Celebrating Easter with Body Ecology Diet (B.E.D.) 🦋

Celebrating Easter on Body Ecology Diet 🦋

Tara Carpenter, NC.

Nutrition Consultant helping people regain natural gut microbiome after yeast, bacteria, and viral infections.

Originally published March 21, 2012.

These alternate Easter ideas are for people of all ages on Body Ecology Diet (B.E.D.), a gut healing protocol designed to balance yeast, viral, and bacteria overgrowth. I started B.E.D. when my boys were 2 and 7, key years for celebrating holidays (and building bones and body!), and found Easter by far the easiest holiday to get through as a mother!

Food is central on Easter, esp. sugar and man-made color. Going without either is easy or not depending how old the kids are and what they are accustomed to. My children attended Waldorf school in their younger years and so they were exposed to far less “mainstream culture/way of eating”. In this way my life was easier as a mom healing with B.E.D. principles. I only had to stretch so far to adapt to what my kids observed at school as their peers tended to be from similar nutritional-minded families who supported a sugar-free, artificial colors/dye-free learning environment.

When my oldest started public school he became harder to please as he wanted to fit in with his peers who wore bright blue tongues from bright blue lollipops rewarded to them for being good boys and girls from the bus driver and teachers. I moved with this desire of his and found he would smile from a folded dollar bill hidden in plastic eggs. This took the sting out of what he was not getting, like food dye and sugar ridden candy!

Easter is a time of regeneration and I am glad, whether following this diet or not, to encourage treats that promote health for my family. Celebrating Easter with B.E.D. doesn’t have to be boring; you must only put more creative thinking into the holiday before the day approaches.

I hope the list below makes your holiday fun and please comment on how you celebrate the day. We learn from each other; ideas below are ‘gluten, refined sugar, pasteurized dairy, yeast-free’ and most are stage 1– approved. I put (*) next to those best reserved as an occasional treat or for stage 2. If you have an autistic child, here is a dad’s guide.

Toy Treats

Fill plastic eggs with stickers, balloons, treats, coins, trinkets.
Buy a small Lego set, divide pieces into plastic eggs; mark each egg with a name or # so kids can complete set.
Make these beautiful embroidery floss Easter eggs.
Wrap play dough in wax paper and tie up with a small Easter cookie cutter tucked in the bow.
Silly Putty eggs add excitement!
Plan a backyard scavenger hunt and strategically hide eggs with clues and actions they must complete to reach end. Instead of hiding a treat in eggs, hide a clue to lead the hunters to next egg. At end of hunt, you can hide a larger gift (i.e., kite, board game).
Put a bottle of bubbles in the basket.
A coloring book and box of sharp crayons is fun no matter our age.
Wrap stage 1/2 treat for basket or as a filler for plastic eggs.
Oriental Trading Company has tiny trinkets+ pig erasers 🐖

Food Treats

Deviled chicks for brunch using homemade mayo and pasture eggs.
Turn buckwheat pancakes into flowers, lambs, butterflies with cookie cutters and smother with cultured butter and lakanto.
Shape stevia chocolate in silicone molds to make bunnies and pops.
Dye eggs naturally without man-made colors (my favorite!).
Toasty coconut truffles are the perfect size to fill a plastic egg.
Cinnamon kisses … little loves of butter.
Carrot cupcakes in baking cups; use small muffins for small hands!
Breakfast on eggs in pepper rounds recipe (omit cheese on stage 1).
Roll coconut cookies or almond cookies into lambs, flowers, and bunnies.
Orange carrots in green lima bean hummus (omit tahini) in tiny terracotta pots.
Tray of almond hearts or other shapes.
Sunflower seed cocoa truffles packed in tiny boxes from party store.