risks, and I’m saying including cancer. And we’ve heard it, and people deny it. But I’m telling you something. There is a direct link to glyphosate and chemicals with learning disabilities, asthma, autism.
See, autism has become like the new four-letter F word now. People don’t want to say it. And I’m telling you something. It is not good and not normal. And this is not proper how many children have autism right now. It is not what it was ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago. It is not normal, it is not good, and it is not proper for one in two people to develop cancer now. Like when did we start to accept this as our lot in life?
Our grandparents and great-grandparents weren’t dealing with this stuff. They were dealing with chronic malaria and the bubonic plague because they were living in horrid unhealthy living conditions, right? You have to have proper sanitation. You have to have proper clean water. Quite frankly, the industrial revolution was one of the worst things that ever happened to human health. And they created cesspools.
And so again, this isn’t an argument on vaccines. And by the way, you keep on asking us to do a class on vaccines. I’ve got to say, I want to be cautious of doing that. We know that Google and Facebook and Pinterest and YouTube, everyone is censoring this. So just so you know, we’ll probably have to do a private vaccine class, like local, and invite people to. And that way we could be free.
At the end of the day, we don’t want Apple or Google or Stitcher and all these podcast places to shut us down because we mention it. So we’re not going to talk about vaccines yet. But you can kind of read between the lines. So do you have anything to say? I’m just going to keep on going on. And people are like, “Let Mama Z talk.” But you talked a lot the last episode. Mama Z talked most last. Someone actually told me, “Stop cutting her off. Let her speak.” So when you want to, you talk.
Mama Z: I remember, I was like, yea, thank you!
Dr. Z: No way! Come on! Ha, ha!
Mama Z: I’ve got lots to say, but it’s a little bit later.
Dr. Z: Okay. So she’s like the gluten part. I’m the grain part.
Mama Z: Yea.
Dr. Z: So again, the problem that we have with modern grains is one hundred percent how they’ve been hybridized, genetically modified, and manufactured. And for those people who live outside of America, you might be wondering, “Why are we even having this discussion?” Because we have a global audience, and we’ve had that; and you’ll say, “What’s wrong?”
The fact of the matter is most countries in the world won’t import the grains that America grows. Let me repeat. Other countries don’t import, not only the grains, but most of the food that we grow. They have rules.
Mama Z: We’re supposed to be one of the most industrialized, and they won’t take our food. That says something.
Dr. Z: It’s because we have no standard. Our health standard is next to zil. And that’s a very shocking truth. And it’s out there. I’m not making this up. I mean you could look it up. You could Google it, you could Bing it, you could Yahoo it, you could whatever it. But the reality is most countries, especially first–and I hate first, second, third world–but industrial countries, they have standards that prevent the use of a lot of the chemicals that we use as a matter of fact.
And there’s one farming practice which breaks my heart. I can’t even believe they allow it. It’s called desiccation. It’s right before the wheat harvest, like a week and a half or two weeks or so before. And again, it all depends on the farmer and the land. But what happens is the farm gets flooded with Roundup, like flooded with Roundup.
What that does is it causes the wheat to sprout early and go to seed early. And it also kills a lot of the rye grass and a lot of the weeds at the same time. So it makes harvesting easier. Well don’t you think that affects the actual wheat that’s going into your bread, that’s going into your baby’s mouth? Like flooding a field with Roundup? And that’s not even including genetically modifying the grain so that there’s Roundup in it already.
Mama Z: One of these days you’re going to have to do a talk about what all is in Roundup.
Dr. Z: Yes. And so we need to really be cautious of the fact that if you are eating conventional grains in America specifically, you are consuming a mass amount of chemicals. And we can directly link that to a number of diseases. And there’s a reason autoimmune is so high. There’s a reason dementia is so high. There’s a reason why so many people have Alzheimer’s. And we already mentioned cancer and autism and allergies.

[23:29 – 26:15] How Sprouting Grains Aids Digestion
So here are some thoughts. Today’s grains, in addition to being just perpetually sprayed and filled with chemicals, are not sprouted like they used to anymore. Sprouting is a natural germination process where seeds or spores put out shoots, and where plants produce new leaves or buds, or other newly developing parts experience growth. So in nutrition, sprouting signifies the practice of germinating seeds to be eaten raw or cooked. You talked about that before.
Mama Z: And one of the things, too, is that in the planting, certain ones of the plants that I plant, depending on the seeds, some of them I have to soak one night or two nights before even planting them, because it starts the process.
Dr. Z: And you mentioned last episode, episode 14, about how you like to soak your beans. And essentially you are sprouting your beans, and you’re rinsing them, and that helps your body. That helps your body digest the beans better.
Mama Z: Yes.
Dr. Z: So a less gassy response and indigestion. You know, sprouting is what makes soy healthy, natto, miso, tempeh. You know, un-sprouted soy, we talked about that last episode, too, when you gave up dairy. A lot of people are having digestive issues when they use soy because of the same reason.
Mama Z: That used to be next best go to forever.
Dr. Z: It was.
Mama Z: Yea.
Dr. Z: So as people are lactose intolerant, they’re soy intolerant, because they’re not properly fermenting the food. You know here’s why. And this is why this makes sense, because historically most of the grains were sprouted. And some of it was actually accidental. It was something that modern techniques have largely stopped.
So just think about it for just a minute. When you would harvest, whether it was quinoa or millet or wheat back a thousand years ago, they didn’t have vacuum sealing packaging like we do now. They didn’t have silos like we have now. They didn’t have immediate refrigeration. They just allowed the grains to sit outside over night, and they started sprouting. I mean that was kind of how it worked.
And so sprouting was just the natural course of ancient harvesting. And so sprouted grains are easier to digest, and nutrients are more bio-available. And research actually suggests that sprouted brown rice fights diabetes, cardiovascular disease, depression, and fatigue. Sprouted buckwheat protects against fatty liver disease. Sprouted barley decreased blood pressure. And the list goes on and on. Grains are healthy for y’all.
And we go into such great detail in our new book, The Essential Oils Diet. And please get it. Go to essentialoilsdiet.com. And we walk you through this whole mess. I call it a mess, because it’s a mess. It’s so confusing about gluten. And we have a lot to share about gluten in this episode.

[26:16 – 27:27] Sponsor Spotlight: Air Doctor
But before we talk about gluten and how you can enjoy your food if you suffer gluten sensitivities, a word from our sponsor.
Mama Z: Are you suffering from indoor air pollution?
Dr. Z: Studies continue to pour in showing how polluted air in your home has been linked to a slew of health conditions like allergies, gut issues, autoimmunity, fatigue, irritability, and even cancer.
Mama Z: Thankfully, we have a solution for you, and it’s called Air Doctor.
Dr. Z: Air Doctor’s ultra-HEPA filter is one hundred times more effective than ordinary HEPA filters. And it’s able to capture 99.99 percent of allergens and pollutants, including dust, pollen, pet dander, mold spores, air-borne germs, bacteria, and viruses.
Mama Z: And the best part is there is not installation required. And you’ll be able to smell the difference in your home in minutes.
Dr. Z: As a special gift to our Natural Living Family podcast listeners, Air Doctor is giving you three-hundred dollars off when you buy through our special podcast link.
Mama Z: Simply go to NaturalLivingFamilypodcast.com to find the special links. You can redeem this deal on the show notes from today’s episode.

[27:28 – 35:34] Let’s Talk about Gluten!
Dr. Z: So when we talk about gluten, a lot of this is very personal to us because I’m half Sicilian. My mother and her entire family line is from Sicily. And so we were raised with Italian food.
Mama Z: Right. And I can remember we gardened tomatoes. We would grow them all summer. We would process them as a family. We would cook them down over a couple day process. We would can them and make spaghetti sauce. We looked forward to making our spaghetti and having our spaghetti nights and our carbo-loading nights before speed skating tournaments and all the things that we did that was pasta and Italian based.
Dr. Z: And bread–your mom made a lot of bread–Herbal Breads Cookbook. She wrote a book, Herbal Breads Cookbook.
Mama Z: She did. She made bread almost every day in the kitchen. And that’s the truth, she did. And so I think it’s important. At first, our first transition was we went to organic wheat. And then we dropped that altogether and did sprouted.
Dr. Z: Well, tell about how we found that. And tell us about what happened. Like why did we? It never bothered me.
Mama Z: So what happened was, I had always had a sensitivity to those things when I was little, because when we thought back to it, that would have been in what I was eating on a daily basis that I was having problems with growing up. And so, you know, later when I had Esther, when I would have the Ezekiel Bread even, then the next day Esther, her bottom would break out from breastfeeding. And I was just breastfeeding her.
Dr. Z: Open diaper rash sores.
Mama Z: Open sores. Like I would wipe her bottom and it would run with blood. It was terrible.
Dr. Z: It wasn’t like oozing blood. We don’t want to get too graphic. But it was like think bed sores on an elderly patient in a hospital kind of thing. This was on a baby’s bottom.
Mama Z: It was bad. Right.
Dr. Z: And we didn’t feed her. She was a hundred percent breastfed.
Mama Z: A hundred percent breastfed for the first solid year of her life. All of our children were. So seeing her bottom like this, our midwife said, “This looks a little fungal. But, you know, you probably don’t have a lot of like the wheats and stuff like that in your diet.” And I’m like no, because everything we have is sprouted and stuff like that. And I was even sensitive to that.
And there were two other things that we had had that was a very small amount. And we looked at every package that we had in our house. I remember. And there was this cornmeal pizza crust that we would get that was gluten free. We felt that was gluten free. It was allergy friendly. But it did have wheat and trace amounts of dairy in it. And that was one of the other things. And then there was one other thing. I can’t remember what the third thing was. And as soon as we cut that out, immediately gone.
Dr. Z: It was like the day after.
Mama Z: Yea.
Dr. Z: It’s something that just still boggles my mind. It’s just amazing.
Mama Z: And every one of our children were like that.
Dr. Z: Yea.
Mama Z: And I remember Isaiah, we would set him down for his nap in his full clothes, because a lot of times he would have that same kind of reaction that I had as a child.
Dr. Z: And he would have diarrhea.
Mama Z: Yes. And then I kept seeing these little sprouts and these little pieces come out. And I realized, I wonder if it’s the bread, you know. I remember, I wonder if it’s the bread, because you would seek the little millet.
Dr. Z: And he wasn’t digesting it.
Mama Z: He wasn’t digesting it. As soon as we switched bread, it was done.
Dr. Z: So a question that I pose to the anti-gluten, anti-grain world is this notion of the Italian paradox.
Mama Z: Yes.
Dr. Z: It’s something that we’ve shared this now quite frequently as we speak on documentaries or tele-summits or interviews. And we always get a resounding, “Oh yea. I know someone like that. Or that happened to me.”
Mama Z: Right.
Dr. Z: So there are documented cases of people who are diagnosed as celiac. Again, we’re not talking about gluten sensitive. We’re talking frankly flat out allergic to gluten. And they go to Italy, and they eat freely. Like they eat the breads and the pastas, and they are fine. Where if they were in America, that could potentially cause an anaphylactic attack or death.
And so what’s known as the Italian paradox leads us to believe that maybe it’s not a true allergen to gluten per se, but an allergen to something that might be in the gluten, or maybe the unnatural amounts of gluten. And here’s something that a lot of people don’t realize. Gluten is what makes your breads and your baked goods gooey. And they make them soft and fluffy.
Mama Z: It keeps the bread together.
Dr. Z: Yea. And the breads that we have now are much different than the bread that our ancestors ate. Again, we probably wouldn’t want to eat the bread that Jesus ate. It was probably very dry. It was probably more dense. Our bread we want to be floating in the air. I mean just think about our standards now. Everything has to be white, right? White is right for a lot of people. That’s not correct, by the way.
And so when you look at what’s happened, gluten-containing products, wheat and a lot of the barleys and ryes and spelt, have been hybridized to produce more gluten. So they are unnaturally growing food to create more gluten in it so they are tastier and gooier. And that’s not what they’re doing in other countries. When you add in the fact that we talked about earlier, glyphosate, Roundup, they’re desiccating the farms. And they’re creating this just mess, this chemical soup of bad things in the wheat.
My question is, and we don’t know the answer conclusively, but are people allergic to gluten, or are they allergic to the ungodly amounts of gluten that are in their food? Or are they allergic to the pesticides that are in the food? But either way, a lot of people find great relief, and we have, too. We have found great relief with reducing the gluten in our diet, especially in America, because it’s really, really hard finding good grains in America. It is.
Mama Z: And my body has changed over the pregnancies and stuff that I’ve had. And the last time, it was by mistake. I had almost like my throat was closing in type of feeling. And that was a couple of years ago. And somebody didn’t know that I had said I was allergic. I gave my list. And I remember the feeling of like my throat closing in. And I had never had that before, like I had never had that feeling. But it was like a very helpless feeling. And then I realized what was going on. And so, yea, it’s like you don’t know what’s first, the chicken or the egg, you know.
Dr. Z: And you have a lot of vegetarian/vegan foods that use gluten as a staple for meat.
Mama Z: Yea, I remember we went to Om Café in Ferndale, Michigan.
Dr. Z: I love vegetarian restaurants, yes. Seitan, not satan; it’s seitan.
Mama Z: Yea, you would get that.
Dr. Z: What’s seitan?
Mama Z: And you were like, “Oh my goodness. All my gluten-free friends would hate this, because this is likely gluten.”
Dr. Z: It is. It’s a meat substitute.

[35:35 – 40:36] Why “Gluten Free” Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Healthy
So what vegans are doing, they’re using as a meat substitute, they’re like putting barbecue sauce on gluten. That’s exactly what’s happening out here, so whether it’s in the breads or your vegetarian food or whatever it might be.
Mama Z: And we eat a lot more plant based than the average person. I haven’t even had meat myself in months. And I don’t even know the last time. And so I think it’s important to note, like I had seen an article that said when you’re looking at all your gluten-free substitutes, is that really better? In some cases it’s not when you look at the unnatural things that are in some of the things to replace things in a completely vegan or vegetarian lifestyle.
Dr. Z: Yes.
Mama Z: When you look at some of the things out there that are meat like, proteins and stuff that they have, whether they’re made from mushrooms or this or that, a lot of times there’s sugar in there. A lot of times there’s a whole slew all of these other ingredients that are not natural, that are then in the products.
Dr. Z: Yea, most gluten-free foods are trash. They really are. There’s a lot of danger of gluten-free foods right now because it’s a multi-million dollar industry that people are trying to capitalize because so many people are “gluten sensitive.”
Mama Z: Yea.
Dr. Z: But, you know, it’s about balance.
Mama Z: It is.
Dr. Z: It really is about balance. And it’s about knowing what you’re doing. And you know what, when you’re talking about Ezekiel Bread, which by the way I love Ezekiel Bread. I think Ezekiel cereal is really good for me and my body. But one ingredient, if I recall, at least time I checked, was gluten as the ingredient in the bread.
So here’s what I’m challenging y’all to do. Look at most breads. Go to the store, wherever it is, be it your favorite Wal-Mart or Whole Foods. And just pick up a regular bread and look at the ingredients. And if you see gluten in the bread, you’ve got to ask yourself, why are they adding that gluten into it? Like what’s wrong with the wheat by itself? What’s wrong with the rye? What’s wrong with the grain?
Mama Z: I’ll never forget the very first time I made–you know, I was like I’m going to get this down, okay. And so the very first time I made a loaf of gluten-free bread in the bread machine, the loaf was one inch tall.
Dr. Z: Epic fail! Hah, hah, hah!
Mama Z: Everything was in there for an entire loaf, and it was one inch tall. And so I had to start getting smarter than the bread. I’m like, no, you are not going to beat me on this.
Dr. Z: And you gave it to me, and I had to be like, “Yes, I love it.” And I would down it with a lot of
Mama Z: It was good.
Dr. Z: It was good, right.
Mama Z: But you’re eating one loaf of bread in like two slices.
Dr. Z: It was so dense. One bite was a meal.
Mama Z: It was so dense!
Dr. Z: Lord help me!
Mama Z: I think one of the times I had to make stuffing, okay. And all I needed was like a loaf of bread. So I had to make like four loaves in order to like equal like a loaf of bread. I needed a certain amount of cups, and I kept making another loaf and another loaf. And I’m like, no way. I’m going to figure this out. So like one stuffing had like six loaves of bread at least in it.
Dr. Z: And you did it. You figured it out.
Mama Z: I figured it out. But, you know, I found that some of these older tools are great for gluten-free if you don’t use them for the final baking product, because gluten-free baking makes the rising thing go on its own terms, on its own time schedule. And so I found utilizing the bread dough feature on like our machine was one of the ways that I could get around that, and then really have it have its own time to do what it needed to do.
Dr. Z: Yea. And the same thing with reduced gluten cooking and baking, because that’s what spelt flour, something we like to use a lot.
Mama Z: Sure, yea, low gluten. I mean if you’re not celiac, an organic, sprouted spelt. I can’t do exorbitant amounts of it. But if I make one of our pizzas with it every so often or whatever, we’re fine. And for people who don’t have that who are looking for a healthier alternative, that is one of the options. So in our gluten-free Italian class, we have all these gluten-free options. And then we have a gluten-friendly option of the pizzas, as well.
Dr. Z: And we want to give you a sneak peek into the class.
Mama Z: Yea!
Dr. Z: You could watch a half an hour cooking show from Mama Z, by Mama Z.
Mama Z: Yea, awesome!
Dr. Z: And all you’ve got to do is go to MamaZItalian.com. And just sign up and you get instant access. And watch Sabrina make three of her favorite gluten-free Italian recipes.
Mama Z: Yea, come join me, and cook in my kitchen with me.

[40:37 – 45:26] Finding YOUR Place of Balance with Gluten and Grains
Dr. Z: So the thing about gluten as well, for sure, just again the concept is gluten isn’t of the Devil. And what we’ve done in America is we’ve just unnaturally added an excessive amount of gluten. And this goes back to anything. Anything out of God’s design, anything out of balance will hurt the body. So when you’re going to get your bread, and you see an ingredient as gluten, in addition to gluten containing grains, just think again. Our ancestors never had the ability to extract gluten at the microscopic level to add it as an ingredient, right?
Mama Z: Right, yes.
Dr. Z: They didn’t even know what gluten was. They just knew that if you added some things together, it made a good bread. So the bottom line is like the Bible has said, man’s wisdom is foolishness to God. And that’s what’s happened time and time again. So for people, here’s what’s happened now. Because we’ve essentially poisoned ourselves with too much gluten, a lot of people have become gluten intolerant.
Mama Z: Yes.
Dr. Z: They’ve become sensitized. We talked about this last episode. And we cover this in super great detail in our essential books and master classes. But there’s something known as sensitization. If you don’t dilute an essential oil, for example, and if you apply that oil straight on your skin, some people, many people in fact, have developed what’s known as a contact dermatitis. You actually develop a skin allergy to that essential oil because of the high concentration of plant-based compounds. That’s why you have to dilute it.
So the concept is this. And it makes all the sense in the world. You don’t have to be a science buff to get this. When you introduce something in unnatural proportions, like extreme, the body doesn’t know what to do with it. So the body will essentially shut down and create a barrier of protection.
And so an allergy is a good thing. An allergy says whoa, way too much, stop! And that’s where you itch. And that’s where the hives come into play. And that’s where the burning and the rashes come into play. Just like if you were to touch a hot stove, your hand burns. It’s telling your body, “Oh no, that’s too much heat. Stop!” Burning is a good thing. It’s a sensation.
So don’t look at an allergy as a bad thing when it comes to this stuff. It’s telling your body this is too much. So people have developed gluten allergies because they’ve introduced too much gluten into their diet. And we have seen this. Again, look historically. My grandma and grandpa didn’t deal with gluten intolerance.
Mama Z: Yea, most people’s didn’t.
Dr. Z: My mom and dad didn’t either until they started getting into their twenties, thirties, and forties. Something happened. And we know what happened. We can thank Wonder Bread. We can thank a lot of the junk processes that we know that create farming now. All this stuff happened in the 1950s and 60s and 70s. And essentially we’re now victims of what happened in our parents’ generation and just late end-state grandparents’ generation.
So for our kids, many of them don’t even have a chance. I mean they’re just born, and there’s gluten in their infant formula. And they’re fed bread after a few months. And they just don’t have a chance.
So if you are gluten intolerant, you can reverse it. You can reverse it. And one way is by eating low gluten grains, like sorghum, quinoa, millet, oats, buckwheat, amaranth, teff, and corn. And those are ancient grains.
Why I said low gluten is because every grain contains gluten, by the way. It’s a matter of it’s gluten 1a, 1b, 1c. A lot of people don’t even realize that. There is no such thing as a pure, true, gluten-free grain, all right. There are microscopic levels of gluten, but it’s in their natural form. And it’s typically the gluten that causes the allergy, which I believe, off the top of my head, is like gluten 1a is like the chemical structure.
So there are ways. And, you know, there are some really cool easy tips that Mama Z has created that you can get not only in our book, The Essential Oils Diet, but in her Italian class, because you can truly enjoy gluten-free food.
Mama Z: Yes, and you know, like we’ve said before, fifteen years ago there wasn’t the kind of products that they have on the market now.
Dr. Z: No.
Mama Z: And, you know, we love the almond pasta. Of course, there’s the gluten-free brown rice pasta. But there are so many different options, whether it’s fresh or dried. And it’s great. And like we make a lot of stuff at home from scratch as well. But it is comparable to those things. So when you’re talking about like an almond fettuccini noodle that tastes amazing, and people are like, “No way! This is gluten-free?” because they think that gluten-free pasta needs to taste like cardboard.
Dr. Z: Nope.

[45:27 – 48:52] Natural Living Tip: How to Cook Gluten-Free Pasta Perfectly Every Time!
Mama Z: And for the most part, if you’ve done gluten-free pasta and treated it like regular pasta, chances are you came out with one big block, you know. It’s like I poured it in. I didn’t stir it. You know, you could do that with regular traditional pasta. And so, it’s really important to make sure that you learn how to do that properly.
Dr. Z: Yea. You know what? To wrap up today’s show, let’s give them a natural living tip that teaches them how to cook gluten-free pasta style.
Mama Z: Absolutely. So when you cook gluten-free pasta, no matter what, if it’s almond or brown rice, organic gluten-free pasta, and there are some other ones out there. But what you really want to make sure that you do is you want to take your water and not just salt the water, but you also want to make sure that right before you put the pasta in the water that you put a level of olive oil. So when it goes in, it kind of coats it. And then you want to stir right from the start.
And really when you boil your water, you want to turn it down some. Where with regular noodles you might have that at a level eight, you are going to really want it more like a level six. And if it says seven to ten minutes, usually you really need to turn it off there at seven minutes. You can let it rest if it needs a little bit more time.
But if you’re going to be then putting it in the oven, you want to pull it off right away. And keep stirring it really one to two minutes between stirs, because when you do that, then you’re really going to separate everything, because as soon as it gets that opportunity to glue together, it will glue together. But I have found as soon as you do that and you empty it then right away after that period, then you rinse it, and then you put it right back into the pot.
And then you need to add olive oil or an oily sauce or something that you are making to it, because what happens is that even if I put olive oil on it, an hour later it will have already sucked it up. It will suck up what you put on to it. So one of the tips that I always say is if you’re going to make it ahead, either make your sauce with a little bit more olive oil or olive oil soak it first and then add the sauce. And then lightly toss it.
You don’t want to break any of the pasta when you’re putting it in the water, because what will happen is it will be even smaller. And then it will break apart into little like one-inch bits. So nobody really wants one-inch pieces of spaghetti unless you’re serving it to your infant. You know what I mean?
So that is one of the biggest tips that we use. And I guarantee if you try it, you will have great tasting pasta. For more awesome gluten-free cooking tips, you can go to page 206 of The Essential Oils Diet and actually get my kitchen makeover. And then you can start making over your own pantry.
Dr. Z: And don’t forget, as a special gift to our Natural Living Family podcast listeners, Air Doctor is giving you three hundred dollars off their portable air purification system, so that you and your family can enjoy pure clean air in your home all day long.
Mama Z: Simply go to NaturalLivingFamilypodcast.com to find this special link so you can redeem this deal on the show notes from today’s episode.

[48:53 – end] Episode WrapUp
Dr. Z: Well, yea! I hope you guys enjoyed this one, kind of hitting a bee hive here, to let people know, yes, you can have your gluten-free cake and eat it, too.
Mama Z: So what’s your favorite cake, gluten-free cake?
Dr. Z: I don’t know. I’m a cookie guy.
Mama Z: I know you’re a cookie guy. But you like cake, too. I’ve seen you with some cake.
Dr. Z: You know, I like my cookie cake. Hah, hah, hah. Folks, thank you so much for listening. We hope that you enjoyed this show. As a reminder, you can find all of the Natural Living Family podcast episodes, show notes, transcripts on NaturalLivingFamilypodcast.com. And while on our website, don’t forget, sign up for our weekly podcast newsletter, which includes a personal invite to join our private Facebook group, so you can connect one on one with Mama Z and me. And you can also meet thousands of natural living lovers just like you. And don’t forget, please subscribe to our podcast and leave a review. We love hearing what you have to say about our show.
Mama Z: Absolutely.
Dr. Z: Well, as always, this is Dr. Z.
Mama Z: And Mama Z.
Dr. Z: And our hope and prayer is that you and your family truly experience the abundant life. God bless y’all.
Mama Z: Bye, bye!