Robyn's Blog

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.

I received this email from a health care practitioner who is a young mother. As I replied to her, it occurred to me that maybe these comments would be helpful to other young mothers who read this blog. (Similar content is found elsewhere on the site and in my writing.) Please do not consider this medical advice. It is my opinion based on my research and having raised four babies of my own. I do not suggest things regarding raising children that I don’t follow. But always, always follow your instincts as a mother. I believe those promptings to be God-given and more powerful and trustworthy than anything an M.D. (or any health care practitioner) will tell you. (That said, do your homework and listen to experts. Be selective about which “experts” you trust.)

Also, a heartfelt apology to those who don’t receive personal answers to emails because I get so many—I so, so wish I had time to answer them all like I did in the beginning, please forgive me.

Dear GreenSmoothieGirl: My husband and I have recently started having green smoothies each day and we are feeling great. I have an almost 8 month old daughter, who currently nurses and eats avocado (almost 1 a day). We would like to start some other foods with her, but I’ve been holding off as I don’t want to do those recommended by my pediatrician and conventional books.

I read somewhere on your site that babies have difficulty digesting cooked food for a while. I would love to start her off on raw greens, spinach, kale, etc. Do you think this is safe? I think the reason that most people give for the recommendation that all baby food be cooked is because raw food could be contaminated with bacteria and cooking kills that. What do you think about this? She’s eating the avocado raw and many books say raw bananas are fine, maybe because those are both contained within a skin? You also wrote about doing mostly veggies the first few years and then fruits, which I love! I think that makes so much sense. I guess my bottom line question is: are the raw veggies safe or should I cook the greens?

I’d REALLY appreciate your feedback on this. I am a first time mother and a bit tentative about some of these decisions. My daughter’s health is literally the most important thing in the world to me.

Thanks so much for the help and inspiration you have given to me and my husband.

Much love, Heather

Answer: Heather, avocadoes are beautiful for babies (wonderful fats for brain development, easily digested, excellent enzyme profile, and higher in calories).  And yes, plant foods encased in skin are the safest of all. I would go to bananas next, not just because they’re in skin, but also because they’re enzyme rich, higher in calories than most fruits, and nutritionally powerful.  Then see if you can find raw goat’s milk.  Make it into kefir or yogurt (see Ch. 8 of 12 Steps). Then try a simple green smoothie with few ingredients, teaching her to drink from a straw, or making it thicker and feeding it with a spoon.

But the longer you can nurse and avoid food, and the more of her calories she gets from your breast milk, the better–up to 18 months! (That said, don’t agonize about feeding her “regular” food—just make it wonderful whole foods!) If you do feed her cooked stuff, like brown rice or quinoa, do so in a meal WITH raw foods containing enzymes, like a green smoothie.

People are worried about contamination with bacteria, but the older your baby is, the less I would worry about this, especially as she gets older and especially if you have endowed your daughter with a healthy digestive tract by nursing her.  I personally worry more about denatured foods gumming up her little digestive tract (refined grain-based “cereals,” cooked veg/fruit baby foods, etc.) and forcing her body to produce lots of mucous to flush it out, than the fact that natural foods sometimes contain bacteria that, 99.9+% of the time, is not only common and safe, but also helps develop a healthy immune system.  Use organic produce for smaller babies/children as much as you can, and wash any conventional produce well with a good, natural fruit/veg soap.  Remember than conventional animal products (dairy/meat) have much higher pesticide and chemical concentrations than even conventionally grown produce. (John Robbins documented this well in The Food Revolution.)

Green smoothies have just changed my life! I have been drinking at least a quart everyday for 6 weeks now. Sometimes I drink more, but always drink at least a quart. My kids also drink them with me every single day. I have even converted my husband who at first stuck his nose up at them. I have noticed so many good things happen. I have lost 17.5 lbs. I have more energy, therfore, am exercising more.

My moods are so much more even, I get stressed and irritated less. I sleep better and feel more refreshed in the morning. My chronic constipation has gone away. I have suffered with constipation since I was a child. I have less desire to eat foods that are unhealthy. Once your body starts getting the good stuff and then you stick some bad stuff in there with it…it lets you know!!!

My PMS symptoms have all but disappeared. My sex drive has increased. I just feel really good. My whole family has really seen a lot of healthy body responses come from adding green smoothies to our diets everyday. I have converted several people and get asked questions each time I am out with my green smoothie (which is a lot). I proudly and excitedly share our experiences and give them some things to try in their families!

(Submitted without a name—anyone want to take credit for this?)

Dear GreenSmoothieGirl: I’m local and can’t find young Thai coconuts! Where do you get them?

Answer: I get them at 1^st Oriental Market, 286 North State Street in Orem (Utah), a case of 9 for $15.  (They also have inexpensive, interesting Asian greens, and cheap fresh ginger. Stay away from the Asian processed foods in the middle of the store—they’re even worse than American foods. I’m sure it’s hard for you to imagine, but they’re less savvy about MSG, corn syrup, etc.)

If you aren’t local, try Asian markets first. Even if they don’t sell fresh coconuts by the case, they can probably start ordering for you.  And if not, ask about canned coconut liquid.  NOT COCONUT MILK. (Coconut milk is good for other things, some of my 12 Steps recipes call for it, but for Hot Pink Breakfast Smoothie, in 12 Steps or the breakfast recipe collection, uses coconut LIQUID—or COCONUT WATER, same thing.)

I wrote earlier of a village we discovered with three people living there who are 110 to 120 years old. These are photos of one of the village elders, with the ancient Incan rings she found when she was a child on her hand.

The other photo is me with Kynet and Marco, whom I wrote about earlier. Marco is 4 years old and has cerebral palsy. Here’s my thought. If this mother in a third-world country, no recipes and no education, with a battered old blender and $200/mo. in income can feed her child a marvelous, whole-food diet . . . can we?