Food and drink keep body and soul together.

22/08/2026 – 28/08/2026  By Uwe Heitkamp

Edition 33.2026

There are foods that help us to lead a better life. I was a meat-eater for many years of my life, even though for just as many years I was deeply concerned that an animal would be killed to enable my consumption of meat. We humans invent other words for ‘killing’, although it doesn’t sound much better in this case, I’m afraid: we kill animals by slaughtering them. I decided I should try to avoid eating meat, but since I had become accustomed to it over many years, it wasn’t easy for me to simply give it up. In the end, an illness helped me. It provided the solution to my problem. And my concern wasn’t just about meat, of course. The shrewd butcher processes meat that he can’t sell so well into sausages and other products and calls them delicacies. And then I finally began to realise that an entire industry had been created around me, encouraging me, day in, day out, to buy food made from ‘dead animals’, bombarding me with it…

Meat and sausages can make you ill, although they might not necessarily do so. In my case, they did. I inherited a condition from my ancestors called gout. And this condition usually flares up when you treat yourself to a beer, or a glass of wine, or eat seafood, and so on. It usually strikes when you least expect it. It wasn’t easy for me to work out what keeps me healthy and what makes me feel ill. Meat! From one day to the next, I stopped eating meat, as well as cutting out all alcoholic drinks – including the local Medronho brandy after meals – and seafood such as prawns and sardines. A particular brand of milk chocolate also triggered gout. And gout is pretty much the worst thing that can happen to a person; the joints in your feet, knees, arms and hands freeze up. Slowly, I turned into a motionless mummy. Each bout of gout was worse than the previous one. I simply could no longer walk. After I cut meat, alcohol and so on out of my diet, my health began to improve …

If, like me, you have consumed all kinds of food for many years without a second thought (just as the vast majority of humanity does), then in old age you will probably start thinking about what you eat, feeling the need to reconsider your diet all over again and learning how to avoid dead animals. You completely turn your life around. It’s wonderful when people and animals are able to live in symbiosis with one another, letting their aspirations and reality come together. You do what you’ve been planning to do for many years but never dared to put into practice. Now you have the chance to follow a consistently meat-free diet – without gout…

For many years, I was someone who loved hiking and walked a great deal. One day, my right foot swelled to twice its normal size. None of my shoes would fit me anymore, not even my hiking boots. I went to the private hospital in Alvor and had my foot examined. They wanted to drill into it, drain the fluid and then seal it up again with bone meal. Following the operation, I asked the doctor who attended me for a written two-year guarantee. Naturally, he refused. I asked him again what guarantees the hospital could give me that the operation would be successful and that my foot wouldn’t swell up again after a few weeks. After all, you get a guarantee for repairs performed at a garage. My right foot had swollen to twice the size of my left foot – a condition known as clubfoot. I sought a second medical opinion at Hospital da Luz in Lisbon and a third opinion from the University Hospital in Zurich, where all the footballers are treated. The doctors there wanted to treat the foot invasively – that is, by drilling into it, suctioning out the fluid and sealing it up again.

I listened to the doctors’ opinions; I read the written explanations carefully and then decided that I would not undergo the treatment these doctors were proposing. Because, in my view, a foot doesn’t just swell up for no reason. I wasn’t convinced by the doctors’ approach. And I decided to adopt a holistic approach, believing that my foot would go down again – I just needed to know how.

I went to Aljezur to see my GP, who has taken various additional training courses. She examined me thoroughly in her own way and suggested I cut out gluten from my diet. Gluten? A protein found in wheat that is used in bread, rolls, pasta and pastries. Gluten, the invisible binding agent, can sometimes cause inflammation…

I have cut out gluten by buying bread made from buckwheat, pasta made from maize flour, and so on. There are foods that can help consumers lead a better life. I’ll be explaining the difference between wheat and buckwheat in the next issue of ECO123, which comes out next Saturday. And that’s not all. I’ll also tell you where in the Algarve you can find the best gluten-free bread, freshly baked. On that note, I wish you all a lovely weekend…