I thought about taking a nice picture of some fancy liver pâté, cooked liver and onions, or coconut battered fried liver strips. But if you’re going to add liver to your diet and will be preparing it yourself, you might as well see what it really looks like. Pretty isn’t it? 
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That’s a picture of an oyster I shucked, with some horseradish. Mmmmm
Fish & seafood, especially mollusks, are very nutrient-dense foods. I have been eating fish and shrimp since before SCD but lately I have been trying things like mussels, scallops, fish eggs, and oysters.
Oysters are a great source of nutrients that many people with digestive problems lack. Iron, vitamin D and B12 are often low in people with autoimmune or gut problems and oysters are a great source. Another important nutrient is zinc, which also helps with acne. As someone with a history of low iron, B12 and still struggling with acne, this is a good option for me.
Maybe coming from my experiences eating organ meats once a week, I was expecting it to have a strong (gross) flavour but they were tasty. When I first tried oysters I was scared to eat them raw so I steamed them. They were ok, taste was good but they were a little chewy. Once I got the courage up to have them raw, I loved them. The texture was great, not at all slimy like I thought it would be. Just soft, easy to chew, with the perfect amount of saltiness. Yum!
If you’re not eating organ meats, you should be eating oysters. And if you’re not eating organ meats or seafood, you’re missing out on the best foods!
Although they are relatively low in fat, the fats oysters do contain are excellent with more Omega 3 than 6. Here is a sample Omega fats content of 6 medium oysters:
Omega-3 fatty acids 565mg
Omega-6 fatty acids 48.7mg
Check out the vitamin and mineral levels, again for 6 oysters:
See full nutrition information on the Nutrition Data site: http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/finfish-and-shellfish-products/4189/2
That’s quite a high amount of Vitamin D, B12, iron, zinc, copper, and selenium. Magnesium and other B vitamins are in decent amounts as well. Something that may come as a surprise is the Vitamin C content. Some organ meat and seafood are pretty good sources if eaten raw.
If you want to eat them at home, find a good fish market and ask them when they get their shipments in. Live oysters will keep over a week at refrigerated temperatures but it’s best to get them as fresh as possible. Also ask them where the oysters are from and how they are caught. Wild oysters are best for nutrient levels, and it’s always best to support sustainable catch methods. I get mine in Ottawa from the Whalesbone Sustainable Oyster and Fish Supply or at restaurants that are supplied by them. If you live near the coast, you might even be able to get them fresh at farmers markets. If you can’t get them fresh, you might want to look for smoked and canned oysters, which have a long shelf life.
If you have an oyster knife and know how to shuck them properly (without slicing your hand open) then they’re pretty easy to do at home. If once open they smell bad or are black, they aren’t safe to eat (it’s pretty easy to tell). Here’s an example video showing how to shuck them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzWvvyfB4tw&feature=player_embedded (found through Nutrition and Physical Regeneration).
If you’re squeamish or don’t have an oyster knife, it’s easiest to go to a good restaurant and try them there. Look for a place with oyster happy hour.
Raw oysters are usually served at restaurants with a few choices of spicy sauces. The restaurant I went to told me the ingredients of each and there were none completely SCD-legal (most had sugar, or Worcestershire sauce) so I had them with grated horseradish and a squeeze of lemon juice. They were delicious just like that.
The first few times I tried oysters I just didn’t want to try them raw so I steamed them. Place them all in a steaming pot for about 3-4 minutes. Let them cool enough to handle them. They should be just opened enough to be able to grab with your hands to open them fully. You can use a spoon to scrape out the oyster into a bowl or plate. If they don’t open easily, it’s best not to have them as they might be spoiled. You can cook oysters pretty much any way, grilling, baking etc, I just found steaming them to be the easiest for me. I also like to make a little sauce to go with them if they’re cooked.
Garlic butter sauce
2 tbsp butter
1 clove garlic, chopped
dash lemon juice
Melt butter in a pan, add garlic and saute a few minutes. Add lemon juice and pour over oysters.
Tomato Sauce
1 tomato, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 tbsp butter
salt & pepper
Saute tomato and garlic in butter, add salt & pepper to taste. Pour over oysters.
Check out http://girlgoneprimal.blogspot.com/2009/08/primal-by-beach.html (4th picture down) for a different method and topping. Broiled with bacon and cheese! Can’t go wrong with that.
And if you don’t think kids would like oysters, check out this: http://www.cheeseslave.com/2009/03/22/these-toddlers-love-raw-oysters/
My first year on SCD involved a lot of trial and error and cutting out certain foods. I discovered nuts didn’t agree with me in large amounts. Too many vegetables, even if cooked, would aggravate digestive issues. Too much fruit or honey and I was a raving lunatic craving carbs (even dreaming about them!). So I spent a lot of time cutting out food and narrowing down to a base ‘safe diet’.
The second year on SCD, after reading articles from a number of sources like the Weston A. Price Foundation, I started to change my thinking. Rather than focusing on cutting out food, I realized I needed to add more nutrient-dense food to my diet. I could cut out all the food that irritated my already damaged gut, but until I got enough nutrients to repair and heal that damaged gut, I would not be able to truly be healthy. SCD alone is a very nourishing diet, but focusing on a few key foods can really bring about a lot of healing.
I was surprised when I had been on SCD for over a year and stopped taking B vitamins that I still showed a deficiency on blood tests. I plugged in a decent SCD day’s worth of food into Fitday.com and it was obvious that I didn’t meet all the RDA for vitamins and minerals. For those nutrients I did get a lot of, it was still only a bit above the RDA value. When recovering from illness it’s important to get more of each vitamin and mineral than the RDA minimums. These are levels that are required to not have any illnesses that are associated with low nutrient status. Meeting these levels in your daily diet probably won’t help fix a deficiency brought on by years of eating the Standard American Diet coupled with digestive illness.
I never did well with multivitamins but my doctor and naturopath were always telling me to take them. A multi-mineral supplement my naturopath had me on for a while seemed to be ok and even helped with symptoms of panic attacks. But every multi-vitamin and B-complex vitamins I tried I ended up with urinary urgency and stomach cramping. I have no idea why and my naturopath was a bit perplexed too, but I just didn’t tolerate them. The best I could do was get a liquid supplement and have small amounts of it spread throughout the day. For nutrients I knew I was lacking in often, I got individual supplements and took those most days.
Once I started looking into the nutrient profile of different foods, I quickly found my answer. I looked up liver, kidney, bone marrow, heart, butter, egg yolks, and various fish and seafood. I always thought of animal foods as just ‘protein’. I was surprised at the high levels of vitamins and minerals in these foods. I knew liver was high in iron so I had been trying to eat that often, but I realized that getting a variety of nutrient dense foods would be better than focusing on one in particular.
Please note that I’m not encouraging anyone to stop taking supplements. I just did a lot better once I started eating these foods. If you have a known deficiency or your doctor wants you on a certain supplement, then you probably need to be taking it. I still take a few small doses of vitamins at the advice of my naturopath but I try not to rely on these as the only source of that nutrient. There are so many other nutrients in whole foods that I can’t help but believe they are meant to be eaten as a package. If you’re deficient in something, getting some from a pill and lots from food is probably a good idea!
Incorporating all these nutrient dense foods into my diet has started to pay off at least in how I’m feeling. I have a lot more energy and more steady (lack of) digestive symptoms. Even though lately I have had to tweak my diet again and cut out dairy, I still feel like I’m moving forward and healing more. I will be writing up some profiles of SCD-legal nutrient dense foods that have helped me with healing. I like to believe that if we give our bodies all the nutrients it needs, it might just work properly. I’ll also give plenty of links to recipes featuring these foods, so there’s no excuse not to eat them.
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