Food Therapy

Tasty and nutritious: Grilled salmon with steamed vegetables and lemon-miso sauce, accompanied by black rice and miso soup with tofu and seaweed. (Yamamori, Dublin).

Alerts:

1. Miso (made from fermented soya beans) is suspect of being high in histamines, but I (being probably one of the four per cent who are histamine-intolerant) have never found it a problem. Fermentation, in general, causes a build up of histamines in food, but whether this happens in a specific case depends on the actual culture used in the process and the temperature. (The bacteria that make histamine are dormant below 7 degrees centigrade  and not present in all fermentations).
2. Farmed salmon is suspect of being too high in Omega 6, which triggers histamine release. Irish farmed salmon, however, which is fed on fish off-cuts rather than sunflower seeds, and controlled by EU regulation and strict Irish supervision, and never stored above 4 degrees, may be safe. I found no problem with fish at this venue, which is always top quality.
3. White rice is deficient in certain nutrients (Biotin and Lysine?). Beri-beri was endemic in Tokyo in previous centuries, due to high dependence on white rice. (Compare Ireland before the Great Famine, highly dependendent on potatoes and milk, but free of any nutritional deficit). This epidemic was sorted by the introduction of buckwheat into the diet (largely in the form of Soba Noodles, soba being Jap for buckwheat). Brown wholegrain rice and, a fortiori, black whole grain rice is much richer in nutrients than white rice.

Brunch: Spinach Omelette with salad and potato (and Mojo Sauce, olive oil based, green version with coriander and avocado and red version with garlic and paprika, if using the Papas Arrugadas version of potato). (Cafe Milla, Puerto Calero, Lanzarote).

Brunch is the ideal way to end an intermittent fast (8 pm to 12 noon). Normal night fast for us is 8 pm to 8 am. The day sees two main meals. If we have breakfast at 8 am, this is followed by late lunch (between 2 and 4 pm), and evening snack. If we don't have breakfast, we have a drink of chicory, tea or coffee at around 8 am (with a bit of fruit and a knob of butter or cream), brunch at noon, and early dinner (sometime between 5 and 7 pm).

We avoid late night meals (i.e., after 8 pm).