Archive for August, 2008

I’m going to bombard you with a bunch of statistics and expert quotes about a plant-based diet versus an animal-protein diet, for 12 days.  These gems are gleaned from one of my favorite sources, John Robbins’ The Food Revolution.  He quotes 60+ sources in every chapter.  Where Campbell’s The China Study is the “grand prix” of nutrition and epidemiology, Robbins is the “slam dunk” aggregation of all the studies showing a plant-based diet to be superior.  I’m not going to kill space listing all the sources in this blog series, but you can find them in Robbins’ book, which is a deeply compassionate “voice” for both people and animals.

I’m not going to comment after each series of statistics, because they speak for themselves best.  I believe you will, however, find the data astonishing in aggregate.  I will ask a provocative question at the end of some of the blogs.  I hope you comment on them.

First, I think it’s fun to mention that John Robbins is the only male heir to the co-founder of Baskin Robbins.  He grew up with an ice cream cone-shaped swimming pool, cats named after the 31 flavors, and often ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and snacks.  He said no thanks to that legacy when he became convinced that his future career would be to line his own pockets making people sick.  For many years, he and his wife lived on less than $1,000/year, very happily, in a cabin in the woods.  I think John Robbins is a great American hero, and his outstanding books Diet for A New America, and The Food Revolution are worth owning and reading.

If you’re looking for motivation to give up dairy and meat—maybe even completely—reading this blog every day for the next 12 days should be an eye opener, if not a mind blower, towards that end!

Tomorrow, we start with stats about whether dairy products contribute to your health.  The series will continue with important data about how meat eating affects health, how much protein we really need, where the main sources of foodborne illness come from, how animals raised for food are treated in America, and how vegetarians’ health compares to meat eaters’.  We’ll also cover info about how much education Americans understand about nutrition, how eating high on the food chain affects world hunger, and how eating high on the food chain affects the environment.

By the way, a nice thing about having two machines (or three, like I have) is that as a GSG evangelist, you want to lend someone a machine.  I *always* have my second VM lent out.  For a while my cleaning lady had it while she saved for her own, and currently my teaching assistant, Parker, has it, because he’s a Brigham Young University wide receiver and needs more energy.  It’s usually one of my starving university students who identifies himself as having health problems or an interest in nutrition I lend it to.  You cannot believe how many of my students (average age: 21) have Crohn’s disease, celiac disease, chronic constipation or diarrhea, energy problems, Epstein Barr, brain tumor, energy problems, and much more.  Every semester I have one or two bring me the university form to show me they have a disability related to chronic, diet-related health problems.  It’s the university’s way of saying, “Sometimes this student can’t even get out of bed, so please be understanding and work with her.”

I’ve never had one of them start making GS and/or drink VitaMineral Green who didn’t have a very exciting improvement in health problems.

So, to summarize:

BlendTec vs. VitaMix (which are the same price):

BlendTec’s square container design has a wide base allowing you to scrape the food out easily, avoiding wasted food like the VM causes, which drives me nuts when I make something thick.  The BlendTec fits under your kitchen counter, unlike the very tall VM.  It travels so much more easily than the VM because the base is more compact and fits neatly in a suitcase.  It doesn’t require you to muscle the food in physically with the tamper—centrifugal force does the work.  It blends grain into flour without requiring you to purchase a separate $80 “dry” container.  If you have a big family, you can get an extra-large container if you want, only with BlendTec.  The blade on the BlendTec has a lifetime warranty, which is huge since if you use it a lot, blades eventually dull.  Last but not least, it’s just more powerful–3 hp compared to VM’s 2.5. 

Shameless plug for buying your BlendTec in the GreenSmoothieGirl.com store rather than anywhere else:

You get 12 Steps to Whole Foods and any/all recipe collections offered here, free with purchase plus support on the 12 Steps blog.  80 percent of 12 Steps recipes use the Total Blender, and the whole 225-recipe program is designed to help you make use of this tool to dramatically improve your health. 

If you’ve already bought the 12 Steps program and get your blender through GSG.com later, just let me know and I’ll send you a rebate or refund through PayPal.  I want EVERYONE to have this very important tool, which I consider not just the coolest and most important thing I own in my kitchen, but the coolest and most important thing I own, PERIOD.

Robyn

www.GreenSmoothieGirl.com

To:           GreenSmoothieGirl.com

From:     Blendtec

Date:      8/29/2008

Blendtec home blender warranty FAQ’s

Question – Is there any restriction on the number of times a machine can be used during the warranty period?

Answer – NO. There is no cycle restriction on the home machine warranty. It can be used many times per day without any concern about going over a usage limit. Some may be confusing the warranty for a commercial machine with the home warranty, but they are two different things.

Question – How is Blendtec’s home warranty different from other manufacturers?

Answer – Comparing warranty coverage across different types of machines with different features and components is a little like trying to compare apples to oranges. But when compared to similar home machines which utilize current technologies, Blendtec has a standard three year warranty on the critical motor and electronic components, whereas other small appliance manufacturers only offer a 90 day or perhaps a one-year warranty for machines costing almost as much as a Blendtec.

Some don’t offer any warranty at all on the jar or drive shaft, which are key components in a blender’s function, but Blendtec offers a one-year warranty on the blender jar, and a lifetime warranty on the blade and drive socket. And if a jar should need to be replaced after the warranty period, Blendtec’s jar is less than half the cost of other high end machines. Some manufacturers don’t even offer replacement parts, so if a jar goes bad, the entire machine is a loss. Not so with Blendtec.

Blendtec makes the world’s strongest blenders and has had machines in constant use for decades. The return percentage for machines needing repair is among the lowest in the industry. Blendtec’s machines are Made in the USA using the highest quality components and materials. Blendtec is a continuous improvement company which means as new technology or production processes become available, Blendtec’s engineering department incorporates those changes into every product it sells.

Some companies which rely on outdated technology and don’t offer the state-of-the-art machines that Blendtec does may have longer warranties, but they don’t offer the value, power, and functions that a Blendtec machine has. 

When you’re talking about processing whole foods, raw fruits and vegetables, whole grains, or ice, just ask the important question “Will It Blend?”, and with a Blendtec blender the answer is “Yes, it blends!”

I read some comments about BlendTec and VitaMix warranties on my blog when I returned from my long vacation.  You can easily read the 7 reasons why I chose to promote the BlendTec Total Blender, instead of VitaMix (though I own both), here:  http://greensmoothiegirl.com/best-blender.html.  Okay, it’s really 6 reasons, because the last one is pretty stupid.  But I’m adding another one (as soon as my newly hired webmaster comes on), and that is how much easier it is to get stuff out of the bottom of the BlendTec canister!  (I always wasted stuff using the VM, which is terribly narrow at the bottom where the blades are.)

If I wanted to, I could promote both companies on this site.  I’m going to focus on the positives of the one I chose rather than the negatives of any other.  I have a strong conviction about the integrity of BlendTec, a company headquartered here near my home.  I know the employees all the way up to David Beck, the president, and worked with one of the authors of the “Will It Blend” campaign when we were both fresh out of college.  These folks are phenomenal, on a perpetual quest to provide the best products in the world in the home appliance industry.  When I send David an email with a question, I get a phone call from him within five minutes.

About the warranty, David Beck told me about a commercial shop he works with who says they burned out 20 VitaMix machines and only 2 BlendTec machines in the same time period.  I believe it.  Although I like my VitaMix (I have two of them, and owned them long before I found BlendTec), I have had to send mine in for repair a number of times.  Not so my BlendTec machine.  I like that the BlendTec automatic shutoff prevents the machine from burning up (I have burned up my VitaMix motor before, twice).

Dave says their experience is that if you are going to have a problem with your machine, it is right away, not three years after purchase.  Comparing the length of the warranty on two different companies’ machines is somewhat pointless, since the machines are not equal.  You need a long warranty if you’re not confident your purchase will last.

To address John’s confusion about limitations on the cycles within the warranty, which he recently posted, tomorrow I will post a memo BlendTec wrote me.

I just drove my 11-year old daughter Libby and her teammate Tristan home from their soccer game in another city.  I started this really funny conversation with Tristan in an effort to end my daughter’s rant about how much she hates practicing the piano:

Me:  Tristan, do you take piano lessons?

Tristan:  Well, I used to.  But it cost $100 a month each, for my sister and me.  So my parents had to fire the teacher, because we didn’t have enough money for . . . um . . . food.  And clothes.  We were wearing all hand-me-downs.

Me (trying not to laugh, as Tristan’s mother is a top-ranking administrator at the university I teach at, and her father is a well paid professional):  Really!

Tristan:  Yeah.  My mom spends all her money on . . . spinach.  And other personal items.  She makes smoothies.

Me:  Really?  GREEN smoothies?

Tristan:  Yeah.

Me:  Did she learn about green smoothies from me?  (I don’t know Tristan’s mom well, as I deal only with her dad for carpool, nor have I noticed her in my 12 Steps subscriber list or at a nutrition class.  But GSG.com readers turn up in the funniest places.)

Tristan (anger in her voice):  Yeah!  And now she’s reading MORE books and learning MORE stuff!  And she never gives us sugar!  Except for, we get root beer on Pizza Night.  Which is only like once a YEAR!

Go Tristan’s mom!  I had to clap my hand over my mouth to keep from bursting out laughing!  Spinach a “personal item,” indeed.

From our condo in Paris, I ran my daily five miles down a busy street, in the morning as some of the commuters were out going to the shops or heading to the subway.

I noticed the most disconcerting thing.  Parisiens do not smile.  They make eye contact approximately 70% of the time (it’s boring, running is, so I actually count these statistics), about the same as in other big cities anywhere in the world.  But despite the same curiosity about who is passing them that people all over the world have, and a similar eye-contact rate, they do not smile!

Here in Utah, I run along the canal, and everyone says hello and smiles to everyone else, even if we don’t know each other.  I decided to do a little experiment, and smile at everyone I ran past to see what happened.

Well, not much happened.  No one smiled back.  So I changed my polite, public smile to the one I reserve for when I see one of my favorite people, really enthusiastic.  (I told my brothers this, and one of them said I was probably scaring people.)  What I mostly got was a look of surprise, but a return smile?  Still very rare.

So I challenged myself.  (I’m telling you, I’ll do almost anything to make running more interesting.)  I decided that each morning, I would not return to the condo until I’d gotten 10 people to return my smile.  That doesn’t sound like many, and I smiled at probably 200 in the effort . . . but that first day, I still had to run almost an extra full mile to get the 10^th one!

Men returned my smile 4:1 over women, which I assume is because they don’t want to be rude to someone of the opposite gender.  Also.  You can always count on nuns to smile—love to see someone in a habit coming down the sidewalk.

After a few days, I had an interesting experience.  I went out for my run and didn’t really care about my return-smile statistics.  I felt a lot of joy and completely genuine positive feelings for the people I ran past, having sort of embraced Paris after spending almost a week there.  And I smiled at everyone who passed, but without really caring whether I met my quota or not.  And guess what—even though I was out earlier that morning, with fewer people on the street, my return smiles count tripled!  Thirty people smiled back, and I didn’t have to run an extra mile!

What is the moral of this story?  Anyone?

[This isn’t the moral of the story, but I honestly wonder if with all that white bread the Parisiens eat, constipation is causing all the frowning.  Those poor people have frown lines before their time!  They don’t just not smile—they FROWN!  Being constipated will drain your battery faster than anything.  And white bread, or what I call “glue,” is the fastest route to that particular malady.  I didn’t eat any of it in Paris because I wanted ALL my energy for climbing the steps of the Eiffel Tower.  And walking all over the beautiful city, and that amazing 200+ acre chateau in Versailles, built by Louis XIV built by 45,000 workers who had to clear a swamp.  Oh, and grinning at total strangers!]  Photos below are of us halfway up the Eiffel Tower and in front of the chateau at Versailles.

Dear Robyn,

I get cracking skin right around the front fo my thumb nail and it hurts.  Many times it bleeds or just makes big ridges like a deep valley.  It will heal up then occure again.  I wash my hands constantly due to three children and potty training.  Do you have any suggestions?  I would appreciate any help.

Thanks and God Bless,

Ann Marie :)

For lunch, we’d stop at a market and buy something like this every day:

1.      6 nectarines

2.      6 large carrots (I never saw baby carrots in Europe)

3.      A loaf of whole grain bread (a comedy of communication errors in a bread shop in Paris taught me that “complet” is the word in France to describe whole grains!)

4.      Some local cheeses and mustard and tomatoes for the bread (read John Robbins’ Food Revolution on how European meat/cheese is highly government regulated and not full of antibiotics, steroids, infected pus and other lovelies, like the U.S. products contain)

We’d wash the fruit and carrots, toss all the stuff in a backpack, and stop in a park somewhere to eat each day, like on the steps of the chateau at Versailles in the photo below.  Part of the fun was going in the little local grocery markets to see what they have.  In Barcelona we bought loaves of the most amazing fresh-baked 6-grain bread just across from our hotel, every morning.  Finds like this make you feel at home in a strange city and add to the sense of discovery and accomplishment in your travels.

And dinner we would eat in a restaurant.  I’m certainly not going to take my kids to Italy without letting them try gelato, and pizza!  (Of course, the pizza bears no resemblance to what is offered here in the U.S., is much better for you, and you can get many lovely vegetarian pizzas, one of the most popular being topped with mounds of raw greens.)  Ditto Barcelona, where we enjoyed the paella (vegetarian, of course) and gazpacho.  And France?  I did not, myself, try the white bread (I’ll tell you why tomorrow) but let the kids do it once because my husband thought it was somehow important in their “experiencing” France.  And of course they did fall madly in love with crepes (I’ve never tried that hazelnut/chocolate spread, Nutella, in my life before—I’m going to have to make a mental to note to stay away from it, because it was yummy on crepes).  So, we did indulge, but always with a big green salad (never forget Step 2 of 12 Steps!).  The Europeans have lots of watercress and other lovely greens that we consider exotic here. 

Amazingly, even without my green smoothies, and despite a few servings of gelato and crepes, I came home the same weight and had lots of energy each day for our adventures.  Go VitaMineral Green!  (More info here: http://greensmoothiegirl.com/buy-green-foods.html)

Is vitamineral green a powder or a liquid?  

Thanks, I will be traveling and it will make a difference to me what form it is in.

I saw a request by a blogger while I was gone for even more detail in the question I’m always asked: what do you eat?  This blogger asked, what EXACTLY did you eat, where were you when you ate it, how much time did it take in the kitchen?  I think she wants to know—do you live the crazy, on-the-run life I do?  (And therefore, GreenSmoothieGirl, can I really believe what you say?)  I had to laugh because I had just logged all the soccer games and practices for this week, at 4 a.m. having woken up early due to my weird jetlagging.  Every single day this week, Monday through Saturday, we’ll be running around to games and practices!  (And that’s just soccer—obviously our life consists of more than that.)

I’ll work on that blog in the near future, thanks for the request.

Europe was a tricky trip and I want share how we went and ate well (5-10 raw vegs/fruits daily) without hassle or excessive expense.  We had NO green smoothies because you don’t go to little European hotels with an appliance, nor will an appliance company cover your warranty if you blow it out with the weird plugs in various countries.  Plus, we had flights from Venice to Barcelona, and Barcelona to Paris, with strict weight requirements.  A turbo blender is just too much weight.

We packed these things in our suitcases to take with us:

1. VitaMineral Green.  This saved us, nutritionally, in the absence of GS!  I’d stir a spoonful into a glass of water for everyone, morning and night.  Learn from my mistake and double-bag just the powder in freezer bags so it doesn’t break on the return trip.  (This will save space, versus taking the whole bottle, anyway).  This is the best greens product ever made, no fillers, amazing ingredients.  You can find it in the GSG.com store, though we don’t call it by name (because I sell it for less than anyone else and the formulator doesn’t let me advertise it by name because of that).
2. Grape Nuts, Shredded Wheat, Costco Granola, and Rice Dream.  Double bag the rice milk in gallon Ziploc bags—two fit perfectly in one bag.  Remove the Grape Nuts from their boxes (we bought the big Costco ones) and add another layer of protection with a gallon freezer bag.  You don’t want these things exploding in your suitcases.  Taking these whole-grain packaged cereals lets you avoid being at the mercy of “continental breakfast,” which is never, in any country, an option that will give you sustained energy for the day.  Even restaurant breakfasts (which take time from your touring and are expensive) are pretty much never nutritious.  We bought bananas in the market, upon arrival, to add to our cereal.
3. Paper bowls and plastic spoons (for breakfasts).
4. Snacks from Whole Food Farmacy.  All of their many snack foods are delicious, and they just changed their business model (away from multi-level marketing, thank goodness, to simple direct sales) and were therefore able to lower prices across the board!  That’s rare nowadays with food prices just going UP, so jump on it. 

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about lunch and dinner.