Foods rich in minerals & trace elements

For optimising dental and other healing and in an effort to make up for previous nutritional deficiencies (yes, including those we may have sustained while developing in our mother's womb, see Minerals and Trace Elements), it seems advisable to eat a nutritious mineral-rich raw-focussed diet based on organically grown food¹, and regularly include seaweed and blackstrap molasses as natural superfood "supplements".

Incidentally, the advantage of using foods rather than isolated mineral supplements to add minerals to one's body is twofold. One advantage lies in the balance of elements provided in foods. While taking isolated minerals and trace elements may be helpful, there is a possible concern of taking too much of a good thing and since these elements tend to "compete" with one another, to actually incur a deficiency in another vital element by overdosing on the one ingested. The other advantage is bioavailability, which in short  is the fact that the body may only or best make use of minerals provided in "organic" form². (In fact there often is a third advantage relating to the fact that generally, foodstuffs are much cheaper than man-made supplements.)

Organic blackstrap molasses:
an abundant source of alkalizing minerals

Organic blackstrap molasses is an abundant source of minerals and trace elements (do make sure you buy organic to avoid pesticides and other noxious elements, if you can't easily get it it would seem best to at least use unsulphurated). Blackstrap seems to owe its high mineral content to its very long roots reaching deep into the earth. Additionally, its mineral spectrum is particularly rich in the alkalizing minerals calcium, magnesium, potassium and iron and thus helps to counteract acidic conditions which seem to lie at the root of many physical ailments including tooth decay.³ In fact, one could say that by eating blackstrap molasses, one is giving back to one's body what one deprived it of by eating sugar and processed foods.

Unsurprisingly considering the importance of minerals and trace elements, blackstrap is credited with numerous health benefits, one of them being that it helps to keep dark hair dark or actually restore its original colour.

Prices in my experience vary greatly but if you shop around (for instance on the internet), you may find some very inexpensive sources of quality blackstrap molasses.

Tips how to add blackstrap molasses to your diet

Personally I use three ways of making tasty recipes/snacks with blackstrap molasses:

• mix with milk (including soy, rice, almond and other nut or vegetarian/non-animal milks), both the colour and taste are reminiscent of cocoa (you may want to try adding vanilla as well)
• eat with yoghurt (perhaps adding honey or other sweetener, particularly the cariostatic xylitol sugar)
• bake molasses biscuits (cookies)
• or simplest, take a spoonful or two first thing in the morning with water.

If you do a search for blackstrap recipes, you will find some other combinations, such as in biscuits/cookies (eg gingerbread cookies), cakes, tea (or mixed with hot water as tea), added to coffee instead of sugar (if you drink coffee of course), smoothies, with baked beans, peanut butter, spread on toast, buttered rolls, on fruit etc. Or simply experiment!⁴

To drown out much of blackstrap molasses' somewhat bitter taste you can mix it with other sweeteners, eg 50/50 with honey - a less tooth-friendly solution but apparently the molasses prevents the honey from crystallizing as quickly as it normally will. Or mix it with any of the tooth-friendly sugars which don't themselves have a bitter nuance.

Seaweed - the richest while inexpensive source of assimilable minerals & trace elements on planet earth

Seaweed in its various forms is a time-honoured natural staple food particularly in Japanese cuisine. It forms an important part of the macrobiotic diet which is credited with a number of health and healing benefits, even in cases of cancer⁵.

Seaweed though a cheap and complete source of all known minerals and trace elements found in the oceans and the richest source of assimilable (bioavailable) minerals on the planet, at least in its raw state (and therefore highly recommended by me), can contain heavy metals (seaweed is actually used as a bioindicator for heavy metal pollution because of its recorded ability to accumulate heavy metals in its cell walls). So when buying seaweed, make sure to enquire about its origin.

Incidentally but importantly, seaweed's rich iodine content helps the body to detoxify fluoride, bromide, chlorine (all toxic halides) and apparently even mercury. (Iodine is additionally credited with powerful anti-cancer and cancer-preventative benefits, more here.)

Seaweed should be available in any health food store. It can also be purchased in Chinese and similarly specialized food stores. I have been warned, however (by a company who provides health food stores with seaweed), that seaweed from Chinese and similar specialty stores may be unsafe since they don't do quality controls re levels of heavy metals contamination. (I think however that the perpetual heavy metal contamination sustained by carrying metal fillings - particularly mercury amalgam - in one's mouth is a much more important issue.⁶)

A seaweed tooth (cavity) healing testimonial

"When I lived on Grand Manan I ate a red seaweed called dulse (harvested in a sustainable manner from a small island in the middle of the Bay of Fundy) by the pound and my teeth were absolutely perfect...no more cavities...but once I moved away and my supply of dulse dwindled...my cavities came back." Dulse (Palmaria palmata) apparently is milder/blander tasting than other types of seaweed. Another red alga is nori (species: Porphyra) which seems to be more commonly found in the shops and actually tastes kind of pleasant (to my taste buds).

Some more info and tips:
how you can easily integrate seaweed into your diet

Tip 1: Purchase the "cleanest" seaweed you can find, grind it up in your blender, pour the resulting blackish powder into a salt shaker or other dish and mix it with some sea salt. Use this mixture as you would normally use salt (in case you do use salt, if you prefer not to use it, simply use the seaweed powder straight as a condiment for a rich daily supply of minerals and trace elements).

Tip 2: For reasons of enhanced bioavailability of the minerals, you may want to try to get raw-processed seaweed.

Tip 3: I sometimes add spaghetti-like seaweed (the one I mostly buy has the natural sea salt still attached to it) to cooled-down noodle dishes or blend it in the blender together with raw vegetables and boiled potatoes cooked in their jackets.

Tip 4: Smaller amounts of non-salty bland seaweed such as nori can also be blended into sweet (fruit-based etc.) and savoury dishes prepared in a blender. They enrich it while leaving virtually no taste "imprint" in the dish.

Tip 5: For numerous recipes with seaweed, you could purchase a macrobiotic cookbook, look for macrobiotic recipes or explore Japanese cuisine.

Extra tip: You can mix blackstrap molasses with seaweed by turning the latter into a powder (just put it into a blender until pulverized), then mixing the two and taking a teaspoon or tablespoon (or whatever feels right) like a supplement. You could also put the mix into a glass of water and drink it (or "disguise" it in a smoothie etc.).

1 while cutting out or minimizing the Foods to handle with caution for the sake of your teeth.
2 For background explanations, see for instance Bioavailability: the science behind “live” and “dead” minerals.
3 Refer to Dr. Herbert Shelton's brilliant insights into caries being caused by an imbalance in calcium metabolism, and for a list of the most alkalinising foods, Acid-Forming & Alkaline-Forming Food Table and this Alkaline/Acid Ash Chart (pdf) which show the foods to favour for balancing the acidifying effects of certain foods, of stress etc.
4 Caveat for haemochromatosis patients: don't take blackstrap molasses if you suffer from this rare "iron excess" affliction.
5 Compare for instance On macrobiotics & cancer healing.

6 More at On the dangers of amalgam fillings and the entire section on Dental fillings.

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