Starving my fungus

Today I mourn because I am saying "good-bye" to sugar. I am not counting calories as much as I am starving the fungus that's inside my body. Parasitic fungi, according to Doug Kaufmann, author of The Fungus Link, are living in our bodies and are contributing to a host of ailments, pain, and weight gain. These annoying fungi love nothing more than the fact that we drink and eat things like beer, coffee, and doughnuts.

I actually had not thought about the role of fungi in my body before reading this book. I majored in biological sciences in college, so I tend to think only of fungi as the microorganisms with yellow and red spores that I grew in the "fungi farm" I built in my on-campus apartment for mycology class. But Kaufmann, not surprisingly so, has gathered a host of physicians and diet specialists to support the findings of the role of fungus in our bodies.

Kaufmann prescribes a diet that essentially starves the fungi in the body. I initially learned about this from a friend who dropped an enormous amount of weight in about a month, attributing it to Kaufmann's anti-fungus diet. I weigh a lot more than I want to so I'm going to give it a try.

But there's a problem: I don't mind eating several times a day and drinking hefty amounts of water, but my new anti-fungal campaign means that I am saying "good-bye" to sugar. No more consuming anything fun that might feed fungus---foods and drinks containing fructose, sucrose, or corn syrup; potatoes; products made with yeast; coffee; and much more. No foods or drinks made with yeast! No beer, no wine! This is nuts, folks, but I'll give it a try. The good news is that fat is not a problem, so bacon and avocados are still on the list! The other good news is that the diet is not a permanent eating plan. How boring would that be?

What continues to amaze me is that I live in a country so wealthy that most of us struggle with eating too much and eating poorly. There is an entire health food and diet industry designed to help us manage what we eat. In a few days, right after a few more farewell meals, I will join the ranks of people eating salmon and broccoli and drinking carrot juice while watching baseball games at home and passing on the hot dogs, beer, and milkshakes. Sugar and yeast, farewell for now.