Archive for January, 2009

Are you on Facebook?  If so, make me your “friend” by searching for Robyn Openshaw-Pay.  (It’s also a great way to keep tabs on what your teenagers are up to!)  See you there.

In other news/reminders, I just did a group buy on ionizers, and Life Ionizer is letting me add a couple of people.  If you want into the buy, please email me at robyn@greensmoothiegirl.com.  I will send you wholesale pricing, which I cannot post because the prices are so far below the MSRP.  Those of us who have alkaline water and no bulky machine sitting on top of our counters (like the $4,000 Enagic machine) LOVE it.  If you are ready to learn about WATER, read my mini reports here:  http://greensmoothiegirl.com/why-drink-alkaline-water.html

And, locals, if you know anyone who didn’t get almonds in the Nov./Dec. group buy, I did get some extra.  Click on “group buys” in the GSG.com store.  You can order 100 lbs. (or 200 lbs., etc.). 

I have also made more colloidal silver and Charlene is making more Anti-Plague, which can be ordered in the same group buy form–just zero the almonds.

And one more thing for locals only: the BEST Gala apples ever are $0.99/lb. at Good Earth.  That’s a good price for conventional apples, and these are ORGANIC.

Dear GreenSmoothieGirl:  I bought a green drink powder once that was supposed to be really good for me, but I stopped drinking it because the nutrition label basically stated there was no nutritional value —which made me wonder if I was benefiiting from the drink at all—even though it was supposed to be made up of all the dark green leafy vegetables.  And besides–it tasted terrible. I forget the name–it was something to do with balances pH levels or something. Does your green drink retain its nutritional value? I am trying to go all raw. Thanks.

Answer:  Dehydrated greens products can certainly LOOK like they have no nutritional value if you look only at macronutrients.  That is, protein, carbs, and fats.  But if you look at how nutritionally dense they are (very high micronutrients per calorie), they are the highest-nutrition food you can find.   Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals.  You can eat green foods all day long and never gain weight, but they are nourishing you in hundreds of critical ways.

This is where I explain my own research on dehydrated greens products that you add to water, and which ones are best:  http://www.greensmoothiegirl.com/buy-green-foods.html

Add dehydrated greens to your water, not your green smoothies.  (It’s just too much in a smoothie.)

I am back from Costa Rica.  It was supposed to be a 7-day trip, using Delta buddy passes given to me (very inexpensively) by a friend.  Unfortunately at the end of our trip, we spent THREE DAYS in the airport trying unsuccessfully to get out of Costa Rica until I finally bought both of us full-price tickets home, the last seats on the plane.  (My friend is a tennis coach without the means to pay for hers.)  Turns out her mother and sister had felt strongly (independent of each other) to PRAY her home right before I produced a credit card at the Delta counter, even though I hadn’t planned to do that.  It’s a good thing, because flights have been booked through today, so we’d still be there . . . and you may have seen on the news that the airport city, San Jose, got rocked by a 6.4 earthquake this morning and the whole city is in chaos with thousands in the streets.

So, I’m glad to be home!  I feel blessed to not still be there.  Pray for the Costa Ricans!

Can you avert the normal travelers’ diet eat plant food in Central America?  (You know I’ve been globe trotting this past year–that’s my 16th country–and am a little obsessed with that question.)

Well, Central America is the place for FRUIT!  It’s so beautiful–watermelon and pineapple and papaya and this most amazing thing called GUANABANA.  We made a smoothie of guanabana pulp we got a quart of in a grocery store, plus ice and Greens to Go from Costco . . . the most unbelievable smoothie of my life.  YUM!  (Unfortunately, I am unaware of anywhere you can get this fruit in the U.S.  Anybody?)

Greens to Go is nowhere near the nutrition of VitaMineral Green that I offer on the site and in local group buys.  But it comes in little packets you can rip the top off and add to a bottle of water.  That stuff saved me in the airport, and it tastes really good!

If I can’t figure out how to post photos here (a problem I have had lately), I’ll have Ritesh do it for tomorrow: see me with some of the local stuff I pulled right out of the trees!  Okay, I was holding my friend’s 7-year old daughter up under a coconut tree, and she was banging on the coconut with a big glass Coke bottle we found on the ground (dumb, I know, but it’s all we had) . . . and a local felt sorry for us and pulled over and gave me that giant coconut in the photo from the trunk of his car.  Then I found another guy with a machete, and voila!  Fabulous electrolyte- and mineral-rich coconut liquid!  And a photo of what the white-faced monkeys eat–we should take a page from them!

Dear GreenSmoothieGirl:  Do you have any information on what kinds of vegetables need to be eaten together to make a complete protein? Do they need to be eaten at the same time, or just within the same day, so many hours of each other, etc.

Answer:  This is an excerpt from Ch. 6 of my e-book 12 Steps to Whole Foods:

Most of the main dishes in this chapter are high in protein because I have designed the recipes to contain both a whole grain and a legume.  Together, their amino acids complete each other to make a “perfect protein.”  Recipes in this chapter that contain a grain/legume combination are identified with an asterisk (*), showing that they qualify as a “perfect protein.”  I include the “perfect protein” designations not because I think such food combining is necessary, but because others do and feel better knowing they have it in their main dish.

No wonder indigenous people used legumes and grains together for thousands of years—millions of people on this planet have subsisted primarily on the combination of beans and rice.  At dinner, everyone wants energy-sustaining food, and that’s a good way to get it.  However, don’t obsess about the “perfect protein,” feeling that the only true meal must qualify under this banner.  Many experts, including Dr. Robert O. Young, say that if you eat green food, your body has all the amino acids in a free-floating pool to assemble proteins, so you don’t have to eat all of them simultaneously to get enough protein.  The amino acids you eat are used over a 24-hour period, so you needn’t make rocket science of your eating habits.  Just eat lots of plant foods, especially greens. 

Because of the way amino acids in plant foods combine, the amount of protein in a legume or grain doesn’t give the whole picture.  Trust your body to manufacture enough protein, even if your food isn’t “quality” protein.  “Quality” only means that it matches human flesh closely, as animal protein does.  The building blocks of proteins are amino acids, and your body can assemble proteins when you give it all the amino acids found in dishes made of a variety of five natural, whole food categories: grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and vegetables.  If you are imagining these foods being a limited menu, think again: you have a huge variety of highly sustaining foods to choose from!

Dear GreenSmoothieGirl: I have PCOS and I have battled weight for years.  I am currently 275 lbs and 5’10″.  I believe that what we eat does impact our health dramatically.  I was on a green smoothie a day for over a month and started to feel better.  Then I was told that it was too high in carbohydrates by my doctor and that I needed more protein to combat insulin resistance that accompanies my PCOS.  The recommendation: eggs, butter and meat.  I had been eating a green smoothie consisting of 1 c carrot juice, 1 c collard greens, 1 c. kale, 1/2 c. spinach, 1 frozen banana, 1/2 c. frozen strawberries, blueberries, raspberries.  I would sweeten with stevia if needed.   They want me to cut out the carrot juice, the banana and the berries.  I like greens but I need the fruit to cut the grassy taste.

I cannot believe that more and more dead animal and factory farmed animal product is better for me, but I am desperate to regain my health.  Do you have any experience with PCOS or insulin resistance and can you offer me any hope or education about what to do?

Answer:  I can’t advise you about specific health problems.  Doctors, however, mostly don’t know that higher-protein foods aren’t limited to animal products.  Higher amounts of legumes (beans, lentils, peanuts) and nuts will increase proteins and decrease any quick-to-the-bloodstream carbs.  And in your green smoothies, you’re already using stevia for sweetener, but you may want to use the mixed berries (lower in sugar) and use lemon and very little fruit (maybe a small apple).  As fruits go, bananas are very high in sugar.

Dear GreenSmoothieGirl:  OK Wow……I just read Myth #12 and I’m really, really depressed!  I thought I was average weight….I’m 5’3″ and weigh 140 lbs….and your chart says I should be around 105! That means I need to lose at LEAST 30 lbs or so (if I give myself some leeway).  I’ve NEVER been that low in my adult life, and don’t consider myself overweight.  Is this truly realistic?  I’ve always been told that I’m ‘solid’, medium bone build, strong, muscular legs, and just a little in the middle–had twins, gained 60 lbs. with that pregnancy…skin stretched a tad, lost all the weight and some extra.  I can’t even imagine myself at 105, or 110, or 120 for that matter.

Answer:  First of all, it’s not my chart.  It’s Dr. McDougall’s chart that I submit to my readers as something to think about.  Let’s just let it expand our mind and give us something to think about.  Let’s not get married to it.

The point is that when you use averages from people who eat an exclusively whole-foods diets, like the indigenous peoples who live on plant foods, around the globe, you get dramatically different—even shockingly different—averages.  That chart is based on weights of healthy indigenous people.  (And you may be aware that extremely thin people have the longest life expectancy, around the globe.)

Right . . . you’re going to say that you and I aren’t living in the Sahara with access to only a handful of foods.  We have the constant temptation of living in the modern world where processed foods are some of our gods.  I understand that.

The point is simply to let go of those lame standardized charts your doctor shows you.  They give us a false sense of security about what is truly healthy.  I’m not trying to create hopeless ideals—please let go of beating yourself up about your weight—I’m trying to ask provocative questions about how we’ve been educated about health and nutrition.

If going to the weight in that chart would be unhealthy for you, then don’t do it.  And looking at an end goal like that can be daunting.  (Note: I am 5 lbs. over the ideal in the McDougall charts, too!  However, unlike this email I got and several others, I think I’d look just fine, quite healthy in fact, at the ideal weight for my height in the chart.  The further you are from that number, the more outraged you’re going to be by the number.)

Don’t hold up huge, unrealistic goals for yourself.  (It goes without saying that starving or bingeing/purging are bad ways to get to your ideal weight.)  Don’t view the McDougall chart as the new gold standard for 100% of people.  (We vary in bone size, etc.)  Just also don’t be surprised if, when you reach your “target weight” based on the American norms, you realize that you want to—and can, without massive effort!—get even leaner.  I’ve seen this happen with many people eating all raw or “high raw” on plant foods.