Can you imagine eating a hamburger, hot dog, or mom’s meatloaf without ketchup? Okay, even if ketchup isn’t your thing, most of us enjoy our favorite foods with some type of condiment. I have seen hot dogs filled with mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise, soy sauce, and relish. A little ridiculous for me, but surely very tasty for many. It can be extremely difficult not to use condiments, but many of us trying to stick to the candida diet are tasked with facing this same challenge.
The Candida diet is a diet used to treat candidiasis, an overgrowth of yeast (Candida) in the intestinal system. The diet suggests eliminating or reducing a variety of foods and ingredients that exacerbate this condition. Condiments are eliminated on this diet because they generally contain a variety of ingredients that are prohibited on the Candida diet. The biggest culprit is vinegar, but corn syrup, sugar, salt, citric acid, MSG, and artificial flavors are very common ingredients in condiments. All of these ingredients help exacerbate thrush by feeding the Candida. Sugar and additives are common food sources for Candida. This is the reason why commercially available condiments are not allowed on the Candida diet. While we’re not going to allow any hot dogs on the Candida diet because they’re also banned, there are foods we can create, like yeast-free meatloaf, that we may want to use a condiment on. So are there any commercially available seasonings that we can use on the Candida diet? To be honest, I haven’t found many, but I have come up with the following ideas for condiments.
I’m a big fan of Chinese food so I had to find a soy sauce substitute to use with the yeast free Chinese meal I created. Traditional soy sauce contains salt and corn syrup, both of which are problematic ingredients in the diet. Fortunately, Bragg Liquid Aminos is an excellent substitute for yeast-free soy sauce. Contains only soy beans and purified water. It is also gluten free and contains no preservatives.
It’s hard to find a free yeast Ketchup substitute. Ketchup contains a variety of ingredients and spices and when you are used to the taste of Heinz it can be extremely difficult to get used to anything else. I create my own ketchup substitute using tomato paste with lemon juice. This seems to work for me. I’ve searched for a commercially available vinegar-free substitute but haven’t found one, as even the organic variety of ketchup in the store contains vinegar.
Mayonnaise is another condiment that I have not found available without vinegar. However, mayonnaise is very easy to make at home, and homemade mayonnaise tastes much better than store-bought ones.
although I have never done it Mustard It can also be done at home and I am sure it will be adapted for Candida friendly diet. It requires mustard seeds and powder and you can substitute lemon juice for the vinegar.