Archive for November, 2008

I read the raw foodists all the time (Patenaude, Wolfe, Boutenko, and lots more).  I think their diet is fantastic.  Sometimes I go all raw, for a few days, weeks, or even months.  I wouldn’t criticize anybody for a minute who wants to do it permanently, as some of my friends do–they all enjoy excellent health.

So why don’t I eat 100% raw and promote it on my site?  I thought I’d lay out my defense of NOT being all raw.

1. Yes, when man discovered fire and begin to cook his food, he altered it for the worse, killing the life force in the food.  But I think we’ve adapted biologically to thousands of years of eating whole, cooked plant foods, eaten as part of a diet containing lots of raw plant food.  I think 60-80 percent is usually enough to provide outstanding disease prevention and an ideal weight.  EVERY meal and snack should contain raw plant food.  What we’re NOT adapted to is cooked, REFINED foods or a diet heavy in cooked food.  
2. I think that grains and legumes are good food.  They’ve been used for thousands of years by most of the populations of the world.  They provide good energy in the form of both carbs and protein, and the perfect amount of fat (which is to say, not very much).  Hundreds of studies say they prevent disease.
3. Most people can’t afford to eat 100% raw.  Boutenko said several years ago that her family of 4 spends $1350 monthly ($45/day).  Because I feed my family highly inexpensive whole foods in the form of legumes and grains, I spend $800/mo. to feed 50% more people than Boutenko does.  In summary, my program is very do-able financially.
4. It’s very hard to feed kids, especially teenagers, an all-raw diet.  Without grains and legumes to give them higher calories and faster food to prepare, moms can really burn out and teenagers get surly and . . . downright hungry.  I have tried it.  It’s really hard (nigh unto impossible) to feed a house full of competitive athletes and teenagers all raw. 
5. On the other hand, it’s not very hard to eat 60-80% raw, at least after completing a learning curve (my 12 Steps to Whole Foods program is the learning curve, as I experienced it, flattened out for my readers to skip all the rabbit holes I chased down that were a waste of time).  It is, however, nearly a quantum leap, I’ve found, to go from 80% to 100%.  It’s like the effort differential between getting a B+/A- in college, and getting an A.  That difference is MUCH bigger than the difference in your effort, for instance, between getting a C and a C+.  A 60-80% diet is achievable for anyone, allowing for social events not to become a stress and excellent health to be achieved.

So don’t get me wrong: I love the raw movement.  If someone has cancer or a serious health condition, I highly recommend a 100% raw diet.  But Boutenko writes about people going 100% raw and then swinging to almost no raw, back and forth.  I never eat no raw—always, always 60-80 percent, even while traveling.  (You can get salads almost anywhere.)

And I think that’s the most important thing: to be consistent about eating well, and keep your “raw” above 60 percent every day and always as high as you can, so you are providing lots of enzymes and not taxing and aging your organs.  I also recommend having periods of eating as simply and as close to 100% raw as you can—like a “detox week.”

Hi all,

Has anyone out there tried Maca?  If so what do you think?  Where did you buy it?  What is the best source for it?

I told y’all some time ago that I was in the final stage of my divorce.  Thanks again for all your support and kind words, both on the blog and in private emails.  We are all doing okay, I think.

So my divorce was final a while ago and I have started putting my little toe in the dating pool.  That is scary, after 20 years!  I am talking to a guy with whom I share religious beliefs, who is a father of three, smart, educated, successful, and physically fit.

The only issue?  I hope you all get a big belly laugh out of this.  What he does for a living is that he’s a district operations manager of a bunch of . . . PHARMACIES.

Should I go out with him, or not?  In his defense, he has checked out GSG.com and doesn’t seem scared.  AND, he wrote me this (I’m paraphrasing since he said it to me in IM so I don’t have an exact quote):

“I work in pharmaceuticals for the money.  But the medical profession has created a monster.  People are gobbling up pills in record numbers; in some venues I see elderly people eating 30-40 pills a day.  They’d probably feel just as good taking a placebo.”

Okay, GSG readers, your opinions on earthy crunchies dating pharmaceutical people?

I just took my kids tonight to the traveling BodyWorlds exhibit currently in Salt Lake City, comprised of “plastinated” Asian cadavers posed in incredible ways (yoga, gymnastics, and many other stances).  The skin is mostly flayed off of the cadavers of former political prisoners (one part of the audio tour explains why they do not feel any human rights abuses are involved).  I had Human Anatomy in college and worked extensively on dissected cadavers, but these dissections were unique and creative.   I have never seen anything like it: science meets art.

Quite a few exhibits are helpful to talk to kids about the effects of their diet, as help in teaching them to make good decisions for life.  One exihibit is a cross section of human fat, about 3 feet long and 2 feet wide.  Incredible to see THAT, after watching these lean cadavers with the beautiful interplay of hundreds of muscles, tendons, and ligaments that allow us phenomenal feats of athleticism.

Another display shows many joints in one cadaver replaced with artificial joints.  Others show what a pacemaker or a stent or a bypass look like, installed in a human heart.  You can look at simulations of what happens in the bloodstream when cholesterol builds up in arteriosclerosis.  You can see actual preserved organ damage: a heart after suffering strokes, and heart attacks.  Lungs after decades of smoking, and lungs full of cancer.

Fetuses are preserved in liquid at every stage of the gestation process, reminding you of how intricate a human life is–with tiny, perfect fingers visible at 9 weeks along.

The human body is such a beautiful, astonishing, complex, and miraculous thing.  The Creator of it is not just a brilliant genius, but also a brilliant artist.

What a tragedy when we don’t take care of such a gift, our own human body, the house of the spirit.  Well cared for, it serves us with thousands of gifts: running dozens of miles; expressing physical love, kissing, and bringing babies into the world; millions of intricate movements of dance or athletic competition; handiwork and craftsmanship; academic contributions to the world.  We ought to take care of our bodies, because we get just the one!

Has anyone been to the exhibit?  What struck you about it?

For those wanting to grow a garden (the #1 way to save money eating a plant-based diet), these are my “bibles”–click on the link if you want to pick it up at Amazon:

Marian Morash’s The Victory Garden Cookbook is the definitive garden how-to, with hundreds of recipes on how to use each of those garden vegetables–I use this recipe book constantly, except when someone borrows it, falls in love with it, and doesn’t return it!

Eliot Coleman’s Four Seasons Harvest was a breakthrough for me, showing how to grow a winter garden even outdoors in a cold climate

Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening has taken the home gardening world by storm.  That’s because this is the very best way to grow a garden, maximizing space and minimizing work.

I am in the market for a blender and I came upon your blogs.  It seems that you would recommend a Blendtec over a Vitamix as do other bloggers.  I was reading on another site that the Blendtec doesn’t stand up to blending frozen fruits and/or ice and so now I am wondering what your comments are on that.  We love to use frozen fruit in our smoothies that we currently make with a blender that is on its last…

jaytee

More important books for parents to own:

Denise Punger, M.D. is a GreenSmoothieGirl 12 Stepper and a brave new voice in modern medicine.  She’s a board certified doctor married to another medical doctor, but she’s also a mother who has breastfed for 12 years and delivered her last baby via home birth.  She’s an advocate of home birth, doulas, breastfeeding, and trusting a mother’s instincts.  Her Permission to Mother: Going Byond the Standard-of-Care to Nurture Our Children is an important book for young mothers to own.

Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food are geared towards teens.  Give your kid an incentive to read one or both of these books.  My 11- and 13-year old kids loved these best-selling exposes and never wanted to set foot in a fast-food establishment again.  Okay, they never set foot in fast-food establishments anyway, except to make a bathroom stop on a trip.  They inspired my oldest daughter to become a vegetarian, and she later converted her sister.  Written for preteens and teens, this is an excellent education in why you want to avoid all fast food.  I overheard my daughter after she read Chew On This telling a friend regarding the friend’s sugar habit, “You know that children diagnosed with diabetes by the age of 8 shorten their lives by 25-30 years, don’t you?”  (Heh heh, my evil educational plot is working!)  Too bad the author states in the introduction that his favorite meal is a fast food burger.

Ron Seaborn’s The Children’s Health Food Book is a seriously weird book!  A friend recommended it to me, and when I picked it up at a health food store, my then-four-year old son went crazy for it.  I read it to him several times a day, because he begged me non-stop, until I just couldn’t take it any more and was making up my own words.  The antiheroes are the Starch Creature, the Dairy Goon, the Meat Monster, and the Sugar Demon.  Of course, the vegetable, fruit, and whole-grain superheroes come in and save the day.  This book is good for younger kids—just beware that the preschool teacher might call you and say your kid is scaring the other kids by pointing out how bad their snacks are (this actually happened to me).

Robyn,

 Have you went to David Wolfe’s website www.sunfood.com?  If you have do you know about this cacao powder he has for sale.  If so what do you think of it?  Or if anyone else knows about it let’s hear from you too.  I have used it myself and I think it helps enhance your mood but I don’t know if it does much else to tell you the truth.  I like it but at 32 dollars a pound I would like to know if it is everything it is cracked up to be.

Thanks all.

These are books important for parents to own:

Randall Neustaedter’s The Vaccine Guide is the most science based, objective, and compelling look on the vaccine issue of all the books I read as I made the difficult decision not to immunize my children.  For instance, although the DPT shot seemed a no-brainer to avoid after reading about the evidence, Neustaedter is fair and balanced in saying that no known deaths result from the tetanus shot.

Robert Mendelsohn, M.D.’s How to Raise a Healthy Child In Spite of Your Doctor is an enlightening, if old, book by a renowned pediatrician who left a top hospital post after becoming disgusted with the way modern medicine treats children.  Dr. Mendelssohn led a research hospital in Chicago until he became so disenchanted with medical practices that he wrote this book that every parent should read to understand why it’s so critical to not put blind faith in medicine.  Some of the things I recall most vividly is how he challenged the escalating trend of tonsils and adenoids being taken out of young boys, only to find that truly, these surgeries were unnecessary and risky for the patients but were needed to fill quotas for medical residents’ requirements.

I learned from Dr. M that a fever is a natural, healthy way for the body to fight infection, and that fever should not be “fought” or drugged.  He put my mind at ease with statistics reassuring me that an out-of-control fever is so rare as to be something I needn’t worry about.  This book is a good start towards realizing that the doctor isn’t God: a good first step down a road to a mother becoming a healer in the home.

You won’t so much get alternative health advice as much as understand the medical paradigm’s limitations and abuses, which is helpful in a parent’s initial effort to break loose of modern pediatrics.