O.K. so that’s a catchy title for excellent content here.

Did you ever wish you could sit down and ask tons of specific questions to your doctor about this raw food idea and get solid answers because They are on the path of  overall health AND they look healthy? (AFTER YOU READ THIS GO TO HER WEBSITE DrRitaMarie.com TO SEE HER PICTURE)  ONE OF MY CHEF BUDDIES WORKS FOR HER.

I found the transcripts for this  interview tucked away and just had to share it because it really sums up a lot of what I spent hundreds of dollars also learning from other experts. I have not had the privilege of meeting Dr. Rita Marie in person but I am taking a course with her on line and she is warm, intelligent and so giving of her time. She has lots of free stuff like recipe books and on line courses that cost money as well.

The RenegadeHealth.com show is excellent and cost nothing to sign up to get constant  information like this with many other experts. Kevin and Ann Marie Gianni are a young married couple living out of an RV and do daily updates on health issues by interviewing people all over the world.

Enjoy and share this wealth of knowledge…….

Renegade Health Inner Circle Interview with Dr. RitaMarie Loscalzo

Kevin: Welcome everyone. This is Kevin Gianni from RenegadeHealth.com. Today is a special installation or special presentation of our Wednesday night call series. Our Wednesday night call series, we broadcast them the third Wednesday of every month. You can listen to them for 24 hours, available for free. What we do is we basically ask your questions to the experts. Very simply done, a very pragmatic approach. I think what happens is that we don’t always have a sounding board to be able to ask our questions. What we do is we bring on questions for you to be able to do that.

Tonight’s guest is Dr. Rita Marie Loscalzo. I had a chance to meet up with Dr. Rita Marie Loscalzo down in Austin. She put on a potluck for us. I think maybe 60 people showed up. A vibrant community down there in Austin that she is a very important part of. She is a chiropractor and she’s been working with people for over two decades. Dr. Rita Marie, when did you get into raw foods, by the way?

Rita Marie: It was back in 1985.

Kevin: Okay. So she’s been at this for a long time.

Rita Marie: A long time.

Kevin: She’s got plenty of different programs that you can check out on her website, which is www.drritamarie.com. Maybe you can even formulate some questions for her while you’re over at the site and listening to us. So Dr. Rita Marie, before I give you an unfair introduction, why don’t you tell us, for those who maybe not know who you are, how you got into raw and living foods and what your background is.

Rita Marie: Great. I would love to share that. It was back in my 20s. So now you can do the math and figure out how old I am. I was sick. I wasn’t feeling well. I was eating the standard American diet, probably on overdrive. I was living the high-life and powering myself on sugar and caffeine. I started to have all kinds of symptoms that I was frustrated that nobody could really provide me with any solutions for, except, “Maybe this drug will help.” Things like sinus problems, headaches and stomach problems and things like that.

So like a little bird in my head said, “I wonder if it’s what I eat. I eat really poorly.” I ate really poorly back then. I just started to ask that question and started to do some research. I was very fortunate in this research and I found various books and things about supplements and things about food allergies. I was playing around and starting to get some results but I really wasn’t getting to where I desired to be.

I happened to run into this man in a gas station. He saw me reading some health book and asked me about it and started talking to me about fasting, about how he had changed his life by going to a fasting center and then following a raw food diet. I was intrigued. He referred me to read “Fasting Can Save Your Life” by Herbert Shelton. I started reading it and then little light bulbs went off in my brain. Wow, I was toxic. What a unique concept. I hadn’t run across it before.

So I went about and did a 28-day water fast and then started eating raw food. It completely turned my life around. All those symptoms were left in the dust. Over the years I’ve refined it and learned more. I’ve certainly had my ups and downs in doing that. I felt like after learning this that I had to share it. There was no way I was going to go back to my computer programming job and just do this stuff and have people think I was weird and not really share it. I decided that I was going to go back to school. I got my degrees in chiropractic and acupuncture and nutrition and herbal medicine and started sharing this. So that’s it, in a nutshell, where I’ve been.

Kevin: Literally, in a nut shell, right?

Rita Marie: In a nut shell. [Laughter] Right.

Kevin: Well, I wanted to get some of the questions addressed because we have a lot of questions and I think it’s most important not to ask my questions but to ask what the listeners want to hear. Let’s start very basic. I’m sure you get this all the time. The question is about protein. “Where do I get my protein in raw food?” This is from Hoka.

Rita Marie: Okay. The answer I always give people when they ask me that is I get my protein in the same place that cows and gorillas and elephants get their protein – from greens. They’re my primary source of protein. What people don’t realize is that green food has a very high percentage of protein and that when you include a lot of green foods – and I do a lot of green smoothies and green soups and salads and things like that. I make crackers in the dehydrator that are loaded with green. I get plenty of protein there. In addition to greens nuts and seeds have a fair amount of protein. Sprouts are an incredible source of protein. It’s never been an issue. I lift weights. I run marathons, do triathlons. I have good muscle tone. I eat a very high percentage of my diet is greens.

Kevin: Great. And you do look like you’re in good shape. [Laughs] It’s not like one of those, “Oh, I’m in good shape” and then you see you in public and it’s like, “Well…”

Rita Marie: “Well, maybe not.” I’m not a scrawny vegan. Far from it.

Kevin: Speaking about vegan, one of the biggest questions was, “What do you think about eating meat?” Instead of just raw veganism, just raw food, raw meat, raw eggs, raw dairy, Weston A. Price kind of thing.

Rita Marie: Well, I think it’s certainly better than eating those foods cooked because of the chemical changes that happen in them. But I still don’t think that they are good foods for human consumption. The dairy is just fraught with problems – the mucus formation, opiates in it, tendency to allergy. But also, just when you think about it from a physiologic, natural-design standpoint, there’s no other species in nature that drinks the milk of another species, especially no adult animals. So why should we be different? I think dairy is a great food for baby cows. I haven’t met very many baby cows recently that have turned into humans.

Some people say, “Well, what about eggs?” Egg is on the top six allergy-producing foods. Part of the reason I believe it’s there is that most of us have been injected when we were very little with vaccines. That’s a whole other talk that we can get into. Part of what’s in the vaccination is albumin, which is egg protein. So it’s no wonder that people have an immune system reaction to it. We’ve been stimulated to have that reaction from a very young age.

The for raw meat, from the standpoint of any raw animal products, you’re really running the risk of contamination, bacterial contamination, in addition to the fact that they’re so acid forming and high in arachidonic acid, which is a fat that’s highly inflammatory in the body. When I do fatty acid profiles on people, if they have not switched to a closer-to-vegan diet, they’re arachidonic acids are way high and their inflammatory markers are through the roof. I just don’t think it’s a good idea.

Kevin: Can you talk a little bit about the essential fatty acid testing and what kind of process you use?

Rita Marie: Yeah. It’s a very easy test to do. You just get a little prick of blood from your finger and you put it on this card and send it off to a lab. What they’ll analyze for is your omega-3 and omega-6 fats. There’s more advanced tests that will go into much more detail than that but I find that this basic test, your omega-3 and your omega-6 fats, will give you…It’s really cool because it’ll give you the fats like the linoleic acid and linolenic acid which are the fats that are in the foods that we eat. So when you say hemp seeds and flax seeds and chia seeds are all good sources of omega-3s, it’s because they have linoleic acid. Then the omega-6s have alphalinolenic acid. What happens when we eat those is that our body needs to convert that into other chemicals that we use for brain function and for immune system function, among other things.

So when we look at the levels we look at ETA — I don’t know how many people are familiar with that but ETA a fat, a long-chain omega-3 fat that’s found in fish. A lot of people will say you have to take fish oil or eat fish in order to get that. Well, your body can convert the fatty acid that’s in the flax and chia and hemp and pumpkin seeds and other things, algae, into that ETA. But if it doesn’t have other nutrients it can’t do that. So it’s dependent on having good stores of magnesium and zinc and vitamin B3 and vitamin B6 and vitamin C and a whole host of other nutrients. When I look at this table it’s very interesting because people will look at me like, “I didn’t tell you what I eat. How did you know? You haven’t even looked at my diet yet. How do you know what I’m eating?” It’s in your fats. I can tell you’ve already learned about eating omega-3 fats and yeah, yeah. But you know what, you’re probably eating some refined grains. You’re probably not eating a lot of greens. “Well, how did you know that?” You’re not converting. You’re not converting from your omega-3 to your ETA. You need all those minerals that you get from the whole foods. I may be able to look at the results and say, “Wow, you’ve cut back on your animal products. I can tell. But you’re still eating some processed foods.” Because they’ll have trans fats that are high and arachadonic acid that’s come down in to a normal range. So it’s a very cool test that not only tells me about the fats in their body and what they’re risk for inflammatory disease is, but it tells me about their overall nutritional status. Then I can recommend what they need to eat or if they need to take supplements to balance it out.

Kevin: Can someone just go to an MD and take this type of test?

Rita Marie: If the MD is informed. If they’ve got a functional medicine or holistic-type MD they’ll know about this test for sure. There’s a wonderful resource online called DirectLabs.com. Any person can go on there and order any medical test that they want to and pay for it directly. The lab will send you the kit or they’ll send you a form that you take to a local lab to have your blood drawn and submit it. You don’t need to go through the typical medical chains to get it done. The prices are usually way lower. On specialty tests like that it’s about the same as if an alternative practitioner ordered it from the lab.

For other tests like your complete blood counts and your blood chemistries and all that, they charge like 97 dollars to get everything tested – your liver, your cholesterol, your thyroid, your anemia markers, your kidney markers, all of that, for 97 dollars. You would pay like 450 dollars to have that done in an MD’s office. It’s a very cool service.

Kevin: That main program, does that include the fatty acids? I don’t think it does.

Rita Marie: No, no. That’s a specialty. It runs about 120 dollars to get the fatty acids done.

Kevin: Great. You mentioned that you started off by doing a 28-day fast. That’s pretty impressive. How important is fasting for the average person?

Rita Marie: Water fasting, when I first learned about it, that’s what I thought was the be-all and the end-all in terms of detoxification. But I’ve come to learn over the years that number one, it’s really hard to recommend somebody does a water fast because unless you’re supervised and you’re with somebody that knows how to watch for signs that you’re getting into trouble, it’s not a great idea to do a water fast for more than a few days on your own. In some people where their detoxification mechanisms are just so messed up and they’re pretty ill, even doing a few days can just really turn things around for the worse for people, if they’re not careful what they do. There’s lots of places you can go to do fasts. There’s lots of natural hygiene type places and a lot of them are staffed by medical doctors or chiropractors or people that have knowledge of not only fasting but normal physiology, to be able to help you know. Nobody should just say, “I’m going to fast for 28 days, it’s fine.” Some people could put so much of a strain on their body that they can become very ill from doing that.

But I do believe that detoxification is important, whether it’s water fasting or juice fasting or juice feasting, as some call it, or even a green smoothie cleanse where you drink nothing but green smoothie’s for a week. Something to break the habits that you’ve gotten into and also give your body a rest so that it can go ahead and heal from all the junk you’ve put in it over the years.

Kevin: Right. What do you think about something like Master Cleanse, for instance? Is that in the same category?

Rita Marie: Yeah, you know, a lot of people have really good results with Master Cleanse and a lot of people don’t. From a physiological standpoint and from a philosophical standpoint, it seems like, “Wow, I’m trying to cleanse myself and I’m drinking a cup of maple syrup every day?” It seems like it’s off track in a way. But on the one hand it does give you a rest and it provides some simple, easy, carbohydrate source to fuel you. The lemon juice and cayenne and all the other stuff to cleanse you. So that’s along those lines. Some people do great with it and some people do poorly with it. It’s not my top choice, but it works for some people quite well.

Kevin: What is your top choice?

Rita Marie: Right now my top choice is green smoothie cleanses. Number one, they’re easy. You just take the stuff and you throw it in the blender. Juicing, it takes a long time to juice. It just really takes a long time and then to clean up from it. If you’re just juicing you’re probably going to be going through a couple of quarts of juice a day. Whereas with the smoothies it’s just so easy to just plop a bunch of stuff into the blender and turn it on. The other thing I really like about green smoothie cleansing is that you keep your energy levels up. You don’t have to just go to bed because you’re so wiped out. You’re actually getting fuel but you’re doing it in a way that’s predigested, it’s blended up, it’s real easy for your body to assimilate. The results I’ve seen with people are phenomenal the changes that people have in just that one week. So that’s my favorite, personally, because I really have a hard time with juicing these days. I’m so busy and it just seems to take a long time.

Kevin: Great. Milton asks, “How can I do a liver detox?” And actually, I’m going to add to Milton’s question, how does he know if he needs to do a liver detox?

Rita Marie: Those are great questions. Most of us need to do some sort of liver detox. The typical way people are thinking of liver detox — I don’t know if this is what he’s thinking or not, but those liver/gallbladder flushes where you drink olive oil and grapefruit juice and Epsom salts and all that. I’m not a huge fan of those, although, again, some people get really good results with that. Those are actually intended more as a flush rather than a detox.

Let me answer your question, how would you know that you need a liver detox? When we’re talking a green smoothie cleanse, when we’re talking a fast, when we’re talking a juice cleanse, we’re all really talking about enhancing our liver’s ability to detoxify stored toxins. We give it a break from new toxins and we allow it to provide more time and energy to clean out the rest. In doing a liver detox, the best thing is to have a high level of nutrition coming in because the liver needs all sorts of vitamins and minerals and amino acids to take the toxin through the two phases of detoxification that it does. So you want to have a high level of nutrition – juicing, wheatgrass juice, green smoothies. It’s really good for helping a liver detoxification.

The other thing you want to do is obviously have a low level of toxin exposure. If you work in a plant that produces paint or something and you’re exposed all day and you’re doing a liver cleanse at the same time, it’s like, “Whoa.” You’re adding to the fire while you’re trying to put it out. That’s not the best thing to do. You really want to give your body a break from exposure like that.

There’s all sorts of ways that you can do it. You can enhance the support, the nutrients the liver needs by superfoods. What I think of as superfoods is green foods – the juices, the smoothies and maybe some powders and things like that. There are also lots of products on the market that address it. It depends on where you are in your process. For somebody who’s coming soon off of a standard American diet and is just getting exposed to these concepts, there’s some pre-mixed, pre-made powders where there’s protein in there and there’s all kinds of nutrients that help support the liver. Those are great. Now if you’ve been on a raw foods diet for a long time, you’ve done a lot of juicing, you may look at those and say, “I’m not putting those in my body. It has things I wouldn’t normally put in there,” in terms of additives or fillers and things like that. There’s other ways.

I just finished working on a six-week deep tissue, liver detox that Carol Warner of The Raw Divas and I put on. We took people through six weeks of various protocols for helping to cleanse the liver. It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. You can accomplish some pretty good liver cleansing in a week of just drinking green smoothies. That’s the simplest way to start.

Liver support foods, that’s another thing. There are really great foods that you can just, on a day to day basis, enhance your liver cleansing and liver detoxification. Things like turmeric and broccoli sprouts and dill and some of the aromatic herbs like basic and oregano and all those. They have constituents in there that help to support the liver and cleansing.

Kevin: We’re about 20 minutes into the call. I just wanted to remind everyone that you can find out more information about Dr. Rita Marie at www.drritamarie.com. So you can check out more information there. She has a blog and you can check out that information and you can maybe hang there with us while we’re going through this call.

You mentioned vaccines. We might as well just talk about them because I know it’s a big issue with people. What do we do?

Rita Marie: It’s a very personal decision. The way I approach it with my patients is to say, I’m going to give you information. I’m going to tell you what my opinion is and what I’ve done with my own children. You’ve got to ultimately make that decision yourself. The whole intent of vaccines is to enhance our immune system’s ability to deal with viruses and bacteria. But the problem I see with vaccines is that they’re taking this injected material, that’s like decomposed viral material, and injecting it right into your bloodstream and bypassing the normal way the normal way that you would get exposed to it. You would normally have all this protection – mucus membranes in your nose and throat and lining of your digestive track – before these bacteria even hit the bloodstream. Here you’re just shooting it right into the bloodstream.

The other problem is all the other constituents that go into the vaccine. Mercury, they’re working on getting mercury out of that, but I’m not convinced that all of the vaccines are mercury-free anymore. Then, like I talked about before, albumin, the different protein carriers that are in there. Then there’s just the standard gunk that pharmaceutical companies put in to things, preservatives and things like that. You’re actually giving your immune this assault like, “Okay, jump in, create an immunity against this stuff.”

I think you’re much better off by getting the junk food out of your diet, the stuff that depletes your immune system and enhancing the body’s ability to do this on its own. You can do that will super good foods.

My kids are 11 and 14 now and they haven’t been vaccinated and they’re healthier than any of their friends. They don’t get sick, even though they’ve been exposed to it a lot. They have gotten chicken pox. It actually took me exposing them three times to people with chicken pox. I didn’t want them to get it as adults. The funny thing is, they contracted chicken pox from two kids that had been vaccinated against it.

So that’s the other thing, the vaccines don’t always work. I just got an email from a friend, her kids and her ended up getting pertussis, which is whooping cough. I said, “Out of curiosity, were they vaccinated?” And she said she was fully vaccinated as a kid. But the pertussis vaccine only lasts for about five years. So if you think you’re protected because you got vaccines when you were a child, you ain’t protected anymore as an adult. One of her kids had partial vaccines and the other one had full vaccines and they still got it in spite of that.

So we’re shooting ourselves up with this stuff that we really don’t know what’s happening in the body. It’s putting a strain on our detoxification systems. The evidence to me is pretty clear that you run the risk of autism and various brain problems. I personally know several people whose kids were never the same after vaccines. So it’s scary to me.

Now, if you are going to just feed your kids the standard American diet and put them on Similac and cow’s milk formula and feed them rice cereal that’s refined at four months old and do all the things that the doctors are telling you to do, well, maybe the vaccines are going to help if you’re not building the immunity.

By far I think building the immunity from the inside out is the way to go. Natural immunity and having a peaceful environment and a very loving relationship with your kids and not introducing stress into the environment. So there’s lots of ways to increase immunity without having to get vaccinated.

Kevin: Lynn asks, “What’s the scoop on agave nectar?”

Rita Marie: Oh boy, I wish I knew. I’ll tell you a story. I stayed away completely from all refined sweeteners for about 20 years, never touched it. I was not going to touch any of that. Then the whole agave thing and I started reading it and I thought, “Let me experiment with this.” So I did and I incorporated it into some recipes. Now I hear it’s like high fructose corn syrup. Is it really just like high fructose corn syrup? I don’t really know. There’s a lot of people who are very knowledgeable and outspoken in the raw community and still think agave nectar is just fine. It depends on where you get it from. You have to get it from a good source. There’s others that say no.

My opinion about sweeteners in general is that you call them what they are. They’re treats. I certainly think that eating a raw chocolate brownie that’s made with agave nectar is going to be way better than going and getting a Hostess cupcake or a Hershey bar. So it’s the degree. If you happen to be a raw foodist who’s been dedicated for years and all of a sudden you get introduced to agave, “Oh, maybe I’ll have some of that.” Don’t bother. It’s not worth it. You don’t need it. But if you’re someone who is used to eating sugar all day long and you’re transitioning away from that, I think it’s an okay alternative.

I would rather see people using stevia, although some people think that there’s a problem with stevia too. There doesn’t appear to be. We grew stevia plants in our yard. You can actually go out and pull the leaves and throw them into smoothies or desserts or whatever. Yacon syrup, that might be a better alternative as well because it’s actually probiotics versus a real sugar. I wish I had the answer. Lucuma is not a bad one either. It’s just a powdered, dehydrated plant as well.

Kevin: I like lucuma. I’ve been putting it in my chia porridge in the morning. It’s been really nice. The stevia, to me, and maybe you can comment on this, I like the green stevia.

Rita Marie: Yeah.

Kevin: I’m very skeptical about the white.

Rita Marie: Me too.

Kevin: When you pick it off of the plant, it’s green.

Rita Marie: It’s like, “Well, it’s white. It’s gotten rid of all the nutrition.” At least you’re eating the plant. You’ve got the green. You’ve got the chlorophyll and the leaves.

The other one is dates, more whole-foods type of things, or apples. I made a chia pudding the other day and I just blended apples as a sweetener. It doesn’t need very much. Coconut is actually quite sweet so you can just put coconut into things and reduce the amount of sweet that you have to put in it. With dates you can actually make a date paste and just blend up dates with water and make a paste that you can serve, put into recipes one to one for something like agave or maple syrup.

Kevin: Kristin asks, “Does good food combining play a major role in longevity?”

Rita Marie: Wow, I hope not. [Laughter]

Kevin: What a great answer.

Rita Marie: I do so much. I’m really dedicated to my health and the one thing that’s been always like a [grunt] for me is the food combining. I’ve given up all the old foods. I stop eating within three hours of going to bed. I breathe before I eat. I eat all great foods. I don’t want to have that rule that you can’t eat this with that. But quite frankly, I did rebel against that for a while. It seems like I’m just naturally slowing into that. Except for when I go to raw food potlucks or it’s a special occasional and I makes some sort of dessert treat. For the most part I pretty well do follow food combining. Not to the extent that if you read the old food combining documents that say you can’t eat a tomato with buckwheat because the acid in the tomato won’t allow the buckwheat to…Taken to an extreme it just becomes a neurosis. That can hurt you more than the poor food combining.

What I tell people is, let’s just get started by getting the junk out. Let’s just get started by increasing the amounts of whole foods that you’re putting in your diet. Here’s some of the guidelines for food combining, if it works that way for you, fine. Now, if you find that when you combine nuts and fruit, which is one of the worst combinations, and you get bloated belly afterwards, then you know that that’s probably important for you.

It also has to do with quantity. I know for a fact and I really believe that food combining is very important when you’re eating a cooked diet, a standard diet. Eating the meat and potatoes together and the apple pie for dessert, that’s horrible combinations. That food will sit in your digestive tract and rot and create problems. So in general I think eating whole, fresh foods is going to increase your longevity. The more pure and careful you are and the less strain and stress you put on your digestive system, probably the more it’s going to increase your longevity and overall vibrant health.

Kevin: Some people will say that fermented foods will basically breed bad bacteria so they’re not good. Some people say that fermented foods are the best thing on the planet. What are your thoughts on that?

Rita Marie: It’s another one of those iffy things. I always thought rejuvelac was really cool. Anne Wigmore used it in her programs. And then in talking to Brian Clement at the Raw Spirit Fest, he said they always thought that too until they started to actually analyze it and they don’t use it anymore. They actually found that there are a lot of bad bacteria in there.

But like sauerkraut, you can make a really good sauerkraut and generally you don’t get bad bacteria in there. Usually you can tell at the top, like when you make it there’s this bunch of gunk at the top and you can throw it away. I think also if you start the process by putting some powdered probiotics in there, then you’re actually getting it started with the stuff you want to grow in there, versus taking your chances and just leaving it in the open air and allowing whatever happens to float along to get in there.

I find that a lot of people do really well with the fermented foods. They find that they digest better, they feel really comfortable and lots of digestive issues they had go away when they go on the fermented foods, and other people find that they’re more sensitive to it. I think it’s like everything else, you have to look at the evidence on both sides, try it yourself and see where it goes. You’ll know if you’re introducing bad bacteria into your gut, pretty quickly.

Kevin: Yeah, they tell you.

Rita Marie: They have a little revolution.

Kevin: As tiny as they are they have the ability to expand your stomach or other nasty things.

Rita Marie: Yeah.

Kevin: Roy asks, “Will a 100 percent raw fruit diet work in the long term?”

Rita Marie: I have not seen any evidence that it will. That came up a lot at Raw Spirit Fest. I think the overwhelming opinion about that was that it doesn’t work. The fruits don’t have enough of the minerals that you really need to sustain your life and to feed your brain and feed your immune system. They just don’t. They have some minerals and they’re great sources of vitamins and antioxidants and easy-to-use sugars, but I think in the long run most people will end up either dropping it, will end up developing really bad teeth problems, hair falls out and they get really skinny. I haven’t seen it work for many people. I’m not really good about that.

Now, does a diet that’s very high in fruit and greens say, where maybe you’ve got a 60/40 or 50/50 ratio of greens to fruit, that may work a lot better. But just fruit, that kind of scares me.

Kevin: Elaine asks, “Can a raw food diet help control or even overcome autoimmune disease?”

Rita Marie: It’s one of the best things for autoimmune disease. I’ve seen it over and over again. Again, you’ve got to be careful about how you do a raw foods diet. If your raw foods diet is agave nectar and cacao all day long, probably not. But if you’ve got a high green, fresh food diet and it’s really well equipped with the omega-3s, the omega-3s are really, really important for autoimmune to balance the fats. What’s happening in autoimmune disease is that you’ve got an inflammatory process that’s attacking your organ systems. So if you can quench the fires and inflammation through appropriate use of the high omega-3 foods and things like turmeric and ginger and some of the herbs that have good anti-inflammatory properties like onions, garlic, things like that, you can actually do really well with autoimmune diseases.

The other big issue with autoimmune disease is that so many autoimmune diseases are a result of your body cross reacting, the antibodies, to certain foods cross react with the tissue. One of the big linkages that I’ve seen lots of research on is the thyroid and gluten. A lot of people have gluten sensitivity. The gluten antibodies will attack the thyroid and then you end up with an autoimmune thyroid condition. In the scientific literature there are reports of people who went on a gluten-free diet and six months later their antibodies for their thyroid were either gone or significantly reduced. The important thing about that though is complete abstinence. As soon as you introduce even a little bit back into the system, the inflammation starts all over again and the healing of the thyroid or whatever tissue stops. So it’s real important in that regard to really be strict about it.

If you want a 100 percent raw diet you are not 100 percent certain to be on a gluten-free diet. That’s the scary thing. A lot of people are using Nama Shoyu in foods. Nama Shoyu has wheat flour in it. Some people will tell you, “Don’t worry about it. The enzymes in the Nama Shoyu eat away the gluten.” Who’s proven that? Nobody has shown me that. If you’ve got celiac or gluten intolerance, you stay away from Nama Shoyu. Which means if you go to a raw foods restaurant or somebody prepares foods for you, you ask lots of questions. I went to lots of raw food restaurants when I was out in California and I’d find that all I could eat was dessert or a smoothie, because they were putting Nama Shoyu in just about everything. I think the awareness is being raised about that. More and more people are becoming aware that you shouldn’t be doing that. But that’s a hidden source of gluten. It’s easy to say no to bread. You go, “Oh, that’s gluten. I’m not going to eat that.” But somebody offers you a nut pate on a lettuce leaf it’s like, “Wow, this is great.” Then you find out that you just had gluten.

Kevin: How do you get through the misinformation? How do we as a community get through that? The community thrives on it sometimes.

Rita Marie: What do you mean ‘get through that information’?

Kevin: How do we figure out what’s right?

Rita Marie: I think that there’s no absolute truth, that everybody has slightly different biochemistry and genetics and history that leads to what is right for you versus what is right for me. You may do very well on a high fruit diet. I may do very poorly on that. I may do very well on a high fat diet. There’s no absolute truth there. I think that some of the stuff is really clear. I did some research on gluten. I have a paper that is available on the gluten-free button on my website. I wrote a paper and I have 60 references from the scientific community. It was all about how gluten affects kids with neurodevelopment diseases like autism, apserger’s and ADD. It’s pretty amazing how much evidence there is that it’s a big issue.

So how do we get it through to the community? You be on seminars like this. You join coaching groups with people who have experience in what it is that you’re dealing with and you want resolution on. You go to things like Raw Spirit if you can. You read books. You’re always coming out with new eBooks and special reports and I do the same. You read it and you bounce it off common sense. Your approach is very much, “Let’s hear all the sides of it and see how it fits for you.” That’s my approach as well. It’s like, “If that doesn’t feel right…” If somebody says to you, “You have to be on a 100 percent fruit diet for the rest of your life,” and it just doesn’t sit well with you and you start to research and there’s a lot of evidence that that’s not a good thing, then you say no. I believe it’s really important to have mentors and coaches and people that you can really resonate with and look up to and learn from them.

Kevin: I completely agree on the mentor aspect. If anyone wants to find out more information and maybe check out a possible mentor you can go to drritamarie.com. You can actually check out that article about gluten on her website if you click on the gluten-free button right on the top.

Rita Marie: There’s a whole packet of information that I just give away as a gift, that has a lot of good resources on gluten.

Kevin: Cool. What should someone be looking for in a mentor? I know you mentioned functional medicine, chiropractic. Let’s look at it this way, if you were to look for a mentor right now for something, what requirements would they have to have?

Rita Marie: It depends on what I’m looking for a mentor for. From the standpoint of say nutrition, I would be looking for somebody who is doing well, who has patients who are getting well, who is really educated and has a lot of experience in what they’re teaching you. Personally, I wouldn’t choose a mentor for me, as a raw food mentor, somebody who’s just been doing it for two months. They’re still learning as well. Maybe they’re two months ahead of you and they can teach you stuff, but if you really want to delve into what’s going on for you and what the best course of action is for you, I would go with somebody who’s been doing it for a while. So that’s one thing.

For me, something that’s really important is working with somebody who leaves the dogma behind, that doesn’t say, “This is always true and you have to do it exactly this way.” I think that then it becomes on the cusp of being a religion and you’re blindly following. I think that it has to make sense and you have to be able to move and flow with the person. I’ve worked with people who three weeks into coaching or a month into coaching, were celebrating that we’re down to two Cokes a day instead of ten and we’ve really worked on that and there’s a green smoothie in there in the morning. It’s your own pace. A mentor should be able to help you identify what’s going to give you the biggest bang for the buck. In other words, what is it that you’re doing right now that’s most impacting your health and helping you to switch that around. That way you’re going to be really motivated to continue to learn more, because you’ve solved really critical, underlying foundation problems.

Kevin: Shaney asks, “Should we be taking raw mushrooms and/or dried ones?” What are your thoughts on that?

Rita Marie: Mushrooms have a place. I think mushrooms have been well studied and well researched and have very serious medicinal qualities – anti-cancer, anti-tumor, stimulating your immune system. There is some question about whether people who have candida or yeast overgrowths get triggered by mushrooms. I’ve seen that some people do and some people don’t. So you need to bounce that off of yourself. I think the mushroom extracts, if you’ve got some kind of cancer or autoimmune disease, mushroom extracts can be really, really good at helping to move your immune system to the level where it can actually handle that. Eating shitake and mitakes and rishi mushrooms, you can include them as part of your food regime. It’s not a bad idea.

Kevin: Jennifer is confused about algae, like chlorella, blue-green algae, marine phytoplankton. Are they necessary? What are the benefits? How much do you need?

Rita Marie: That’s a great question. I’m a big fan of eating from the sea. Part of it is as long as you can get stuff that’s been grown in non-polluted waters. We haven’t gone in and depleted the ocean, plants can still grow there and pull out the minerals from the salt water. I include sea vegetables every day. I love to include a little bit of algae. I’ve just gotten back into the algae. When I run out I sometimes don’t buy some more right away. That’s the blue-green algae. Then you’ve got chlorella and spirulina which are actually micro-algaes. They’re a little bit smaller, microscopic-type algaes. They all have really, really high levels of nutrition.

The other thing about them is they have the ability to chelate, which means that they can suck heavy metals and toxins out of whatever they’re in. That’s good news and bad news. It’s good news in that if you eat them they’ll suck out some of the heavy metals and the toxins and help you to eliminate them. The bad news is, if you harvest them from polluted waters, they’ve already chelatedout a lot of the toxins from the water, so you’re actually putting more toxins in you. So it’s real important to have good sources of that stuff for sea vegetables like kelp and kombu and dulse and nori and those sorts of things.

Don’t just go to the local Asian markets — not that I have anything against Asian markets. A lot of times they just get “produce of Japan” type sea vegetables. Who knows? Is this in the harbor right outside of Tokyo? It’s probably not a good place to harvest it. You want to really know your sources and you want to know where they’ve been harvested. I think they’re an important part of your diet, at least to include a few times a week if not every day.

Kevin: I usually don’t add anything but I do want to add this. I recently noticed that the price of adzuki is dramatically increased, literally 20 dollars a bag. So you won’t be able to find it in health food stores because no one will pay that. We called Eden to find out what was going on and they are apparently now just sourcing Japanese adzuki because the other sources have been found to be contaminated. So it’s pretty interesting that you say that. We do have to be careful about our seaweeds.

Rita Marie: Right. And good companies like that are on top of it. I was dealing with a company out in North Carolina that’s a macrobiotic supply place. I was calling them up to try to get some stuff. It was about some little cracker things with nori around it that my kids liked. They were so expensive. I asked why. They said, “The source that we have. It’s very expensive to buy this nori. It’s not 50 sheets for 3 dollars like you would buy in one of the local markets. The nori there is very contaminated. We tested it.” So you really need to know your sources. There are some really, really high-quality sources that like that, that’s very impressive. They were checking it out, on top of it. You know you can trust it.

Kevin: You mentioned candida so let’s open that can of worms or can of yeast.

Rita Marie: What do you want to know?

Kevin: What do we do? How do we know we have it? Does just taking Pau d’Arco tea work? It’s a huge topic.

Rita Marie: It’s a huge topic. We all have it. It’s a normal inhabitant of our body. So set that straight. If somebody says you have candida, okay, yeah, we all do. It’s just a normal inhabitant. It’s meant to be kept in check with the other normal inhabitants. It’s when it’s in overgrowth, when it gets out of control, when you’ve taken antibiotics or been on steroids or birth control pills, which knock out your good flora in your body, that the candida has a field day. It goes, “Whoa, there’s lots of space here. Let’s multiply, let’s grow.”

It feeds on sugar. So if you suspect you have a candida problem then staying away from sugar and refined carbohydrates is a good thing, and even some of the whole grains is a good thing because it gets converted pretty quickly into sugar.

How do you know if you have it? Well, you can go online and say, “Do I have candida?” And come up with tons of websites that have lists a mile long of all the symptoms that could be associated with candida. If you read that you go, “Well, I guess everybody has it.” It’s like so widespread.

The issue is, do you have symptoms that get worse when you eat sugar? Do you have symptoms that get worse when you’re in damp and moldy places. You probably have some candida overgrowth. Do you have persistent skin rashes that just don’t seem to resolve? Do you get bloated in the belly and constipated or diarrhea? All of those things can be associated with candida.

There are some tests. There’s a breath test and somebody just told me last week — I don’t know how valid this one is — a spit test. You spit into a cup of water and if your spit floats then you probably don’t have candida but if it starts to clump and sink to the bottom then you probably do. I don’t know how valid that is. There are breath tests, ammonia breath tests. There’s antibody tests. Some of those are accurate and some of those are not. You can probably do a stool antibody test as well. I would just say if you’ve got really overt symptoms then just doing some Pau d’Arco tea is probably not enough.

The way I like to approach it, because most people that I see that have a candida problem will be coming in on a pretty poor diet to begin with, so I always like to start with addressing the diet. You need to have an alkaline diet, which means that 80 percent of the foods that you’re eating are from the alkaline side of foods. I don’t know how many people are familiar with those alkaline/acid charts. Again, a controversy because every place you go has a slightly different chart. But there’s general patterns to it. So you really want to have an alkaline diet because the alkaline environment in the cells will promote the growth of good bacteria and promote the extinction of bad stuff. You want to have no sugars. You want to have lots of greens, lots and lots of greens. Fermented foods are controversial with candida as to whether you get bad stuff in there that it can trigger it. But it’s really important to have the probiotics getting in there. For those that are not familiar with the term probiotics, it’s just basically a term for the good bacteria that inhabit not only your gut, but your skin and your throat and the mucus membranes throughout your body. We need to have good colonies of those in your gut in order to help you to digest your food, help to make some of the B vitamins. They’re real important. If you’ve taken antibiotics, if you’ve been on steroids, if you eat commercially-raised animal products, which are fed antibiotics to keep them from being infested, you’ve probably got a disruption in your normal flora.

What I like to do initially is get people to up their flora, increase the good guys. The way I describe it is like if you’re in a room and it’s loaded up with people that you don’t like very much, you have two approaches to getting rid of them. You can do some violent things and knock them out and push them out the door or you can open up the other door and let lots more people in and let these people kind of flow towards the other door until they get crowded out. When you try to hit the candida with those really strong anti-fungal type herbs and medications, that’s the clubbing approach. If you don’t have enough of the good stuff to begin with, even when you get rid of the candida, you still don’t have enough good guys to keep it from coming back. The approach needs to be to get rid of the candida, either by crowding it out, by putting in a lot more of the good probiotics, or by doing the combination – clubbing them and crowding them out so they can’t come back in.

So there’s all kinds of approaches. There’s the Pau d’Arco, there’s all kinds of anti-fungal type things, black walnut and Artemisia. There’s no set formula, like, “This one always works.”

One last thing I’ll say and we’ll put this, hopefully, to rest, if you’ve got parasites, and you eradicate your candida with a really good candida protocol and you don’t get rid of the parasites, the candida is going to come back. So it’s really important to identify if you have parasites. That’s another whole can of worms.

Kevin: [Laughs] How do you know if you have those?

Rita Marie: Well, persistent candida-type things that don’t go away. Symptoms that don’t go away in spite of you doing some good protocols and getting off the sugar and being really diligent about it. There are certain things like itching in the anus which is a real obvious sign of parasites, bloating in your gut. Eating lots of food and not gaining weight, is another sign of parasites because the parasites are feeding on it. There’s a whole host of others – headaches and behavior problems and depression. All these things can be. It’s when you have persistent health problems that don’t seem to be resolving in spite of really good habits and good

herbal support and all that, then there’s a good chance that you have a parasite. And you can test for it, although the tests aren’t 100 percent accurate. There are a number of tests where you can test your stools to see if parasites show up.

Kevin: Great. Jeff asks, “Are there any raw vegan vitamin D supplements?”

Rita Marie: Vitamin D, I’ve looked for them. The vitamin D3 is always from lanolin. I’m not sure if there’s a synthetic. I think the D2 is the synthetic. That’s vegan, but it’s synthetic. You have to pick your poison. Either you have to be doing your sunbathing 20 minutes a day and getting it on over 40 percent of your body and getting plenty of D that way, and not showering right after you do it. Or you have to take a D3 which is from lanolin, or take a D2 which is a synthetic. Or cod liver oil or something like that, which is not vegan.

Kevin: Great. What is your opinion on distilled water? Which water do you use?

Rita Marie: I don’t know if I really have an opinion at this point. Distilled water is de-mineralized. I heard Brian Clement talk about it last week. There’s something wrong with distilled water. I really am not an expert at it. I personally have a reverse osmosis filter at home. I also have a distillation unit. I don’t really use the distillation unit as much because it’s not hooked up to my faucet.

I think the real important thing is that we get enough water. Dehydration is one of the most common causes of diseases and symptoms and persistent overweight. When people are dehydrated and they perceive their hunger. So it’s important to get the water. I think it’s really important to take out all the crud – the lead and the chlorine and all the other stuff. That’s real important. Filtering your water is really important. Then whether it’s distilled or reverse osmosis, I personally like the reverse osmosis because you don’t have to heat the water so it doesn’t kill whatever life force might be in it.

I think spring water is probably your best bet. If you have a source of a really good spring, as it’s bubbling up out of the ground and has the natural filtration. Then there’s all these structured-water type gizmos that you can use. The whole theory behind water enters the cell one molecule at a time in a single row and it tends to get clumped by the filtration process. So these clumps of water don’t actually get into your cells. You may be drinking lots of water but not getting it into your cells. So there’s these little wands that you can use to stir it and there’s drops you can use to put in it. I haven’t really researched to see what the best bet is, but probably something like that is a good idea.

Kevin: Great. Donna asks — and I think this will be our last question — “How do I confirm the nutrients in the combination of foods I consume weekly so I do not have to take unnecessary supplements?”

Rita Marie: That’s a great question. There are a number of programs. There’s an online place that’s free, fitday.com. They don’t do all of the nutrients, they do a subset. But they do the major minerals and vitamins. I don’t know if they break down amino acids. There are programs that you can pay for that you can just plug in what you eat and it pops out the other end. But then it runs the question of, it’s adequate compared to what? The RDA? What is really adequate in terms of nutritional need?

So you can use that as a ballpark and as a guideline. If anything is low then you either need to supplement it or eat more of the foods that contain it. Then you run into the issue of, does the food really contain what they say it contains. Was it grown on de-mineralized soil? Is it organic or not organic? Eating lots of greens and taking the chlorellas and super-type food greens, which are really concentrated, adding the sea vegetables for your minerals. The vitamins you’re pretty much getting. You’ve got fresh, whole fruit and it’s got color to it, your vitamin A and beta carotene, you’re getting plenty of those. The things that I see that people may not be getting enough of are say the sulphur-containing amino acids, which are really important for detoxification – the broccoli, cauliflower and cruciferous vegetables are really good sources of that. So making sure you really get adequate amounts of all these foods.

I put together a checklist that I give my patients that has lists of the different categories of foods and approximately how much you should be eating in each of those categories to get a full spectrum of nutrients in you.

Kevin: Donna’s been a long-time listener. That’s based on caloric value that someone would need?

Rita Marie: Well, caloric value is pretty easy to calculate. But the caloric value varies from person to person. Your basal metabolic rate will determine whether you need a high number of calories or low. Is your furnace running hot or is it running cold? The calories are pretty straightforward. Any program online will give you calories and the total protein and the total carbohydrate and the total fat. It’s a great exercise to do as a raw foodist, to give you a guideline as to whether you’re going overboard on the nuts and seeds. If you’re into the range of having 50 percent, 75 percent fat diet, you may be eating too many avocados, nuts and coconut and need to cut back. So it gives you a broad spectrum of how you’re doing and it will give you the vitamins and minerals, to an extent. But there’s no guarantee. It’s a great starting point though.

Kevin: The listing in terms of how much of these foods that you should be eating, that’s based on someone’s specific caloric needs though.

Rita Marie: Oh, I give ranges, right. So I may so between 4 and 6 cups of this or between 6 or 8 ounces of that, based on how small you are and what your exercise patterns are.

Kevin: Great. You can find out more information about Dr. Rita Marie at drritamarie.com. You have a free eBook here that someone can go on your site and download, right? Why don’t you tell us a little bit about that.

Rita Marie: Actually, I have a really nice set of eBooks that I usually give out on calls, if you want me to give you that link. It’s my favorite topic, a whole collection of three little eBooks and an audio tape about greens and the value of greens. One’s on sea vegetables, one’s a few green smoothie recipes and the other one is nutrition charts of calcium and all the different vitamins and minerals. Then there’s a little audio that I put together, a conference call that I recorded. So you can get that by going to drritamarie.com/green. That will get you to a form and you can fill it out and you’ll get all those eBooks.

Kevin: Drritamarie.com/green. You can check out those three free eBooks and the free audio that goes with it. Dr. Rita Marie, thanks so much.

Rita Marie: You’re so welcome. This was fun, a pleasure.

Kevin: It’s been a lot of fun. It’s been nice getting to know you over the last maybe five or six months, seeing you at Raw Spirit Fest and seeing you in Austin in your stomping ground, your hometown. I’ve really appreciated the information you shared today. I think that it helped a lot of people. We really appreciate it.

Rita Marie: Any time you want me to come back I’d be more than happy to join in again.

Kevin: All right. Have a great night. To everyone else out there, this is Kevin Gianni from RenegadeHealth.com. Please join us on our next call, two weeks from now. I do not have the listing in front of me but I’m sure it will be as awesome as the one that we had tonight. Mark it on your calendars, the first and third Wednesday of every month we have these calls. So to everyone else out there, remember we really value your time and we know how important this is so we really want to thank you for sharing it with us tonight. Have a good night all. Take care.

If you need video to learn: check out http://www.mondaynightliveevents.com for a very different and powerful interview with Dr Brian Clement from the Hippocrates Health Institute. This is available for only a week but more interviews are shown every Monday night.

Next posting, I will share some more of my favorite sites to keep all of us educated

LISTEN

LOVE

LAUGH

AND EAT YOUR VEGGIES especially the GREEN ones!

Eva

I am using the first person in this scenario to acknowledge that I am a part of this system and I helped create this culture of eating. This is what I knew as food as it was passed onto me from my family and ancestors.

When the cow eats the green pasture and I eat the cow I am trying to get into my body what the cows ate, mainly the minerals, amino acids, and vitamins to nourish my cells to make healthy new cells.  My parents have grown up eating cow and I don’t think it is odd at all to feed an animal food then kill and eat the animal. It is very efficient to eat something else so I don’t have to go to the bother of looking for green food. If I were to travel to a distant land and they thought this idea disgusting I would readily defend it because it is what is familiar and because I appear healthy I would say it was proof that it works perfectly.

Let’s say I travel to a new culture that does strange things to get their food I might be reluctant to try it. People living on the coast wait for a full moon and go far out on low tide to cut and trim sea weed and let it dry on the nearby branches and then soak it and mix it with other herbs and spices and call it a meal. What if they cut tough rubbery green leaves and smash it to a pulp and drink the liquid for breakfast? What if they took seeds that could be planted in the garden and put them in water and the seeds sprouted then they just ate them raw before they produced a fruit or vegetable? This could really be out side of my “civilized” comfort zone of what I consider a normal breakfast.

My breakfast: is to slice animal fat off a four legged intelligent being that I might of raised from a baby that I tricked into being slaughtered and then heat that fat at high temperatures until it is brown or black and crispy. Then to accompany this burned animal fat I add two embryos from another species of animal and add it to the same searing hot fat filled pan. I have observed mammals in the wild stealing these eggs so if they are good for them it must be good for me to eat these stolen eggs. Actually, I am smarter and feed and cage the animals to get to the babies so I don’t have to chase and fight off the mother for them. But, I am not quite done finalizing my meal so I use a beautiful grain that is strong and grows throughout the winter and in spring brings up fabulous nutrients into it’s seedhead due to it’s great root structure. I take that seed that is grown by complete strangers that I trust with my life, they grow and store gigantic massive quantities of these seeds in big tall round buildings for long periods. When the seeds get stored it may get damp and some mold and mildew might get in the seeds but it all gets finely ground and stripped until it is pristine white then it is stored in bags again, for very long periods of time. Then I add a sweetener extracted from a cane plant with the vitamins removed and bleached, more animal embryos, and another animal’s body fluids are added, sometimes I add whole seeds to this gummy mixture to make it look rustic and feel superior with some yeast that causes the whole thing to start to rot and get bigger until I decided it was big enough to add heat, to hold it into a form that gets sliced up. Then, it is put into a nice colorful wrapping made out of petroleum and put into big boxes that go into bigger boxes for many more days. I buy from these giant boxes and bring home this sliced form and keep it for a few more days and finally I put two of these slices into electrical wires until it is dried out and crispy. So I add more animal body fluids made into a solid fat, with lots of salt to hide the taste, and spread it on the seeds that grew in the winter that I couldn’t tell is a seed at all anymore.  Then I spread a thick layer of delicious sweet fruit that has been heated to high temperatures that extract the vitamins, nutrients and taste and add some more sweeteners made into white powder to give it a super extra sweet flavor with other things that make it stick together. So now I have a complete civilized breakfast, My high heated animal back fat, my heated congealed bird embryos, and a white gluey substance that no longer resembles a seed smeared with lots of white sugar, flavored with a little fruit, this is a normal way to begin my day in my world.

Eating directly from the soil is just plain barbaric in my eyes and unimaginable. Animals were put her for my use because I am smarter than they are, after all I love my animals and give them my garbage scraps to eat and they taste good so all my needs are met. Of course, I don’t kill them (that is just way too gross and awfully messy) so I am not exactly responsible for how they get on the breakfast table. How could primitive foods such as seaweeds, nuts and seeds be edible and feed my body and make me thrive in this modern world? It takes too much work to figure out how to get my protein. People get brain dumb or something like that without animals in them I have heard.  It is normal to eat animals, my ancestors did, after all, and they created me.

So ‘WHAT IS FOOD”?

This made up story is about my thoughts when I was shopping for my family and witnessed people buying seaweed in bulk and was shaking my head at the absurdity of not eating “real food”. So here I was in a health food co-op store with my cart filled high with organic beef and chicken and was sure I was doing the right thing for my family because that is what was familiar. Even though I was raised on a vegetable farm, and we had very little meat, I was sure meat protein was the best food. I was very smug in buying only organic and cooking it very well as per the recommendation. Much later, something got stirred up in my mind about food and I went to a whole food chef school to verify that I was correct in the way I fed my family. I learned about cooking bones for days on end until a fatty liquid developed and put vegetables in this to flavor it.  I even learned to broil the bones first to give it a charred flavor for more enjoyment. I spent six grueling months commuting by train seven hours a day to take this course and at the end discovered they never taught us to cook beef as they felt it wasn’t good for our bodies to eat red meat. Only once or twice we cooked some fish because it was hard to endorse the  quality in our polluted waters, even though we got our fish from the seafood famous San Francisco Bay. The chicken prep was taught in only one class and it was treated as a transitional food towards more vegetables. I learned a lot about the preparation of beans and legumes and using vegetable broths with seaweeds to add much needed minerals to everything. I learned about the hazards of heating oils and to never reuse heated oil as it became extremely toxic. I learned about replacing milk products with safer non-allergic alternatives. We were taught to ferment food and where to buy the raw organic gourmet cheeses in the bay area that were considered better than over-salted colored packages in the grocery store. A PhD in nutrition ran the program and we learned to cook from several chefs from some of the best restaurants in the bay area. The emphasis was on healthy tasty food that you could be hired as a professional chef to create. One of the chef instructors was a vegan but didn’t teach exclusive vegan cooking per the director. I found it odd that he didn’t eat with us after teaching us how to prepare the meal. We were given extensive written assignments to research different health conditions and to create menus to support the recovery of several health challenges. We even had one class on how to prepare food raw and it was very complicated and extremely tasty, however there were not many raw food chefs in the area to use as mentors. I loved this new venture and started teaching others all I had learned and cooked for clients with health challenges such a dementia and cancer.  When I cooked what they wanted which was familiar foods for them they wanted chicken and fish. I cooked the highest quality I could find and used all my culinary skills to keep a good variety. I noticed when I cooked just veggies the client with dementia would become lucid and have long engaging conversations and when I cooked the requested meat dishes he was not able to remember to take his meds or how to tie his shoes. This observation has profoundly affected me even to this day. My question to myself is: Is there any such thing as safe animal products?  I talked with a local doctor who is adamant about eating grass fed humanely slaughtered beef and buys half a cow each year for her spouse and herself. However, she stated when she is traveling, she eats at “In and Out” burger and uses lettuce for the bread!! So, from this observation I concluded that when you eat high quality meat the body gets addicted and sets up an acid condition that wants to maintain homeostasis and any acid food will do in a pinch!! Weather  you are in a fine restaurant or a fast food take out the mind can easily justify whatever it is we are used to. So many gourmet restaurants were forced to put cheese burgers on the menu because that is  what the clientele knew to order.  Stress is an acidic condition and we crave sweets and any acidic food when under stress. We as a human species don’t like change much at all especially with our food!

When I got hired as a personal chef to a vegan family I was really challenged to not use any animal products that were used in chef school such as butter and feta cheese to make vegetables tastier.  I witnessed a passionate “chef mom” that was constantly vigilant about getting the correct nutrients into her young daughter. I cooked from her own created recipes and started trying them on my family with some rave reviews.  It was a strange shift away from any animal products and sometimes we used processed foods such as oil spreads that I would not consider whole food. Gradually the emphasis was to get more and more whole foods and homemade veggie broth was used and beans were soaked and cooked with kombu but always with taste and texture foremost in mind. I was propelled into an accelerated on the job learning curve to question what I had just learned in chef school. I was so thrilled to have her two year old come into the kitchen and asked for “nori nori” or “quinoa, quinoa” and eat some incredible healthy foods with gusto. She would even critique what I gave her and say that it needed more tamari or nutritional yeast! I Love what Olivia taught me then and is still teaching me about the power of nutrient dense foods as I watch her develop into an extremely intelligent, strong, healthy, curious preschooler. Her current favorite vegetable is purslane!

As my own curiosity expanded I wanted to know just how healthy food could be, I dipped my toe into the raw food world and fell smack down the rabbit hole!! I discovered there are places where people go when their doctors have given up on them that teach them how to eat raw to heal from serious diseases. I have heard from people one on one directly at raw food chef school tell of their amazing recoveries from crippling fibromyalgia. Hundreds of pounds have been lost and diabetes cured by un-cooking vegetables and yet still people cling to what is familiar.

At the “whole food” chef school world people were also having significant changes towards health from a junk food processed diet towards organic  “real” food, but nothing, like the speed and astounding cures with a raw diet.

We ate mostly the same foods, namely vegetables, however EVERYTHING changed in how that veggie got delivered to the table. The description that helps people understand about raw food “cooking” is that it is “kitchen alchemy”. Creamy thick sauces and spicy crunchy snacks and mushy comfort foods are still what this culture identifies as food. Unless I can satisfy my eyes and nurture aromas and create mouth feel and satiety I would not be able to isolate myself to eat rabbit food. So I took the leap and decided to make amazing tasty raw food dishes that can easily be researched on line. Now. I eat pure alive deliciously outrageous food and take supplements to keep in balance just as anyone should do to enjoy life.

It took a full year before the smell of Bar-B-Que  no longer triggered a  desire.   Our culinary roots have strong memories and to shift away from them takes a whole body cellular make over.  That’s why you hear some people preaching about going totally raw to be able to stay on raw food. When people are very sick they will do anything to get well. But once they are feeling better it is a different challenge to stay well. Fear is a much stronger motivator than improved subtle good health.

During this last year of my raw food lifestyle I would say to myself “why am I eating like a cancer patient when I don’t have cancer?!!” But somehow I continued, just for the sake of curiosity and I was feeling terrific!   The energetics of how food makes me feel is unfolding; recently after eating intense fresh basil pesto a few days ago I could sense the clearing and opening of the area above and in front of my forehead. Believe me, I never felt anything like this on my previous diets. I might think I was a bit loopy except I talked about it with a friend and she explained how basil is a mind expander and excellent for the brain and has long been used in ancient traditions to get clarity of thoughts.  I never imagined I would be “that tuned into” foods but, here it is.

I am writing this on the day of my brother’s memorial or “celebration of life” He died at the young age of 62 leaving behind two grown daughters and two adorable grand children. They are across the country celebrating his life with stories of how he loved to grill steaks, smoke cigarettes and drink to keep the back pain tolerable and talk to his dog “buddy”. They will be serving some great traditional comfort foods of ham sandwiches, steak and store bought potato salad with potato chips with packaged vegetables and a sour cream onion dip. He tried to eat that “healthy stuff” for a while, when he was first diagnosed, but “it obviously didn’t work because he still got three different cancers at once”. He listened to his doctors who said stay away from grilled meats and don’t smoke. He bought fruits and ice cream and blended it up three times a day to ward off cancer but, they didn’t tell him how cancer cells love all sugars and especially casein from milk protein. Doctors don’t know how to feed for health, just treat disease. It is not their fault or my brother’s fault for eating what our culture has indoctrinated as the American way of life. My hope lies in the grand children because the parents both currently have heart problems from eating what everyone around them eats. Family members are usually the last ones to want to be educated about a lifestyle choice, we just get to love them and hold them in our prayers.  “God speed and  love to you Al”.

How many people do you know that would rather eat steak than watch their grandchildren grow up?  This food must be powerfully addictive that we would willingly cater to our taste buds and accept an early death.

I haven’t heard of any health clinics that feed animal flesh to cure anything. There are lobbing groups that proclaim the health benefits of eating grass fed organic animals and raw dairy products, some are secretly funded by the beef and dairy industry. I wonder where the carrot interest group is?? It is so simple “eat life to get life”. Eat death…..

See…. there is no money to be gained from growing and eating plants, sprouts, nuts and seeds, just a lot of healthy people that don’t use pharmaceuticals or need a medical system for chronic diseases.  We are actually a detriment to the economy for not being ill.

What are you waiting for……. ? Give Plants A Chance!

Since I just had my 55th birthday it is a good time to talk about celebrations. It is so important to enjoy your food and let the nutrients fill you and flow over with energy.  Eating a raw plant based diet dose not mean giving up any of your treat foods such as Birthday cake. This is one I made for a friend  together and she came and helped me make mine just recently. I found a fun website that gave lots of inspiring raw dessert ideas. the site is http://gliving.com/raw-mint-chocolate-tart/  check it out for some fun new dessert ideas to impress yourself and your company and used the article below to eat healthy.  I created a slew of  vegan ice creams with raspberry and chocolate sauces and a buffet of desserts and invited tons of people and had a live dance band. What a blast to eat living food and to dance non stop. I  served salads first to offset the rush of sweetness. The most repeated feedback from the party was the food was awesome and band was great. No one cared there was no dairy used to create creamy and yummy fun new foods.

It sometimes can feel isolating eating healthy when everyone you know is eating the SAD diet (Standard American Diet).  At chef school they said that everyone loves raw desserts and it is the best way to introduce people to the idea of eating raw.  However, I can’t eat these desserts everyday and neither should anyone else.  Dr RitaMarie Loscalzo (drritamarie.com) just had a class on hormones and she emphasized how the overall glycemic load was the critical tipping point for good health especially during menopause. She explained how vitamin B-6 can help balance out too much sugar but with lots of exercise, positive thoughts and sleep as well. So celebrating with lots of dancing and piece of raw birthday cake among friend is a fabulous way to enjoy the sweetness in life. However, just because it is raw dose not mean it is healthy. The desserts may make you want to eat raw but you can’t eat them as your main diet. Just like many vegetarians and vegan don’t eat enough vegetables!  It is GREEN FOODS and lots of  them that brings a body into balance. Checking your blood levels for omega 3′s, B-12, vitamin D and sufficient calcium and magnesium levels is good advise for any lifestyle choice. Eating only plants, nuts, seeds and oils take a lot of education and knowledge but we are evolving to that level with lots of research available to keep us healthy.

If you are  out of balance with a challenging disease such a cancer or diabetes  or just want to stay healthy then you might want to “celebrate” with alternate sweeteners as recommended in this article from Natural News:

The Harmful Effects of Sugar and Choosing Healthy Alternatives

Thursday, February 21, 2008 by: Teya Skae, citizen journalist

Most of us have heard the good advice that we need to eat less sugar – and rightly so. However, despite the numerous warnings by health authorities of the ill effects of sugar, the majority of the population is still consuming sugar on a daily basis in some form or other. “Sugar” is both a broad category and a misleading one. Let’s examine it for our health’s sake

We do not have to consume white, refined sugar to be consuming sugar. Sugar includes glucose, fructose (as in fruit sugar), lactose (as in milk), sucrose (as in table sugar), maltose or malts (as in rice malt and honey), jam (contains concentrated juice, which is high in fruit sugar), maple syrup, corn syrup, palm sugar (traditionally used in macrobiotic cooking), and the very deceiving organic brown sugar, which is not all that different from white sugar. Even alcohol is a sugar. All of these sugars are problematic in many different ways.
The sugar industry is not in decline and obesity is on the increase. Sugar is a major culprit in the case against obesity. For obese individuals, consuming even a teaspoon of sugar a day would cause metabolic imbalances that contribute to obesity. Sugar is to be avoided, not only by the obese but by healthy individuals.

Is there rationale behind the statement, ‘Sugar is to be avoided’? Definitely!

Nancy Appleton, PhD, clinical nutritionist, has compiled a list of 146 reasons on ‘how sugar is ruining your health’ in her book Lick the Sugar Habit. Here are some of them:

* Sugar can decrease growth hormone (the key to staying youthful and lean)
* Sugar feeds cancer
* Sugar increases cholesterol
* Sugar can weaken eyesight
* Sugar can cause drowsiness and decreased activity in children
* Sugar can interfere with the absorption of protein
* Sugar causes food allergies
* Sugar contributes to diabetes
* Sugar can contribute to eczema in children
* Sugar can cause cardiovascular disease
* Sugar can impair the structure of DNA
* Sugar can cause hyperactivity, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and crankiness in children
* Sugar contributes to the reduction in defense against bacterial infection (infectious diseases)
* Sugar greatly assists the uncontrolled growth of Candida Albicans (yeast infections)
* Sugar contributes to osteoporosis

The body changes sugar into 2 to 5 times more fat in the bloodstream than it does starch. With 146 proven reasons why sugar is bad for us, is there perhaps one single reason as to why we might need it? The only interesting thing about sugar is that it tastes good and makes us temporarily feel good. This is an area worth exploring.

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), a 5000 year-old wisdom of self-contained knowledge of healing, we all need sweetness in our life. We need six tastes: sweet, sour, salty, astringent, bitter and pungent to stimulate the taste buds on our tongue at main meals, in order to experience satiety.
Satiety and cravings are the result of imbalances in brain chemistry and have nothing to do with fullness of the stomach. When foods hit our tongue, our taste buds relay the bio-chemical information to the brain, stimulating various parts of the hypothalamus – the ‘satiety centre’. The tongue is also a mini representation of the body, just like in reflexology, and contains points that stimulate all the organs in the body. Avoiding sweetness would be unnatural and unnecessary, as this will inevitably lead to imbalances and sweet cravings. This is why people have such a hard time giving up sugar; it is almost impossible to get children to stay away from it.
Many people really try hard to avoid sugar, and do not sweeten their tea or coffee, yet they crave sugar in some other form, such as chocolates, cakes, ice cream or even fruit – dates and figs. Dates are 99% sugar, in the form of fructose. When a person is in metabolic balance they do not crave sugar. If they do, it is a sign of a metabolic imbalance and it can be corrected without having to consume sugar.
The wonderful thing is that we do not have to give up the sweetness of sugar in order to be healthy; we just need to replace it with better alternatives. While giving up sugar is very difficult, replacing it is now very easy. There are two natural, organic sugar alternatives that are sweet, easy to use and cook with – stevia and xylitol. They may sound like chemicals but they are completely natural and have been proven not only safe but beneficial for our well-being.
The best one to use is Stevia (Stevia rebaudiana) from the Asteraceae family, which was rediscovered by Dr. M. S. Bertoni in 1888. Stevia is a herb that has been used as a sweetener in South America for hundreds of years. It is calorie-free, which means it has no effect on our bodies’ production of insulin. Stevia, in its powdered concentrate, is 300 times sweeter than sugar, so only tiny amounts are needed for sweetening. Stevia is widely used all over the world. In Japan, for example, it claims 41% of the sweetener market, including sugar, and was used in Japanese Diet Coke until the company replaced it with aspartame (to “standardize” worldwide).
There have not been any reports of toxicity with stevia, which is consumed by millions of people daily. However, in the US, the FDA, and in Australia, the FSANZ, do not allow stevia to be used as a food additive. But in China, Japan, Taiwan and Korea, stevia is fully approved and has proven to be safe, with no toxicity reported from its use to date. In Australia stevia is sold as a supplement and it is readily available from various distributors. A wonderful article that puts the whole sugar industry in perspective is published by the Herb Research Foundation: Stevia Leaf – Too Good To Be Legal? by Rob McCaleb (http://www.dorway.com/stevia2.html) .

The only thing that deters people using stevia is that it can taste a little bitter in drinks and in some recipes, but this can be overcome by using another wonderful sweetener, called xylitol, in combination with stevia for ideal sugar replacement.
Xylitol is a natural substance found in fibrous vegetables and fruit, as well as in corn cobs and various hardwood trees, like birch. It is a natural, intermediate product that regularly occurs in the glucose metabolism of humans and animals, as well as in the metabolism of several plants.
Xylitol is so natural that our bodies produce up to 15 grams of it daily during normal metabolism. Xylitol has been known to organic chemistry since the 1890′s. Studies on both humans and rodents have shown that xylitol, when administered orally, is well tolerated and safe to levels of at least 40g per day (which equates to some 10-12 teaspoons of sugar) with no subjective or objective adverse findings. Importantly, much less insulin is released into the blood during xylitol administration than during glucose administration. This is obviously a very good thing for insulin-sensitive individuals or for anyone concerned with weight loss, as insulin (apart from driving the glucose into the cells) also tells the body to store even slight excess carbohydrates as fat, rather than to use them as energy.
Relatively high quantities of xylitol are found in plums, raspberries and cauliflower (0.3 to 0.9 g per 100 g dry matter; the quantities vary depending on plant varieties). Even though xylitol is derived from fruits and vegetables, it is not the same as fructose. Xylitol is a five-carbon sugar, which means that it is anti-microbial (prevents the growth of bacteria), whereas all other forms of sugar are six-carbon sugars, which cause bacterial and fungi overgrowth.
Xylitol looks, feels and tastes exactly like sugar – though that is where the similarity ends! While sugar wreaks havoc on the body, xylitol heals and repairs. It also builds immunity.
There are many benefits of using xylitol as a sugar substitute:
* Glycemic index of 7 (sucrose is 60)
* Minimal effect on blood sugar and insulin levels
* Inhibits yeast, including Candida Albicans (It actually helps fight candida)
* Inhibits plaque and dental cavities by 80% (Dentists use it and recommend xylitol toothpaste)
* Retards demineralization, and promotes re-mineralization, of tooth enamel
Based on scientific and public health evaluations, xylitol has been approved in virtually all industrialized countries to be used in oral hygiene products and in other products to promote oral health.
In its crystalline form, it can replace sugar in cooking, baking, and as a sweetener for beverages. Xylitol is used in chewing gum, mints and hygiene products, such as nasal and mouth washes, because it inhibits bacteria. Unlike many artificial sweeteners, it leaves no unpleasant aftertaste.
Xylitol is formally approved in over 50 countries worldwide. Xylitol has no known toxic levels (Except that quantities over 90 gm/day may have a laxative effect).

The amount tolerated varies with individual susceptibility and body weight. Most adults can tolerate at least 40 gm/day. The only problem with xylitol is that it costs more than sugar, however, if we combine it with stevia in the ratio of 12:1 (12 parts of xylitol to 1 part of stevia), it becomes more cost effective and is a healthy way to sweeten our taste buds and satisfy our brain! Imagine eating cakes and chocolates that not only taste good but are also good for our teeth? You can literally have your cake and enjoy it without the guilt or empty detrimental sugar calories!
References:
Nancy Appleton Ph.D (http://www.nancyappleton.com/)
(http://www.ghchealth.com/refined-su…)

Hallfrisch, Judith, Metabolic Effects of Dietary Fructose, FASEB Journal 4 (June 1990): 2652-2660.

J. J. Rumessen and E. Gudmand-Hoyer, Functional Bowel Disease: Malabsorption and Abdominal Distress After Ingestion of Fructose, Sorbitol, and Fructose-Sorbitol Mixtures, Gastroenterology 95, no. 3 (September 1988): 694-700.

(http://www.riverhouse.com.au/factsh…)

(http://www.riverhouse.com.au/factsh…)

(http://www.xylitol.org/)

About the author

Teya Skae M.A. B.A.
Dip Health Science
Dip Clinical Nutrition.
Metabolic Typing® Advisor
Clinical Kinesiologist/Nutritionist
Health and Relationship Coach
Author/Speaker
Teya is the founder of Empowered Living
www.empowered-living.com.au specializing in practical solutions for Optimal Wellbeing.

For more great researched articles log onto NaturalNews.com and be immersed in knowledge from several experts.

CELEBRATE LIFE WITH LIVING PLANTS!

We don’t often hear about personal heros anymore, but they are good to have in your life.  When I first met Will he was standing behind a table selling his book and I made a quick judgement about him (that wasn’t kind) and walked away. I heard him play piano later that day and speak and my heart opened and has not been the same since. Today I got to spend time listening to him in my town and it  dawned on me that his words in his book are the reason for my entire lifestyle change. I have read a LOT of books on food in the last  few years and heard all the reasons why we have to live like our ancestors. But, I am real sure I am not doing the manual labor of my ancestors so why would I eat like them? Also,I learned  so much information about nutritional needs have been influenced by special interest groups.

Dr. Tuttle’s eloquent and well researched book THE WORLD PEACE DIET systematically cemented in me why I can never eat another sentient being no more than I could eat my cat! I had been so far removed from the source of food,  I just went along with whatever everyone else was eating. Food preparation and cooking was from the store and onto the plate. Even though I shopped at the local co-op and only bought  all organic and believed the labels of grass fed and free range I still didn’t  REALLY  know where my food came from. When I learned that a state law mandated all organic grass fed cattle must go to the same slaughterhouse as all the other cattle and how the animals experience torture and terror in the whole process I became permanently changed.  I now knew and could not go back to ignorance. I had ingested that fear and my energy body needed to process that fear as it had become a part of me.  I no longer want terror, torture or fear to be a part of who I am. I like choosing life giving nutrient rich plants that I can nurture and grow or know the farmers that grow it. I believe we all want “life “over fear and we just don’t know how to go about changing something that we have done since we were born, mostly that meant  eating  what is put in front of us or eating what we are use to. It takes a huge conscious effort to alter what is on the end of your fork when you are hungry and thanks to my personal hero Will I now have a ton of information to choose with certainty it won’t be  animal tissue. Having experienced a vibrant healthy body eating plants, nuts and seeds I know it can be done. Plus it is so amazingly delicious and varied with the seasons.

Will Tuttle is about living his passion of saving the animals from suffering and inhumane treatment weather the animal is a song bird or a domestic turkey. His background is not unlike many of us having been raised on meat and potatoes and never knowing what a vegan was and imagining them to be skinny hippies. He doesn’t want to change everyone, just being himself and living a life full of compassion and by giving talks maybe that compassion will be contagious and someone else will shift to what is appropriate for them on their path to helping the planet as well as their health. I won’t give all the compelling facts and figures about the incomprehensible cost of  eating meat and dairy here but if you need a hero I will let you borrow mine. Feel free to google him and check out his website willtuttle.com

Many many blessings on your food choices and what you are becoming.

Eva

It is so great how plants take care of us ! When the heat soars we get lots of gifts  from plants to cool our bodies such as watermelon. I wanted to share this great article from Nomi Shannon  as she talks about the many different ways to assist your body detoxing.

Be sure to juice the inner rind with the watermelon along with the red, so the green can balance out the sweet as Nomi explains in the article.  I love this drink! I am doing a week long cleanse and I am am needing TWO exercise classes  per day plus gardening and my regular chores  to release all my energy!  How much energy can YOU handle?

Customize your cleanse with what ever  equipment you already have and what fruits and veggies the farmer brings from the fields.  Enjoy your vibrant health.

Summer Detoxifying Cleanse

By NOMI | Published: NOVEMBER 30, 2007

Summer Detoxifying Cleanse

by Nomi Shannon

originally published in Alive Magazine, Canada’s foremost health magazine in 2001

With summer in full swing markets and gardens are brimming with luscious ripe fruits and vegetables. If you have ever thought about embarking on a cleansing program, now would be the time to do it! What exactly is a cleanse, you ask? Simply put,when your body does not have to constantly attend to the complex tasks of digestion, assimilation and elimination-it is able to more efficiently attend to some of its other functions, the most important being cleansing and healing.

Drastically simplifying your intake of food will allow your body to expend its energy on cleansing and healing. There are several ways to do this. Water fasting is the most extreme form. At one time I considered water fasting to be foolhardy. But after experiencing several water- only fasts, I have changed my mind. Water fasting can be an extremely profound and beneficial form of cleansing and healing. However, bed rest is a very important component of water fasting. Since this would be impractical for most people, it’s nice to know that wonderful results can also be had with juice fasting. Juicing extracts the liquid from the food, leaving the pulp behind; thus allowing your system to rest from the constant work it does while still taking in nourishment. A typical juicing plan would consist of drinking as much freshly made juice throughout the day as you want. If you like, you could start your day with fruit juices and switch to vegetable juices in the middle of the day. Many people use 100% carrot juice for fasting, however I would recommend 50% carrot juice and 50% juices from green sources such as cucumber, celery, spinach, kale, cabbage, sprouts or romaine lettuce. Carrot juice contains a great deal of sugar, but with the addition of greens the blood sugar levels tend to remain more even. Also, the chlorophyll in greens is an excellent internal (and external) cleanser and healer. Greens also contain protein, the darker the green the higher the protein. All raw fruits and vegetables contain enzymes, minerals and vitamins, and along with flushing out toxins, you are also rehydrating with these high water content foods.

It is wise to lead up to a juice fast gradually by cutting out flesh, dairy and wheat foods while adding more raw fruits and vegetables to your daily routine two to three weeks prior to starting your cleanse. This will greatly minimize any adverse detoxifying symptoms such as headache, fatigue, lightheadedness or nausea. These symptoms are indications that stored up toxins are rushing to exit your body. With a gradual lead up, you should be able to maintain your normal daily activities while on a juice fast. But it would be nice if you could get more rest and sunshine than usual during this time as your body is doing a lot of cleaning out and resting would assist the process.

You don’t own a juicer? Or, you have no time to juice? That’s okay. You will be amazed at the health benefits you can obtain by setting aside anywhere from three days to two weeks or more for eating raw fruits and vegetables only. The simplest approach would be to eat mono-meals, which means one type of food at a time. For example, breakfast could be peaches. Just peaches. Eat as many as you like until you feel comfortably full. Peaches are cleansing for the kidneys and bladder, plus they contain calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, Vitamin C, potassium and folic acid. A large wedge of watermelon is also an excellent way to start off the day, as it digests rapidly and has alkalizing and diuretic properties and contains beta-carotene, thiamin, Vitamin C and potassium. For lunch a large green salad with a few embellishments like red pepper, cabbage or broccoli and a splash of lemon juice would be good. Dinner could be another large salad with different embellishments. But you don’t even have to get that fancy. Eat a red pepper, some celery sticks, perhaps a pickling cucumber (they are not waxed), corn on the cob (raw)-until you are comfortably full. Snacks can be any fruits or vegetables that you have in the house. Fill a large bowl with fruit and leave it on your counter to choose from throughout the day, and load up your refrigerator with lots of pre-washed vegetables. That will help keep you out of the bread bin.

Blending some of your meals is another option. Blending breaks the food down, making it easier to digest. It contains all the original fiber. Smoothies are an example of a blended food. They taste wonderful, take only minutes to make and all you need is a blender. Use a base of any natural or fresh squeezed juice, or water. Next, add a variety of fruit. For cold, thick smoothies, keep some in the freezer, cut in chunks and ready to use. Bananas are simple, just peel when very ripe, put in plastic bags and freeze. Other fruits that are good to have on hand either fresh or frozen are strawberries, raspberries, boysenberries, blueberries, mangos, papayas, peaches and pineapple.

For a delicious and filling breakfast pudding or snack, blend 1 banana and 1/2 an avocado. Top off with berries. Or, try 1 banana with about a cup of papaya, adding 2 teaspoons of tahini to the mix if you’d like it to be more filling.

Fresh raw soup is a quick and easy alternative to salad. For Summer Tomato-Basil* soup, place the following in a blender and blend until smooth: 6-8 medium tomatoes, 1/4 lemon, peeled and seeded, 1 avocado, a large handful of sunflower or clover sprouts, 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil, 1 tablespoon chopped onion, 1 small clove garlic. Pour into bowls and garnish with basil or sprouts. Serves 2. Or, try Summer’s Bounty soup*. In a blender, combine: 4 red peppers, seeded and cut up, 1 medium cucumber, cut up, 1 scallion chopped, 1 small clove garlic, 3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil or other fresh herb, 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano, a pinch of sea salt, and a dash of lemon juice and olive oil. Pour into bowls and garnish with chopped cucumber, red pepper and sliced mushrooms. Serves 2-3. For dinner you could have a salad, a blended soup or just veggies or fruits as they come from nature. How much simpler can life be?

How will you feel at the end of a detoxifying cleanse? Most people report feeling lighter in body and mind, clearer skin, clearer thoughts, weight loss and lessening or the complete disappearance of bothersome symptoms like sinusitis, digestive disorders, mood swings, fatigue, high blood pressure and much more. With a new spring in your step and a flatter belly, the results of enjoying summers bounty will be well worth it.

*Soup recipes are from The Raw Gourmet, by Nomi Shannon (Alive Books, 1999)

Author of The Raw Gourmet, Nomi Shannon is a well-known proponent of natural health and healing. Besides writing books and health articles, Nomi is a raw foods chef and since 1995 has been a Certified Hippocrates Health Educator. As a twenty-year raw foodist, Nomi is a Live Foods Lifestyle Coach, and provides counseling and consultation services for individuals and groups the world over who wish to improve their health- one bite at a time. For information about live and online seminars and tele-seminars as well as classes and consults, Contact Nomi at her website: www.rawgourmet.com, or email: nomi@ rawgourmet.com

After getting some Komatsuna in my  CSA box I started researching the health benefits and discovered this article about how the Japanese have been doing green drinks way before I was born!! I wonder what juicer they used??  It seems kale is the most nutritious of all and they got the seeds from the U.S.  So why are we not the most healthiest robust country with no health care crisis???

Enjoy the article.

How about a…..

LONG TALL COOL GREEN ONE ?

This  time of year when the temperatures soars everyone is eating something raw!

The beauty of raw is it’s simplicity and variety. The thought of a hot grill is totally unappealing and of course not healthy. Keeping hydrated is key to healthy cells and bones. We know we should eat for energy but maybe you just can’t face another salad.  Then juice your salad and have it poolside!

This refreshing drink contains: cucumber, celery, baby bok choy, romaine, carrot, dandelion, cilantro, mint with a squeeze of lime!

I can  drink this so much easier than trying to  eat  and chew thoroughly all the above ingredients.

Check out the past post on proteins and feel relaxed that you are more than covered in that area.

Doesn’t it look delicious?

I kept sipping while I was photographing it.  You can combine what ever you like in your green juice as most greens get along wonderfully.  Carrot, beets  or a green apple will sweeten so go light with these as this will spike your blood sugar. The sour of the lime helps balance the bitter of the dandelion. Don’t be afraid to put  lots of kale (save the stems from making kale chips) or spinach or fresh parsley. Go sparingly on the herbs at first and have one main flavor to work around.  Be flexible with whatever the garden or forest gives you! I discovered the white rind of the watermelon is also very healthy juiced! Taste as you go if you want to decide how much of each item to put in.

Juicing verses smoothies

Juicing removes the pulp but leaves everything else behind. So your digestion gets a rest and dose not need to break down any fiber to get to the pure whole nutrients. If you use a single or twin auger juicer (the Huron slow juicer linked to this site is what I use) it presses the cells and leaves the walls in tact whereas a blender and some juicers breaks open the cell walls and allows oxidation and the vitamins quickly (within 15 minutes) get oxidized and lose the potency.  I like to use the blender for fruit veggie lunch smoothies/soups that I will consume right away and have my juice in the morning after exercise and sip slowly allowing my system to “break-fast”.

Veggies in the morning really soar you into amazing zest for the rest of the day. But ANY time is great for green juice except during a full meal as no liquids should be consumed to allow the digestive juices to be undiluted.

Let your body gradually get use to pure green energy and start out with 3 ingredients and work up to what gives you both pleasure and energy!  The basic rule is that greens gently cleanse and fruits cleanse more quickly and with more calories.  So use that knowledge to get gently daily cleansing and without toxins we get a smooth lean running machine that has energy to play:)

Here is some facts on just one ingredient in this glass of heavenly life giving nectar:

Nutritional Value of Cucumber

Given below is the amount of nutrients in 100 gm of raw, unpeeled cucumber

* Carbohydrates – 3.63 gm

* Sugars – 1.67 gm

* Dietary Fiber – 0.5 gm

* Fat – 0.11 gm

* Protein – 0.65 gm

* Thiamin (Vitamin B1) – 0.027 mg

* Riboflavin (Vitamin B2) – 0.033 mg

* Niacin (Vitamin B3) – 0.098 mg

* Pantothenic Acid (Vitamin B5) – 0.259 mg

* Vitamin B6 – 0.040 mg

* Folate (Vitamin B9) – 7 μg

* Vitamin C – 2.8 mg

* Calcium – 16 mg

* Iron – 0.28 mg

* Magnesium – 13 mg

* Phosphorus – 24 mg

* Potassium – 147 mg

* Zinc 0.20 mg

Health & Nutrition Benefits of Eating Cucumbers

* Raw cucumber, when applied on the skin, can help reduce heat and inflammation.

* The diuretic, cooling and cleansing property of cucumber makes it good for skin.

* Fresh cucumber juice can provide relief from heartburn, acid stomach, gastritis and even ulcer.

* Placing a cucumber slice over the eyes not only soothes them, but also reduces swelling.

* Daily consumption of cucumber juice helps control cases of eczema, arthritis and gout.

* Cucumber has been found to be beneficial for those suffering from lung, stomach and chest problems.

* The potassium in cucumber makes it useful for the problem of high and low blood pressure.

* Cucumber contains Erepsin, the enzyme that helps in protein digestion.

* Cucumber juice is said to promote hair growth, especially when it is added to the juice of carrot, lettuce and spinach.

* Cucumber juice, when mixed with carrot juice, is said to be good for rheumatic conditions caused by excessive uric acid in the body.

* Cucumber can prove to be beneficial for those suffering from diseases of the teeth and gums, especially in cases of pyorrhea.

* Being rich in minerals, cucumber helps prevent splitting of nails of the fingers and toes.

* Cucumber has been associated with healing properties in relation to diseases of the kidney, urinary bladder, liver and pancreas.

* Those suffering from diabetes have been found to benefit from the consumption of cucumber/cucumber juice.

May the GREENS be with you!

Something Looking This Good Must Be Raw!

July Forth is my first Rawversary !  This time last year my husband and I drove to Ft. Bragg to satisfy my curiosity of this strange idea of NOT cooking food.  At this time I was a professionally trained whole foods chef cooking for a vegan family for a year and loving the gourmet ways to prepare vegetables and how delicious simple foods could be. My client was a chef who wrote articles in Veg News Magazine and we often did test recipes and I loved my job. Prior to this  I ate organic grass fed meats, bone broths and ate raw cheese along with an all organic whole foods diet.

I considered myself to be in good health with a just minor tendinitis flare ups, my hormones were a bit wacky and I carried about 10- 15 pounds that just would not let go. Judging from my peers, I figured this is normal for a 54 year old woman. I got sick only a few times a year and felt this was really great.

So WHY RAW??

I was simply curious.  I also was ready to peel off a deeper level to health. I didn’t have a chronic illness that needed a miraculous solution or even know anyone who had been “cured” from eating raw foods.  So my approach is different from most people you hear about that take on such a drastic lifestyle change. I was skeptical that this type of diet would keep you healthy let alone cure anything. So I went into this with lots of doubts and wanting proof. After my weekend of raw food culinary wizardry wonders, I felt fantastic and the food was amazingly delicious and not at all boring, so I sign up for more classes. I also signed up for three levels of nutrition courses taught by two doctors who were raw for 20 years each, one was a researcher and one was an instructor at Bastyr University. I wanted to make sure I would not hurt my body trying to get healthy.

THE WHEAT GRASS LESSON…

I heard about this green stuff that tasted pretty disgusting being profoundly good for you and decided to “go for it” and give it a try. So along with my new raw food at the school I would get 2 oz. of wheat grass in the morning and 2 oz. in the afternoon.  Having no prior experience with it I thought I would be fine with this amount. The third day of doing this I awoke at 2:00 a.m. so cold that several sweaters and a winter coat under my blankets were not enough. I was vomiting and had several urgent trips to the toilet I could not stop shaking but mostly I felt as though I was ready to die!!   I barely made it to class the next morning and described my symptoms and was told I was de-toxing and to go easy and have some green juice.  I could bare sip ginger tea but got through that day and gradually felt so much better. I knew that any plant THAT powerful had my full respect and I now enjoy growing and revere the deep alkalinizing properties of this tiny wheat seed that packs such a powerful detoxing punch. I only take it on occasion and usually along with a juice feast. I never would of believed I could go a day with only green juice let alone ten days but I did and loved it! So many new discoveries about me.

WHAT DID THE FAMILY THINK?…

I was of course very excited about my new recipes and couldn’t wait to share this newfound wonder with my daughters and husband. I would leave class and go home and try all the recipes.  My daughter would try and gross out her teen age friends and say “Want to come over for some RAW spaghetti?” So they would come to be curious and leave really liking the dishes and enjoyed using the spiralizer and watching tomato sauce take less than 5 minutes to make. One even declared it tasted like his Italian grandmother’s sauce. O.k. he doesn’t count as he was dating my daughter at the time and probably looking to score points. I think I went over board when I had an entirely raw Thanksgiving.  It is hard to replace traditions even if the replacements are tasty. I invited friends along and they loved it and that helped somewhat. I remember the conversation with my husband about people deciding we are crazy with this raw lifestyle and want to distance away from us.  He was willing to risk it and give it a try anyway. His mother was very skeptical and would take him out to dinner when ever she could so he could get his meat. My daughters were a little freaked out when I started giving away my Le Cruset pots and pans. After about nine months into this my oldest was able to reflect how difficult it must be for me to choose to be so different and so committed to a radical diet.I now understand why so many experts recommend a support group to keep at it. My raw food potlucks have been wonderful for this, as well as teaching others who decide to radically change their health.

HOW HAS  EATING RAW AFFECTED MY HEALTH?

I never intended to be a raw food person, so if it weren’t for some drastic benefits I may have dismissed eating raw as a fad diet.  After about 3 months I noticed none of my pants fitting and finally my daughter saying,  “ just try on my jeans and see what size you are.”  Well the jeans fit with ease and she is now concerned that her mother could now borrow her clothes and they might even look better on Mom!! So I discovered I went from a size 8-10 down to a size 2-4 in pants. No more menopausal weight problem! Wow, I was eating like crazy and not even trying to limit any food. The best part was my craving for bad food just dissolved with out any effort. I can’t believe how greens can make you want more greens, it’s so simple!  I also got so much extra energy that I was trying to figure out how the day got so long and what to do with myself so I started a dance class having no prior dance experience. I am loving having my body move and balance and reshape into ways that I was sure was only for the very young. I am writing this in Lake Tahoe and love kayaking and I remember always having inflammation so bad the next day from it. Now, I can go twice a day and double the distance with no problems!  This part is funny. My hair started to curl and is returning to my natural color!! I have been coloring my gray hair since I was thirty! Now my hormones are balanced and my hair is thick and curly and looking like my oldest daughter did when she turned adolescent. So I lighten it with henna and feel like a 20 year old!! Yeah, no more chemical dyes. The other benefit is my brain fog has lifted and I can retain more information for more classes and multi-task easier. People tell me my skin looks fabulous all the time. I can say with honesty for the first time in 30 years that I love my body! I have felt a desire to pull away from mainstream activities and crave my solitude and silence. I have a deep yearning to garden with a desire to create healthy top soil not just vegetables. I have found a sacredness to the entire plant kingdom. I applaud my buckwheat when they sprout their tails.

So the BIG truth is in the blood work.  How am I doing inside?  I just got back a full blood screening panel and a doctor looked a it and said your are perfectly balanced on paper, I wish I could attain this! So that was a relief to know that eating this way is not in any way harmful or restrictive to the body. My proteins are great and vitamin D levels are great my HDL cholesterol are great and my LDL are ever so slightly elevated. Go figure how eating plants can elevate your LDL’s but I know I need more flax, chia, borage and omega 3’s to correct this. My doctor said to not even think about it because it is so slight. Do I think I will continue to eat like this? Well, I was at a family Bar-B-Q and they served tri tip and the three people that ate it were very excited and declared they don’t do it often but it was a special occasion. I brought my food and shared bean salads and some potato salad with chocolate vegan ice cream. They asked for recipes. The next day each of the meat eaters were down with something, fatigue, allergies, inflammation etc. and my husband and I were feeling full of energy. So I don’t miss meat or dairy and it effects on digestion and the immune system. I am very clear that to “celebrate” I don’t need to kill something.  I never thought I would feel this way. I was at the new animal sanctuary in Grass Valley this weekend and was delighted by the crowd of people that share and support the education to stop slaughtering sentient beings just because they taste good. The book by Will Tuttle  “DIET FOR A PEACEFUL PLANET” was very enlightening for me and will not be soon forgotten. I just didn’t know how to live without animal protein and especially how to eat plants without being bored or get out of balance. NOW I KNOW SO MUCH I CAN’T WAIT TO LEARN MORE!!

HOW MUCH TIME DOES IT TAKE  FOR ME TO EAT RAW?

At first it took a lot of time and every new recipe was an adventure and I was trying tons of new dishes. I was dehydrating and buying special foods and ate lots of fruit. It was a challenge because I was in training mode. I wish I had some local classes to guide me and make things easier instead of traveling to chef school and spending thousands of dollars. The recipes books were from gourmet chefs that wanted to out shine other chefs. So it was admittedly daunting in the first six months. When I decided to eat more local food it became even more challenging because so many recipes use coconut and tropical fruits. After trying all kinds of gourmet-dehydrated foods my favorite meals are really simple ones. I usually prep once a week with some staples of kale chips, “buckwheaties”, energy bars, sesames seaveggie crunchies, and soak and dehydrate some nuts.  I love to do what I call the one button meal of what ever is in the CSA box gets to go in the vitamix with some miso and lemon and  is instant soup. I enjoy juicing and spinach pestos.  My new mentor is now my bio-intensive gardening instructor Nikki in Auburn who eats 85% of her entire diet from her backyard!! She even grow her own grains and sunflowers! I am excited to try this and be raw.

Currently, I really don’t eat a lot of fancy dishes unless it’s for pot lucks or entertaining.  I love making desserts and eat them guilt free. Most surprising is how seldom I eat just a plain green salad. I was thinking that’s all I would be eating. I might cook up some black beans or garbanzo beans and add all raw ingredients to it and have that throughout the week with different added veggies. The best freedom was when I decided not to have to have a certain percentage of raw food in my diet. I am mostly raw, probably 80% but don’t hold firm and listen to what my body wants. The biggest factor is cooked foods taste dead and raw is so vibrant!

What was the biggest lesson I learned…

I was surprised at how I could not digest raw foods and how much bloating and gas I lived through until I discovered therapeutic enzymes. I didn’t realize  after all the cooked food over the years my body forgot how to digest raw foods. I went to a raw food expo and all the experts were saying if you want the 3 most important things about a successful raw food diet it is

1. ENZYMES,

2. ENZYMES, AND

3. ENZYMES.

I remember someone saying about five years ago that the most import health benefit in the future will be enzyme therapy. I had not really thought about what enzymes were or how they helped you but after taking them by the teaspoon on an empty stomach as wells as with my meals I am so impressed with how my digestion has improved. They basically reprogram our DNA to make healthy new cells instead of duplicating worn out aged cells. There is a lot more science behind it, but, that’s it in a nutshell. So when anyone is struggling with staying raw I encourage enzymes and even if you are not raw, enzymes are highly recommended. I like the powder instead of the capsules to save money. There are good ones sold on my link to the rawfoodworld.com.  The next most important lesson I learned is to listen to experts in the field that have been at this for years and get as much education as you can to help you make up your own mind on what works for your body. I take supplements and eat spiralina and chlorella frequently. The Internet has been invaluable to get a full cross spectrum from tree huggers to full medical doctors treating cancer in well-respected clinics. For support try drritamarie.com I usually have some lecture going in the kitchen when I am preparing food to keep informed and be inspired. I also know it isn’t a diet but a full lifestyle shift and some people need to be more gradual than others. I am a passionate person and like to dive in. My husband needed to take baby steps and go at a slower pace, which supported his transition easier. He also looks and feels great and wants to continue.

So find what works for you and see what your first “Rawversary” review will give you.  Try raw for a year and see what you lose and what you gain!! O.k.,baby steps are fine too, try maybe just a week…Sometimes, it only takes a green smoothie in the morning to shift to a new level of health.

By the way, that is a raw White Chocolate Cherry Cheese Cake in the picture. A Big hit at parties!

The warm weather has arrived and summer celebrations and eating outside is just beginning. I LOVE not having any messy greasy grills to clean or pots and pans to wash. Not to mention the health risk of cooking over an open flame. The Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH’s) are bad enough on the food we consume, then we breath the cooking oil fumes and research indicates that PAH emissions might cause more serious health problems that traffic exhaust!!  Then there are Heterocyclic Amines that are also formed as a result of cooking foods and  just like  the PAH can form a DNA adduct which is mutagenic and very likely carcinogenic as well. Yikes!!!, What a crazy way to “celebrate” with our loved ones by creating food and fumes that are considered to be carcinogenic.

Thank You RAW FOOD lifestyle, for fabulous tasting foods that don’t put nasty toxins in our bodies!

These great tasting Zoom  Burgers(made with zucchini and mushrooms) came from Cherie Soria’s cookbook The Raw Food Revolution Diet.

They can easily be made ahead and last for about 3 days in the fridge so just pop in the dehydrator to warm before serving. We served them at the last Living Luck with guacamole and “caramelized onions”  The bread we used for buns was an onion caraway bread that was an instant favorite and that will last up to a month in the fridge!  However, you will probably  use it much quicker!

I find that I prep one or two days a week and just add fresh veggies the rest of the time and spend very little time actually prepping for a meal.

Remember to drink extra water when eating dehydrated foods as the water is removed. So lots of greens, tomatoes, guacamole on the burgers please…. Perhaps a green smoothie earlier in the day!

I hope you enjoy these recipes and add them to your summer fun.

Zoom Burgers (yields 3-4 small patties)

3/4 cup walnuts soaked and dehydrated

1 cup shredded zucchini

1 Tablespoon dark miso

1 Tablespoon purified water

3/4 cup minced mushrooms (can be lightly steamed for more bio-availability of nutrients)

1/3 cup minced celery

1/4 cup minced red onion

2 Tablespoons ground flax seeds

1 1/2 Tablespoon fresh parsley

1 Tablespoon nutritional yeast flakes

1 1/2 teaspoons  minced fresh sage

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 clove garlic crushed

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper

Place 1/2 cup walnuts in food processor fitted with the S blade and process into a coarse powder. Add Zucchini and pulse to blend into a coarse texture.Place in big bowl. Coarse chop remaining walnuts and add them to the mixture.

Mix miso with water and form a paste and mix in along with all remaining ingredients.

Form small burgers about 1/2 inch thick and place on dehydrator trays with a non-stick sheet. and dehydrate at 105 degrees for 4 hours. Turn the burgers over onto a mesh dehydrator tray and continue to dehydrate for  2-8 hours depending on how you like them. They should be crispy on the outside and moist and chewy on the inside. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.  You can make small croquettes and serve with mushroom gravy and raw mashed no-tatters for a more elegant dinner.

Cherie also has recipes for real tomato ketchup, cashew mayonnaise, and hot mustard in her book. A good resource for any library!

Onion Caraway Seed Bread (makes 18 slices or two trays)

Note: this recipe may be a bit complicated for a beginner and you might want to take a class and observe it being done to master the techniques. But feel free to give it a try.

4 medium to large sweet white onions sliced very thin with a mandolin

2 cups hot water

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Soak the sliced onions in the warm water and lemon juice for at least 1/2 hour to remove strong onion flavor.Then drain and pour over marinade  and massage into onions and set aside for 2-6 hours.

Onion Marinade

1/4 cup Tamari or Braggs

1/4 cup olive oil

2 Tablespoons lemon juice

2 Tablespoon agave nectar or yacon syrup

1 tablespoon caraway seeds ground

1 teaspoon pureed garlic

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

1 teaspoon dey thyme

1/2 teaspoon white pepper

After 2-6 hours drain the marinade and reserve to use as a dressing.

Next

2 cups of sunflower seeds soaked for 2-4 hours and drained

2 cups golden flaxseeds, ground

1 granny smith apple, peeled and rough chopped

Process the sunflower seeds and apple till smooth. Put mixture in a large bowl and mix in the drained marinated onions. Put half the mixture back in the processor and pulse so onions are well combined but with visible small chunks. Repeat with other half of mixture. Put in large bowl and hand mix in ground flax.

Divide the batter in half and spread onto  non-stick dehydrator sheets and spread about 1/4 inch thick, use entire sheet. Repeat for second half. Dehydrate at 125 degrees for 2 hours. Reduce the temperature to 110 degrees until you can flip the nonstick sheet over and remove the sheet. Score the bread into 9 equal pieces. Dehydrate until dry but still flexible.

Caramelized Onions (yields 3 trays) great for any sandwich!

6 medium onions thinly sliced using the mandolin

1/2 cup salt

2 tablespoons Tamari

2 Tablespoons agave

Soak onions in water and salt for 1 hour

massage to liberate strong juices

rinse and towel dry

Toss with  mixed Tamari and agave and place on dehydrator tray with non-stick sheet.

Dehydrate at 105 degrees for 4 hours

Store in sealed glass jar in refrigerator for up to a week.

Decadent Chocolate Ice Cream (makes 7 cups) Not a health food but a yummy rich dairy free treat.

4 cups almond cream (made with 4 cups soaked almonds and 4 cups water)

3 cups cashews soaked for 3 hours rinsed and drained

2 1/2 cups agave nectar or sweetener of your choice (note freezing dulls the sweetness)

1 cup Ultimate Superfoods raw cocoa powder

1 vanilla bean,  scrape out and add the inside

1 Tablespoon psyllium powder

pinch of sea salt

Blend almond cream with cashews and add other ingredients and chill for 20-30 minutes and pour into ice cream maker and process according to machine’s directions.

COME JOIN THE FUN, THE FIRST AND THIRD WEDNESDAY OF EACH MONTH

AT 4:30 till whenever the last lick of  ice cream is gone…….

“LIVING LUCKS” AT THE  BRIAR PATCH IN GRASS VALLEY!

We’ll save you a seat!

Well the next question that follows where do you get your protein is often “What about Omega 3′s in fish?” or something similar.  Growing up a New England farm girl, fish was always a yummy treat and we never imagined the ocean would not constantly provide for us. Well, the current gulf oil spill has us ALL keenly aware of the menace  industry can have  not just on a food supply but the delicate environment for  generations to come! Eating wild Alaska salmon for omega 3′s  is just not a good option for our planet anymore. Let the oceans rest and recover, please!  Did you know the majority of the fish products we harvest, up to 70%, is used as cattle and poultry feed! Yikes, so you are getting lots of  mercury and toxins even if you eat chicken and beef and don’t like fish!   Getting your fish oil from Norway and feeling smug that you are not effected by this spill is certainly not a solution either. The fish is often shipped to be processed long distances away and allows for microbial and enzymatic attacks on the flesh tissue before being processed resulting in a inferior end product. Plus,  a recent scientific study indicated that animal based long chain Omega-3 Fatty Acids – DHA and EPA are more readily oxidized and result in more toxic oxidation products being formed when consumed. There is a disruption in the balance of peroxidation  in our cells when we consume fish oil and more alpha-tocopherol in the diet is required to protect tissues lipids from damage. This balance is very important for human health and when out of balance cardiovascular diseases with other diseases such as cancer, cataracts, immune system decline and brain dysfunction.  Omega 3 from plants don’t have to worry about antioxidants balance  as the plants are perfectly balanced as a whole food.  For the actual research behind these statements please refer to the book CHIA by Ricardo Ayerza Jr. and Wayne Coates. I found it a fascinating read if you  like science of food as your bedtime reading. Available from this site by clicking on the links to the raw food world store.

So flax is a plant based excellent omega 3 and has been used for four thousand years. However, all flax contains toxic limarin, vitamin B6 antagonist, cyanogenic glycoside, trypsin inhibitors phytic acid, goitrogens and other antinutritional properties and must be detoxified for human or animal consumption. The most efficient processes require the use of solvents and this is not totally effective at removing all the anti-nutrients! Wow, who knew about this?  Well flax is actually banned in France and limited in Germany, Switzerland and Belgium. The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture put a limit to no more than 12 percent of flax to be used as a food ingredient. However the clothing from flax is superb.

So what is an omega 3 seeking plant loving person to do??

Chia has no toxic factors either in the seed or oil and  is excellent for animal feed as well! The seed can be stored for 4-5 years without refrigeration and loss of antioxidants!

What is Chia?

An ancient super food that is celebrating a glorious renaissance, chia is a member of the sage family. The tiny black and white seeds were once a staple of the Inca, Mayan and Aztec cultures and  the Southwest Native Americans!

I learned about  the “Indian running messengers” that  would travel from the mountains to the coast in South America and simply carry a small pouch of chia with them for an incredible sustaining surge of energy. It needs no refrigeration and absorbs up to 12 times their volume in liquid. I have been putting a tablespoon in my wide  mouth water bottle and drinking them whenever I have to sit for a conference and need a sharp mind to absorb technical information. It helps with dehydration and chewing the seeds reminds me to “chew your liquids and drink your solids” . This practice allows us to slowly absorb our food and breaks it down properly to help digestion.

Why would you want to use chia?

~ twice the protein of any other seed or grain ( 19 – and 23%) and is gluten free!

~ six times the calcium of milk, plus boron which helps transfer calcium to your bones

~ twice the amount of potassium as bananas

~ three times the antioxidant strength of blueberries!

~ 6, 1.8, and 2.4 times more iron than spinach, lentils, and beef liver respectively

~ Chia slows the impact of sugar to the system,  a great benefit to diabetics!!

~ prolongs hydration and retains electrolytes especially during exertion.

~ easy to digest and quickly assimilated

~ intestinal regularity,  chia seeds bulk up and sweeps out waste in the  intestines

~ Regeneration of cells;  chia is very useful for bodybuilders,that demand constant   repair of tissue. also, excellent for  pregnant or breast feeding moms

~ 82.3 % of ALA omega 3 and linoleic acid the highest of all crops!

~ TASTES GREAT, very mild!

How do you use Chia?

The most common way is to soak the seeds like I do in my drinking water. You can add 1/3 cup chia seeds to 2 cups water. Stir well to avoid clumping and place in fridge in a sealed quart mason jar. This will get mucilaginous and stay good for almost 3 weeks! Just reach in and have some plain to rehydrate you from being in the garden or add some gel to a smoothie, shake, pudding, granola, or salad dressings. If you want  a sweet taste with your chia mix it with organic apple juice. I love chia cereal when I travel! You can mix it with grated ginger and pumpkinseeds and raisins and add warm water and let soak for 10 minutes while you shower and a yummy  sustaining light and satisfying breakfast keeps me going for many hours.

This “Raw Rice Pudding” is fun ( all these  recipes came  from Angela Stokes Monach at the rawfoodworld.com)

add 4-5 tablespoons chia to 2 cups almond milk and add vanilla, cinnamon, cardamon to taste after ten minutes you can also add chopped pecans and dried fruit with coconut if you like. This keeps very well in the fridge and can be eaten anytime for a sweet healthy snack.

Banana-nut Bread

2 cups vegetable juice pulp 1/2  from carrots

8 Tablespoons ground chia (grind in spice grinder or clean coffee bean grinder)

3/4 cups chopped walnuts

3/4 cups raisins

5 ripe bananas

Mix together the veggie pulp and bananas in food processor and add chia seeds until throughly mixed. Transfer to a bowl and add nuts and raisins. Shape into a loaf and let sit until firm. Can serve with “mock cream cheese” flesh of three avocados, 9 dates, juice of 1 or 2 lemons and teaspoon of ground dulse seaweed blended. Spread on top of banana bread slices.

Chia Fresca (still a popular drink in modern day Mexico)

10 oz. pure water

juice of lemon or lime

2 tsp. chia seeds

sweeten to taste

Stir all together and enjoy.

Green Chia

8 prunes soaked in 1 pint of pure water

1 tablespoon spirulina powder

1/3 cup ground chia seeds

add the chia to most of the soaked  prune water to absorb.

Blend the prunes with spirulina then add to soaked chia and stir.

Chia Gel Muesli

1 cup of  chia gel

2 bananas mashed with a fork

1 Tbs. lucuma powder (can omit but very tasty)

1/4 cup raisins

1/4 cup pumpkin seeds

Mix all together with a fork and enjoy!

Chia Smoothie (my husband’s favorite lunch)

6 oz frozen organic blueberries

10 oz coconut water (or pure water, can also use fruit juice)

2 bananas

3 romaine leaves loosely chopped

1 tsp. spirulina

1/2 tsp chlorella

1 cup organic local frozen peaches (can also use mangos or whatever is organic)

2 tablespoons chia seeds

Blend and enjoy!

There you have it a fantastic nutritious food with some recipes to explore with. I am working on a chia ice cream recipe but it has been too cool to try it out. I also use chia instead of flax in my crackers and love the flavor. I make a sesame seed, sea palm, gogi berry, and ginger snack held together with chia and it is a counter top staple snack that travels well. Start playing and enjoy the benefits of this ancient wise super food. I am also curious as to how to grow chia locally but it dose not like frost much so it does well in warm climates especially the dry southwest.

Chia is inexpensive and available at the local Briar Patch Market or you can order it from this site on the rawfoodword link in big bulk packages. I was given a package of “MILA” to try which is suppose to be a superior chia and it is fine however it is distributed through multilevel marketing and double the price of regular chia. I personally didn’t notice any difference with regular chia. Also, the white seeds are marketed as Selba and very expensive and is just white chia seeds nothing special. Feel free to mix and match colors and varieties and buy organic all the time.

IF YOU TRY ALL THESE RECIPES AND ARE STILL LOOKING FOR WAYS TO PLAY WITH CHIA YOU CAN PUT SOME ON THE SILLY POTTERY HEADS AND WATCH IT SPROUT INTO GREENS!