Seasonings and the Candida Diet

Can you imagine eating a hamburger, hot dog or mom’s meatloaf without ketchup? It’s okay, even if ketchup isn’t your thing, most of us enjoy our favorite foods with some kind of seasoning. I have seen hot dogs filled with mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise, soy sauce, and seasonings. A bit ridiculous for me, but for sure very tasty for many. It can be extremely difficult to go without seasoning, but many of us trying to stick to the candida diet are tasked with facing this very 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. Seasonings are eliminated on this diet because they typically 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 all very common ingredients in seasonings. All of these ingredients help exacerbate yeast infection by feeding the Candida. Sugar and additives are common food sources for Candida. This is the reason why commercially available seasonings are not allowed on the Candida diet. Although we’re not going to indulge in any hot dogs on the Candida diet because they’re also off-limits, there are foods we can create, like flat meatloaf, that we may want to use a seasoning on. So, are there any commercially available seasonings that we can use on the Candida diet? I haven’t found many to be honest, but the following ideas for seasonings have come to my mind.

I am a big friend of Chinese food, so I had to find a soy sauce substitute to use with the Chinese yeast free meal I created. Traditional soy sauce contains salt and corn syrup, both problematic ingredients for the diet. Fortunately, Bragg Liquid Aminos make a great substitute for yeast-free soy sauce. Contains only soybeans and purified water. It is also gluten free and does not contain 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 have searched for a commercially available vinegar-free substitute but have found none, as even the organic variety of ketchup at the store contains vinegar.

Mayonnaise is another seasoning 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.

although I have never done it Mustard It can also be done at home and I’m sure it will adapt to make the diet Candida friendly. It requires mustard seeds and powder and you can substitute lemon juice for the vinegar.