I don’t want to have to think in the morning, when I’m a little sleepy and everything’s spinning around in my head. What can I come up with?
Most of what goes into a typical Swedish or British breakfast is wrong, according to the new thinking. Juice, bread, yogurt, cheese, rolls, cereal – none of that works anymore. So I look for something that can become the new breakfast.
I test different things and arrive at smoothies for breakfast. Almond milk, berries, nuts and protein powder. It breaks up our family’s mornings, since my habits are so different.
Snacks are simple: a couple of hardboiled eggs and a tomato; nuts and fruit. But dinner demands more thought.
I was no cook before I became a mother, but once I had children I became interested in cooking to nourish the family and create a happy mealtime. In my old life, it was easy to make food taste good and dress things up with extra butter, sugar, cheese and breading, or by frying, adding good bread toasted with garlic butter, and so on. There were soup and pancakes on Thursdays. My husband cooks just as often, usually with extra everything.
ANTI-INFLAMMATORY VEGETABLES AND MUSHROOMS
Think of the rainbow – purple, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. The more colours you eat every day, the prettier your plate and the more beautiful you will be, inside and out, since each colour represents a certain kind of active polyphenol.
• Asparagus
• Aubergine
• Beetroots
• Pak choi
• Broccoli
• Brussels sprouts
• Cabbage – white, red, cauliflower, green cabbage
• Celery – celery root and stalks
• Courgettes
• Cucumber
• Dandelion leaves
• Endive
• Fennel
• Kohlrabi
• Mushrooms – white mushrooms, ceps, oyster mushrooms, chanterelles
• Nasturtium
• Nettles
• Onion – red, yellow, garlic, leeks, spring onions
• Parsnips
• Peppers – red, orange, yellow and green
• Radishes
• Salad – rocket, iceberg, mâche – go wild!
• Spinach
• Sprouts – alfalfa and all others
• Tomatoes
• Watercress
Certain vegetables, like beetroots, parsnips and celery root, have a higher glycaemic index (GI) value than others. Mix them with vegetables that have a lower GI value, for example beetroots on a bed of rocket with a dressing of vinaigrette and nuts. Perfect!
I still want to eat good food, feel satisfied and enjoy food together with my family, by myself or with friends or colleagues, so I have to become more creative. But I don’t have all the time in the world.
I decide to compromise. I plan meals with food that is natural but with a little glamorous twist. A little more taste, a little more spice, good sauces and dips made of tomatoes, avocado, grilled vegetables, spices, oils and garlic.
The trick is to achieve good proportions. A plate divided into four parts, where 25 per cent is protein, 25 per cent salad, 25 per cent other vegetables and 25 per cent rice or quinoa – more or less.
But there are many challenges.
‘Where’s dessert?’ asks my son, with his big brown eyes. ‘You used to make that good chocolate cake.’
It’s true. Since I started cooking with my new method, I’ve increasingly lost interest in baking big, fluffy cakes. It’s not about body weight but just the feeling that I want to serve my family something other than 2 cups of sugar, which my former prize cake contained.
So I experiment, with mixed results.
‘Sorry, Mum, but this is a failure,’ my blue-eyed son laughs when I serve his best friend some courgette cake.
The friend is too polite to say anything, but he stares listlessly at his piece of cake. A few strips of courgette are swimming around like threads in the dry almond flour.
My brown-eyed son brings his new girlfriend home, and I serve them some protein muffins. I’ve found a recipe with protein powder, sweet potato and almond flour. The new girlfriend smiles but doesn’t take seconds.
My son grunts.
‘What is this?’
It sounds like I have spoiled children, but I don’t. They’re just used to a different kind of food. It’s said that Chinese children don’t like cinnamon buns. Why? Because they never eat cinnamon buns. You like what you are used to. This way of eating is the opposite of how we used to eat, and the change takes time. But I don’t really care; I have patience. I feel happy in some way. It’s not just the spring light. It’s something more – that’s hard to put into words.
Then I find the explanation. Again, by chance.
I’m working on a book that I’ve been thinking about for a long time.
I once had a brother who died. My handsome, mischievous, idolised brother got sick in his twenties and was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a grim psychiatric diagnosis. In 1986, I lost him in a fire in a Stockholm apartment. Through a contractor project I’ve done for Karolinska Institutet, I’ve begun to think a lot about the stigmatisation of mental illness.
Now I’ve decided to write a book that illuminates and looks into the taboo around mental health problems. This also involves dealing with the taboo within myself, the shame that I’ve felt – because mental health problems are looked at differently than physical disease. Aside from the sorrow, there’s this damned feeling of shame that rests over both the afflicted and their loved ones. And that makes us doubly ashamed. We’re ashamed because people we love have a shameful illness, and then we’re ashamed because we’re ashamed.
I root around eagerly in everything that’s connected to this issue. I talk to researchers, read and interview lots of people with different illnesses, as well as doctors and nurses.
While I’m looking through the latest research, a new branch emerges. It has a very long name: psychoneuroimmunology. It’s the study of how mental illness can arise in the brain, and how it’s linked to– here it is again – inflammation. Hmm . . .
In other words, on the one hand there’s a connection between immune defence and inflammation, and on the other hand, a connection to brain health? Fascinated, I look more closely into this connection.
We’ve already mentioned all the foot soldiers that are sent out by the immune system. Among them are the cytokines, triggered by inflammation to show up in huge numbers – something called a cytokine storm. This storm, like a swarm of bees, starts up the body’s defence system in the form of the so-called B and T lymphocytes. But the cytokines also talk directly to the brain.
Let’s say that again. The immune system and the brain talk to each other.
This is