Robyn's Blog

In a class I attended on single parenting, the teacher repeatedly brought up the “McDonald’s Effect” (which you may remember from the documentary Supersize Me):

McD’s is carefully, methodically creating its youngest generation to be its best customers ever.  Play Places beckon with bright colors and all kinds of free fun.  When you walk in the door, the smells are inviting and rewarding.  You buy a very inexpensive, easy meal in a brightly colored box, with a fuzzy stuffed-animal toy.  It’s exciting—you never know what it will be, but it’s always fun!  Nothing in the box has any nutritional value.  In fact, what’s in it will hurt your child.  But the child develops emotional attachments and positive memories of fun, good smells, good tastes, instant gratification, and comforting toys.  That, on top of the sensations in their mouth of high-fat, high-sugar foods, is virtually irresistible. For life.

I actually like sitting in classes where something false is taught. It gives me a chance to think through the logic of my own belief set, and craft responses in my head if not out loud, that are sensible and rational.

I would like to say that some dietetics professors at least two other universities I know of are 12 Steppers, learning and growing, changing curriculum with information outside the mainstream “bill of goods” sold to us by industry.  Not all nutritionists push animal protein consumption on people. 

But, do your own thinking regardless of the teacher’s credentials.

Many years ago I read a three-part Wall Street Journal series on inner-city nutrition.  The WSJ reporter went into a tenement building to interview three obese young ladies eating in front of the TV after school.  They were munching on the usual suspects: chips, Hostess products, sodas.  The reporter had found that in the inner city, most of the people are eating three meals a day of fast food. He had also gone into the grocery stores to find that most had no produce at all besides potatoes.  Store owners who were interviewed said no one bought it.

One of the young women was quoted saying this:

“I know it’s good for me because McDonald’s sells it. They wouldn’t sell it if it weren’t good for me.”

Now you folks here on GSG.com are, many of you, the “choir” that I preach to.  Already converted.  But some are newbies.  And whoever you are, you are surrounded by newbies.  You have the power to slowly, in a “drip” fashion, influence people to reject what they’re taught by pop culture.

Please do it.

This is a serious question. I’ve been drinking green and pink smoothies for about a month, and I’m elated.  I love them.  I try to make them as healthy as possible (trying not to overdo the fruits) and put all kinds of additional things in them besides my staples of massive quantities of collards, spinach, swiss chard and 2 different kinds of kale, all organic.  I add goji berries, almonds, dulce flakes, flax oil, raw wheat germ, a piece of lemon with the rind, hemp protein powder, sprouts, some maca powder, some aloe, some spirolina — I just go nuts.  I feel like a mad chemist sometimes.  I crave these and I would be happy drinking a green smoothie, slowly, for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I am very overweight and feel like this is the first thing I’ve put in my body in, oh, forever, that feels right because it’s so freaking healthy. I haven’t lost much weight yet, just 3-5 pounds, but think that if I continue this, the weight will eventually start coming off. I’m a terrible cook and I don’t trust myself in the kitchen.  I manage to mangle everything, even when adhering closely to the recipe.  It’s just too frustrating and time consuming, whereas the smoothies take just 5-10 minutes. Can I survive on nothing but green smoothies for a while?  What if I DON’T get bored with them?  If I want to eat this way for a while, a couple months or more, is there any harm in that?  I’m taking enzymes and a probiotic daily as well, and some extra virgin coconut oil in capsules. I also drink a glass of sole every morning when I wake up.

I listened to this presentation for an hour by a very nice and apparently very poorly educated woman who very frankly has no business telling anyone what their diet should be.  I love formal education and am often impressed by doctorate degrees. But sometimes a PhD is worthless when the person who earned it has no critical thinking skills, is not discerning.

When she lauded mypyramid.gov as the best diet in history, I began to fidget rather uncontrollably as only people close to me know I do.  Just the day before, I’d been in attorney-activist-author-cancer survivor Merilee Boyack’s auditorium lecture, standing-room only, called “Standing Up In a Sit-Down World.”  Just today I read this from Seth Godin’s blog:

It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers.
It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail.
It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.
It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.

I really hate conflict. Believe it or not, I don’t argue with people about nutrition, not in the last 10 years anyway.

With my own university and community education experience, I’m pretty quick to formulate relatively articulate responses.  I did raise my hand, with this in my head ready to say, politely:

“That curriculum and ideology you have on the big screen was bought and paid for by the  most powerful industries in America: DAIRY, and MEAT.  It is not in keeping with the Word of Wisdom we profess to believe.  It has led to an epidemic in all the modern diseases that are destroying someone each of us knows and loves.  It has led to two-thirds of us being overweight or obese, which is bringing our economy to its knees.  There IS a better way than the diet you have on your screen.  It’s called living close to the land.  Eating mostly raw plants and whole foods.  The way God made them.  Before men discovered fire, and invented boxes and cans–and McDonald’s.”

My friends, I would like to finish this story with something besides what actually happened.  I know I’ve built this up, but unfortunately, you’ll find this to be a story with no climax.  She looked right at me, and didn’t call on me.  I should have raised my hand higher.  That was the place to speak up.  I didn’t get my shot.

Sounding off on my blog, here, is the next best thing.  I think I’ll send a newsletter to my 12,000 newsletter subscribers pointing to this blog entry.  This is important.  The world is going to teach your children a bunch of GARBAGE about nutrition.  Your children will listen, they’ll take notes, they’ll memorize it for tests.  This starts in elementary school.  I hope you’re teaching them the truth.  If you’ve been with me for long, you have sources.  Point to them.  Speak up when it’s appropriate.

(Even Merilee Boyack told a story of when she remained silent in a city council meeting when she was being considered for mayor after the mayor died.  It’s not always right to speak up, when speaking up constitutes “shooting off your mouth.”  But let your gut guide you: there is a time and a place to speak up.  I missed one this week. Boyack was actually sitting in this nutrition class near me, taking notes. If she reads this by googling herself, I would like to formally apologize here for NOT speaking up.)

So I went to the lady’s class and learned two interesting facts that I shared with you yesterday.  But that’s where the useful information ended.

I was hoping for some good tips since I’ve spent quite a bit of time assembling an arsenal of good information and great expert speakers for my upcoming 6-part teleseminar on Developing a High-Nutrition Food Storage.

Imagine my shock to spend an hour in this class on stocking a healthy pantry, and never hear any of these three important words: Vegetable (with one exception you’ll love, later in this paragraph). Fruit. Whole.  Not even any talk of grains or legumes. What I did hear was advice to stash things like creamed soup (full of MSG), Otis Spunkmaier cookie dough, cake mixes, canned anchovies, and “Krab” meat.  A long discussion of whether to freeze your meatloaf before or after you cook it.  Instructions to blanch all your veggies before freezing them to stop the enzymatic action.  The teacher laughing about how she never uses her oven because she adores her microwave so much.  A tip about a wonderful taco salad she eats often, full of chips, cheese, and hamburger meat.  A suggestion to use your canned chickpeas to make hummus, and don’t bother going to the health food store for tahini (raw sesame seed paste)—just use sour cream instead!

I could write paragraphs on each of these pieces of COMPLETELY BOGUS ADVICE.

The teacher put mypyramid.gov up on the screen, the U.S. government’s dietary guidelines.  She said this:

“Recently a man asked me, ‘Is there a better way to eat than the American diet? Like the Mediterranean diet, for instance?’”  The teacher pointed at the government’s pyramid, which prominently features meat and dairy and ignores raw plant food, and said this:

“I told him, ‘No.  This is more research based than anything in the world. It is the best diet anywhere.’”

I was astonished.  I got a book out to read until class was over, writing her off as being a rather ignorant grandma who was recruited to teach the class maybe because she was willing and maybe has a very organized year’s supply of food.  But then she mentioned being single and living alone, and a few minutes later mentioned, “When I was getting my PhD . . .”

PhD!  I put my book away.  Please, please, I thought to myself, don’t let her PhD have anything to do with nutrition.  Hundreds of people are sitting in this class learning falsehood from her.  Please, please tell me she is not influencing young people, the parents of the future, every semester on this campus.

I quickly flipped to the back of my Education Week magazine to learn her credentials, and this is what it said: “Association professor and dietetics program, director in nutrition, dietetics, and food sciences.”

So what did I do then?  I’ll tell you tomorrow.

Back to my five-part series tomorrow. Today I figured a way to get my cases of raw/organic agave SHIPPED in our raw-almond buy . . . and also add some great deals for you on raw walnuts, sunflower seeds, pecans, raw honey, organic cold-pressed coconut oil, and other items like dried fruit.  I’m excited!  I could never figure out how to ship it affordably before.  Those of you who have a co-op, or who want to organize one, you will LOVE this!  Remember, 1,100 lbs. or more (and this will include any item, not just the almonds) gets cheap shipping of $0.25/lb.  We’re getting tons of emails–please know we will email as soon as the order is ready to kick off.   You won’t miss it if you read this blog or get the GreenSmoothieGirl.com free newsletter.

Questions I’ve been asked:

How do the almonds come? in 50 or 100 pound sacks or in a bin?

50# boxes.

Is it possible to get them sliced raw almonds or slivered? some of the people who order with me want to know.

I don’t think so. But I will look into it. They will oxidize faster that way and won’t germinate–not sure this would be a popular item.

Do the almonds come shelled?

YES.

Some of my group are asking where they come from.

California, long-time, reputable ranchers who friends of mine have worked with for many years. Same people I worked with last year.

Part 2 of 5

In a very huge curriculum across all topics, I found next to nothing on nutrition. I should really teach at Education Week. Somebody make that happen and I’m there.

On Friday, though, I went to a class called Stocking A Healthy and Convenient Pantry.  Please make careful note of the way that title is phrased, for my later comments. I had low expectations of the class, since the LDS (Mormon) people attending the campus event (at the Mormon university) have adopted all the ways of the larger culture, in terms of the Standard American Diet.  We embrace processed food and a heavily meat- and dairy-dominated diet, despite counsel against that in both ancient and modern scripture. (One of these days, LDS friends, I’m going to start posting loads of public comments from the prophets and apostles over the past 150 years on diet.)

My low expectations went even lower when I walked into the class and saw the teacher, an older lady who is about 80-100 lbs. overweight. Please know that I love everyone (I am already bracing for the responses to this blog entry), but I say that only because I prefer classes on health to be taught by people who are healthy.  Just like I expect a class on Old English to be taught by someone who has read Beowulf, and a class on dance to be taught by someone who can cha-cha.

Before I go just all-out nuts on what was taught in this class—representative of what’s being taught in America—let me tell you the two interesting and valuable facts I learned from the highly academically qualified source:

First, in the 1940’s (before Betty Crocker and prepared foods), guess how much time women spent in food-related activities, and guess how much time they spend now? 

1940’s:  6 hours a day

Now:    20 minutes a day

Sure, we have more pressures now.  More of us work.  But wow.  We could do better.  We don’t have to spend 6 hours.  But maybe we could commit to spending a bit more than 20 minutes?  Remember that includes shopping and drive-thru time . . . ALL food-related activities!

And here’s the other interesting fact.  Google “food neophobe” about children who are very “picky,” a new phenomenon that I’m sure is also a spawn of the Standard American Diet and its addictive chemical “foods.”  Children who won’t try new things need 9 to 10 exposures, according to research, to embrace a new food.

So don’t give up if you gave them green smoothies three times and it didn’t go over well! Be patient and persistent.

I was at Brigham Young University ’s Education Week most of this week, with my gorgeous sister and two favorite cousins.  (That’s saying a lot about how cool Rochelle and Quinn are, since I have 48 first cousins and they all rock out loud.) I got to see a few GSG readers here from out of town I’d arranged to meet, or who saw me in classes.  (Lala whipped out her empty green smoothie container from her backpack, and I learned that her dad is one of the authors of Crucial Conversation, one of my all-time favorite books—I was there to attend his lecture. Fun!)

Here’s a photo of us at our last class, my sis next to me and cousins on the outside.  The incredible class we’re sitting in was taught by Kathy Headlee Miner, the founder of Mothers Without Borders, who I am meeting with tomorrow.  GSG readers will be hearing more later about how we are gonna get good nutrition to orphaned children together in third-world countries!

I have lots of comments about things I learned, so this will be a multi-part series.  Education Week has literally hundreds of classes all over the huge campus, about everything from single parenting, to Isaiah in the Bible, to gardening (to give you an idea of some of the things I learned about).

I got Quinn and Roch (12 Steppers) addicted to Hot Pink Breakfast Smoothie, since they stayed at my house.  Roch told the others that she dreamed about it at night.  Just sixty seconds ago, she wrote me an email about how she made it for her family and they were mocking her because it was disgusting.  Then she said, “I forgot the strawberries!”  She would like me to write you a “testimonial” that says this: “Don’t forget the strawberries.”

If you’ve tried it and don’t like it, you made it wrong.  LOL!  If you can’t find fresh young Thai coconuts (by the case in Asian markets), never fear.  You can buy coconut water/liquid (not milk, high in fat) in cans.  I get them $1.19 by the case, and one can has about 2.5 cups in it, so it’s no more expensive than fresh.  It doesn’t have live enzymes because it’s not raw when it’s canned, but it’ll do in a pinch and has many other health benefits fairly intact.

The recipe is in Ch. 10 of 12 Steps to Whole Foods.  Even though it’s really yummy and virtually all raw, it has beets and carrots in it. Anyone, please tell me a breakfast containing those ingredients that you’ll enjoy as much.

Anyway, tomorrow I’ll tell you a couple of REALLY interesting things I learned before I go off about modern dietetics based on a nutrition class I attended.  Watch out: I’m fired up and both barrels are loaded.

I struggle with cooking every day, because I’m either busy, and also I don’t really like to cook. I try to cook something healthy everyday, but sometimes I just don’t feel like it. So I’m looking for ideas of healthy places to eat out. So, tell me what you all eat when you don’t want to cook, or don’t have the time. By the way, I live in Utah county, so anything local would help.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1917458,00.html

Please read this article about the high price of the cheap food we eat.

I am extremely unhappy with our president’s health care reform plan.  (My health care reform would include disincentives for prescription drug use and incentives for healthy living “preventive” measures.)  But I’m a big fan of Michelle Obama’s organic garden producing 225 lbs. of produce this summer, and all the media attention it has gotten.

My garden is outta control.   This year I planted a 6′x’4′ square foot box entirely full of amaranth.  Then I forgot what I’d planted until I saw it somewhere else last week.  I’ve been putting it in smoothies and freezing it, too, but 80% of it is going to go to compost–I just can’t keep up.  I have eggplants nearly ripe–the first time I’ve planted that, and also turnips and purple cabbage and grape tomatoes and several other things.  It’s fun to try new stuff in the garden.  Eggplant parmigiana later this week.  (No, I don’t know how to make it.  I’m going to figure it out.)

Q: Dear GreenSmoothieGirl:  I am from Canada and would like to purchase “The Green Smoothies Diet.”  Do you know where I can purchase a copy of your book?

A: We were told by one of our readers that you can find the book at the Chapters/Indigo bookstores. So, if you haven’t gotten a copy of the book yet, check with these bookstores and see if you can snag a copy!

–Jenni (GSG admin)