Cristina Kisner, the Peruvian who has become a benchmark for healthy food in the US.

Cristina Kisner is the creator of the book “My healthy kitchen” (Planeta, 2018), where she teaches nutritious and delicious recipes. All created from scratch and after a long investigation that arose after helping to heal her daughters through food.

food as medicine

“Food is capable of preventing diseases, but also of eliminating symptoms and even reversing them,” says Cristina Kisner. For her, this became a reality when her daughters suffered from allergic rhinitis and she refused to think that medicines were the only way out.

“With my first daughter I started reading a lot about healthy eating. After breastfeeding, I took care to give her the best ingredients during complementary feeding. But she started with a very strong allergic rhinitis. All the doctors gave me the same treatments and there was no betterYoa. We began to give up processed foods and dairy products, we began to buy everything organic, to cook everything at home and I began to investigate the properties of foods and which ones to include, and we saw how the rhinitis disappeared“, remember.

That was the first step and approach to healthy cooking. There was a long way to go, but she knew that food was becoming the medicine that her daughters needed. At that time there was still not so much information or books, but Kisner was looking for a way to create recipes that would allow her family to eat delicious but also receive the nutrients they needed.

When they started school it was a new challenge. “Lunch boxes started. And I had to see what my daughters were going to wear to school. I wanted them to share their lunch boxes with their friends. It was very important to me that her colleagues know about other options as well, because that way there would be less room for junk food. After a while, the mothers of her classmates would write and call me so that I could share my recipes and give them classes. I never thought of teaching. She told them that she wasn’t ready, but they encouraged me. They would go to my house and I would teach them what I knew. I really liked that experience”, he comments.

The second time she confirmed that healthy eating has the power to heal was when she found out that one of her daughters had gluten intolerance. “My second daughter started with headaches, stomach aches, nausea, and chest pain. The gastroenterologist started with several tests and nothing“, Add.

“It was 10 years ago when I told the doctor that it might be gluten and he said it was unlikely. I had to follow my hunch, so I eliminated gluten from her diet, and after a month, the symptoms were gone. So I did a couple of tests giving him gluten twice, and both times, the symptoms came back. I thought: what do I do now? I set about researching everything I could about gluten and its effects on health. In Lima it was not easy to find gluten-free products. There were no gluten-free cookbooks and it was not easy to order on Amazon. At home we all stopped eating gluten, not only to avoid cross contamination but because I learned that it is an inflammatory protein that is best avoided”comment.

Then, she began experimenting to come up with a gluten-free bakery and pastry that her family approved of in taste and texture. And what he prepared was so delicious that when she met one of the owners of the San Antonio bakery, she suggested they do a joint project: Huh Natural & Real Food coffee.

miracles

Cristina knew that food had power over people’s health, for better or worse. Processed food is capable of inflaming the body, and the state of chronic inflammation is the mother of all disease.” Our genes do not determine our destiny, there are many factors that are responsible for activating or deactivating certain diseases, food (and its quality), stress, hours of sleep and also our emotional state, what we think and feel are very important”, indicates Cristina.

Cristina’s eldest daughter was found to have a mass behind her eye that was eroding the bone that connects the eye to the brain. “It is a malignant tumor, they told us (several doctors), we have to operate because the girl needs to start chemotherapy next week“, bill.

During the surgery, according to Cristina, there was a great prayer chain at her daughters’ school and on social networks. When she finished the procedure, she was told by the doctors that it was not a tumor as the previous tests indicated, but a sac full of pus. “We couldn’t believe it. The doctors told us it was a miracle”, he assures.

Then would come the diagnosis of a rare autoimmune disease. “It was a long nightmare, full of problems in the operated eye, skin infections and many symptoms that no one knew how to treat. I started reading about the AIP diet (autoimmune protocol) and I proposed to the pediatrician to do the test. He told me “In truth we don’t have any more tools, do the test, but don’t remove the meat” And so it was. I began to document the entire process with photos. I realized that it was not only a question of what foods to choose, but the quality of these. After 2 months the girl was fine, neither the pediatrician nor I could believe it.”, he argues.

He had already faced several problems, especially related to the health of his daughters, and to this was added financial problems and, according to what he says, they lost everything. “The company, the house, the cars and the girls no longer went to school. It was a difficult time. The last of my daughters was born with a birth defect in the kidney and ureter and her urologist wanted her to be operated on, but we opted for another opinion, this time in the United States; a trip in which we bet everything, also taking advantage of it to look for an option to migrate”comment.

In the US they met a doctor who recommended not operating, they visited all the gluten-free cafeterias in the area and returned to Lima where they recommended giving her daughter cranberry juice. Cristina followed her advice and began to investigate further. “It was as a result of that suggestion that I began to investigate everything that could help her; I started giving him cranberry juice, but concentrated, and I also entered the world of probiotics and realized that the root of all diseases begins with intestinal dysbiosis. By fixing that, the body regains its ability to function properly and heal itself. Find the balance. The microbiota is the basis of everything. But it is not just a matter of giving them any pill (probiotic), it is the combination of a correct diet, and choosing the correct strains and brands as well as the prebiotics that accompany it. It’s been 5 years and she hasn’t had a urinary infection again.” Add.

For her, miracles in life come in the form of people, times and places.

Bottom

As life is full of signs. After her husband, Sebastián, had a heart attack due to the stress of bankruptcy, they found out that a small gluten-free cafeteria that they had liked so much in the United States was for sale, so they decided to bet on it. “We borrow from family and friends in order to acquire the space“, Add. Once they managed to finalize the project, they arrived in the United States in October 2019.

“We arrived with 14 suitcases and the dog. things began to walk but we only sold 200 or 300 dollars a week. With that we bought new supplies to continue selling our desserts and other preparations. The pandemic began and although we did not close here, there was a change. It was a very hard year. We worked from 5 am to 1 am every day and still we didn’t have enough to cover the basics,” he adds.

Despite working almost 19 hours a day, Cristina remembers that she and her husband felt grateful. “We were here, living a second chance, we learned to live with gratitude. When you have so many problems there are two options, either you sink, or you change your way of seeing things. We had debts, many debts and we were doing everything to be able to pay. We were behind in renting the premises, the house. But we were grateful to be working, to be together and healthy. Our clients gave us clothes for the girls and things that they did not wear, we learned to leave pride behind, we learned to receive.“, remember.

come out

His life takes a 180 degree turn when he suddenly appeared Brandon Stantoncreator of “Humans of New York.” The writer and photographer arrived at his cafeteria Cristy’s KitchenRoswell, Georgia. “We help him with his diet. I told him my story and he wanted me to help him. She was going through health problems and the doctors were not getting his treatment right. I cooked for him weekly. He came by once a week to take away all his frozen food.”.

After Stanton feels much better with the food he received weekly from Cristina’s family, he proposed something to them. “He asked me: how are you?, but it was a ‘how are you’ of those who ask you how you really feel. I told him that we were heavily in debt and that things were not going so well. He listened to us (…). ‘I had the best doctors, but you gave me hope, let’s tell your story, there are many people who also need hope’, he told me. And I needed her too”, he added.

Stanton spent several months interviewing Cristina and writing her story, which he published in March 2021 in a 12-chapter/post format on his social media. And in the last post, the American writer raised funds through Gofundme. A little over $1 million was raised. “We were together in the cafeteria as Brandon published the story. At that time, we received a call from a person in Maryland, who told us that his son was sick and that our story had given him hope. Brandon looked at me as I cried and smiled. We had made it. That call was everything to me.”bill.

“With the money raised we were able to repay all the money we owed. We put everything in order. We improved the premises, now we have new projects. The kitchen has been our life. The kitchen saved my family”, he reveals.

He knows that everything they have gone through and faced has been able to overcome it because he has had a great partner by his side: Sebastián. “I can cook, but he is the one who runs the restaurant. My driving force is him. It has been a learning journey. Losing everything in Lima, going through all that nightmare and starting from scratch has been a spiritual journey, learning not to give up, to improve and to move on”.

After the fundraiser, Cristina or Cristy as they call her over there, began to receive invitations to work with her. Since September 26, together with the publisher William Morrow / HarperCollins, her new book “Cristy’s Kitchen: More Than 135 Scrumptious and Nourishing Recipes Without Gluten, Dairy, or Processed Sugars” is in pre-sale.

“I don’t want to sell a book, I want people to read a story of hope. In the book there are many super healthy and delicious recipes, but I also tell you my story. It is a very sentimental book. It is not a success story, it is a story of hope, that miracles exist and that no matter what you are going through at the moment, do not give up because there is always a light at the end of the road. Each step (no matter how ugly and hard it may seem) is necessary for the next one.”he concludes.