ginger tea & lemonade

Ginger Tea and Honey by dj345, on Flickr

Stage 1 GAPS requires both ginger tea and water with lemon (what the rest of us call lemonade!)

The only allowed sweeteners are raw honey and unrefined green stevia powder (Dr. Campbell-McBride is suspicious of the white refined powder).

As it happens, I have lots of dehydrated stevia from my garden, so that's covered, though it's available to buy when I run out. I have both raw honey (from my farmer's market) and a big pile of lemons (from a grocery sale) on hand. I will be picking up and pregrinding a bunch of fresh ginger root next week, though might move to dehydrated depending on how annoying this chore becomes.

And I have tea balls, though I originally got them for making bouquet garni in recipes calling for whole herbs.

All the recipes following are for 2 quarts, which I am considering 2 servings as I fill up my water bottle as few times as possible.

vitamin A

Retinol or Vitamin A 3D space model (balls model), by YassineMrabet, on Wikimedia Commons

There is just so much confusion on this topic that as a chemist, I decided to set the record straight.

Vitamin A comes in a number of forms:

retinol

vitamin A; the normal form that is stored in the body; chemically it contains an alcohol functional group

retinal

the form actively used by the eye; chemically, a reduced form of retinol containing an aldehyde functional group

retinoic acid

acts as an important hormone-like growth factor; chemically, an oxidized form of retinol containing a carboxylic acid functional group

retinyl palmitate

the form found in animal foods; chemically, an ester function group joins retinol to palmitic acid (the most common saturated fatty acid)

alpha-carotene, beta-carotene, gamma-carotene and cryptoxanthin

the provitamin A forms found in plant foods; the thesis of this post is that these are not "real" vitamin A, though useful nutrients on their own

So first, let's take a look at the various forms of vitamin A...