Dr. Johanna Budwig’s Healing Diet & Protocol

The basis  of Dr. Budwig’s oil-protein diet: how to make the flaxseed oil plus cottage cheese/quark mixture & how to make simple homemade quark

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As mentioned, the basis of Dr. Budwig’s diet or protocol is the ingestion of a special oil-protein mixture in the form of organic cold-pressed flaxseed oil plus cottage cheese or quark*. In fact, the Budwig diet is often mistakenly believed to be just about “flaxseed oil and cottage cheese”, likely a major reason why many may feel hesitant to more deeply research it due to its sounding simplistic and hence unbelievable. The fact is that Dr. Budwig was a brillant scientist whose ground-breaking discoveries in the field of human health still await proper recognition. See Who Was Dr. Johanna Budwig?.

Preparation of the Budwig diet flaxseed oil plus cottage cheese/quark mix

This is how the Budwig diet mix is prepared: for each tablespoon of flaxseed oil, add 2 tablespoons of low-fat cottage cheese (or quark). The flaxoil/cottage cheese (quark) mixture should be fully blended until no traces of oil remain visible, proving that the highly unsaturated fatty acids have become water soluble (a hand-held mixer or a blender works well when you add some milk as suggested by Dr. Budwig).
For those who like to go into even more detail: using a measuring tablespoons of 15 ml, the flaxseed oil/cottage cheese (or quark) ratio is about 1:2 by volume (going by weight, the flaxseed oil/cottage cheese [or quark] ratio is about 1:2.4). It seems preferable to rather use a bit more cottage cheese (or quark) than too little. Dr. Budwig used 42 g flaxseed oil (3 tblsp) mixed with 100 g quark in her breakfast muesli, a central part of her diet. 

Low-fat yoghurt and yoghurt quark

Since organic cottage cheese may be hard to find, and if available, may possibly be cost-prohibitive for many, you also have the (less optimal) option of using yogurt. If yogurt is used, 3 times as much yogurt as cottage cheese is required (i.e. for each tablespoon of flaxseed oil, add 6 tablespoons of yogurt) and even then it may not be as effective as cottage cheese/quark because it lacks the protein density of cottage cheese and may not fully mix with flaxseed oil.
Compare Did Dr. Johanna Budwig actually recommend the use of yogurt in place of cottage cheese/quark?

Much better is making your own quark or cottage cheese and use this as a substitute (for additional suggestions also compare vegan alternatives). You can easily make your own “yoghurt quark” by straining the yoghurt until you obtain a firm mass of yoghurt quark. You can strain the yogurt through a kitchen towel, piece of plain white/natural real linen fabric, some unbleached, 100% cotton muslin (old, well washed muslin pillowcases will do), or similar cloth*. Line a colander with the fabric, and let the whey drain out until you have a quark- or cottage-cheese-like mass (make sure the cloth contains no detergent residues or similar irritants/toxins). Make sure to drink the whey, it is packed with nutrients. Alternatively use it in making fermented vegetables or give it to pets.
* You can also use a metal mesh coffee filter which reportedly also works fairly well to drain homemade quark or cottage cheese. Do not for convenience’s sake use paper towels, apparently these have chlorine (and possibly other) residues left in them from the paper-making process.

If you also make your own organic yogurt (using an inexpensive yoghurt maker or any device or setting allowing a (optimally) constant temperature of 108 degrees F to 112 degrees F to be maintained for the time of incubation), you will save a lot of money in the long run. This also will ensure maximum freshness of your yoghurt.

If you don’t have access to yoghurt cultures, kefir might be an alternative, see Making home-made kefir (to use as the basis for kefir quark).

Probiotics

To get maximum health benefits from your home-made yogurt/yoghurt quark, make sure to use a starter culture containing live Lactobacillus acidophilus, Bifidobacterium bifidus and L. casei bacteria. These probiotics or beneficial gut bacteria are part of the healthy intestinal flora necessary for good digestion and immune function and compromised in many persons due to antibiotics (and possibly pesticide and other toxin) ingestion. Among many positive contributions to our health, probiotics also keep any candida albicans (yeast) colonies in check. To make low-fat yoghurt, either buy organic lowfat milk or, if unavailable, leave the milk standing for a while (organic milk normally shouldn't be homogenised, so the cream will rise to the top allowing you to easily skim it off to obtain lowfat milk). More on advantages and benefits of probiotics

Tips from a site visitor’s letter:

“I have been using the flax oil and cottage cheese for a couple of years now (along with ascorbic acid, glucosamine, high co-q10, etc. [please not the caveat re concentrated antioxidants in the FAQ]). We started because one of our dogs has had numerous tumors/cancers and at somewhere around 14 now, he's still doing wonderfully well (the flaxseed mix appears to be the most crucial of his supplements -- when a new tumor presents, if I up the dosage, it starts shrinking within a few days, usually). And now the whole family's taking at least a bit of it -- but I have ongoing GI troubles and cannot tolerate dairy (compare Tips, Suggestions & Testimonials on How to Overcome Dairy/Cottage Cheese/Lactose Intolerance & Sensitivity and vegan alternatives).

So what I do is make my quark out of homemade yogurt, as you suggest, except that I prepare the yogurt according to the SCD (special carbohydrate diet) specs which is to avoid adding powdered milk or anything else besides the culture/yogurt starter and permit it to ferment a full 24 hours. Complete recipe & instructions at scdiet.org/2recipes/scdyogurt.html -- except if you're using yogurt instead of dry cultures as a starter, you should only cool it down to 110 F instead of 100, or the mixture won't be warm enough.

When yogurt has fermented for that long a period, the conversion of lactose to lactic acid is virtually complete, and doesn't present the same digestive problems, even for those with irritable bowel disease, in most cases.

The yogurt comes out nice and firm and it tastes good -- sourness varies with what culture or yogurt you use as a starter. The only one that turned out too sour for me personally was Axelrod's.

A couple of preparation tips. While I used to use an electric blanket, a heating pad and sometimes the oven, now that the whole family/menagerie is eating my yogurt, I needed something more space-efficient in my galley kitchen so I purchased a pair of yogurt makers. I suggest the Salton YM9 1-Quart Yogurt Maker, got a pair for 17.95 each at Amazon.com, free shipping.

Apart from low price, the beauty of this model is that the one-quart plastic soup containers you get free from take-out food places fit inside perfectly, so I can start my new batches as soon as the old ones are finished (use glass to eliminate any worry over using plastic with warm food).

Re: Quark, I find that a real silk chiffon scarf is much better and not as messy as cheesecloth for straining. It crumples up so you can wash it at the same time you're washing your hands, then air dries virtually instantly. Most women will have an old one already on hand, but they're cheap enough in thrift stores and on eBay. Alternatively, those nylon bags they have at the paint store for straining paint work nicely.

Last aside: I have extremely poor gut motility, to the point where I've had two surgeries already and probably need more. For those of your readers who have IBD such as Crohn's or simply suffer from extreme constipation, they may want to consider using Dannon activia as the starter for this yogurt, as the specific cultures in it have most of their activity in the lowest portion of the gut and colon.

It's a bit of a trade-off, as there's no plain version, just Vanilla, which has sweeteners and additives; however, the culture is a small-fraction of the finished yogurt/quark, volume-wise. And these specific cultures, when they've been growing for 24-hours, really work. It's made a tremendous difference to my own quality of life.

As a health crisis often precipitates money problems, I like to pass on any cheap solutions I find.”
 

* Quark is a dairy product readily available in German-speaking countries made from various types of milk and roughly similar to cottage cheese. Dr. Budwig used quark because quark is a traditional food item in Germany, inexpensively sold at every corner and used in a wide variety of dishes, sweet, salty, in baking etc. Cottage cheese (Hüttenkäse) is a relatively recent import (I would estimate it was introduced in the late 60s) and isn't even remotely as popular as quark.

For cancer patients and carers it is highly recommended to buy and share with others Dr. Budwig’s available English-language books.

Vegan Alternatives • Why Organic Dairy
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