A Better Bagel

Unfortunately, people often associate naturopathic doctors with crazy, restrictive diets. No gluten, no dairy, no fun! Don't tell your ND that you eat a granola bar and coffee for breakfast, because he or she will take those away and make you eat chicken and mushroom brown rice congee with lemon water instead. Lemon water as a replacement for coffee? What a joke. Gahhh, I hope there aren't NDs out there like that (but unfortunately I do know that they exist).  Um, what happened to baby steps? If the patient's breakfast does need work, can't we start by suggesting a good quality granola bar and maybe some raw honey in their coffee instead of refined white sugar?  Baby steps!

We had an exercise in class this week where we did talk about modifying patients' diets. Here is an example of a bagel makeover: 

Say the patient eats a bagel and cream cheese for breakfast everyday. How can we gently improve their breakfast to make it higher in protein, less allergenic, and overall nutrition? By suggesting that he or she instead eat a bagel with soft goats cheese and smoked salmon/lox on top. This substitution has made the bagel much higher in protein, calcium, is less allergenic (goats cheese is more easily digestible than cow dairy), and is actually a bit fancier than regular cream cheese.

Image source here. 

Note: While some NDs may protest the inclusion of a glutinous bagel, unless the patient has a known wheat allergy/sensitivity, a regular 'ol bagel is a heck of a lot better than those gluten-free ones sold frozen. Those ones are practically nutritionally void as they are often made of corn, starches, and other fillers.