Robyn's Blog

My friend Claudia sent this to me two years ago and I just stumbled on it again:

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth and populated the Earth with broccoli, cauliflower and spinach, green and yellow and red vegetables of all kinds, so Man and Woman would live long and healthy lives.

Then using God’s great gifts, Satan created Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream and Krispy Creme Donuts. And Satan said, “You want chocolate with that?” And Man said, “Yes!” and Woman said, “and as long as you’re at it, add some sprinkles.” And they gained 10 pounds. And Satan smiled.

And God created the healthful yogurt that Woman might keep the figure that Man found so fair. And Satan brought forth white flour from the wheat, and sugar from the cane and combined them. And Woman went from size 6 to size 14.

So God said, “Try my fresh green salad.” And Satan presented Thousand-Island dressing, buttery croutons and garlic toast on the side. And Man and Woman unfastened their belts.

God then said, “I have sent you heart healthy vegetables and olive oil in which to cook them.” And Satan brought forth deep fried fish and chicken-fried steak so big it needed its own platter. And Man gained more weight and his cholesterol went through the roof.

God then created a light, fluffy white cake, named it “Angel Food Cake,” and said, “It is good.” Satan then created chocolate cake and named it “Devil’s Food.”

God then brought forth running shoes so that His children might lose those extra pounds. And Satan gave cable TV with a remote control so Man would not have to toil changing the channels. And Man and Woman laughed and cried before the flickering blue light and gained pounds.

Then God brought forth the potato, naturally low in fat and brimming with nutrition. And Satan peeled off the healthful skin and sliced the starchy center into chips and deep-fried them. And Man gained pounds.

God then gave lean beef so that Man might consume fewer calories and still satisfy his appetite. And Satan created McDonald’s and its 99-cent double cheeseburger. Then said, “You want fries with that?” And Man replied, “Yes! And super size them!” And Satan said, “It is Good.” And Man went into cardiac arrest.

God sighed and created quadruple bypass surgery.

Then Satan created HMOs.

Amanda asked, do I have any almonds left?

Well, no. And there are NONE to be had until we do the group buy again in the fall.

BUT. We mistakenly shipped an order to Las Vegas, and I am going there Valentine’s Day weekend for my daughters’ soccer tournaments. I will pick up the 250 lbs. of almonds (five boxes), as well as a box of cashews, dates, and shredded coconut.

LOCALS, if you want any of that, first-come, first-served, write me at robyn@oppublishing.net. I’ll keep a waitlist and let you know when I’m home with it on the 15th.

So I was volunteering in the lunchroom and recess at my 4th grader’s charter school. One of the moms came up to me and said she was a GSG.com fan and had my 12 Steps program and recipe collections. To prove it, she reached into her pocket, pulled out a whole cucumber, and took a bite. (LOL!)

She said, “Know how I learned about your site? Your daughter Libby walked up to me two years ago in the lunchroom and said, ‘Hey. My mom has a web site. It’s called GreenSmoothieGirl.com. You should go there.’”

I couldn’t stop laughing! I told 12 y.o. Libby later that day when she got home all about becoming a GSG affiliate. Let’s see what she can do in school cafeterias, ha! (The best part is that she is my most resistant child, nutritionally.)

I’ve approved lots of affiliates in the last two days, from Norway to New Zealand to Tanzania. They have a green smoothie dog web site or a P.E. certification web site; they are a health coach, a network marketer, a handmade soap maker, a healing center owner, a detox specialist, a La Leche League counselor, a bunch of family bloggers, a celiac blogger, a jewelry designer, and lots more.

Welcome all–I love the diversity!

My newsletter went out this morning about our affiliate program (see below), and I just went in and approved tons of new affiliates. It’s fun to read about their varying backgrounds, web sites and marketing strategies! People who have signed up so far today are a doula, a chef, a natural beef rancher, fitness instructors, a green smoothie blogger, VitaMix and BlendTec demo reps, a bath/beauty product developer, a holistic doctor, and herb store owner. Others own web sites dedicated to high school soccer, green living, raw food, cooking, dog training, homeschooling, vegetarians.

You are all so welcome on my site and I am honored that you would promote my information products to the world. I hope to help you in the one thing we all have in common: a desire to help others be healthy.

Here’s the newsletter that went out this morning:

We have been working on this so long, with hundreds of folks waitlisted . . . thank you for being patient . . . drum roll please . . .

Please join the GreenSmoothieGirl.com affiliate program!

What’s an affiliate program? I’m so glad you asked!

Many popular web sites have one. If you are an affiliate, you get your own unique URL. You send people through that link to join 12 Steps to Whole Foods, or get recipe collections, or anything else on the site. And you get a commission of 20% of all purchases on information products, payable monthly via PayPal.

Any time someone you’ve referred, through your link, comes BACK to the site and makes a purchase, they are “cookied” and therefore track to you forever, and you continue to be paid 20%–or 30% if you reach $1,000 in any month.

It’s a beautiful thing if you have a blog or web site, or if you teach classes, or if you run a co-op, or if you do BlendTec or VitaMix Costco demos. Or if you’re just a big green smoothie fan and want to share the love. We regularly get mail saying “I send everyone to your site.” You can now be compensated for that as well as help people implement good nutrition in their lives.

If you sign up as an affiliate, you can click through to a link to get your own customized business cards with your unique GSG URL on it.

Here’s the link to sign up.

After you sign up, you can grab some banner ads to put on your web site or blog. Just talk about whatever your favorite products are and put the banner ad out there for people to click on. It’s really simple! Our affiliate program has a robust back end where you can log in and see your sales as the month progresses.

Then, if someone you know buys 12 Steps to Whole Foods: The Complete Course, you get paid $30. This can be truly residual income, since you don’t have to touch the product or even the customer to make sales.

If you are a doctor or health food store owner, by purchasing physical product to stock in your practice or store shelves (minimum $449), you get a 30% discount, a reseller option within the affiliate program. (That’s 3 full-course kits, or 6 course manuals.) My information products teach people how and why to use the products sold in health food stores. Just indicate in the affiliate signup process, in the marketing plan section, that you want to be considered as a reseller, and you’ll be sent a coupon code for 30% off purchases that meet that minimum.

We need more people out there helping others learn to eat whole foods. (We as a culture have forgotten how!) Everything I’m doing on this site is to that end. I hope the affiliate program incentivizes you to spend a little of your time doing so. MANY of you who read this site are incredible in the way you teach and inspire others to eat a high-raw, whole-foods lifestyle! GO YOU!!

To Your Health,

Robyn Openshaw

In the LDS (Mormon) church, we have this program called home teaching. The church doesn’t like anyone to be without a support system. So two assigned “home teachers” come once a month, with a message, support, and sometimes treats that usually their wives made.

(A similar program, visiting teaching, assigns you two women who also visit once a month—treats are even more common in that program! Mormons are well known for being skilled with all iterations of sugar! Without booze and tobacco, it’s our only remaining vice.)

Both my home teachers (Steve and Terry) have heart disease, stents, high heart attack risk or history, and high blood pressure. Terry recently had a very serious cardiovascular surgery and is still in denial, as he’s 69 but very active. Steve was told by his doctor, “Don’t eat anything with a mother!” (I don’t think he’s taking this advice, but I’m impressed that he was given it!) A famous golf colleague of Terry’s told him to read Caldwell Esselstyn’s book. Terry thinks he eats just fine and his approach is to just lay off some of the cheeseburgers and fried foods for a while.

Plant foods heal. Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. Neal Barnard,and Dr. John McDougall are some of the most prominent M.D.s who promote the research on how well heart disease reverses itself when a plant-based diet is adopted.

I don’t usually give advice when I’m not asked for it, especially with old-school guys already rolling their eyes about the possibility that diet is part of the problem/solution. But, well, with those guys sitting in my living room for an hour, I did go out on a limb a little bit. I suggested they go to thechinastudy.com and told them I am here and willing to help should they want it.

My extended family (on my mother’s side) was recruited to be in a huge study of families with LOTS of heart disease and families with NONE. My family is in the NONE category. They bribed us and flew across the country to take our blood. (I did not participate or put my children in the study, but some of my sibs and parents did.)

I don’t know why my blood pressure is 96/58, my resting heart rate is in the 50’s, and my cholesterol is at 100, but I assume my plant-based, whole-foods diet has a lot to do with it. (Exercise clearly plays a big role.) I assume that at least part of the reason my extended family has no known heart disease is that for generations, they ran a produce dealership and ate almost exclusively whole plant foods.

Too bad Romney Produce Co. is now defunct and the Romney family is now left to fend for itself against the Standard American Diet.

I have reports on the site about why I like coconut oil (for cooking, for your beauty regimen), and at the bottom of each report is a link to the best price on really high quality coconut oil:

http://www.greensmoothiegirl.com/robyn-recommendations/coconut-oil/coconut-oil-health-benefits/

A reader purchased coconut oil through the link and had a strange reaction with the oil going bad in about a year. We have never heard this complaint before, and my own oil is good after a few years, so I was curious about the followup this reader got from the company I link to. Here’s what she said, with her advice to you based on her experience:

“To keep you posted, I did call Mountain Rose, and they were extremely courteous and attentive to my concerns. They conducted a lab test on the batch that I bought from, and emailed me the following:

‘Thank you for contacting Mountain Rose Herbs regarding your unrefined Coconut oil. Our QC lab manager has investigated your feedback on this oil and responded:

‘I examined our archived lab sample of this lot. It is stable and there is no indication of the oil becoming rancid. This customer may want to inspect the glass jars she uses and make sure they are completely dry before adding any oil. Water (hydrolysis) can cause decomposition of the oil, which can eventually lead to the oil becoming rancid. 11/9/09

‘Please let me know if I can be of further assistance. Thank you for your business and for supporting organic agriculture!’

The reader continues:

So now, thinking back, some water droplets (few) might have been left in the jar after washing it and adding the coconut oil, due to my excitement to use the stuff. This would make sense because the larger container that I was drawing from seems fine still. I’d like to warn fellow bloggers to completely dry their jars before adding oil. Apparently the growth continues and eventually takes over the jar with bacteria. (Nasty stuff–smells like rotten fish! yuck!)

Thanks for your support and responses! (Mountain Rose still has my patronage because of the kind, professional way they handled my complaint.)

Thanks,
Chris

You’ve probably read me saying that whole plant foods have more than enough protein—to rival human breast milk, to satisfy the World Health Organization, and even the U.S. Recommended Daily Allowances!

One uphill battle I face as a nutrition educator is those trying to put on muscle mass, especially weight lifters, competitive athletes, and teenaged boys! Another challenge is helping anyone who wants to lose weight, where increased protein is helpful.

I have a teenaged athlete living in my house. He has to live in the real world, where all his friends are drinking raw eggs and cans of tuna and otherwise obsessing about protein. Here’s the good news: you do not have to drink eggs and eat animal flesh to achieve your goals.

If you’re going to eat protein powders, shakes, and bars, I have this important suggestion: DON’T EAT WHEY OR SOY!

Whey is the protein from dairy milk, the casein used in all of the animal studies in the Oxford/Cornell China Project where the animals (and later, people) fed a 20% animal protein diet suffered from all the modern diseases, especially cancer, and had shortened life expectancies. The evidence is enormous that this protein is harmful to your health.

You can request your free copy of my Nutrition Manifesto special report here, debunking falsehoods you’ve been taught about nutrition by the media: 12nutritionmyths.com

You can read in my report about the unhappy consequences of putting refined soy products in nearly everything in our food supply. Also read about why dairy is not the source of calcium and protein our mothers believed it was.

Hopefully you know that whole plant foods are the only true route to minimizing disease risk and living with more energy than all your peers. I have made a very exciting discovery and watched my son’s muscle mass and definition increase impressively in the past year using an incredible new product:

It’s Sun Warrior’s sprouted, fermented brown rice protein. Not only a whole food that isn’t stripped of nutrition–but live, and fermented, too. If you follow 12 Steps to Whole Foods, you know from Chapters 7 that sprouting a grain explodes its nutrition almost exponentially. You know from Ch. 8 that fermenting foods predigests their proteins, massively reducing strain on the digestive system.

The only other protein powder I approve of, nutritionally, is hemp, but it makes your smoothies gritty. And it’s not sprouted or fermented.

My son loves to make shakes with this raw, vegan, sprouted, and fermented protein powder, which is silky and delicious in Natural, Chocolate, and Vanilla flavors. My son puts it in the blender with ice, protein, and frozen bananas, plus almond, rice, or raw goat milk.

Adding high-quality protein to smoothies can help you lose fat, lower cholesterol, get in shape and increase muscle tone, as well as normalize your blood sugar.

If you get your protein powder on the GreenSmoothieGirl.com right now, you get my new Protein Shakes recipe collection FREE–sent to you as a download. (No surprise here: most of my shake recipes feature raw leafy greens!)

Unlike formulators of other protein powders, these guys at SunWarrior know real nutrition. Not false doctrines of bodybuilder nutrition, which promotes food full of chemicals and animal products. This is the superior nutrition I teach on GreenSmoothieGirl.com: where whole foods and live enzymes are important. And the only sweetener is the herbal stevia.

Here it is–I think you’ll love it:

http://secure.ultracart.com/catalog/GSG10/category/products/

So I just made this recipe in my dehydrator yesterday. They didn’t even finish drying before my kids finished them! So I’m starting a new double batch now. It’s a great treat to get RAW, SPROUTED nutrition into your family’s routine, and it’s a great way to use your raw almonds you got in the group buy.

If you got almonds in the group buy and you’d like to try this, and you’re one of the first three to respond by commenting on this blog, I’ll have Organics for Everyone send you a 12 oz. jar of their organic date syrup, which was WONDERFUL in this recipe (unprocessed, highly nutritious sweetener):

Chocolate Almonds

2 cups raw almonds
1 Tbsp. coconut oil
2 Tbsp. date syrup
1 Tbsp. raw chocolate powder (or nonalkalized unsweetened cocoa powder)
1/4 tsp. Original Himalayan Crystal Salt

Soak your raw almonds in water overnight, then drain and allow them to air dry (an hour or two). Make sure coconut oil (warm it in hot water if necessary) is liquid, and mix all remaining ingredients well. Stir in nuts. Spread evenly on dehydrator tray and dry until no longer wet/sticky, about 14-18 hours, below 116 degrees. Enjoy!

Today this story ran in the Daily Herald about the growing green smoothie movement, and this site. Thanks for reading my blog—I love you all for the way you want to make the world greener and help everyone around you be healthier.  Photos by Mark Johnston. Enjoy:

http://heraldextra.com/lifestyles/food-and-cooking/article

If you missed the group buy, you can still get one of the last 20 boxes (50# each) of raw almonds. I got them, extra, because people are always writing after the buy closes. You can get just 50 lbs. if you want, so point your friends in the direction of this link if they missed out:

http://secure.ultracart.com/catalog/GSG10/10012.html

LOCALS ONLY, if you want raw organic agave cases or raw/cold pressed coconut oil, stand by for an email from me announcing a discount on that because I accidentally over-ordered.