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I did plain chicken and sweet potatoes for a month. No spices, boiled or baked. Water or Green Tea.

Best I have ever felt. Ended six months of whole body agony.

I try and follow AIP these days. (Potatoes aren't allowed, but Sweet Potatoes are.)

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Basil, oregano, thyme, ginger and some other spices are allowed according to AIP though?

They are herbs and not necessarily called spices

I gotta ask: why no spices?

It’s a diet for autoimmune disorders.

Genuinely I’m not quite sure I get the connection. Would spices in general cause issues with autoimmune diseases? Specific spices?

From. https://thrivingonpaleo.com/aip-spices-and-herbs/

What spices are NOT allowed on AIP? Allspice Anise Seed Annatto Seed Black Caraway Black Cumin Black Pepper Caraway Cardamom Capsicums Cayenne Celery Seed Chili Pepper Flakes Chili Powder Chinese Five-Spice Chipotle Chili Powder Coriander Seed Cumin Seed Curry Powder (typically contains nightshades) Dill Seed Fennel Seed Fenugreek Seed Garam Masala Juniper Mustard Nutmeg Paprika Pepper (from black, green, pink, or white peppercorns) Poppy Seed Poultry Seasoning Red Pepper Russian Caraway Star Anise Steak Seasoning Sumac Taco Seasonin

The idea is that the disorders may not actually be autoimmune, but reactions to certain foods.

I have heard Paprika and chili powder, along with peppers in general, doing something with opening the tight junctions in the gut from Paul Saladino but I can’t recall the what the specific issue or mechanism was.

Herbs have all sorts of compounds, many of which are known to interact with the body's immune system.

Loads of studies about tumeric and inflammation, arthritis. Also capsaicin, piperine, etc. The list is extensive.

Remember: Herbs and spices are where medicinal remedies originated.

Deep down, AIP is one of those fad diets that prohibit more things than there's evidence for. It's justified based on some pseudoscientific ideas about certain foods causing autoimmune issues. People might say things about intestinal permeability, but the scientific connection can be a bit sketchy.

Exactly, that's the genius of Indian cuisine: making otherwise bland ingredients (chickpeas, lentils, potatoes, spinach, etc.) taste amazing. I just polished off a simple rice, spinach and tuna dinner. Very tasty thanks to some sprinkling of misc. spices. I could swap out the rice for potatoes and it would probably even healthier.

> the genius of Indian cuisine: making otherwise bland ingredients (chickpeas, lentils, potatoes, spinach, etc.) taste amazing.

How is that different from any other cuisine? Rice, noodles, potatoes, beans, cabbage, fish, meat, chicken all get mixed with spices in almost every cuisine

More than one cuisine can successfully use spices at a time. “Indian food is good” is not the same as “food other than Indian food is bad.”

Of course there are other styles of cooking. Indian cuisine excels at just the complexity of the spice blends they use. Completely the opposite of Italian cuisine which tends to be minimalist in terms of numbers of ingredients. Just a handful of ingredients typically.

As a Dutch person where salt & pepper are considered excessive in some places, quite a contrast. Let's just say I know what unseasoned vegetables and potatoes taste like after they've been boiled to death. Not great.

The comment I responded to didn't mention complexity, only the spicing up bland food.

Also sorry to hear that - boiled vegetables taste amazing to me. Cabbage, onions, broccoli, etc have amazing flavors when you learn to appreciate them. I can enjoy food drowned in spices and sauces, but in my experience "blandness" is often an indication of desensitization rather than an actual lack of flavor, like how people who excessively consume sugar may have trouble appreciating the sweetness in fruits.

It was an elimination diet. See what things were bothering me. Severe migraines and autoimmune issues. I was very desperate at that point.

Sweet potatoes didn't bother me at all, and kept me full.

After a month I slowly started adding things back in to see how I reacted. Made it easy to tell what foods were an issue.

Great that it helped. I was also on AIP for some periods, long ago now though (maybe because it's so hard)

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