The COOKWARE you use is a highly underestimated and integral part of your food and nutrition.
Find out why most cookware is toxic and vulgarising the quality of your food and get an insight into the healthiest cookware on the planet and how to optimise your nutritional intake.
DISCOUNT CODE for listeners of the Vital Veda Podcast for Miriams Earthen Cookware: mec10vitalveda
ABOUT OUR GUEST: JAMES SWANWICK
From a very young age, Miriam believed that in order to enjoy a healthy life one must maintain a positive interaction with the environment.
Her love for people and environment was the motivation in creating a unique line of cookware made from the purity of nature. One that is timeless and yet as new as tomorrow – All-Natural clay cookware!
About 8 years ago, her own personal encounter with diabetes and the realization that the world around only seems to be getting sicker every day, set her off on a journey traveling the world looking for healing in the most fundamental of place – our food. Her research led her to know the damage to food because of cooking in the wrong pots and pans, and so her search continued, now with more direction, to find the way to cook food without damaging it’s worth. After testing cookware made from every kind of material, from the most expensive to the least, she discovered that All-Natural clay – nature’s own gift – has been from time unknown and still was, the safest and healthiest! She then returned home to create her own line of pots and pans made from this material without any additives and no compromises to purity and strength. Miriams Earthen Cookware was born from this labor of love.
Today Miriam can be seen working on creating machine jigs and tools to efficiently create new products for her line, and on expanding marketing, but her hand is still in the clay, spinning utility and beauty from this wonderful gift of nature. She will also be the first to let you know that her vision and mission is a reality today greatly because of her team of hard-working and skillful individuals and her supportive family, to whom she is always grateful. Miriam is a graduate of Psychology from Women’s Christian College, Chennai India. And the mother of 4 beautiful children.
IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
Table of Contents
The Three Pillars of Health According To Ayurveda
Food (ahara) is one of the three pillars of health (Traya UpaSthambha) according to Ayurveda. Food nourishes your tissues and sustains life!
You NEED to include the cookware you are cooking in.
The healthiest (clay) cookware on the planet!
How Miriam Got into Cookware
She was part of the diabetes pandemic and cured that along with other health issues with healthy cookware!
Miriam’s story
“After the birth of my son, when he was about 8-9 months old, I started getting clear dreams between 3-4 am of making cooking pots from clay, pure clay and just clay without any chemical additives. The ideas flooded in, images, descriptions… I had to wake up and take notes.”
Miriam’s extensive search for the purest and healthiest cookware in the world.
Miriam’s work attracted religious leaders and experts from all fields.
The Epidemic of Diabetes in the World, Especially India and USA
- About 50% of the world population of diabetes is in India.
- One million people die a year from diabetes in India.
- 85% of Americans are pre-diabetic.
Different Types of Cookware Materials
Teflon – containing toxins like Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA) that can kill birds just from the fumes from heat.
Non-stick coatings – Toxins like Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA), Lead, Cadmium, Arsenic, Feldspar, Petalite (an ore of lithium) from the non-stick coating.
Our minds are not meant to remember these chemical names.
Aluminium – A known neurotoxin. Aluminium foil does not cause this so much but heat, makes this pseudo-nutrients leech out a lot more. Also acidic foods bring the metals out. e.g. tomato sauce.
The Metal Ions/Chemicals Biological Reaction:
- In the presence of heat, they get bound to the food and enter into our digestive systems.
- From their they are booked down along with the food and are absorbed by the tissues of the body.
- Foreign elements activate the immune system to fight and eliminate it. It is an unsustainable and a recipe for immune-dysfunction for the immune system to be working every meal 3-4 meals a day, everyday!
Pure Clay Pots contains all the five elements (PanchaMaha bhutas) and are living entities.
Stainless Steel
- This alloy (a mixture of different metals) is available in different grades, the popular ones (general purpose) are 304 and 316.
- The 304-grade stainless steel contains elements like Chromium, Nickel, Carbon, Manganese, and Silicon.
- 316 also has high levels of Nickel and Molybdenum.
- What is the core – aluminium? When it gets scratched the core comes out.
- All these elements are highly reactive and break down as ions when food is cooked in Stainless steel cookware.
- These combine with nutrients in food and form toxic compounds that are dangerous in the body.
- For instance, a very small amount of concentration of nickel can cause kidney dysfunction, low blood pressure, muscle tremors, oral cancer, skin problems etc.
Cast iron and iron
- Good method to get iron in the body but beware those with excess iron.
- Better not cook food with water in iron.
- High near-infrared heat from the metal = damages delicate nutrients in food.
Copper (Tamra)
- Great to leave water in a copper cup overnight.
- Beware sour and high-level pH.
- It is reactive metal – reacts with other chemicals to create an undesirable end product.
- High near-infrared heat from the metal = damages delicate nutrients in food.
- You lose a lot of steam, which is essentially water-soluble nutrients depleting the food.
Ceramics
- Man-made material made to replicate clay.
- Contains 0-9% a refined form of natural clay (usually secondary clay). – Same with Porcelain and Stoneware.
- They contain many toxic elements.
- Lead in an integral part of the ceramics.
Pots finished with Colourless or Transparent Glazes
- Where you can see the colour of the clay but it’s still glazed and treated with chemicals, oxides and metals.
The Amazing Health and Culinary Benefits of Pure Clay
Pure Clay Breathes
- Exhale – It pulls toxins from the food and pushes it out of the walls of the pot to the outside walls of the pot.
- Inhale – It breathes in oxygen to fortify the food with prana (life-force).
- Like soil self-cleansing and regulating.
Pure Clay is Better for Blood Sugar, Diabetes and Insulin Management
- Damaging heat in conventional cookware destroys the complex (and delicate) carbs and leaves an overload of simple carbs.
- If the pot burns your fingers it burns the delicate complex carbs!
- We need a balanced diet of both simple and complex carbs for optimal insulin management.
- Excess simple carbs require high insulin to break down these carbs into energy which leads to shorts bursts of energy which is a poor way to utilise the insulin hormone.
- Plus there are a low amount of complex-carbs which is low GI and helps the pancreas to produce insulin.
- This miss-management of insulin + low amount of complex carbs causes the body to not produce enough insulin to transport, store & utilise glucose (carbs when digested become glucose), resulting in a condition with excessive glucose in the blood — diabetes!
The food-friendly heat of pure clay pots gently cooks the nutrients keeping intact both the simple and complex carbs, and the essential vitamins and minerals.
Complex carbs are more sustained energy, so energy levels are optimised.
Losing Weight from Cooking in Pure Clay
Keeping the Food’s Nutrients Intact – Unique Gentle Heating Mechanism
- Not just that – the heat from these (earthen) pots is different — they cook without destroying even the most delicate nutrients!
- In my experience, the food isn’t so “extracted,” it is kept intact, the nutrients are concealed into one nourishing an delicious dish.
- Harsh, near-infrared heat from the walls of metals and man-made materials like ceramic/enameled/glazed pots destroy a lot of these nutrients.
- Touch a metal/ceramic pot 5-10 minutes into cooking and it can burn your hand, food is also tissue matter and is prone to damage with that kind of heat.
- On the other hand, the gentle far-infrared heat from MEC’s walls penetrates deeply without destroying these important nutrients, all of it taking less heat and about the same amount of time or less (on a gas stove)! – You touch it and it doesn’t burn!
- Study on nutrient retention: 28-30% of the nutrients remain in toor dhal in a pressure cooker vs. 98-100% of the nutrients remain in a pure clay pot.
The Purity of Clay Pots
- The clay is pure and the pots made without any additives. MEC go to great lengths to fully test our clay before harvesting.
- They are made by hand on a high spinning pottery wheel, so the clay remains pure and no additives are needed.
- The clay we use is of the highest quality natural clay called primary clay or MEC’s pure clay™ (rich in nutrients!). It has no metals, oxides, chemicals, toxins.
- Even though we know that primary clay does not have toxins, we test for soil contaminants, the history of the land is evaluated going back 200 years and the clay is verified to be of the highest quality.
- It is harvested from 20-25 feet below the surface.
Steam Condensing: No Loss of Water-Soluble Nutrients
- Most of the steam generated in food is water-soluble nutrients.
- Out of the 13 essential vitamins and minerals, 9 are water-soluble, which means they dissolve in water, is quickly used in the body and needs to be replenished every day.
- Steam leaves the pot also makes the food lighter.
Invigorate with Prana: Cook in the Presence of Oxygen
- As the temperature goes up inside the pot, the higher pressure draws in air through the semi-porous walls, fortifying food with much-needed oxygen.
- This is a stark contrast to food cooked in an airless/lifeless environment in regular cookware.
- Another reason why you shouldn’t glaze the pots.
Miriams Earthen Cookware (MEC): A Green and Sustainable Company:
- Low Cost!
- Green and sustainable.
- Innovating and testing methods of clay preparation, processing, making, finishing, firing, to yield a product untouched by chemicals, additives or contaminants typically used in almost all making methods of cookware.
- Takes less energy – heat and time, to cook the foods.
- Pulp (eggs) – sustainable packing material.
- Carbon neutral.
Holy Clay
Under temples, under churches. High vibratory geographical location. Angels were taught to make clay pots in the Bible.
Clay in The Veda (Ancient Vedic Scripture)
- Kati, Gaurakhatika = clay
- Mrutthika – mud.
- Mrunmauya – pot with clay.
- Ghatam – clay pot.
How to Fry in Clay (Cooking Tips)
Other Food Vessels to Use for Food
Silver, bronze, gold, quartz.
Other Uses of Clay in Ayurveda
Krsna Mritikka (Black Mud)
Cures ulcers, burning sensation, diseases of blood, menorrhagia, mitigates K and P.
Gairika: Red ochre (ore of clay and ferric oxide)
Synonyms: rakta dhatu, gaireya, firija, svarana gairika (more red in colour).
Both kinds:
Rasa (taste) – Madhura (sweet), Kshaya (astringent)
Virya (energy) – Sheeta (cooling)
Gunas (qualities) – Snigdha (unctuous)
Good for: eyes/vision, cures burning sensation, bleeding disease, diseases of kapha origin, hiccup, poison.
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