30 Favorite Hashimoto's Recipes - Carrie Korem, FNTP

Your diet plays a huge part in Hashimoto’s and in thyroid disease in general. Here’s a collection of 30 of my most popular Hashimoto’s recipes over the last 16 years!

Here’s a quick list of foods to eat and the ones to avoid if you have Hashimoto’s:

1. All vegetables are great, just make sure to eat them cooked. One of the root causes (there are always multiple root causes) of Hashimoto’s is some sort of gut issue, so cooking the vegetables instead of eating them raw helps make digestion easier.

Cooking also helps reduce goitrogens (in vegetables such as kale, Brussels sprouts, etc.) which can inhibit the uptake of iodine into the thyroid. Cooking your vegetables also reduces the oxalates and lectins. So, if you cook them, you don’t need to worry about any of those things.

2. Pastured Butter and Animal Fats – Butter contains omega-3s, a highly absorbable form of iodine, and vitamin A, which are all crucial for proper thyroid function.

3. Wild seafood and sea vegetables – The thyroid needs iodine to make thyroid hormones, and wild seafood and sea vegetables are both great sources of iodine.

4. Pastured Meats – Meats such as beef, chicken, turkey, game, and organ meats contain vital nutrients such as Vitamin A, folate, Riboflavin, B6, B12, Magnesium, and zinc, which are all important for proper thyroid hormone balance.

5. Meat Stock – Meat stock, rather than bone broth, is a good food to be consuming during the early stages of healing the gut and balancing the thyroid. Stock is especially rich in gelatin and free amino acids like proline and glycine. These amino acids, along with the gelatinous protein from the meat and connective tissue, are particularly beneficial in healing the connective tissue in the lining of the gut.

Bone broth is different from meat stock because it’s cooked longer and contains higher amounts of various amino acids. I recommend only drinking meat stock for the first 4-6 months and then switching to bone broth.

6. Organic, Pastured Eggs – Eggs contain about 16% of the iodine and 20% of the selenium needed in one day. I realize that most elimination diets restrict the consumption of eggs, but in our practice, we’ve found that unless someone has a documented egg allergy, pastured eggs can often be an important part of a thyroid healing diet.

7. Cultured and/or Raw Dairy – Dairy is another food that has gotten a bad reputation in recent years. Of course, we always want to stay away from factory-farmed and processed dairy, but cultured and/or raw dairy can be a healthy part of a thyroid-healing diet. These foods are rich in omega-3, Vitamin A, Vitamin D, Magnesium and B Vitamins.

8. Fermented Vegetables – Just 1 tablespoon of fermented vegetables such as sauerkraut contains millions of probiotics. It’s a wonderful food to add to each meal to help build up healthy flora in the gut. You can make sauerkraut at home (it’s actually very easy!), or purchase at your local health food store. A good one to get started with is the dill pickle kraut from Farmhouse Culture. This is great food for the kids to eat as well!

9. Soaked Nuts, Seeds, Legumes and Lentils – All of these foods are good options, but they do need to be properly prepared (aka soaking, spouting, fermenting, etc.).

For a much deeper dive into the foods to eat and avoid when you have Hashimoto’s, tap here.